"That will be popular," Vyrll agrees.

The path crests a hill, and Prish points. "There it is, Pallass. Can you see it?"

"Without an avatar I can't see past a mile, no."

"You'll have to wait until we're closer, then. Any questions before we're there?"

"Do you have any idea how I'll be received, what things people might be interested in hearing or want reassurance about?"

I mean, if he's asking.

"I predict they will not want you to claim anything inside the city," says Vyrll.

        "Drakes really like their walls," Prish repeats, snorting.

"If we're being safe we should wait outside for someone to come out and talk. I'd start with the high-level interactions you have with people where you're from, before explaining your exact abilities. Senators get twitchy."

"Seems reasonable. Is it called the City of Invention for a particular reason, by the way?"

"They specialize in engineering, manufacture and crafts. Pallass exports the best steel you can get in volume in Izril, and other metals and alchemical goods; for themselves they build siege engines and moving elevators and all sorts of machinery. And the city itself—well, you'll see."

At least if it's within a mile of the wall he will. "How much longer do you expect it to be?"

If Vyrll could hear Kiraavi's thoughts, he would laugh.

"Ten minutes," says Prish.

"All right." He's looking forward to it. "One thing I might be able to do is share inventions back and forth between the worlds, is why I ask."

As they come up of Pallass, it becomes clear what they meant he should see.

The walls of the city are tall. Stone and metal, straight and proud, and three hundred feet tall when enough comes in range that they cap out. Side to side, they span more than Kiraavi's range; and as his sight peneterates into them, they get... complex.

The outer layers are just solid material, not even with balistraria carved out for archers, just pure fortification. Deeper in, there are great columns and gears of brass that thrum with strange power, spokes driving through the stonework with unclear purpose, and chambers around and between them with the occasional Drake scurrying down for—maintenance? Deeper in are steamworks and machinery, pumping heat and water and something dense and energetic through the walls.

Even farther in, the construction opens up, but not to the flat settlement of a city—into floors. Great, conjoined platforms anchored by titanic struts and cables, nine of them from top to bottom, the lowest one extending farther than Kiraavi can sense, the highest continuing on the top of the wall itself. Each is almost a city in its own, with its own buildings and streets, teeming with people and industry. Some structures are built for this architecture, joining from floor to ceiling, some ascending through multiple floors. But there are also parks and markets, houses and yards, all that a city has stacked on top of itself eight times over.

Stairs run down the grand ramps that connect the floors, but it's the elevators that are the backbone of traffic: moving platforms lifted by cables along throughshafts that rise up and down the floors, stopping at each level for Drakes and Gnolls to step on and off. Operators take payment and turn the controls; if Kiraavi tracks where the cables go, he'll find the drive shafts powered by the hydraulic network plumbed through the walls and floors.

It's like an ant hive of people, but rather than excavated into the dirt, instead lifted from it, every tile and stone quarried and set by mortal hands.

"Oh, wow. I see what you meant."

The gates are large, made of ancient steel, and driven by cables and pulleys. It encompasses not only the first, but the second floor, offering a straight two-storey cut towards the center of the city, with bannisters on the second floor where it parts for the road. One can only imagine what they needed to drive through here.

Once they're within shouting distance of the guard station inside the gate, Vyrll turns his horse and trots off to the side.

"Tkirr," he calls to one of the other riders. "Get us a senator, will you? Maybe that annoying Errif guy."

To Kiraavi, "We'll have to sit tight for a while for them to send someone."

"Sure, I'm not in a rush." He has plenty of machinery to examine.

There is so much machinery to examine! About forty percent of it is perfectly understandable—composed of moving mechanical parts and fluids from which motion proceeds with cause and effect. Another forty percent of it is understandable in the same way but operates on materials with vaguely unreasonable physical properties, for what they appear to be, and something weird might be going on with them. Twenty percent, mostly the stuff in the inner walls, is just not really clear what it's doing, but it's doing something, and something really weird is definitely going on with them.

He's confident he'll figure it out eventually! He uses his most-remote avatar back home to manifest and poke at a few of the weirder substances, skipping any that look potentially volatile.

There are some interesting metals and alloys he might not have seen before. Some of the strange stuff, used in instruments and strange kinds of machinery, is what some civilizations would call technical ceramics, which really has very limited apparent similarity to ordinary ceramics. Brittle but strong.

Some of the more absurd structural materials, like the major cables that hold the platforms, fight him a bit, and come out... not absurd? It's still really good quality steel and so on, but missing the specialness, and definitely not able to hold up to the stresses they're being subjected to in Pallass.

The mysterious brass(?) structures anchored deep in the walls really don't want to exist, and sort of come out as steaming slag if he tries to force it.

The highly energetic sludge in some of the systems just completely refuses to manifest.

It's weird how some of the materials won't come out for him! The ones that do are more than enough to keep him occupied for a couple hours, though, if the senator takes that long, with occasional delighted comments to Vyrll about what he's learning.

Vyrll didn't know most of this and doesn't quite follow a lot of it, but it is pretty interesting!

The senator takes an hour, which is long enough that Vyrll gets fed up and takes some time to brush his horse while they're waiting. Eventually, the senator does come, though, with a small entourage of two guards and a smartly dressed secretary. He's a Gnoll with a fancy vest embroidered with a very intentional symbolic pattern, and wearing a small hat, with a great air of self-importance.

Kiraavi has plenty of attention available to play with the new toys and also keep an eye on things around his bearer; he alerts Vyrll when the senator's group breaks off from the crowd to head toward them.

Vyrll stands more respectfully when the senator shows up.

"I understand there is someone I am supposed to meet," says the senator.

        "Senator Jealwind," says Vyrll. He presents the vial. "This is Kiraavi."

"Of roads and travel; it's good to meet you. I'm a god; I came to your world by accident a few days ago and I'm hoping I can be useful here."

"Our gods are dead, so I'm afraid I don't entirely understand what that implies. Are you a sort of... terrain spirit, i am told? Like an elemental? I hear you're interested in offering services relating to road maintenance and safety, in exchange for compensation in kind."

"That's the general gist of it, yes. I can make and monitor roads, and bring news and guidance and supplies to people on roads I have watch over, and keep the roads themselves in good condition and discourage bandits and other dangers. At home I also help coordinate and supply emergency evacuations in situations where they're needed, from natural disasters and wars and things, but it looks like there'll be less if any need for that here, your walls are very impressive! On the other side, gods like myself are sustained by attention, and that's traditionally given in the form of offerings - the specific item being offered doesn't matter, the important part of the tradition is figuring out how the offering is relevant to me. I do especially like offerings of travel gear with good use left in it - it's less costly for me to give someone in need something I already have, rather than making it, though I can do both - and books about travel and distant places."