"You don't walk."

"Talking encyclopedias, then! Everyone's a critic. Ask away!"

"Ooh - are you people, or just encyclopedias -"

"We're encyclopedias with over-active imaginations! Some say," and here the skull lowers its voice (which sounds mostly like an ordinary voice except for the slight screechy quality to it), "that we're the captured souls of unborn gods, snuffed out before we even had any faithful."

Another skull pipes up, "Some say we're uppity art pieces!"

"Anyway, if you have questions, we have answers! Most of which are even true!"

"Their success rate isn't bad! They lie well, though, and they lie if they don't know something. We don't rely on them unless we have someone who can detect lies around."

"How do they know things? Like, would they know things about my planet?"

...she seems unsure about how to answer that for a moment.

"I think...they only know things that could have been known when they were made. They don't have to be only things their creator knew. If someone made one now, it might know things about your planet. These won't."

One of the skulls starts to speak but is interrupted by a chorus of other skulls.

"Well, people on Amenta knew things about it at the time." She looks at a skull. "What's the capital of Anitam?"

"Oh, that's an easy one! Lina, great city. Wish I'd been there, or seen it, or knew what it was like."

"It got it right," she tells the formian.

"Oh! That seems very useful then. I suppose we should charge more for it-"

There's a brief pause.

"-okay. Would you like to buy one, then? That'll be fifteen bells for a rude one, thirty bells for a polite one."

"How bad are the rude ones?"

"They can be quite cruel about things that people are sensitive about, but if you're not easily bothered, it should only be a problem if you let it talk to anyone else."

"It's probably not as useful if I don't let anyone else consult it! Why are there rude ones? How are they made?"

"It's mostly wizards who are themselves rude. I think that's the problem. If you found a polite wizard- oh, there is one that's more polite, but it won't be used for anything that it thinks is evil, so it's harder to sell."

"What does it think is evil?"

"World conquest, forming armies, experimenting on unconsenting victims, assassination, mind control, rape."

"Anything an evil wizard would do!" shouts one of the skulls.

"-that would be the skull."

"I'm not personally doing any of those things though I expect there to be an army of some kind in my colony once Amentans show up..."

"Have you considered that starting an army is something an evil wizard would do?"

"Amenta doesn't have any wizards, evil or otherwise! It doesn't have any magic at all. Didn't you know that?"