That is startling and given current context kind of concerning. Someone should check it out.

Such as this someone, heading home from archery practice. He's carrying a bow and arrows, but the bow is unstrung, which he figures is probably unintimidating enough for visiting a shop.

The interior is... Much bigger than the outside of the wagon. There is indeed a lot of food on display, preserved meats and a wide variety of bread and bread-like things and colorful fruit stacked in neat arrangements on nice painted metal displays. Off to the right, paint, rolls of cloth, leather, and metal tools for various trades. There's more he can't see in aisles going back.

There's another sign. "Shop rules. 1. Absolutely no stealing. 2. Absolutely no violence. 3. We reserve the right to eject patrons from the store via magic for any reason."

Nick finishes writing a sentence, sets down his pen, and smiles, "Welcome, first customer of the day! Looking for anything in particular?"

It's clearly magic. He's not sure whether to expect to get out of here and find the fruits are actually stones and so on.

"Hi! I was actually wondering what brought you here."

"Well, my store wanders, as the sign says. I'm always selling to interesting new people that way, though I'm never quite sure where I'll go next."

"Did you come from Niazon?"

"I've never heard of such a place, unless the word has been badly mangled. The Amazon, Arizona, Nissen." The smile falls away.

"Huh. They're just over the river. Well... have you got anything that would help us protect ourselves?"

"I don't carry weapons. After all, I know nothing of you or Niazon - who's to say who's in the right, there? But I'll sell to you none the less. I do have food, if you need food - much of which keeps and travels quite well compared to what I expect you have. And materials, if you know a smith or leatherworker to turn them into arms and armor for you. Some of it's magical itself."

"Magical how?"

"They do various things. Purely beneficial, I assure you. For example," He steps out from around the counter and looks through the food. "Where did it... Ah! Here, heartflame peppers will actually keep you warm for a few hours after eating one, either through a cold night or for hiking through the winter. Though they are quite spicy - an intense flavor you might not be used to. Or perhaps these deepwater mints," he holds up a shiny sealed bag full of bright blue circles. "A sweet candy that will induce calmness and help with fear, panic, and stress. Of course, my best items are my most expensive."

"Do you have any that protect people from injuries or heal them or protect them from fire?"

"Hmm... You might need my specials. I try not to sell too many of those at once. I have an Immortal Cake for sale. It doesn't make you immortal, but it - refines your body, for lack of a better word. You'd heal cleaner, see better, recover from exhaustion faster. Age more gracefully if you last that long. It's also absurdly delicious. I'd actually tone the taste down if I could without losing the rest of the effects! I recommend splitting it between many people, as the taste can ruin you for all other types of food if you have too much. Besides, there's diminishing returns. The Hell's Kitchen set gives you and anything you use immunity to burns while cooking, among other functions, but I wouldn't expect to be able to weaponize it very well... It's not meant for that, anyway. You could buy some power rocks. They give you a magic power for an hour or two after cracking one open with your teeth."

"Are people where you're from usually capable of cracking rocks with their teeth or are these unusually crackable rocks?"

He rolls his eyes. "They're candy. 'Jawbreakers', first called that way to challenge teenage boys who want to prove how tough they are, you know. You keep them in your mouth and suck on them for a while, and then they're pretty crackable."

"I've never heard of that and if I wanted to prove how tough I am I'd go kill a bunch of Azanis - you seem like you don't want to take sides here but they attacked us first and I'm trying to think of magic that would be more useful defensively than offensively."

He shrugs. "War's messy and I bet the Azanis think you attacked them first, or something like that. It's why I don't sell weapons. I'll sell you what I've got though. At normal rates. I'm not saying I can't be convinced you've got a just cause, but I'd need to talk to an Azani too, or watch them commit atrocities, at minimum... How about some pseudodrake leather? Damn hard to work with, but it's fairly absurdly tough. Also, fireproof. Could be good since you're on the level of swords and arrows - unless there's some wizards hiding outside I haven't seen. Or just some plasteel from my printer stock. Great metal, plasteel. Light, tough, and easily workable at a good forging temperature. You might need an arc forge too, though."

"I don't know what an arc forge is, or how I'd tell whether anyone here can figure out how to work with pseudodrake leather. I... guess the cake sounds potentially useful, and the materials if we can use them - how much are these things?"

"The Immortal Cake is precious. I can only make one, maybe two, a year. I'd want... At least four or five gold coins, I think. Big heavy ones. Plasteel- If you just want to put it in one shape and not reforge it later, can your people work with copper? It's fairly soft as I sell it, almost like a thick resin. Once you're done working it, heat it up to copper-smelting temperature then cool it rapidly, it'll get very hard and tough and stop being workable."

Nod. "We can do that. I don't suppose you sell books about how to make it, or how to make any of the other things...?"

"I have some manuals and cookbooks, but a lot of it would be quite hard to manage on your own, sorry to say. I'd have to check around to see what's useful."

"On my own like without an expert to learn from or on my own like without friends to recruit? Because I have friends."

"Without an expert. My shop only sticks around for a week or two. I have crafts in the crafts section that I think would usefully add capabilities to your society with a lot of effort, the thing that springs to mind is steel-making, steel being a particular form of iron and the precursor to plasteel, but I can't just magically teach you how to make everything I can make. It'd take someone who could become a master weaver, mason, smith, archer, and farmer in a couple of weeks."

"Well. Whatever works. And... the war's probably a lower priority than medicine, given how advanced your stuff is supposed to be."

"...Oh, quite. I sometimes regret my choices of stock, all sorts of wondrous medicines were an option, but I can't take them back now. I don't know where you're at in terms of medicine. I'd be happy enough to chat with a doctor for a while if one comes and visits, at least, see if there's anything obvious that's common knowledge where I'm from."

"I guess I can send one to you. Is there anything you could sell me that'd be a good proof of concept and harmless and ideally in itself beneficial to other people and cheap enough I'll still be able to afford more things afterward if it works?"

He 'tch's. "I don't carry medicine, I said. I carry food, and craft supplies. -Though if you meant proof of the magic you can get a lighter, that's useful." He points at a thumb sized red rectangle capped with metal in neat rows by the register. "Two of the little copper ones and I'll show you how to use it."

"That's what I meant, yeah." He'll get a lighter and a lesson.

This thing makes fire! Fire you can control with your mind, even, and which doesn't actually burn people - though things you light up with it will totally burn you. He demonstrates on a piece of receipt to show that it's real fire. It'll last about twenty minutes of continuous use and then be out forever.

Twenty minutes, wow, okay then.

"I'll go show this to a doctor or something and then maybe they'll come by."

"I'll welcome any customers, just keep in mind I might not be here tomorrow. Don't want anything else while you're here?"

"I don't want to insult you but in stories magic places like this show up and you buy their fruits and get away and the place is gone and the fruits are colorful stones and the only thing real is the price you paid. I'm going to go test the lighter. I'll tell everyone to hurry but that'll do the opposite of help, really."

Shrug. "It's your war." He picks up a book from somewhere behind the counter and sits back in his chair.

Somewhat less than twenty minutes later, someone arrives and starts examining everything in the shop.

"Welcome to the wandering store! I'm here if you've got any questions." He turns a page.

"Yes, I have. I heard I should talk to you about medicine."

"Where I'm from people know a lot of things about medicine. It gets incredibly specialized. Unfortunately, I'm not a doctor, but I can just go on about things that are common knowledge to me. With any luck they'll be testable and useful. What, pray tell, causes infectious diseases - the ones that spread as plagues, rather than just afflicting one unfortunate soul?"

"Filth and vermin."

"From what I know, filth and vermin both carry germs- Much much tinier vermin, smaller even than the hair on your head. These live and breed and die just the same as larger animals, and a person makes quite a rich ground for them. Our bodies fight back, of course. In fact, it's our body fighting back that causes fevers - to cook them. That's why boiling rags and water helps purify them of disease. Two main kinds - bacteria, like tiny vermin, living all on their own. These are the ones responsible for infected wounds, for the most part. There's a class of substances called antibiotics that are particularly potent at killing bacteria, including one caused by a specific kind of mold - from melons, I think. By giving patients these, they can be saved from infection much more often. Unfortunately I don't have a good way to help you find them.

"The other main kind is a 'virus'. A sort of parasite that is not even alive until it seizes tiny pieces of our own body and uses them to make copies of itself. These are harder to fight with medicines and you mostly have to keep the patient healthy. Someone can be capable of spreading germs once they're sick, since they're growing inside the person. Even if they don't appear sick yet, they may already be spreading. The usual pathways for this are in waste or spit or breath. Cloth masks to block germ-laden breath and keeping your distance from sick people helps. Washing your hands often helps, but you probably know that already if you know filth is bad. I've got a tiny-things-viewer in the back room, could show you some bacteria if you'd like and you don't. Touch. Anything I don't tell you to."

"I think I can avoid touching things, and I think I'd like to see that."

"It's not often I let people into my workshop, but this seems important, you know. C'mon, it's this door over here. Do you have a bit of mud or pond water or something to look at?"

The workshop has two rows of clean stone tables, glass and metal cabinets all around, strange devices on the walls and in corners, and all sorts of gadgetry neatly organized here and there. He puts away some glassware and a slightly glowing rock.

"Well, not on me, but it's likely I have as small an amount of something as you're talking about stuck to my shoes."

He doesn't touch anything. In fact he has his hands behind his back.

"Most anything has some bacteria on it, honestly. Most of them are harmless, only a few kinds can thrive in humans enough to hurt us."

He swabs his own cheek and prepares a slide, sets it into focus, and- Yep. There. Slides the slide slightly to show a wriggling bacterium.

"Here, you can look through this. The knob here to adjust the focus, wiggle it back and forth until it's clear."

He looks. He's slow to figure out how to work the knob; he has almost no experience with similar machines.

"...This is a very interesting device."

"Light is kind of hard to explain, but very carefully made glass and mirrors can bend it and make tiny portions of your vision bigger. Do you see the bacteria?"

"I see something."

"I don't think this demonstration is directly useful for - something you can do to help people, it's more to satisfy you that tiny living things are real. I could turn down the zoom and magnify something else if you like so you know it's not just showing whatever I want it to."

"I don't think that'd be that much harder to fake but sure."

They ought to know how cloth works, right? This should be fairly believable. He fetches a swatch of cotton from somewhere and turns the microscope down to 5x, then 10x, then 25x, then 50x, all the way down to 500x, progressively showing more and more details on the fibers until a single thin strand covers the whole viewport and looks totally alien.

"I'm not sure what to tell you besides the truth behind germs, honestly. Most things I could try to explain sound crazy and could hurt people if I'm remembering important details wrong, or aren't very useful on their own. But if there is something useful it'd be worth talking, yes?"

"Yes, I suppose so, assuming all this is real. I can also make use of books if you have any."

"It's real. You can believe that or not at your leisure. Oh, there's an idea. I don't have books on medicine, I'd be a lot more confident if I did. I have a lot of guides in the crafts section, not for medicine but for things like weaving and metalworking. I'm trying to remember the worst diseases you might face here..."

"Huh. I heard that you claimed your metalworking was more advanced than ours and if any of this is real I believe that. Do you have a guide to making the thing you showed me?"

"The microscope is essentially a careful arrangement of lenses - specially curved glass. You can make a telescope to see distant things the same way. I have some stuff on glassworking, someone could learn to make lenses that way. Do you have glass, and mirrors, around? Let's head back to the store so I can show you things as I mention them?"

And get out of HIS WORKSHOP, much as he invited the doctor in it's making him a little testy.

"Well, I don't have glass or mirrors on me, but I could get them." He'll head back to the store.

He heads towards the crafting sections where a vast number of familiar and unfamiliar tools and materials are stocked.

"I don't have the kind of books that explain how things work in direct terms, just craft guides. Let's head over to where I keep my glassworking stuff and see if any of the guides talk about optics, that's what you need to know here."

"Hmm. Yes, let's." He looks at the tools on the way, trying to see if any seem like the sort of thing he should be looking into getting a guide for.

Weaving machines, lathes, CNC cutters, drafting equipment, strange metals, extremely fancy cloth, lots of some shiny material almost like insect shells, power tools, glue and bleach and dyes and solvents and soap-scenting kits. There's a divide between aesthetics - shiny metal and sharp lines, and natural shapes with fantastical design.

Much more rare are things that seem to be about doing magic, as opposed to magical tools for more ordinary crafts. Sets of implements for alchemy, spellbook-grade ink, a book on how to properly create ritual implements.

He can barely read and generally hires someone for that; he doesn't pause long enough to puzzle out what the magic guide might be about. All the other things look... mostly comprehensible, but advanced, and there are so many things, and some of the materials are very alien.

Here's the glass section. It has a variety of modern and traditional tools for working with molten glass, panes of amazingly clear finished glass apparently for cutting up, stained glass additives and other materials in powdered form, and-

"Here we go. Glass Molding Handbook, Basic Glass Fusing, The Glass Artist's Handbook, Beginner's Glassblowing, Beautiful Stained Glass From Scratch, Art From Scratch: Glass From Natural Materials. Those are the ones that might be any good for this, I reckon."

He can scrutinize titles until he's pretty sure that's probably what they say. "How much are they?"

"A few small copper coins for each." Books are cheap. "I'll need to write down some notes on optics though, that's the part you want- This is just how to get glass good enough to do the other stuff. Maybe geometry and math too... I don't just happen to have a lens grinding book, sadly."

That's shocking and inexplicable but so is the rest of this place. "And how much for those notes?"

"Call it two books, since I'm writing them down personally and the books are all flash-copied."

"...Flash-copied?"

"That's how most books are made where I'm from. Someone writes them once, and machines copy them over and over again. If you check one of these, you'll notice the letters are very precise. Hard to do that by hand."

"Do you sell those machines?"

He gets that look craftspeople sometimes do and mutters for a bit.

"...I could get you something that works to copy text onto new paper, but it'd be kind of finicky and delicate."

"Hm. Maybe. ...Do you sell guides to making that sort of thing?"

"I don't have a guide to the printing press- Which is a more primitive version you might actually be able to build. But it's not all that complicated a concept, you just need some pretty good metalworking and... Hmm."

(He investigates his magically-acquired knowledge of whatever they speak in Sesat. The translation is usually so automatic and seamless he doesn't notice but for this it's probably important.)

The doctor gives him a moment to think.

Sesati is written in a partly phonetic script consisting of 136 characters. They almost exclusively go in straight lines. There's no separate minuscule script but size variations are common (though not required).

"-Sesati would be alright for it. But it takes a lot of very careful metalworking and I don't know how much of that your society has, I've only seen the outside of the one town, you know?" 

"I've never thought we weren't good at that, but... yours is different."

"It's not that we're smarter, it's just that we have more stuff, more writing, more to learn with and that kind of snow-balls." Wait, that's not very idiomatic here. "-Just keeps getting bigger and bigger, like a fire. The printing press is essentially hundreds of little stamps or seals you arrange to make one bigger stamp, and use a thousand times, and then arrange it into another stamp for the second page- You could make a printing press with cast copper, the hard part is making blocks for each character and smoothing them down well enough that they all fit together. Then you can arrange them all in rows along rails and swing the whole thing onto ink and then onto paper and I've gotten a bit off track, I should write this down, with diagrams, instead of just explaining it." He laughs to himself.

"...Huh. Sounds fiddly. Bet we can get it working, though."

"Yeah, it's fiddly. I bet you can, too. Should we get a metalworker in here to browse, since I'm a bit afraid to try to explain vaccines and get it wrong thus hurting people instead of actually helping?"

"Maybe we should go to the city government. They can investigate once and call on the resources of the entire population to figure out what we want and pay for it."

"I suppose." Sigh. "Well, I'm staying right here. I don't like governments much, as a rule. But I'll take their money."

"I'll go talk to them."

He leaves, at least for the time being. The next person to come in is a young woman who looks around at everything suspiciously.

He's in the workshop, but pings his voice over the PA. "I'll be out front in a moment!" And heads out about a minute later. "Want help finding anything?"

"I'd like to know how you travel and whether you ever take people with you."

"Sorry, flat no. I could maybe cook up a vehicle if you're running from something, though."

"I never run. Do you have evidence that any of your wares will still exist in the morning if I buy them?"

"Only my word. Though I suppose a knowledge of how the things I'm selling actually work, so I could explain some underlying principles, if you and I both have the patience to get through an interrogation about that."

"That sounds excellent. Are they the sorts of things that are obvious once you hear them?"

"Some of them. Controlled-lightning would take a lot of background, for example. Are you familiar with smelting metals at all? Or perhaps you should pick the topic, if you're wanting assurance."

"I am... somewhat familiar with some aspects of metalworking."

"So, bronze is a combination of two metals. Copper and a bit of tin. Copper and tin, as it happens, are pure metals. You can separate bronze into copper and tin, but you can't separate those two into anything else. Copper and tin, they're not combinations of anything else, they're a stable way that matter can be. We call those stable substances 'elements'. Iron is as well, but the best iron is not pure iron. It's carefully combined with small amounts of carbon, and possibly other metals, to form 'steel'- An alloy of iron, much like bronze is an alloy of copper. Most things are complex combinations of other elements. What would you say the smallest possible amount of, oh, water, one could have is? If you had some way to see details much smaller than even one of your hairs, would you predict that you could keep dividing a droplet of water forever? Where would it stop, if it does?"

She suspects that he's asking so that he can gauge which claims she'll be able to verify. But she's not sure what else she can do but go along with it at least a little. At least if she doesn't want to try his patience with accusations.

"That sounds like a philosophical question about the definition of water, at least as much as it's an engineering question."

"It's an engineering question about the definition of water. Atoms. The fundamental building block of the universe. So small you can't see individual ones, but everything is atoms in the end of ends. Each element is a kind of atom. Water is one oxygen paired with two hydrogen. They're incredibly tiny- But they're all the same as each other, barring some subtleties. How to demonstrate this, hmm..."

"If it's an important part of the background knowledge needed to create your devices I imagine it has all sorts of impacts on the world, but I suppose you'd need to find something I could be sure didn't have another explanation."

"Here's one that ought to be supporting if not definitive. If you burn something, it turns to ash, yes? The ash weighs less than the burned thing. But if you burn something inside an air-tight container, it will weigh precisely as much as it did before. Of course, if you burn something inside an air-tight container it won't burn very long without the oxygen in the air being turned to ash and unbreathable gas, putting the fire out, as fire is a process of conversion. There's lots of other possible explanations now that I think about it actually... I don't exactly do this often, you might be able to tell."

"It can't be a very normal sort of job, it's not quite teaching... Anyway, are you implying ash is made of different kinds of atoms?"

"Yes. Many of them the same that were in the wood or whatever, and some that were in the air. Oh, air has weight and is made of elements just the same - they're simply light enough to fly freely rather than being pulled to the ground. If it got cold enough the air would turn liquid, then solid. Oh, there's an idea, want to see some frozen and liquid air? Components of air, at least."

"Yes. I would love that."

"Be right back!"

He comes out with a silver cylinder of liquid nitrogen, and a stryofoam box of dry ice, and a couple little beakers half full of water.

He carefully pours liquid nitrogen from the insulated container into the beaker. The surface boils vigorously and mist pours off it, frost forming on the outside. It feels very cold, though.

She moves as if she's going to reach for it, and then stops. On the one hand, she could get hurt. On the other hand, she could believe an ice burn.

"'M not responsible for any injuries. You can lose fingers if you immerse them in this stuff. Touching the outside would be safer."

"Of course."

That's terrible but not necessarily as bad as the upside here is good. She pokes the outside gently with the tip of her left pinky and pulls back immediately.

The beaker is nudged slightly and continues to boil. The boiling has started to settle down some now.

It's very cold. Freezing, even. Just touching it for a bare moment doesn't do lasting harm probably.

"I confess I can't tell by looking at it that this is a component of air."

"I could get some lox out, you can breathe that. You can breathe this too, but it doesn't have the stuff that powers burning - and our own bodies. Oh, the air coming off it will put out a flame, though!"

"What does it mean to say I can breathe it if it won't power my body?"

"There's a sort of fire inside us which would die. You could pull it into your lungs, it's not even poisonous at all, but it wouldn't sustain you. You'd drown without a drop of water in sight, because nitrogen can't be burned, or rather, it can't burn things like oxygen does. A fire is... The interaction of oxygen, which burns things, and things that can be burned, which releases energy. Things that can burn, and the oxygen in the air, have a certain amount, and things that have been burned- Ashes, and the carbon dioxide fires and breathing both produce- Have less. Think of it like a big ball on a hill. It's happy to sit still, but if pushed hard enough, it'll roll down the hill. But only if something pushes it, which is why things aren't on fire all the time, they need a push to light up. As for air itself, it's a mixture. Nitrogen, this stuff," he taps the frigid beaker, "Is the bulk of it, but oxygen is a considerable portion too, with small amounts of a few other things."

"So, from my perspective, I'm feeling very convinced that nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide exist and act as you say, but I'm not feeling very convinced that they're components of ordinary air outside this shop, or that things you sell me to manipulate them won't turn to stone with the sunrise."

"At some point this stops being my problem. Would you like a free sample of something to see if it works tomorrow morning."

"Yes, I would. I thought you were planning to leave before then."

"I don't entirely control when I leave, though everyone being so skeptical and doing so little business makes it likely I'll go sooner than later. Here, have a lighter. The part where they make fire is completely mundane, the part where you can control the fire is magic. It's got some oil-like fuel in the bottom there, when that's gone it's done, not really refillable."

"Thank you. If you're still here in the morning, I'll see you then!"

Well, at least it gives him time to work on his clockworks.

The enormous wagon is still there the next day.

He gets some visitors overnight but they're mostly just there to gawk.

But in stories, when mysterious things like this show up in the evenings, the magic is gone the next day. Teru's there just after sunrise, and so are a handful of other people, including a couple others who visited yesterday.

He has relaxing guitar music playing in the background today.

"Welcome one and all. Let me know if you need help finding something, and mind the rules."

Teru looks at the fanciest-looking things first - she'll get to everything, eventually, but given her complete lack of expertise it seems like as good an order as any. The other woman who came in with her starts looking for the cheapest things.

A man dressed in work clothes, but very well-made and relatively new work clothes, asks about a cake he heard might be sold here.

There's lots of shiny metal and glass things around! The giant food boxes with big glass fronts are all cold or even frozen inside. There are cooking implements too, including a 'meat printer'. In the crafting section, some of the most expensive items are a needle of infinite thread, a whole series of tools that will half move on their own if held meant to help people learn, self-cleaning paintbrushes, some kind of elaborate workstation with mysterious lights and little black rectangles and colorful metal wires, firedrake leather that looks like some sort of very thick snakeskin and boasts extreme durability and protection from fire.

The cheapest things are items like bread, loose fruit and vegetables, simple items in cans and shiny wrappers for food. In the crafting section, it's more like stacks of wood rods (the kind used for wicker), ordinary paint, packs of stickers and pencils and paper, and assorted lumber, nails, screws, and other fasteners.

"The Immortal Cake is a high-tier and expensive item that could certainly give a physical boost to a group of soldiers. It can be split among many, in fact I generally recommend that, and refines the whole body into a slightly superhuman state. Less exhaustion, less age, healing more cleanly, strength and flexibility, sharper senses... I don't know your full situation, of course, but it may be less efficient for you than something like good leather and steel since it is the single most expensive item I carry regularly. I also have more mundane campaign food that will not spoil for decades and is light and waterproof."

"Hm, when you say you have food that 'will not spoil for decades', is that assuming pests don't get at it or is it immune to pests?"

"Thick metal cans or heavy plastic sealant, still reasonably open-able. Here, let's go take a look- Like this, see," He indicates a row of canned fruit. "My trail food is a bit further back, but you see that tab, you just pull on it to open it up and there's fruit in heavy syrup inside. Just open and eat. You could even melt down the cans later, though it's hardly worth it for most people I sell to."

"Hm." He checks some prices. "And how many people do you recommend splitting the cake among?"

"At least five, but past about a hundred you'll start to hardly notice the effects. It works best if eaten immediately after intense training."

"What would count as intense training?"

"Running twenty miles, sparring for hours, a long day of hard labor, just generally pushing your body close to its limits."

"What if someone were... ill or frail or otherwise unable to do those things?"

"It would still help, but... Not the intended use, to feed it to someone already ill or frail. The Immortal Cake purifies and tempers a body, like a smith working on metal. If the metal is poor, it will hardly be any better afterwards. Such a person may benefit more from an Apple of Elysium."

"What is that?"

"Grown in Elysium, a magical land of comfort and rest, and having absorbed some of that essential essence- They won't heal you, but they'll offer a reprieve from almost any ailment. For a while, a week or two to even several months depending on the severity of the malady, the worst of it will vanish. Pain fades, weakness abates, failing sight can even return somewhat. But not forever. Eventually, it will return, and each apple after the first will help a little less."

"...Hm. And if you take that window to train hard and eat cake it won't help much because it's... not working on the same sort of thing?"

"I haven't ever actually heard the results of feeding Apples of Elysium to someone, getting them to exercise, and then giving them Immortal Cake! Elysian stuff is inherently temporary outside of Elysium, but Immortal Cake is imitating techniques I don't actually know for permanent improvements. I know that physical therapy done under Elysian influence helps an appropriate amount even after it fades... I'm not certain, but I think that would be better than not using an Apple of Elysium, at least."

"I might want to get the materials for that, then. Are the apples also divisible?"

"Yes, but once their skin is broken they must be eaten within the hour."

"And the cake doesn't have that kind of requirement?"

"No, the cake is stable. It'll still go bad and pests would love to get their teeth on it, though."

"...Isn't that a lovely thought, stronger rats with sharper senses. Do you have anything that would be useful for defending noncombatants?"