...I think it's like - field laborers different from town laborers. If people are someone's, sort of. If someone's punishing people who are theirs. So it'd be to their loss, if they did that. She doesn't need to add 'not that that's good', or try to list the ways it's worse; they both know that. 

They - wouldn't do that in town either, it'd obviously - make the town worse. But if they didn't care about that.

...Helas would do that. The - symmetrical.

Yeah sounds about right. Unless whoever has some people doesn't care. Or just wants to hurt them for fun, though like I said that's more our problem than yours.

Cutting it off would be too fast, they'd break all the bones first or something. And if a mage-slave was stealing they'd do much worse. But yes.

('Mages heal', neither of them need to say, even to each other.)

"Just checking, does 'the person would be too scared to do it in the first place' work very well here?

Where we're from you usually have to do worse to get people that scared, and you have to catch people mostly every time, and you have to make sure it wasn't that something awful was going to happen to them no matter what they did. And it still doesn't work all the way."

"I honestly wouldn't know, but I wouldn't be surprised it doesn't work."

"Are there symmetrical punishments involved if someone commits crime with their gifts or other magic?"

"To a degree? But someone with a gift might just be killed on the principle that's harder to contain some gifts. I think depends on the circumstances, I suppose."

Acknowledgment.

"How about with ritual magic?"

"Easier to... stop with symmetrical punishment, though putting shackles around someone's ankles and wrists is also enough. So, I suppose the punishment would depend a lot on circumstances. Ritual magic tends to be on the weaker side, your summoning not being a typical case."

"Shackles?

What kind of circumstances would they care about here?

How'd this one get that much stronger?"

"Something, usually made of iron, around their wrists and ankles to stop movement? I think they would care the motives of the crime and how it happened? This one got stronger because we found a world with wells of magic that after a lot of work we manage to tap into. That world is not hospitable on the long term, it has these plant-like things that are both resistant too and feed on magic. They grow on your lungs if you're not careful."

"Just physical shackles? Why does that do anything?"

Well that's incredibly cool(!)

"How did you find something like that?(!)"

"Rituals require specific movements combine with speech, symbols and other elements. Just disrupting one's movements hinders their ability to do rituals greatly. Not completely, but enough that in most case you can stick shackles on someone that you don't want to kill right away."

"We have known of people going to other worlds, my husband being one, and we considered it as possible way to solve the fertility crisis. After some time researching the topic we figure we could find a world with magic fuel - without it we need months to gather enough energy for interworld travel - we found a few, all too dangerous, but that one was stable enough to be useful. We still have to be careful, whenever we do a summoning some energies spill out and the not-plant things grow faster."

"...I might be able to help with the energy part, if that's worth trying. 

What're other worlds usually like? How's that usually happen?

The fertility crisis would be solved by moving?

Are there not-plant things around here?"

"Help with the energy how?"

"As far we can tell every world is either really empty or very different. Or sometimes both."

"The fertility crisis actually affects the area, it might find a way to worm itself to other places, but it didn't do it for the moon. And even a few years would help some."

"The not-plant things are unique to their world, and we have managed to keep them there. Though that was helped by the infertility crisis affecting them as well. But our current method does not rely on that."

"Well, lots of what I do is kind of making energy, and I've never tried making your kind and I'm not sure how much you need, but if I can make it and make enough of it-

What kind of different? You can't move into an empty one? How does 'both' work?

...We probably want to be pretty sure it won't move on over if we're taking you back to our world.

That's good!"

"Different, as in space was really distorted, and there was one that was apparently entirely composed by something sort of white fire. Empty here means that it didn't have things necessary for life and not more useful than trying to accommodate everyone on the moon. Both would be the one that was just... dark void with purple lights. We will test to be sure that the infertility thing doesn't spread, but the experts are pretty sure."

Oh she'd thought empty meant of people, that explains it. Also that sounds rather cool, though indeed not very helpful with a problem that requires moving. Can people somehow be in those worlds and not die?

Also, speaking of, what exactly did happen here? They know "major disastrous event that left the world inhospitable", and that there's an infertility crisis, but that does not amount to very much information about it.

(She's also still curious how people usually get to other worlds.)

"Oh... apparently, a long time ago, some humans were turned into spirits or something similar enough. They were very powerful and were called Gods over it, but people managed to bind them and use them. The people who bound them eventually declined and then were forgotten. But the Gods tried their best to break out of the prison. The infertility crisis was them draining power from us. They eventually cracked their bindings and used that to create an eternal night and create crystal covered zombies to drain even more power. Then they used that to completely break free and kill themselves."

Well then.

...Are people now able to try something like that again, since it happened the once? (Use them?)

(Also was the eternal night also necessary for that purpose or was that for some other reason, if they know?)

We are hoping - for certain values of hoping - that the gods are truly dead. Creating a new one sounds very hard, a few orders of magnitude harder than bringing all the recent dead back to life and moving them to a new world. The eternal night helped absorbed a bit more energy from the sun, but it was probably just pettiness. They are not entirely sure.

Values of hoping?

"You can bring back the dead?"

"It's something healers can learn, but it's very tiring. A typical healer can bring one person back and then get knocked out for eight days. We have a few around, but any effort to bring back large quantities of the dead will take a lot of power. Or time."