"Gods don't live on the material plane."

"Arazni does."

"That doesn't count."

"Because she doesn't live?"

"- let's go with that, yeah."

"So, gods are some sort of - insubstantial superbeing that does stuff, notably giving people magic, but don't, like, walk around and eat food?"

"I mean, I think they can have bodies if they want them."

"Again, Arazni."

"Sure. And they say Erastil's married so at some point presumably, even if not all the time -'

"That's weird to think about and you're weird for thinking about it."

"But you're not going to meet one walking down the street, at any rate, they're on other planes."

She will slightly clingily keep chattering with these adventurers for a while. Maybe propose a board game. She knows a bunch of weird ones, in addition to chess.

Pej and Karl and Ierachi will all play with her but Karl decides to go get out of his armor and have a nap; he didn't sleep well in the previous fort.

(Her favorite weird game is this tunnel themed path-building game that was popular at home!)

...She'll go back to making stone objects when everyone gets bored. Her time slot with the smithy isn't until later. And she's long since kind of... Shut down in front of everyone here, even Txell, for the most part.

The adventurers move on the next day after porridge.

Copper wire, copper wiiiiiiiiiiire she will hammer, and hammer, and hammer, and hammer, and hammer, and hammer, and hammer, and eventually have some copper wire.

The first thing she's making in a proper workshop is a wire-drawing tool.

...Food, and stone arrowheads, and any other requests for stone objects people have at her, and tinkering, and sometimes martial practice...

"If'n you want projects maybe the Commander'd buy a chess set."

Ugh, she's wasting her time here. Since she can't make any more projects for the torture people without feeling weird about it, and she doesn't want to walk with patrols east on her own, and she's used up all her allotment of Stuff and made things with it already...

"Yeah, I do want projects. Might as well."

She spends some rock-carving time making a chessboard and pieces out of slightly differently colored rocks. And then presents it to the boss, sure why not.

"...and what are you charging for it?"

"...I dunno, some coppers? I'm actually incredibly bored for all that I don't really want to-" Would he take it badly? The commander is the one guy who has had the most level-headed response to everything. "-To try to make and sell weapons and other military relevant stuff for Cheliax- When I'm making stuff it means I'm not thinking useless noisy thoughts."

"...all right." He counts out five coppers for her. "Thank you, it's - well targeted."

Well now she feels like it's too cheap, but whatever. She did literally say 'some coppers'. And she can always carve another.

It's a gift in her heart.

"Yeah, people seem to think you're really into chess? I made them to local looks, not our variant, we had Clanks for rooks and Drakes for bishops, and a Spark for a queen. And the queen could promote an adjacent pawn to a nonqueen once per game, but it counted as a move."

"- oh, that must have interesting strategic implications, you'd want to threaten the accessible squares around the queen... I am fond of chess, yes."

"Yeah, and if you use it early it's no longer a, uh, threat in potential? Is that the right word? But the longer you go not using it the more you're passing up opportunities- I'm not great at chess, I like other board games more, but I know it well enough I think."

"I have a book of variants but haven't had a chance to try most of them."

"Could be a way to slay boredom if there's ever no pressing duties?"

"There are often no pressing duties. Much of the operation of a fort is being ready to present a lot of force if something comes up precisely in the hope that for reason of this readiness nothing will come up."