And they can go through to Absalom!

She loves it. She wants to stop at all of the magic shops and peek in the window and study the spells and scrolls and wondrous items. She wants to gape at people walking down the streets wearing same. The illusion-theatre is showing a romantic comedy about a powerful sorceress and a bumbling King trying to win or otherwise acquire her hand, while his handsome younger brother (who turns out to be the king himself, in disguise) tries to win her heart. 

"We should get it in Cheliax."

"That would be amazing." Leareth is also very impressed with Absalom. It's not quite as much a case study in everything that delights him as Aktun, but it's lovely. 

He takes her for breakfast, and afterward they can go to the illusion-theatre and see the show. Leareth is intensely curious; Velgarth illusion-magic has never to his knowledge been used in quite this way. 

The show is cute. The illusions aren't amazing, but they're good enough to hold the story together, and it's only a first level spell (there's a separate actor doing voices). 

When they leave Carissa looks dazed. "We have to get it in Cheliax now. We should try to hire them off from here, maybe - at least let's go ask where they trained and who does the scripts and scene designs -"

Sure, they can go ask. Leareth is also impressed, and it makes him happy, seeing her so awed and pleased by it. 

They get a location of the school where they're being trained, which also provides the scripts and scene-books the illusionists use for reference, apparently. It's not too far. "Do you want to go over now or come back tomorrow when we have a proposal for them - we're going to need, what, ballpark ten thousand..."

"We could maybe go over quickly now and have more information to prepare a proposal, if you know what questions you would want to ask them. Ten thousand - wizards trained to do this?" 

"I think so, right, if each of them can do enough shows a week for a thousand people to see it." She starts walking in that direction. 

"...Right, I am still not calibrated on how many first-level wizards your world has, there would not be nearly enough mages in Velgarth to make this feasible as entertainment. Probably we cannot get that many all at once, we could start with it in some of the big cities." Leareth enjoyed the show a lot but is very slightly confused why Carissa has picked it to be this level of enthusiastic about. 

She looks confusedly back at him. "Not as - I guess it's all right as entertainment. It's perfect as propaganda."

"- That makes more sense now. I wonder if it is even better than Valdemar's Bardic system, they have shockingly good propaganda, but it would at least scale better if we could in fact bring shows to literally everyone in Cheliax, it seems hard for the lower-density farming areas but doable eventually..." 

"Most people are walking distance of a temple for the healing when there's babies born, if absolutely nothing else. Ideally you wouldn't do it in the temples because - ideally part of the audience here is people who haven't set foot in a temple because they're still not sure that's not dangerous enough to ruin their life all by itself, but maybe they'd go if everyone was doing it, to see a funny romantic story - anyway I think people in the cities got a much more concentrated dose of Asmodeanism so they're much more important to target."

"That makes sense. Easier for Asmodeus to reach for the same reason it is easier for us to reach them." He smiles at her. "That is a very good idea, though. It would hopefully have occurred to me eventually but it is not where my mind went right away, so - thank you." 

They reach the school. 

Then they can ask some questions about how the school trains illusionists and what share of them can get the hang of it and how many they've trained so far and how the business model works, and promise to come back the next day with a proposal.

"Lunch now?" Leareth says outside, taking her hand. "The restaurant I had planned is a longish walk so I might just do a short-range Gate. It is very nice not having to worry how many times I Gate in a day because I have four each of Lesser Restoration and Recharge Innate Magic." 

"Sure!"

Leareth pauses and does an unscaffolded Gate in midair. His short-range Gates are really fast. Maybe ten seconds later they're arriving at the restaurant he had picked out for lunch, this one close to all the good magic shops that Parmida recommended. 

That's really neat. 

She enjoys lunch and spends it gawking at additional people and magic things.

Leareth is glad she seems to be having a good time, and is feeling a bit less like he's trying and not quite succeeding at following the script she expects of him.

He tells her the plan is to visit some magic shops that were recommended to him, and he'll buy her inks and materials for working on spells with Aroden, and maybe replace some of her magic items if she's desperately missing them. 

"- This is the main shop where Aroden used to sell magic items, a long time ago," he says when they arrive at the first one. 

"Wow!" The things she had before were a +2 headband and a ring of sustenance but she is going to stare in fascination at everything in the shop if they look rich enough to not get kicked out for doing that. She wants to see how similar amulets of nondetection look to the hatpin of it she made.

Leareth isn't sure if they look rich enough, but he brought a very substantial budget for this and if the staff start looking annoyed with them, he'll buy her whatever she's decided she wants and see if that helps. She should definitely have a Ring of Sustenance again, if only to save on the awkwardness of different bedtimes.

He looks at things with mage-sight and can try to tell her what the amulets of Nondetection look like to him, though he can only study the hatpin to compare if it's not currently Nondetection-ing. 

She doesn't have an effect up concealing it right now and they can compare. 

Eventually she gets self-conscious about how much money they're spending even though it's mostly on magic supplies which are a perfectly reasonable thing to spend money on. Her thoughts are all quite loud and defensive about how lots of the paladins had fancy enhanced armor.

"Thank you," she says. "I think probably that is more than enough to keep me busy for the next year."

"It is a reasonable start, anyway." Leareth isn't sure how to help her feel less defensive about extremely reasonable expenditures, which are so far just replacing all the things she gave up to come here - gods, he would be so frustrated if he had to sell his headband at this point, he's gotten so used to it. 

Maybe he should just say it rather than hinting around it, that's always what he ends up wanting her to do. "Aroden will probably want you to have twenty more magic items as soon as he thinks of it. The entire week before the war he kept just handing me powerful magic items I had barely heard of and saying they would be essential to getting things done effectively, and he was absolutely right about it." 

- nod. "I - understand the logic. I just - haven't thought it through at all, how much money to spend on improving myself compared to on Cheliax - I guess if he has then that's probably good enough." She does look very very tempted, in there with the looking conflicted.

"He has thought about it a great deal. You could talk to him about his thoughts, there, if it would help?" 

"He's Aroden. He's very scary. I can brave it for the magic but I don't know if I have it in me if it's just for important strategic informat- I guess I will try."