"Sure."

Poke poke poke. "So these ranked magics are weird. This one's Dominion, right, the one that does enclavey things? Why is it weird."

"Ah, that's an affiliation with a faction."

"Do I want to affiliate with factions?"

"Very plausibly! Not everyone does, but a lot of people do. You get faction magic at a discount, and a special bonus ability."

"Huh, kinda special bonus ability?"

"Depends on the faction! Lunabellans can conjure infinite food. People associated with Alfheimr can lowkey teleport and have a chance to have a spell not cost mana. I'm not entirely sure of the specifics of how Hawthorne's would work in your case, it interacts with Mothergifts. The Hespatians have a sort of stealth cloak thing, the Watchers have an approximately angelic transformation, and Arcadia gives you diminished versions of two other faction abilities."

"Somebody had to - be the mother of the mothergifts, right, they were invented, is there any record of that process?"

"There isn't even a publicly accessible record of her name."

"Well damn. ...how does inventing entire new disciplines work at all?" he inquires, turning over the Wands bubble in his hands.

"I--hmm. I'm not an expert in it, myself, but I can put you in contact with some people--but Arcadia is a good place to ask that question, digicasting was invented very recently."

"Digicasting is cool but kind of - frivolous - in most albeit not all applications..."

"Well, yes, but there are principles behind inventing ranked magic that can be derived from the process that won't be restricted to digicasting specifically. Not all of them, I'm sure."

"No, I get that, I'm just looking at the bubble. Wands is... neat but it's sort of more like a bunch of those wild magics all put together than like what I expect from magic, especially as taught at a school that even has teachers and stuff, like it doesn't relate to itself very much, am I wrong?"

"Remember what I said, about how there are the basic hexes that come with the ranked magic, and there are other hexes that people have invented? People have had a lot less time to invent spells for Wands than they have had time to invent Hexes, but in the long run it looks like it's going to become extremely versatile."

"Oh, it looks useful as all get out, just... not in a fun puzzle way. Maybe it's more of a fun puzzle to do the inventing?"

"My brother seems to think so!"

"Dominion also looks lovely though I might want to know more about my long term living situation before buying more than a little bit of it. Maybe one rank each that and Wands to start investigating synergies and the underlying principles of each. If I do pick up that Nature affinity that'll make Dominion cheaper going forward anyway... Is getting into Ministration even compatible with being a Lucastan - it doesn't look overwhelmingly my speed but if it were -"

"Oh, yeah, I have an arrangement with the Watchers."

"Cool. Occultism looks... weird and sketch. Covenants wizards have our own things for and probably insofar as it's different can be left to specialists..." He sets the bubbles down. "Is the next step the, uh, loot part, or the part where I inform you that actually I like my hair short and don't want to grow it out by magic like Bella?"

"The personal transformation is actually something you do entirely on your own, I don't guide that part. Also you should know that you don't in fact have to live on Lunabella long-term in order to take the relevant fate twist, which is important, because a lot of people don't want to live on Lunabella long-term, because they have a weird slavery-related thing."

"I can see why that would cause people to not want to live on Lunabella long-term! What will I be tolerating from the neighbors in visiting the place?"

"Visiting is fine, people visit all the time. The weird slavery-related thing is that, technically, every Lunabellan citizen is enslaved to another one, all the way up to the king, who is enslaved to the nation's constitution. It does not in practice look like other things called slavery but it is weird and hierarchical and, you know, called slavery. But visitors approximately don't have to interact with the thing, you get a tourist visa and there's a government office that's basically for people who are responsible for tourists if anything happens where a tourist would otherwise have to interact with the system."

"That's sure some kind of way. Fate twists are not a thing I can take later, right?"

"Correct, sorry."