"Petrification is reversible in some cases and not others, although more often not when fully petrified, and very rarely when shattered. Nonetheless, if you know the Skill, Spell or creature which caused it, our scholars would be able to investigate. Your message can almost certainly be fetched from Levrhine, or if you wish to retrieve it in person, it is only a day's travel by carpet away.

"You are welcome to use any divinations or Skills you wish to on our person, or our staff or citizens provided it is inoffensive or the subject agrees."

"Then tomorrow morning I'll prepare the spell. I'm unsure to what extent it's possible to retrieve messages by proxy. I can definitely fix the shattering given the pieces, it's the petrification that requires a circle I don't have to fix."

Nod.

"Then by our [Alchemists]' abilities and yours combined, there may be a solution. Shall a messenger fetch you, then, tomorrow morning? Do you have any more to ask?"

"I think that is all my questions for now, though of course I'll need to know more about what form you want the knowledge transfer to take should I agree to it."

"Typically lectures, and writing, and selecting a small number of apprentices from an applicant pool, although the last may not be practical given time constraints—but it can be discussed further if needed.

"This has been an illuminating audience. You may take your leave."

"Thank you, your majesty."

Out he goes.

He can pass back through the two entrance halls and down the unnecessary flight of stairs!

It's still morning, creeping towards noon. Is the cheerfulness still too creepy, or does he want to take a closer vibe check on the populace now that it might be actionable information? Or to check in with caravan guy?

He needs to let caravan guy know that he might not be continuing on with them first thing!

He can catch the guy coming out of the exchange for lunch.

"Still in one piece? What did His Majesty have to say? Don't have to tell me, of course."

"I have been offered a quicker route to my destination if I will use the time saved to tell people in Khelt about my world. It's a very generous offer and I will probably take it though I am taking a little time to think it over."

"That's a stroke of luck, is it? Well, it was good having you with us. Let me know when you decide. We're leaving tomorrow afternoon, if all goes well here."

"I will probably have made my decision by then."

He's going to... go for a bit of a walk in the areas permitted, since unlike yesterday he hasn't been traveling all day and now he has to assess the medium term livability of the place.

The immediate area near where he's staying is mostly businesses and artisans, with a dash of dining and entertainment venues. You can buy trinkets, art, delicacies, clothing, travel gear, all high quality, all of it overpriced. Enchanted warming gloves. Elegant but practical pottery. Jewelry—actually relatively modestly priced. He may notice that a non-negligible fraction of people are trading with barter, or with odd tokens or papers.

The cost of living would be pretty steep, but hopefully he'd get a stipend, or at least complimentary food and housing for the duration of his temporary employment?

The permitted area is pretty big. If he walks more, he can find a cultural district, with indoors and open-air galleries, theatres, art sellers. There's a large library, open to all visitors for free. Over yonder is a university of history and archaeology.

It doesn't feel like it's the foreigners' district, or anything like that. Blai's group seems to be the only one in town, and he barely sees any of his co-arrivals after he leaves the vicinity of their lodging. It's just a part of the city, which foreigners are also allowed in. People seem to regard him as a curiosity, but not a new one.

It's not extremely clear how the undead work. He won't see people with personal undead servants following them around. Mostly, where they're visible in the city, they're performing public work like street sweeping, or in rarer cases business functions like cooking. They seem... docile, largely autonomous, not sapient, but not unintelligent either? A cleaning skeleton is completely oblivious to the people walking around it, and doesn't react to accidental bumps, but when someone spills a drink and taps it to call it for cleanup, it does. The cooking skeleton is operating a stir-fry notably less dextrously than a living chef, but it's still doing so without constant supervision.

There's a newspaper. It's free; does he want one? Local language, no translation, but maybe he prepped a Comprehend?

He didn't, but he'll take it if it's free, get to work on learning the local script.

And there are multilingual signs around the more merchanty district if he needs the extra reference.

That does help, yes.

He buys lunch and picks his way through the newspaper.

National headlines!

Last Practitioner of Traditional Ataaji Pottery Passes Away at 92

Fall Rains in Esse Reach New Highs: Weal or Woe?

Second Accident in Two Years at Algrimm Steel Refinery Draws Council Inquiry

Stone Plaque From 241 Emrist Decoded: Historians Suspect Prank

Local news:

Curator of Utekt Gallery Retires, Gives Speech

Royal Observatory Reopens After Decade Renovations

He will pick at the steel refinery article a little more. These people are going to have plenty of Shelynites, if it turns out they're not all Evil.

The Algrimm Steel Refinery is in Iribest, which the article doesn't further identify but is presumably a different city? It's one of the oldest and most respected steelworks of the nation, founded in the reign of Izimire; its alloys have been used by the royal armorers of Khelt for much of that time.

Six days ago, an apprentice [Smith] was injured, lost two fingers and almost died, due to a failure in a casting(?) bracket. Yet the [Foundry Director] claims that the same equipment had been inspected only two days before, and has declined to comment more on the purportedly ongoing internal investigation. Other [Smiths] of the refinery have been silent on the topic.

This incident is right on the heels of a similar event in <unfamiliar proper noun, possibly local name for a month or season?> of last year, when a junior [Blacksmith] suffered career-ending injuries from an extruder(?) malfunction. At the time, the investigation found that the accident was the fault of user error, although the victim was compensated richly for her injuries. Perhaps the new investigation will discover the same, the author writes, but even if it is the truth, if Algrimm's trainees repeatedly find themselves confronted with tasks they cannot adequately handle, the fault can surely not lie in the apprentices.

A number of more minor incidents relating to smithing work have also occurred over the last two years, conveys the Head of the House of [Healers] in Iribest.

The Council of Iribest has announced that a representative of them will be participating in the Refinery's investigation, and that changes must be made to prevent anything like this from happening again.

It will be so disappointing if these careful happy people are actually all Evil.

Well, it will be somewhat difficult to confirm until he prepares the right spells tomorrow, whereupon it will hopefully become trivial.

He goes on studying the newspaper until he thinks he'd be able to render his translation of the Acts in this continent's script and then goes and starts on that.

Next morning, the same guy as yesterday will come fetch him.

He's got multiple Detects ready. Can he catch some skeletons in a Detect Evil on the way?

They have the ordinary faint Evil aura you would expect from a medium humanoid skeleton created by Animate Dead.