>Hmm. Miners and archaeologists would love to have us around, among others, once we work all the kinks out of these gizmos. Might even be our ticket to the big city right there.
>Grin.
>Thank you, Marissa.
>There's certainly money to be made finding rare metals and other valuables. Of course, there's quite a difference between finding a vein of a valuable mineral, and finding it in a quantity that makes it economical to mine. The Miner's Guild has an outstanding bounty on the later posted at the guild. Some people try their hand at it, now and again. You're probably better positioned to fulfill that one than most people, although it's still rather akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, even with the dowsing rods.
>You grin and thank Marisa again. This gift is certainly going to come in handy.
>Could we dowse out non-material things, such as concentrations of faith (presumably from the faithful), or conceptual things such as a shortcut to a physical place? Or a city by name?
>Keep on trekkin' down the road.
>You don't know if faith can be concentrated enough in a tangible sense to actually exist as a measurable force (at least as far as someone like you could tell). However, you can certainly sense concentrations of
magic, to a degree. It may be possible that if a concentration of faith were directed towards the manifestation of something specific, you might be able to detect
that, in a similar way that you can detect magic, but you honestly don't know. You've never had occasion to observe such a thing. You could not detect a shortcut simply by virtue of its shortness. You might, say, be able to find a mountain pass by sensing configurations of rock and feeling for absences in it, but this would be a hit or miss thing. They mightn't be distinct enough (or at too great a range) to really pick up in most cases. You could not find a city by name, or by any property that was not in some way a tangible part of its physical being.
>As you continue along the road, you pass a few carts making their way to Braston, bearing fresh produce of various sorts. You briefly exchange pleasantries with the drivers as you pass; farmers, most of them. You even recognize a couple faces, though none you know well. Judging by the time of day, this is probably around when most people would start trickling into Braston if they left Easthaven at dawn. They'll doubtless get rarer as you proceed; nobody
plans to come to market after nightfall. Aside from the occasional traveler, another hour or so passes without event.
>You're starting to get hungry; it occurs to you that you haven't had much to eat today at all.
