"Hmm! That is not at all the way I'm used to doing things, but I suppose I can see the appeal."

"It's best if we have both kinds," she asserts. "Magic is great." 

"What sorts of things can one do by invoking the dread mushroom god?" she wonders.

(Tabitha has by this point finished stacking requested books on the desk.)

Lucy scoops up the books. "Well, in theory a lot more than I could figure out even from reading all of these, a lot of magicians keep their grimoires a lot more secret than Eibon did. And of course there's things you can do with an ordinary god that you probably couldn't with a mushroom god, like, I think having a baby who took half their essence from something that couldn't think at all would be a bad idea. But you can summon things, if there's things to be summoned...you can place a geas on someone, you can reanimate various creatures, you can do some interesting things with light...you can body-swap with someone, you can hide things, you can make visible things invisible or invisible things visible, at least temporarily, Wilbur did that once when we were little...I can tell you more things once I've studied these some more." 

"I look forward to hearing it!" she says. "Do you want to study them now, or continue going through our choices? I seem to recall at some point we were discussing who our love interest should be."

"Oh right. Yeah let's keep talking, the magic stuff can wait. I think I personally prefer the dark rival because a reserved personality doesn't seem like a desirable trait and we don't have that much to go on, but it's not a super strong preference."

"That seems reasonable enough to me."

Tabitha makes a little pencil note on her clipboard(s).

"What's next? Probably it makes more sense to go through all the choices before getting too attached to any free-form worldbuilding..."

"Hmm... have I presented you with the tech and magic level options yet?" She checks her clipboard. "No, it looks like I got distracted. Magic level ranges from None to High, and it sounds like you probably want High, which gives you both the Magic-User perk for free since with that magic level nearly everyone is a magic-user. Tech level is more complicated; the list there is Faux Medieval, Actual Pre-Modern, Early Modern, Marvelous, Industrial, Steampunk, Contemporary, Cyberpunk, and Space Opera. Should I explain those or would you like to look at the magic level options in more detail first?"

"Is there that much more detail? 'Lots of magic' seems pretty straightforward."

"There is not very much more detail than that," she confirms. "There are some descriptions of the default arrangement for uncreative people, but I think what you two have come up with is already much better than the default arrangement and you would not benefit very much from hearing about it."

"Let's hear about the tech level options, then."

"Mhm!"

"Faux Medieval is the default, and describes a version of certain worlds' feudal historical period which has been upgraded to be more pleasant and convenient. Actual Pre-Modern is the same time period without any of the conveniences. Early Modern covers the invention of the scientific method and the introduction of guns and cannons. Marvelous is a future envisioned from within Early Modern, and has technological developments that would be considered fantastical by the standards of later periods, with an overall level of technological progress that can fall anywhere between the start of Early Modern and the end of Industrial. Industrial covers the introduction of factories, railroads, and steamships, and ends as electricity is just starting to get going. Steampunk is an alternative future for Industrial, in which steam engines and clockwork remained prominent and electrical technology never really took off. 'Contemporary'—not contemporary to either of you, but this pamphlet is outdated and makes some unwarranted assumptions about the applicant's demographics—covers a time period often called the information age, in which electrical technology takes off and enables a number of exciting possibilities that would have been very difficult to predict in advance, though Steampunk offers many similar amenities from a different underlying technological base. Cyberpunk is an alternative future for Contemporary in which those same electrical technologies remained prominent in a way similar to Steampunk's clockwork, and Space Opera is a future in which technology advanced to the point where humans were able to build vessels that travel between the stars, and establish a civilization spanning multiple solar systems."

"If we take Space Opera does that mean we can't do the infinite plane thing?"

"You can take Space Opera with an infinite plane universe, though I'm concerned that neither of you will be able to contribute much to designing how the technology will interact with the cosmology since the technology will be unfamiliar to you, and you might like to take a more familiar tech level in order to have more creative control."

"I do like creative control."

"I like creative control but also I'm intrigued by the words 'information age.'"

"How best to describe..." Tabitha adjusts her glasses again, frowning slightly in thought. "The phrase 'information age' refers to the effect that very fast, very effective communications technology has on a society. Inventions like the printing press and the telegram... you could think of them as bringing locations that are distant in time or space closer together, because people in one place can communicate with people in another, by writing books that reach many readers, or sending messages that arrive at their destinations very quickly. The information age is like that, but much more so. A book's worth of information could travel across the world in a few minutes or even seconds, at trivial expense."

"That sounds bewildering," says Raivethrani. "And I can see how it would interfere with our creative control. I can hardly imagine how such a society might function."

"I am definitely in favor of people having more access to books though. Like, really really in favor. Maybe we could have that from scratch though? Like, if I build it into the reified version of my magic system..."

"Hmm. What if we designed the world to make it possible, but concealed the mechanism so that we ourselves would need to 'invent' it when the time came? Then we would be better able to predict how our world will function to start with, while we're still building it, but then after we arrive we can introduce the innovation that lets people share books across vast distances."

"Maaaaybeeeee..." she draws it out doubtfully. "But that would mean we wouldn't have it until we're older than I am now, and I already died of not having access to books I needed!"