"You understand I wasn't there, right? I didn't try to" unintelligible "the poor man."

Wasn't there to... interrogate? Or if he means the person that was made, maybe something like an autopsy?

"Yeah, of course, you just seemed so sure... I don't know what sorts of things can go wrong when making people in general. I've never seen it done, and..." He takes an extra moment to pick his words. "I'm lucky enough not to have known anyone who died from the way they were made, yet."

"Some places nobody regulates it, people just make folks on a whim, it's much more common there."

He has to ask, right? Has to.

"How bad can it get? I mean, I've thought—" like five seconds ago "—of people trying some crazy stuff, like... making a person with extra arms, or with wings, or green hair. But does that sort of thing actually work? Even if they end up with health problems, or dying quick?"

"I don't think you can get any of those."

"Not extra good arms. You're not supposed to try it because you can get extra creepy useless arms. You can do extra fingers but you have to really know what you're doing if you want them to work, trying it just because you heard it somewhere gets you creepy useless fingers. Wings and green hair I don't think you can do at all."

Huh. Why would extra fingers require you to "know what you're doing?" Is the implication that people in this world all come with a detailed knowledge of a normal human biology, so they know enough to make that work when they picture someone in their head?

The simplest explanation is still (sadly) the one that involves fae or aliens grabbing humans from other worlds and inserting them into this one. Maybe they do some quick surgery if the maker is imagining something weird, but botch it on purpose to discourage that sort of thing...

"Creepy extra fingers or arms sounds bad," is all he says, still sorting through his thoughts as he focuses on his sewing. "I'm glad it's regulated in most places."

"I mean, they're not great, but they're kind of a self-limiting problem, you've actually got to be much stricter about psychology."

Their word for "psychology" has always felt like it had a few subtle undercurrents to it that were hard to understand out of context. "Because... some psychologies aren't as self-defeating, and they can spread through new people they make?"

"Right, if you make somebody with something physically wrong they're not necessarily going to want to make more people like that."

"Have... any of you heard of someone accidentally making someone?"

"Not like tripping and falling, no, but like absentmindedly walking all the way home when you were actually meaning to go somewhere else without meaning to, that can happen."

So... what, it just takes imagining a person for a long enough time, and they just appear? But with some ticking clock that charges up what age they can be when they appear? 

(Assuming that's right, is it like a bank account that you can withdraw from multiple times? Two 20 year olds instead of one 40 year old?)

"That must be awkward."

"It's not common, I think it usually comes up in situations where somebody's been making a person every week for ages and then the war's over and they don't have to any more."

Okay so you can make a new person in a week who is already prepared for war which means all his previous ideas about the age limits of this sort of person-creation thing just got tossed out of a ten story window.

Is the cap literally just "a person a week?" Would he reveal too much ignorance if he asks about that?

But then why was Chesabit so young? Because they'd made someone within a week before that and didn't give it the full 7 days? It didn't seem like there was anyone else new on the boat, and they can't all have been so recent in having made someone, could they? Unless the ship was at half crew and made the other half within a week of his arriving? No, they were clear that it's not a common thing, and there's still no explanation for why she knew his language! You can't just imagine someone into existence knowing a language you don't know

wait he can check that one.

Instead of dropping his needle and thread to grab people's shoulders and shake them while yelling YOUR WORLD IS THE DREAM OF A BORED AND NOT PARTICULARLY SENSIBLE FAE LORD he takes a breath and asks, "What about creating people with knowledge you don't have? I met someone who was made knowing a language none of the rest of her crew knew."

"- well, yeah, of course you load people up with every language you've ever heard of, languages are easy."

"Right, but... she knew a language even her maker didn't know." He looks around, checking to see if anyone gets his confusion. "Isn't that... odd? That people can be made knowing things the maker doesn't?"

They're all staring at him like he's crazy badly made now.

Goddammit he was being careful...

"I mean," he quickly adds, "When I think about it, I just wonder where the knowledge comes from? None of you... ever wonder that?"

"Where does anything else about the person come from?" somebody shrugs.

"Right, exactly! That's the question, isn't it?" Surely they've thought about this at least a little? "If you wanted to make a blacksmith, maybe that knowledge would come from, I don't know, your maker's maker's maker's maker, who was a blacksmith and so that knowledge is inside you somewhere waiting for you to bring it out in a new person."

He turns to someone else. "But maybe none of your maker's makers were blacksmiths, so if you want to make a blacksmith, they'd be less good at it? But maybe not, maybe so long as anyone in any of the rounds is a blacksmith, their knowledge can be recreated in someone you make. But if that's how it works, would they get all the knowledge from every blacksmith? I don't know anyone that's tried this, but if someone kept making a new blacksmith every week, so the skill of their maker is the same... or mostly the same, maybe they get a bit better between weeks... would each made blacksmith have the same knowledge and skill, or would they gain new knowledge and skill that the one before them had gained to stay even with them?"