Memory 12: Teacher
So, this is after the Battle of Dzur Mountain. Tazendra is hanging out on top of a floating building (well, ruins) that she happened to levitate*, helping to teleport (a spell she invented) supplies/people to and from Dzur Mountain. She's also chatting with a Dragonlord, Morrolan e'Drien, Duke (well, Count at this time) of Southmoor about magic, and pointing out annoying spells they can rain on the enemy below. See, Morrolan was born out East, where, even if he had been born at a time where sorcery worked, he couldn't have used it because he was not a citizen of the Empire. So he picked up witchcraft. But now he is, and he wants to learn sorcery.

Tazendra kind of thinks witchcraft is 'well, I suppose it can be useful, but sorcery is better'. Some of this is snobbishness that Honor won't latch onto*** -- witchcraft is used by Easterners (normal humans); canonically Morrolan is the only known Dragaeran witch, and, well, he was raised in the East. Some of it is outlook -- witchcraft is a lot more of an art than a science and generally tends towards less showy effects**. And, if you can't use a spell to set battlefields on fire, what good is it? (Answer: maybe when you don't have even amorphia, let alone the Orb, witchcraft is a bit more appealing.)

Anyway, there's a lot of the basic theory of sorcery in this conversation, so Honor probably can start making up her own spells beyond variants of 'throw energy into it until it explodes/melts/catches on fire'.

The Empress shows up and inquires as to their health. Tazendra compliments Morrolan's ability at sorcery, and Morrolan compliments her teaching skills. The Empress is looking for Lord Brimford, the warlock, and Morrolan tells her he's down recruiting animals to go harass the enemy -- witchcraft does useful things, like let you sic wolves and dzur on your enemies, which between that and the dead rising to fight for Team Zerika****, is really screwing with morale. Morrolan points out that, as the Empress, Zerika could telepathically talk to any citizen she wanted to; and the Empress is like 'yes, but do you know how many citizens there are? finding a person I don't know well in that crowd is a pain'(5) and points out Morrolan knows Brimford and witchcraft is good for telepathically talking to people.

Morrolan calls Brimford and finds out where he is, and Tazendra (with Morrolan's help) teleports him up to the roof. And, hey, this is the first time Honor remembers an actual normal human/Easterner from her world! I mean, she presumed they existed because she knew what to call them, and had mentioned them before, but... look! At least one is a citizen of the empire, and nobility even(6).

Presumably this involves Morrolan giving Tazendra whatever mental picture she needed to grab Brimford and teleport him -- I don't know if that was a witchcraft or a sorcery thing. (It could be done with either at this point.) Anyway, the Empress and Brimford run off and Morrolan and Tazendra continue their conversation.

What Honor Gets
-- A lot of basic sorcery theory, suitable for instructing a promising beginner.
-- Witchcraft. Useful and kind of neat, but sorcery is better. OTOH, Morrolan can do both and he's younger than I am and a Dragonlord. I bet I could learn both. If I wanted to. But I don't really want to. (Except maybe if I need to go somewhere without amorphia.)
-- ... I can teleport things.
-- This probably won't cover sorcerous telepathic conversation, which is... possible.
-- So we do have Easterners in the Empire. They just aren't common, or I would have remembered them earlier.

Teleportation (and Psychic Communication)
Okay, so Tazendra can teleport things -- bring herself and others to and from familiar locations. Now, I could just say that she's unlikely to do this without the Orb, because it's a lot more delicate than Blowing Things Up. OTOH, if there was an emergency, Honor would totally risk it to get her teammates out of danger and back to Lyvus (probably the only location she could manage -- maybe some of the other dorms, but at that point, Lyvus would be more useful).

And the bracer could restrict it. Canon could go either way -- even gifted sorcerers couldn't teleport using Orb 1.0, and experiments tended to end badly. And the one attempt to teleport something via Elder Sorcery(7) had mixed results, but that was also trying to teleport several things to the Paths of the Dead. OTOH, teleportation quickly catches on such that every city has two-bit sorcerers making a living by sending paying customers from A to B... less than a handful of years after the spell is invented. So it's not the kind of spell only a wizard can use.

Also, teleportation tends to make normal humans nauseous.

Also, I can't figure out if Morrolan gave Tazendra the coordinates she needed via witchcraft or sorcery. 200+ years later, psychically talking to friends is totally doable. OTOH, I don't know if that relies on the fact everyone's mind is linked to the Orb(8), so uses it as a relay as well as a power source. It might just have been easier for Morrolan to do it via witchcraft, in which case, Tazendra learns nothing new about magic from it.

(Tangent: given that Selendis's powers are psionic (and thus, closer to witchcraft than sorcery in Tazendra's mind), I wonder if Tazendra's great esteem for Selendis will make her reconsider her stance on Eastern superstitions. Plus, Honor lacking Tazendra's 'bah, Easterners' bigotry, and being in a place where she couldn't even use Elder Sorcery -- and, she can't create amorphia like Aliera, Adron or Vlad could. (Whether she could contain it... not sure, since only those three seem to do it, and those three are special))


* She's not keeping it up; she passed the duty off to Morrolan's witches, who couldn't get the castle up, but can maintain it.
** Sorcery is pretty much using your mind to shape an external source of energy; witchcraft is basically various psionic things, using your own personal (or other casters') energy.
*** While Honor is all 'yay our Empire is awesome', she kind of ignores any hint that Tazendra is rather a big bigot when it comes to normal humans. (Though Tazendra doesn't seem to have any bias against the Warlock/Lord Brimford or Arra, the two allied Easterners that appear on-screen with her, so she may already have the loophole of 'well, they were unusually gifted', in that both were skilled witches and actually helpful.)
**** It's a good guess that, whatever a normal fantasy society considers taboo magic, most Dragaerans are like 'what's the big deal?' or 'but not in the house' or 'that's technically illegal, but that doesn't stop the nobility or organized crime from doing it'.
(5) The Empress isn't lying here, but she's misleading. Brimford is her human lover, so she probably could call him up on the Orb... if she wanted everyone to know about this and cause a scandal when she's trying to keep her position and gain support. Tazendra knows none of this, and probably would never figure it out, due to lack of give a damn.
(6) Honor doesn't remember this is because the Empress gave him a title for being a badass witch.
(7) I presume it was Elder Sorcery given that the Orb was going haywire at the time. Which is another factor -- Sethra was probably lucky it worked at all.
(8) I guess I could go through the Vlad books and see if Vlad or anyone ever talks to a non-citizen using sorcery (and not witchcraft).