"Huh. We have different words up to fifteen and also a separate word for twenty but I guess sixteen through nineteen are composed like that?"

"Huh. We could go over math more at some point in case there's useful information about that that you could be taking home but Bar might give that to you for free. Anyway, I can sell large round numbers of magic things. Or large non-round numbers. If I can make them at all."

"What would you want for them?"

"For just one, value equal to ninety six Hari imperial rings in any currency Bar can accept if you provide the object to anchor it on, more if I have to buy some random thing for it to be. Depending on exactly how many you want, I offer small bulk discounts and larger humanitarian discounts given proof of the humanitarian crisis you're dealing with, and I still accept payment in political advice and sometimes art depending on how much I like the art. Or archery lessons or staff training."

"Oh, well, staff training I could do. I don't have a bow with me and was never as good with one though I do know the basics. You're going to run me out of political advice but you're welcome to what I have. How would you want me to prove that - what, zombies exist? -"

"Well, I will, for starters, need a specific enough definition of zombies, or possibly to see a dark thing or something, just to be able to design the spells, I wouldn't currently say I know what 'zombies exist' would look like. And then I will probably check if you have newsreels or something that Bar can get me that mention zombies doing whatever negative things zombies do, or obituaries of people killed by them, or things they've published that say things like 'we the dark things all want what's worst for everyone', or if your world is in a really bad way you can open your door and let me see it but I hope that wouldn't work."

"I don't know what an obituary or a newsreel is. My door leads to the inside of my order's compound, there aren't dark things in it."

"...I wonder if you also want blueprints for a printing press."

"Maybe? What's that?"

"It's a device you use to put more upfront effort in than writing normally, but not ten thousand three hundred sixty eight times more effort, and then quickly produce ten thousand three hundred sixty eight of the same book. Or some other number. I think maybe you do want to study engineering and math before you go home, there are a lot of things like that."

"- math? How does math come into it?"

"Um, I think it matters more when you're working with natural materials instead of just enchanting your buildings to stay in the shape you made them in, you have to - balance forces and get angles right and stuff - and there's another thing you can do, once you have a substrate for it, that I'm pretty sure involves math, where you have a tool that stores pictures and text and sounds and sends them to other people and it's slightly more convenient than just having the ability to scry what people have said in public and probably a lot more convenient than not having worldwide communications."

"Wow. I guess I have a lot to try to haul home with me."

"Doesn't have to be a lot of volume or weight, at least."

"I guess! Though I don't know who to get on the - manufacturing -"

"It's not completely impossible I know someone who'd be able to figure that out but probably not. Anyway, let's go back to: what exactly is a zombie?"

"A corpse that's come back to - motion, not life really - and they attack people."

"...So, if I do a thing that prevents corpses from being moved, you will need to cremate them on site, but there's probably a way to specify zombies more precisely than that..."

"They're also contagious?"

"That's promising. How does that work?"

"They bite. If they get a paladin and we heal it we're all right, but if they bite anyone else they turn into a zombie themselves."

"Is there a specific chemical in their saliva or is it magical?"

"...I have tended to assume magical but now that you ask I realize I don't know."

He turns to where there isn't a bartender and asks if there's a book on zombies or a book on dark things that also mentions zombies.

Bar can cough one up!