"Not entirely sure. The records I found said it was part of an old battleship."

"So like some kind of combat computer?"

"Probably, yeah - though it could also be like an autonomous gun or something, or even an emergency life support system capable of decision making. But the records suggested it was mostly a martial thing."

"Huh."

"Artifacts can get pretty out there. But they're interesting, and I have time to do this salvage. It also ties into my usual work - I'm trying to get expanded rights for non-elven sapients, including intelligent artifacts."

"Are there many others floating around?"

"There's thousands at least, spread across the planes. Intelligent artifacts aren't common enough to be anywhere close to a majority of slaves - but they fairly universally don't have legally acknowledged personhood, which even slaves tend to get. There's exceptions - one small nation's actually ruled by an intelligent throne - but those're too rare to be an overwhelming precedent."

"Still, there's - a general legal principle, where uplifting the lowest will drag up everyone above them. That happened in Aitania about a century ago with animal cruelty laws spreading to child and slave abuse laws - once the precedent of 'you can't abuse a creature just because you legally own it' got put in place, it was pretty easy to argue extensions. And Aitania's getting close to banning slavery outright - the core plane actually has a law where everyone physically there is legally free, but it hasn't been applied to colonies yet, or to really putting pressure on neighbors to end slavery."

"You dream big."

"I'm an ambitious sort."

She smiles.

She works a bit more, chattering lightly about artifacts she's met or heard of, intelligent and not. (A deck of cards which has powerful and random effects if you draw a card... A battleaxe capable of cleaving any physical thing... An evil book of profane lore, the individual pages long since scattered... A dancing hut capable of jumping between planes... A dagger that tries to mind control her wielders into murder, possessed of incredible magic... A sword forged by a paladin order that selects their leader by teleporting into the new leader's possession... Mighty and famous ships like the original Spelljammer, a massive intelligent ship carrying a city on its back...)

She finishes up, putting her tools away and brushing herself off. "So!" she says, brightly. "Magic lessons?"

"Magic lessons."

"Probably safest up on the deck." She leads the way on up. "And I think we should be ready to head out after - the spelljammer helm needs a bit more time to realign - so I can show you how the navigation panel works then..."

"I don't suppose it's much like driving a car."

"Dunno. I've never driven a car. But most models rely on having a spellcaster or a magic item powering it and providing direction - this ship uses a magic item. Not a smart one, so I need to provide destination and route stuff ahead of time, and I'd need to take over the helm personally in an emergency."

"Semi-autonomous, then."

"Yeah. Sounds like your world's managed some similar stuff, even without magic?"

"Reliable physical laws are good for some things."

Laugh. "Still, I like magic more."

"Seems like less work, overall."

"Doesn't help with everything - you can use zeroth circle spells and some magic items as much as you want, but first circle spells and above and some magic items have limited uses per day. And magic items can't really be mass produced. The best strategy would probably be a bit of both, have normal technology for all the utility magic doesn't cover... Still, that's been slow to catch on."

"Per day is kind of a weird restriction."

"The current theory is it's mostly based on capacity for spells refreshing when you sleep or at least are really idle for a long stretch. Casting spells depletes magical energy, especially for spontaneous casters - most casters are either planned or spontaneous. Spontaneous casters know a certain list of spells, and can cast any subset of them, which runs down magical energy. Planned casters have a set number of spells that changes every day, usually intentionally so - that's most common with people who get their magic from gods or patron spirits, since the god will just basically give you little spell parcels to cast later. Wizards also have to plan out their spells - they make and store spell parcels themselves, usually when they wake up but sometimes later. Zeroth level spells are simple enough that a spontaneous caster won't ever run out of energy to cast them unless, like, you do something like refusing to sleep or rest for three days in a row while you constantly cast, and a planned caster can set the parcel to rebuild itself after casting without increasing its energy requirements a lot."

"That makes sense. How does a spontaneous caster know what's on their spell list?"

"Experimenting, and also training towards specific spells. It does vary a bit with whether you're innate or trained - sorcerers are innate spontaneous casters usually, and lean more 'experimenting' early on, while bards are trained spontaneous casters and lean more 'training.'"