"There's some ranked magics whose rank 1s aren't very useful but runes is not one of them."

Raven nods.

"So what's next?"

"Curses. To cast a curse, by default you point at the target and chant. Curses can take effect on a delay or on a condition, and you can divide up the duration for repeated brief triggers in response to a condition. There's a set of core curses, sickness, pariah, madness, disaster, and spellbind, which develop with curse rank. Spellbind attaches an effect of up to the curse's rank to a curse. At rank 1, sickness inflicts a brief bad cold, pariah makes nearby insects dislike the target, madness makes the target angry, disaster makes them trip. At rank 2, sickness requires bed rest, pariah makes small animals join in and increases range, madness means the target can't distinguish friend from foe, and disaster causes a muscle spasm. At rank 3, you can skip pointing, you can chant a bit more to affect everyone in your view, you can make an effigy of someone or something with their hair or close possessions for remote curse targeting, and you can also use that effigy to inflict pain by harming the effigy."

"This one seems like potentially a lot of fun for some other people who aren't me."

"I get a lot of mileage out of it but I have it at rank 5 for interfering with resurrection. And you can use rank 1 Pariah plus some alchemy on a volunteer to kill an awful lot of bugs. There's been some work on a 'null curse' for Spellbind but it isn't quite there yet, unfortunately."

"Oh, interfering with monster reforming would be a godsend, hope we get someone with rank 5 potential. And in any case I can guarantee you that if you're willing to use that ability for our side, the cabinet would pay a lot for it."

"It sounds to me like the monsters are killing mortals in highly public locations so my plan was to do some of that, yes, though the curse has to actually land and stay stuck until death, which isn't easy with tough monsters."

"If you're willing to hit known mortal-killers with that curse, we'd back you up with the best warriors we have, and gods bless you for it."

"It's going to be expensive but if someone's killing mortals in broad daylight I am unconstrained from killing them."

"Good."

"Expensive to cast, to be clear, I'm going to need some combination of rare materials or a lot of mana or to lose a limb and not regrow it for a little while. Though if people are willing to have a combatant as a gestational surrogate I can get a lot of mana."

"Huh, how's that work? The surrogate thing, I mean."

"Every race has a distinctive mana charge method, though it's possible to get a different one. Orcs like me draw mana from reproduction – pregnancy and childbirth produce a lot and then it slows to a trickle as the child grows up. If the kid's a straightforward reincarnation or otherwise not mine I don't get charge after childbirth, but I have a mint, so I can solidify a lot of mana from one pregnancy. It's not the most convenient charge method, but it's adequate and I'm pretty dangerous without spending all that much mana."

"Oh, you mean you as a surrogate, not one of us. I'm sure you'll find plenty of takers, especially if it helps us take out monsters for good!"

"That's convenient."

"So...hexes, next, in the order you're using?"

"Yup. Hexes let you transmute something into something else using a medium which is consumed. It has a rank zero, which every witch gets for free unless they restrict themself from Hexes, which I wouldn't recommend. The rank 0 for hexes is minting Kisses, six minutes per kiss, no medium."

"At rank 1, you can transmute stone to mud, clay to glass, iron to tin, salt to sugar, and polymorph small animals into other small animals. The medium is wood, about a twig's worth for several gallons, or K5. All the transmutations also go backwards. You can stack transmutations and do stone to clay to glass, but you can't always stack polymorphs, any polymorph spell cast on an intelligent creature gets reverted if anyone casts a second polymorph. At rank 2, you can transmute cloth to leather, water to milk, paper to plastic, copper to bronze, and combustible fuel to bread, using around an ounce of metal or K25 for several gallons. Polymorph can target larger animals or smaller children and do anything biologically plausible. At rank 3, you can transmute eggs to chocolate, water to gasoline, and vegetables to meat, with jewelry-grade quartz or topaz, about a hundred cubic millimeters or K100. Polymorph can go up to a human adult and reshape objects without changing the material. You also can animate lightweight objects and write behavior loops for them, up to 3 that you can switch to with commands but it's wise to save 1 for 'stop'. If you want complexity you need to create multi-object hierarchies."

"Oh wow, I don't know yet if I'll go for rank 3 but whoever can do human transmutation is going to be rich."

"Lot of demand?"

"As a wise webcomic author once said, 'the profits from transsexuals alone—'..."

"If you're not dealing with a magical body template alchemical testosterone can go pretty far."

"Nice."

"You are going to have a magical body template, by the way. Which you get to do design work on."

"Oh, I'll have to keep that in the back of my mind! My knee-jerk reaction is 'I'm perfect as I am, sunglasses emoji', but making all my other choices will give me time to think."

"You can actually poke at fingernail thickness and how long your maximum hair length is and dental stuff, not just broad characteristics. And if you can tolerate a third nipple you get extra points for it."