Magic without a magic

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel wakes up. This is not where she went to sleep. She has a peek at the stream -

- And lets out a surprised yelp at the nonsensical cacophony.

"What in the blue hells is this place?" No answer is immediately apparent, so she climbs to the top of the ravine, carefully avoiding the various inexplicable things in the area. The snake-goat hybrid was particularly grotesque.

The top of the ravine has a road. She tries to fly, but can't. Again, very strange. This is a pretty nice road, physically, but magically it's completely undeveloped. She walks towards the city, peeking at the stream once in a while only to see fog, and seeking an explanation.

Comments

[sturdycoldsteel]

"How much gold will 1500 seo buy, by weight? How much silver? And does that include my platinum coins?"

[alicornucopia]

"It includes your platinum coins and if you want gold denominations of seo it would look like -" He picks up a coin. "About a hundred and fifty of these."

[sturdycoldsteel]

She does some mental math. They're taking a fairly solid cut, but not an outright ridiculous one. And it's not like she can spend silver circles here. "Very well, it's a deal."

[alicornucopia]

"I'll be right back," says the teller, sweeping all her coins into a box, setting it on a scale and noting the total weight presumably in case she's about to make a surreptitious swap, and departing. He's back with a bag containing a hundred and fifty gold coins.

[sturdycoldsteel]

...She thinks about taking a few coins from the box, and holding it down with bluestream. But the bank hasn't done anything wrong.

So she stashes the bag in her backpack and goes back to that food-seller's stall to buy a filling meal. Food is important, you can't think on an empty stomach. "I have seo now," she reports, holding out a gold coin. "Do you have enough change for a gold if I buy something?"

[alicornucopia]

"Yeah," says the seller, and she gets silver and copper denominations back with her potato thing.

[sturdycoldsteel]

She eats the potato thing and chats with/subtly quizzes the seller. What's this city like? Who's in charge? What kind of jobs are there to do?

[alicornucopia]

This is a midsize city, second biggest in its duchy, with a good-size market that way. A lot of people are craftsmen of one or another sort, or merchants or financiers. This fellow's brother is a postal worker and his sister's a vicar.

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I can probably be a crafter. And I'm set for a while anyway. Thanks for the advice."

She wanders around the city, trying to find a craftsmen's street.

[alicornucopia]

They don't seem to be quite that obviously localized. She does find the market, where she could ask some craftspeople where they work.

Some of the things for sale are slaves.

[sturdycoldsteel]

When she realizes this Steel has to duck into an alleyway to calm down. She bends the local stream and heats up the rock below her feet to take most of the strength from her anger. Lots of things are wrong with Telra, but slavery is not one of them.

She comes back and tries to locate one of the more alert slaves.

[namesthesky]

Most of them are just sort of sitting or standing around, being chained to stationary objects. One of them is looking curiously at the exotic embroidered person.

[sturdycoldsteel]

Steel asks that one, "Is slavery normal here, or did I happen to be magicked up near a particularly ruthless city?"

[namesthesky]

"...Slavery's legal throughout Tayane."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"In the probably-fictional world I have memories of, most people are required to work in the civil service for three years, but at least that has an end date. Damn."

[namesthesky]

"Do you know who or what you were before you fell into the magic?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Absolutely no clue. My brain continues to insist that I'm a healthy adult who's been teleported here from another world in the middle of a courier run, as much as the odds are against it. I have my own magic, though." She hovers for a moment, demonstratively.

[namesthesky]

The slave blinks.

"That's a useful embroidery."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Yes. I can't fly without preparing ground for it, but I can hover, and heat things, and make light. Now - I have no memories of Tayane. Suppose I am philosophically opposed to slavery, and I have strange magic from an embroidery that can do a wide variety of physical effects with effort and preparation time. How would I go about ending it, or at least making the conditions less terrible?"

[namesthesky]

"Can you remove tattoos?"

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Hmm... Maybe. I'd have to actually try - bodies are tricky. If I can't remove the ink directly, I could try to rip out a layer of skin and re-grow it."

[namesthesky]

"Because if you can do that you can free any slave you can get to quicker than they can change the law. Magical removal of our heel tattoos constitutes Aelare's blessing and requires immediate manumission."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"Is Aelare a diety? My memories are largely void of religion."

[namesthesky]

"Aelare is a deity, yes. Generally credited with the magics. It's not necessary to believe in them, that's just how the law is worded."

[sturdycoldsteel]

"I might attract attention if I tried to do it right now. I imagine someone has already noticed me chatting to you for longer than usual. Are you likely to be here in a few hours, so I can go buy some paper and do some figuring and planning?"