That's not very surprising; he might want to do something about it in the future, but for now, it's fine.

"Hello, everyone! My name is Raafi, or you can call me Traveler if you prefer, I answer to both. I'm not usually a teacher and I'm doing this circle on a bit of short notice, so I don't expect to have enough of a language lesson to fill the entire period; do feel free to ask questions about the subject, and you can save any other questions you have for the end; I'll fill any extra time with a question-and-answer session. Let's get started."

It quickly becomes obvious that he's working from a lesson plan designed to get someone to the point of being minimally functional very quickly, rather than giving a comprehensive understanding of the language; he covers the grammar, but only in simple terms, and the vocabulary is mostly practical words that would be relevant to getting by in a new city. He explains some basic things about his world, too, mentioning gods and churches, explaining how to tell the difference between humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings, and passing around examples of the gold, silver, and copper coins they use as currency.

They pass around the samples, and do not think they could tell gnomes and halflings apart until the gnomes started asking questions, and they don't know what gods are, and they're mostly pretty quick at the language, with a boy and a girl who might be mates taking to jostling each other so they can playfully say "excuse me" in Common over and over.

That's cute; he lets it go unless and until it starts distracting the other students.

Gods and religion are a topic that could easily fill a whole circle themselves; he's considering putting one together and they're welcome to come to it if he does. For now it's enough to understand that gods and their churches have various goals and focuses and that if they find themselves in need of help in his world, a relevant church - or Pelor's, generically - is a good place to ask.

He ends up coming closer than he was expecting to filling out the period; there's about fifteen minutes at the end for questions.

They have some grammar questions - they have never encountered plurals before - and some pronunciation checks, and then they want to know when they'll be able to visit, and if the females will fit streets and buildings and vehicles, and if it's a safe place, and how expensive magic doodads are.

He answers the language questions, and gives the same explanation of how it could be anywhere from a few months to a handful of years before there's transportation available. Females should be able to manage outdoors in most places - some of the narrowest alleyways might not work for them - but probably not indoors, by default; he can think of exceptions to that but aside from stables they're relatively rare. He hasn't seen vehicles besides the train, yet - he'd love to see trains imported - but if they're on about that scale, they'd be fine on country roads but only fit on the main thoroughfares in cities.

The world as a whole isn't tamed or anything, and does have monsters, but he expects they'll be most interested in the cities and larger towns at least to start with and those tend to be fairly safe - best to have a guide along to start with, of course. And magic doodads tend to be quite expensive, on the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of gold, since they need expensive magical components and lots of time by a specially trained spellcaster to make; single-use and a few very minor ones are easier to make, and can be had for less - tens to hundreds of gold.

"You use gold as money?" somebody asks. "Isn't that heavy if you want something expensive?"

"We also use platinum - it looks like silver, but a bit brighter, ten gold to a platinum just like the others - or gemstones, for really big purchases. Diamonds, rubies, and large pearls are especially valuable, those are useful for spells."

This causes some muttering; they don't go in for adornment much and do not have these things around for decorative purposes but they've certainly heard of them.

Mining isn't his area at all, unfortunately. They'll be able to get them by trading, at any rate.

Are there any more questions?

"What sorts of things do people on your world want? Besides metal and minerals. - can you list the specific metals and minerals they like again."

"Copper, silver, gold, and platinum, for coins; iron and steel for building and crafting; diamonds, rubies, and large pearls for spellcasting; most other gems for decoration - black onyx is an exception, that's used in a few spells that are illegal in most places, and trading it is generally illegal too. Aside from those, spices are a popular trade good, and rare food if it travels well enough - I'm going to be working on figuring out which of your plants and animals are good for humans to eat over the next few weeks, and we can eat spren just fine - and artwork in general; you won't be able to make clothing very easily but I'd expect furs and skins and any interesting sorts of cloth you make to sell well, and any paints or dyes you have that we haven't invented yet. Your inventions are going to be a big deal, too, but that'll be more of a one-time thing."

"Why are the spells illegal?"

"How does a spell use a gem?"

"I'll get into that in another circle," he tells the first girl. "The quick explanation is that they're dangerous to cast, and dangerous to be near someone casting, in a way that most churches disapprove of and most governments don't want to deal with."

"Spells that use gems use them in a few different ways! Some use powdered gems, and you have to spread the powder around as part of the spell and it's not really possible to pick it back up again. The one that takes pearls, the pearl is dissolved in alcohol and drunk as part of the casting, and bigger pearls get turned into doodads - they're especially good at storing spells, when they're prepared right. Other kinds of gems get turned into doodads sometimes too. And diamonds in particular are used in spells to resurrect the dead, where they're taken by the gods as an offering."

"Couldn't you do the spell in a clean room and then vacuum the dust up?"

"You still haven't explained what a god is, let alone why they want diamonds!"

"You can resurrect the dead?"

"That might work! It's hard to get a room clean enough and we don't have vacuums, but I'm sure someone's tried sweeping the powder up. I haven't heard about it, though, so I can't tell you what happened."

"There's a lot to talk about, with gods, they're an important part of how things work in my world and I think if I try to explain them now it'll just be frustrating, I won't get anything close to a full explanation in. I am planning a circle on the topic. My understanding is that diamonds are especially easy for them to work with, magically, and rare enough to be a meaningful sacrifice - they'll take other kinds of offerings too, but it's a lot harder to guess what they'll accept, it varies from god to god and seems to depend on the exact situation."

"I can, with some limits - I need part of the body, mostly, and the offering, and it's an expensive spell even aside from that, unless the person is very recently dead. And I can't do anything for someone who died of age."

"Why not old age?"

"Why does it have to be a meaningful sacrifice? What does that have to do with whether they can resurrect the dead or not?"

"How is it expensive apart from the diamond?"

"That gets into philosophy - and without the gods I'm used to, it might be different here, actually. The short answer, at home, is that the goddess of the dead has decided that that's how it should work; she thinks it's fairest for everyone that way."

"Well, gods only have so much attention, and resurrecting the dead takes a bit of that attention, unlike most spells; they don't want us asking for it casually."

"It's a powerful enough spell that most clerics will never be able to cast it, so just finding someone can be a whole quest. And - sometimes we'll make an exception, depending on the cleric and the situation, but usually we'll charge the standard amount set by the wizards' guild for a spell that strong, which starts at around a thousand gold before the cost of the offering."

He's attracting a bit of a surplus audience on top of the official attendance of the circle at this point.

"What makes it fair to require diamonds? Fair to who? Don't you have poor people?"

"Is there a way to... ask to raise the dead... casually. Like, 'oh, excuse me, can I have the time and also my grandma."

"My economics teacher thinks price-fixing is BAD."

"I'm not a cleric of the goddess of the dead, I'm not sure why she does things the way she does. I know she's thinking about more than just the dead people and their families - this gets into philosophy too. I can say she's not trying to be nice, she's not that sort of goddess."

"There really isn't - there are only a few ways of reliably getting the gods' attention at all, and all of them are expensive one way or another."

"Maybe I should take a circle with your economics teacher; I don't know much about economics."

"She does them first and second circles every day and they alternate which is drop-in! The rest of the day she does math," says the person who is taking economics.

"Well, I'll see about dropping in, then. And," he turns back to the first questioner, "I wanted to add that it is possible to do the spell with other kinds of offerings, including ones that aren't expensive at all, it's just harder to guess what will and won't work. My spells come from the god of travel, so if I needed to raise someone and couldn't get diamonds for some reason, I'd start by figuring out if there was a really impressive journey I could go on - maybe to find someplace nobody had ever been before, with some kind of monster I needed to defeat to open the path so that other people could follow - and offer some symbol of that."

He keeps an eye on the crowd, but doesn't do anything about it for now.

"You could build a spaceship," somebody says. "...except I don't think there are space monsters."

"I bet building a spaceship would do it. I'd have no idea where to start on that, though."

"What's a spaceship?" someone mutters, and "science fiction thing" someone replies.

"Any more questions?"