"It's actually something halfway between those!" She fiddles with her right earring and removes it, then dispels the illusion over it, revealing it as a small, plain, golden earring with a white crystal embedded. "I do have some real physical jewellery, but it doesn't have the protective enchantments itself. It has a, let's call it an anchoring enchantment. It's connected to a set of enchanted gear back somewhere safe, and so long as I keep the appropriate illusion over it my set of illusion clothing behaves just as if it was itself enchanted!" She seems very proud of this for some reason.

"Oh! Oh I see! That's very clever, then you don't need to worry about repairing it or cleaning it or anything. And clearly the anchoring enchantment is covered and protected by the enchantments it duplicates, because I'm not seeing any obviously weak points for dispelling the entire illusion. Though you might have more trouble with some of a necromancer's enchantment removal, they're better at brute forcing than mesmers are and with enough focus could..."

Vetareh realizes Kasmeer's girlfriend is a necromancer. She trails off.

"... That's a feature, not a mistake, isn't it," she realizes out loud.

Kasmeer just keeps smiling at Vetareh for another second, then says, "I was thinking we could get a sigil to replace my old one on my wand, maybe."

Vetareh clears her throat and tries fruitlessly to forget this tidbit of information about Kasmeer and Marjory's sex life. It is very much in vain. In fact, it is burned into her mind forever, and she is terribly jealous she wants to do that too! Why are James' friends so hot and surprisingly kinky!! It's not fair, he was the one that wanted to do polyamory, why is she surrounded by hot people with clever magical ideas!!!! She doesn't even want to make passes at any of his hot friends right now, that sounds too complicated and messy and she would really rather wait for her thing with James to be more settled, but, but, the universe needs to stop conspiring to immediately discredit her thoughts about herself, okay!!!!

"That'd be nice and practical," she agrees, nodding.

"Yes, it'd be useful on its own for me but also make us as a guild more effective, wouldn't you think?" she continues, acting oblivious to Vetareh's internal struggles with her attractiveness. She absentmindedly reattaches her earring and covers it again with an illusion.

"Mhm! Though that does technically make it a little self serving as a gift from James, doesn't it."

"Well, anything practical would be, a little, right, since in practice I'll probably be hanging around hunting Dragons. You know, as you do."

"True. But it would be important information for ridiculously teasing James about it later, which is really the most important part of this whole adventure."

"Oh!" She grins. "Of course, how silly of me."

She smiles back, then hums thoughtfully.

"Though, ah, I will be the one paying for the sigil if James turns out to not find this whole adventure amusing, so..." she tries to figure out a polite way to phrase 'Please don't break the bank' but fails. Kasmeer can figure it out even if she doesn't manage to finish the sentence, right?

Kasmeer laughs. "Don't worry about that, he will in fact find it amusing. In fact, if I know him, he'll be thrilled."

"I expect so, yes. But..." she trails off again. The words 'I love him,' are... a lot. They're a lot. The only way she wants to finish that sentence, but also a lot.

Instead: "I think it's important to clarify with these sorts of things, you know?"

"Well, if you want," she says, in lieu of questioning the end of that sentence, and then closes her eyes—

—and after a sparkly explosion of purple, there's a second Kasmeer there. "I could ask," says the clone.

Vetareh laughs, delighted.

"Can you? Can your clones actually make the trip from here to Divnity's Reach intact??"

"They're time-limited rather than distance-limited," says the original. "And also, I can change the ratios of where I put the magic in them to make them last longer." Kas-clone shatters into rapidly-dissipating magic and then a new one appears, but this one looks more like a purple Kas-ghost than a proper clone. "Intangible, unrealistic, but this lets me redirect a lot of its magic to other relevant things I want out of it."

"Oooo. Is there a reason why it's based on you instead of—well not an image of something that isn't really there, that's obviously much harder than a direct copy—but, say, multiple copies of your staff hitting something? I suppose there you'd be need to be simulating a way for a staff to hit something by itself, whereas with a clone of yourself you can copy precisely what you've already done and have less to personally do yourself, but then, wait how does that work with your clone being able to say things that are different than what you say, or take actions that are different from what you do? I suppose you can set all of that up in advance, but then the question comes 'why clones at all in particular'..."

"As opposed to?" she asks, clearly enjoying this as much as Vetareh herself, though apparently for now taking the 'mentor' role.

"Uh, wings, illusionary knives that you throw at people, rocket boots, illusionary darkness, flock of birds that mob people—hm, but those are all situationally specific, aren't they, a clone has an easy base that any mesmer could use with a lot of potential applications, which would make sense when you've got to take the time to write all of your spells on weapons that different mesmers would use. But that's so..." She gestures helplessly. "I acknowledge the benefits and tactical intelligence of it but I am so upset about all mesmers apparently doing clones now!!!"

"The technical term for the transparent ones is phantasm, actually," she says, grinning. "And for what it's worth, even when not writing spells on weapons it's pretty time-saving to just have the general-purpose clone spell memorised to deploy at will. I do have a few of those specific ones, though, when the situation calls for it."

"The idea of all mesmers doing clones is going to get ever so delicately assassinated with my lost ancient magical knowledge, and there's nothing anyone can do about it," huffs Vetareh, crossing her arms.

She giggles. "Any juicy gossip about this lost ancient magical knowledge I can draw from you before you publish it in a major journal and get rich off it?"

"It's a bit hard to say, without more complete knowledge of the modern standard, but... As far as I can tell my hexes are significantly meaner and more varied, and the modern necromancer has figured out how to spread them with epidemic. Which is quite a change and retroactively justifies my chosen secondary profession even more."

"Secondary—oh! Oh you have a secondary profession!!"

“I do! It didn’t occur to me at first that it’d be notable, actually, it came up at all because I offered to show James ancient necromancer spells.”

"How does it work, what does it feel like, can you combine them? Lyssa, that's so exciting!"