Tanidio keeps his face carefully casual. "Did you like opera back in Thailand?"

"I didn't have much opportunity to go."

Those spikes are... Something. He has no clue what adjective to use, because he has no clue what it is.

Maybe if Tanidio doesn't make a big deal of it Bun will forget about it. 

Tanidio's an idiot. He's such an idiot. Chrisor is going to get quiet about it. 

You don't normally get torture shops. Most people, when they want to hit someone else, use their hands or a wooden spoon or whatever else they have to hand. Tanidio's mother made him make his own switches. Even if you want to get creative, they're almost always sold by the artisan that makes them: pick up rope from the ropemaker, a whip from the leathermaker, a scold's bridle from the blacksmith. In Kintargo and Egorian and Ostenso, the church has subsidized the creation of torture shops, as an experiment to see if it encourages people to torture each other more. But you just wouldn't have enough people for it in a small town. 

But Sogno is near Brastlewark. Which means that it buys things from the gnomes, to sell to people who don't want to talk to a gnome. And if you're buying from the gnomes, it makes sense to divide up the stores by what you're buying it for, since you're not making it anyway. And if you're doing that, you might as well go around to various artisans and pick up the other things you'd need--

Fuck.

He's so stupid.

"What kind of things did you like?"

"--I pretty much just worked."

Is the chains-and-miscellany shop going to haunt him? It is probably going to haunt him.

"Me too. You kind of have to if you're a wizard."

"I would have thought the easier laundry would give you more free time," he jokes.

Is he. Is he going to ask about the chains and miscellany shop? ... probably? At least to check they aren't using that on the horses or something. He picks a random object. "What is the... Metal round thing for?"

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK, Tanidio thinks.

And then an idea lands in his head fully formed like a gift from Geryon. 

At the Worldwound, no matter how much Cheliax officially frowned on it, there was always fraternization. Soldiers drank together, you talked with people on watch, wizards had a spare Charm Person or Hod Person that they wanted to use in an entertaining fashion, and as long as you weren't friends with a paladin of Iomedae or a cleric of Cayden Cailean or something insane like that the hierarchy mostly didn't care. 

Tanidio himself had spent a bit of time in the library of Shelyn, which had a variety of... interesting... books which catered to the interests of the lonely soldier. And from this he had gotten a certain sense of what Good people got up to in bed. They still wanted to hurt each other, they still wanted to have power over each other, but instead of actually hurting each other and having power over each other they played this elaborate pretend game where they were really equals. It seemed ultimately unsatisfying to Tanidio-- he didn't want Chrisor to pretend to be allowed to punish him for fucking up, he wanted actual consequences for fucking up-- but he guessed this was what came from repressing all your natural urges and being Good. 

He makes himself look awkward, to cover up his silence. "It's for sex."

Meanwhile, at the library in the church of Shelyn at the Worldwound--

"--I don't know, I don't know, I just don't know, do we really want to fight demons, as Shelynites shouldn't we be trying to redeem them, ideally from a very safe distance--"

... That answers the question. It also raises a lot of new questions, but he is going to ignore those. (Not least because his brain is trying to mash together however those things are meant to work and Tanidio's face when he bit him.)

"--that makes sense."

Yes! Yes! Good connections to be making, Bun.

"Some people like hitting other people, in bed. Or tying them up, or giving them orders, or using Suggestion--"

or trying to bruise them with their teeth, or ?interfacing with those objects?, or... "Suggestion?" Magic: much less awkward to talk about.

"People have to obey a single order of yours even if they don't want to." Or it can deceive their perceptions or thoughts but he can just leave that out right now. "--Eighth-circle wizards can do Euphoric Tranquility which I understand is very fun."

"It sounds it."

"The person you cast it on is too blissed out to do anything except lie there and feel good." Which makes them incredibly weak and vulnerable and easy to manipulate! But that isn't the part Good people are interested in.

"From what the work load sounds like, it's probably wasted on the eighth circle wizards."

"It is. Once you hit fifth circle, you can retire and be fabulously wealthy doing the occasional Teleport. Eighth-circle wizards are people who are really ambitious or really, really like magic."

"Someone's got to do the research."

"Well, I mean, I'm not going to retire when I hit fifth circle."

"I can't actually picture you retiring."

"When I do hit eighth circle I'll cast Euphoric Tranquility on myself and then you can see how fun it will be."

He should not be flirting with the security officer. "I look forward to seeing that."

OH COME ON THEY'VE HAD SEX TWICE WHY IS HE ACQUIRING A SENSE OF ETHICS NOW

...at least that question was safely answered without him wanting to go in.

Tanidio says, "if you didn't need to get eight hours of sleep to do magic I don't think I'd have slept a full night since I was twelve."

Look, a safe topic! "You need to be rested to do magic?"

"If you're tired you can't focus well enough to hang a spell. Chrisor finds this incredibly offensive. I spent two weeks on four hours of sleep once while he tried to get me to hang a cantrip. No luck."

(Giving up had hurt worse than the punishments.)

"I'm going to break those poor students' sleep cycles."