He's not currently dressed for the Worldwound, though, he's dressed for summertime in Cheliax (with the concession that he is wearing armor, since you don't have time to put it on if a monster attacks, not that it... helped...)

It would be a weird monster that teleported its prey to another land altogether but, well, here he is. He will put his mace back on his belt and approach empty-handed. The one looking through the bag is conceivably going for a scroll or something, which might be best since he himself did not prepare Comprehend Languages.

Nope! She pulls out some kind of metal item, pokes at it, and starts talking in a language he doesn't recognize.

Someone else is pointing a small metal box with a smaller glass panel at him. She smiles and says something in what sounds like probably the same language; it makes a clicking sound.

Most of the street has stopped walking and started to stare at him.

"Do any of you speak Chelish, Common Taldane, Infernal..."

The person with the box says more things he doesn't understand! It might be a different language?

Blai shakes his head apologetically.

Some other people on the street chime in. Between them they have lots of unfamiliar languages, or possibly are doing a really bad job of coordinating on not trying the same language multiple times. You wouldn't normally expect there to be people who know this many different languages anywhere but Absalom.

Maybe it's Absalom! Though he thought the place was less majority human. This could be a human neighborhood, maybe. He shakes his head at all the languages and repeats his three a few times.

No one on this street seems to know any of them! Is he inclined to stay in the area or try wandering off elsewhere in the city?

Is there a bench he can just sit on for a while?

No benches, but a little ways down the street there's a group of three small tables, each with two chairs.

If there is an unoccupied table he will go sit at one of those and tell curious passersby what languages he speaks. Maybe they will fetch a wizard or cleric who did prepare Comprehend Language this morning.

Eventually he's approached by a pair of men wearing what could be an unusual style of cleric garments — long, black robes with wings embroidered on the collar and a design that could possibly be a weird variant design for a Sarenrite angelic ankh taking up roughly the bottom quarter. Both of them are wearing necklaces that depict an injured man hanging from something shaped vaguely like a window frame and stoles with a number of symbols — one looks kind of like Milani's, one could theoretically be Shelyn's but realistically is more likely to be some other bird-associated deity, and the rest are unfamiliar.

...so probably some god he's never heard of. "Good day. I speak Chelish, Common Taldane, and Infernal."

Roberto Nicolas speaks nine languages and he's not going to let the fact that some of them are things like "Old Aramaic" stop him from trying all of them!

Hiraga only speaks five, and two of them are languages Roberto already knows. But if the ?miraculously appearing stranger? doesn't seem to recognize any of Roberto's languages, he'll try as well.

No dice. Blai is at this point kind of expecting to pull an all-nighter here and get some language spells in the morning if these people inexplicably don't have any either.

They do not seem to have any language spells.

Eventually the possible-Andorani will gesture at him to follow him, while the Tien one starts talking to other people nearby.

...sure, okay, he can follow along if this is an inconvenient place for him to be.

Then Roberto will lead him through the city for a while! Once they get off their current street several of the other streets have metal-and-glass wagons making loud noises. Apart from the buildings, they pass by some statues, cross a river, and cut through a small park.

Eventually Roberto will stop at one of the buildings, unlock it, and gesture Blai inside.

In for a penny. Actually, no, that is a terrible thought process. Instead he will have a better thought process before doing the exact same thing: these people seem friendly and might be bringing him to their superiors or colleagues who can cast Tongues prepared Share Language or something.

There aren't any other people inside, so at the very least their colleagues aren't there yet.

Roberto gestures at a couch, gestures at another room, says some incomprehensible things, and then goes into the room he just gestured to.

Couch is good. He sits on couch.

The other man eventually shows up at the same building and goes into the same room.

A little while after that, he comes back out to the room where Blai is sitting and gestures Blai to follow him into the other room.

Okay. Do they have a Share Language yet. Did they have to go find a wizard with a free slot or something.

They don't attempt to cast any sort of spell on him.

The other room has a large table with three place settings and a bowl full of some kind of complicated-looking pasta dish. (Also more doors leading to other rooms. Anyone who could afford a place this big in a Chelish city would have to be pretty wealthy.)

The man who brought him here gestures at the table and smiles.

He doesn't have Detect Poison prepared because he was planning to Create everything he ate on the way. Food has been ruinously expensive in Cheliax this year.

He has no specific reason to expect them to poison him, it's just kind of weird to invite a guy to dinner when you don't have a language in common and found him sitting around on the street not even begging for food. (Actually, in Cheliax it would remain weird even if you spoke the language and he was begging, but he can imagine that probably if you delete the influence of, uh, Asmodean clerics, then maybe that would not be too weird.)

He will sit down, but allow it to be obvious that he is puzzled by this situation.

The two of them start praying. (Blai still cannot understand them but their body language is not very ambiguous.)

Oh, is that what they're doing. Iomedae, if you could swap out my Spark for a Detect Poison I would appreciate that but I understand that this is not standard practice and will do without. Please let me be a tolerable ambassador for You and Your aims here in this strange land though I have not made it to a catechism course yet. I hope whatever is going on most of which is certainly more important than this is going well but I do not actually know if I can help You with it from this position. I'm going to just look at the ceiling for a while until they seem done because I wouldn't want to distract You unnecessarily.

It's not a very long prayer.

The possible-Andorani serves some of the pasta onto each of the three plates, then gestures encouragingly to Blai.

He casts Guidance because it helps with basically everything, whatever it is you do next, and whether the next thing he's going to do is "throw off poison" or "try to learn a few words of this language" it can't hurt. He takes a bite.

It's delicious and not poisoned at all!

Well, you can't always tell right away, but he bobs his head in an appreciative fashion.

Possibly-Andorani man seems happy about this!

Over the course of the meal, Blai can probably pick up that the possible-Andorani is called "Roberto" and the possible-Tien is called "Hiraga," as well as a handful of miscellaneous vocabulary words related to the meal.

He can point at himself and say "Select Blai Artigas", if they're doing introductions.

One of the men says something incomprehensible followed by "Select Blai Artigas"! It sounds friendly, at least. 

Smile???

Smile! 

Eventually dinner is over. Roberto retrieves a pillow and some bedding and arranges them on the couch in the other room. He attempts to mime to Blai that he is allowed to sleep here.

Polite head-bob. He'll take his armor off, even.

Once he's all set up, possibly-Tien man leaves the building.

Blai is not attacked by demons, or anything else, during the night.

The insides of buildings in the middle of cities are great that way.

At dawn he awakens automatically and prays for his spells.

He is not interrupted while he does this. 

That's good.

He loads up on Comprehend Languages, drops Spark for Detect Poison because apparently that's otherwise going to bug him, picks up a Share Language and a Communal Share Language, grabs Bestow Insight in case there's something he ought to remember about whatever deity these people follow. That last he casts right away once he's done with his prayers, and - nothing. Must be really obscure.

Not that long after he finishes his prayers, Roberto enters and gestures him into the dining room.

"Comprehend Languages." Maybe they'll recognize the verbal component. But he does also go into the dining room.

He doesn't seem to recognize it.

There are only two place settings this morning. The platter in the center of the table is piled high with pancakes. Roberto serves both of them pancakes, then prays. (It's a shorter prayer than he used last night.)

"Lord, grant that we, gathered at this table, may be filled with your goodness. May no one lack the necessities of life. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Okay, their god is called Christ. Blai will improvise a grace - it's specifically the one Iomedae was supposed to have said over her one meal a month once she decided she should eat at least once a month, except he swaps out Aroden's name. It's what there was to be had in the Acts and that's all he has to go by. "Holy Iomedae, may this food nourish our souls as well as our bodies, and may we have the will and the power to fill every plate one day, amen."

Roberto is not going to try and strike up a breakfast conversation with Select Blai Artigas without prompting. (He has not yet been able to identify what Select Blai Artigas's language is, but so far that's only surprising and not shocking. Hiraga has Lauren trying to find records of him.)

When they don't say anything Blai tries tapping his ear and looking expectant at them.

(It's just Roberto so far today, not Hiraga.)

"I'm sorry, I still don't speak your language," he says in what he hopes is a cross-culturally clear apologetic tone. "I'm good with languages, but even if I knew what yours were called, I couldn't become fluent in a single night."

"Comprehend Languages," Blai repeats, though this time he is not casting the spell. (Would that even work? Probably it would just reset the duration, that's how it works with most things, but for some reason it has not previously occurred to him to wonder about Comprehend Languages.)

He does not seem to have any idea what Blai means by that.

Oh dear. Eartap eartap?

"I still don't speak your language." Sigh. "I really hope Lauren and Hiraga were able to find something on you. I can keep talking but I don't really think you're going to become fluent in Italian just from hearing me talk."

"Italian?"

"Right now I'm speaking Italian, which is the main language spoken in Italy. I also know Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Haitian Creole, Latin, ancient Greek, and Old Aramaic. Someone in Rome who didn't know any Italian would usually be an English speaker but Hiraga tried that. Your language also doesn't seem to be Mandarin Chinese, any major European language, or any of the several most common languages worldwide, but I'm not as sure of that."

"European?"

"From Europe, the continent we're currently on. Uh—" He repeats the word "European" in several more languages.

"We're on continent Europe?" Yes of course they are what a stupid thing to say but Comprehend Languages is very limited.

"Yes. The other continents are Africa, Asia, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica."

"Avistan, Garund, Casmaron, Arcadia, Vudra, Tian Xia...?"

"I've heard of Arcadia, but only in a mythological context, I've never heard of it being a real place that someone could actually go to. I haven't heard of any of the other places you mentioned." He writes them down anyways.

He points at himself. "Cheliax."

"I have never heard of Cheliax."

"Avistan. Golarion." He mimes drawing.

Oh, he really should have thought of that. He can get Select Blai Artigas a piece paper and a pencil, and a current world map, and some outdated historical world maps. 

Blai can draw a kind of bad rendition of Avistan and the Inner Sea region.

"This kind of looks like the Mediterranean, but I think if you were trying to draw the Mediterranean you probably would've included Italy." He taps Italy on the world map.

Headshake. He starts pointing at areas. "Cheliax. Absalom. Osirion. Rahadoum. Lastwall. Andoran. Nidal..."

"I haven't heard of any of those places." 

The doorbell rings.

"Oh, Hiraga is here. I'll be right back."

He leaves the room, returning shortly after with the man from the previous day.

There's some muffled conversation as they return, but Blai can probably catch the end of it.

"...and Lauren hasn't been able to find any records of someone named 'Select Blai Artigas,' not in the flight data and not anywhere else. He couldn't have passed through the airport without leaving some record."

"Airport?"

"Where airplanes land. The main one here in Rome is Fiumicino." He is frankly pretty confused about how Select Blai Artigas is picking up vocabulary so fast for words with no obvious physical referent but maybe he does know a Romance language after all, similar enough that he can guess from cognates?

"Airplanes???"

"A... very large car that flies through the sky?" he tries. "I could show you a photo?"

"Photo???"

"Photograph? Picture taken with a camera?"

"Camera??????"

"A camera is a little box that takes photographs. If you don't have the vocabulary for either of those, I'm not sure how to explain it better."

Hiraga will launch into a scientific explanation of how cameras work!

That's baffling and not even in a helpful way.

If Blai just - holds out his hand - will either of these men take it.

Sure, Hiraga will take it.

"Share Language."

"How did you do that?" he says in Chelish.

"It's a cleric spell. I asked for it this morning. I had meant to get along farther with Comprehend Languages alone so I would know who the best recipient would be but it did not seem likely to work."

"It would be helpful if you could explain 'cleric' in more detail. It appears to be similar to the Italian word 'priest' but it seems like some of the connotations are different. As far as I knew before today, it is very rare for a priest to speak in tongues or grant others the ability to speak in tongues." 

(In Italian:) "Roberto, did it sound to you like I was speaking the same language as Select Blai Artigas?"

"I think so."

"A cleric is an empowered servant of a god, in my case Iomedae, who is not better described as something else, such as a paladin. There are in some religions such things as lay priests who don't receive divine endorsement in the form of spellcasting but I haven't met any before."

(In Italian:)

"Roberto, have you ever heard of an 'Iomedae'? He claims to have been granted miraculous powers from a god by that name."

"I have not."

(Back in Chelish:)

"Depending on how broad 'spellcasting' is either all priests here or almost none can do it."

He glances nervously at Roberto, then back to Blai. "It would also be helpful if you could tell us more about 'Iomedae.'" The most obvious explanation is that Iomedae is some sort of very obscure demon but he wouldn't normally expect a demon-worshipper to admit it outright to a pair of priests.

"Iomedae is the Lawful Good goddess of defeating evil; I've also heard Her interests glossed as 'triage' though that description doesn't come up in Her holy book. She was a paladin of Aroden some hundreds of years ago and ascended to godhood after spending decades in His service."

(Italian:)

"Roberto, same question but for 'Aroden'?"

"I haven't heard of them either."

If he takes what Select Blai Artigas — oh, now that he's thinking about it with the language, it's clear that "Select" is a title — if he takes what Select Blai is saying at face value, the obvious hypothesis is that Iomedae is another name for Jesus, with Select Blai being part of some very strange splinter sect. Or she could be a folk saint, but then the claims about her becoming a god are stranger. Or it could be something else entirely; none of his guesses are entirely lining up.

"I only know there to be one Good god," he says in Chelish. "He is known by many names but Iomedae is not one of them. What sorts of teachings, miracles, and so on are generally attributed to her?"

"In mortal life Iomedae fought in and later led the Shining Crusade against the necromancer Tar-Baphon and most of the Acts in Her holy text are related to that, though I can read you the index if you want more detail. There is definitely more than one Good god; in addition to Iomedae the other major ones widely known in the area where I came from are Erastil, Shelyn, Sarenrae, Desna, and Cayden Cailean. The last is also a former mortal."

(He checks these with Roberto as well.)

"Neither of us have ever heard of any power with those names — there is a river in Eastern Europe called the Desna River, but as far as I know the name is unrelated. ...I am curious about her holy book" and he suspects Roberto is even more curious "but I don't know if it's the most important thing to discuss. We were initially sent out, among other things, to ask you some questions about the circumstances of your arrival in Rome but I'm not sure if that is either, I'm honestly very confused right now."

"I was ambushed by a monster but I had no prior knowledge of monsters that teleported their victims, let alone such distances."

That's not not necessarily any weirder than a burning bush, but it's still pretty confusing.

"Witnesses reported seeing you appear out of nowhere in the middle of a city street. Does that match your observations of what happened after you encountered the monster? —Also, would you like some context on the pair of us? We tried to explain yesterday but that was before we had the language."

"That does match my observations, yes. I would appreciate context."

"The two of us are priests of, ah, God — I am not sure that came through with the same connotations it would have in the Italian. We're both miracle examiners working for the organization that heads our religion, the Vatican. Our primary duty is to investigate purported miracles to determine whether they were, in fact, miracles. We were initially called in to investigate a report that you had miraculously appeared from nowhere. ...I suspect we were selected for this assignment largely because we were already in Rome. Under normal circumstances, I specialize in natural philosophy — that did not come through with the intended connotations — and Roberto specializes in ancient documents and codebreaking.

I don't expect that to have cleared up all or even most of your confusions. I'm happy to answer any questions you have." 

"Are there a lot of ambiguous miracles here? - does 'God' have another name, I'm afraid it's very confusing in Taldane."

"He is also referred to as 'the Lord,' which is more ambiguous in most of the languages I know but might be less ambiguous in this one. If it would work with your apparently-supernatural ability to understand other languages, I could also use Dio, the Italian word for God. He consists of three persons, called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — if you need to distinguish from, for instance, your actual father, you might say 'God the Father.' The Son is most commonly known as 'Jesus,' 'Christ,' or 'Jesus Christ.'

Miracles are fairly rare, so it's common for people to be mistaken about whether something really is a miracle, or outright lying. Of course, in some cases it's not possible to tell for certain — say a child is seriously ill, and recovers with no apparent cause, but their condition was not the sort that's always fatal — but in many cases it's possible to determine one way or the other. I can give examples if that would be helpful."

"'Dio' just translates as 'god' through Comprehend Languages but it will wear off in less than an hour and then it will do. Jesus Christ is properly unique.

Since I am here through the strange mechanism of a presumably nondivine monster and have no dealings with Jesus Christ nor any of His aspects would it be more appropriate for me to lodge elsewhere going forward?"

"If you'd prefer not to stay with us, we aren't going to force you to stay, but it might be difficult for you to find shelter elsewhere with no legal identity and no money." Though Lauren could almost certainly fix the legal identity issue, and in principle the money issue as well. "If you would like to stay, it's really no trouble. We are called to shelter those in need, and while this is a bit of an unusual form for that to take, we'd be happy to have you. ...And I'm sure we'd both be excited to learn more about your god and similar topics."

"Legal identity?"

"Most countries keep records of everyone born in that country. In general, it's expected that most people can if necessary present documents proving their identity. It's not needed for most purposes, but the vast majority of hotels will want to see it, so that they can make sure that you're really the person who made the reservation. One of my friends looked into you after you told us your name last night and was unable to find any such record of your existence. ...It's possible he'd have better luck with the knowledge that 'Select' is a title but I don't really expect him to, we knew we might not have the spelling right."

"I wouldn't expect that to help since I have no reason to think that Cheliax sends copies of its records of - not births, they don't record those, but schooling and military service - with your country."

He nods. "...Just to be clear, I'm not sure how well this came through already, but neither of us has ever heard of a place called 'Cheliax,' and we would normally expect to have heard at least briefly of all the countries that exist."

"I think it is most likely that I am on another planet."

"That sounds plausible to me. We had previously considered it an open question whether there were other planets with life but I don't have a better explanation." Which doesn't mean he won't keep trying to check, of course, but 'another planet' can be his working hypothesis for the time being.

"My planet is called Golarion. I can sketch its continents, though poorly."

Hiraga doesn't think it's likely that this will give them much new information but it's a simple test to try. The paper and writing implements are still there, as well as the maps from earlier.

"Would you like me to identify our continents as well? Unless Roberto already did so, I suppose."

Sketch sketch. "I'm not a scholar of the planets. The offer is courteous but if there's no special need for me to be studied up on the planet's geography it's not urgent."

Those indeed do not remotely resemble Earth's continents, though that doesn't narrow down the possibilities very much at this point.

"Is there anything in particular that would be helpful for me to explain?"

"What are the laws of this place that I will need to follow? What are my prospects for earning a living, probably by selling spells and healing?"

"—Miraculous healing of sufficient reliability to be sold for a living is also very rare here, though not so rare as speaking in tongues. I expect it would be very easy to make a living, assuming there isn't some sort of hidden catch. ...Do you know if you can cure cancer?

...Er, my apologies for getting ahead of myself, I can also explain the laws to you." After he finds out if Select Blai can cure cancer.

"I can cure a lot of things but I'm not exactly sure what cancer is and would want to try a couple of spells if channeling didn't suffice."

He launches into a highly technical explanation of the biological basis for cancer.

"I - I don't have the background for any of that, I could try a Lesser Restoration but I have no idea if it would work or just make someone feel temporarily better."

"—I apologize, I got a bit carried away there. We could most likely tell the difference between a miracle that cured the cancer and a miracle that made someone feel better, though in some cases it recurs months or years later and we could only determine that by observation. It's one of the most common causes of death, but I'm sure you'll be able to find work even without being able to cure it."

"I don't have unlimited spell slots, unforrtunately."

"I'm not familiar with the term 'spell slots' and it doesn't clearly correspond to any supernatural phenomena I am familiar with."

"Clerics get limited numbers of spells of various levels of power each day and the capacity for any one spell is called a slot. I'm a third circle cleric which means I have third circle slots, though I can only freely assign one."

"I have not heard of supernatural abilities working like that except in the most technical sense. Could you give me some more details about how it works — how many slots you have at each power level, what you can do at each power level, that sort of thing?"

"I can hold four orisons, or zeroth-circle spells - I can cast each one as many times as I want but only four different ones on a given day - four freely assigned first circle, three second circle, and one third circle. For non-orisons I also get a 'domain' spell but I have to pick those each off a shortlist of two. Orisons include Create Water, Mending, Detect Magic, Light, Guidance... First circle spells include Comprehend Languages, which I was using to understand you before, and Endure Elements, and Air Bubble, and Protection from Evil... Share Language which we're using to talk now is second circle, and so are things like Zone of Truth, Lesser Restoration which I mentioned, a few spells which improve someone's constitution or dexterity or splendor or strength or wisdom for a few minutes... At third circle I can create food out of nothing, though it's worthless if not consumed within 24 hours, or dispel magic, or make it so that creatures in an area don't need as much sleep, or summon - actually at all the circles I can summon creatures but they become progressively more powerful at each circle used."

Those sound incredibly useful for investigating miracles, and if Select Artigas turns out to be interested in helping with that they could probably get the Vatican to sign off on his papers and salary legitimately, assuming they can determine for certain that his powers aren't from a demon. It really doesn't sound like they're from a demon; powers granted by demons are rarely so benign.

"Which orisons are you holding today? Is it alright if we perform some experiments to verify their capabilities? ...Also, just as a precaution, have any of your supernatural abilities been known to backfire such that they technically achieved the advertised effect while entirely subverting your intent?"

Oh no he has to admit he spent a completely inappropriate amount of time wondering if they would poison him. "Today I have Create Water, Guidance, Light, and Detect Poison. I... don't think any spells I know of have that problem, but it's possible that... a hostile spellcaster could co-opt a summoned creature, maybe? And if I were enchanted out of my right mind I might cast allied spells on enemies or vice-versa? I think the thing you describe is a known hazard of the spell Wish but it is a ninth circle arcane spell, I can't cast it and will never be able to."

"What does Guidance do? ...For that matter, what does Light do?" Presumably it's light-related but there are a number of plausible light-related effects it could have.

"Light makes an object glow; Guidance makes me slightly better at one thing I do in the minute following its casting and I often cast it dozens of times a day."

"Of the four of those, Create Water sounds easiest to test. What sort of receptacle will you need to demonstrate it?"

"...I can make up to ten gallons but it can be less and I'm fairly good at shaping it how I like, so if you want vapor I don't even need a container but any cup or bowl will do if you prefer."

"If you can do it multiple times, it would be useful to see a demonstration of both vapor and liquid water, but liquid water will work better for the tests I have in mind."

He explains what he's doing to Roberto, leaves the room, and returns with a metal bowl and some unfamiliar-looking scientific equipment.

"When you're ready?"

"Now is fine."

"Create Water."

That certainly does appear to be miraculously-appearing water.

What happens if he uses this equipment here to run some tests on it? Is it chemically normal for water? Does it have the impurities you might expect from, say, tap water, or is it pure water? Does it have a basically normal (tiny) fraction of heavy water for a naturally-occurring water supply, or exclusively the regular kind with normal hydrogen atoms? If he removes a small amount and boils it, does it boil at a normal temperature given local conditions?

It's like clean but not ridiculously-pure rain water. It boils at a normal temperature.

"If nobody drinks it, it lasts a day and then dries up all at once," Blai volunteers.