"Do you believe that the eggs themselves, once formed, are magical in nature, such that a form of magic which can create nonmagical objects might fail to duplicate one?"

"Since lactation but not other hormonal effects occur I have reason to believe that there is still magic going on while the egg is being formed but once laid, honestly, I don't know. It could be that they're magically resilient, but it could also just be that they're nonmagically sturdy. It--might be possible to tell the difference experimentally but, uh, it would involve experimenting on babies."

"Didn't escape me. That's a wrinkle, all right. Does this only work on sapients?"

"Nnnnno, it does work on animals, but there's a fairly strong--instinctive reluctance--so those of us who do choose to pursue careers as livestock breeders or what have you generally charge enough that casually obtaining sheep eggs or whatever for science isn't done enough that I'd know anything about the results. Also...even if you know that an egg actually contains a dog or something it still looks and feels like a people egg, so--imagine doing science that would involve smashing disturbingly realistic baby dolls, it's not impossible but it adds a layer of difficulty."

"Hm. Different subtopic, how does the hybridization turn out with very different parents?"

"Depends on what axes they're different along and how much manual control is being exerted. If you're asking me what happens if you naively mix a cat and a horse I have no idea, my area is people genetics, but I could come up with some plausible cat-horse hybrids I expect I could aim for if I got over my squeamishness enough to create one."

"I was actually wondering about sapients from different worlds with different magic and nonmagic abilities and traits of various sorts. You can pretty freely mix and match things? Even if they're - polygenic, pleiotropic, that sort of thing? Only if the trait is purely genetic?"

"Not exactly--genetic is used as a catchall, but there are actually three factors, ovoic, genetic, and thaumogenetic. Ovoic has to do with chemical factors within the egg that would in ordinary gestations have more to do with the mother and the environment than anything inherent to the fetus, and thaumogenetic has to do with magical factors that--they connect to the genetics but they aren't, strictly, genetic, and they don't cleanly encode the way genes do, it's--a related skillset but it works on different principles. You can't put species magic in a baby that has no DNA of the relevant species but there isn't, strictly, anything in the genes that codes for the magic. Honestly it's a bit frustrating but magic is incredibly valuable so I put up with it."

"So, some magic in the multiverse seems to work based on parentage one way or another, but others seem to have to do with where the baby is conceived or gestated - any guesses? Obviously I won't hold you to them."

"Hmm...my guess would be that things that work based on parentage would involve thaumogenetics as I understand them, but I could easily be wrong. I would further guess that if they don't, I would still be able to manipulate them but would have to work on the skillset from the ground up. Things having to do with where the baby is conceived or gestated I have never encountered before at all but if I had to make a guess I'd say probably either I couldn't influence them at all or once I had a feel for them I could apply indefinitely, weighted towards the former. --With the caveat that if they're detrimental in some way, even as a tradeoff, I wouldn't be surprised if I could make it go away even if I couldn't do anything else. Elf magic is strongly weighted towards 'healthy children.'"

"Particular special case of that is there's a world where babies gestated there show up with immaterial animal companions that they can solidify to be able to do spells. I assume you'd have only a wild guess if you could design the animal on top of the baby."

"...That sounds...potentially thaumogenetic? But I'd really have to try it to have any idea. And I think it's probably lower-probability if it's 'gestated' than 'conceived.'"

"Now here's the really big ticket possibility. Sometimes, a person repeats, world to world - sometimes in the same circumstances if the whole world is similar, sometimes just in weirdly reminiscent circumstances or barely recognizable ones. They sometimes look alike, sometimes don't, may or may not vary in species, gender, that sort of thing. If you can finagle that on demand you're looking at a very pretty picture."

"That sounds...this is more intuition than anything I can back up with facts, but it sounds like the kind of thing I might be able to learn. I do know that I don't know how to do it now, though."

"It seems like it might also be possible with some combination of our magic and magic that exists here? That's just idle speculation though."

"Far as I know they don't have a way to affect it at all, just detect it when they're not sure. Do you have an idea what you might be combined with to useful effect there?"

"No idea, I just know you have a lot of capabilities that I know next to nothing about but that include, like, literally resurrection."

"Well, something could turn up, I try to be informed but there are a lot of nooks and crannies out there. Anyway. I think you might want to put in a bid to some Amentan countries. They have a eugenic project, are only gradually relaxing their population controls in light of the new availability of colony planets so marginal couples keep on top of opportunities to do magic experiments in exchange for subsidy, have a pretty high rate of homosexuality. The things that might keep this from working out are to do with the eggs part of your process. Amentans like being pregnant and might not want to do less of it, though it could also make surrogacy less harrowing for them. And their original planet is in the world of Warp, but their colony planets are in Revelation so their exponentiation can add to the supply of some magical creatures that the locals get to turn into as an afterlife. Which would make it slightly more salient to them if those creatures can clone their eggs with the magic I mentioned earlier. If either of those issues scuttles it my next suggestion would be Elendil. They're making a point of harboring genetic engineers because their major state competitor as a federated group of civilizations there forbids the practice. So you'd be able to collaborate with others from that vantage point and there's a pre-existing market flow. It does put you in competition with the other engineers but your product is different enough to still have takers even if you set up right beside a standard gene therapy clinic."

"Forbids it?"

"I think there's some historical reason."

"Huh. I guess I can see that. Fear can be a powerful motivating force..."

"So Elendil takes genetic engineers on the run from the neighbors."

"That makes sense. How do I make a bid?"

"I can do that for you, if you'd like, or I can show you how."

"I should probably learn how."