Get to Know Jasmine

Jessica : "So you went through this too?"

You realize you could have meant several things by 'this'.

Jasmine : "Yes, in every sense of what you could mean. I was born with your same condition, I had my own mentor give me a real man's body, I felt what you felt. That was over sixty years ago and I still remember it clearly today."

You had quite a lot to think about and we're too exhausted by the experience to really probe much more into it today. You decide to steer the conversation more to who this sorceress was.

Jessica : "I heard that I should ask you about Guild diplomacy as a career..."

She seemed visibly relieved to move to something less heavy as well. You think this must have reopened old wounds.

Jasmine : "Oh you should definitely consider it. We transfigurers have a natural ability to blend in to other cultures and... Appeal to a wide variety of leaders... It's impressive what the guard can do when it comes to battle, but solving conflicts the diplomatic ways is almost always cheaper both in blood and treasure."

She pauses and a distant look comes over her face.

Jasmine : "I know I don't look it but I've been around long enough to see things done both ways. It's no exaggeration to say that a well spent year in the diplomatic core can save the lives of dozens of casters and countless common folks."

Jessica : "but what do you actually do?"

She blushed just a little bit.

Jasmine : "you mostly go to parties and meetings. The meetings are mostly for fun and the parties are where serious business is conducted."

You couldn't quite tell if she was serious.

Jasmine : "really it's just meeting with a lot of leaders and their functionaries. Casters are able to quickly travel between kingdoms and facilitate negotiations which gives us influence even into conflicts not directly involving the guild. Being long lived we are able to build relationships with most parties in any dispute. Guild policy is a peaceful realm is good for business and we're given wide latitude to do what we think is best for maintaining that peace. Sometimes that means spending guild coin, sometimes that means... Improvising... Other forms of persuasion."

You think you know what she means.

Jessica : "have you been in the diplomatic core since you finished training?"

Jasmine : "oh no, I spent a few decades heavily involved after becoming a guild membet but now I only get involved when something big is brewing. Things have been mostly peaceful recently..."

Jessica : "what do you do when you're not working for the guild?"

Truthfully you had no idea what life was like for casters outside of Brawford. It sounded like could just live a charmed life of doing the occasional magic trick for common folks and laze about for centuries if they liked. This was an existence foreign to the life you had lived growing up near Edon where a bungled harvest could leave you without enough to eat in the winter.

Jasmine : "all sorts of things. In my most recent role negotiating some internal conflicts within the Garton kingdom I found myself in the possession of a medium sized vineyard. For the last few years I've been obsessed with learning the art of wine making. There have been some caster attempts to improve the process using magic in the past but most of those are closely guarded secrets. I'm working with some flora and beast master sorcerers to see what we can do and it's a fascinating subject. Growing good grapes is the obvious place to start but the aging and fermentation process seems resistant to most of our efforts so far..."

She's gotten very excited about the topic and you can tell she could talk about wine for hours. You guess this is the kind of thing people who don't have to worry much about survival get up to.

Just then a bell chimed in the office.

Jasmine : "It looks like our time is up for today."