"It's associated with a rogue planet that enters the solar system every few millennia. Next opening isn't for several centuries." 

"Fun!" Convenient inconvenient.

Could you get interdimensional travel out of Hallowed Gift? The most important event of her life involved that, probably, and... hmm, no, it just depends on how far it scales and how much 'power' crossing universes takes, which she's just going to have to ask. Can she phrase it in a way that's not obvious what she's getting at?

"I'm not clear what 'moderate' puissance means. Nor 'street-level' but I'm looking at the Hallowed Gift part now, if you said... well, this is the most important event in my life so far, if you frame it as 'Orden asked for help and I came in answer' you could describe most of my job history the same way, and certainly I moved to - Wellington," because my uncle needed someone nearby "for similar reasons, oh, and I picked my intermediate so Michael wouldn't be alone, so you could draw a rough line over my life as a series of escalating - that - and I don't know what that would add up to."

"By moderate in this context, we simply mean, greater than the lesser powers on offer and lesser than the greatest. The sort of power which would define the career of the great hero of a single unexceptional world?"

"When you frame things like that, you have a very potent narrative indeed. It might be possible to obtain a system that allowed you to hear any calls for aid addressed to you in the local universe, empower you massively as you pursued them, and ensured that they were always rewarding in proportion to the difficulty? Or it could become many other things, depending on what you needed and what about the narrative was important to you." 

"Hmm. I don't think our world has ever had a great hero, in that sense, in reality—when you, and this, say 'world', does that usually mean planet or universe or something else? Do you say 'local universe' to suggest that it couldn't stretch between universes, or like the local part of each universe and it couldn't stretch between galaxies? I'm—not sure what you mean by 'rewarding' but I think it wouldn't tend to limit to people addressing their pleas to me."

—their prayers, you could say. You could frame a narrative that people pray for help and she appears, as Theophania, a manifestation of god.

She could go by that, and it wouldn't seem silly or pretentious, just alien; wouldn't mark her out as someone who chose their name. 

Ugh. She's too attached to just a draft idea.

"I could probably make it work either way depending on your preferences; not all universes have outer space and galaxies and so on but there usually is some level of legible geographic mapping from universe to universe. You'd need to have a travel power like Geometric Investment to answer pleas in other universes though, so it wasn't my default offering." 

Can she do a text search for 'Geometric Investment', yes. There's even an entire guy called The Traveller.

[ ] Geometric Investment [-38 Coin] - Gain a minor, accessible fraction of the Traveler's own Expression via Reciprocal connection.

Once an hour, you and a maximum of five additional passengers can travel to any location within the universe you're in, appearing at the desired location in an instant. This won't ever transport you to a location that's unsafe, instead moving you to the closest adjacent space.

Once a fortnight, you can perform the same feat, but instead travel to anywhere you've ever been before, or any universe in ontological proximity to the one you're currently in. Ontological distances may be difficult to understand for the uninitiated travelers, reliant mostly on conceptual connection. For instance, moving 'in the direction of apocalypse,' steadily brings you closer and closer to worlds which underwent or are undergoing an apocalypse. If one of those is a world that froze over into a snowball, you'd also be close to other cold worlds, and so on. You can move away from an idea as well.

Aha, that's what she wanted. Slower-paced than she'd prefer but wow that navigation is cool. No limited-to-places-she's-been-told-of there.

Stepping back—40 and 38 is more than she can ask for without asking for one of these as her 'patron'. She doesn't have a thorough picture of what that means, to live with.

...she should ask more questions so she didn't run out exactly when she got her proper answer. "Why's it a geometric investment?"

"The Traveller's Expression uses and refers to geometry and space more generally; this is an investment of a portion of that." 

"What is an Expression?—or I could ask the tablet that." Tap.

Some rare subset of people gain incredible unique powers; there are various 'risk factors' and some worlds where the lesser "principled" Expressions are downright common, but it's mostly a crapshoot. The strongest and most terrifying "unprincipled" Expressions are unique wonders of which only a handful have ever been seen in the entire history of the multiverse, the most notable of which is Orden's ability to do the impossible in exaltation of the human spirit, an ability not described in further detail in this wiki for reasons of it being a secret. 

Does 'principled' look to have a meaning beyond less-or-more powerful? Also do you have to be born on these worlds to count? Just. Out of idle curiosity.

Principled Expressions can be reasonably expected to follow rules and do only possible things. You do have to be born on those worlds; it's understood to be an innate property of the soul, somehow. 

(The world most famous for having Principled Expressions is an Earth alt, where they were used to form a totalitarian world government.) 

Does anyone have a concrete definition of 'follow rules and do only possible things' in the context of unique superpowers?

It's the kind of thing which makes sense when you have better intuitions for what the wider multiverse is like. 

Yeah, she gets that a lot.

Okay, back to Orden's section or clear the Traveller's first, maybe she'll just glance up—

[ ] The Traveler's Intercession [-16 Coin] - Receive a shining coin with a swirl design. Thrice, you may speak to the Coin to contact the Traveler, and he shall appear in your vicinity within no more than ten seconds; often less than one.

Uninterested in non-renewable resources and, well, the resource is trusting this guy she currently knows nothing about.

If you're on one of the central worlds of the Alliance, securing a passage to another world shouldn't be difficult, as the Ordinator has constructed a series of corridors between them.

Oh that's good.

[ ] Minor Bullshit Magic Catalogue [-8 Coin] -

Yeah yeah, the choice of minor powers so free-form you might as well be inventing it, we've all seen it.

Furthermore, as an optional and completely free addition, he'll throw in a magical wolf or raven familiar, magically tied to you and capable of sharing your senses, and imbued with Zenith and Primal Fury to enhance their attributes and give them supernatural powers.

Tiffany is not wiki-sniped re 'Zenith', 'Primal Fury' at this time.

The wanderer whose smile conceals secrets, a stranger met by moonlight at the crossroads; the renegade protocol, a wild card slipped into the deck. Who can fathom the Traveler? Among the Alliance's Patrons, he's the most avoidant of responsibility and duty. A former rival to the Ordinator, he's since then thrown his hat in with the Alliance, as the enemy they fight concerns him as well.

As a Favored Patron, the Traveler rather openly doesn't care about you: he'll say as much to your face once you have a chance to meet, most likely some months down the line. You're free to do as you like, essentially divorced from the vast majority of duties you'd otherwise have on you. Likewise, he considers himself free and absolved from providing any aid to you beyond the foundational discounts you can acquire from his Patronage. He'll do his thing, you do your thing.

Hmm. Where she is right now, that would be positive. But if she does decide she can trust these people, then that is not how she wants to relate to them.

Not the only place that problem's going to come up.

How do you trust anything when you don't know what counts as 'possible', and you do know the person you're talking to is supposed to be able to break that.

"Will I be able to meet these other people, at some point?"

"It will be possible to arrange an interview prior to committing to serving under a patron, but I'd rather not do it with everyone. We're all very busy people. The Traveller would have to be over text, he currently has a problem which makes staying in the same universe for more than a few seconds at a time profoundly unwise." 

"...right. That sounds ...unpleasant." Unliveable.

"Do you have a time frame in mind for this phase?" She gestures to the room with her and allegedly-busy Orden and the scrying tablet in it.

"I have the rest of today allocated to talking to you. If you want to take multiple days to finalise your decisions, I'll probably pass the remaining time to one of my aides until it comes time to empower you directly."

He answers the unasked question: "I can be in multiple places at once. Talking to you isn't the only productive action I'm taking right now." 

"Oh good. If I need multiple days to think about this can I go home in the middle or would that be dangerous? Also is there food here, can I have snacks?"

As she thinks to desire snacks, snacks will arrive, just barely obtrusively enough to be clear that they are in fact arriving, and reality isn't just randomly shifting under your feet. 

"It would indeed be dangerous to return to your home to think, but not unacceptably so; if you will accept the offer of a guardian to watch over you, I think the risk would be entirely acceptable, and I will not force you to stay, even if you refuse such." 

...familiar packaged snacks, raw produce, strange alien concoctions?

"Like a specific guardian or whoever happens to be free?"

Tasty canapé-type small prepared finger-foods, moderately optimised for her personal tastes. (Orden is as unable to eat as he is unable to speak, preventing his no doubt bizarre snack preferences from influencing the selection) 

"One of my crow-spirit agents, most likely, though if that is somehow objectionable there are other options." 

What that works out to in practice is "the all time hits of New Zealand party food". Little bowl of tomato sauce with cheerios and sausage rolls, carrot and celery sticks and chips around proper onion soup mix dip, little pikelets with salmon on cream cheese and cream on jam, triangles of fairy bread.

Nothing in this process has resembled a fairy story but Tiffany will not eat the goblin fruits when she's not even hungry. Maybe poke a sausage roll to see if it's warm. 

"Do you have one named Memory and another named Time... do you make this food or summon it? Did you delegate designing the menu?"

The sausage roll is pleasantly warm and flaky-pastried, as though fresh out of the oven. 

"I have ones named Thought and Memory, if that's what you mean. Gladys handles provisioning, along with about 95% of the other logistics concerns for the alliance." 

A smile for the correct crow names. "Gladys?"

"Gladys Selwyn, Ruler of the Estates, Bearer of the Authorities of Ancient Blood and Auspicious Patterns, and the person micromanaging pretty much everything that happens in the Alliance. She's very helpful, very good at her job, and not a Patron because it's not her marginal advantage. She's very busy."