Most Likely A Refuge

[whatamithinking]

It was probably safe.

The bar was...unusually reticent, in the lower layers of her mind (and she hadn't pried further; she wasn't sure if she'd be noticed; she wasn't sure if offending would get her kicked out, and regardless of whether it was actually safe it was safer than anywhere else she'd been for the past...three years?) so she couldn't be sure this place wasn't really a trap of some kind, but the higher layers gave a plausible explanation that didn't involve being a trap, and whatever else it was warm and dry and had food. Her guard was probably a full 25% down. Positively trusting, these days.

Comments

[onceandforall]

"What do you mean?"

[mindovermagic]

"Because you're going to get sent home with a tablet of the stuff and you're an actual sorcerer?"

[onceandforall]

"Oh, you mean like - what is the content, not, how will it sociologically affect all the everything."

[mindovermagic]

"Right. How it'll sociologically affect all the everything is something I'm plotting, not wondering."

[onceandforall]

"Tell me of your plots."

[mindovermagic]

"I haven't gotten very far yet, to be honest; at this stage it's mostly just "dispense magical favors to people who need it and who are being actually helpful and conspicuously refrain from dispensing them to problematic people."

[onceandforall]

"Incentives," nods Bella. "Works best if you do give favors to reformed or at least improved problematic people, though."

[mindovermagic]

"Smaller ones to start out with, though, so they have a harder time pretending to reform for a short time and then running cackling back to the dark side," Edie agrees.

[onceandforall]

"Yeah, but if they can't get anything by changing their ways..."

[mindovermagic]

"Under the right circumstances I might be able to do a great deal of good even so if the magical favors given to helpful people mostly constituted leverage in and of themselves, but you're quite right."

[onceandforall]

"Leverage? Does that mean bribery?"

[mindovermagic]

"No, I mean like magic that they could specifically use to do more good."

[onceandforall]

"Oh, force multipliers. Good stuff."

[mindovermagic]

"Mmhm."

[onceandforall]

"Any specific prospects? People who just need some oomph and then they'll take it from there?"

[mindovermagic]

"I think I'd need to sit down with my spreadsheets for a while before I made any firm choices but I have some ideas."

[onceandforall]

"Ooh, spreadsheets."

[mindovermagic]

"It's not stalking if all you care about is their ability and inclination to do good and not any personal information and the only things you put in their file are fully public anyway!"

[onceandforall]

"It might be a little bit stalking. But all for a good cause."

[mindovermagic]

"Close enough. So--what kind of magic do you think would be the most useful versus fluffs? We could see if the Ancients had an insight into relevant fields."

[onceandforall]

"I'm not sure. Divination type stuff maybe just so I know more about what I'm dealing with - I'm sure that whatever species they are doesn't natively look like fluffs, for instance, I don't know how they got to Earth or how they found it..."

[mindovermagic]

"Well, at least your new spell falls into that category. Bar?"

[alicornucopia]

Bar produces books on sorcerous divination.

[mindovermagic]

"...I have no idea how advanced these are."

[alicornucopia]

These are relatively introductory.