"Yeah, I don't reliably do good political commentary. I'm behaving in a manner that doesn't generalize well to political situations where none of the major actors are made of ideals, and that messes with my ability to make conversation on the subject."

"Just model most of the ones I'm unreservedly condemning as Neutral or Chaotic Evil and you'll be fine, I think.  I'd say Lawful Evil, but honestly, no.  They fell over themselves to prostrate themselves at the feet of the first demagogue to make the right mouth noises.

"And the remaining major forces may as well be True Neutral that occasionally get kicked Good-wards basically on accident, for all I care.  So much of their time allegedly in unreserved power was spent not even being willing to pull together in a coherent front against the encroaching fascism --

"Fuck, I'm talking politics.  I need a topic-change, stat.

"Uhh.  What's the internal experience of using your magic, like?"

"I vaguely analogize it to weaving, but it's honestly difficult to explain. There's the occasional thing with an emotional component, like a smite effect, and … oh, this might amuse you. There's a spell which takes as a component – not a focus, which you get to keep, but a component, which is consumed – a variable amount of height above the ground. As in, if you're flying when you cast it, you get a tiny bit lower, and if you're not flying, you need to jump to cast it and be prepared for a weird landing."

Griffie was very correct about the amusement she would derive from knowing this!  Her reaction is in fact the most physically demonstrative she's been the entire time!  "Is, does, is it levitation!  Because!  That's very flying-coded!"

"Nah, if it were levitation you wouldn't have to land. It's a blast of often-damaging energy that has wildly variable effects. Chaos magic. …having it prepared counts as carrying a pie and it can be relayed through wedding participants, too. Named after an extrauniversal drinking game, too. 'Fizzbuzz'. And no, I don't know why."

"...bh...haa!  Programmers!  Why is this!  Okay so my referent for FizzBuzz is a coding interview question that asks you to print the numbers 1 to X, except if X divided by three is an integer print Fizz, and if X divided by five is an integer print Buzz, and if both print the eponymous FizzBuzz, so what's the drinking game like?  I'm curious!"

"I think it's like that but you go around counting out loud instead of making a computer show things, and if you get it wrong you drink alcohol? I wasn't actually paying the most attention."

"...aww, boo, that's mundane!  It needs to be cooler!"

"Well, now you know at least some of why I wasn't paying the most attention. …honestly drinking games as a reference class seem mostly only interesting to intoxicated people."

"And considering my opinion on functional impairments to intellectual processing, I rather think I'm the exact opposite of the target audience, so that checks out."

"Yeah, you and a lot of people. If I could actually sell my cognitive enhancement spells in here I'm sure I'd make a fortune, but no, it's basically unworkable."

"Souls aren't being cooperative?  Yeah.  Maybe see if you can find a Golarionite and trade notes."

"Well, we'll see. …if you were that interested in touching a dinosaur, by the way, would you be interested in taking some payment for further tutoring in the form of being flown? I have a giant vulture form that can carry people your size, and if you're in good health and borrow some specialized gliding equipment I could fly you around in air elemental form without lasting injury, though it'd be a much rougher flight."

"On the one hand, kind of yes?  On the other hand, dinosaur you was really cool because we don't have dinosaurs back home.  On the third hand, we do have aircraft that are less...terrifying-awareness-of-heights inducing?"

"Feather Fall doesn't need a positive-energy-soul for targeting, if I screw up somehow, though that may not help on a mental level. There is a lake that we could fly over, which might be more reassuring, water's not an amazingly soft landing but it's softer than the ground and I have some practice with low-altitude flight."

"It's...I mean honestly I'm not not interested but I'm pretty sure I'm not that interested?  But also, that does smell like a plot hook...

"...Now that I think about that, I think I'm not even remotely prepared for adventuring.  So maybe training for training?"

"Adventuring is a dubious idea and even well-prepared adventurers tend to die of it. I am not a good role model. If you want to learn some self-defense and wilderness exploration skills, good for you, but I do not recommend adventuring."

"Yeah, I don't recommend it, but...

"It feels inevitable, is the best way I can put it.

"Not all the problems that wander into this bar are going to be kids whose problems can be solved by pulling the fire alarm and breaking a wall, and I didn't even break the wall.

"But I'm going to want to help, regardless.

"Therefore, I should train."

"Many of the problems that wander into this bar are starving children whose problems are basically that they have inadequate resources because their worlds are complicated messes not solvable through a bit of violence. If you can produce resources here you can help with that, no violence needed. There's also occasionally high-powered worlds or worldsheafs which show risk of leaking, which a mildly competent adventurer would not be adequate to solve but, say, your math skills are quite helpful for in the case of Suaal. Bar doesn't see them too often but a recent case before mine was something with a net-negative contagious magic system that needed to be fundamentally reengineered at its source, which required technical skill and outside-context wards, not being good at swordfights. I think you … I don't know, expect this to be emotionally satisfying in a way that it often isn't?"

"Maybe."

"...Maybe."

"I basically grew up on stories of heroes facing down villains and solving problems.

"So if anyone was going to have inflated expectations about how satisfying that line of work would be, it would definitely be myself.

"On the other hand, I am legitimately helpless to affect real change upon my homeworld, and just getting the chance to fix shit without the - everything that makes it so impossible, or at least implausible, there, where the norms actually encourage just solving people's problems -"

She pauses, for a moment, and lets herself unclench.

"I'd do quite a lot for that."

"I would not describe my experiences as 'getting the chance to fix things without everything that makes it impossible', or having norms actually encourage just solving people's problems. If you want that, learn medicine and come work in the infirmary. Nobody has successfully attacked me over healing a patient here."

"Maybe I should," she says, rather wetly, "although frankly compared to yours my medicine mostly sucks at actually healing things."

"But it's...adventurer is a profession.  Where you're from.

"We don't have anything like that.

"Not the...roving fixer type.

"...There's some charitable organizations, and probably if my money was where my mouth is I should have found this door in a MSF camp or in a door I just hung for Habitat for Humanity, but...

"There's diminishing returns on improving your ability to exert effort a lot sooner without magic.  Also, Earthling medical school, by all accounts, would be...really bad for my health."

"Sorry, 'MSF'? And … look, you seem to switch between idealizing 'magic' as a concept, which is I suppose fine, and idealizing the kind of magic everyone you've interacted with here can actually offer you, which is just a good way to end up making mistakes lethal to not only you but also others. And … adventurer is a recognized profession, yes, but it's one with a high rate of dying, being arrested, your neighbors deciding they don't like you because you're a violent and unpredictable-to-them person, that sort of thing."

"Doctors without Borders.  Yes that's not the right letters, blame French.

"I'm not sure how you mean that, about idealizing magic?  It's just simply true that you can erect significant chunks of infrastructure with single spells.  Or, hell, look at goodberry.  We don't have that.  Individual people can have so much more direct systemic impact with powers of the 'move shit with your mind' genre."

"If I focused really hard on it I could try to parse it as English but it sounds like a reasonable unpacking of the acronym to me. And … I can do infrastructure-significant things with a spell. Even if I do get you started with magic, you will not be able to do this. Goodberry is neat, but it leans on freshly-picked berries, which means you're relying on your environment or carrying around a berry bush everywhere. In the former case, learning to forage for food and medicinal tools in the wild is doable without magic, and in the latter case, you can carry around a bunch of amazing and surprisingly cheap medicines and compact nutritionally complete food. And also, the really big-deal magic on an international stage generally involves things like empowering an army, there are really serious disadvantages to working alone, and then you still have to deal with all the complexities of groups of people."