:I guess that part's not great: Jisa sighs. :I had to ask a lot of elementals before they even admitted that they kill their owner if they're freed and that maybe this is related to why fewer owners free them. It...makes sense, I guess, that they think that way. If most humans just enslave them and don't even think they're people. But it's really tragic: 

:I don't think all elementals know that. Most of them haven't been freed before and they aren't always allowed to talk to each other. The ones here have more downtime because they keep enough around for the barracks to always have a handful for the students, and they let them talk while they're there, but you probably weren't talking to university ones:

:I guess that's true. And maybe if someone from another world ended up in Valdemar, they'd have a hard time learning important things because most random peasants don't know them. I hadn't really been thinking of it that way: 

:Yeah. Elementals don't start knowing much and they don't even have parents:

:Do they coalesce already knowing how to use their magic or do they need to train that?: 

:They know how in about the same way they know how to walk and fly - they can do it but they don't start out with fancy tricks or dance routines:

:Do mages who own elementals teach them fancy tricks sometimes?: 

:Sometimes. But usually they just control them directly, and the elemental might pick it up that way but it's not essential:

:Mmm: Jisa swings her legs for a bit, not succeeding at thinking of more questions. Mostly she's just very very relieved to feel like she has a friend here now. 

:- All right: she says eventually, :I should probably experiment with Gates some more until it's nighttime, and then I can go talk to the elementals here, even if I'm not ready to do the freeing-them mission yet. I guess maybe I should free the Stone properly, so he can be my helper, if he wants to: 

:If you steal Stone from the university that will attract attention, and he'll be recognized:

:Oh. That makes sense. I did free another one in the city - an Adamant, I think? And one outside the city. But they both ran away really fast and I don't think they're still in my Mindspeech range to ask:

:The one from outside the city would be ideal, since people in the city won't know their face, but if you can find one with a face-obscuring halo who never takes it down - we can't control their halos - and free that one, that would only be moderately suspicious. It couldn't be a hybrid, though, if you freed a hybrid and one just like it appeared that'd be a giveaway even if no one recognized it:

:All right. I can try to find that one, they were a Glass, and if I can't then I can travel out of the city and try to find and rescue another one from outside the city that won't look suspicious: 

:Carefully. Maybe the owner wouldn't notice anything if they were asleep at the time?:

:I think breaking the amulet is kind of conspicuous and the time I tried to steal it, that didn't really work. I can think about it: 

:Why didn't stealing it work?:

"I'm trying to remember that one... The necklace wasn't long enough to pull over the owner's head and I don't have Fetching, that can instantly move objects somewhere else but mage-gift can't. So I tried to break the necklace instead, but it was really strong? And I guess it didn't help that the man was fighting me and so was the elemental." 

:The elemental probably wasn't fighting you. Their owners can control them, remember. So, if someone was asleep, you could maybe break the necklace without them fighting about it:

:And if they do wake up then I can still rescue the elemental, maybe? I wonder if set-commanding them not to obey their owner would override their owner's control. If the owner is asleep then I can ask the elemental if they'd want me to do that: 

:If you want to test that we could ask Adamant if she'll try?:

:Good idea: And she turns to Adamant and explains the idea.

Adamant looks up from her epic poem. :You want to see if - you can stop me from obeying the amulet if Maurabel tries to make me do something?:

:Yes. It’d make it easier to rescue elementals if they couldn’t be forced to fight. It’s totally reversible, I can undo it right away after:

:Couldn't you just do that to everyone? Let us all ignore the amulets, and we could fly away?:

:I don’t know. Maybe. Set-commands tend to work better as ‘don’ts’ than ‘dos’, it might be that I can let you resist orders to do a specific thing but still be bound by it otherwise. We should test that, though: