[...so where's the person you mentioned?]

[Exploring. It can be irregular when he's able to return.]

[Exploring off the planet??]

[Yeah. Ones we know about from the aliens, mostly, and trying to - follow trails. Scout.]

[It does mean he's sometimes out of contact for very long times, though - there's something keeping him from going from any point to any point - and it's easier for him to send us messages than the other way around.]

[...I don't think I really get the situation with that but perhaps this is not of immediate import.]

[Yeah. Result is there's an essentially random chance I'll be found, but most likely I'll find my own way back.]

[All right. How scalable's the method?]

[Should be repeatable, single seal per person is likely to be more efficient than multiple people per seal, non-living matter is essentially free but can take time to prepare if there's a lot of dissimilar items. But I don't know how much experience activating complicated seals it'll take to use, or how much energy it'll require, or if it could be activated by people without my magic system - I'll probably actually send a message with instructions for how to get from there to here, that's less risky if my aim's off, and pulling's likely going to be easier than pushing, so I could pull someone here and then we could coordinate about when I should be pulled back. Then if we want repeated interworld travel we could try to get anchors set up, or just get someone stationed at either end.]

[Things like complicatedness and energy use can also be refined over time, but the initial versions of seals are usually stupidly inefficient.]

[Can I get a summary of what seals... are.]

[So a technique is a specific pattern of magic use that produces a consistent effect. They have to be performed at the same time they take effect, and they take energy we call chakra. Chakra is omnipresent on our planet but concentrates in living organisms. Most people can only use their own chakra, and there's a limited amount in their body at any given time, and running too low will kill you. Mostly depleted chakra stores will regenerate over a few days, usually, but that sets an upper limit to how much you can do at any given time.]

[A seal is a way of essentially delaying when a technique goes off, usually until a trigger condition. You preload them with chakra, and many can draw on ambient chakra, reducing their total cost, and a well designed seal uses chakra more efficiently than most people can.]

[They have to be anchored to something physical and made with inks containing bits of a chakra-sensitive organism - you basically write out a... Circuit? For the chakra to follow. Most people use inks made from chakra-sensitive plants, drawn on paper made to handle being an anchor, but technically there's nothing except common sense stopping me from cutting my finger and drawing a seal in blood on the floor. - Experienced seal masters can do that, but it tends to go poorly for anyone else. If your circuit is faulty, chakra will gather in places it shouldn't and basically explode, and unlike your body a seal doesn't have defense mechanisms to stop overloads.]

[I carry seal inks and paper with me, but also I do know how to create safely usable ink from my own blood if I run out.]

[Seals usually require a pulse of chakra to activate, which is a safety measure and also a way to simplify the seal. Simple seals are faster to make, and you're less likely to make a mistake when drawing it. Seals also usually have a practical upper limit on total complexity.]

[Why can most people only use their own chakra? Can technology do anything with chakra? Will yours regenerate normally on this planet? Will you be able to make more ink here, how much do you have? Why do you draw them by hand instead of printing them?]

[Chakra has... Different subcomponents, that can be arranged different ways, and taking external, unfiltered chakra into your body can cause really bad issues if it's incompatible, and you have to be specially trained to figure out chakra compatibility - uh this isn't exactly like transfusing incompatible blood types but if you use the metaphor vaguely enough it's similar. Your body can process and filter very tiny amounts but not well.]

[Seals are a technology and you can interface them with things like electronics to get compounding effects but that is an extremely specialized and hard field, and we haven't managed very many different things with it yet.]

[Mine should regenerate normally, but I'll be cautious until I'm sure.]

[I have enough ink for... Probably four experimental seals. I can make more, as well as more paper.]

[Our printing presses aren't very good, seal inks corrode a lot of non-organic materials, and wood is really terrible for printing with zero stray markings, can sometimes set off a seal when printing, and wears out quickly. Also, it's easiest and safest to charge a seal as you draw it, rather than all at once, but my control is good enough that's usually not a problem for me.]

[Can you make more without personally bleeding, though, I don't know if our plants and animals have chakra. We have assorted kinds of printers, what kinds of materials does seal ink not corrode -]

[Probably not, but it wouldn't be much blood, and I'm guessing your civilization has invented needles? So I'd draw blood and use that to make a large batch of ink, I wouldn't cut myself and drip into a bowl.]

[Glass is usually safe, though glass with impurities sometimes isn't. Metals aren't but you might have weird metals. Plastics aren't and can also do very weird things. Rubber varies depending on what it's actually made of, usually it behaves like either plastic or wood. Things like shells, horns, bones, tusks, and the like actually behave well as long as they have no living cells, but then we get back to 'fragile.' Seals need to be painted with natural hair brushes, too, usually with a bone handle, though my seal brushes shouldn't wear out anytime soon.]

[We generally store ink in glass or bone vials.]

[We've invented needles, yeah. And we have lots of kinds of glass, some of which is tough enough that it could probably compose all the ink-facing parts of a press. Stone? Ceramic?

[Most stones don't degrade, but they're not ideal - I think obsidian usually works other than being fragile and rare. Ceramics usually can't be glazed, and most will pick up the inks too much otherwise.]

[Well, maybe some materials scientist has an exotic ceramic designed for spaceships or something that will work. Or there's a way to do a printer that doesn't require anything to both touch the ink and be particularly sturdy against non-ink forces. Mass-producible magic would be a pretty big deal even if we had to import all the ink.]

[You'd still need someone trained in chakra use to charge them, either when they're made or when they're activated, but we're trying to train more of our population now, and the most common seals can be charged by students...]

[...Actually, how good is your world's agricultural technology, we had nine tenths of our population as farmers before the war and we're struggling even more now to get enough food, if your world's even a bit more efficient that'd - help, a lot. We could train more people, if nothing else.]

[...far, far fewer than ninety percent of the world population is farmers, we can absolutely export combine harvesters and stuff if there's a way to get them across.]

[If we can send people we can send items, and nonliving material is cheap to transport. Food, seeds, and agricultural technology alone would be enough motivation for us to throw significant effort at establishing trade...]

[Those are all doable! I will start trying to figure out who to talk to about that.]

[I do still need to figure out transit, so we have time... But trade can take a very long time to even really prepare for.]

[I'm not a farmer or botanist or anything but I know the strategic overviews and what the biomes are, so I might be able to answer some questions if any technology or whatever is picky about local conditions.]

[The combine harvesters don't care, I think, but similar questions - how long are your years and what are your seasons like, is your population likely to be gluten-intolerant or allergic to peanuts or suspicious of potatoes or anything, what kinds of food preservation technology do you have?]

[Might have to think about some of those, but it could give me something to do on the plane if I get tired of math.]

[Sure. I'm sure Jackson or his dom can spot you some notepaper if you need it.]