It's a small room. One wall is dominated by a window going from edge to edge, showing a starry sky. The other walls are overstuffed with bejeweled panels and illuminated screens and cupboards.

The centre of the room is full of two startled elf-like creatures.One of them has gone very wide eyed and very still. 

The other has her hand on her knife hilt, though she hasn't drawn it. Her voice comes out echoed, first in a language that Liliane does not speak, the second time louder in a language she does. "Is this an attack, a weird attempt to join, an accident, or what?"

The woman is clad in old-fashioned chainmail, with a tabard depicting a golden stylized sun on a white background over it. She has a flail at her waist, a quiver and bow across her back, and various leather pouches around her waist. She has, most strikingly, bright red eyes and two small pearly horns jutting out of her hair, with skin that's a bit too gold. There's an odd aura of agelessness about her, and she moves more quickly and smoothly than she perhaps should as she straightens and lowers her hand from her weapon.

"An accident on my part, at least, though this may be some plot by Acererak to be rid of me. I was in Chult, pursuing a lead on the Death Curse, before a snake-monster appeared and attacked me. Then, I was here."

The sky-window is. Strange. Both that there's so much glass unbroken in one place, and that she can't see the ground from this angle. How high up are they? Though the view might be magically induced, there's clearly magic of some kind in those lights.

She quietly focuses, activating her ability to detect the presence of greater beings. They're not undead, nor fiends, nor divine... (She is uncomfortably aware that she might very well now detect as something greater to another paladin.)

At least, their involvement with Acererak is unlikely.

That doesn't mean they're good, though, but Liliane likes to give the living the benefit of the doubt.

If they had had more exposure to humans, they may have realised that horns and bright red eyes were odd. Considering they hadn't, those features barely registered to them.

The woman takes her hand away from her knife as Liliane does. She's not otherwise armed, unless the multitude of spikes on her blue-and-black plate mail count. The ends of her hair have been dyed blue, and she has three piercings in each long ear. She stands confidently, and one can see the restrained energy around her as she tries not to pace. Her eyes seem too big for her face.

The man's do to. Most of his face seems to be too big for the rest of it. He's slowly unfolding himself in his chair. He's also long haired, but it is its natural brown, and his body is also otherwise unmodified. He's also unarmoured.

"Well, that was a just a stream of names to me," the woman says. "But, big galaxy, you know? If it's an just accident, that's fine. We can see about getting you home maybe? Do you know what sector you're from? Do humans even have those?"

"I am worried about the snake monster, honestly." The man says. "It might be following her. And Acerak sounds concerning." He turns to Liliane. "I'm hoping Acerak is not a daemon?"

"Galaxy? I'm from New Lyons, in Icamur. I'm also not human, I'm a tiefling." Technically much more elf than fiend, but the 'tiefling' part is usually considered to outweigh the other descents. "And Acererak is more than concerning; he's likely a demilich, and he's the one behind the Death Curse."

"...yeah, that's still a stream of names. We probably sound like a stream of names too, so, don't worry," says the woman. "Good to know you're not human. Humans are... lovely, but don't keep up. We're Aeldari, if you've heard of those? Oh, speak of names!" Zerri stands straighter, and gives a little flourished bow. "I'm Zerri Merrydirk, Captain of the Merry Band! And this is Jas, our pilot."

"What's a demilich, and what's the Death Curse?" asks Jas. "It sounds quite bad, but maybe similar to a problem we have. So, teaming up on it may help."

"Nice to meet you all. Pilot? So this is a ship? Anyways, haven't heard of Aeldari, either. Demiliches are liches who stopped actively feeding souls to their phylacteries, disembodying them. ...Liches are beings who underwent a magical ritual to become undead and immortal as long as their phylactery isn't destroyed. Acererak started the Death Curse to trap the souls of the dead, and to slowly drain the life from anyone brought back from the dead, presumably so he could consume their souls and grow more powerful. My team was hired by one of his victims to stop him before her own soul is trapped."

"Yes, this is a ship," Jas says. "The Starshark. She isn't particularly fancy, but she is reliable." He pats one of the panels affectionately. "I'm not sure how describe the Aeldari to someone who hasn't heard of them, I'm not sure what would be relevant. Long lived? Fast? Varying levels of psychic?"

"The Death Curse sounds similar to our problems," Zerri says. "What with the whole 'soul eating' thing... But at a very different scale."

"You can not meaningfully fight She Who Thirsts," Jas elaborates.

"Exactly."

She glances over at the window. "Ships where I'm from don't usually have glass. Or stay so still."

"And those sound relevant. Is She Who Thirsts a god? Because I already have at least one deity on my list, I don't mind adding more."

"This is a star ship, not a sea ship," Jas says, "So that's probably why."

They both look a stunned at her statement.

"Wow. Haven't meant any actual god-killers, just people who call themselves that," Zerri says. "She Who Thirsts is definitely a god. If you can sort her out-- That's good. Very good. Impressive, even.

She's the god of pleasure, excess, torture, perfection, desire, a whole bunch of stuff. And because we --We Aeldari-- kinda... made her, she eats our souls when we die. And when we're alive too, sometimes. It's fun. Plus, ways of preventing the whole soul eating thing range from 'impractical' to 'immoral-AND-impractical. So."

"Star ship? I... Don't think I'm in my home plane anymore."

"If god-killing isn't a known thing here it might be more difficult, and I've so far only personally met minor, nearly forgotten gods. And I had my entire team with me. I might need time to get a running start so to speak. But I'll do my best - it's my sworn duty to face evil in the world. In all worlds."

"Most known paths to immortality are similarly immoral back home; the only non-immoral way I know of is becoming fully divine yourself, which is incredibly difficult. ...I am minorly divine. Still a bit away from not dying when I'm killed, but. I'm a bit beyond most people from my world."

"That's quite possible?" Jas says. "Though 'plane' may not be translating well. There's about three for us? And I'd be a little surprised if you're from the Webway or the Warp."

"Yeah, Slaanesh--She Who Thirsts-- isn't minor or forgotten," Zerri says. "She's one of the Big Four, so to speak. But if there was even a possibility you could kill her, with time and resources, that's pretty impressive. And a lot of people will appreciate any help you give them, even if it's not killing her. She's caused a lot of damage."

"Huh, don't think I've met anyone any amount of divine before? There are not-immoral ways to be mostly immortal. Or at least not have your soul eaten. If you die when you're wearing a waystone and it's attuned to you, you go into it and don't get eaten by Slaanesh. But they're hard to get, especially for people of our... profession, but that's what we're currently trying to get."

"For us, there's - the Material planes, the Shadow plane, the Astral plane, the Ethereal plane, the four elemental planes, the Outer Planes - there's sixteen well-known of those, but many powerful deities have their own - and numerous demiplanes."

"Something like that could be arranged with magic, and I wouldn't be surprised if faced with the Death Curse some wizards have, but it'd be difficult."

"And, yeah, semi-divine people are rare on my world. My team's theory on why we're suddenly divine is the gods of Chult are trying to help sort of? But most gods when they offer gifts expect payment, so."

"Where would you find waystones? I can help with that to start."

"...I feel like we have a bigger difference than just being on a different plane. That sounds systematically different," says Jas.

"I mean, if they're relatively nice gods, that's maybe not too bad? It'd be nice of them if they specified the payment though," Zerri says. "So, galactically that-a-way--" She waves a hand in the direction of the window "--there's a hole in reality, where our empire used to be. It's Slaanesh's fault. Anyway, on some of the planets in the reality hole, waystones fall from the sky--"

"They're the tears of Isha," Jas interjects.

"--if you're religously inclined. They fall from the sky, you can fight daemons for them and collect them, and see if someone will attune them for you in exchange for extras. Anyway, that's where we're headed. If you're capable of killing small gods, you'll probably be fine, but this is pretty risky risky. We're only doing it because we're in imminent danger of being eaten by a god, and we don't really have a better option."

"...Well, if they're at all like the demons back home, I might do extra damage, so. And I can heal people, so as long as you don't die before I can get to you..."

"Really? That's awesome! I mean, I have no idea how similar our daemons are, but you can heal? That's brilliant!"

She's a bit taken aback, but it does make sense if healing magic is a lot rarer here. "Yeah. I can lay on hands, or cast a spell. Laying on hands allows me to attune how much I heal, but I only have so many charges for a day. I can also use a spell, which is unlimited for a weaker heal - that's because of the divinity, spells back home are usually strictly limited per-day. The laying on hands can also be used to cure up to twelve people a day of disease or poison. Is healing magic rare here? ...Also, if I do happen to fall unconscious, do not seem able to rouse myself after a few seconds, and it's critical that I regain consciousness immediately, pour the contents of the red vial around my neck down my throat. I would recommend against drinking it yourselves, potions can have different effects on different species."

"Fairly rare, yeah. There are some psykers that could do it? But neither of the two psykers we have can. And they probably shouldn't use those powers in the reality-hole anyway. 

The Aeldari do have healing tech, but-- okay, so the subset of Aeldari that most of us except Jas are is the Drukhari-- and when it comes to tech, Drukhari have a bad habit of answering 'how do we power this?' with 'by torturing people, of course!' The Asuryani tech is probably nicer, but we don't have any of that either. So. We're a bit short up on healing overall. Any healing is brilliant for us, and dealing with poison is super useful as well.

If you're unconscious, red vial down throat, don't drink it yourselves: got it. I'll make sure that gets passed around the crew.

"Thanks."

"I have infernal blood in my veins, so. A certain subset of my ancestors would probably leap for joy at torture-powered magic. It's hard to recognize when you're in a damaging culture, too, and leaving can be difficult, but making your own way is a good act."

"For more healing - I can try to teach people how to be paladins, but - it's incredibly difficult, moreso than many other magical traditions, it requires a certain inner devotion, and the capacity to keep to a strict oath in action and mind. The training itself usually takes one to six years, and I don't know if you have anyone with that sort of time and the right mentality. And my world doesn't have that sort of time, if Acererak grows unchecked. But training some of your people in one of the traditions with healing is possible if I find my way back, and if I end up settling here - the idea of eventually founding my own order is tempting, I'll admit."

"That's good to hear from someone else. I just I worked it out sooner, you know? There's just a lot of people who I hurt--" She glances at Jas, uncomfortable. "--But now, I'm trying to show other Drukhari that there's a better way. That's why I started the Merry Band. 

Yeah, I'm not sure we have the right sort of people to become paladins. This is a corsair crew. But if you settle down, there's certainly going to be takers for healing magic. Especially if it gets around the dangers of psychic powers. And if you head back, we might be able to get some nice-Asuryani tech that does something that's hard in your world for you to take with you."

"We don't have ships like this, or so much metal, or so much glass. I suspect even just books would be a huge boon. My world does need me, and I have unfinished business beyond that, but - here seems to be in need, too, and my world has other heroes. If I can get back, I can likely return here, or find someone capable of plane-shifting."

"Those are all acquirable. Metal and glass would be pretty easy, and books too. Ships would be a little harder, they're more specialist. But books a pretty cheap in the more civilised parts of the galaxy, unless you want rare knowledge.

Hopefully any way we can get you home is two way. Acerak sounds like he really needs to dealing with, and he's probably  a stepping stone to really hurting She Who Thirsts. This world has trouble, but we're not under time pressure like your world. She Who Thirsts has been doing this ten thousand years, we can hold on. Not forever, but we can hold on."

"Our worlds seem to have a good deal to learn from each other, then."

"I think we lucked out with worlds with compementary strengths and weaknesses. And if you can bring us along and need extra help with Acerak, I can see what we can do. More practice for us and more distance from Slaanesh can only help."

"With any luck it'd be possible to hook your people into our afterlife system, at least anyone who immigrates."

"That'd be real helpful as well. I'm assuming there's no soul eating gods in your afterlife system? I'm not sure how many takers you'll have. The Asuryani would probably say 'we're perfectely happy with our current afterlife system' and the Drukhari would be 'we're perfectly happy with our not-dying-because-torture thing,' but I'd take up the offer if it was possible. I imagine there'd be other corsairs, or people from other species, who'd take it up as well."