"Remember when I said, you don't get rich while casteless unless you're some flavour of criminal? The Carta is the banquet," says Stalas. "Oh, speaking of productive occupations for the casteless - Bhelen, what do you want to bet we can get the Assembly to agree to let them into the army? And then separately send Annie around to give darkspawn disintegration powers to any soldier who wants them."

"One society-changing venture at a time," says Bhelen, amused. "We can plot how to bully the Assembly into doing something intelligent in an hour after we're done trying to figure out how to bully dwarven society to accept farming."

"Sorry," says Stalas. "Getting the casteless into the army will probably ultimately contribute to people's willingness to buy food from them, which is why I thought of it, but go on, I can hang onto my brilliant suggestion until we're done with Rica's."

"It's illegal to buy things directly from the casteless," explains Bhelen. "And separately, there is the problem of people finding getting food from the casteless distateful. The... humans idea has some merit, but I'm concerned about Orzammar becoming too reliant on humans for a societal problem we really ought to solve ourselves."

Stalas thinks of another tangential comment, but stifles this one.

"I invite you to solve the part of the problem that calls for humans yourself by making it legal to buy things directly from the casteless," says Annie, and then she looks (well, "looks") at Bhelen expectantly.

"And - sorry - if we're also getting the casteless into the army, that's multiple angles on integration," says Stalas. "And precedent for the Assembly to start granting them more rights."

Bhelen snorts. "Fair point."

"If the only legal bottleneck is ownership per se then you wouldn't need many humans. Just a handful to go to wherever the farms were, hand over the money, pay some dwarves to carry their stuff, take it to a grocery store, get some dwarves to actually handle the retail end. I can make sure to advertise that the hope is that dwarven classism will not be profitable for long. But if you can't just wave your hand and make it legal to purchase directly then I think declining to involve outside parties to whom that rule doesn't apply will accomplish very little except delay for the casteless."

"Yes, agreed. And I'd rather not delay things for the casteless. And you can hire humans that won't take offense to their jobs not being stable?"

"I don't have a clue what the labor market on the surface looks like, but if it's anything like my world - as it was at the local technology level, in particular - I'd be kind of surprised if I couldn't. Or elves, whatever."

"... Elves might be a better choice, if you can get them," says Bhelen thoughtfully.

"Why?"

"I haven't had many dealings with the surface, but I've overseen some, and elves seem to be treated like the casteless, of the surface. And humans are in a place of strength, and some might attempt to use the opportunity to, say, spread word of their religion, or expect that because we let them have this in, they can have others. I expect elves would on the whole be more grateful and loyal, and if we make a point of hiring elves we might gain a set of allies on the surface. I don't see comfortable human merchants considering us allies at all, just marks to be exploited."

"Okay. Bias in favor of elves or at least the generally disenfranchised."

"Yeah, agreed," says Stalas. "Speaking of the surface, though, that Grey Warden wants Annie to accompany our troops to Redcliffe so she can hand out darkspawn disintegration to everyone. I'm not sure how soon that's going to be, but it'll certainly be a chance to meet some elves, if they're drawing on all the old treaties, and it sounds like they are. Can I go along without putting myself in charge of the army? Not that I object to being in charge of the army if that seems like the best place for me."

"You can almost certainly go along without being in charge of the army," muses Bhelen. "Whether or not to put you in charge of the army is another thing that I'll need to think about later. Hiring elves while at Redcliffe sounds like a good idea, though then we have the trouble of getting them back to Orzammar, but crops take time to grow anyway, so - how long do the planned surface crops take to grow, do you know?"

"...First of all, I haven't even invented the full spectrum rune light yet, let alone tested it. It's possible it won't work at all and in that case I won't have a job to offer elves I meet. Second of all, I wasn't a farmer and didn't frequently interact with them in my world, so I'm operating on extremely layperson knowledge. I know a potato will sprout if you just leave it in a cupboard for a few weeks, but I have no idea how long it takes to turn some of a potato into multiple potatoes. Less than a year - actually, if farming gets big enough you might be able to export crops by timing them right. There's no seasonal variation down here and you can have things in the middle of winter they can't get until summertime. Certainly you'll be able to do two, maybe more, crops of most things in a year."

"Ooh, exports," says Stalas.

"... I just sort of assumed you'd be able to invent the rune," says Bhelen, realizing his mistake. "You're betrothed to Stalas. But yes, fair point, don't count the nugs before they're caught."

"I have a guess about why regular rune lights don't work and a few days worth of admittedly promising education in runecrafting. If runes just don't do the thing I have in mind or plants are allergic to magic light it won't work. That doesn't mean nothing will - maybe between my having ever seen a lightbulb and Caridin knowing how to make things we can figure out how to make a lightbulb - but it would certainly put the time horizon of the project a lot farther in the future."

"He's doing pretty well with bicycles, speaking of exports," says Stalas.

"Oh, yeah, did Stalas tell you about bicycles? They're not particularly useful down here but they're great for surface streets with no stairs."