"I see."

"In answer to point one, I'll be very surprised if there's only a single party for Dukes.  There will be at least two factions.  Probably three.  As a newcomer you're unusually well-placed to sell to the highest bidder, albeit you also won't have banked resources unless you got them sideways.  If you take me there with the purpose of my starting drama--which, to be clear, I wouldn't be doing on purpose, I'd just say out loud when I thought I saw a better way for them to accomplish something--it ought to be after having sold that act to a rival faction."

"On point two--"

"Oh, wait, I didn't mean for you to answer all of the questions at once! Is the first point the one you want to talk about first? It did seem the most time sensitive, but I wasn't sure if you'd even be interested."

"Are you interested?"

"In a faint, distant way that's overwhelmingly drowned out by questions about whether Eldrida is likely to change drastically in the next week and how your own entire universe works."

"Well, if I'm only a little interested, and you're only a little interested, I'd say we shouldn't bother with it. What happens if I just don't show up to any of the parties?"

"Each of the factions has no way of being confident that you haven't made a deal with one of the other two."

"Sounds dramatic!"

"All right then. So, you'd like to hear about my universe, that has value to you. You already know three more questions that I have. Can we find a way to spend some mutually beneficial time together?"

"I expect so.  To be explicit about this, you're offering to pay me now rather than threatening me with later death after your rise to power?  Or is it both?"

"I've never..."

Opalyn starts to say that she's never killed anyone and then ruefully remembers the force-circle and the cracking of spines that happened within a few seconds of her arrival...

"Hmmm. I've never been in a position where killing rivals or using the threat of death to force compliance was at all tempting. As of now I don't expect to become the sort of person who would do that." Opalyn sure hopes she doesn't become that kind of person, but you never know until you get there, do you? She didn't expect to kill five people at once, either, even in self-defense.

"I like to make good deals. In the best deals, both parties come out with an advantage because they have created value by trading. That's what I'm usually looking for."

"And yes, I'm offering to pay you now, or possibly in the very near future. I can't instantaneously transfer information directly into your mind." ... "I think?"

"Is direct mental transfer near to something you can do?"

"Not that I know of! In my world we were maybe getting close to being able to do that, but it was still some years off, despite the breakneck pace of innovation."

"The fastest way I know to transfer information from my mind to yours is by talking, and having you explain it back to me in your own words, or asking questions, and then we iterate back and forth until we have at least the illusion of mutual understanding."

"If there is a magical way to transfer information, I don't yet know anything about that. Is there?"

"So far as I know, mind-affecting information-transfer sorcery is the province of the Dread Emperor's power level, or possibly of some artifacts he brought with him from wherever he was before Eldrida.  The Capital planet's translation field is the only case I think you'd have experienced directly, or that I'd have experienced for that matter."

"Hence my interest."

"What is the translation field?"

"For example, if your home planet and native universe didn't previously know what 'breen and roopo balls' were, you know it now."

(It sounds like a dish that would be similar to Swedish meatballs.)

"Ahhhh, that might answer a question I've had. I have the memories of the person who previously inhabited this body, and at first I thought I knew the local language from her memories. But I also seem to be able to read and understand words that she didn't know. Would that effect go away if I were further from the Capital planet?"

"Yes, but you'd retain any words you'd previously practiced."

"Can people tell that I'm not a native speaker, just by listening to me or my accent, or maybe by magically perceiving the translation taking effect? Or do I sound indistinguishable from other people?"

"No, you definitely sound like you're from a distant hick planet that spends most of its time out of touch with Capital.  Very educated, though."

"Hmmm, I wonder if I can fix that. Probably doesn't matter."

"Anyway! I think of my three remaining questions, I would most value some help with my basic Wizardry, though the other two questions, regarding finding a Count and managing the chastity belt, are also still of interest. Can we make a deal?"

"Yes.  Your ways are alien but I rather think I don't mind them."

"Albeit explaining basic wizardry sounds trivial at best and tedious at worst.  I'd want to be banking up favors about it.  In some ways I am an unusually good explainer and in some ways I am not.  I note, in case you weren't shown it on entry or you didn't correctly interpret what you saw, that there exists an entire academy interlaced through this Facility. Education increases the value of prisoners and is also a great source of drama."

"Oh! I didn't realize there was an academy. You know me a little bit, now. How do you rate the odds that one of the academy's tutors would be more effective at helping me than you are? Or would it be easier to decide that after trying to explain one simple thing to me?"

"I'd expect them to have access to such exotic teaching aids as simple magic-generating devices, or paper and pencil, or textbooks that didn't cost tokens to rent."

"I'd also expect them to be idiots who had a hard time comprehending exactly what you didn't understand.  You coming to me for help with those parts sounds rather more pleasant than my trying to do it all."

"The books are free? What about the tutors? Do I need to pay them?"

"It does indeed sound like maybe I should start with them, then, as you said, and come back to you when they're being too idiotic."

"On to counts and countesses then?"

"They're free.  All labor by non-sorcerers is free from the Facility's perspective, by comparison to sorcerer-related revenue, and they only charge for it if the charges help create drama.  In this case it's to their advantage that you learn."

"On Counts:  It's hard to say what Count you should blackmail or make an offer without knowing more about what you think you can offer them, what your plans are, what sort of personnel you expect to need, and all that.  Matchmaking that sort of thing isn't fundamentally lower-information than dating.  I don't even know at this point if you're a pure sub, or a switch, or a dominant who slipped in here sideways like myself."

"I don't know what my plans are yet either, as I mentioned! I am not even sure how long I will be in this prison - kind of depends what offers I get, and whether there's a riot in the next few days that destroys the whole place!"

"Anyway, if I'm going to be here any length of time at all, I will probably want at least a few people on my team. I want friends, allies, lovers. Normally I prefer to connect with others using a combination of affection and mutual support and good deals, but here it seems everything runs on the token economy and I will participate in that if I must in order to have a small team."

"I'm primarily a submissive, though I am capable of switching. I find dominating to be kind of a lot of work so I need to be fairly entertained by how subby my subs are."

"Many of the higher-ranked inmates try to cultivate their switch sides, what with all the submissives around they have ambitions of controlling.  A number of those, in the opinion of a number of subs, are not as good as more natural dominants like me.  I could probably steal some of their subs quite easily, with your backing, if you didn't mind making enemies or are resigned to making them anyways."