"The church inside Osirion is organizationally separate but I'm sure the Abadarans in Absalom would be overjoyed to assist."

Nod. Well, that could be pretty straightforward, Joshel can prepare the Abadar truth spell this time, to skip the whole proving-they're-not-making-up-up rigamarole (assuming it's not already known that Osirion took a bunch of clerics off to another world), and then just show up there with Tantras tomorrow morning and probably to have it all decided on by noon. The church of Abadar is great. 

:I may approach you again if one of our Farseer-Fetchers is interested in the, er, tomb raiding: he adds. :Assuming that doesn't involve taking sides in conflicts between other parties.: 

Why are 'tombs filled with treasure' a thing??? Whose tombs??? Joshel is pretty sure he would not be getting that particular advice from Cicerone Raad if raiding the tombs for treasure was a crime, so he's not worried about that, he's just really confused why this is even coming up as a notable way of earning money in Osirion. 

"There's some paperwork, and some tombs may have extant mummies but if they have stayed put this long they are not likely to emerge."

Might have extant what - why is this enough of a thing that they have a bureaucratic process for it— not the top priority to ask questions about right now. 

:Er, taking a step back - because I think I'm not doing enough of that - is there anything else obvious - about the interworld contact , not the current emergency - that I'm not thinking to ask about or plan for?: 

"You could be accepting payment from your own neighbors here for transit to Golarion if they have their own trades they'd like to undertake."

That! Is in fact! Really obvious! 

...Well, kind of, it would still pretty much have to be a joint venture with Leareth's organization, because Brightstar can't personally do all of their interworld Gates, and Joshel will probably continue to feel weird and uneasy about the exact status of that alliance until he has a chance to talk it over with Leareth personally (which, incidentally, is a spectacularly intimidating prospect that he's mildly dreading.) ...Also Brightstar is not, technically, Valdemaran or a Herald or in any way in Joshel's chain of command - and isn't one of Leareth's people either, obviously - and somehow that hadn't occurred to Joshel to mull over either.

Should they be paying him??? They should pretty plausibly be paying him, and this only hadn't occurred to Brightstar because the Tayledras barely have money as a concept and he hasn't yet thought through that one thing he could use money for is "saving up for the super-expensive Resurrection and getting his parents back". And, like, Joshel could probably let Randi continue taking advantage of the fact that Brightstar is personally loyal to Jisa and probably feels like he can’t ask anyone for anything after his - participation - in Leareth’s death. They could keep acting like he clearly owes them all this free labor, for quite a while, but that doesn't seem very Abadaran!

:Thank you, that makes a lot of sense: he says. :...I actually just thought of something I want - Abadaran theology? Advice on? …The man who solved the Gate -routing first - who dropped me in Sothis - isn’t actually from Valdemar or in the Heralds’ chain of command. He took very significant risks to speed up the research, for - personal reasons - . …I don’t think it’s going to occur to him that he could ask Valdemar for payment at all and I’m not sure how to figure out what’s fair if someone isn’t going to negotiate for what they think they ought to be paid? He wasn't the only one who worked on it, but it's entirely on him that it was possible in time to save the people dying, or to get Gentle Reposes inside your time limit for Raises. …The people he’s from live in small communities of a few hundred people and don’t really trade with outsiders or use money. I'm not sure he has much way to know what Valdemaran money is worth.: 

"...well, what were his personal reasons? If he gets what he wanted in the first place out of the endeavor, if he would have done it for that payment, then that would be a fair price. Or, does he have a use for any of the myriad things that can be bought with money, even if he'd rather have someone else handle his budget for him?"

:He was - complicatedly partially responsible for Leareth’s death and also got some other people killed, on his Goddess’ orders, though She later…apologized? Apparently? I think he was sorry it had cost us our chance at timely interworld contact, and - wanted to make it up to some people close to him who felt pretty betrayed by it. …Also his parents were killed along with all but one of the members of his clan, their Goddess exploded the Vale to set off a war with Leareth. And your world has resurrection. Though it would need to be the most expensive kind and Valdemar can’t pay for it.:

Joshel feels kind of…embarrassed? about all the Velgarth gods exploding their own countries and things like that? even though on reflection this is stupid because it’s not like he had anything to do with it.

:It’s possible Leareth’s organization could: he adds. :But that’s not up to me and I’m not sure what they consider themselves to owe him and - I guess it should go on the list of awkward conversations to have with Leareth once he’s functional again about our messily shared finances while he was dead?:

Joshel did try to ask Nayoki about it! And got a polite brush-off, so she apparently didn’t feel like it was in her authority either. Either that or she was dealing with eighteen more urgently-on-fire problems, which is unfortunately plausible.

:I don’t know. I hadn’t - really had a chance to think about it before now.:

"It does sound like you have a lot of irregularities that need to be regularized, yes, hopefully in such a way that everyone feels they've gained by it. Insofar as you have influence over this it sounds like you could... prompt people to tell him they forgive him, perhaps? If that was what he was after. And if he's a mage he will have plenty of his own opportunity to earn money for a True Resurrection grade diamond."

There are so many irregularities that need to be regularized! Joshel is glad that at least one person understands why this is an uncomfortable situation that would ideally be rectified sooner rather than later! Like, it’s not that he objects to Leareth's people funding the whole endeavor and generously contributing some of their diamonds toward Raising Valdemaran casualties, he just...wants a clearer understanding of the relationship here. 

:He's a mage. Also a trained Healing-Adept, though that's only useful if Golarion has any magically-contaminated land that needs cleanup to render it habitable. I...should definitely make a point of telling him that he could earn money in Golarion, he may not realize that either.: 

Brightstar is definitely alongside Jisa on Joshel's personal list of people who, while brilliant and talented, seem especially likely to manage to create some kind of bizarre diplomatic incident if sent off to visit Golarion solo. But Brightstar isn't a Herald and they don't, in fact, have the right to order him to stay where he is. 

(He will consider using the Companion-backchannel for a very gentle prompt that if Vanyel or Jisa consider themselves to have forgiven Brightstar but haven't said anything, they could consider saying it, but - whether they do forgive him is not really up to him.)  

"Golarion... actually does... have some magically contaminated land, though it's currently still infested with demons and it's not clear who if anyone is interested enough in occupying it once they've been cleared out to pay for cleanup."

What, how, did Golarion manage to have some kind of demon-summoning Cataclysm - you probably could cause a demon Cataclysm with a scary enough scaled-up version of that horrible dagger artifact from Highjorune that supposedly Leareth made– nevermind. 

:I suppose one thing Valdemar could do for Brightstar is help him find that out, I expect we'll have better routes for that.:

"There you go. There's plenty of value on the table, it only needs to be shuffled around and we'll all be the richer."

Abadarans are great (and Joshel does not feel like he's all that good at being one yet but he'll get there!) It's so refreshing to take a moment and look at the situation from the angle of "in five years we'll be so much richer" and not just grinding terribleness of this particular week and all the casualties on the border that they can't possibly justify Raising. 

:Thank you for the advice, Cicerone.: 

"You are quite welcome. When there's a bit more spare time, there are classes, at the churches back in Sothis, some for laypeople but some for people like us, you may like them."

'When there's spare time' is going to be never, but - it's important. Joshel can tell Randi it's important. 

:I think I would like that quite a lot. Thank you.: 

(Joshel has noticed that the Abadarans will sometimes respond to 'thank you' with 'no need, I'm getting paid', but he's Valdemaran and he's going to keep saying it, at least for a long time.) 

...Aaaand on that note he had better go, he's getting a warning from Kimbry that he had better go be ready for a Gate to someplace called Frescue, or rather the refugee camp eight miles out from someplace that used to be called Frescue, which is having some kind of newly urgent problem. 

The Star-Eyed Goddess has been mostly focused on elsewhere, right now. She has other projects, and the ones distant enough from Valdemar are still possible to see, and She was not going to burn any more resources on trying to intervene again on the situation in Valdemar. 

...Except now there's a whole lot more inability-to-see! Still localized, still not affecting distant Vales and only rippling out as far as the Dhorisha Plains a little, but - something happened. She just cannot even slightly see what. All She knows for certain is that Her mortal isn't dead, because She is not in possession of his soul. For all She knows everyone else might be dead! 

(She did try asking the Shadowgod, who cryptically conveyed that it was good-from-Their-perspective but was not even trying to be helpful.) 

Her mortal, who was so loyal, might be in a terrible situation! She wouldn't know!!!

Fine. Hey Abadar? The Star-Eyed Goddess is interested in trading with You, if You have more visibility on this here place, and will do another weird favor in exchange for information on what's happening there! 

They're trading! They hired some of Abadar's guys and a few other guys and are buying things that are valuable with things that they find less valuable. It's beautiful.

......Abadar has really strange taste. 

But! Importantly! Visibility in Valdemar! Especially so in Haven!

The Star-Eyed Goddess is very confused, though. How did Abadar end up with so many mortal followers here so quickly??? Also this kind of makes it seem like Abadar's fault that the noise in Haven got worse, if He's been recruiting followers so hard and nudging or instructing them to engage in mortal activities that He can see just fine (whether because of His bizarre taste or the fact that they’re His or the fact that He told them to do that) but that makes it impossible to see for anyone else! 

If it’s His fault then maybe He should refund what She paid for information because She wouldn’t have needed to if He wasn’t causing the noise in the first place  (This is more the god-equivalent of a curmudgeonly muttering under her breath, rather than a request, and is not very clear anyway.)

(One of the things the Star-Eyed Goddess cannot see clearly enough to even guess at is that interworld contact happened. Enough other things were going on that it doesn’t especially resemble the Foresight footprint from the last time.)

Nope, most of these are from Golarion and not new. He's only picked one local guy. They must have needed more help and ✨imported✨ it.

!!!!!????????

…Abadar clearly thinks this is good. Abadar has weird taste but…probably…would be displeased by everyone in Valdemar dying since then they could not ““trade”” anymore? 

How...did they get here from Golarion? Is that something Abadar can see? 

Oh yeah Abadar is not generally speaking into it when people die. They usually don't want to do that and it happens because there are not things on the market that suit them as alternatives.

Abadar is not sure how they got here because nobody has been paid for that part. He thinks his local guy did the importing though.

It is somewhat reassuring that Abadar doesn't want people to die and will presumably be steering for that. (It would be more reassuring if any of the things that Abadar cares about made sense to the Star-Eyed Goddess.) 

...She is not hopeful, because of Abadar's baffling taste, but - can He see if this particular mortal, who is Hers, is - okay? 

He can't see that guy very well. He's not doing very Abadaran things. He thinks His guy may be planning to find a way to pay him for something but that's pretty dimly visible.

(Is that good?????? It's so frustrating to figure out how to translate the information Abadar can actually sell to Her into something She cares about.) 

It's - enough of an angle that She can unwind and de-noise some threads of Foresight, not that this makes it much less confusing... 

...wait. 

She tugs to get the Shadowgod's attention. What happened to the soul of the used-to-be-immortal one???? Because it was definitely dead! But that one thread over here is really quite reminiscent! What!