He's sending words mentally along with his more native Telepathy, and Tongues translates the words for her (but not for Tora). This lets Aria start noticing places where the translation is slightly inaccurate; where Gandalf says 'wizard', he thinks merely 'mage', or at least she is unfamiliar with the more specific concept he is using. This is not very surprising; people on other continents practice different traditions of arcane magic. She has heard it said wizardry was invented by the ancient Azlanti, who brought it to Avistan.

<Teleporting is far more widespread among wizards than telepathy, where we come from! But I know people on different continents have very different magical traditions. And wizards do have to be quite powerful before they can teleport. If I draw you a rough map of the world, could you point out where we are?>

At the same time, Aria is a bit confused, because she didn't notice him cast a spell! Is he really a wizard, or is he some manner of innately telepathic creature? (Or both?) He looks and smells like a human, but for a mage that may only mean he wishes to pass as a locally-common person.

So she casts detect magic. This requires both words and gestures, but in her dire tiger form few non-druids would recognize them - unless he has his own magic sight, in which case it should be obvious what she's doing. After a few rounds, she can see three auras about his person:

- Something under his cloak (moderate divination and conjuration)

- His staff (moderate, universal)

- A ring (strong abjuration)

...well! Those seem to be quite powerful magic items! She can well believe he's a wizard, or at least some sort of mage. The odd thing is that he doesn't have many more, weaker ones, or any kind of headband. Unless they're shielded from her sight, and those are his weakest items that he doesn't bother hiding?

Aria resolves to be cautious and to avoid antagonizing this Gandalf until she knows better what's going on.

Gandalf is also surprised!  Tora and Aria's thoughts both feel strange - and, strange in ways he hasn't seen before in any Speaking Peoples or animals of Middle-Earth.  Strange - not dangerous or evil, but strange.  He's now even more sure they aren't from Arda.

<Yes, if you're from this world that we are now in... but it seems to me you are from farther away.  Eä holds many worlds, it has been said.  It surprises me greatly that people from another world should come here to this world, Arda, but it would surprise me more if there were another place in Arda where teleportation of people with bodies were common.>

He's implying they're on a different planet? How is that remotely possible? No-one has an interplanetary-capable teleport, and if they did they wouldn't put it on a mirror in a snake's mouth!

<Then perhaps we might go home by plane shifting. What gods have clerics on this world, and which of them are powerful enough to plane shift?>

Meanwhile, she shifts human again, and takes out a bit of paper and charcoal to draw a rough sketch of the continents of Golarion.

Gandalf watches, intrigued, as she turns human - not just with his eyes, but with his other senses and his Ring.  It looks like she's not just putting off the tiger's skin, but she's actually shifting her body as well as skin.  He can't quite bring to his mind's eye what it looked like to watch one of his cousins in Valinor taking on a body or shifting it around - that's one of the things that was shrouded when he accepted this mission to Middle-Earth - but he can believe it might have been like this.

<Amazing!> he says.  <I have seen several skinchangers in my time, but none of them changed with as deep a shifting as you!>

<But I would be very careful before shifting planes...  The plane most easy to reach from here is the wraith-world(*), and it is very easy for the Dark Lord to see people who have shifted themselves there, and if he sees you it is hard to escape his gaze.  Unless of course you are dead and giving yourself over to the Judge(*), but the Judge only summons the dead.>

Gandalf is more confused by what she's saying about clerics.  It sounds something like the Maiar associated with a Vala?  Or how the Valar or Maiar sometimes individually teach Elves they're particularly close to?  Except more organized and much more common?  What are the Gods or Powers of her world like?

<I'm not sure we have exactly what you mean by clerics...  I know some people who might be?  And they know more than most about other planes" (he's thinking of Galadriel and Elrond, particularly, and until recently he would've added Saruman) "- but I am not sure any of us could safely shift you into another plane besides the wraith-world, and surely none of us could do it safely and quickly.

<And the Dark Lord is moving even now, so I fear we would not have time for a lengthy study.>

*(or, "spirit-plain")
*(If Gandalf were speaking in a language, he might use the Quenya name "Námo" or title "Mandos," but with non-language-based osanwe, what comes through is the meaning of the name:  "Judge.")

That comment is well calibrated to flatter her and draw her interest!

<Many mages can polymorph - that is, shape-shift - but they keep their mind and soul separate from the body. It is, as you say, only skin-deep. When people are given spells that do all the hard work, they see no reason to spend time and effort understanding what is being done.>

<We druids do it by understanding the animal so fully that we can become the animal. When I am a tiger, there is no part of me that is human. I'm not an ordinary tiger; I can talk and reason and cast spells; but I do it as a tiger would who had grown up to be smarter, not as a human who happens to look like a tiger.>

<Our animal companions are not usually druids in their own right, though some are, but they take some steps along a similar road. Tora was born a tiger, and I helped her grow smarter and to learn some human languages, and in the process she came closer to understanding humans.>

Tora sees it a little differently. <The first human I met were very evil. I would never have learned that some are different without speaking to them.>

The matter of the planes is much more troubling. <I would not claim to know anything about other planets,> she thinks at him. <I never studied them, or been to one, and all I know is what I heard in passing. But I believe the major planes, and the greatest gods, are universal. Nirvana and Abaddon, Axis and Maelstrom, they are some of the cornerstones of reality. Perhaps they are hard to reach from here, as you say, but more likely it is the lack of clerics with plane shift that is the matter; the spell is a tool made for a precise purpose. And the caster shifts themselves first of all, and takes others along; someone who has not visited the other planes could not send me there that way.>

<If the gods choose not to grant this spell to their followers on this world, then - I fear we are unlikely to find a way despite them. Only the mightiest wizards on Golarion can travel to other planes by their own power, and druids cannot do even that. Our business is with the world, not elsewhere.>

<We know the Judge of the Dead as Pharasma. I am not sure how one might bodily follow the souls' path to reach Her; She resides on a plane known to us, but the place of judgement is separate from that, I think.>

Gandalf strokes his beard.  <And I do not know of these planes you speak of... except perhaps the Maelstrom?  The Everlasting Darkness?... and I would certainly not call them the cornerstones of reality.  Are those not the Music and the Secret Fire?  Perhaps there is some even deeper disagreement here?  Are the gods of your planet perhaps less communicative than ours were?...>

(He pronounces "Everlasting Darkness," "Music," and "Secret Fire" in Westron, as well as sending the concepts through wordless osanwe.  The Darkness is void, chaos, what is outside the metered bounds of ordered reality.  The Music is what gives pattern and beauty; the Fire is life and life-givingness; both also have faint half-remembered memories of love and beauty which cannot be put into words.)

He also briefly wonders - does Aria's world have a different Judge, or are they conflating Mandos and Nienna?  For not the first time, he wishes he remembered more of his time in Valinor before taking this mission.

<But as intriguing as this may be, we are in this world, so yes, our business at present is here.  I fear there is much urgent business ere the Dark Lord strikes - do you have plans as yet?>

And his own urgent business has just gotten more urgent, but he doesn't yet trust Aria enough to say that he's about to ride away to the north as fast as he can.  Much less to breathe a word of the One Ring.

<The near Maelstrom is inhabited, but deeper in it gradually becomes total Chaos, until the very laws that link past, present and future are gone. It cannot support life and thought as we know them. Some people say it is the primordial state of the cosmos before Creation, and going into the Maelstrom merely means to go outside it.>

<The source of life is the Plane of Positive Energy. Souls grow there before moving to the Material and lodging in bodies. It is not a place where anyone can easily go, and the gods do not dwell there. And it has a counterpart, the Plane of Negative Energy, which I suppose you could call eternally dark, since its fundamental property is to destroy all things... (*)>

<But it seems to me that you are describing a very different cosmology (**) from that which we know. Patterns are the element of Law; love and beauty most would assign to the element of Good; they are orthogonal. Pure Law is not beautiful; pure selfless love is not rule-bound.>

<And, with respect, I would think the world with plentiful clerics, the strongest of whom can commune with their deities to ask questions, and summon lesser servants of the gods who can also answer questions, and a great many who have visited the other planes and spoken with the people there, and a major goddess of Travel who includes interplanar travel in Her remit - I think our world stands better informed of greater Creation, than a world where even reaching Nirvana seems outside any mage's abilities.>

(*) Aria's mental concept of 'all things' is closer to 'all natural and proper things' than 'everything that can possibly exist'.

(**) lit. 'planology'.

Tora's sure this is all very fascinating to human-shaped Aria, but she's focused on more important things.

<Our next plan was to find dinner. Who is the Dark Lord and can we eat him?> 

She is aware that most of the time, the answer to that kind of question is 'no' or at least 'not easily', but it pays to ask! Keep your head in the game, as the humans say, and the game in your mouth. Aria has helped her hunt and take down (and, sometimes, eat) some very interesting things over the years.

<Many people from your world have visited these planes?  Then yes, you would be well-informed...  The Maelstrom does sound like the Everlasting Darkness, and it might be telling of the relation between our worlds that it is the only plane that sounds similar?>

He strokes his beard.

And then he turns to Tora.

<A good question!  You could eat the Dark Lord's body, and that would help - it would take perhaps some centuries, but he would come back and build a new body, as he did before.  Though I would not be surprised if his body proved poisonous to you.>

<Though, given all the defenses between here and the Dark Tower, I am hoping for a more permanent solution.>

Destroying the Ring, but he's still not going to mention that.

<A Dark Lord with a Dark Tower is a big name for someone who can just be eaten by a tiger every few centuries>, Tora says dubiously. <Why does he scare you so much?> 

Aria's posture indicated some deference towards this wizard, and powerful wizards aren't much weaker than even quite magical tigers.

<Because he has learned deceit, and turned his enemies against each other while gathering many armies of Orcs* and Men and others who worship him as a god, with powerful magic to strengthen them...>  He shakes his head.

<Once, a large dog did kill his body.> A brief smile at the story.  <But that was long ago, and he has learned since, and invested more power.  The last time, it took all the armies of the Last Alliance.>

* The concept Gandalf sends for "orcs" is... not quite off for the sort of orcs Aria's familiar with, but surprising - "twisted, evil, chaos," and a sense of sadness about it.

What happened to the local orcs? She'll mentally add it to her growing list of questions, along with 'how did orcs and humans spread to multiple planets' and the much more pressing 'why do all the animals and plants here look like those at home???'

<What is he, then? A wizard? And what is his name?>

Aria is also a little dubious at this story of an immortal mage (a lich, perhaps?) who is 'worshipped as a god' in a world with no clerics and has 'powerful magic' in a world without teleports and was once eaten killed by a large dog (how large, exactly?)

<A Maia*, similar to the gods** themselves but with less power.  In this era he is called Sauron.***>

* The meaning that comes through is "spirit", with connotations of "immortal, ancient, older than the world."  Gandalf isn't thinking at all of the literal Quenya meaning, "beautiful."
** Gandalf says "Valar", but the term has been mapping almost exactly throughout this conversation.
*** Gandalf sends the exact word as well.  The meaning is "The Abhorred," which maps pretty exactly onto the connotations.

<We call some lesser gods demigods (*). They have a physical body that can be destroyed and takes them some time to regenerate; to truly destroy them one must slay them twice within a year, or slay them in their own domain of power, and perhaps neither of these would suffice for some.>

<To be perfectly clear, even the least of the demigods would be far beyond our power to contest, and beyond any but the greatest wizards and clerics in the history of the world.> Single-handedly, that is, without teams of paladins on griffons lying in ambush. <But I suppose nothing rules out the existence of lesser demigods than those we know of.>

<Or perhaps you mean something else when you say Maia are similar to the gods. Does he grant his followers divine magic? Does he hear their prayers, and is he empowered through them? Do their souls come to him when they die? Also, our gods are not said to be older than Creation, but there is no consensus in our world about how Creation came to be.>

<What true gods are active in this world, and what they do if they do not grant magic to clerics?>

(*) Lit. 'halfway-gods' in their power and abilities, though not 'half-gods' in parentage.

Gandalf feels reflexively she's asking perilous questions.  Not many people ask questions like this about Sauron, and even fewer ask them without planning to serve him and pray to him in hopes of magic.  But Aria is new to Arda; she seems to be asking them in full innocence...

(And it's truer than she thinks that Sauron is beyond their power to contest.)

<To some of his followers, he does grant magic.  I do not know how many; they shroud it in boastings and lies.  Some souls, he does bring to him - again, I do not know how many.  I suspect it is most of the Orcs and few of the Men - it requires special dark arts to divert Men's souls from their natural course - but I do not know and would not ask.>

<The gods - it is a long story, but they do not intervene much in this world anymore.  It is best to lay our plans in hope, but without expecting more intervention.>

Aria did not know the souls of humans to be different from those of orcs, but she is not normally concerned with people after they die; this conversation is already coming close to exhausting her knowledge on the subject. Perhaps Gandalf means this Sauron is a Chaotic or Chaotic Evil demigod, and the local orcs tend to those alignments, like the ones in Belkzen.

<You have told us much, and yet we still know little, because this world is new to us.>

<You asked of our plans. I want to learn about this world, and how to - relate to it, to place myself in it, to promote the same values I did on Golarion. And how to find our way back, if it is possible. I did not expect to find answers very quickly, and now that I know we are in another world entirely> (or so he claims) <it might take years, or decades.>

<I was going to travel to Edoras, and if I learned nothing there, perhaps to seek out the White Wizard I was told lives nearby, or the elves in the forest farther to the north. But you are clearly knowledgeable,> and not just in comparison with some random villagers. <Do you have better advice for me? And is there anything you would ask of us, in return for your advice or in general?> 

She is also very curious (and suspicious) how he found out about them and arrived so quickly to question them if he cannot even teleport, but she's not going to press him on the subject. It has not escaped her notice that this Gandalf has said absolutely nothing about himself.

And Gandalf is keeping in mind that she's said little about herself, either.  She seems to be holding herself out as something like an Ent... but she's had a lot of questions about the larger world.  She might just be trying to place herself in it, like she says; but she might be hiding something else.  Her mind and background are too strange for him to be at all confident right now.

<Do not go to Saruman the White - I just escaped from his tower.  He used to be my friend and ally, but he recently betrayed us, saying that we - or, he - should defeat Sauron only to rule in his stead.  He tried to convince me to join him in his scheme, and when I refused, imprisoned me.  After escaping, I visited the king in Edoras, to warn him and seek aid.  The king is sick, and would not hear my warnings.  His advisor Grima is - either in Saruman's pay, or deceived by him.  He bade me take a horse and be gone.  Which I would have done anyway, for I have urgent business in the North - allies to warn and protect before Sauron strikes there, as he may have already done.>

He peers at Tora, and then Aria.

<So I came to befriend* a horse, when you met me.  But they could use good counsel in Edoras, if one could win their trust; I fear they may shortly be embroiled in war.  The Elves** in the Golden Wood*** would also, I think, be friends - and their Lady is in fact one of those who might know something of the planes.>

* Other people might have heard this word as "tame," but Gandalf is thinking of it as more "befriend," so that's what Aria hears through his osanwe.
** The sense that comes through with this word is close to "Speakers; singers; elder kindred."
*** Gandalf has too high respect for Lorien to think to himself of anything in Middle-Earth by that name.

Aria is well aware that different human cultures have different customs; it is a wonder that she can talk so easily to humans from another planet (if indeed she is). So she takes this grayscale palette of White and Gray and Black-maybe-lich wizards in her stride, while noting she does not yet know what the locals mean by those colors. Likewise, she does not know why he associates elves with speaking and singing; at least the reference to their long life-spans seems clear.

That Gandalf expects to be able to befriend a wild horse, to the point of riding it, is - well. It is certainly possible for some people to do as much; it is just that in her world, those people can summon or conjure or Call their own steeds, or become horses in their own right, and so they do not normally bother the wild ones. (Although that white stallion was an impressive specimen!)

That Gandalf prefers to do so rather than 'taking' (or buying, loaning, stealing, etc.) a tame horse from the local king is surely important, but what does it mean? Does he dislike tame animals, as some druids do? Does he think to befriend one would be like befriending a slave, without yet freeing it of its burden? That he won't ride a horse being ordered into it? Perhaps she should think of him as closer to a ranger than a wizard - an old man with no powerful spells, but enough animal empathy to befriend and ride a wild horse a long way. 

If so, it speaks very highly of him - or perhaps of his ability to judge her. Does his proclivity for telepathy indicate he is reading her thoughts, or perhaps her emotions and desires?