"Can you sell paper and ink?" He turns over his shoulder to Temperance. "I'm probably going to go really silent for a couple minutes and then I'm going to stow some of my skin, please don't worry too much."

"Okay, but why?"

(Bar can sell paper and ink.)

"If I'm going to edit a textbook down to a form that can fit on paper and optomize it as an introduction to my world for people who won't have The Institute to help supervise I won't have the brainspace to also carry on a conversation. As for the comment about stowing some of my skin I can write faster if I don't need to limit myself to the shape of human hands and writing with a pen."

"Ah, alright. Good look then. I am going to edit my oath a bit further."

He spends a bit being silent then negotiated with bar to get the inks and paper he needs along with materials and tools to bind the books. Then the skin on his hands seems to be pulled away revealing a mass of metal resembling nothing so much as a tree of needles. The trees blur into motion placing ink on paper and bringing three copies of a book into existence. It takes a good twenty minutes or so before he's done but he's willing to talk once he starts printing them.

"Would be insensitive to ask if you're a robot?"

"Whether I'm a robot is a complicated question. My mind is copied from a biological human but my body has no biological components."

"Huh, I feel like answering that statement with the trivia that one of the new kind of Oathknight has produced someone that can turn into a robot."

"Do you mean they turn themselves into a robot or that they can turn other people into robots? Also, robot is a pretty broad category."

"Turn themselves into a robot... Well, their body is made of metal and- hold on a moment," Temperance asks a picture from bar.

There is a newspaper with a picture of said oathknight. It's clearly not just a futuristic armor there is a hollow space where the abdomen should be the torso is supported by a system of pistons connected to the hips.

He raises his eyebrows. "Well, that's surprising. I'm not sure what to make of that."

"In what sense?"

"You're magic is more, showy than mine tends to be. Also, human transformation isn't something I think we've found a way to do yet, the stuff you had mentioned previously sounded more like putting on a different set of clothing."

"Ah, no. The two forms are sort of... separate? If you're harmed in one, you're not harmed in the other and vice-versa. Even if the other form looks like you with a different outfit."

"Then yes... that sounds very different from my magic. I don't really know how I would begin to accomplish that."

"Technically, I don't think anyone actually knows how. Maybe the Lady does, I wouldn't be surprised."

"Well that's the other big difference. My magic does exactly what it's told to do, though sometimes it doesn't learn quite the pattern you intended."

"What do you mean with that? Not learning the pattern you intended?"

"Magic isn't smart, not like a person is smart. But you can try to teach it things. If you try to teach it something and mess up you can end up with not quite what you intended. Like you could try to teach magic what a bird is and if you didn't point it in the right directions it might decide that squirrels are birds since they're animals of similar size that spend a lot of time in trees."

"Can you unteach the magic or edit some parts out?"

"Yes, you can try as many times as you want. You can also either freeze a concept that magic has learned or tell it to try to keep learning. Letting it keep learning sometimes has weird consequences. Someone told magic to pay attention to boats a few thousand years ago and that category now includes submarines hovercraft and aircraft carriers, also certain airplanes and space ships."

Temperance giggles. "Why not all airplanes and space ships?"

"I think the rule it learned was things that float in water at least some of the time, and aren't animals."

"Uh... driftwood? plastic bottles? hell, a surfboard?"

"I think there might have also been a minimum size, or maybe a holds people clause. I didn't see any of those when I was looking. I did see single person kayaks though."