"Oh, sorry, were we going to have very serious important conversations on this carpet trip. How goes progress on your theology paper about trade relations with the drow."

"I did look up existing writing on related concepts, actually. Uh, in particular, there was a paper in last month's Prices telling the story of a series of agreements between a corrupt and slightly fraudulent businessman and one bank that continued working with him after he'd defrauded them in the past and defrauded lots of other banks and generally established himself to be a terrible credit risk. They charged him exorbitant fees for the privilege, and he didn't steal their money."

" - is the relevance just that we could charge drow higher fees for being chaotic and evil?"

"A bit broader than that, right, it's that - a lot of people have the intuition that if people are bad then you shouldn't trade with them, especially not if they're bad at being trade partners, but you still should, just at a different price, and sometimes you'll get very rich doing that."

"I regret this change of subject."

"I think once you have anybody buying your grain or whatever you should point out the price'll go up if shipments get stolen. Even if they like being chaotic evil nobody wants to maximize that at the expense of their own convenience in every aspect of their life, you could wind up with drow preventing each other from stealing shit so they can keep buying at nice predictable prices."

"That makes sense."

"They do have police down there, even, not that effective but they exist. Or, they do in Noctimar, I guess some places may do without."

"What kind of laws do you have?"

"Lotta rules for the slaves - that's most of it - but also you're not allowed to murder random people, just your dependents, within the space of a town, and they won't care much about stolen stuff unless it's a slow day but they'll bother about stolen - or 'borrowed' - men or slaves. There's treason laws, can't tote down a paladin and give them a shot at your neighbors in exchange for immunity or anything like that. No poisoning the water."

"Do the men need chaperones?"

"Not the same way people here do? It's not a matter of protecting their reputations, it's a matter of not getting their moms or wives angry. If a guy's mom or wife will take his word for it he wasn't sleeping around and he doesn't think anybody wants to fuck with her through him, he's fine to do whatever, so it depends on the family."

Nod.

"Really fancy families sometimes take a chaperone sort of approach to their sons so their daughters-in-law can be sure of getting pristine merchandise but I am not an especially classy drow so I don't know many details of that."

Snort.

"And they don't make an exception if the boy just wants to fool around with other boys, either, the idea being that if his future wife's into that she can arrange it herself."

"So they're just never alone around anyone?"

"Family - if you're not prepared to take somebody's word for it she doesn't tolerate incest in her cave, you don't marry her son. Some subcultures think slaves don't count even if other drow boys still do."

"Huh. I'm sort of surprised that there'd a culture that wanted men to be inexperienced but I guess a lot of the same motives must still be there."

Shrug. "If somebody wants experience she can buy the guy and loan him out. It's more customizable, I guess."

"...I don't think that teaches the same thing?" Shrug. 

"What same thing?"

"Uh, I think letting people fool around before marriage teaches different skills than renting them."

"Maybe. Wouldn't know and unless one of you faints am not likely to have an opportunity to investigate." Pause. "Well, unless Fazil faints."

"He's not as uptight in bed."