With the Benefit of Hindsight [Lady's Library, Morning 0]

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"I... hmm. You may be right that it is difficult to self-diagnose it. Obviously some of those things that are not a part of our daily experience, we have no actuated awareness of, or we find repulsive or too menial and uninteresting. But if you want any admission out of me on this occassion, I suppose I can do a bit better."

There was a pause.

"Moneymaking. I realise there may be many sets of very complex practices that may lead one to securing means they need, but on practical level I fail to acknowledge them. Whenever I am running short, I default to honest, menial work presuming the combination of my social standing and ethics makes it binary for me."

[Dare Shah]

"Hmm. I've never delved too much on the matter of money myself actually. I was always blessed with stable income, and didn't look any further beyond that.

Theoretically, I suppose I could make more by going into the business of making and selling magical items, money that could be eventually be fueling science. But, even in the best of cases, that would require a rather long period of instability before turning a good enough profit during which my research would have to be set aside. And, in the worst of case, I would become lost, one way or the other, in this new venture, the meaning becoming the goal to the detriment of the endgame.

I guess, despite my name, my tolerance to risky gambits is rather low. Or maybe it's because I've studied risk versus reward strategies at length that I'm more acutely aware of the difference between an opportunity and a fool's errand.

I'm curious what a dame of your quality considers menial work though. Bureaucratic tasks? I have a hard time imagining you carrying bags of flour at the market for example."

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"This limit on your imagination, my lady, is probably due to an accurate assessment of my meagre constitution." Akh chuckled. "In the end, I do what I am asked to do, though I am way more efficient in scribal tasks or in finding answers and solutions rather than implementing them. Menial work is... probably everything which is not therapy or research."

[Dare Shah]

"Well, as for right and wrong guesses, I'm surprised to find someone so philosophical is also a doctor of the flesh.

My own knowledge of medicine makes it look the most pragmatic field that is. All the focus on making sure the patient is better, and very little on how the magic allowing that, literal or mundane, actually works."

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"It depends... After all, we're all suspended somewhere between the arcane and the mundane. I've found that treating body and spirit shouldn't be too separate, especially in palliative care. My approach to medicine is not as much a struggle against death as it is about helping the natural progression toward it be more measured and dignified. If the body gives in and the soul does not, or the other way around, it leads to all kinds of trouble."

Akh bowed her head. "I hope it explains my weirdness a little bit."

[Dare Shah]

"There are several theories that death is a requirement for life to thrive in a long run, by forcing renewal of the population and thus changes that might be more suited to an ever evolving universe.

We're entering the domain of the politically sensitive though, in a world full of gods and godlike entities with no intention to ever die."

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"I suppose I have taken certain positions in that debate that are abhorrent to some." Akh Uur Hoon mused. "But I don't seek to offend. As for the gods, demigods and the like... once you've gone all the way up, the only path forward seems to be down. Isn't it what's been happening in Toril, under a rather euphemistic name of The Time of Troubles?"

[Dare Shah]

"Wasn't the whole thing about a bigger god getting angry at small gods after they tried to stole some of his power? If so, not so sure it's the best example of evolutionary ceiling. History is written by the winners, and it's very much unclear if rising further was actually impossible due to some unbreakable law of the world or if it was solely a personal failure from a few.

Though I agree it's anecdotal evidence for that fact godhood is not the end, just yet another step."

[Akh Uur Hoon]

"I suppose ever bigger godhood might be a possibility, with an ever bigger capacity to exert control. But let me offer this counterargument - if there was no ceiling of this kind, it would be hypothetically possible to arrive at a point at which no laws of nature can be relied upon as everything is subject to discretion of one personal will."

[Dare Shah]

"There's the dilution theory, that the more omnipotent you become the less of a self you have, until you eventually become a force of nature with no real will of your own.

Though how that's different from death in practice, you tell me."