"Iomedae is the Lawful Good goddess of triage and defeating evil. Hundreds of years ago she was born to an ordinary mortal family on my home planet of Golarion and lived as a mortal, becoming the most powerful paladin to ever walk that planet before or since principally through her participation in the Shining Crusade against necromancer Tar-Baphon and his legions; in her mortal life she was a follower of and chosen for paladinhood by Aroden, the Lawful Neutral god of civilization, Who is now deceased in a failed attempt to bring about the prophesied Age of Glory on Golarion about a century ago. The failure not only killed Him but also prevented prophecy from working as it previously had across the entire planet. Iomedae ascended in her sixties, and is called the Inheritor in the modern day because She took over many of Aroden's previous areas of concern and institutions devoted to Him upon His death. Her church on Golarion is headquartered in the country of Lastwall."

This is baffling but it’s hard to ask useful questions just by repeating words. She makes an interested noise and proceeds toward a hotel.

"- I'm not sure what to elaborate on. I have a copy of the Acts of Iomedae, Her holy book, if you would like me to read from it."

"...Would like you to read from it in a safe place to sleep because I a safe place to sleep you?"

"I am not tired now and can begin to read it in whatever place you plan to invite me to sleep."

She smiles like this is what she wanted.

Around another corner and past another half a block she enters a building and speaks to the man at the front desk, gesturing to Blai, and trades some magic coins for a crystal necklace and directions to a room somewhere on the second floor.

He seems superfluous to this interaction, though he's really impressed by how high-magic the place seems.

The hotel room door opens when booped by the crystal. Once she’s demonstrated that, she hands it to Blai.

The room contains a bed sized for one medium humanoid and enough space to set down a reasonably sized suitcase next to it. There's a window that turns opaque when tapped (and then transparent when tapped again), a spot on the wall that lights up when tapped (and goes dark when tapped again), and a picture on one wall showing the approximate angle of the sun with some specific times marked and a caption (though of course the text is not in Taldane).

He observes the demonstrations of these functions, tries them himself, and sits on the bed and puts his bag down in the bag-putting location. And starts the process of getting out of his chainmail, if this is to be his room for the night.

She waits for him to be done with that and ready to read from that book. Hopefully he'll be the type of reader who intends to communicate each specific idea and not the type of reader who intends to repeat each sound.

He's usually the second kind but this particular book is also relatively new to him and of great interest. It opens on a ballad-esque rendition of the events which are to be told herein in more detail: the youth, call to paladinhood, adventures, philosophy, and ascension of Iomedae.

What the fuck. But as long as he intends the words to mean things she can slowly add to her vocabulary until she can manage to say something sort of useful.

"No paladin was here before."

"...do you want me to talk more about paladins in general?"

"...I want you to talk about gods in general?"

"Oh! All right. There are many gods. Major ones widely known in the area where I've spent my life include Iomedae, of course, but also Erastil, also Lawful Good, god of farming and hunting; Shelyn, Neutral Good, goddess of art and love; Sarenrae, Neutral Good, goddess of the sun and redemption; Abadar, Lawful Neutral, god of trade and cities; Pharasma, True Neutral, the Creator and the goddess of birth and death; Nethys, True Neutral, mad god of magic; Gozreh, True Neutral, god of nature and the sea; Desna, Chaotic Good, goddess of travel and dreams; Cayden Cailean, Chaotic Good, god of alcohol and luck; Calistria, chaotic neutral goddess of lust and revenge; Gorum, chaotic neutral god of battle; Asmodeus, Lawful Evil god of tyranny and contracts; Zon-Kuthon, Lawful Evil god of pain and darkness; Norgorber, Neutral Evil god of crime; Rovagug, Chaotic Evil god of destruction; and Lamashtu, Chaotic Evil goddess of monsters. Not all of those are equally popular and there are many less famed gods and demigods of all alignments, often specific to a particular species - Torag is one of those I know, a dwarf god - or very narrow area of concern."

"...There are not gods? I heard about no gods before?"

"- that's surprising to me. I would not be surprised if you had heard of very different gods, or some of the same ones under different names and with different focuses. It's known that there are many planets and that some planes at least are of infinite extent. I would not be very surprised if a place with very little magic were neglected by all the gods, possibly to the point of widespread ignorance about their existence, but a place with a lot of magic seems like a place with a lot of resources that should interest many gods who want resources for things, and you seem to have a lot of magic."

"...A lot of magic?"

"It looks like magic, at least of some kinds, is more abundant here than I am accustomed to. I have a limited number of spells per day apart from the orisons I mentioned and that is standard for spellcasters on Golarion, and further most spells do not have long-lasting let alone permanent results."

"Oh." That’s disappointing. "Um... I want you to talk about lawful, chaotic, good, evil and true neutral?"

"Those are alignments. There are nine alignments, which can traditionally be represented in a grid with two axes, law-chaos and good-evil, with both axes allowing a neutral point. I am a cleric but not the kind who does a lot of theology or philosophy, so my gloss will be incomplete, but I can give a first pass. Law is about things like alliances, promises, structures and systems, following orders and operating in organizations. Chaos is the opposite - I believe its proponents have sincerely kind things to say about it where I will only be parroting but I think the idea is that they highly value freedom, the opportunity to discard previous arrangements that no longer serve one's values... starting over again after overthrowing an existing system that was disagreeable in some way... that kind of thing. Good is in the main about helping people while Evil is about hurting them, with complicated nuances in edge cases that I am not an expert on. Alignments are relevant in life because they inform who one's natural allies and enemies, and one's unnatural allies, are - for example, I have spent my career stationed at the Worldwound, a portal through which an unlimited number of Chaotic Evil outsiders could enter Golarion, and Lawful churches of all moral persuasions were able to coordinate with one another to provide stable presences holding back the tide, and non-Lawful persons who were nonetheless Good provided more incidental support at times. And they are relevant in death because Pharasma, the Judge of souls, divides the dead into their afterlives according to the balance of their lives in these same terms, with the afterlife planes being Heaven, Axis, Hell, Nirvana, the Boneyard, Abaddon, Elysium, the Maelstrom, and the Abyss."

"...Afterlife planes? I didn't hear afterlife planes - I hear my plane, I hear all my plane - all the outside, I don't hear a safe place to sleep," she says, as though this last thing is a very important reassurance.

"If you don't know about the gods here it is I suppose not additionally very surprising that you don't know about afterlives. They aren't continuous with the sort of space that Golarion is in, but I don't know what plane or planet this is. The spell Plane Shift, which is too powerful for me to cast, is capable of moving creatures from one plane to another, including the afterlife planes I listed and also planes like the Plane of Shadow or the Plane of Earth, and also demiplanes, which are smaller and artificial. There are also resurrection spells, also too powerful for me to cast, which can bring people back to life; their memories are often incomplete, and if the resurrection was predictable in advance they may have spent their death not having experiences to remember at all, but a resurrection of a person who has been dead for a sufficiently long time can yield their firsthand account of their time as a petitioner in an afterlife. Scrying works between planes, and Sending, but I also can't cast those. Third circle is more powerful than most people ever get, but there are nine circles for people who keep getting stronger and stronger, the highest of high priests and the archmages of the world."

"Scrying works between planes???"

"Yes... it's fifth circle for clerics, fourth for wizards, and doesn't always work. If you have anti-scrying protections that work against the divinations of your own plane they probably fend off scrying spells fine, I know that both spell resistance and a will save will throw off a scrying attempt. It's used for communication sometimes in my own world and I would not have been a target for one because as a cleric I would be too likely to resist a scry and couldn't be ordered to allow them in general lest a hostile party get through."