"Not enough room to really do projects up here, it can wait until we land I think."

"Yes I did not mean right now," she says, smiling. "The basic applications of enchanting are subjectively all the same, really, it's just a matter of how well you can specify the task. Biggest problem with most golems is that the more complex ones often encounter situations their makers didn't think of and react in weird unexpected ways."

"Fail-safes will be in any big ones I do. If you're confused, move to a stable stance and stop."

"Identifying confusion itself is a problem, some situations just leave unambiguous instructions that are wrong for the context."

"Can... Hm. Let's say I make a tiny golem that says 'I'm here' magically. Can other golems, like, listen to that and stay on paths marked that way?"

"Yeah."

"That can work for factories and other one-place type stuff. If the golem is outside the marked area, or if a worker - who will be wearing a different tag - is inside it, everything stops. Or... Wait, what if that causes crashes somewhere behind it? Oh, this is fiendishly complicated."

"You're getting it, yeah. And I mean, golems themselves might not be what you're going for, there's no need to keep the humanoid appearance, specialised artefacts are probably it."

"Oh, I thought all magical items were 'golems'."

"Oh no the word's used only for the specific humanoid types, magical items in general are artefacts and are the only form of magic that reside outside humans. Well, I suppose that depends on how you count scrolls and that bloody storm."

"What do scrolls do?"

"Arcanists can set spells to single-use scrolls so nonmages can use them."

"Huh! I can see that being very useful indeed, depending on the scroll."

"It's how I make money: buy a scroll, absorb its mana, remake it more efficiently so there's some mana leftover, eventually I've accumulated enough extra mana to make a scroll I didn't buy, sell them all."

"Because of course nobody is going to give or sell you mana, they'd rather burn than even admit to having such an idea."

"Pretty much. And mages who die of old age or for any other reason just take their extra mana with them."

"What kinds of scrolls are popular?"

"Telekinesis, cleaning stuff, sending messages, communicative telepathy, stuff like that."

"The right kind of cleaning would be great for doctors."

"Why?"

"I mentioned 'germ theory' - gangrene and infection are the result of germs entering open wounds. If you carefully clean them it helps stop this."

"Oh that—makes a lot of sense. I bet a spell can figure that out."

"If only one of us were respectable enough to get some doctors to take us seriously... It'll take some effort to convince most of them, if my world's any guide."

"Yeah I don't have the necessary political capital. Yet."

"...Computing, germ theory and evolution, electricity, did I do steam power yet?"