You're better able to read people than most

Although you find it hard to get along with most people (since most people are not quite at the vaunted intellectual heights you occupy), you've never had any trouble reading them. Indeed, since you read Varithex's Compendium of Goode Faces and Badde: A Treatise onne Knoweing the People, you've found them practically as easy to read as your books. This insight doesn't always tell you what to say, of course, but it does help you avoid being swindled, and it helps you make sure no one around you is secretly gunning for your power (a constant concern for any mage).

You came to Torwin originally to study a spring up in the hills near here that was reputed to have magical healing properties. You spent nearly all of your saved coin getting here - and then, of course, the rumor turned out to be utter bunk. You're tired and exasperated; and, worse, you have no way out of this gratingly mundane town and back to parts of the world that actually have interesting things (and people) in them. You've tried to sell your services as a hedge mage, but no one around here can afford the cost of magic - and many of them are distrustful of it anyway, you know.

Gorto interrupts your downtrodden reflections by thunking two foamy mugs of ale onto the bar in front of you. "Here yeh go, Gavilard," he says respectfully. "Enjoy 'em!" You nod your thanks and slide a couple of small coins across the bar to the man in payment.