"The radios have the advantage that non-mages can make them, though I don't know how easily or what kinds of materials are required. I think really basic ones might require vacuum tubes."

"Ahh. I'll have to ask my facetious fiance, then. I would like to use radios, I have no moral issues with stealing ideas to let people not be oppressed anymore."

"The concept of the radio is long out of patent, I'm sure."

"Oh good, so no one will make faces at me for borrowing it."

"Not a bit. And even if you take things that are patented, your world is well out of jurisdiction of anyone interested in enforcing Earthly patent law."

"True, but I'd like to avoid antagonizing anyone in charge in your plane. If I need to in order to prevent large-scale death or something, I will, but if it's something simple - I can just throw money at the problem until it goes away. That's what I make it for."

"The ostensible point of intellectual property law is to allow people the profit motive for making their ideas available without fear of those ideas getting stolen. So if you feel bad about it and you have the money to throw - after whatever conversion process into local currency - you could also buy radios and whatnot. The problem is that modern ones will require more sophisticated infrastructure to maintain and repair. You'll run into this problem with most things - we're using improved versions of everything that requires materials science and software engineering and robotic assembly lines just to get the parts spat out of a factory."

"Aha. So I'd have the basic, no longer in use versions and need to upgrade if I want New Kystle to match your plane. That sounds like I should just do what I can with simple versions until things are stable enough to start getting an infrastructure set up. That works for me."

Isabella nods. They are still snuggled up, so it comes out as vaguely nuzzly, but presumably meaning is preserved.

"Hell yes."

He laughs. "Alright. I'll have to actually get mirrors, but I can get a pair when I get chamomile."

"Yeah, no shortage, mirrors are cheap."

"I'd be incredibly surprised if this plane had fantastic things like radios and Wikipedia, but mirrors were beyond the infrastructure capabilities," says Adarin, amused.

Isabella giggles. "What's your currency plan, anyway? Even if you brought bricks of gold you'll have to find somebody who's interested in buying them. Most transactions don't work directly in objects of material value; we have fiat currency."

"Two-fold. First, find something people will pay for here - partially mooching off of your portal system income for a bit, then using that to pay for something else I could do that would make money and saying you did it, or something. Once that's set up, I find something to convert my currency to this one. Bricks of gold is a method, but they're heavy. I might buy expensive jewelry and try selling those, if it seems like those would have a good return value."

"It's actually pretty hard to resell objects like that. You might be able to find someone to take them, but off the top of my head the only ideas I'm having are businesses designed to take advantage of people who need liquid cash yesterday and are willing to part with their grandmother's necklace or whatever to get it."

"Ahhh. Then in that case, I'll pass on that idea. Maybe it would be better to just reveal that I'm super extra-foreign and try to set up a proper currency exchange."

"I'm sure you could get ahold of an enterprising person willing to buy New Kystle currency if they could expect to make regular trips there. Can you set up permanent interplanar portals or do you have to personally ferry visitors?"

"I can set up permanent interplanar portals, on the caveat that I'm a little nervous to. I can break a portal entirely if I want, but I don't know of a way to monitor what goes through them without spending hours a day scrying. So, something nefarious from either side could get by, and I wouldn't know. Perhaps I could set up security to check, but uh... A large number of mages could rebel if I tried that, considering how the last time we had extraplanar relations went."

"I'm sort of worried that you'll bring me over to visit, one or more of these people who antagonize you so will decide it is about time you were dead, and I will be stuck there."

"Ah. That's a pretty understandable concern. If it helps, they don't actually want me dead. If I die, then they have to deal with Zeviana if they want my bloodline to be salvaged at all, and if they didn't they would have had my mother killed when she was a child," he explains. "They seem to think I'm the easiest to deal with of my family."

"Well, that helps, but not overwhelmingly much. Is there a way to hide the portal? Put it up in midair, nowhere anybody is liable to look; you can build a building under it later if everything goes well, but failing that, I'll be able to fly home?"

"Sure. You can mark a spot when I have both halves of my thingamajig and can find my portal hub site."