"Ah, yikes. The Lord of Light isn't related to the Blessed of Light, is he?"

"I don't think it's common knowledge, but great-grandfather says he's been sending them funding."  

"Hmm. This probably has implications I will think about later, when I have more than a rudimentary understanding of how politics works here. Your great-grandfather sounds like he's well-connected."

"Yeah! He's one of the founders of the deep gardeners! He's taught me a lot of stuff."  

Sida chuckles.

"Ah, then I suppose he would have a pretty good idea of how this city works. I’m Josarin, by the way."

"Dyva Graverooted! It's good to meet you. You mentioned not being from here?" 

She turns to the figure in armor. "And you are? If you don't mind me asking. I presume you're with Dyva."

"Yeah, I'm from another world. I showed up here about a month and a half ago after I got hit by a truck—large vehicle—and, presumably, died. My home world doesn't have magic, or gods, or weight, or monsters, or sapients other than humans, so it's been something of an adjustment."

The figure inclines ?his? head to acknowledge that she's addressing him, but doesn't say anything. 

"Oh that's Ossa, don't mind him. He's my guard, has been for ages."  

"Oh wow that's so cool! I've heard about other planes but never one that was that weird. I guess the plane of air doesn't have any ground, and your home is hardly weirder than that, but at least the plane of air is part of a paradigm of elemental planes. I've heard theories that there are other material planes - I think the main argument I've heard against that is that we seem to have a fairly complete set of gods here, but if there are places where divine influence can't reach. That could have fascinating implications! Theoengineering isn't really my field, if only because you need a lot of weight to get anywhere in it. Maybe I'll study it some more if I make it that far. What do you do *instead* of gods? Enough gods spend their time just ensuring that their domains keep functioning that I'd think a world without them would just fall apart after a while."  

"The world runs on natural laws, we think. Not all of it is fully understood, but a lot of it is."

"How odd. I wonder what would happen if you tried to use them here. Probably it wouldn't work at all, I'd describe the fundamental nature of the world as pretty magical."  

"Some of them do, I think. Some of the sort of medium-level derived principles, that is. Objects move in the same way on a human scale, I think. Probably a lot of biology is the same, I think people here have the same organs as I do. But the lower-level foundational laws are definitely different, and I have no idea what's going on there."

"...There might also be other things I'm not noticing, or have forgotten. At home we have a way for people to learn things that I can't think about here."

"It's probably fine, we manage to struggle along without it, and we have plenty of educated people. Though it'd be nice if some of them were a little less armchair-theorist about gardening." 

"It's moreso the idea that there might be other things I can't think about that's bothering me. I think it would have to be pretty extreme for me not to notice the discrepancies in my memories or whatever, but still. It's scary."

"Ah. At least take comfort in the fact that literally nobody else can conceive of this one either? But yeah, that's why you've got to get strong, right? So people can't just do stuff like that to you. At least with adventuring, if you die, you'll die facing your doom, rather than being taken by surprise because you chose to remain a frog in a well."  

"I'm not familiar with that idiom."

"Ah, it's like. If you're a frog in a well, you think you can see the sky, and the entire world? But actually, the sky is infinitely vaster and more complex than you can see, and the world contains many things besides the interior of the well. Because there's something you're not doing, your understanding of the world is limited." 

"Oh, that's cute. I don't think my language has anything quite like it. Maybe it's the implication that one can simply exit the well."

"So, you're a druid? What's that like? I'm interested to learn more about inf—other forms of magic."

"Being a druid is wonderful and obviously the best, but I'm also planning on learning to be a necromancer as well! Great-Grandfather invented a way to make the two work together, if you get strong enough. The best part I think is just having a connection to nature at all. ... It's not a source of power, that's a common misconception. But druids get to understand nature on a level no-one else does. I spent all my childhood learning about these deep flows of power that were making my plants live and die and now it's all just obvious. ... especially when the deep flow of power in question is whether or not I'm watering them, but I grew out of forgetting to water things when I was like, six. All the short-term magic is useful, but it's basically just a distraction from the actual proper implications of setting up that interface in your soul. Like making crossbow bolts when you could be making tomato-stakes - you never want to be *out* of crossbow bolts, but they're not what's good in life."  

"That does sound like it would be nice. It sounds like you mainly work with plants, but I've heard druids can do things with animals too, is that right? And it wouldn't surprise me if fungus druids were also a thing."

"I work with fungi as well, though I'm not super-committed to it like some people are, you have to spend your entire life worried about contamination or surrender control over what fungi you have to the fungi, if you want your main thing to be fungi. I have the technical skills to do the animals stuff, there's a lot of utility and practical skills there, the first twenty things to try and kill a new adventurer are all animals, but animals aren't that interesting to me."  

"Fair enough. I'm glad you enjoy what you're working on."

"So, how do you combine necromancy with druidic magic? Does it have anything to do with animating dead plants?"

"It's more often animating dead things with plants! I can't go into details, because family secrets, but the idea is that death is a font for new life, and life is a font for new death, so you can make a positive feedback loop. I imagine you can do the same thing with healing, but druidcraft is better because life is actually adapted to deal with death already, you get all the mechanisms for handling growth and death and rebirth handed to you rather than just raw power. That's the obvious philosophy bit, the hard bit is making that actually happen in your magic."  

"That does sound interesting... There are so many fascinating avenues of research here that I won't have time for. But if I'm ever able to make it home, everyone will have a lot of stuff to do."

"I think as a rule, everyone everywhere has a lot of stuff to do. Anyone who says otherwise is shirking. What're your priorities, then, research-wise?"