Gnomes. Varan isn't going to disobey, though. First of all because he has no better ideas for avoiding giving offense than just doing whatever anyone wants him to, and second because that actually sounds really helpful. He visits the café.

There is a young lady meeting the description looking around for him at the restaurant in question.

Varan walks up to her and asks if she's the person he's supposed to meet. His voice is quiet, his posture very deliberately nonthreatening and aiming for not seeming scared but compromising wherever that might possibly involve seeming in any conceivable way threatening.

"Yeah, I'm Belmarniss. You're Varan? Apparently you made an impression on my mom's gnome friend."

"I think she was just interested in Nidal but if that counts, I guess."

"Well, it's interesting, not a ton of people make it out."

"I guess the people who want to leave and the people who can leave mostly aren't the same people."

"Cheliax is like that too, or tries to be, but one meets more of their defectors. Possibly my sample's odd because they often shelter at the Worldwound and I guess you'd have no strong reason to do that."

"I've never heard anything good about Cheliax. I'd definitely leave - but I guess I'd also leave Nidal." Shrug. "Never been to the Worldwound."

"Me and my adventuring buddy pop up there now and then, kill a few demons, nearly die, go home for a while. It's a good place to get into straightforward fights if you want the circles, and I do, but it's cold and unpleasant. What do they say about Cheliax in Nidal? I think of them as geopolitical twins, albeit not identical twins."

He laughs, startled. "Uh, they’re weak, they’re easy prey when they come visiting, Cheliax has a fucked-up justice system because they have this stupid god of suffering and he lets them - " Varan's been getting worked up and animated but he abruptly cuts himself off and says something softer and more aware of his audience. "They, uh, mostly don’t torture rich people. Because Asmodeus says torture is for making people weaker than you unhappy."

"- huh. Let's get a table, I want to take notes if you don't mind -" She pulls a chair at one of the outdoor tables.

Whichever table she wants is fine with him.

"Would you say Zon-Kuthon is not a god of suffering or just that he is not a stupid god of suffering?"

"First thing," he says with a tiny shy hint of something that might be a grin.

"What's his domain, then?"

"I think that might be a term of art but if you just mean what he's a god of, darkness and pain. Sometimes people suffer when they’re in the dark or in pain but that isn’t important."

"Huge fan of the dark myself! Who needs a stupid sky fireball, besides all the plants in the world? Are there people who are similarly huge fans of pain? In, uh, quite that much generality, I know there's people who like it if you pull their hair in bed or whatever."

Varan kind of boggles at this question. "Of course? I don't know anyone I'm confident wouldn't ever mind any pain but I think they'd tend to move to Pangolais instead of staying in the sticks where I'm from and - well, I get closer over time. Everyone I knew at home was closer than people here. Except this one person I met once who just seemed... incredibly tired of absolutely everything all the time. Come to think of it, I don't actually know that my aunt had any positive feelings about pain at all, but she never complained."

"...those observations don't strongly suggest to me that the Nidalese are legitimately huge fans of pain or even that most of them with exceptions like your aunt are."

"I don't think most people anywhere like all pain. I do think I'm a basically random person who didn't just end up here because of especially liking pain, and I'm confident no one in Absalom could make me scream. It's kind of hard to tell how much the people back home liked pain more than you, though, we don't have stuff like games that aren't painful to play or anything like that." Very slight shrug. "It doesn't matter unless you hate the sun enough to pack up and leave everything you've ever known, or, actually I have no idea if you grew up here."

"Oh, no, I grew up in Noctimar, which is under Taldor, my parents moved here after I had them resurrected. Is it pretty feasible in Nidal to steer for kinds of pain you like?"

"Pretty much? Once you're an adult, anyway, or if your parents are nice. You want to not piss anybody off - my mother pissed my aunt off and she knows some spells so obviously my aunt broke her fingers at the same time as she stole her spellbook, but she really did have it coming, so just don't have it coming. Anyway, as long as you're nice - and not a pushover, because you probably don't want to end up at the mercy of the first person who has their eye on you, better you beat everyone who wants you for their sweetheart or just hold out for someone who likes the complement of what you like. I did the second thing. Uh, to be totally honest, it only worked for a year or so and then they wanted to hurt me in a way I wasn't comfortable with and I skipped town, so you might want to make sure you're on top of any relationship you get into if you're really worried about that - honestly, I wouldn't be really worried about that, if you've been to the Worldwound and survived you're probably stronger than anyone in most villages. And, hm, you'd have a hard time avoiding being whipped for Night's Return but it wouldn't really be that hard a sell if you wanted to do something like have all the skin removed from your ears instead. At least, not where I'm from. There might be places where you just absolutely can't - well, you can probably get away with a lot in most villages as long as you can convince the whole village not to gang up on you like they would if you were Chelish. I guess I don't really know how you do it in the cities, everyone says Pangolais especially isn't safe at all and you shouldn't go there if you can help it. I guess the hardest thing is really that it's hard to get anyone to cure you if you get sick, harder than it is out here because the Midnight Lord's clerics don't heal people and you have to get a druid to do it. Other than that... yeah, pretty easy to stick to kinds of pain you like okay."

"To be clear, I am in no way considering moving to Nidal, I'm just curious about it, you don't need to get specific about what circle of sorcerer I'd need to be to assure what kind of treatment."

"...Yeah. Makes sense. So how's Noctimar?"