The bored clerk wearing a much more black variant of the Probably A Gang Style seems to think his armor and mace are really cool, going by where her eyes go. But she dutifully reads the rules, not that he can understand them, and hands him his key. It says '403' on it. The pods are numbered. There are signs. Including one that says "--> 401-449".

He's still not sure if these are definitely numbers, let alone which numbers they are and accordingly what order they go in. Language guy, help?

...Sure, he'll show Blai to pod 403 and how to open it.

"Thank you," says Blai, hoping to be understood in tone if not content. He will not have room to get the armor off in there so he starts getting out of it ahead of time.

Languages guy indicates the clock on the pod wall; it's currently 02:24, and he would like to meet up again at 13:00, out front?

........Blai still does not know what these characters mean.

......tally marks, and numbers next to them?

(The clock ticks over to 2:25)

(He yawns and blinks.)

...if Blai can have the paper for a second? Sunrise, then stick figure kneeling in the pod, then stick figure emerging.

...Shrug. Another yawn, and then a wave goodbye.

...well, hopefully they can find one another again in the morning.

Blai packs away the armor and climbs into the pod to sleep.

The pod door locks if he wants to turn the latch. There are some background noises but nothing major. Dawn arrives.

He wakes up at dawn. He scrunches himself into an acceptably prayerlike position in his pod and delivers a sitrep and receives spells. That wasn't really a lot of sleep and he will have a little more if the guy isn't hanging around waiting for him.

There's no evidence of language guy on a quick walk out to the square the pod hotel is in. Food stalls are setting up, and there's a bunch of people walking to work or hanging around talking to each other and distributing small objects.

He prepared another Create Food today but he doesn't cast it right away. He will... put his armor back on and go for a walk to familiarize himself with the area.

Street vendors buying and selling what seems like random junk along with more understandable items like knives, food, clothes, and bottles of beer. "Green Dragon!" Convenience stores and gas stations. Construction crew forming up around a foreman. Clothes store. Gym. Traffic. Food stalls. Lots of traffic. Soup kitchen. Residences, between everything else. Parking garages. Mechanics' garages, repairing the vehicles. Bars. A street clinic treating walk-ins. Hotels. Drug pushers. Gun store. Improvised sports field in a parking lot, with some kind of game on. Ads, everywhere, occasionally gory or pornographic ones.

Half of it is incomprehensible; the other half he can parse by vibe even if the specifics are bewildering. He watches the sport for a little while. Observes the construction for a minute. Tentatively concludes that the guns might be mechanically dangerous instead of magically when detecting magic on them yields fuckall. He pauses at the soup kitchen and again at the clinic but decides he will come back when he can talk.

He returns to his capsule to sit in it and study the Acts till the guy shows up, if he's going to do that.

It's not too much longer; He does come and knock on Blai's pod door a bit after noon and the extra sleep and wandering ate much of the morning.

Handshake?

Sure, handshake.

"Share Language."

"Yep, I knew something was up. Cheers. I'm Samuel Brown."

"Select Blai Artigas. Where am I, please?"

"City of Cincinnati, state of Ohio. North America, Earth. They called me crazy, you know, but I did always believe there was something more to the world than physical reality. Ha! Let's not chat right near the other pods, it's rude."

"Of course, where should we go?"

"Just out to the square, I guess. 'Cmon."

Once they're a bit away, "Oh man. I have so many questions I kind of wrapped around to having zero questions."