"I wouldn't know they are a devisor though, so it might be a hard sell for another dreamer without an existing connection."

"Hey now, don't underestimate my connections. But that's fair, if it's Devisor-led they'd tell me if they wanted me. I want to hear all about it when you're done, though. Maybe it'll make a good song!"

"I'll be sure to give you the story. I do hope it isn't too exciting though."

"Hah, if you were Named saying that'd be a good way to make it moreso. But don't worry, threats to life and limb are just one way to make an exciting story. Grawtosh rarely fails to deliver something interesting in any case."

He frowns for a moment before pushing himself to smile again. "True enough. Hopefully it'll be exciting in another way." 

If Shadwick notices, he doesn't comment. "Gods be with you and all that. In the meantime I hope you enjoy the party! Try the roast duck, it's a Sustainer special."

"I will, thanks." Hmm he sees Alexius pretty often these days. He'll see if the chainer still seems available.

The young man is stockily built beneath his robes, sandy-haired and lightly freckled. He watches Alex approach with idle curiosity. "I don't believe I know you."

"I'm Alexandr Lustig, Alex for short, I'm a bit of an oddity since this is my first year here at Grawtosh."

"Oh." A pause. "Sagidunnus. I'm almost done with my apprenticeship. To Magus Murena," he adds. (The name doesn't ring a bell.)

"In the chainer order right? What's that like?"

"The Order of Chains. Some say 'Binders,' though less so after the reforms," Sagidunnus corrects absently. "It's...political. Like Vision in some ways. Hard to master its traditions without something of a taste for control.

"My master is more subtle than most. But few alive know Rego better. It's a privilege to study under him."

"Lucky you, having such a skilled master. If I had the chance I'd like to learn everything but there's just not enough time. I'm not well suited to keeping up a face and balancing things like that. Seems like it's needed at least a little in every order though."

"Some more than others. Less so in the provinces. Accept being someone's asset, and you can go harvest vis or live in a tower somewhere and study what you like in the off-season. Plenty of magi are content to trade away their potential in exchange for being left mostly alone." Sagidunnus shrugs. "I'm not."

"Any particular ambition you're willing to share?"

This earns a wry grin. "You know, there's some who say you shouldn't tell people what you want because it gives them a way to hurt you. Seems backwards to me, even here; if they don't know what you want they can't offer it, either. If someone tries to hurt me, I'll just make it a point to find out and hurt them more. It can be dangerous to be too specific, though. Careful who you ask that question.

"As for me...I want to understand the gears of power. Why do those with wildly different aims work together? Why do people defer to the Imperator, the Regent, the long-dead Primor Magnus, or the words they wrote on aged parchment? What brings magi who hate each other together for a massive ritual? What keeps the Code intact, what bounds a Wizard's War? Is it fear, ambition, compulsion? What is it the gnomes had, before the Fall, that made some scholars insist they'd take over the world one day?"

"That's an interesting topic. It probably depends a lot on what you mean by power but I can see at least part of what you mean from the questions you asked. When you say power you mean something like the ability to do things especially by getting other people to do things with you or for you. Right?"

"An adequate definition, if overly narrow. A skilled mage or politician often cause people to do things for themselves that happen to benefit the mage or politician, for instance."

"Isn't that covered by for you? No, I see what you're saying. You mean you set things up so that people want to do what you want without thinking about you at all."

"Exactly. And groups of people, which often behave very differently than individuals. Consider a problem from Advanced Compulsions: There are plenty of spells that induce one mind to perform specific actions, inhabit specific modes of thought, or even obsessively pursue particular goals, albeit often with a significant efficiency loss. But what if you can only compel one member of a group? How does that change the contents of the ideal prompt, or the necessary structure of the compulsion itself? There are so many unanswered questions in this space!"

That's a slightly disturbing thought but Alex tries not to show it. It does have some resemblance to using illusions for the same purpose. Alex nods, "If there's an obvious leader then that's who you would want to target but I expect that isn't always the case and even if it is you need to take care to avoid your influence being obvious."

Sagidunnus nods. "The leader, if there is one, is also the obvious target for adversaries, and for those looking for signs of influence. So you might try for second-order effects, subtler targets. The leader's second-in-command, their servants, the ones who bring issues before the leader. There are many versions of the problem, with different tradeoffs and constraints. It's more Vizier fare than Binder, but I've always found the details fascinating.

"If you're interested, I recommend On the Architecture of Thought by Marcia Lenta. It's also said that the Yan Tei have also done significant research into the subject, though I've yet to find a sufficiently well-translated volume of theirs."

"I'll have to look for that when i have the time. Circling back to one of your earlier questions. I have my own pet theory about the gnomes. I think it was about accumulated knowledge and specifically how quickly they were accumulating that knowledge and how rapidly and widely they were able to apply it. There's stories of them having flying machines and incredible weapons. I know some people think they found some incredible artifact or unstable power source but what if it wasn't that at all?"

"So some have claimed, including, I think, many gnomes. But that just pushes the question further, doesn't it? How were they able to accumulate so much knowledge so quickly? Does it have anything to do with why they're never truly Gifted and have to rely on instruments to do magic? There have certainly been records of artifacts and unusual power sources from Wennelthlim-That-Was. Burning sand, the Four Treasures, strange devices that move under their own power."

"Perhaps it's precisely that, so much of magic seems to be individual and difficult to share precisely with others. If every gnome could build on every other gnome's work reliably then I think the tendency towards curiosity they're well known for would do the rest."