"Great idea! Good news first!" she says, and starts walking with a noticeable limp towards two hexagonal tiles with consoles. "Feast your eyes and blindfolds on this!"

She notes the charr facial expression, but not having exactly interacted with many charr, she doesn't know what it means. The air sniff and direction of the facial expression implies some things, though. It's not very hard to guess what he just figured out. A bath doesn't help a ton with getting the smell of each other off if they have it together. She's kind of uncomfortable about this information being available to the public, and shifts her weight a bit from one foot to another. Still, she's not sorry, ashamed, or interested in denying it. If anyone tries to tell her she was wrong to spend the night with him, then she has a knife and a couple hexes they can introduce themselves to. Rytlock doesn't exactly have a gaze to meet, but she can give him a calm, steady look of 'Yes, and?' She is completely certain that no one on that floating rock is going to be surprised that she and James are sleeping together. No one. Well, maybe the minister. He seemed kind of dense.

The fact that charr seem to be able to tell who has been intimate is... good to know, though, she guesses. She really wishes that information were not under their purview, but apparently it is, and it's not like anyone can do anything about that. There might be a spell for disguising it, or they could take separate baths, or—but no, she doesn't actually want to arrange her personal life around this. They get confirmation of a thing that most smart people would eventually figure out on their own, good for them, it's still not their damn business.

Her eyebrows quirk a bit when Taimi pretends James asked about the good news first, but, okay, sure, eye feasting may commence?

Other than whatever charr facial expression he directed them, Rytlock doesn't seem to want to comment on it, and instead elects to "look" at Taimi and say, "Different tile on the ground? Impressive."

"No! This is another one of Rata Novus's secrets I discovered!"  she says. "Stand there and you'll be ported to this crazy simulation room the Novans developed but never finished. —sorry, there's only two," she tells Vetareh.

"That's all right, there were a few things I wanted to work on anyway. And realistically speaking, if put in a crazy simulation room, I am going to be too distracted by the crazy simulation itself to pay attention to anything actually going on in it."

"So you managed to finish this, then?"

"Well... no. I couldn't... you know... figure it out."

"What's that?" Rytlock asks, maybe a tad too amused.

"I couldn't figure it out, okay?" she admits. "Just so happens to fall outside my giant, incredibly deep pool of knowledge—whatever! It works now. I called in Moto, an asura with some experience in that realm. He got it up and running for me!"

"Is it built for running many kinds of crazy simulations, or is it more specialized?" she asks, and then she clamps down on the next five questions she wants to ask because there is a Dragon on the loose. Somehow, she suspects that Taimi is the sort of person that could fall into a magical theory talk for hours. Sort of like her. As a responsible adult, Vetareh would like to keep on track.

"It can process numerous experimental theories and, yes, 'crazy simulations,' but the Rata Novans developed it to test themselves against various Primordus minions."

But how does it process the numerous experimental theories, how does it calculate what things to show, how in-depth is the simulation's simulations, does it do touch and heat and the like, does it also simulate magic that enemies use, by what mechanism does it do any of this, what is the construction of the systems, how—

Learning all of the details of how this works is not conducive to being a better mesmer in a more modern time. She was already clamping down on her urge to ask questions, but now she has to do it hard enough that she... can't actually think of things to say. There are only questions. That she cannot say.

James watches the procession of thoughts going through Vetareh's head as reflected on her face and laughs then shakes his head. "I'm sure you'll be able to ask Taimi all about it later." He looks at the asura. "You probably did not call us here just to show Moto's genius off."

"I don't know if I should be offended by that. I'll choose not to. Anyway, yeah, wanna check it out?"

"Sure, it'll be helpful to find out what we're about to go up against."

"Perfect! It'll also help me run some numbers and see what the room's capable of!"

Thank you, James, for saving her. She needed it. She does not want to get sucked into this nerd vortex, there would be no escape.

"Will it disturb any of your instruments or readings if I sit in a corner and try to catch up on two hundred and fifty years of magical progress and make illusions to myself?"

"Nope! Go ahead."

(And James and Rytlock stand on the fancy tiles in front of the consoles.)

"Excellent. Thank you very much for having me, have fun, I'm sure you will come up with brilliant and unprecedented theories of all kinds."

And then she very politely flees. Fleeee from the nerd vortex it will swallow her whole. She has books to read!

In the meantime: a holographic projection of James and Rytlock in a cubic room appears in the middle of the room. The three of them talk a bit more and then start the simulation.

Okay, so she distinctly remembers James switching weapons mid-battle and switching battle spells with them. She has no idea how this works, or how it would work. She knows more spells than she can comfortably have prepared to use in a combat situation—minor spells and enchantments like the weight lightening enchantment and contraception signet are easy, but spells that are up to breaking through enemy magical defenses are, magically speaking, expensive. Also rather complicated. They're finicky enough to set up that switching between available spells mid-combat sounds... distinctly unwise. Otherwise, she would have swapped her hex breaking spell for something less mean. So how do these people do it? Clearly it has something to do with weaponry, so she'll start there.

The books she acquired are all for beginners, of which she is distinctly not, but it's not like anyone's written a book aimed at people two and a half centuries out of date on magical theory, so she'll stomach the simple explanations that are probably going to feel at least a little bit condescending. She picks up the first book on mesmers and weaponry, and begins to read.

It's a very introductory book, so it covers the very basics. It's also quite deep, though, and goes into the theory.

Mesmer is a profession based around the Denial and Preservation schools of magic with minor traits in Aggression. The mesmer utilises illusion as their main tool, and also has the ability to manipulate space and time to their advantage. As such, it's a midrange profession that switches between melee and ranged combat with practised ease and battlefield control that leaves their opponents wondering where they actually are and what they are actually doing.

To fight, one needs weapons. As a scholar profession, mesmers use their weapons mostly to channel magic. The basic mesmer training includes training in greatswords, staves, scepters, swords, foci, pistols, and torches. Certain spells are attuned to weapons, and it's easier and more efficient to use them with those spells through those weapons. The intrinsic nature of weapons determines which spells stick best, and the end of this book contains a list of the most common spells to be found enchanted in each of the weapons mesmers can use.

The types of magic and their mesmer uses in each weapon type are:

• Greatsword: this two-handed weapon is best at skills that focus on a single foe, but also have side effects on nearby ones, with very high single-hit damage. Cleaving, slashing, spinning, blocking, knocking down, pushing, and bouncing are the sorts of abilities one will find associated with a greatsword. Mesmers use them to shoot energy beams at a target and nearby foes, creating illusionary greatswords that bounce between foes, sending waves of magical energy, and creating localised magical effects around themselves;
• Staff: the staff is a long-range two-handed weapon, best at area of effect magic, support, and crowd control. Cleaving, swiping, creating areas of damage, barriers, armour, and affecting groups of enemies are all things they're good at. Mesmers use staves to create energy projectiles that affect multiple enemies, armour themselves up, create magical storms, and strengthen their allies while debilitating their nearby enemies;
• Scepter: a medium-range one-handed weapon that's good at debilitating effects, typically but not always single-target. Single-target projectiles, bleeding, tormenting, and confusing are things often seen in magic associated with scepters. Mesmers use them to apply torment and confusion at a single target;
• Sword: it's a one-handed weapon, and it balances positioning and damage dealing. Parrying, evasion, blocking, slashing, and single-target slashing are typical abilities associated with swords. Mesmers use the sword to create evasive sorts of illusions, switching locations and using sneak attacks;
• Focus: foci are technically not weapons; they're enchanted objects of various kinds that typically have supportive and defensive magic associated, mostly used by scholar professions. Barriers, defensive bubbles, armour, and boon-stripping (for foes) and granting (for allies) are common spells associated with foci. Mesmers use them to create barriers and protective bubbles;
• Pistol: long-range single-target rapid-use weapons, pistols aren't often used by scholar professions for their lack of strong magical resonance. Mesmers' high enchantment ability makes them an exception, but only as a secondary weapon, which they use to debilitate foes with magical conditions and to create illusions that shoot illusionary bullets;
• Torch: torches cannot be used as a main weapon, because they're not magically resonant enough for spellcasting nor physically sturdy enough for direct combat. They focus on burning foes—either directly in melee or indirectly via burning-related magic—and mesmers use them to generate smoke for their illusions.

Vetareh takes notes in illusion as she skims, picking up important things and where she finds them so she can more easily find them later in case they turn out to be important. There's a lot to compare to what she knows of magical theory.

It's interesting that they say a mesmer needs weapons to fight, because actually, she doesn't. Her scepter certainly helps, without it she'd have a bit less punch to her spells, and she can use it to throw minor magical projectiles at people, but her spells are hers, not tied to a weapon. This sounds like they outsource them to enchanted weapons with spell... patterns on them. That's interesting, and clearly helps with flexibility on the battlefield, but she gets the impression from reading this that everyone's sort of... working from the same seven possible objects to carry around. That's, what—she does some quick illusionary math—ten possible spell load outs? Is that it, really? She double checks, because that just seems tragic—yes, two two-handed weapons, two primary weapons, and four off-hand. Ten.

No wonder everybody's been taken by surprise by her. She is accustomed to there being more than ten possible spell load outs. In fact, she has seventy-seven combat capable spells, not counting the now useless resurrection signet. Four of those are elite spells, of which she can only use one at a time. But the rest? She is entirely free to pick and choose what she does and doesn't want to bring. Just, well, she'd better be sure about those choices she made, because she can't possibly have them all ready to cast, since she doesn't get to switch on the fly. Clearly this system is more flexible, and she expects even when following spell patterns enchanted onto weapons that there's a bit of flexibility in the spells themselves, but. Wow. That's. She understands why they wouldn't want to be caught with the wrong spells for the job and unable to switch, but she can't help but feel that something has been lost, here.

The part about weapons only really being good for specific sorts of things sounds... odd, to her. She's not sure why that would be. It's all just enchanted matter with spells inscribed onto it anyway. It matters that it's well crafted and made from the materials that resonate in the right sort of way and enchanted well, but that's it. The shape is immaterial. There are some allowances for what materials can be arranged into what shapes practically, of course, but there should be a lot more room for creativity. Magic is not naturally this constrained. So what's going on?

... She hates wrapping right back around to echoes every five seconds, but, honestly, it's the only thing that makes sense. Are they finding it easier to copy things that have been done before, all stuck in a magical rut? Or perhaps it's hard enough to enchant weaponry to hold spell patterns that they're forced to follow things that have already been done to get anything powerful enough to use in combat? An artificing book would have a better answer to that one than this basic book on mesmers, she thinks. Not that she thought to buy one of those while she was shopping. She's done artificing before, she made her scepter (not that it's very good, she was midway through a better replacement when she fell into the Mists) and could probably pick up the modern version without too much trouble. Well. Probably some amount of trouble. But it'd be worth it, to not be stuck with the same ten combinations as everyone else.

Still. It would pay to know how the various weapon combinations work, and how they'd interface with her own spell selection. Perhaps she can pick up a couple weapons and see what happens. It'd be very nice to have her usual spell load out and the spell patterns the weapons have, but she suspects that if it were that easy, this book would not say that to fight, one needs weapons. Realistically, the best she can probably hope for is that it only requires her to sacrifice some of her space for spells to use the weapons as they were intended. At worst... well, she'd honestly rather be unique than be just another mesmer with the same ten combinations. She'd be constrained, but she'd be uniquely constrained, and unpredictability and the element of surprise have always been a mesmer's best weapons.

(Meanwhile James and Rytlock seem to be having a lot of fun having their virtual arses kicked by giant holographic lava bugs.)