Skrel ended up sharing some of those broaches of shielding with me with a bit of convincing. Between two of those and the last pair of life alchemy necklaces I had enough funds from the group loot pile. Plus that got rid of the illegal type magic the necklaces used. I still had the Azure Spider Silk and that looked bad, but I believe that I could truthfully claim research on such a substance. Anyway, Skrel wanted a special pair of boots in addition to the earing to makeup for his lack of speed. The Boots of springing and Striding was the project for that night in Maki's portable tower.
I vaguely heard the others talking up storm in the other part of the castle, but couldn't really make out anything. The only real thing I heard was Maki talking about how the Great Old Wyrm was a dreamer in a similar manner to Kniana. She had an intuition on who would be successful or not. This combined with how the marking ceremony works with us getting our custom symbol. Some believe the symbol itself determines just how well you'd do in this world, but I never put too much into the stories. My success be be driven by superior product, not fate.