"It absolutely is, yes."

"Hm, do you have expectations or hopes for how contact between our worlds would go?"

"...yes and they're pretty nearly disjoint because our prospect for achieving it is, well, I guess I haven't met the man himself but he's at least a terrible parent."

"Disjoint?"

"What I expect is very different from what I hope, because the transit is to be controlled from this side."

"Ah...I believe Duke Metcalfe is, on the whole, better than his son. More interested in social standing. It seems plausible that his son's misbehavior can be leveraged and along with additional bribery... hrm..."

"If he takes bribes my world can buy him. It can buy him a hundred times. But it's a single point of failure, and if he gets offended - or if he just dies, or loses his powers -"

"I wonder if there is a way to make his portals permanent..."

"Is there precedent for that, are there any persistent power effects?"

"Yes, the crystal sword Lord Metacalfe was wielding is one such example."

"Who made that?"

"I don't actually know - I presume it is from empowered far from here that one of the Metcalfes paid, though possibly it is from the corpse of a wild demon."

"There are demons that come with separable magical objects, or that can be used as parts for magical objects?"

"Yes - in particular, it's quite common for wild demons to have this property."

"Which one, or do both occur?"

"Their bodies are magical and persist as such after they are killed or when parts are separated from the main body."

"How does one tell what properties such items have or can impart?"

"I would expect that the blade of the sword was physically part of the wild demon, possibly as a claw, with the same properties it now has."

"So... to make a permanent portal you'd need some part of a demon which already functioned as a permanent portal, and to detach it from the demon."

"Possibly, though there are other options. For instance, in theory there's no reason a portion of a demon couldn't hold nearby powers in stasis in a way that allows the temporary portals Duke Metcalfe can create to become permanent."

"Is there anything like a central archive of all known wild demons and their properties?"

"Hm, not as such. Though the Royal Campaign Records records information on each campaign to kill a wild demon, there are also missives circulated among the nobility appealing for campaigns to be called against particular wild demons. Oh, and the writings of Earl John Albert may be helpful - he had a theory about the theological importance of wild demons which was rather unconvincing but he did a reasonable job of collecting information about wild demons in a bid to justify it."

"Seems worth investigating, then, can these materials be borrowed or would one of us need to travel?"

"I have copies of the Royal Campaign Records and some of the more recent missives proposing campaigns here. I can send for the writings of the Earl Albert to be brought from my family's country manor, as well as for any additional missives they may have there, should my grandfather permit it, which I expect he will for at least the Earl's writings. I'll need to contact others to gain access to more of the missives - they aren't stored centrally and not everyone archives them."

Nod nod. "Maybe to pass the time I'll compile it into a book. I had a - computer-based series of articles, about dungeons and espers, back home, it'd be reminiscent."