Bella takes rapid notes as the words go by. "Sword? Doll?! Who's Alphazon and why are they producing new witch species?"

"Alphazon are a human megacorporation that have managed to get a monopoly on doing unethical megacorporation things on this side of the veil. Swords and Dolls are...Dolls are artificially constructed, often using a pre-existing soul as a component. There are ethical Dollmakers, people who take souls without salvageable bodies and make them into living Witches, but...if you want to be a Dollmaker who isn't seen as shady as hell, you have to have complete transparency, because most Dollmakers are shady as fuck. Swords are witches that...I've heard conflicting explanations for why, but some witches awaken as a sentient magical weapon with the ability to turn into humanoids, without having any biological needs. They don't, despite the name, have to be swords, but I've never heard of one that was a non-weapon tool."

"That's weird! That's probably rude but I suppose I should get it out of my system before I meet a sapient slingshot!"

"I wouldn't say it to one's face but you're not wrong." 

"It's interesting that nobody knows for sure how they work. Most witch varietals work approximately like normal--ethnicities, if not species--even if not more than approximately, and everyone knows where Dolls come from--which isn't actually always 'a Dollmaker did it,' sometimes people unexpectedly awaken as Dolls, but we know why that is, they're reincarnations of Dolls who were made the normal way. Some people think Swords are like that too, but there isn't any way of making a Sword witch, and there aren't a whole lot of sentient magical weapons running around, and there are more Doll witches than Sword witches but there are more Sword witches than the reincarnation kind of Doll witch!"

"What is unethical about cyborgs and xenos?"

"They don't only do unethical things," Belladonna clarifies, "but they do do experiments on people in order to develop new types of witch, and they don't have an external oversight board ensuring that everything is held to adequate standards of informed consent."

"Okay. What are all their mana generation methods?"

"Xenos get mana from unfertilized eggs they lay, and Cyborgs convert mana from electricity. Gorgons get mana from the people we have petrified--which is reversible. Lamias get mana from living creatures they have trapped in their digestive tracts. Hannya get mana from drinking alcohol. Humans get mana from sleep, Elves get mana from meditating, Wulongs get mana from proximity to art, Draviri get mana from destroying things, Mimis get mana from being patted or petted or rubbed, Daeva get mana from ambient emotion in their surroundings and more from emotion directed at them specifically. Spiders get mana from having creatures trapped in their webbing, which I understand to be a less unpleasant state for most than the corresponding entrapment by a Lamia. Sprites get mana from a honey they produce, Fairies get mana from having people caught in their revels, Pixies get mana from the blooming of flowers they're associated with. Empusas get mana from drinking blood. Kekubi get mana from being on fire, Luxal get mana from proximity to precious metals and gemstones, Erinyes get mana from pain, Lilin get mana from violating personal taboos, Taura get mana from conservation of things like nature or historical monuments, Dolls get mana by obeying commands, which is frequently but not always exactly as concerning as it sounds, Vanir get mana from acting in opposition to psychological pressures, such as instinct or social opinion. Oreads draw mana from proximity to people they love. Aurai draw mana from sending people back in time in ways that don't actually change the timeline. Inkborn get mana from storytelling, Gemini draw mana from their two halves being in sync, Undines draw mana from magically purifying water, Sylphs draw mana from proximity to spirits and strong concentrations of spiritual residue. Um, what haven't I mentioned...

"Ifrit get mana from any fire they personally set, although magic fires that don't consume fuel don't count. Sirens get mana from any breath anyone doesn't take because of them. Nymphs get mana from making people want things. Changelings get mana from making people think the Changeling is someone the person knows. Orcs get mana from having kids, with a higher charge rate while pregnant. Jotun get mana from eating meat. Humanoid flesh gives higher charge but also is addictive. Dwarves get mana from being around other Dwarves. Withers draw mana from decaying organic matter. Swords get mana from combat, which, come to think of it, might be why I've never heard of one that wasn't a weapon. Hollows get mana from ore they place inside the suit of armor they bind to. Genies get mana from granting wishes, and Gnomes get mana from making things."

"I hope kekubi at least like being on fire. Why are the blood drinking ones not called 'vampires'? - anyway, seems like the key ingredients we need here are an incredibly capacious sink, either borrowed from a big enclave or purpose built, and then some people hanging back having a spa day or visiting a museum full of treasure or chilling in a national park or performing demolitions or hanging out with their families or sending excited historians into the Belle Epoque or cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay or what have you? And they wear sharers, and dump into the sink - maybe we should have backup sinks, just because it would suck for this whole operation to go pear shaped, it's not like they often fail but we'd be putting it through its paces - and then a bunch of people wear sharers and have a regular Ragnarok in Antarctica with all that mana? - I assume wishes aren't the complete game-changer they sound like or they'd have come up sooner."

"Empusa are a specific subtype of vampire and the other kinds can't be witches. Wishes are kind of a big deal but not by a game-changing amount, and Genies are rare and tend to be discreet to avoid their vessels falling into the wrong hands. --Any non-witch who touches a Genie's vessel becomes their master until another non-witch touches it, and Genies can't disobey their masters for very long. Genies tend to prefer to avoid this and people who are not genies tend to prefer to arrange this."

"...like in, fucking, Aladdin?"

"In Aladdin the master only got three wishes and the Genie didn't have to obey any non-wish commands. Also in Aladdin the Genie didn't seem to have any particular rank limitations--granting wishes is ranked magic, like most other kinds."

"Also Genies aren't generally blue and don't have their legs trailing off into little wisps coming out of their vessels."

"I haven't seen the movie, I read the original story in a French literature class. - it was inserted into the thousand and one nights by a French translator. Anyway, I will assume genies are not readily available in any quantity. Rest of the outline sound right?"

"Sounds good! --If they make new mana storage can I watch."

"I can explain how it's done later." 

"But you're not even my age! I bet they're better at it than you." 

"You'll have to ask whoever wins the bid to make it."

"Also I imagine they would be less interested in answering questions." 

"Fair enough." 

"Genies are also one of the kinds that respawn." 

"That's true. So are Erinyes and Changelings but, uh, better not to rely on that--when we respawn, a human dies in our place, it's not good."

"- anybody in particular?"