I was pouring back through my notes for the last few weeks/months (no idea why I still have my grocery list from 4.5 weeks ago where I wanted to try and find tahini paste and garlic stuffed olives) and realized that I never told you about my gun and my having become my own business.

Well, first, the business -

Since getting ‘outed’ as a Seer and Baseline, I ended up starting my own non-baseline troubleshooting business. It was definitely a bit weird to leave my company and start my own, but Warren had a friend, a fellow lycanthrope of some sort but not the same kind as him, who helped walk me through it. It’s apparently more of a challenge to become a business with baselines than with non-baselines, but you have to be legitimate with both if that’s how you deal in baseline currencies.

Luckily for me, being a consultant is a nice vague enough description that no baseline government or audit will look too closely (and usually can’t because NDAs are a legal beast unto themselves).

So…. since starting my own business, I’ve begun troubleshooting for archwizards and witches, begun dialogs within the lycanthrope communities on common issues and baseline technologies to support them, and even started consulting on the whole non-baseline logistics system.

Honestly though, it’s a little weird to be working piecemeal clients and go to running my own business and suddenly working with Big Important People in the non-baseline world.

From what I’m able to gather, a number of the council are actually glad to have a Seer counted among the midst. Since I’m… well, not exactly immune to illusions, but definitely heavily resistant to them as well as having a major background in being a baseline, I’m able to go more places and use my ultimate power - baseline-equivalent common sense - to solve longer term problems.

I know, I know. I’m glossing over a LOT and I’ll get more of the details described eventually, but I need to tell you all about the gun the Council sent me.

Thanks to my connections with the Wizards, the Council, and Odarth (gnomish ombudsman extraordinaire), it’s both concealed carry and targeted strictly for non-lethal. Again, I don’t pretend to know how they got a Colt M1860 conversion, but there’s no denying it as a weapon and as a solid deterrent.

Between the runes and elemental magics carved all over the bloody thing and whatever these rounds are, I’ve been promised by the Wizard police that using this will stunlock any hostile for long enough for them to turn up. Naturally, I don’t believe them, but I’m not about to tell them that.

I had Lucy take a look at the rounds (and the gun itself). Or rather I tried to. Lucy took one look at the thing and backed off several steps and even half-way hid behind a wall until I put it away.

I did get an explanation though.

“Think about the most terrifying thing you can given form. Something so utterly horrible that you are viscerally repulsed to even see it. That’s what I see when you pull out that… thing,” she explained.

I asked what that was for her.

The old stories of djinns being bound to vessels is at least partially true it seems, because what she saw was a binding vessel with the magical equivalent of open shackles. Even without knowing what djinn servitude is like, I can certainly guess that it’s no picnic.

I tried with Warren and he saw the pistol for what it was, but seemed to perceive it as a kind of silvered weapon (surprise surprise, silver does actually affect lycanthropes, but it’s like an allergic reaction, made worse by their metabolism). Wouldn’t kill a lycanthrope, but would most likely put them into a near comatic state for a while.

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I even tried our vampiric neighbor downstairs. She also could see it for what it was, but apparently could sense that something about how it was made would be like a stake through her core. (Fun fact - it’s not called a heart once you’re a full vampire. It’s your core, since you don’t have organs like baselines would - not that you really need them.) Again - wouldn’t kill her, but would definitely stop her for a solid while.

She also pointed out a rather interesting fact that now that it’s in my possession, only a baseline can move it. Something about how the runes react to my essentia (or rather lack of essentia).

This could be a problem since I’m now going to be walking around with it all the time, but given the two attempts to kill me, it’s probably safer to take my chances.

And I know I promised a story about going on an adventure with Rennet before I knew all of this, but I haven’t written it yet, so patience is needed there.

But enough about my gun and back to my newfound work.

Well, as I just mentioned, my lack of essentia actually makes me perfect to help troubleshoot really complex magics with archwizards and witches. They don’t have to worry about my essentia getting sucked in at the wrong places while they’re trying to fix their spells. Apparently magical R&D is a lot of trial and error, with major emphasis on the error.

But they’re working on apparently better and better containments. Which I’m more than happy to help with.

Pocket universes take one only so far and I’ve actually spawned a few new ideas among the wizards. Like “if you’re going to create a pocket universe, why bother to keep all the same physical rules? Why not make pi equal to 3?”.

I know I know. I’m stealing a bit from my Pratchett, but the wizards looked at me like I’d just given them the most amazing ideas. As I said, my ultimate power seems to be common sense and asking dumb questions that for whatever reason just never got asked.

One of the archwitches (archwizard who is female?, I still need to ask around about what the correct delineation is) offered to craft me a shield spell as payment. Believe me, I definitely considered it, but I decided against it. A bit too much deus ex machina for me. I did settle for a bracelet of shielding though. If I activate it, it looks a bit like a tower shield. Trouble is that it needs essentia crystals since I don’t have essentia and those are E X P E N S I V E. Like several gold bars for each one kind of expensive and even then they’d be used up within 5 minutes.

Well, I say gold bars, but that’s just to get it back to baseline levels of expensive. Technically, there are alchemists who can make gold bars by the truckload. They don’t just because gold isn’t actually useful even in alchemy. It’s not bad if you need a bit of quick baseline cash, but it tends to attract the wrong sort of attention, so the alchemist agreed as a group to not make gold except for experimental reasons (and even that’s pretty restricted).

Speaking of which, the alchemists are exceptionally interesting. As per usual, we have one here in town (a few blocks from our pub) in the back of a ‘medical’ pot shop. I don’t indulge so I never paid it much mind. It would explain the interesting set of smells though (as well as the extra two chimneys and the ventilation system).

Plus, fun fact, they already have a so-called ‘philosopher’s stone’. Or at least something analogous to one. It can fully transmute matter from one form to another. The problem, as with most, is that doing so takes a LOT of energy, depending on how complicated the change is. Just something as simple as changing a jug of hydrogen into a jug of helium can take a full essentia crystal. So they don’t do too much actual ‘transmuting’ and do more ‘arcane chemistry’.

It’s been a learning experience coming to terms with alchemy in that sense. There’s so many more factors to consider compared with baseline chemistry. Sometimes, the ingredient source is that much more impactful - for example, scale scrapings from a Sicillian dragon nest react wildly differently versus scrapings from a Cuban dragon nest. So the alchemists have to keep a rather more astounding level of recordkeeping.

Which is where I came in. Migrating all of that into a computer is difficult, but also giving them an interface to add new materials with scancodes, encrypting their database against baselines, and even giving them a mechanism to quickly and efficiently log and edit their recipes was just all part of the service.

Did it still require a lot of work? You bet. But there is something to be said for us baselines - we know about complicated inventory systems and customizable software for logging.

I doubt it’ll spread too much (unlike the lycanthrope ‘anti-scream’ box), but the alchemist did promise to get me a nebula in a bottle in addition to my fees.

In short, I’ve been busy and definitely getting to know my local community of wizards, witches, alchemists, lycanthropes, and more. But that’ll have to be all for now. I can hear Lucy in the hallway and I promised to go for waffles and fried chicken today.

I haven’t forgotten about the adventure with Rennet or with trolls and orcs, but I’ll get there. Assuming I don’t perish from waffle overdose.