Mr. Glinckle frowns. "Well, we try not to rely on it. But we don't frown on it, no - and I happen to have an inborn talent, which made it to my comparative advantage to specialize thus."

"Tell me about it, I haven't been qualified for anything I've done in the last--"

Oh. New alien.

Blink blink blink. 

"Erm, sorry if this is horribly rude," he says, when they're done with that bizarre and fascinating exchange, "but I'm so curious now and if you've been eavesdropping in purpose I think I'm entitled to at least one dumb question, are you two the same species?" 

"I am a gnome," says the apparent gnome. "He is a halfling. His people are believed to be a magically influenced offshoot of humanity, whereas mine are either descended from, or were formed from living stone in a fashion similar to, the dwarves. Depending who you ask."

Tomi looks like he's not sure whether to be offended. "Who's goin' around believin' things about the origins of halflings?" he asks suspiciously.

"The Lantanese, mostly. It's not just clockwork."

He was under the impression dwarves were also a type of human. Probably they are a different thing here. Wait did he just say formed from living stone. That sounds like a basically normal kind of creation myth but it's kind of weird in a sentence right next to a claim about evolutionary speciation??

".... Right. Erm. Robert Gadling, pleased to meet you I think. What d'you suppose magic is, then?" 

"That is an excellent question. I can give you any of several answers, individually or sequentially, and I will probably do it sequentially, because it is so rare that one has a captive audience to listen to one's explanation of a fundamental law of reality."

He conjures up a translucent illusory slate behind his head, along with a translucent illusory piece of chalk. "The answer given by a peasant might match your own, in some ways: magic is when someone does something impossible. This is an appealingly straightforward definition; unfortunately, it holds up poorly to scrutiny. As a facile example, according to all laws of mechanical aviation known to the gnomish people, there is no way a dragon should be able to fly without magic. Empirically, however, they do. Put a dragon in an anti-magic field, and it will fly, even though its wings should not be able to lift its towering bulk off the ground. Dragons do not care what we think should be possible, and neither does magic."

The slate gains the note Magic is not possible, but not all impossible things are magic.

"There is also the swordsman's definition: Magic is what my party's wizard and cleric do. Each day, a wizard can hang a given number of spellforms within the structure of his own mind, complete but for the final touch, and throughout the day, as the need arises, he finishes one and casts it out into the world. Each consumes reserves of arcane, physical, and mental energy such that until he has slept a full eight hours - or, in an elf's case, meditated for four - no more spellforms can be constructed after his allotment has been met. In the case of a cleric, this process is mimicked by connection to the wellspring of her god, which imparts spells all at once, to be cast as needed - at dawn, for holy gods, or dusk, for unholy, or an idiosyncratic choice of those thresholds for the morally neutral. This definition is philosophically uninteresting, but I believe it may be the most relevant to your personal understanding."

Note: Magic is discrete.

"The Illuskan, Imaskari, and Netherese definitions vary only -"

Tomi slaps a hand over the gnome's mouth. "Nah, nah-ah-ah. I've worked with enough wizards - if you mention Illusk, Imaskar, and Netheril in the same sentence, stop talkin' until you remember you're talkin' to people, not yourself."

Boddynock frowns. Around Tomi's hand, he manages to enunciate "M-- --p--l--g----s."

Tomi has every right to be obviously correct that Hob should not possibly have heard of any of those places but in fact he has literally today read several books that frequently said things like in the geographic region once controlled by the Imaskari Empire and somewhat north of the borders originally established by the Netherese city state that it was once a colony of and so forth. And then immediately went and talked to Eltoora Sharptyl. 

"S'alright, that bit made sense. Actually wondering more about the part where you mentioned elves? Who only need four hours of sleep a night? And haven't been murdered to the last by frothingly envious neighbors?" The books had mentioned the definitely still extant polities therecomposed, but not this particular detail of their physiology. "Otherwise that sounds... reasonable? Probably wizards back home also have a limited number of magic calories they can spend a day, and stands to reason if you have a lot of wizards you'd get better at quantifying the limits." 

He's now imagining Jack Constantine carefully recording his magic calorie expenditures in a pocket logbook like seventeenth century MyFitnessPal and this is extremely funny, especially now he's finished his magic drink and is working on the ale. 

Boddynock carefully removes Tomi's hand from his face. "Elves are among the communal races. They are biologically incapable of sleep as we understand it, but require four hours of a meditative state known as the 'trance' if they wish to cast spells, during which they are aware of their surroundings but cannot take physical action without disrupting their trance and ruining the effects. I do not envy them this; they are psychologically suited to sitting perfectly still for four hours of full consciousness, whereas I would go insane. Am I correct in assuming that back home, your wizards are... not a major fixture of society? There are, perhaps, a few towers dotting the countryside where they conduct their magical research, and occasionally a clash between two magi will rain brimstone over a city... but, usually, you get by through other means?"

Well, you know, brimstone, kryptonite lasers, exploding confetti, very small radioactive mice... 

"Yeah, you've about got it. Couple big famous examples, not so much with the friendly neighborhood laundry wizards. Our, ah, clockworks and the like have gotten very advanced to fill most of the gaps, although embarrassingly I am quite unqualified to explain basically anything on the topic. So-" he contemplates Boddyknock's entire lecture, which he did get most of although wow that was a lot of unfamiliar words very fast, "you said holy and unholy like those are distinct observable qualities things can have? That's also true at home but I get the sense the divine heirarchy situation is a bit different and I assume if I asked the religious folks they would say stuff about the inherent moral nature of whatever and not tell me anything about how it works." And possibly even the ones who might in fact know how it works would refuse to tell him but he's not going to bring this up when neither Tomi nor Boddyknock has thus far said anything about his evil (unholy?) aura.

(He's not sure this isn't because they just don't care, but it's tentatively extremely reassuring news if it's that they actually can't see it and it's just Aribeth and... some unknown subset of her people but not actually all adults. The quartermaster could see it too, so it's not just Aribeth. But supposedly Aribeth's divine power is because she is a paladin, and Jojo is that too and he doesn't seem to have been able to. It's probably not that it's a racial trait of elves or Sharptyl would also have noticed - well, actually she might just have been distracted by everything else about him, maybe it's elves. Or maybe with so much magic lying around it's that the power is located somehow in the political office, Aribeth can detect evil because she's the Seneschal, and the quartermaster is... her deputy...?? That seems less likely than him being some amount elf, Hob is tentatively guessing it's that.) 

"This is a known tendency of clerics," Boddynock says drily. "Holy deities, such as Tyr the Evenhanded, Ilmater the Broken, or Chauntea the Earthmother, are... generally prosocial. They may disagree on the ideal means of making the world a better place for the most people, or even the definition of better, but they agree that this is the thing to strive for. Not coincidentally, many of the most comprehensible gods, especially those who ascended to their rank, are holy - or Good, as one may put it. Evil, or unholy, deities, are less likely to be the same fundamental kind of entity as mortals, because they terminally value something inimical to us. A man may steal to feed himself, and kill if caught -"

Tomi looks very innocent.

" - but it is a very rare man who believes, in his heart of hearts, that murder is the apex of beauty, that the world would be incomplete without it. This opinion is less rare in unholy gods and their servants. And, as far as the perceptible auras of mortals, they are based on the alignment of a mortal to the poles of Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos, less philosophically than consequentially. One who wishes Toril to be as Celestia will not find himself there, if his method involves flaying orphans."

"Eurgh, I should hope that's rare. Murder is the apex of beauty, fuck right off, it's the worst thing in the world." (He says this with absolute sincerity and no apparent dissonance regarding the fact that he personally committed a murder like twenty minutes ago.) "Right, so when you say consequentially.... this fellow Ilmater, say, he's holy because he consistently tries to do good and succeeds, or is the 'and succeeds' part only necessary if you're mortal?" Does he count as mortal. "Does that do something or is it just-- like having ultraviolet stripes?"   

"Ilmater is holy because Ilmater is holy; barring absolute catastrophe, he will remain thus as long as he exists, which may be forever. His followers are good because they try to do good; succeeding is, of course, better. I am told that I have an axiomatic but not a holy aura, and were I particularly inclined to change this, I would not begin with desperate acts of heroism, but rather, with a measured and considered series of charitable acts. And, no, alignment means little to the majority of the population - paladins et cetera excluded - until they near death, as it determines one's placement in the afterlives."

"Ah." 

Next comment delayed slightly by staring into space contemplating his deeply complicated relationship with the concept of divinities being immune to the consequences of their actions unless they are specifically the Devil. 

"And the paladins are paladins, right. You're not inclined to try to get a holy approved-ethics soul stamp? Why not? I'd think most people would, if they knew it was possible, not want to go to Hell. Not judging, you understand, just curious." 

"I am certainly not going to Hell," Boddynock sniffs. "But, mm. As a fairly devout worshipper of Garl Glittergold, it is unlikely the question would even come up unless I offended him so direly as to be denied his divine realm after my passing; a god's claim can reach across one aligned border, or two in extremis. And even if I were sorted manually, as it were, the Seven Heavens of Celestia have always seemed very... intense. I am fonder of the Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, which are more on the axiomatic than holy side of the scale."

The what. 

"...the what?" 

"Seven Heavens? Peaceable Kingdoms? They're two of the seventeen Outer Planes of the Great Wheel, which contain the divine realms of the gods and the more general afterlives for more casual worshippers. Would you like me to list them, because I doubt it will help, but I certainly can."

"The seven Heavens I am familiar with. Never heard of there being more than those and the nine Hells, though, as far as afterlives? My first guess for counting seventeen would have been those sixteen and Limbo and now I am curious what the rest could possibly be, yeah. Faerieland? Valhalla? I feel like if you start counting all of those sorts of thing you end up with rather more than seventeen. I probably couldn't list them all myself, every time I talk to an occultist I learn of yet another place that only sort of exists." 
 

Boddynock conjures up an illusion of a sphere with a broad accretion-disc around it. The arrangement spins for a moment, then he zooms in on the sphere and cuts it in half, revealing two distinct layers. "We are here," he says, un-bisecting the central sphere, which is Space. "Not literally in the middle, but: everything you can get to by walking, flying, or teleportation is in this part, so it doesn't matter much. We call it the Prime Material. It is coterminous with the Shadow Plane, which has little enough impact on you and your activities that you may happily pretend it does not exist."

Outside this sphere, there is a shimmering veil. "The Ethereal Plane. Also irrelevant to your interests." Outside that sphere, there's a chaotic whirl of elements, which he re-forms and expands; one pole is light, the other dark; in between, the four classical elements battle for dominance, with patches of ice or black glass or steam forming and melting away. "The Inner Planes. Air, Earth, Water, Fire, Positive and Negative energy, and the paraelemental and quasielemental planes developed therefrom. I am merely providing basic context, you understand. These, too, are irrelevant."

Then he vanishes the sphere of Material-Ethereal-Inner, returning to the disc and revealing a spire in its center that should definitely have come out the top of the sphere. "These are the Outer Planes. -this is, of course, a three-dimensional representation of a concept inexpressible in any number of dimensions comprehensible to the unaugmented humanoid mind. The Great Wheel does not look like this. Anyway."

He taps the spire. "This is the great tower-city of Sigil. It is not, technically, an outer plane, for reasons that amount to it isn't. It has a population of two point five billion. It is ruled by the Lady of Pain, on whom I shall say no more except that she maintains strict neutrality on very nearly everything." The disc. "These are the Outlands, which are, equally technically, an outer plane. They contain the divine realms of the neutral gods, and the afterlives of those with no character to speak of."

Then, he stands the disc on its side like a clock face. Starting at nine-o'clock and going clockwise:

"The Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus. Perfect Order. A place for everything, everything in its place, a vast clockwork rotating endlessly in self-admiration."

"The Peacable Kingdoms of Arcadia. Order tinged with Good. Fields of perfect flowers each alike, and orchards of unblemished fruit in forever-sunset."

"The Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia. Axiomatic Good. A constant pursuit of perfection, the literal ascent of the infinite mountain parallelling the ceaseless process of improving the world."

"The Twin Paradises of Bytopia. Good, informed by Law. Rich land and untainted wilderness, demanding persistence and hard work but rewarding it amply."

"The Blessed Fields of Elysium. Unalloyed Good. Alabaster halls and twilit forests, all-loving, all-redeeming, welcoming love and beauty in all their forms."

"The Happy Hunting Grounds of the Beastlands. Good, approaching Chaos. A great jungle where the beasts are wiser than any man; benevolent, but loving best those who need to be free."

"The Olympian Glades of Arborea. Chaotic Good. A storyland of unrivaled passions and indulgence."

"The Heroic Domains of Ysgard. Chaos, with a holy patina. A land of glorious battle and revelry, never lacking a good cause to fight for."

"The Ever-Shifting Madness of Limbo. Chaos and nothing but. Incomprehensible phantasmagoria, from which anything can be wrought, in which nothing can last longer than a breath."

"The Windswept Depths of Pandemonium. Chaos, a shade darker. Iron sand, shrieking winds and clashing steel, amplified into all-consuming madness."

"The Infinite Pit of the Abyss. Chaotic Evil. A vile font, no two layers alike, spewing demons without number into its own meat-grinder battles and over whatever else it can reach."

"The Torturous Depths of Carceri. Evil, touched by Chaos. A trillion trillion little realms, one for each evil that can be named and a thousand more for the ones that cannot."

"The Gray Waste of Hades. Purest Evil. An endless, ashen expanse of self-perpetuating ruin, sucking all that is good and joyous from those within."

"The Bleak Eternity of Gehenna. Evil, bound by Law. Unclimbable slopes of ash and molten stone, tormenting its victims with the futile hope of ascent and stability."

"The Nine Hells of Baator. Axiomatic Evil. The homes of the devils, who delight more than anything in treachery and in perverting institutions and individuals against themselves and those they love."

"And the Endless Battlefield of Acheron. Order of the worst kind. An endless puzzle-trap, acting according to an inscrutable pattern to mangle and ruin all upon its face without ever breaking its own rules."

He dismisses the illusion and takes a sip of his ice water.