"I think ours have an affinity for minds and can sense intent, which includes intent to lie. You can also put more power in and force people to tell the full truth, and I don't really understand how that works. I'm not the one who invented the technique." 

Nod. "Next up is evocation. Combat stuff - creating force or energy. We can throw fireballs and electricity and ice and sonic bursts. The thing you did pinning down the dragon looked just like a evocation spell I am not powerful enough to cast. There's illusion - what it sounds like, illusions that are bigger or more complex or persuasive to more senses or longer-lasting are higher-circle -necromancy, which is formally the school of magic that uses the plane of negative energy but which everyone mostly associates with being trailed around by a lot of undead servants -"

Ick. "Our world doesn't have the last thing at all, as far as I'm aware, and I've never heard of a plane of negative energy - it sounds a bit like the Void but that doesn't have anything to do with, er, undead. We have illusions, the kind of mage I am can do those too, I'm all right at them. I'm really good at the thing you're calling evocation. Anything where raw power matters most." He doesn't look entirely happy about this fact. 

"The planes we know of are the elemental planes - Fire, Air, Water, Earth - the positive and negative energy planes, the ethereal and astral planes, the shadow plane, and the afterlife planes. And then hundreds of random demiplanes, I guess. We know that's not all of them, though, it's possible the Void is something else or it's possible it's the negative energy plane but that necromancy can't be done with your magic system.

There are plenty of people who'd pay you to blast things but I dunno that the jobs tend Neutral Good. It does probably mean it's safer for us to raid some more challenging tombs than we'd have tried before. - I am assuming that Fazil can heal you normally, probably we should not assume that and should instead check it."

"I've fought in a war and done a lot of things I'm really not sure were Good," Vanyel admits, "but I'd prefer not doing that as, er, a mercenary. We should check that Fazil can heal me. I guess I can give myself a minor injury?" 

"Sounds good."

Vanyel shrugs and slices the palm of his hand a bit, in a way that won't be too annoying to fix with his own weak Healing if it turns out Fazil's method doesn't work. 

His expression doesn't change at all. 

He blasts a thirty-foot radius around him in not-quite-mage-energy and the cut seals right up.

Vanyel jumps, startled. "That's the weirdest healing magic I've ever seen. Does it hit anyone within thirty feet? I could see it." 

"Yes. We have kinds with more finesse but in a fight sometimes you just want everyone on your side to be several weeks of healing along on recovering from their injuries, immediately."

"That's - honestly really incredible! We usually can't afford to take our Healers into battle, and they can only Heal one person at a time, plus it's not instant like that." 

"Healing with arcane magic is a nightmare and a half, I'm impressed you can usefully do it at all. Divine magic is much better for that. This is why adventurers always have a priest."

"Also your wise moral counsel and guidance on the wishes of the gods."

Mental laughter. 

"So it sounds like I can do most of what your arcane magic can, with some weird exceptions. Are there other kinds of magic - other than divine, or areas of divine we didn't cover...?" 

"As far as we know all magic is one or the other, or some creative combination of them but that's exceptionally rare, I've only seen it as a parlor trick."

"Right. I guess I should go through what I can do. Hmm. Can arcane magic make durable magical artifacts? I'm trying to see if I..." He can't remember if he has a spare shield-talisman with him. It turns out the answer is yes! "This is something I can wear, and if I activate it in a fight, it'll make a personal shield against magical attacks or physical blows, say from a sword, that I don't have to maintain from my own reserves." 

"We can make those. They're both finicky and require expensive materials, but most spells that you can do at all you can make an artifact for, in principle." He gestures at his own outfit. "The headband's for intelligence, the gloves help with not letting spells slip while I'm casting them, the cloak does a little bit of shielding. If you can make magic items that's a good way to make money, you can supply a shop in Sothis or Absalom."

"Hmm. My kind is pretty fast to make and doesn't require particularly special materials, I usually use quartz as a focus but lots of kinds of crystal or stone will do. The problem is that most of them have limited power and then stop working, and it takes a mage to re-power them. I guess maybe your kind of magic could do it too." 

"Probably! That complicates selling it in a shop by a little bit, if people'd need to learn a new technique to repower them, but it doesn't seem impossible - and it's possible that the expensive materials traditional for item-making here.. collect the magic on their own, so to speak, and if you tried with those you'd get more longevity? I am not an expert, I planned to retrain in magic item making once I retire."

"Right. So I might have an advantage for some areas of artifact-creation, but it wouldn't be revolutionary or anything. What does your magic have in terms of defensive wards?" 

"I can put an area under a ward that will silently - or loudly, if I wanted, but I usually don't - notify me if anyone enters. There's variously selective versions of that, like ones that'll notify me only of illusioned creatures, or only of anything magical that enters, or only of people I haven't preapproved. I can lock down an area against teleportation or against summoning or against scrying. I can do a barrier that hits back if anything hits it but that spell's not stable, it lasts about a minute and a half. There's magical traps? Really powerful wizards usually hang out in their own extradimensional space where they control the laws of physics."

"Wow! That's not something our magic can do at all, as far as I know. It sounds like your shielding and wards have a similar range to ours. I can do magical traps too, and I've got a wide repertoire of types of shield-barriers." 

:I wonder if Vanyel could get through shields that your arcane magic usually can't get around?: