He spends a minute reading it.

He taps the table when he's done. "Well, it won't be the strangest thing I've heard. I can work with this. You want to cast a language spell on me? Let's go."

"Share Language."

"Fascinating," says Arxam. "This makes your claim more credible, yes."

        ("Do I go now?" Dross whispers.)

"What was the issue you wanted to discuss?"

Blai nods at Dross, and when he's clear:

"If you don't mind I'd like to try some things that I think will not cause a headache and work up to it, so I know what's safe to say to other people who aren't willing to take the risk."

"Fine by me."

"Thousands of years ago, an extremely powerful human wizard named Aroden survived an apocalypse that destroyed all civilization across the entire planet of Golarion. He used various magical abilities to extend his life and begin to rebuild and make sure that some of the knowledge of his civilization was retained into the future. One thing he eventually did when he decided that it would be - more efficient than acting as a wizard - was to... move to another plane, called Axis, from which he was able to share his power with people whose goals were sufficiently compatible with his, so they could cast spells, albeit not the same spells wizards can cast."

Arxam nods along as Blai speaks. ("Apocalypse that destroyed all civilization" is unsurprising. It happens.)

"No headache so far. We have some stories like that as well, but—how exactly was he 'sharing his power' that he had to do it from a different plane?"

"That is one of the things I think will cause you a headache, I would like to go on for a bit before I circle back to that.

"One of the people he shared power with was a woman from some centuries ago called Iomedae. She became very powerful over the course of her adventures. She belonged to an organization that forbade lying and other forms of misconduct, and the particular form of power she had from Aroden was such that - it was common knowledge that if she did any misconduct she would lose her powers that she got from Him, so the power also served as a badge of His approval, His vouching for her character and trustworthiness. Good so far?"

"That sounds similar to Terandrian knight orders, and to a smaller extent common [Guardsmen] as well—they have to hold to certain oaths or codes of conduct, or they can lose their class. And some knights or knight orders are sworn to royals, with classes or boons directly or indirectly granted by the [King] or [Queen]. Is that what you mean?"

"She was a knight under oath, with boons granted by Aroden, though he was not acting as a monarch."

"That makes sense so far?"

"And He'd left behind a - tool he created and used when he decided to move on to Axis and become a power-granting sort of entity. After Iomedae had accomplished the great work of her life and left behind a lot of information about how people who might want to align with her goals should go about it, she made use of that artifact, the Starstone. She went to Heaven instead of Axis; they're both part of a category of plane called Outer Planes which among other things harbor the souls of the dead after they are judged."

"I understand everything you said and I don't have a headache, but the—Outer Planes? Is a place you can go to and interact with the... souls of the dead? If it's not immediately relevant I can hold those questions for later."

"It's relevant, yes. When people die, at least in my world, their souls move on to Judgment, where their alignment is decided; there are approximations and divinations you can use in life that usually work but judgment is the last confirmation step. There are nine outer planes, for nine alignments - Good, Neutral, or Evil, and Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic, in a sort of grid. Heaven is the Lawful Good one and Axis the Lawful Neutral one."

"And these are actual physical places you can observe by travelling to them?" Arxam's tone is slightly skeptical. "There are some societies which believe in a sort of... 'life after death', or in reincarnation, but there have been many attempts to scry the souls of the dead in history, including holding a continuous scry through the time of death, and as far as we know, death is just... death. The old stories are simply superstition."

"They are actual physical spaces that powerful enough spellcasters can view, summon creatures from, resurrect the dead out of, and travel to. - actually even not very powerful spellcasters can summon creatures from them but they'd be strange animals, nothing that can talk. I don't know if people here have the same sort of afterlives but on Golarion they are definitely real."

"It's possible to trap the soul of a dying or freshly dead person—or a perfectly healthy living person, for the matter—and store it or turn it into undead, so it's theoretically possible to create a sort of... synthetic afterlife, with a large-area catchment spell to capture dissipating souls. It has been discussed. But there is no observable natural process that does it, or known destinations for them to go to. What happens, in these afterlives?"

"It depends. They're all different. The Evil ones are very unpleasant."

"So the souls go on having conscious experiences. Do they continue identifying as the person they were in life?"

"At first yes. They remain there for an eternity and typically change to be more suited to the plane over that time, though. It would be odd to meet an outsider who was still interested in the concerns of his mortal life."

"That's quite interesting. Though not really actionable unless we find a way to get in contact with your original world. If you write a book I'm sure many people will buy it. And you were talking about being sorted into alignments... who exactly is doing the judging? I'm a bit confused whether this is a natural process or a... an administered process."

"It is an administered process. The - entity - responsible for the system being emplaced at all, and for judging the souls, is called Pharasma, though like most - entities with such broad responsibilities - She has subordinates."

"This is all very... abstract, I assume to get around the headache problem? But I'm having a hard time forming a mental model. Pharasma is the creator and controller and administrator, partially via proxy, of the soul capture and afterlife system, and she is—not a human, or you'd have said that. A construct? A species?"

"I think that the species that, having become so powerful, Iomedae now belongs to, and Pharasma shares, is the thing that causes the headache problem... I have heard, once or twice, locals refer to 'dead gods'." Does that do it?

"...Sorry, I think I got distracted by something. I was following until Iomedae becoming a—member of the species? That's not how I understand the term 'species', or are you just using it in the way one might colloquially call 'liches' a species?"