It's impressive how it was clearly all soaked through and now only dribbles a little when squeezed but the gambeson in particular needs the squeezing, it's padded.

"In American culture it's customary to wear a freshly cleaned shirt, underpants, and socks every day, but people here are limited in their packing allowances and washing machine use is usually authorized only once weekly, so I don't know if you'll be able to partake in this custom while you're here."

"It does not sound very practical. I don't have a spell for creating new clothes. But I can work on the cleaning application of Prestidigitation and perhaps eventually get somewhere with it."

"We have machines that an operator can use to sew faster, that might help. …so, 'prestidigitation' is something you work on, it's not that a god hands it out?"

"Prestidigitation is a wizard spell but I was taught to cast it as a sort of educational experiment in my cohort. It admits of more fine control than most divine magic and I do not have most of its functionality working but it would not be impossible in principle for me to get it fully operational with practice, I've just been occupied with other things and do not quite have the Cunning to make it smooth and easy."

"Are you in a position to teach what you know?"

"I am not remotely qualified. A particularly exceptional genius could possibly get somewhere with what I have."

"One in a thousand? In a million?"

"......my impression of how common extreme ability is has been very much colored by the fact that to demonstrate it legibly people have to become powerful adventurers of some kind and this involves surviving lethal danger on a regular basis. I would expect, say, the Archmage Cottonet to be cunning enough, but I have no idea how many men like him died when they were second circle, or sixth; I don't know how it affects rates of retirement, to be that clever, or how much it improves the odds of survival against like challenges faced by a less cunning wizard. And clerics don't get the spell that let you just read someone's mind and see how bright it is."

"If you don't go to the convention we can probably convince some geniuses to figure out magic. There's one who has a disease that means he can barely move, if you heal him he'll probably find his schedule more open. But that's a future issue. For the next few weeks … well, doing research down here is expensive, you have to be fairly bright to have a research plan that the government pays for. We have tests that are supposed to tell you how bright someone is, though they aren't perfect. We could ask everyone if they've taken the test and how they scored and see who the highest scorers are who are willing to make time for this."

"This would, to be clear, get them one cantrip the primary use of which is laundry that you already have devices for."

"I don't know if everything exciting in technology goes through a phase of being a very expensive way of accomplishing nothing much, but there's definitely a pattern."

"I just don't want to get anyone's hopes up. Even in a world vastly more monster-infested than this one sounds it is pretty rare to get powerful enough to cast high-circle spells and that's with prior art to build on. Prestidigitation is how I make chess pieces, and how wizards do laundry, and make Worldwound stew taste like something other than Worldwound stew, and cause their hair to be irregular colors. It is not much of a gamechanger. .........I guess if you can manufacture diamonds we could possibly trade with Axis for wizardry materials."

"What would trading with Axis take?"

"There is a third circle spell that can call an outsider. Summoning brings one here only briefly in a projection body; it's mostly used for combat, mine would last only thirty seconds and if they die in a fight they don't really die. Calling brings it in for real, so it can accept payment, and with repeated interactions bring things requested from its home plane. Axis's main god is Abadar, the god of trade, and I expect outsiders from that plane that I summon would be open to or know someone open to this kind of arrangement. They will want payment for showing up at all, let alone bringing anything - but if you can manufacture diamonds, and there isn't some kind of nonintervention pact around this planet -"

"Do you definitely only lose the payment if an alien actually teleports in? What would happen if there was a non-intervention pact?"

"If no outsider responded to the spell then they would not be able to take away whatever I had lined up to offer them, it's not like a Raise Dead that consumes a diamond even if the soul refuses to return. If there were a non-intervention pact then possibly Iomedae would not grant me the spell, or when I cast it nothing would happen, or the outsider would appear and hear what I had to say and take some diamonds just for responding to the call at all and leave without doing or saying anything."

"Well. You're not going to disappear on us tonight, so we can ask the government if they'll buy someone's ring or such for this, instead of trying to argue with whoever happened to bring jewelry that they should gamble it. I'll ask people if they've taken the tests. It's a little rude but it's worth it."

"...it's rude to ask if they've taken the tests? I wouldn't think anyone should gamble their jewelry on this here, it might want quite a lot of diamonds and to get anything delivered from Axis we'd have to pay at least twice."

"There's a crude comparison I want to make but I don't know if you want to hear it or if it will land."

"...well, I also don't know."

"It's sex-related."

"I have spent the last twenty years of my life in a fort full of soldiers and whores," says Blai dryly.

"Fair, fair. People talking about their intelligence test results is considered a bit like men arguing about who has the largest penis."

"Wizards can be a bit like that about the results of the mindreading spell."