"Yes, that's all for now, thank you!" And off she goes to find Ma'ar. He might still be in his room or in the library, she's not sure...:Ma'ar?:

He's still in his room, but calmer now. :- Did you check? What did he say?: 

:I did and he said it's not actually addictive like drugs are and it doesn't actually make people evil, but it's more complicated than that in practice - I have notes, where are you -:

:In my room - can you come explain it so I know whether I should be worried or not -:

She comes and knocks and then sits back down in his desk chair. "He says people get attached to it because they don't, uh. Feel safe without being able to sling around a lot of power, sometimes, and the bandit cases are sometimes basically slaves to their bandit group - you can just read this page if you want -" She passes him her notebook.

He reads through it. 

"That - makes sense." He shudders. "Some bandits tried to do that to me, I think. That's probably what the one who I killed would've done. I - I don't feel like it's worth it to kill people just so I won't be scared! I mean I probably would if I'd literally die otherwise but it seems different if I kill someone who's literally trying to kill me and then also I get blood-magic for it instead of just wasting it." Shrug. "I would be - really really upset, though. I want people to not die. Even if they're bad people. They're still people." He closes his eyes. "Lights in the world." 

"I wonder if... people don't like the idea of not wasting it... because it seems maybe gross like eating them? Like, not eating dead people is also sort of wasting stuff."

"I mean, if everyone is going to starve otherwise - if there's, I don't know, a war and a siege in your city or something - then I think you should eat people! And it'd be stupid to ban it just because it's gross! ...It doesn't feel wasteful not to use blood-magic if there's lots of mage-energy and everything important is getting done already. Maybe that's true at the Tower right now. I...don't think it's true in lots of places, though." 

"I mean I would rather eat a person than starve but I wouldn't just go around eating people and think a lot about policy for when to eat people and learn people recipes."

"If I - knew there was going to be a war and a siege next year then maybe I'd want to try to persuade important people that they ought to be willing to make it not-illegal if that happened? Because otherwise I bet they wouldn't because grownups are stupid."

He shrugs again. "There's probably not going to be a war, though, so - in this actual world I'm not going to prioritizing thinking about either blood-magic policies or people-eating policies very much. Just, I wish more people felt like it was a thought they'd be allowed to have, if things started getting really bad - I don't think it is, did you see everyone else's faces. But if it was then it'd feel less like it has to be me - us - who think about it even though it's horrible and upsetting." 

"We can still check for books. I'm - kind of worried about how - you don't ever seem to feel safe and that's the thing Lionwind thought made it hard to not do blood-magic -"

"I told you that I don't feel tempted to do it at all! I could've done it so many times when I was trying to make it here by myself, and been in less danger, because then I'd have gone to sleep with more magic instead of having none because I had nothing to eat. But I didn't because people dying is bad. And I didn't do it even when I'd just killed someone anyway - which was really horrible!!! - because I also don't like it and it didn't seem important enough!" Ma'ar is getting so. incredibly. tired of how it keeps feeling like people don't believe him when he's being very clear about what he thinks! 

"You don't have to yell at me!"

He shrinks on the bed.

"...Sorry..."

She sighs. "I'm really sorry all that bad stuff happened to you. But even if blood-magic doesn't do anything to your gears at all bad stuff happening to you can. It's not fair! It's horrible that if somebody has awful things happen to them they don't even just have those awful things to live with but also extra awful things that live in their head! And if you won't go see Lionwind and everybody else is totally crazy about everything to do with blood-magic then I am the only person here to worry about it besides you personally, and I'm not calling you names, I'm not saying it's your fault, I'm not saying you can't be okay or can't be a good person or anything, I'm just - noticing. And telling you since you didn't want me to tell Lionwind."

Ma'ar listens her out, hugging himself but otherwise looking calmer. He nods. 

"I - thank you. For looking out for me. I...don't think there's anything wrong with my gears that would make me - want to hurt people - but if it looks like I'm going to do that then you should stop me. You - have my permission to do that and I wouldn't be mad." 

"... I mean, you might if we are already postulating that you have in this situation started hurting people, but noted."

"If you think I'm hurting people right now I - have no idea how but you should tell me and I'll - figure out a way to stop." 

"I don't think you are right now."

"...Thank you. - I guess if in the future I go all evil because my gears are broken then maybe me then would be mad, but - me now isn't mad about the idea of you doing it, if that makes sense? I don't know if it helps but I mean it." 

"I think that makes sense." She kind of really wants to look at his gears now but she is not EVEN going to kind of allude to that a little bit.

He fidgets. "Maybe we can go look at books now?" 

"Yeah, let's go do that."

It turns out to be kind of hard to find books on blood-magic, it's not indexed in the appropriate alphabetic section, but Ma'ar isn't particularly in the mood to ask the librarian about it. 

:Maybe under 'dark magic'?: he suggests to Azabel. 

:Maybe, you check there and I'll check the one on reserves and ley lines and nodes in case it mentions it as annotation somewhere?: