The Void sounds more like the Negative Energy Plane? Blai can prepare summoning spells if Leareth would like to look at various elemental creatures, though they don't last very long. Most of what Blai knows about most of the planes is what spells interact with them - so he can describe Ethereal Jaunt and Astral Projection, in case that helps.

Descriptions of spells that interact with other planes would probably be helpful! Looking at various summoned elemental creatures definitely would be, though it sounds like that would have to be tomorrow? 

(Leareth has been taking very detailed notes, and for spell descriptions in particular would like to read Blai's mind to pick up as much as possible about the structure of the magic.) 

That's fine. Blai considers warning him that he's been told it's unpleasant but actually he was only told that once when he was like twelve and nobody's complained since then and he's been having his mind read a lot on this planet so maybe it doesn't bear mentioning.

Seldan feels like he is quite the expert in Blai's mind at this point and, while probably nothing would bother him anyway thanks to the bond, he thinks Blai's mind is objectively just fine? And certainly not bothersome to Leareth, who must be an unusually hard-to-bother person in order to have gotten up to all the shit he's done. 

Leareth can productively interrogate Blai on Golarion-related matters for a couple of candlemarks, by which point it's lunchtime and Vanyel apparently wants his attention on something again. He will make whatever progress he can for the rest of today - assuming there are no disasters that take up all of their time - and then if Blai can prepare a summoning spell tomorrow, that would also be very informative. 

Actually, if Blai has any spells that use negative energy, that would also help narrow down if the Negative Energy Plane and the Void are the same thing. Leareth's understanding is that Blai's healing works via positive energy, which does not seem to correspond to anything Velgarth schools of magic are familiar with. 

Just one summoning spell? He can only get one kind of elemental at a time.

He can prepare an Inflict Light Wounds and... kill a chicken with it or something.

Several kinds would be better but Leareth's guess is that if one of the Elemental Planes matches they all do, and he's aware that Blai has limited spell opportunities per day and doesn't want to cut into his available defensive magic. 

Seldan is so curious about the wound-inflicting spell! Does it inflict specific wounds or just, like, woundedness in general somehow? 

You can aim it a little bit, if you're targeting somebody with enough toughness to stay conscious after getting Inflicted at all and want them to still be able to do some particular thing afterwards like walk or chew, but not very much. It tends to go for flesh wounds and skin-level damage. He used to be able to channel (negative) energy through his mace and that tended to concentrate most of the extra damage at the spot where he hit the demon, so he could squeak out a little more crippling effectiveness out of it if he landed a solid blow on an important joint or the head.

Summonses are actually a pretty good spell to have prepared for defensive purposes; he'll prep two, show off one, and plan to use the second as a demo only shortly before dawn, keeping it in pocket till then, if that works for Leareth.

That works fine for Leareth! He thanks Blai for his help and ducks out to attend to Heartstone-related Vanyel questions. 

One of his staff can show Blai where to get lunch, if he’s hungry. They’ve made arrangements to have hay and grain brought for Seldan, and a guest room set up on this same level so Seldan can join Blai there without having to navigate stairs.

Oh no, can Seldan not do stairs. Blai can cast Air Step on him if they anticipate stairs but what if there are surprise stairs.

Seldan thinks he can get up or down stairs (as long as it’s not one of those extremely tight cramped spiral staircases they put in towers sometimes, in which case he would literally not fit). It would just be so so undignified. He is grateful to Leareth's people for saving him from having to decide between "extremely undignified" and "literally demanding a short-range Gate to their bedroom." 

If they ever have to descend stairs at some kind of formal court function or something, though, Blai is welcome to prepare Air Step so he can look cool instead of incredibly silly. 

It's probably not a very justifiable use of a second circle slot.

What's for lunch?

A range of communal dishes set out on a side table with similar overall variety to the Heralds' dining hall, none of them Worldwound stew or undersalted! 

Seldan clops over and examines the table curiously, warns Blai that this one bean dish is popular in Seejay and is usually made very spicy, and then stops to mull on how in the world he could possibly know that. Did he travel to Seejay? Did Valdemar entertain some sort of envoy from that region during his time as a Herald? He is getting seriously ticked off that he doesn't remember any autobiographical details of his actual life - except for some generalities, he knows he held military commands and wrote treatises - despite having pretty good retention of historical facts. 

Also Leareth's style of speaking is definitely familiar, to the point that Seldan is now suspecting he did somehow know Leareth in a previous incarnation, as unlikely as that might seem. It's driving him wild that he can't dredge up any details of who. Especially because he's...pretty sure the person-who-was-secretly-Leareth wasn't someone he knew as an evil archmage, he was...probably a scholar? 

The dining hall isn't that busy - they're a bit late for the usual lunch hour - but there are a bunch of people at one table having some kind of good-natured argument in Rethwellani. Seldan considers translating it for Blai's entertainment before realizing it's for some reason almost entirely about obscure math he doesn't know. They can play some mental chess instead? 

He'll steer clear of the spicy thing, he is perfectly capable of putting food that hurts in his mouth but it makes his nose run and there doesn't appear to be any reason to do it here.

Seldan speaks Rethwellani? Is that another holdover from his human lifetime?

Apparently! He thinks it's not that hard to learn if you know Valdemaran, and Rethwellan has all the best scholarship, you really have to know the language if you want to read the most interesting philosophical treatises. He determines after brief introspection that he apparently speaks Karsite as well, and that's a much less closely related language. 

Ooh they have pocket pies with apples inside! Seldan wants one! ...He actually has no idea if horses experience taste similarly enough for him to enjoy foods he liked as a human, especially given that apparently he does like hay fine now, but he wants to test it and he's pretty sure Companions don't have the weirdly fussy digestion that regular horses do. 

Blai gets a pie for Seldan and one for himself too.

It turns out apple pies are still tasty! Not in a way where Seldan would suffer too much if he was only getting hay, but he's happy that he can still enjoy them. 

Seldan thinks the plan is still for them to be on-call to cast Owl's Wisdom on Vanyel two seconds before someone Gates him back to Haven at which point they can also be on call to worry about things going horribly wrong, no point worrying when they know Vanyel hasn't even started yet. Anyway, in the meantime maybe they can go see if the guest rooms in Leareth's headquarters are nicer than the ones in Valdemar? 

It's weird that the guest rooms in Leareth's headquarters are more prepared for horse shaped guests than the ones in Valdemar, and that is at present a pretty important trait if you ask Blai. Off they go to check it out.

This room was absolutely not a bedroom until half a candlemark ago! It was probably some kind of general meeting room, going off the fact that almost an entire wall is set with slate panels sanded smooth to write on with chalk.

It's definitely much bigger than the guest room Blai was temporarily assigned, with a wide doorway suitable for moving tables in and out easily or, as the case may be, for a horse to get in and out. It now contains a bed, the mattress resting on a cleverly folding frame and a makeshift sort of low box on the floor beside the bed filled with straw. There's a desk as well, and an armchair. Overall the furniture is plainer than what was in the Valdemaran guest room but also much newer. 

It has permanent mage-lights set in the ceiling but, as the person showing them to it apologetically explains, they're not the kind that an un-Gifted person can activate themselves - it's sort of taken for granted that any meeting will have at least one mage - so Blai will have to ask someone to power them up if he wants light. They do recommend it if he ends up spending much time in here, it's not good for people to lack any source of bright light all the time. Normally they go on walks outside, but the whole facility is very locked down right now in case Iftel is scrying the surface for activity, and anyway there are barely five candlemarks of daylight at this time of year and outside is pretty dismal. 

Blai can do his own light. Not that much of it but he's used to coping with just the one light through the winter at the Wound in a windowless office.

A useful background for living up here! 

Anyway, there's a privy next door which he should have to himself at night - the regular bedrooms are on the lower level - and this room down the hall has a bath and hot water. Sadly not UNLIMITED hot water like the base he used to work out of, which was built above a geologically active area and routed a hot spring directly to the bathing-room. But apparently that's slightly less safe because risk of earthquakes. 

Yes, there's apparently an earthquake suppression spell that the Star-Eyed is wired to directly in Lineas, it seems bad. Blai hasn't had a bath since... drowning... which probably was kind of a wash (so to speak) in terms of its effect on his overall cleanliness, he might go ahead and take a bath if nothing else is pressing.

He should definitely bathe! It seems unlikely they'll be needed in the next half-candlemark and the river was not exactly sparkling clean. Seldan now feels slightly bad for not thinking to bother someone in Haven until they offered him a place to bathe, but in fairness he's...a horse now...and may have forgotten to track the existence of baths for a while, and was also feeling pretty paranoid about Blai going into buildings without him.

(He's not feeling bothered about that at all here, one advantage of being in Leareth's highly secure base is that it might be underground and slightly dismal but he feels very safe here. It seems like pretty strong evidence that the gods can't pull anything here that Leareth has been unmolested despite still not being immortal. Though he will have to nag someone to key him to the shields so he can Mindspeak Blai if one of them is outside the bedroom, it's rather well shielded even from the hallway.)