"Yes, of course. Um, can you explain who some of these people are? Why does no one want to work for Galt?" 

"Galt is a country on the continent north of here. They were part of Cheliax but broke away after Cheliax became an instrument of Hell. They overthrew the Chelish government, very bloodily, but understandable, right, there was a lot at stake - and then they overthrew the post-revolutionary government, and then they overthrew the next post-revolutionary government. And then Cyprian rose to power and now they're bringing the revolution to all their neighbors, by which I mean conquering them.

The pay would be very good, if that's what you want to do."

"Euughh. No. I've participated in one counter-coup and it's enough for a lifetime." 

"War is bad. And I don't just mean that it's Evil, though it usually is that."

"Rahadoum is a country west of here. They are rabidly anti-religious and ban all the gods and all their servants. It is illegal to worship, there. They've been recruiting for a while, and won't say for what, but the obvious guess is - so this continent is right near the continent north of us, and in between there's the Inner Sea. And at the western edge of the Inner Sea there's a very narrow strait crossed by the Arch of Aroden. I should show you a map."

"Whoever controls that strait can tax all trade out of the Sea, and the south end of it used to be in Rahadoum, but Cheliax conquered it. So the obvious thing Rahadoum would be recruiting mercenaries for is to take it back, and I hope they succeed if that is what they're trying."

Vanyel studies the map for a few minutes. 

"Right. I hope so too, and - if they were to start I might offer my help. But I'm really a lot less useful without Yfandes nearby." 

He nods. "And they might be fine with Yfandes, or not able to identify her as god-related at all, but I don't know how to tell except by explaining more than I'd expect you want to explain to a national government with a large army and secret goals."

"I would prefer to avoid drawing that much attention to myself. Anyway, it sounds like I should get the ring, and I need to buy other travel gear too, hopeful the remaining money I have is enough to cover that?" 

"Should be easily enough. Magic items are expensive but other gear won't be."

"Right, that makes sense given magic being hard and thus in demand. How much of your world's basic crafts and industries are done with magic involved? Construction, or glasswork, or, I don't know, making books last longer..."

"Mostly not. Laundry is done with magic, because it's very labor intensive normally and the spell for it is one of the ones with negligible power requirements. And repairs are done by magic, because there's an easy spell for that too. But construction isn't, glasswork isn't, textiles are not - I've head of people trying to make a magic loom but they've never gotten it good enough you don't need a human supervising - we do use magic for preserving books, and for copying them -"

"So construction help more generally is a service I might be able to sell. It's not complicated, raw power is most of it, and...well, I feel better about it than about setting things on fire." 

"Understandably! I would have to think who to ask -"

"I can ask at the church, most construction is insured.- does your world have insurance, Vanyel -"

"...That didn't translate, so, I guess not, or not close enough. What is it?" 

- he looks delighted. "So imagine that you want to do a shipping venture, or a long overland caravan, or you want to plant lots of crops in an area that's prone to floods in some years that might make you lose the whole crop. Let's say you'll make a hundred gold if you succeed, and only have to spend forty up front, and you estimate a half chance that your ship will be sunk in a storm or your caravan attacked by bandits or your crops flooded. This is worth it, right, if you take lots of bets like those on net you'll end up richer. But most people still won't do it, because they look at reasonable odds of being utterly ruined and decide to spend their money on something else instead.

But a big organization, like a church, isn't going to be devastated by any given venture failing. So they can sell - a promise that you won't be ruined if your venture doesn't work. Usually it's in the form of something like 'you pay twenty gold for a promise that if your expedition fails, we'll give you thirty-five.' That's insurance. And then people will do chancy things, and if we were right in the first place that the chancy things were worth it then overall both sides of this transaction will get richer.

But what if we were wrong in the first place that the chancy things were worth it? Well, instead of the church making a blanket promise to pay back twice your gold if you lose, the church hires a hundred smart people, gives them a lot of money, and tells them to take as many sensible bets of this form as they can. And they investigate ocean conditions and bandit conditions and flood history and decide what prices to set, and the ones who are good at it are obviously good at it, because they end up richer. And after a while you know who's good at setting insurance prices, and the prices are information for the merchant, too - if no one will sell them insurance at a reasonable price then probably the venture is more risky than they thought it was!

The Church sells insurance on everything. Ordinary farmers are encouraged to insure themselves against crop failure or the death or illness of a working-age man, and they get pensions if anything happens. Mahdi has insurance out on his own death. And that means that risks are all - distributed among a bunch of participating parties as bets, and no one has to lose everything. There're some situations it's tricky for - if there's another famine like the year Aroden died, there's no food to be distributed, doesn't matter how clever you are about distributing force if enough of it hits - but for ordinary ventures, ordinary lives..."

"Oh! That's an incredible concept. I know someone back home who would love it." He's a little surprised Leareth didn't invent it himself, actually. 

"You should get a book you can take back with you!"

"I should! How expensive are books, in this world?" Thoughtful look. "Also - am I right in thinking that you don't need an innate Gift to become a wizard with arcane magic?" 

"You don't. Most schools of wizardry have admissions tests but they're just tests of memory and cleverness and spatial reasoning, because you won't get far without that. No innate ability is required."

"Wow. That would - change things a lot, back home. It's probably not worth it for me to try to learn, it'd mostly duplicate things I can do already and it sounds like it takes years to get to things like flying, but...wow." 

"We could come back with you, conceivably. It's not every day you learn of entirely new worlds."

"That is the kind of thing where I should probably ask Abadar if it's a good idea but I'd expect him to think it certainly is."

"Abadar sounds shockingly, er, progressive? For a god. Our gods aren't like that." 

"That's much of why I'd want to ask Him, maybe there are much sharper god resource constraints in your world or something such that inviting attention from our gods is actually bad! But yes, Abadar favors civilization and commerce and law and I'd expect Him to actively want trade between our worlds unless there's some reason we don't know of why that's a bad idea."