Ranara and her little daughter Azabel move to Urtho's Tower when the latter can say six words ("up", "mama", "milk", "no", "now", and "please") and hasn't started to walk yet. Ranara sets up to teach little children to read, ones who don't have evident Gifts yet - Ranara herself has Mindspeech, is all, with about a classroom's worth of range. Azabel sits in on classes, worn on her mother's back or later plopped in a corner with toys or, when she's only four, plopped in a corner with a book, younger than the other kids in the class. When Azabel has in fact sat through her mother's curriculum she is turned somewhat loose, to walk very carefully up and down and around the Tower, exploring.
:...I guess trying to learn difficult magic or pass tests to go into higher-level classes is something I want to do more of? But - not really because of how I feel, just because it's - important for my goals, and it sounds like you think that's different:
:You wouldn't just find more problems somewhere and grimly get cracking on those?:
:Mmm: He looks up at her. :...It still bothers me that Urtho is - probably wrong, about this really important thing. Are you going to keep trying to talk to him about it next class?:
:- Does it not bother you that he's wrong? And - that he doesn't even know you think he's wrong because you were talking like you basically agreed?:
:I'd rather he was right but I don't feel really hung up on it? I have most of the conversation we had written down and if he storms up to me in five years being all 'Azabel, how could you possibly run for mayor, we discussed this' I will be able to pull it out and explain to him that I have addressed all his points and am running for mayor very humbly: Also, like, that's not very plausible in the first place, she's kind of not sure Urtho would notice if she ran for mayor.
:It just seems pretty bad if he's the most famous mage-teacher in the whole world and runs the most important school in Tantara, and also he thinks mages shouldn't try to do important things with their lives! Because probably a lot of the students will just believe him!:
:If you think you could get people to do that, I'd be pretty interested to know what they say!:
So the next time there is a class there is a neatly block printed slip of paper on each chair somewhat before anyone else arrives, unobtrusive, reading "Opinion Poll: to your way of thinking, should mages be wary of seeking political office? Should others frown on this behavior? Please place in collection box when completed" and little checkboxes for yes and no, and she puts a box on the teacher's desk behind the filing tray where the teacher will not immediately notice it. Azabel arrives very slightly late.
The students are very confused and curious about this! A handful of them are glancing at Azabel, thoughtfully, but they're discreet and the teacher, who's also regularly late for this class, doesn't seem to have noticed anything. The students who come in later than the teacher make no comment about the bits of paper, though there are some Mindspeech-looks exchanged between the Mindspeakers present.
Ma'ar, who's usually early, keeps his eyes straight ahead and doesn't smile at Azabel even though he wants to.
The teacher gets started with class; he's not a morning person and usually comes in still bleary-eyed and nursing his tea. Today isn't one of the sessions with Urtho and they're just talking about distributions of defensive wards - a limited resource in Tantara since it takes a skillful mage to do them - across various high-priority locations, and whether this could be done better.
Ma'ar raises his hand a few times to make innocuous points. He's gotten much better at predicting what will or will not be controversial.
Defensive wards can be anchored on artifacts, right? Would it be valuable to have them mostly done that way so they can be moved around and any given place might be defended or not until someone checks, to make it often not worth the effort, or are they too easy to steal?
That's an interesting question! They often are done with artifacts, or at least built on a crystal focus, but moving them around on a randomized schedule hasn't been a practice in the past - it could be a clever thought! Though they'd probably take some tweaking, to be moved between buildings, and also it's trivially obvious to anyone with a sniff of mage-gift whether a building is warded or not.
Is 'more warded' versus 'less warded' obvious? If it's not they could lightly ward lots of places and move around the heavy duty artifacts.