"Paper currency? How does that work? Like - notes of authorization for silver held somewhere central?"

"Well, perhaps you could do it that way but the reason I don't have any is because it was instead backed by damned souls."

"Ah. I see. ....we've got to beat Tar-Baphon first but after that we will figure out how to prevent that. ...does Lastwall execute prisoners outside wartime? It has occurred to me to wonder if a civilization could get away without that."

"I have - uh, have read - the Worldwound handbook and not the domestic one, so I don't know."

"Do you know anything about how they choose their government?" This is also something where she has lots of ideas but enough sense to not say them aloud.

"I think it is slightly more complicated than just being a theocracy... and I might have heard of it, given recent events in my timeline, if it were a republic, so I think it probably is not."

"What is a republic."

"Oh, that's when leaders are elected by a popular vote. Andoran's doing it. Galt was for a while but I think is now complicated in some way. I'm not sure either example recommends it very highly, Andoran throws tremendous numbers of pirates who I assume must be very popular and Galt had a reportedly dreadful civil war about the implementation details, but the husband of the archmage couple is reportedly Republican and that's behind the constitutional convention he wanted."

"A vote of...all citizens in the major city?"

"...my impression was throughout the country but I don't actually know how I came by that impression."

"Has transportation improved much? ...in this society people mostly travel by river, which is only moderately dangerous, or overland, which is quite dangerous in most places. Powerful wizards can Teleport but most people will never have met any wizard that powerful or anyone who has travelled by Teleport."

"Cheliax had a lot of wizards, because of screening everyone in the compulsory education - they'd get all the kids together in a room and read their minds and see which ones were bright enough and take them even if their parents were serfs or something. I got a Teleport with one of the remaining supply wizards from my fort to Taggun Hold, I don't know if the place exists yet, it's in Menador, and I was just going to walk the rest of the way to Westcrown."

"And that would be safe to walk alone?"

"Not overwhelmingly, and in fact I will not make it to the convention due to a monster intercepting me, but I didn't have anyone to walk with."

"All right. I'm interested in whether any of the major inventions of the next centuries can be had early just from knowing of them, but there's both the fact that Asmodeans would've tried quite hard to limit what anyone knew about anything and the fact that you haven't seen much of our world. When you read the Acts were there things that stood out as more difficult to do than they'd be in your time, or done very differently?"

"...there's the prophecy spells, of course, but that's not... hm. I think I would have expected a higher concentration of arcane casters than seemed evident but I know Cheliax is unusual on that even in my time and don't know by how much. I have only read it all the way through once, though I scrivened off the second copy myself and skimmed it then and have consulted individual passages more often, just, not ones about inventions..."

"I would have expected innovations in warfare to stand out and not be something the Asmodeans could censor but maybe fighting a portal to the Abyss just does not really involve conventional warfare because demons are not capable of strategy."

"There are things I would, if commanding the forces described in the Acts, choose to organize differently, but not in a way where I know it to be better rather than circumstantial rather than stylistic. I can try to compose a report on that for you but it will be more difficult without the book to consult."

Perhaps to calibrate her expectations she should look at how much progress has been made in the last nine hundred years. Her homeland was civilized, but that's not a matter of invention. "I might appreciate that but it doesn't seem of immediate importance. Did you have other questions for me?"

so hypothetically how drastic a discount do you think She probably needed to "I don't think so, sir."

"I have a sermon to deliver after the executions but I can remain here another half-hour, if you'd find it valuable."

"It is not obvious to me what I am likely to be cleared to know about the strategic picture and was assuming that information would be issued on a need to know basis..."

"It is widely known that this is the city of Canorate, capital of the imperial province of Moltuna, currently under military rule and the base of operations of the Second Army of the Crusade against the king of Ustalav, Tar-Baphon, a powerful necromancer, who has also swayed the orcs of Belkzen to his service. The Emperor of Taldor is Kydonus, long may he reign, and the Empire reaches from Galatia province in the northeast to Sophra prefecture in the southeast to the Arch of Aroden in the southwest and to, well, here, in the northwest, with the rest of Moltuna currently very dangerous due to the war and with the lands north of it occupied entirely."

"They call it Molthune in the future. The Glorious Reclamation was based out of it and the Lord Marshal thereof is sometimes described as the most powerful paladin since - you, except presumably that refers to later in your career, I don't know how powerful you are right now exactly."

"There are paladins more powerful than me in this city. Is Molthune one of the provinces conquered by Hell?"