"One gold to a hundred copper is a good bet. And a meal in a decent restaurant costs five or six copper."

"How much is 'a gold' in copper?"

"I meant weight for weight. One gram gold to a hundred grams copper. I should just go ahead and make a list of common currency materials."

Pause. "I mean I knew I could plausibly live quite a lavish life back home, relatively, if I chose to, but I hadn't really realized it."

"I don't know that it's that valuable back 'home'? And a six copper meal is pretty modest and a great deal, come to think, that's mostly what I pay in ingredients when I cook. Sorry for the confusion."

He starts writing down currency conversions. 

Common currency materials

Silver. 1g silver = ~2-3g gold

Gold. 1g gold = ~80-100g copper = ~16-20g silvered brass.

Silvered brass. 1g S.brass = ~5g copper

Copper, steel, and starglass. 1g copper = ~1-1.5g steel = ~3-5g starglass

Various plastics. 1g copper = 10-30g plastic, depends on type.

Wooden tokens. Depends on town.

Rates variable - rough guide only

"I haven't looked up gold rates back home! But they're reasonably high, I think, people want fancy things and gold seems to count."

He looks over the list. "So plastic is reasonably common, then?"

"Yeah. Grows in vats from leftover Earth engineered bacteria if you feed it right, most kinds."

"… Huh, okay."

Evara also looks at the list.

"How's iron, for price?"

"Sell it to a forger who'll make it into steel. Not sure how much you'll get - probably around sixty to eighty percent?"

Peer. "Hmmkay. I haven't actually done much metal manipulation, or like any, so I'm not sure how the better structure will impact it…"

"More permanent workshop? Should speed it up quite a lot, especially if there's room somewhere for me to try doing – experimental things. Which there might not be."

"How long does it take to learn this stuff, when you have chi? A few months? Years?"

"It depends what you want to do with it, and – a lot of things build on top of each other, practice with one thing helps with another. Learning to make something glow – while you're actively feeding it, at first – would be, uh, something like a week or two of concentrated effort?"

"So kind of like engineering, I suppose. You need a little knowledge to learn the next thing, and there are so many individual parts and specializations."

Magic. A rare or possibly unique talent. Supply and demand could be handy there but it also sounds like a massive pain to learn even if he could...

Shrug. "I'm pretty sure you can't do it if you're metaphorically a rock."

"If I could I would definitely want to learn how."

"Maybe it will turn out you can use the ambient chi after hanging around us long enough, or something." Pause. "We do not know much about the origin of various creatures, so – if you get a desire to turn dark and shadowy and terrorize people in some forests, please let me know."

"Forests around here aren't big enough for proper terrorizing, I suspect. But I will keep an eye out for sucpicious things as I already said."

"Would be convenient to check that you're not, like, a one-off. … Not that you probably are, just, you know, you're so far a one-off."

"I could stop somewhere inhabited on the way, sooner than the full trip, if you really insist. It's a bit of a delay and uses some consumables though."

"Is there anything en route? Could check if there's chi surrounding a town, low-fidelity."

"Everything moves around. Maybe we come across a small town on the way to the edge of the stormwinds, maybe we don't. Looking for one and catching it and lining up to dock and refilling all the gas and water I use to get neutrally buoyant would be the delay and expense."

"It's not really important enough to check early, I don't think?"

"Nah," agrees Akien. "– Do you mind if I have a look 'round again?"

He angles to get something out of his bag.