"Eh, I'd probably have to make most of the tools myself. Copper, steel, rubber, acids, glass, some nickel and zinc, silver, chromium- My type of sorcerer throws specialties or at least styles and mine is largely metal-ish."

...She considers the word 'spellsilver' and attempts to identify it based on memories of Iolantha Heterodyne's Magnificent Metallic Matrix.

Does the Matrix include the category "lanthanides"?

"So alchemist shit."

It does! So the rare rare metals. Curiosity resolved.

"'Electroplating' at least is alchemy, yes. I know my alchemy but it was never a specialty. Oh, uh- What thing is going to bite me on the ass for not knowing it the worst, do you think? I've only seen the one demonology class and it was about succubi and incubi, I'm not going to attack anyone or mess with things, but... Unknown unknowns."

"Uh, foreigners never wanna get into it about religion, so don't. Aaaand you need a coat but if your thing you're doing in the kitchen works probably you can get paid partly in a coat."

Hey Common Taldane, what's a religion?

The practices surrounding prayer and worship of whatever god or subpantheon is favored in a given community.

Oh, so not relevant to her seeing as she is not a cleric or aiming to be one. These ""gods"" are pretty clearly just powerful superbeings anyway, like the Queen of England.

"Gotcha. And yeah, I'm asking for a coat as part of it. Now a scout suit, they'll keep your toes warm in a blizzard, I want to make one of those, but like, they run on heavy oil and also that'd take more glass, steel, and rubber, and some naphtha, and- Okay, no rambling, sorry. I ramble."

"All the fun people do."

Tacit permission received?

"Scout suits are multipurpose! They are armor, warmth, light, electro power for running devices! They also burn oil at a rate that may be prohibitive given that firewood is a major constraint. I made major improvements to the facility that makes them, that and the potato house are probably my two favorite creations. Everything requires energy input of some kind- Burning things is some of the easiest energy to work with, though pure muscle power hauling on a crank is technically even simpler, it's far less convenient. I've been having thoughts about using large mirrors to concentrate heat from sunlight. Or perhaps trying to draw out wherever magic comes from."

"What's a potato house? - could we be putting the horses to work, when they're not needed on patrol?"

"The potato house used electro stimulation and dense fertilizer - complicated, alchemy - to make potatoes grow at an extremely rapid pace. One eighth of the plants were harvested each day and by the eighth day they're ready again. But it takes a lot of complicated alchemy and upkeep, and lots of energy leached off our smelter... The horses probably have to eat more if they're doing more work, right? I'm pretty sure that's how horses work, there is no free lunch."

"Yeah, but only to a point. They have to eat even if they're not doing anything at all."

"Maybe you should, then. I could whip up some lights off a horse moving with just copper, zinc, and some glass, as a first thought."

"You'll wind up dipping into the wand materials, till the requisitions come in."

"I might go to, uh, Kenabres, once I have a coat. Resource scarcity is not very fun."

"Ah, fair enough, Worldwound's not a popular posting. Maybe you'll be very lucky and something big'll attack, enough that we call in a strike team, and they can bring you home with them."

"Someone's got to do it but the people I consider to have authority over me are... Not here. Maybe it's where I should be, getting stronger. Maybe not."

"It's the right place for that. There's sort of an awkward valley around third and fourth circle where you're not strike team quality yet but you're too tough for routine ops to get you much of anywhere, but for getting past first and second, here's where, way better than grubbing around in a three-man party hunting dire bugs and zombie outbreaks."

"White bears and the bandit dregs of Polar Lord civil wars for us."

Stacking stacking. Hmm noise.

"Is circle a relevant metric because of topology somehow? It seemed odd that there was a math group among all the more practical ones. Obvious answer, math is practical actually."

"Oh, yeah, us wizards need it. Sorcerers use it but don't need to understand it, they can just pull perfectly formed spell structures out of their asses."

"Sparks can pull animated biting boots out of their asses, but proper learning helps. A lot. Think I could sit in on topology circle without being useless?"

"I mean, you can sit in and not say anything, then you'll be useless but at least not worse than that."

"I'll imagine my voice is annoying and weaselly and calculate threshold of interruption accordingly."

"We all got it in school, see, and you might've gone to some alchemy-sorcery school but you didn't go to wizard prep."

"And interdisciplinary studies is not the prescribed topic. I've some calculus?" Shrug.