"Efficiency is a blessing when conducting meetings. As you might imagine, a man in my position wears many metaphorical hats."

"I'm the reigning prince of Osirion. I'm the only ninth level caster in a thousand miles. I am the chief executive of nineteen local and transplanar banks. And I am, of course, the high priest of Abadar on Golarion."

"It is in that capacity you have come to my attention, as Abadar used some of his very limited intervention budget to notify me of your existence."

"That's an interesting choice, since I was probably going to meet with his church anyway. I was told that they'd potentially be interested in providing banking services in my plane of origin."

"Prophecy has regrettably ceased functioning, so he might not have known, and either way, pointing out trading opportunities is fortunately one of Abadar's discounted interventions. I should not worry about His budget."

"It is true that we do frequently provide true banking services as part of a religious trade to Lawfully trading countries.

I would be quite interested in hearing about your home plane or planet, and what you think we might have to offer one another"

"I originate from Earth. My region is stabilized by the false belief held by most humans on Earth that magic mostly does not exist. Because of this, I advise acting with discretion on Earth. I mostly live in a demiplane."

"Like Golarion, our region is threatened by entities which I suspect would locally be called Dark Tapestry entities. Interacting with them is bad and they should be avoided or killed on sight. We don't have a Pharasma and incursions aren't rare. I personally have defense obligations, and am obligated to pass on these warnings under some circumstances."

"Onto nicer things: We have different magic, and also nonmagical technology you don't have. People on Earth don't travel by horse, much. Moderately wealthy humans tend to have carriages powered by petroleum derivatives or stored lightning. Less expensive than that are two-wheeled vehicles, powered by the rider, which are more energy-efficient than walking on a smooth enough road. A lot of people have small machines that run on stored lightning with a range of capabilities – emitting some light and sound, sending messages to other humans with the machines, storing representations of books and songs, performing calculations, sometimes recording images of their surroundings. I have one which I brought, but I altered it to not function without my personal magic, so I can't demonstrate it to you at this time. We've automated the spinning and weaving of cloth. I have access to instructions for many of these things and can telekinetically manipulate metal to produce the ones which are made of metal. There's a lot of other things in this genre."

"I don't know what your highest value exports will be. I do suspect that truth magic would be popular. The best we can manage is faerie contracts. A lot of people don't want to sign faerie contracts and most witches and faeries with the capability to produce them don't want to work as notaries."

"I should warn you that there is a desired technological growth curve that the Divine Consensus is aiming at for this planet in particular, due to its unfortunate inhabitant- most other planets are not as dangerous as this. Abadar used to be paid by the god Aroden- who represented technological development- to attempt to bend this curve upward, but this is not presently the case."

The Ruby Prince flutters their fingers. . 

"Despite this, If you have arrived from a world with higher technology- through some mechanism of your own that the gods were not aware of- the gods will likely not stop you introducing technology that you are able to introduce personally, using your own resources."

"However, if we could find sufficiently valuable nontechnological goods-" the Ruby Prince twinkles. "raw materials, for instance- it would be worth it for me to cast Gate, at least for the initial market price equalization. [Gate] provides a a twenty-foot diameter window into your world, that would last for only a minute and a bit. It is not clear to me how much goods could be transported by your vehicles during such a time. I would then sell those resources on the open market, and pay you a percentage as a finder's fee, making those your resources."

"Inhabitant? And I think we could set something up, I have ongoing communications. What goods would you say are the highest value per unit volume? Would you be interested in an exchange of visitors? Would it be possible for me to commission one for returning home in a few months?"

"There is a Tapestry God imprisoned inside the planet. The gods are not keen to have massive petards (or wishsplosions) going off on the surface.

For goods with high value per unit volume- djezet, horacalcum, spellsilver, diamonds, inubrix, mithril, powdered diamonds, gold, black onyx, siccatite, souls (buying and selling them counts as evil, human blood (doesn't). Probably most demand for spellsilver and powdered diamonds. 

Exchange of visitors- for what purpose? 

Commissioning a gate to return home would be absolutely possible. It would be expensive."

"No big explosions, got it. I'll … have to consult with some people to figure out how to avoid facilitating that."

"Regarding goods: I can probably get a ton of spellsilver, assuming you don’t care what variety. Diamond and onyx are much more expensive than spellsilver at home, are they much more valuable here? Are blood apple saplings of interest? And I don't trade in souls, or even recognize all of those goods, and we haven't industrialized mythril production."

"As for an exchange of visitors: Someone you sent would be able to get a sense of the world and maybe sell truth spells for an absurd fee. Meanwhile, if I can convince Maimonada to visit, she'll be able to set up portals herself. I'm not sure how interested she'll be in doing it but it would open more options. I suspect in the long term you'll be interested in trade with Lunabella, which actually has a mistress of portals, who of course could make all this unnecessary."

"There are, in fact, very dangerous entities and forces on this planet. How immune to mind control are you? How immune to wishes and scrying and torture? How immune are the people you intend to send? Once this gets out- and once we begin trading, this will get out- you and yours will be in significant danger."

"A ton of spellsilver would be..welcome. We have a standard contract- approved by the God of Law- for planar trade equalization agreements- which I think you should review."

"Not as good as some people are. I should probably make myself a suicide trigger of some kind, stick with the lich I came here with, maybe bother some old alumnae."

"I do expect Maimonada would immediately head home and I could brief anyone planning an extended visit. And for what it's worth, invading Arcadia would likely go badly for anyone who tries, and invading Lunabella would just be insane."

"I'll have a look at the contract."

A wave of the hand, and a contract, in the form of a book a foot wide descends. 

It begins (translated) with seven hundred parentheses, and then begins defining a set of recursive linguistic macros, which slowly build up into legal macros. The contract (at the end), is only 7 symbols long. 

That's a lot of contract.

It seems like a really obvious trap, except for how the Ruby Princess seems like an honest person.

"I'd want to review this with my calculation machine and discuss this with my organization before I could even consider signing it."

"Regrettably, my god, Abadar, is also the god of law, and as such has....standards. Especially for people who have calculation machines. We could travel to Axis, and you could have your machine sing to those of my lord in a great chorus."

The Ruby Prince smiles sheepishly.

"I hear such things are done. Things always leak."

"I don't think I need my machine to … sing to … those of your god just yet, I can help my machine read this as it is, but if you're in a hurry I would need to insist on a much shorter contract. Is this a magical contract, by the way?"

"Ah- Magical contracts are seen

- if self-enforcing (terms) as slightly gauche in current exegeses, though there's something of a training-wheels faction. 

- if self-enforcing (justness) as proper

- if information-equalizing, subject to active theological research. 

- if compelling the user in any other way, or conceal terms- as a capital sin.

This isn't any of those."

The Prince smiles prettily. 

"I'm in no hurry, as I would imagine that in nearly all plausible future timelines we have a new trading partner- it's just our job- church and state- to make sure trade happens in a good way!"

"Contract magic in this region can self-enforce justness separately from terms? Anyway, that's good to know."

This is clearly a special interest of theirs, and the Prince's smile is noticeably wider.

"It's the difference between the terms being enforced, after the fact, by the contract (through magical compulsion, or if the contract is sentient, the many other means that a man can be influenced) and the terms being just from an absolute or locally relative sense when the contract is agreed."

"Impressive. And yes, I really do expect you to get a new trading partner, it just might not be me."

"You can use my gardens, over there, for your machine deliberations. They're lit by magical sunlight, which I have had specially arranged to be good for the skin."

The Prince waves their hand vaguely behind the throne. 

"While my intelligence service is well paid, and I am very powerful, I am not a wizard, and cannot claim to be able to prevent the greatest wizards from learning about what's happening in the Dome, and so while you may certainly leave at any time you like, I recommend obtaining some protection before you again walk the streets of Sothis. Scry-teleport kidnappings of important individuals tends to happen on Golarion with some regularity."

The Prince looks a bit dejected.

"Even in Sothis."

“Do you think a friendly lich is inadequate? And thank you.”

The Prince calls after her- "Depends on the lich!"

The sky in the gardens is plainly an illusion, but it is a good one, and the sun that shines down is bright and warming. The gardens themselves are semi-formal, with wild plants carefully pruned to look their best. 

She heads into the garden with the contract. Her aura recharges her phone. She rearranges her Garment under the dress to be a more compressed version of her usual outfit, removes the dress, and re-starches her collar and pleats her tie and rounds her jacket buttons.

Is there a servant she can hand off the dress to?