It slams its Kerenzikov to maximum acceleration and begins perceiving time three point two times faster than normal before it finishes landing on the ground, and spools out a foot of softly glowing red wire from its palm, holding the end carefully with its other hand, before landing on its feet with a very solid thump and looking around wherever the fuck it is now--

A solid stone room. A very solid stone room - if she looks very closely in the dim red glow, she'll see that the floor and walls and ceiling all seem to be contiguous stone, not bricks, and on the floor is inscribed some kind of dark pattern of dizzying complexity. There's the faintest suggestion of a single massive door.

And, slowly spinning and drifting on the air like a dandelion-clock, a huge mass of liquid-crystal shards, thousands, spines around a core that's impossible to see past the millions of facets reflecting and refracting that faint red glow.

It drifts slightly closer. 

Nope. 

She lets the wire retract, pulls out a pistol from her thigh holster and shoots it while backing towards the - suggestion of a - door, not really expecting this to work.

The pistol fails explosively in a way you wouldn't imagine pistols could fail - a gout of flame bursts from it, and the metal sort of crumples on itself with a sad sort of sucking sound.

The inscriptions on the floor flare briefly bluish. 

If she tries to step over them to get to what might possibly be a door, she'll find that - 

- she can step over them perfectly well. 

It spins softly back, at that. 

And then up and over like a leaf caught on the breeze, and then around the room for no discernible reason candles flare to life, dozens of them, and she can see it properly - impossible gemstone shapes like the dreams of a mad jeweller-god, intricate spiderweb-archwork forming a spherical structure around a plasmic core.

There's a weird pressure at the front of her skull for a moment, and then she finds herself imagining - 

[a rough, unpolished chunk of stone on a beach of smooth pebbles]

Fuck! Sabotage? Her hand is slightly singed, but not seriously harmed. Would her other pistol, the miniature railgun and not the chemical propellant one, also fail explosively? Are her implants still working properly?? No time to consider these questions.

She reflexively pushes back at the pressure, but apparently not enough. Her brain monitor watchdog program flags the thought as anomalous outside influence. No shit! Is this - some other parahuman? She thought she was the only one on her planet...

"What do you want?" She bites out, eyeing all the carvings warily...

It whirls frustratedly, sending weird spectra of unrecognisable colours dancing around the room, and redoubles its efforts. At least she's talking now, that makes things easier.

[I said, that was rude.]

"You know what else is rude? Kidnapping. Mind alteration."

[I summoned a Thing from the Far Realms, not a human. And you plant images in the minds of others every time you speak. I am only more direct.]

A pause, as it drifts softly. 

[You are a human, are you not? The texture of your brain is strange.]

"I consider myself a highly augmented human. Communicating by fucking sounds is the accepted fucking standard and a thing that I am reasonably sure is not some kind of security breach, subversion, or attempt at an attack on my person. Unlike telepathy which is using some mechanism I have no fucking clue about to make unknown changes to small regions of my brain without the understood and trusted medium of my optic and aural nerves and the natural interpretation of said signals. Do me that courtesy and I will be significantly more inclined to treat this as some sort of accident instead of a hostage situation."

She has had about one subjective minute, now, of looking around and trying to make any sense of all the markings on the floor, walls, and presumably ceiling. Does anything have a resemblance to the languages in her database, or any other common images therein?

They're mostly extremely intricate geometric patterns inscribed with things that look kind of like letters, but nothing resembling any languages she knows. 

...Is she, uh. She's just referring to her database and checking with her eyes, right? Not actually making and uploading digital images of the spellforms or anything like that? Because there's a good reason why spellbooks have always been copied out by hand, even in the old days.

[I do not know your language. I do not possess organs of speech. I am the Professor of Conjuration at Silvermoon. If this were an attack, you would be dead. I am being very courteous by doing things your brain will interpret as language. Mostly language. Augmented in what way? You are not a cleric. Have you trafficked with devils for magic? Where do you live?]

She's constantly recording her entire sensorium, of course. It all gets saved to her onboard Cyberdeck. Her eyes are computers. Her ears are computers. The millimeter wave RADAR in her forehead and shoulders is a computer. Her skin is partially computer. Her computers are deeply wired and laced up into her brain, which has several novel semi-biological and non-biological enhancements, both Tinkered and non. It's all very tightly integrated and well maintained.

'Courteous'. Right.

"Courteous? You're holding me here - well, I admit I haven't just asked to leave, but I assumed you would say no. May I peacefully leave or be returned home? Surely you could be patient and take efforts to learn my language. I would cooperate with that. You clearly don't see the telepathy as a big deal. I do. It is a very big deal to me. It's a matter of bodily autonomy! I have privacy. I have secrets. I don't know how telepathy works and can't trust your answers if you tell me. If you claim not to be prying into those or reading my mind, I will not believe you. You're right, you haven't killed me... Still, I don't see any particular reason to answer further questions given my current epistemic status and your refusal of what I believe is a reasonable request."

...Something anomalous is happening. One doesn't survive this long and see this much without learning to spot the increasingly rare chances to learn something new. 

Well, it cannot reply without telepathy. It would be wise not to spook the anomaly any more. But it therefore cannot offer to trade a teleport home for answers. 

It gives up. There is an ancient wizardly device for solving problems like this. It is called a graduate student. 

[Come to help me], it sends. [There is a thing that looks human and speaks only a heathen tongue.] 

There is a loud clunk and the door vibrates in its frame and creaks slightly open. It drifts politely back and waits to see what the human does. 

She bows slightly.

"Thank you. Suddenly appearing in an unfamiliar environment was very alarming and I interpreted it as an attack... I don't mean to hurt anyone unless I am clearly attacked."

...She's not sure if this person (and it definitely is one, odd substrate for its mind notwithstanding) understands, though. If it acceded to her request it won't.

She composes herself with a deep breath, goes up to the door, and peers through the crack?

The depths of the dungeons underneath the Faculty or Conjuration. This is a twisting stone passage lined with flaming torches, leading to a flight of steps to the left and a set of double doors to the right. 

There's a large window that seems to just have solid stone behind it.

And the sound of running footsteps, getting closer. 

She pushes the door open with a wary glance at the 'professor' and steps out away from its workshop, trying to appear nonthreatening. Polite 'stern but not pissed off at you specifically' japanese-corpo body language.

It will sort of vaguely follow at a distance. 

She comes running through the doors at an extremely impressive pace considering the high heels, and manages to somehow make it look graceful and above all natural, like a gazelle in the woods. 

"Professor! I brought -"

Her inhumanly violet eyes light up when she spots the Entity. If she notices the look on her face, she doesn't let it stop her.

"Well met!" she says in Dr Baika's mother tongue, in exactly her accent, but in a curiously breathy and musical manner she's never quite heard before. "You must be the thing that looks like a human? I am delighted to make your acquaintance." 

Yeah, augmented, probably, and therefore dangerous.

...Well, as far as the odd Night City dialect Japanese goes, is it setting off her mental interference alarm still? It's probably a Thinker power...

Shallow bow; High rank stranger to high rank stranger.

"Hello. I am Dr. Baika Hasumi," last name first, "Degree of medicine from Oxford university, with Ph.D., cybernetics implantation specialist. I suddenly appeared here completely unexpectedly and I am rather tense. The professor seems to have stopped using telepathy on me after I explained my objection to it, which I do appreciate. I am human, depending on one's precise definition of human. I consider myself human. Where am I, please?"

No mental interference at all. She's not actually totally sure what this Spell does, but it seems to be working. To her it just feels like she's speaking Elvish. 

...Degree of medicine? Oh no, is this is going to be Necromancy? Well, there's only one way to find out, and that's talking to the Entity mysterious human! She's disappointed that it's not a creature of the Far Realms, assuming it's not lying, but opening a portal and getting a random human is still exciting!

"The Silvermoon Academy of Wizardry! Don't be tense, it doesn't help! Where is 'Oxford'?"

('University', adorable!)

"And what kind of magic is 'cybernetics implantation'?" 

(That comes across as some kind of obscure term she thinks has something to do with ships.)

 "What were you doing when you got here? What's wrong with telepathy? And by what definition of 'human' are you not human? Do you want to come to my room and sit down, by the way?" Normally that would be an incredible breach of academic etiquette, but if the Conjuration Professor has an office or something she doesn't know about it, and one of the few advantages of the Conjuration Department is that the head of it is not humanoid and accordingly very reasonable. 

'Wizardry'. Magic? Is that how they understand their Shards and the powers they grant? Because her current leading theory is that she's been kidnapped - possibly accidentally - by some version of Earth that powers are slowly working over, much like the weird accident that crossed her over with 'Earth Bet' when she got her own power... Well, the impression she likes to give off in this circumstance is kind of 'airy, absentminded professorial type'. It's a little harder to do that while under this much stress. She defaults to 'corpo bitch' instead. She takes a moment to focus and think.

"...That's an awful lot of questions at once. The problem with telepathy is that I don't understand what it is doing to my brain, not the way I understand speech, which is vibrations in the air being interpreted by my aural nerves as concepts. If I don't understand something, it could be doing anything to my brain and I know very well how many terrible things can be done to a person's brain, accidentally or intentionally! I have to fix them in patients sometimes! So telepathy is really alarming and feels kind of hostile."

Is this- No, she didn't introduce herself. Hm. Better to assume higher status in a stranger than lower status. Did she see some kind of hesitation in the woman at the mention of 'medicine'? Is that a mistrusted and primitive art here? It makes her want to defend her profession.

"Very well, let's go to your office. Oxford is located within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland... Just north of mainland Europe. On the planet Earth. It's easily in the top twenty centers of higher learning for medicine in the world. I also learned a vast amount of biology, anatomy, and other factors to the practice of medicine, the treatment of disease, the use of surgery to correct cancers, repair traumatic injuries, keep people alive and well... All that, of course, hence the general medicine degree."

And now comes the part where she tries to lie about her Tinker power, and imply it's normal.

"I wouldn't describe cybernetics as magic. Cybernetics is the practice of integrating machines into the body in order to replace lost capabilities or add new ones. Ranging from artificial eyes to correct for blindness or failing vision - or replacements to lost arms or legs or hands or what have you, polymer arteries or new hearts to correct for the heart disease that often strikes elderly humans, improvements to one's strength or ability to think quickly with machines that interface with the arms, or brain... It's normal enough that there are standards. There are many cybernetics implantation specialists. If I am not human, it's because I have surgically implanted a great many machines inside myself because they make me more like the me I want to be."

What's a nice and harmless one to show off? ...She pops out one of her optics, poking her own eye with no hesitation and then showing the glassy front and conical metal back with its interface to her optic nerves for a moment, before popping it back in.

"These let me see further, sharper, record what I see, and see things that humans normally cannot like infrared or ultraviolet. Such things are reasonably common, and I'm wealthy enough to have access to the best ones, and learned enough to customize them and use them on myself. But it's still more of a physical craft, than magic. I've installed new eyes in hundreds of people, it's one of the most common treatments. Though I seem to be far away from my suppliers and my workshop now... Which is rather worrying... What does the Silvermoon Academy teach?"

When she takes the optic out, she can't see the incongruous window any more.

Oh no, the Professor is going to see her bedroom. 

Well, hopefully it will be distracted! She beckons the Mysterious Human after her as she turns to head back the way she came. 

She's never heard of any such land. There are lots of little kingdoms, supposedly - she didn't skip all her Cruel and Unusual Geography lectures - but then she hears "planet Earth".

...

All right, ammunition for the camp that the planets are other material worlds like theirs, and Myrillian the Mystic therefore wasn't lying and imps aren't falsifying all the astrological experiments again. Unless the Entity actually is from the Far Realms and planets are different there. 

What kind of name is "Ground" for a planet anyway?

This day is starting to get strange even for Silvermoon. 

She's managing to nod along sympathetically to all this talk about how you have to cut people open when they're ill - places outside the aegis of the Church must be awful, but that's a dangerous sort of thing to think about - when she learns what "cybernetics" are.

Well, that's wizardry, all right. Hundreds! What! She is never letting the Dweomercraft Faculty get their hands on this woman or she'll never make it out again. Even the elven cities don't have that much wizardry. She's not sure the Old Kingdom had that much wizardry. 

Then she hears "improve the ability to think quickly" and all caution flies out the window. 

"...Interesting!" She finally manages. "I think we have a lot to talk about! I have never heard of anything like that. 'Earth' doesn't sound familiar, and wizardry isn't as common here as on 'Earth', at least not any more. Silvermoon teaches - wizardry. All this kind of thing! Arcane powers, manipulating the world by learning secrets, stealing powers man was never meant to know. We don't have 'cybernetics', though. Just the normal ones," then she realises how stupid that is, "er, Conjuration, Abjuration, Transmutation, that sort of thing."

"-I posit that cybernetics and medicine are not wizardry. With sufficient education, tools, and time, anyone could manage it. Though I do approve of this Promethean attitude towards knowlege... Prometheus being a myth of the man who stole fire from the gods and gave it to the people of the world. Still, 'wizardry' is translating as a concept of outdated mysticism and fakery. You are implying things that seem... Impossible under my understanding of how the world works, bar a few poorly understood corners of it... And I have seen significant proof that my previous belief was wrong and look forward to more. Conjuration?"

Don't pull a dwarf's beard and don't imply a wizard is fake - possibly from the Far Realms, right. 

Polymorph.

"Not fake!" croaks a raven that swiftly turns back into an elf. 

She likes this Prometheus customer. 

"So is Wizardry! Anyone can learn it! Except - it's like poetry, or music, or something - anyone can learn it but most people aren't ever going to be any good at it. And you have to be really good to get anywhere without your brain eating itself! All right maybe not anyone can learn it but I still think your thing sounds like wizardry! What makes mysticism outdated, anyway? There's new mysticism that works better? And Conjuration is one of the magical disciplines, the Art of... well, moving things across different worlds. Not normally ones like yours. It's one of the most dangerous ones, the mechanics of the Planes are," not at all understood, but that's dangerous to say in front of the Professor, who is pretty sure it understands perfectly well thank you very much or at least that's what it telepathically communicates if you're foolish enough to ask "extremely liable of misinterpretation."

All this is delivered in one breathy fascinated torrent that seems to just make it extremely clear that this mysteriously elegant person is startlingly interested in hanging on your every word. 

"Mysticism is outdated in that it rarely produces consistent replicable results on my world- Definitely less than industrial production or scientific inquiry. I considered mysticism as a sort of social technology, that people use to rationalize the behavior of the uncaring universe or convince themselves and each other to cooperate, more than anything magical. -Brain eating sounds very alarming. I agree that interdimensional- Er, inter-planar? That subject is hideously complicated."

She can barely understand enough of Dr. Haywire's notes to make an ansible or two, and she was really lucky to have got even that much during the whole Crossover kerfuffle.

"You have the ability to move things across worlds? That's amazingly useful, I can only imagine the chance for trade if you can avoid having a war about it."

Naevys's room is one of those bizarrely-shaped spaces you get in really old buildings, original purpose long since forgotten (or maybe, considering where exactly they are, not discovered yet). It has a messy little bedchamber visible through a side door and a couple of chairs gathered around a table covered in mostly-empty bottles of wine, bits of silverware stolen from the dining hall, and various substances Dr Baika won't recognise. The rest of the room is haphazard piles of books and parchments, blackboards with strange diagrams, and a collection of different artworks - paintings, statuettes, a small working fountain - that look quite tastefully put together despite everything. 

"So you do know about Conjuration but not any of the others? But you can't actually move across planes? That makes a lot of sense, the Planes are, uh, unpredictable, I don't know if any trade happens across them! Maybe it does and I just haven't heard of it, though. Actually going to planes is," why the gods invented adventurers "dangerous. So," and here she leans towards Dr Baika with searching violet eyes, "What's your home like?" Even wizards from the Far Realms probably don't just tell you their secrets of you ask, but 'probably' isn't 'definitely' so she's fishing. "What's it like when everyone is - 'augmented'?"

"I only know of one person who seriously studied Conjuration; He's dead now, and I, ah, acquired some of his notes. I haven't made much use of them, because of how nonsensical and dangerous it seemed. If it can be approached safely, or those other branches you mentioned, I'm interested in that."

Her ansible is kind of one of her biggest secrets, no matter how interesting these two would likely find it. Better to go 'Dr. Haywire's notes made no sense and I'm not poking that'. (The raven thing made no sense except as 'powers, I guess'!! How do you even control something that's too small for your brain? 'powers, I guess'!!)

"Well- It's very different from here, we make extensive use of machinery and computers... And it's not that everyone is augmented, some people can't afford it, or prefer to avoid the drawbacks, or are too young for it. In particular you need to be... At least around eight to ten for anything at all, and the safe options expand over time 'till adulthood. Here, let me show you."

The laser emitter built into her lower right arm has a projection mode. She finds a convenient stretch of wall and points the little glass lens on her right wrist. What to show... How about a perfectly normal clip of her walking around the front area of her clinic, past the receptionist (who is almost elfy-pretty and has hair that's shifting through the rainbow), (fast forward) down her private elevator and into her private garage, into her car (slow down again) and then driving along some of the nicer-ish areas of Night City to a decent restaurant. Environmental sound comes from somewhere on her person, too.

Well that makes sense! The early history of wizardry isn't something she knows about but it probably killed most of them. "It can be done safely!" Silvermoon is the safest place in the world for wizards, nearly nine students in ten go on to lead full and healthy lives. "Show me the notes and I'll see what we can do!" Now she needs a distraction. "If we can get a stable connection to your plane that would be ideal, but it sounds like it might take a while! Would you like to stay here while we work it out? We can probably find somewhere for you in the department!"

Oh, huh, they have Illusion as well. All right then. 

That city doesn't look like anything she's seen outside of history books, and even by those standards it's pretty weird. "So... The huge towers and the moving devices, those are also 'cybernetics'?" she tries. 

"I do very much want to go home. And also acquire tools and materials to recreate some of my equipment if that's not possible in the short term. I'll need to do self-maintenance eventually if nothing else... And nope, those would be 'machinery', or for the towers probably just industrial production. Cybernetics refers to things that closely interact with a person, usually directly on or in their body, though ancillary systems count too. The term has evolved from its original meaning. Are you familiar with the term 'electronic computer'?"

Generally, no, but Naevys is a wizard of the Fourth Circle and knows some of the secrets they don't teach most Elementalists, like how that thing that happens if you rub a bit of amber on some fur is mystically symbolic of Lightning, and that this is one of the slight dangerous sorts of secret. This calls for an appropriate level of caution.

"No, I'd love to hear about it!" she says. She radiates sincerity. "I think we're familiar with completely different kinds of wizardry somehow. My kind does things like create energy or change the properties of things, or at the higher end move instantly across Creation or alter reality or something, not so much improving people." That actually sounds pretty worrying. "So how do you have enough wizards for 'industrial production' of a whole city?" The Old Kingdom had that and nobody knows how they did it, but again that's not the kind of thing you should talk about because there are seventeen different theories that each have extremely well-respected and important defenders who might turn you into a frog. "Generally here wizards are quite rare. For humans, at least."

"I think we do have completely different kinds of wizardry, yes." If you interpret wizardry as 'powers' or as 'technology', it works both ways. "As for the city, machines making machines making machines that make machines to make more machines. More or less. Most people don't really know how they work, or only know parts of it, narrow specializations. They just use the machines and work their own narrow slice of the whole complicated system. That and three hundred or so years after a few key inventions- The first big machines that did the difficult muscle and craft work, creating more wealth and incentivizing further invention and automation. Computers are more advanced, though the key factor is the computing, not the being enabled by electricity... It's all just clever yes-no logic. With enough simple mechanisms, you can make a machine add. When it can add, it can multiply. And when it can multiply, it can basically do anything... Informationally speaking, at least."

This is starting to sound like one of those things where if this person ever finds the Dweomercraft Faculty the world ends in a week. Exciting! 

"I don't suppose you know anything about those first machines? Three hundred years is a very long time for humans, we should try to be fast!" It would be sad if the visitor never lived to see it! "And - when you say anything, informationally - can 'computers' think? Do they have souls? Can they do wizardry?"

"Oh, I absolutely do. I could give you an industrial revolution if you have a decade and a fuckton of money. It's a bit early to be considering doing that though, I need more background information to see if it's a good idea. As for thinking computers... It doesn't seem impossible."

She isn't actually completely sure what an "industrial revolution" could refer to, she thought the old empires were richer just because they were better times with stronger magic, but - "What kind of information? And do you need the First Machines or can you do augmentations and things by yourself?"

"...I'm absolutely going to need a workshop and to build a lot of things if anyone wants augments, yes. As well as likely days to weeks of lead time. I'm also a doctor and can perform more mundane medicine with much less prep. If you have any urgent injuries or epidemics, I'll likely be happy to help."

"Oh, bless you!" One of the strange things about talking to beings from beyond this existence is that you don't tend to think of them as heathens, but of course they all are. Poor things - she shouldn't dwell on that! ...Converting the visitor is probably best left to someone who isn't Naevys and after all do they really want ecclesiastical attention here, no they do not. "Don't worry, these are holy lands - unless you can spread 'medicine' very fast like with the cities, that could be important in foreign parts." And now that she thinks of it, that would shift the balance of power and oh no she'd have to do politics. Human politics. 

"-I think I need context on 'holy lands'. Gods have never done anything for Night City and I have never seen any evidence they exist."

"...What, none of Them?" That might actually be good news, but still. "I mean - er, places where the Church has a presence. ...The Church is the - collective of all the faithful everywhere, the heirs of the Prophet. How do you know what gods are if you've never seen any evidence They exist? Did They die somehow??"

"There are various religions that ascribe various things to various gods. Mostly one god, the creator of all that is and was and will be." Eyeroll. "It always smelled like wishful thinking to cope with the unfairness of brutal reality to me. You don't get to have nice things unless someone makes them. God's not about to just give you presents."

"...So, er, gods are Someones making nice things - I am not any good at theology!" Normally she wouldn't admit to not knowing about something, but you have to be honest about gods. "You mean you have no clerics - people who can channel divine power - that explains why medicine is so important, right? I think you might actually like to hear about this but you did say you wanted background knowledge! So: gods definitely exist, a lot of Them are really bad news but the good gods sometimes give powers if you're very holy - I think I'm making a mess of this explanation - clerics channel divine power from the gods, they can heal injuries and wield other powers too. The gods don't directly do things often but it does happen. I think the gods would approve of your attitude, though. Even the Church was something people made. What do you need to know, here?"

"We don't have any clerics, or if they do they're quite secret. You have people who can do certain things- How was it determined these things are god-granted? Did someone say so? Or what? My priors on this are very low but I'm not unwilling to believe it, especially if many different people agree. The fact that you're not excited about medicine is even somewhat convincing!"

"You have a really interesting way of thinking, you know?" She hadn't expected it to be this kind of interesting! More the kind that has casualties! She'll take it! "I'm starting to like it! Normally heathens have very different questions, I gather, I've never actually met one! Sometimes if you pray to a god and you're the right sort of person you gain divine powers. Some powerful clerics can commune directly with the gods, a little bit. Very rarely the gods talk to people. Usually it turns out to be just a lie or a hallucination but not always!"

She's wondering if 'gods' are the same kinds of 'shards' that mediate powers, under agent theory...

"I certainly can't make a decisive judgement on this today. Certainly people believe it so my actions ought to be largely similar whether I also do or I think they are deluded." 

Shrug. 

"How many people out of a hundred can read and write? How many people out of a hundred can learn wizardry if they cared to and had admission to a school? How many actually do? How many out of a hundred farm? Estimates are fine. If your ratio of farmers to other workers is high, the path to prosperity may lie largely in improvements to farms."

"We should probably find a priest for you to talk to at some point!" But that's not important because it sounds like she's about to learn some ALIEN MAGIC. "...So, to be clear, I am an elf, we are not exactly like humans but there aren't nearly as many of us. I've never heard of an illiterate elf and a lot of elves learn some magic eventually, but we are... of a different sort from other races. Elves don't really have farms like humans do. For humans..." she has no idea, she hadn't met any until she came to Silvermoon and the humans here aren't exactly normal! But still!

 "I think most humans - sixty or seventy in a hundred? - can read and write a little Low Common, it's what merchants use, but they aren't really literate, they wouldn't be able to write a poem or read a proper book or anything like that. I have heard that one human wizard apprentice in three survives and makes First Circle, outside Silvermoon that is, and I think most humans aren't good enough to even try, so... maybe ten? I would guess it's less than one in a hundred who actually do. I think more than half are farmers? Sixty in a hundred? I do know it's a lot more in heathen lands, more like ninety, that's in Scripture. Do people tend to know this kind of thing where you come from? And how do enhancements or 'industry' help farmers?"

"Yes, that's very high. One in three survive? ...Hmm. Mechanized plows, seed drills, pumped irrigation, automated weeding, mechanical threshers and harvesters, ammonia reactors for fertilizer, pesticides... Oh, I could engineer nitrogen fixing wheat... I'll need equipment but really, seed engineering is great because it could spread without me personally or even anyone who needs to know what they're doing. With appropriate cautions so it doesn't run wild."

"Yes. Wizardry is really dangerous, in lots of ways. It isn't necessarily that you die, if you're not one of the lucky ones, but a lot of really bad things can happen to you. And anyone nearby. Blowing yourself up is one of the best ways it can go wrong." That's a sad thought so she's going to try not thinking it! "Your odds are much much better at Silvermoon, though, don't worry! There aren't a lot of safer places to be than the same room as a friendly archmage! We can see what kind of aptitude you have - it's not just cleverness, but that helps a lot - I bet since you already know your own world's magic you'll be fine. Anyway don't we want it to run wild? Also what kind of equipment are you looking for?"

"...I suppose we'll see." 

Here's some photos of lab equipment on the wall. She rattles off a list of lab equipment. Incubators, centrifuges, fume hoods, spectrographs, thermocyclers, dryers, vapor deposition...

"...But really, these are all fairly specialized things your society would have little reason to build."

Good, she thought of a way to say it without saying "primitive".

"I'm going to have to make all of it myself from whatever's available locally, and run everything off my implants, so, components... Glassware? Alcohol, as pure as possible, or I can make a high proof distillery. It's for sterilizing things. Things for precisely measuring and handling liquids. Magnets. Copper wire. Shelves, trays, cabinets. Quartz. Chemical precursors like benzene, or am I going to have to mix those up too- Lots of glassware- I can do some computationally expensive math to pay for this if that's useful. Is cryptography useful? Knowing about large prime numbers? Anything where you need to check a hundred million variations on the numbers and find one that works, really.

As for the seeds, it would be a dark sort of victory if my new strain of potatoes outcompetes all over plants and ruins natural grasslands or forests, replacing them with endless fields of wild potatoes. For instance. I don't know what I'd be destroying if I made highly resilient crops with extreme natural spread and just let them loose. So I'm thinking something simple that farmers have to do to the seed to make it take, maybe. Or, well, there's a lot of ways to put guard rails on."

"...I don't recognise any of those devices but if you tell me what they do then we should be able to help. Wizardry uses a lot of... specialised things, and we can make new ones very very quickly. The question is going to be," now it's time to be delicate, "getting funding. And faculty support." 

She glances at the Professor, which is still drifting eerily through her room, and doesn't seem to have said or done anything either way. It's making her increasingly nervous. It's really really annoying sometimes to try to detect the subtle moods and whims of, basically, twenty tons of rock. 

"I don't know what 'benzene' is, this translation Spell is very weird, that sounded like a compound word in old Elvish, but everything else is fine. When you say as pure as possible - do you just want normal alchemical spirits for cleaning things, because those still have lots of water in them, or do you actually want Dwarvish whisky? It's all right if you really just want to drink it, that's a completely reasonable use of a research stipend! Cryptography - sounds potentially very useful? You could, say, check a hundred million Spell formulae, except that's a horrifying idea I shouldn't have said out loud sorry Professor please don't do that there are a lot more Spells that do horrible random things than useful things because there are more horrible random things than useful things, is one of the many many problems with that idea, I should stop talking and change the subject now. How exactly does the "checking" work? Could you, maybe, find the lost name of the Old Kingdom? Or the location of the Great City itself? Or, there are bound to be interesting encoded things in the Library, I bet someone must be working on it. Also has the thing with potatoes happened before?"

"I mean to use it for cleaning, not intoxication," she drawls. "I might want distilling equipment anyway, for other chemical processes. The potatoes thing has happened before with some of Arasaka corporation's custom fish farm species infesting waterways throughout Russia and eastern Europe, driving many local species extinct and causing other issues with algae and pollution... And yes, I do understand the need to procure or justify funding. I could fund myself by synthesizing chemicals, maybe? Dye? Artificial flavors? Medicines. Wizards seem like they would be extremely, perhaps unwisely, interested in nootropics and stimulants... There exists a pill that lasts about four hours and makes you extremely awake and alert, improves reflex speed, boosts memorization, improves ability to pay attention, and has a relatively gentle come-down... In humans. Not tested in elves. Much more dramatic than the active ingredient in tea and coffee, if you have those. And as for the mathematics, it's really more for, mm, I need to understand the rules and be able to state them in formal logic. Finding the name of a lost empire isn't the kind of thing it can do, unless I had tens of thousands of books in a computer-digestible format maybe. Finding, say, the fastest possible path to visit twenty towns once each if you know the time to travel between each one to its neighbors, that I could do."