After a few hours, there'll be a small trade caravan riding down the road, guarded by people on horses in armor, with someone in a robe sitting on top of one of the carriages, holding a wooden staff.

Most of them are draconic humanoids with scales, snouts and tails. Some of them look like hyena-human hybrids, again humanoid with fur and canine features. They're transporting large volumes of raw ore, gems and jewelry, some books, and supplies for the road.

Wow, do they have humans here at all?

He'll just wait until they're in reasonable shouting range, this time. "Hello! I mean no harm, I'd like to ask you a question!"

Woah! Weird spooky voice out of nowhere that sounds like an [Orator] having too much fun with their Skills. Is someone hiding in the patches of tall grass? The merchants and the driver are startled, but they look to the guards on horses for direction.

The armored riders are alert, but not overly perturbed. Their [Dangersenses] aren't going off, and while there are stories about dangerous monsters that emulate human voices, there are stories about everything. Out here there's nothing but goblins, deer and bugs.

If it's bandits, they can probably take bandits. And bandits don't usually announce their presence. And don't have such... dramatic... voices. (That feels like an understatement. What even is that?)

"Where are you?" the one in the lead calls, looking left and right. He's taken hold of the sword at his side, but not unsheathed it.

"I'm up ahead, I'm the footpath off to your left."

They're pretty sure there wasn't a branching footpath here before, a brief conference among the caravaners decides. Still, not suspicious in itself. What even to be suspicious of?

The guard leader has mentally autocorrected the voice to mean they're on the footpath, obviously. He dismounts and approaches.

"I don't see you," he calls.

Illusionists have better things to do than be bandits.

"Yes you do, you're looking right at me." With a gentle ripple, the grass immediately on either side of the footpath changes to purple flowers, starting where it meets the road and continuing for a hundred feet or so. "Can you tell me where the other gods are, and the nearest city?"

The Drake does draw his sword at the sudden flowers, and doesn't put it back, but he holds his ground.

(Quietly, below the volume anyone not standing right by him could hear, he murmurs, "Tekss, illusions? Invisibility?" The words echo faintly from all the other guards, and the robed person on top of a cart. The sound seems to be coming from small stones secreted in their various headwear.)

"The gods are dead," he says aloud. "What are you?" His tone isn't accusatory, or all that disbelieving, just curious and wary.

(The robed person answers, through the speaking stone network, "No, but something weird's going on.")

"I'm a god from a different world, my avatar ended up here in an accident. Gods are common where I'm from, though, I know dozens. Do you know what happened to yours?"

"What happened?" What a strange question to ask. He shrugs. "They're dead. There are living ones in your... world? What do you mean by that?"

"There are. If you're in a hurry you could bring a piece of me with you and I'll tell you about it on the way; I'd like to be someplace with more people, here. I can pay for passage, if you'll take something I can make, metal or gems or spices or something."

"Weird," and kind of hard to wrap his head around. "We're not on an emergency, but no reason to hold up the caravan if we don't need to. They trade metals and gems, yeah, if you can pay I don't imagine they say no, but it's not my call. I can ask. What are we talking about by a piece of you?

"A small vial of dust will be fine; I can make one. I'll want you to turn it out on the ground at your destination."

He eyes the spontaneously flowering dirt path.

"IIII might have to clear that last part with someone. But I'll take a vial, sure."

"Thank you. If there's someone I ought to talk to before getting set up I'd appreciate being brought to them, I guess."

A small glass vial full of road dust with a ribbon tied around the neck to allow it to be worn as a necklace appears in the middle of the footpath in front of him.

"I can also keep watch for danger on the road if you can tell me what to look for, I don't have the visual range of a normal person but I'm better at spotting hidden things."

"We'd appreciate a heads up for anything bigger than a cat hiding in the grass, but these roads are safe enough most of the time."

He takes the vial and goes off to talk to the caravan head, a Gnoll in loose embroidered dress.

"Did you catch all of that?"

        "Most of it. We'll take a standard payment for unexpected ridealongs, I suppose." She suspects she can ask for more, but she doesn't want to take the risk of offending the god, or whatever it is.

"That's a gold coin," he tells the vial. He draws one out of his satchel to indicate. It's small enough to close a fist around, and only mostly gold, the rest copper and nickel.

"Sounds reasonable. I can't manifest things from the vial but I've made one back on the path for you."

Presumably there's nothing hiding in the grass around here?

Nope! All safe. Someone goes to pick up the coin and offer it to the Gnoll lead, who inspects and gives it a scratch on the rim.

"Let's be off, then," she says. "Vyrll, would you ride by us so I can hear what this... god... has to say? Do you have a name?"

"Kiraavi of roads and travel, at your service. You wanted to know more about the gods of my world, I think?"

"I'm Prish, [Caravan Leader]," says the Gnoll. "This is Vyrll."

        "[Captain] of Salaz' Scales," he fills in, swinging back on his horse.

They start moving. "Let's start with that 'world' thing, don't we?" Prish says.

"That part was a surprise to me, too! I'll have to explain a bit about how gods work to explain how I know, but the place I come from is a sphere, and this isn't a place that could exist on that sphere, and neither are most of the other places I've gone the same way I came here from my home sphere. Even ignoring the part where my sphere only has gods and humans for people."

"You live on a sphere?" asks Vyrll. "That must be weird."

        "You only have humans?" Prish raises an eyebrow.

"So you've been to a lot of different worlds?"

"I'd only been on the one up until a couple days ago! A giant snake with a mirror for a face appeared next to my avatar on the road and ate it - when I make part of myself that's like a normal person or an animal, that's an avatar - and then my avatar was here, or rather over in the bloodfields. I trapped the snake in a hole and let it eat a few more parts of me and they all went to different places but this one is by far the most interesting."

Yep, that sounds like a thing that could happen.

"In the Bloodfields. You're lucky it's not quite into summer yet, or I wager you'd be toast. I'm surprised you made it out in one piece anyway."

"Oh, I lost the avatar in the first two minutes, they're not much sturdier than normal people and I didn't realize the tree I wanted to climb had spike traps for roots. I'm fine, though, physical damage like that can't do much to me."

Prish is laughing at Vyrll now, he knows it, she has that smirk. He scratches his neck. "Right, that's good."

        "That's how all gods are like, where you're from?" Prish asks.