Right. 

Well, either this man is exactly what he seems to be - and what he seems to be makes no sense whatsoever - or he's some kind of plot. If it's a plot then - well, it might be possible to use Mindhealing to twist someone's head around enough that they genuinely thought they were from another planet. It's still not at all obvious what the goal of the plot would be, but of course Leareth - and Vanyel can't think who other than Leareth could pull something like this off - wouldn't want it to be, so that's not actually surprising. 

:I think we should have one of the Mindhealers have a look at him. ...I'd actually prefer Jisa, given her - more varied experience - but I'm worried about putting her at risk.: Though it's probably not exactly what Leareth was steering them toward, Leareth doesn't - or shouldn't - know anything about Jisa's mage-gift, or her lifebond. :- If we put him in the nearest Work Room, those aren't actually shielded against Mindhealing.: As all of them learned a few years ago. :She can have a look without him knowing.: 

:Right. I can pass that along. ...Should we get Randi and Karis out of the city, do you think? Just in case?: 

:Just in case of what?: Vanyel sighs. :I have no idea. I suppose if he's a mage, he could Final Strike - Jisa can check that, too -: He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. :I have no idea. I don't know what we're looking at here. It - smells like a trap, but I don't know what the trap part could possibly be. I think - make sure they're behind shields, and be ready to evacuate, but having them out of the city reduces our options too -: 

:All right.: 

Savil can pass this on to Katri. The nearest Work Room is outside the guarded perimeter, but only about a ten-minute walk. 

Katri is still trying to gauge if her attempt at reassurance is helping at all. It's been less than thirty seconds. 

She smiles at the man, as soothingly as she can manage, and will maybe project reassurance a little too (not too hard, she's worried that in itself might spook him). :Why don't we go inside somewhere warmer before we, er, ask you more questions to try to get this figured out.: 

Reassuring him does not help at all. He's not being anxious at her, it's just happening. Constantly. The content is responsive to what's going on but the amount really is not. She can cause the content to refresh itself unusually quickly if she pushes on it? What if he tracks mud indoors, why did he never get good at Prestidigitation. Is he underdressed. What was that in the corner of his eye, just a squirrel? His hardboiled egg and his roll are going to expire in his bag if he doesn't eat them in the next twenty minutes or so and he can cast another Create Food and Water today and won't go importantly hungry without the bit saved from last night, but what a waste to let any of it shrivel up into nothing. Was his most recent chess game with Grec really fun enough, is there any objective way to be sure. What if the Worldwound isn't really closed and opens up again for no reason like a partially healed cut that prematurely loses its scab. If they try to send him back to Golarion will they accidentally drop him in the ocean and is that a good reason to take his armor off first or is that just asking for a monster ambush.

:Of course, where would you like me to go?:

(It doesn't occur to him at all that someone might be subtly influencing his emotions and only those; if that's a thing in his world it's not subtle or not emotion specific.)

Katri isn't reading his mind and can't particularly tell if the content is changing over faster, just that it's not really helping with his affect. She'll stop trying, in that case, she already has a lot to juggle and this poor man's anxiety levels are not really the top priority to address here. 

:Follow me.: 

She's trying not to appear at all on-edge, they really don't need more of that bouncing around, but she can tell that Savil is alarmed and stressed and it's hard to hide it entirely. 

The man's thoughts continue to be disorienting and exhausting to follow, even if Vanyel can sympathize rather a lot with someone worrying about petty concerns like making a mess even when there are VASTLY bigger concerns that ought to dominate. 

...He's worrying about the food in his bag doing WHAT???

...He's worrying about the WHAT reopening????????

Nevermind. Focus. This man's thoughts are definitely full of tantalizingly baffling details that could conceivably have been put there by a clever Mindhealer to distract the Heralds from whatever he's really here for. Vanyel...isn't sure he really believes that could be what's happening here...but it would be stupid not to check. 

He doesn't relay any of it to Katri. She definitely doesn't need the distraction. 

Katri doesn't try to make conversation while they walk. (She does notice that the man seems to be extremely fit; he's having a lot less difficulty moving at a decent pace through snow while wearing a pack than she would.) 

They arrive at a clearly temporary and hastily-erected fence, and walk along it for a bit before reaching the nearest checkpoint. Katri waves to the Guards and very young Herald stationed there, to indicate that everything is fine, even though she's not at all sure that everything is fine. 

Is his holy symbol still clearly visible? ...not that anyone seems to recognize it, but if they did it would be important. He follows Katri, though not before looking at everybody they're going past to make sure that's also okay with them, he doesn't know if these people have any intrafactional issues and certainly doesn't want to exacerbate them if they have. He lengthens his stride a bit to try to keep up with the horse and not slow it and its rider down. How long will it take to afford a Plane Shift (or two of them) home? Probably long enough that he's going to miss the convention. It didn't sound like Iomedae was going to pick up a ton of Chelish clerics to fill Her seats in the religious delegation but he can't Plane Shift himself remotely in time unless some remarkably bad things happen very quickly. Would he be higher circle if he had run his fort worse? That's a perverse incentive, he wonders if anybody's doing that on purpose so they get to have less overdetermined fights with non-stunned demons more frequently, you'd hope that wouldn't be a way to get promoted but a lot of officers seem to think circles matter more than any other quality for promotion, he got some incredulous letters when he promoted Grec...

Vanyel is starting to feel like he should have been taking notes??? He's pinned down slightly more of what felt odd and off about how the man was thinking about magic, earlier - it feels a little more like White Winds, what he's heard of it from Jisa, than how Valdemar thinks about mage-gift, except that White Winds isn't exactly about having more fights - and he still feels like he's not quite reading it right, something is more off than that, but they still don't know if anything the man thinks about the ""other"" ""world"" is even real... 

Jisa is now hurrying over from the Mindhealers' Collegium as quickly as she can, which will be a lot more quickly once Enara manages to rendezvous with her. She would be more annoyed about being abruptly dragged out of a sesion with a patient, but this does seem like it could be incredibly important. 

(In a corner of her mind that she doesn't look at too closely, she's almost excited. It feels like a long time that they've been waiting for the inevitable escalation.) 

(Nobody they're going past seems inclined to start an argument with Katri over their direction, though a lot of them are more visibly tense than her. Nods of acknowledgement are exchanged. They pass another half-a-dozen of the blue-eyed probably-horses, which watch him closely but don't interfere with their passage.) 

They arrive at one of the standalone Work Rooms, a squat brick building beside a path mostly cleared of snow. Katri ushers the man in ahead of her, and gets to work on a weather-barrier; she's not a powerful mage, but she trained in k'Treva, and the technique doesn't have to have a lot of power thrown at it to quickly warm a small space that has its own walls and everything. 

Inside the room are bare stone walls and a couple of rickety wooden stools. 

:- I'm sorry, I forgot my manners. My name is Katri and I'm a Herald-Mage of Valdemar. What's your name?: 

The Mostly-Horses are unsettling, like some kind of shapeshifter aimed at 'horse' and missed. Wow he does not recognize that spell at all. Maybe it's some not-a-spell bonus thing like channels and domain powers and sorcerer bloodline nonsense. He sits on a stool. It's ambiguous if he's under arrest, this is really not a guest room looking place (though it also doesn't really look like a jail cell, those would normally have a hallway you could observe people from? Maybe it's a teleport trap or it's for calling outsiders most of the time or something?), and it's not that he'd like to be arrested but he would really like to be clear on it, but asking would sound so confrontational. He is hardly about to threaten to leave unless they make it obvious that they want to insist, if that's not the way they operate around here. Especially since, if they don't know the symbol, they might construe it as a weapon just for being pointy and not even because he can cast spells with it, and then if they were arresting him they might take it away. (She's being very tolerant so far. Guidance.)

His name! He has one of those. :I'm Select Blai Artigas and I'm a cleric of Iomedae.: Which is redundant if you know what Select means but they really don't seem to recognize the symbol. Hopefully they can pronounce his name because he just bets if he has to come up with an alternative it will wind up being something inappropriate in their language or something. Is that Herald in the sense that gods have heralds or in the sense that monarchs have heralds or in some other sense that is translating awkwardly. She doesn't have a trumpet but Clarion Call is first circle. Probably that's not even standard issue heraldic equipment and he's overgeneralizing from a book he can't even now remember reading.

Most of that continues to be - not important to address now, before they've confirmed whether they're in the implausible-plot scenario or the impossible-but-would-in-many-ways-make-a-lot-more-sense scenario. But probably the man should know what Heralds are. That seems important. (Also it's only fair for him to know whether or not he's being arrested, but Vanyel...isn't actually sure yet how they're going to decide they're handling that. Safer to wait until Jisa has a chance to look and determine if he's had enormous amounts of Mindhealing done to him.) 

:You should explain what Heralds are: he sends to Katri. 

Fortunately explaining what Heralds are to someone who's never met one before and doesn't have much context on Valdemar is not a completely new situation to be in. 

:Heralds are - it means someone who's Chosen by one of the Companions - you saw my Companion outside, she looks like a white horse, but Companions are magical and intelligent and Choose people who're, er, well-suited to help lead Valdemar, and they help guide and advise us on protecting Valdemar and upholding the laws and generally being trustworthy people.: 

She has no idea if he's going to believe any of that, or find it reassuring even if he does. She doesn't get the sense that he intends to break any laws on purpose but he might be afraid of doing it by accident. 

:...Um, I didn't fully get what you mean by 'cleric', whatever it is I'm not sure we have them here. Could you explain?: 

Okay, the Mostly Horses are called Companions. This rhymes a little bit with how paladins sometimes have their own magical horses and are chosen by paladin-corner gods, but it's not quite like it, since the Mostly Horses Companions are doing the filtering, and he should stop relying on comparisons to Golarion magical traditions. ...if the horses are intelligent is he being rude to the horses? She didn't introduce her horse. Maybe her horse COMPANION is shy and he should not rely on this as a cue for all further encounters with them. Anyway. They're some kind of military branch, which is a little weird if they all have the same powers - maybe there are support personnel she's eliding, that would make sense, like how a paladin order won't generally explain itself with "also we sometimes hire wizards and burglars". And they also have some kind of advisory role, or maybe it's a Heraldocracy outright.

They don't have any clerics? That's weird.

:A cleric is a person empowered by a god, in my case Iomedae, and it is the most common way for gods to empower people - though Iomedae in particular does more paladins. We're good at healing, compared to other kinds of Golarion spellcasters, but can prepare spells that are suitable for other needs too. I'm third circle. - clerics go up to nine, like wizards and sorcerers do. I am not allowed to lie: he thinks; paladins definitely aren't and Iomedae was a paladin in life, so he's at least almost certainly encouraged not to lie and he cannot exactly ask anyone for clarification right now :or do Chaotic or Evil things in general and it's my responsibility to carry out my best understanding of Iomedae's will wherever I find myself but She's Lawful Good so that will not take the form of going around doing crimes or anything.: He himself is probably not Good and has very little idea how long it could take him to get there given how he was working for Asmodeus for twenty years; he's presumably Lawful Neutral now. But Iomedae thought he'd do and he will try to make Her right.

That really gives her a lot more additional questions than answers, but Katri nods anyway. :Thank you.: 

And since she's sort of stuck here waiting for further orders after Jisa sneaks by the Work Room to peek at the guy's mind - she's not entirely sure what for, she didn't get an explanation from Savil, just "Jisa is on her way, keep him in the Work room" - and she needs a further topic of conversation - 

:Can you tell me a bit more about Iomedae?: 

Jisa is almost there! 

She also didn't get more of an explanation than ''this looks like it could be a Leareth plot" but she can fill in the gaps. She doesn't bother to dismount from Enara's back, just gets herself in Sight-range and Looks straight through the wall - she can't get through with anything other than Mindhealing, which makes her feel half-blind, but her Sight is stronger than it was a few years ago, she should be able to get the detail she needs... 

:Iomedae is an ascended god. In life she was a paladin of Aroden, I don't know if He's visited this planet before. - uh, He's dead now. Iomedae is called the Inheritor for this reason. This is her symbol,: the tiny dagger with the gold wire sun behind it. :She has a theocracy on Golarion called Lastwall, but I've never been there. I have Her holy book with me,: two copies actually, he kept thinking of situations where he'd want to leave one somewhere so he Scrivened off a second though it's just sewn together and not really bound properly, :if you would like me to read from it though it's quite long and I'm not sure how well it will translate.:

Blai's mind is very... trellis oriented. Very few things growing in his garden are able to support themselves. There are a handful of vines that are struggling along the ground looking for the trellis without having found it yet but they're underdeveloped. The trellis is - new. He has to have had a previous trellis, some of this growth is old enough that it has to predate this shiny new golden structure, but there was some damage when the old one vanished and he's busily growing new vines to cling very hard to the new one.

The vines are forever growing new superfluous tendrils and underripe fruits that will never be able to wave around trellisward and hook on; he prunes them very swiftly and they all turn into compost.

That's...not not concerning...but Jisa is really quite sure you can't do that with Mindhealing. 

She reaches out. :Van?: And she'll try to describe it in generalities to him rather than bounce her Sight directly, both because Mindhealing Sight takes a lot of training Vanyel doesn't have to interpret and because, even if this man isn't precisely her patient, she still feels like he deserves some degree of privacy. 

:- I don't know what happened to him. Something definitely did but it's - not something magic or Mindhealing could do.: 

Vanyel is no longer reading Select Blai Artigras' mind. He's keyed to the shields on the Work Room (he was the one who last redid them six or seven years ago) and still directly linked into the Web, he could reach his Thoughtsensing through if he wanted, but it would be more effort and he doesn't really expect to get anything new and useful that way, or miss anything critical in the three-or-four-minute window before Jisa confirms what they're dealing with. 

...Huh. 

:Could a god do it, do you think?: 

:- Oh. Maybe? The Tayledras don't look like that - even Moondance doesn't - but not impossible.: Pause. :What else do we know? It'd help to - put it in context - normally I have more to go on than just Sight, you know.: 

:He seems to believe he's probably from another world. If that made any sense whatsoever I'd - be inclined to believe it. Everything he thinks about is incredibly strange. He's the follower of a god I haven't heard of, and was thinking about it in a very odd way. My concern was that - well, we had no reason to think it was possible to travel between worlds, right, or that other worlds existed with people who look human and use magic - and it's a baffling plot if it is one, but 'Leareth having a baffling plot' is definitely not impossible, just weird - and you could make someone believe a lot of strange things with Mindhealing, right, if you didn't care what was ethical...: 

:You probably could. I don't...think...that's compatible with what I'm Seeing? One moment...: 

She'll try to look 'up close', insofar as she can through shields. Her initial impression is that the trellis is not a normal structure for a person to have in their mind, but the growth around it is entirely natural and not directly meddled with - and you would need fine-detail work to alter someone's beliefs about reality, the trellis doesn't look like the kind of thing that could do that, it looks like something that could guide the man's deeper motivation and drives but the rest is all him - 

- but she wants to be quite sure of that, before she tells Vanyel that this definitely can't be Leareth's doing. Can she see any signs of Mindhealing detail-work up close? Or anything that doesn't look like it grew that way naturally, even if she can't pick up the traces of Mindhealing per se?