"Spoilsport."

"Annnnnnd that was too much information for me. Let's just call it at crows."

"Please."

Hisame just bursts into laughter. "I'll hold onto any tips for just harem members, then."

"Thanks."

"Moving back towards the topic. Would it be an effective use of downtime to repeatedly drain our magicka to build a larger store?"

"Yeah. Especially if you're actually doing stuff - healing yourself while you're perfectly healthy's less useful learning-wise than healing yourself while you're hurt, though making it so you can idly heal yourself while doing other things is helpful, too, and you can practice that healthy. Conjuration's great for quickly building up stores, and that kind of practice also helps you build up a relationship with your summons. Conjuration's some of the costliest basic spells, though, so it's hard to learn when you're still new to the whole thing."

"But we'll want to do it eventually, yes?"

"Yeah. And I can afford to burn magicka potions, too, since I can grow my own ingredients now. Can teach you guys to summon spirits, next - those're generally easier and less dangerous than atronachs, especially animal spirits."

"Does one get to choose the animal?"

"Yeah - even a specific one, if you find someone you work well with."

"Interesting. Are they more intelligent than standard?"

"Spirit animals don't get much cleverer than dogs, but dogs are pretty smart. Atronachs are human-scale intelligent, just kind of alien and not talkative."

"What choices are there?"

"Wolves are kind of classics in Skyrim. They're smart and a pretty good size for fighting. You can also do snakes, or sharks, or giant spiders, or large cats - stuff much bigger than a tiger's hard - and I'm not actually sure if there's anything someone very determined couldn't summon. Still, spirit animals don't have venom or anything, so getting clever with snake species isn't helpful."

Eliana and the Keres both fancy trying for a cat.

Elatra will go for a wolf.

Hisame, obviously, wants a tiger.

Mora asks Glint about flying animals native to her universe, and then goes for a cliff-racer.

And it takes longer than the healing spell, and a lot of magicka potions so they don't have to sit around waiting for magicka to regenerate, but eventually they'll all be able to summon at least one critter. (Glint hasn't summoned big cats, but there's a few wolves she can recommend for Elatra to try for.)

Elatra appreciates Glint's recommendations.

Sweet!

And next would be taking time to learn how to work alongside the summons - spirits are easier to control and more predictable, so this is less important than with atronachs, but it's still a good step, and will help their magicka capacity and magical skills anyways.

Time to Make Friends With Animals.

Fortunately the animals are pretty chill and easy to make friends with! (Hisame needs to circle through a few tigers before finding one who doesn't mind being petted).

Elatra settles on a wolf with a fluffy grey coat.