Alicornutopia

Depends heavily on the book. You can get introductory volumes, you can get copies of incomprehensibly obtuse notes-to-self, you can get treatises on the effects of ambient temperature alone on a hundred different spells.

Fairies are not wholly invulnerable to food claims from other fairies (while humans are wholly invulnerable to food claims from other humans). A fairy that eats human food will wind up with a claim from at least one human (although not necessarily an alive or nearby human). A fairy that goes foraging for breakfast in Fairyland is almost certainly safe. There is a small risk of claim, but it doesn't add up much even if you spend thousands of years eating from every plant you find and it's not worth it for anybody to follow up unless they're just trying to order you in desperation just in case. The exceptions are berrybushes (who grow berries on their antlers), as the strongest example, and a second-tier of weaker but still good quality food claims including leaflet tree products among unspecified others, and possibly some third tier of fairies associated with specific plants but not that intimately.

An unused, weak food claim can wear off, although this is hard to verify because if it comes into play in any way it's not "unused". An inter-world food claim or one that is ever used for everything lasts forever. Someone with a lot of food claims on them already is less vulnerable to a new claim with any failure rate, but not immune; and the number of existing claims has no effect on claims without a failure rate. So, if Promise feeds a human - not even just a haw; anything from Fairyland at all that she picked up and put in their mouth - human's hers now. If Promise feeds a fairy a random Fairyland flower, the fairy will not be thus vassaled, at least not to Promise. If Promise feeds a fairy a haw, she's got a decent chance, maybe 80%, and if she feeds a bunch of fairies haws the 20% who aren't claimed will be likely to have already been food-claimed in their pasts.

In general, cannibalism and sex acts do not interact with food vassalization.

I recommend reading the Promise sandboxes for this sort of background understanding if you haven't.

Is sex-shifting oneself a plausible kind-magic?

I guess. It's not right aesthetically but it's within range on scope and doesn't break anything.

Alicorn wrote:Depends heavily on the book. You can get introductory volumes, you can get copies of incomprehensibly obtuse notes-to-self, you can get treatises on the effects of ambient temperature alone on a hundred different spells.

Let's say an introductory volume, and one that assumes some background knowledge but is as well-rounded as an introductory volume.

(And, for that matter, how did Visitor from the short story get his knowledge of sorcery?)

Alicorn wrote:I recommend reading the Promise sandboxes for this sort of background understanding if you haven't.

Aye, am doing so.

Ezra wrote:Is sex-shifting oneself a plausible kind-magic?

Unfortunately Sadde's most definitely not a fairy.

I haven't fully defined Visitor's backstory. A standard intro volume will explain how to do lights and purify water and maybe make candied dewdrops or warm or cool things or something like that.

And how advanced does a volume need to be to contain information on how to make gate magic? Or would that require a specific gate magic tome?

You'd probably get a gate magic book. The fairyland publishing industry is really informal and nobody is commissioning The Standard Book Of Spells Grade 4.

If you wanted a thing that did the thing and was closer to how I perceive the aesthetic (although I acknowledge that I could be wrong) maybe you could get a kind magic that had someone continually shapeshifting towards their perception of themself?

Alicorn wrote:You'd probably get a gate magic book. The fairyland publishing industry is really informal and nobody is commissioning The Standard Book Of Spells Grade 4.

I would commission it if the economy weren’t barter, with one of the common barter items being people. Maybe I’d start a school instead of a library.

That kind of kind magic could be effective against people turning you into animals.