"Okay."

"So, do you know how many gods there are roughly?"

"It's hard to say for sure. We know there's at least two other continents but there's not much travel between them. If I had to guess, I'd say... four hundred. Maybe more."

"That sounds really small at first but then I remember the whole god thing, actually how big is Ellayania's territory?"

"Around 1200 square miles."

"So your world is smaller than mine or has more ocean or there's a lot of area that's not claimed by any god."

"Ellayania's on the smaller side."

"Oh, that would be another possibility wouldn't it. How do gods differ? What leads some gods to be larger than others?"

"There's a lot of factors, but one big one is positioning. Gods need worshippers to grow. If they're in an area with fewer mortals, they won't be able to grow as big."

"Huh, I guess that's one way to design a system that will hopefully put good people in power. Well, depending on how easy it is to coerce worship."

"It wasn't designed by anyone. It's just the way the world works."

"Um, maybe, but it could also be that it was designed too far in the past for anyone to remember."

"Theoretically."

"Sorry, I don't mean to offend. It's just the considered opinion of the Institute that of the magic we've observed so far it looks like someone built it rather than it arising naturally. I'm not sure whether that would carryover to this world and its Gods but it's my default hypothesis."

"Might want to keep that one to yourself. Some gods might not take kindly to it."

"I will avoid expressing that opinion then."

"Ellayania doesn't have a problem with it, but it's something to keep in mind if you go touring."

"Yeah, that makes sense. I usually avoid criticising local beliefs about origins stories for their world and such."

"What other ones have you heard about?"

"There's a pretty wide variety, they usually involve some sort of creator deities.  There was this one somewhat polytheist one where there was one creator god who sung other less powerful gods into existence and taught them to sing in turn. None of the gods were in evidence when we visited but there was a music based magic system. Some of their spells were really beautiful."

"Do you have any recordings?"

"Sure, let me play one of the waterwalking spells. Unfortunately, I don't count as a valid caster so it won't do anything but it sounds nice." He gets something out of his backpack and soon there's a quiet contemplative song playing. Ellayania will be able to understand the words that sing about water flowing smoothly and holding together.

"Who counts as a valid caster?"

"With most of the magic systems we've found so far it's mostly heritable with some additional fuzziness where people either unexpectedly are or are not magic users. Idelia follows that rule. Magecrafters, Wanderdeep's empowered, probably don't, one of the magecrafters known to the Institute had a child and they don't have the power."

"Idelia is the songs?"