"Fancy mushrooms do sound like the sort of thing fancy princes would like."

"I hear they also like gains from trade but I don't know if that adds flavor per se."

"For Merenre? Definitely."

"I should charge him for his mushroom."

"It'll make him think it's tastier. If he were a drow girl he'd just want the most expensive husband."

"There are in fact boys with deliberately inflated prices specifically to cater to the conspicuous consumer market."

"Well, maybe Merenre wouldn't like that. Or would like it, he'd like it a lot, but not personally want to partake in it. He didn't auction off the right to be his wife, though he was thinking about it; I forget why not."

"Huh, maybe I can find a way to ask. Or, well, not ask, but induce him to explain probably by way of going on a tangent about the drow husband market."

"I bet that'll do it."

"The lady who gave us directions was dropping hints about her nephew. I think it's the book pocket in my backpack, it rather screams 'wizard'."

"That's - sort of sweet, really. Is there something else that says 'single' or do they not so much care -"

"I'm unclear how they show that in women but I don't look local anyway. Wrong accent and I'm not doing that high maintenance haircut thing and they all have kind of long noses even if you explain away the adventurer gear."

"You don't look different to me but I guess people can't usually tell as easily in other species."

"Longer generations, we probably objectively look less different."

"Huh, I hadn't thought about that. I also can't usually tell halfling ethnicities apart, though, let alone Dwarves or gnomes or whatever."

"I've never tried, I usually don't know where they're from to check against."

"Sothis is a mostly human city but when I first visited I thought it was so astonishingly diverse, what, ten percent not human and some of the humans foreign. Went around asking everyone their life stories."

"'Visited'. Did you get good stories?"

"Got some stories. People were pretty suspicious, except adventurers, most of whom are just doing my funny story lever but worse. But - some stories. I was so happy."

"I used to people watch a lot till I nearly got arrested for it."

"Oh?"

"I was in surfacer skin and everything! City watch just didn't like me sitting there all day. Let me off with a warning."

"Guards're - bad. Dunno what to do about it, but they're bad."

"I think people like having recourse. Even if it doesn't work all that well and has a lot of side effects."

"Yeah, places without guards invent worse. But." Shrug. "I wish Elysium solved this in a more interesting way than not letting any bad people in."