"Second, which makes it very difficult to test."

"Yeah, that'd do it. --I'm assuming you're a wizard and not a sorcerer or something, if you're trying to fiddle with Mirror Image." They didn't actually clarify that on the road, it not being delicious infodumping to feed Nenio, but she intends to mention Nenio to Irabeth and it would be better to have more rather than less pertinent data. 

"Oh, did I not introduce myself? I'm Nenio - wizard, explorer, scientific luminary, author of the Encyclopedia Golarionnica, and future rector of every university in Absalom. I specialize in illusions and scrolls."

"My brother and I are wizards too!" What should she add on to that. Mentioning their specialty schools isn't a great look in front of all these other people who hear "necromancer" and think "sketch as hell" for very good reasons. She's out of non-cantrip spells, what non-obvious applications of her cantrips could she mention--not polishing metal with acid splash, not when Nenio is so cavalier about her own safety. Um. "It's easy to specialize more effectively, when you have two people who can cooperate as well as we can." Hopefully that wasn't inane. 

"I suppose that could work, but you could both just skip the boring schools of magic instead."

She ticks off her fingers. “One, which ones are the boring schools; two, there are ways of specializing that aren’t about picking schools—like, if I learn how to make magic necklaces et al and he learns how to make rods, then we both have access to the ability to make both things, and each only had to spend the time to learn one.”

"Necromancy and Abjuration, of course. They don't do anything interesting."

"Well, it's hard to avoid studying necromancy, in Mechitar. I managed to avoid it but approximately only because we were acting so consistently as a unit." 

Nenio is quite impressed by her good sense! Less so with her brother, but that just means she picked the right assistant.

"Anyway, necromancy isn't that boring. Animating skeletons, sure, anyone can do that. I'm interested in the possibilities offered by False Life, and by extension Greater False Life. It's not really proper healing--yet--but it's an obvious angle to work, and--" he's not going to mention Luzai's Geb-related ambitions, "--the school of necromancy has a lot of applications not related to the undead, that are deeply underexplored, because most people who don't want to do tedious things with the undead are scared off by the school's reputation." 

"It's not as bad as it could be, true, but everything interesting you can do with necromancy there you can also do with enchantment. Greater Heroism, for instance, and once I get aid to stabilize as a wizard spell there's that too. And that's without mentioning conjuration. You're wasting your talents on necromancy."

"But those are just two spells! I'm not saying Enchantment is bad, Luzai's focused there, but necromancy has so many spells like that--Positive Pulse and Phantom Blood just at first circle!" 

"That's a stretch - by that logic Rage is healing, especially since you need it to get any use out of Phantom Blood in the first place, and Positive Pulse doesn't even have that. Transmutation is also better than necromancy by this standard, and conjuration allows outright arcane healing."

Personally Nenio doesn't find the subject of healing with wizard spells to be all that important, but if Villibor is going to dedicate themself to niche research the least they could do is do it efficiently.

"Hmm. My studies have been rather warped by growing up in Mechitar. I'll look into that. But I do think someone ought to mine necromancy for its useful pieces, and I'm a pretty good candidate." 

Then as long as she has a captive audience for her theories, Nenio will drop into an impromptu lecture on the relevant uses of enchantment, transmutation, conjuration, and even theoretically illusion magic for healing; in her opinion celestial and infernal healing are pretty obviously dead ends for iterating on where any improvement would require enough more circles to make the issues with the spells even more apparent, but she's got some thus far untested claims about a school in Garund that has secret information on the subject and theories on reverse engineering mystic theurgy that have yet to be proven impossible.

Oh, that is fascinating. He'd be surprised if mystic theurgy turned out to be a very fruitful path of investigation, since it still involves the active participation of a god--he, himself, is intrigued by the possibilities of spells that can replicate other spells--limited wish, the shadow class of spells particularly since Nenio is an illusionist--also, witches are arcane casters and can cast cure spells, he once read an obscure book, by a witch, about converting between wizard and witch spells. 

(He does not mention that by "obscure book" he means Areelu Vorlesh's personal notes. He implies that it was an obscure volume in his father's library that he no longer has access to.)

Eventually Seelah will remind them that they should probably eat at least some of their food.

By that point, Wenduag has long since wandered off. When they got started she tried following the conversation, but even aside from her completely lacking background they're using enough words she doesn't recognize to make it an exercise in frustration. 

Oops. Luzai originally started that conversation looking for a segue to get Nenio to eat. She tucks into her food with cheeks shaded with embarrassment. 

After dinner, she goes to find Irabeth and tell her about Nenio. 

"Do you think she'd be responsive to requests, or should I just plan on it giving your group a little more muscle?"

"I think she'd be responsive to requests that were delivered by someone who knew how to make those requests scientifically interesting?" 

"So not me, then."

Irabeth shakes her head. 

"As for the other matter, Aravashnial said he would be willing to stick around long enough in the morning for you to copy detect fiendish presence. I don't know how long to expect that to be, but he's also needed in the field so I'd appreciate it if you make it a priority."

"Oh! Okay, will do, I'd want to do it before preparing spells anyway." 

"In that case, I think that's everything. Inheritor keep you."

They've got a bit more time on their hands after that, but fairly soon most of them will need to turn in. Luzai and Villibor are lucky on that score - as wizards, them being able to sleep well is a strategic priority, so they're able to get one of the smaller rooms to themselves. Everyone else has to deal with things being a bit more cramped, but despite complaining about the indignity even Camellia  considers it better than getting killed in her sleep by demons. All too soon, however, it's morning once again.