"Next time I level I can shoulder some of the scrying. I'm coming up on it, I think."

"Oh good," he says fervently.

"If it's as bad as you say maybe she won't want to."

"Some people don't mind it."

"It doesn't sound that bad. Crystal ball's a better deal but the upfront cost is nuts."

"I just dislike concentrating for an hour. Used to lose the spell all the time by getting distracted. That doesn't happen anymore but it gave me a bad introduction."

"This doesn't give you a spell prep problem? It took me a while to get used to preparing spells."

"Eh, that's more interesting."

"I used to think I'd just go straight sorcerer, I think I was imagining a slightly more narratively surprising brand of adventure than one finds in reality and expected to run into a lot of sudden changes of plans."

"Huh. Most sorcerers do, I suppose once you get used to not needing to prepare spells it's more annoying than it seems to me?"

"I still have the levels and I like the extra flex, but yeah, I've got used to wizarding. Also let me have more of a repertoire before I had to go inviting things to kill me to get any better."

"There's a spontaneous divine caster in my church in Sothis and it honestly seems worse in most respects. I guess you get the element of surprise."

"I only have one second level sorcerer spell, and cantrips're cantrips, but first level I've got endure elements and comprehend languages and true strike and I like not needing to trade those off because they're useful in wildly different situations."

"Can you learn more second level spells? Or do they just come to you magically? If you bought an item for boosted charisma and it gave you an extra second level spell slot, would you learn another spell or just be able to cast the same one twice?"

"Oh, I can cast it eight times, an item could get me more. Also it's cunning not splendor because I'm a weird sorcerer. I haven't tried too hard to learn more, I think it'd slow me down on wizard progress."

"Eight!" He looks genuinely jealous. "What's your bloodline? Or are all drow sorcerers?"

"Not all, and more girls than boys - probably a similar number of boys are born sorcerers but fewer make it to the point of casting spells since that's not a main filter on 'em. My mother got it from her dad's side and didn't know a formal name for it and just called herself a cunning sorcerer."

"What do they filter the boys on -"

"...general health and vigor as infants, I guess. And not being twins. My grandmother sometimes says you should kill a boy if he gets so much as a cold before he's a year old, as a rule of thumb, unless he looks like he'll grow up real pretty."

"Wow."

"Do all drow everywhere do the female rule thing?"

"Far as I know but I haven't traveled extensively belowground."

"Just seems like as soon as someone thinks of selecting the boys the same way as the girls it'd fall apart."

"If suddenly every woman in Osirion became as smart and capable and likely to be magic and useful at work as the men, would it change anything?"

" - sure it would. Docks would hire them, they don't even care if whoever they're hiring is human. They could defend themselves, it'd be safe for them to go out whenever it's safe for men to. No one'd want to hit his wife, if she could hit him right back just as hard."