"Huh. That seems like it'd be a feedback loop for you - if you're less effective at stopping people from making more dark things, then you're stretched thinner...?"

"I don't think we have a lot of repeat offenders, actually, but sometimes it does take a while to track them down."

"...Why don't you?"

"- don't have a lot of repeat offenders? Uh, I'm not sure, do you have a lot?"

"As a fraction of the total population, not really, most people never commit any crimes, but as a fraction of criminals - for most combinations of species and index offense, more than a quarter of people go on to commit another crime, uh, over I forget what followup period but I remember the title of the study so if you really care we can get it from Bar."

"I guess I have no idea what it is for... theft or something, I only contact that whole end of things when it's something to do with dark things. Usually that is a bad experience and they stop after being caught if not before. - to be clear a lot of the time they stop before being caught because dark magic gets them killed."

"Oh. Well, that's convenient."

"In a way, I suppose."

"I'm sure it's not convenient to have to deal with the dark things afterward. Maybe that was an insensitive thing to say."

"- I mean, ideally they'd stop before that point both for their own sakes and for everyone else's."

"Ideally, yeah."

"And sometimes a reformed mage who knows things about the dark arts can help us."

"That's the term for making dark things or is it broader than that?"

"Making them, turning into them, consorting with them, all the steps useful toward those."

"Turning into... they wouldn't happen to be related to vampires, would they?"

"Liches, are the ones people can turn into."

"Not translating as anything I already know a word for. I'm guessing from context and prior experience that it comes with tremendous power and some kind of horrible drawback possibly involving something similar to command magic or actual mind control."

"They have roughly the same powers as a normal mage except that they're also kind of dead and this means they don't have to rest or eat or anything."

"A power I can imagine killing for. I wonder if I could make you an artifact that'd just make it impossible for dark things to start existing anywhere near it, is that the sort of thing you'd be able to use if I could?"

"Yes! Though I'd put it somewhere that seemed likely to throw zombies, liches are much rarer."

"I also offer bulk discounts if you want twenty thousand seven hundred thirty six."

"...why twenty thousand seven hundred thirty six?"

"That was round for me. What base do your numbers use?"

"...base?"

"In Ilan, which I'm speaking now, we use base twelve. What that means is that I count one, two, three..." and so on... "twelve, and some of them sound a little similar but they're just - different independent words, but when I say 'thirteen' that's derived from the words 'twelve' and 'one'. Some recent immigrants of ours use base ten, where they count to - what was it called - 'ten', with a new word for each number, and then if they want to count something like forty eight they break it down as four tens which they call 'forty' and then they say the word 'eight' afterward."