I can't fix you, but maybe I can still help

[powerispain]

He's trying to kill us--could ruin him--worry about that later--grab your sister and go.

Comments

[powerispain]

What the hell even causes down here.

[alicornucopia]

Magic!

[powerispain]

What kind of magic?

[alicornucopia]

Down magic! It is speculated that any sufficiently large flat surface will have a down at it.

[powerispain]

This is ridiculous and obviously requires thorough scientific testing.

[alicornucopia]

If she says so. The books have no comment.

[powerispain]

She decides to skim a few books on Corenta to see if there are any obnoxious social problems that would be more obvious to an outsider than to someone who grew up marinating in the stuff and head back to the wizard place.

[alicornucopia]

Corenta is great, say Corentan books on Corenta found in Corenta. Apparently some people like to rank countries by their popularity with dragons, who will up and move if they think you're pulling shit; Corenta is in the top five by dragons per capita in spite of the presence of a shren house.

[powerispain]

"In spite of." That sounds promising as a potentially problematic social institution. What's a shren house?

[alicornucopia]

It is a house where there are shrens whose parents did not opt to raise them. Some dragons keep their shrens but it's not very popular.

[powerispain]

...And what is a shren that makes them so popular for abandonment?

[alicornucopia]

It's mostly like a dragon, except horrifyingly diseased. The condition makes them unable to fly, which is very painful until they're twenty.

[powerispain]

So it's a disabled dragon with horrifying social stigma attached. Why is this painful until they're twenty.

[alicornucopia]

Dragons have to fly, and can't shapeshift until then.

[powerispain]

Fuck's sake. And it just--argh.

She's going to go back to the wizard place now and possibly ask why nobody's done anything about this yet.

[alicornucopia]

...well, there's no cure for it, they explain, when somebody who knows what a shren even is hears the conversation.

[powerispain]

Okay, but if doing magic here doesn't hurt why don't they do anesthesia?

[alicornucopia]

...none of these people know very much about shrens but they probably do have potion painkillers for it...

[powerispain]

If these were dong a good enough job presumably she wouldn't have found in an encyclopedia that being a shren younger than twenty is horrible.

[alicornucopia]

None of these people are witches either.

[powerispain]

And wizardry can't do anesthesia? At all?

[alicornucopia]

Well, they can render somebody unconscious? There's probably some reason the shrens do not spend their entire infancies unconscious. It would be hard to feed them that way, for one thing. Might delay their learning to shapeshift if 'learning' isn't just a term of art; none of these people are dragons either.

[powerispain]

Sigh. She's going to have to actually go talk to these people if she wants to figure out why they still have these problems, isn't she. Fine. She can do that.

...How much does teleporting-with-passenger cost? There are children in pain now

[alicornucopia]

Teleporting's pretty cheap! They can go to many locations national and international.

[powerispain]

Great. Which shren house seems most likely to be interested in answering her questions and receiving help from an outworlder with outworld magic?