The weirdo in flowy robes looks very surprised by this, and fairly annoyed on top of being surprised.

He tries a sleep spell. This will probably make her stop that.

Man, wherever this is sucks. She tries neutralizing the magic, and she doesn't really feel like it did anything but she doesn't feel like the magic did anything either, so.

She tackles him. Probably doesn't have to kill him if she can get him pinned and then tie him up and gag him. As long as he's the only one here. Is he the only one here?

He's the only one here. He looks more surprised, and more annoyed, to be tackled, and he shouts something and makes an odd gesture with his hand and then...vanishes.

Well, that figures. That could be - invisibility or teleportation, maybe, she doesn't know which is harder for mages - she listens -

No obvious sounds. 

She seems to be in a basement. Aside from the alter it has a cluttered workspace and a shelf of old books and a - recently dug open pit - and a trapdoor on the ceiling with no stairs.

Also figures.

"What the void was that?"

"Some kind of - portal, or something, I don't know, it's not the fade, magic would work here if it were the fade, and it doesn't - "

"His worked fine."

"Well then he's doing something else. As far as I can tell we're completely cut off from the fade here. I didn't even know that was possible."

"Great. Well, have to get out of here, I don't imagine we're going to reverse it by ourselves."

She looks around the workspace for, like... rope? Any sort of climbing tools? Anything that might otherwise be useful for getting out of here?

Lots of rope conveniently near the altar!

Well then she can probably get them out of here. Kind of depends how high the ceiling is, but if it's a reasonable distance she can find some stuff to stand on and force it and then figure out how to get everyone else up. North might be tricky but maybe they can knot the rope into a harness or something.

Through the trapdoor there's a storefront, with the door currently locked; it has a heavy wooden desk and some bookcases with shoddily-bound books and some wilted herbs and some engraved icons and some candles. It's very dark. 

"Draconis, are you getting the - you already have the secret pit books you want. Okay." 

She doesn't take any of the other stuff. They don't have Leliana here so she'll just force the lock on the door to the outside again, lock picking is not one of her areas of expertise. 

What's outside?

It's nighttime. There's a street. It's lit, with streetlights every ten paces or so, and mostly empty; there are a couple of bundled people sleeping under the awning of a building, and a couple dogs fighting over scraps in front of a different one. The street is straight and goes on a long way, until all that can be seen of it are the little dots from the streetlights. 

Well. This sure isn't Redcliffe. For one thing it's a whole lot bigger. 

"Stick close, North." Draconis can do what he wants. She heads for - well, the huddled people are sleeping, probably rude to wake them? Can she see anyone, like, walking or otherwise awake, if she wanders around a little bit?

There's:

 - a tavern from which people are wandering home, drunk and talking loudly

- two uniformed and armed guards hanging around the tavern watching to see if any of the drunk loud people do or get into any trouble

- a woman embroidering something under the light of the nearest streetlight, leaning in very close so she can see her stitches

- a cart tucked tightly against the building so it doesn't block too much of the road, with someone sleeping on top of its goods

...human guards aren't her favorite people to talk to, but they are the people who signed up for dealing with criminal nonsense, and it seems not impossible that she has just been the victim of a crime. Also sort of committed some but she feels like that was pretty defensible.

She sheathes her sword and heads for the guards. "Hi! I think we're lost, could you tell us where this is?"

Blank stares. 

One of them says something in a language she doesn't speak.

...great.

"I don't know that language. I only speak the King's Tongue. - Draconis, do you know any others - "

"Some Tevinter. I don't know what they're speaking."

The guards don't seem to know any more languages either. They can try slower and more condescending?

Sigh. She bows and waves goodbye. 

She tries the old woman embroidering, any languages in common?

 She shakes her head and points them at a shop. It's closed.

Sigh. She bows and waves goodbye.

"I - guess we can head back to Mr. Kidnapper's shop until morning? I'm kind of stuck here."

"I guess. You want first shift?"

"Sure."

And they can head back to the shop and Draconis can sleep. She would knit something if she had her knitting stuff, but she doesn't, so she'll just... sit here.

The person who summoned them shows up a few hours later, with a pop, and immediately tries to stab her with a summoned shimmery magic blade.

Nice try asshole. She kicks his feet out from under him, wakes Draconis with a yell, and attempts to wrest the blade away from him while he's busy falling.

She gets the blade, except it vanishes in her hands as soon as she has it. He instead attempts to blast her with lightning.

Wow this sucks. She tanks the lightning; it hurts but doesn't make her fall. She kicks him in the stomach, hard. She draws her sword. 

The dog growls and springs forward, trying to bite the other guy in the leg.

He was really not expecting her to be able to survive the lightning. He looks anxiously between her and her companion and the dog and then - lights his house on fire, and all of them with it.

- what the fuck!

She grabs his hand and wrenches him out of the house and into the street. Pins him. Yells the word "Fire" a couple times, very loudly. 

He runs out of the house and barks a lot! He does not like fires.

He grabs his backpack full of books and supplies and - fishes out some bandages to gag the other mage with, that seems like maybe the only thing he can work on right now.

People pour out of the neighboring houses. There's some screaming. The neighboring houses evacuate.

One woman steps forward and pours water, apparently generated from nowhere, on the burning house. 

The man struggles.

Understandable but not going to help him. She's good at pinning people.

He gags the other mage when he can. Hopefully that'll stop the spellcasting.

After a couple of minutes there are a lot of people dumping magically-generated water on the fire, enough of them to keep it from spreading though the house itself looks like a loss.

There are also guards.

The guards have a lot of incomprehensible questions.

Well, she can tie up the mage and engage with them instead, but engaging is mostly going to look like a lot of pointing to her ears and shaking her head and saying, "Sorry, I only speak the King's Tongue."

Someone does another spell in her direction. 

" - anyone know who they are -"

        "Never seen them before, officer."

              "That's old Fottlebottom, sir, that's his house that burned down." 

      "They burned down."

"Now, now, can't go making accusations just yet."

        "Could've burned down the whole town."

                "Is he all right?"

"Does anyone know if this man has magical capabilities -"

       "Fottlebottom?"

               "If he did he wouldn't live here, officer, with due respect."

      "Ruffians just beat up an innocent old man, if you ask me, and destroyed his house - a damned shame - what this city's coming to -"

               "They're foreigners."

      "That's what I mean, what's this city coming to, with all these foreigners."

"Can you understand me?" a guard asks her. "Nod your head for yes, like this -"

Nod.

"Do you have reason to believe this man has magical capabilities?"

"Lots of them. I think he pulled us here in the first place, a few hours ago. Then he disappeared, I expect he pulled himself somewhere else? I tried to get a guard, but no one spoke our language. We decided to stay in the shop until morning, he came back and tried to kill us - with some kind of summoned weapon and then with lightning, I think I have burns from it - and then he lit the house on fire, again by magic, and I pulled him out and yelled."

"I can't understand you," he cuts her off impatiently. "Nod or shake your head."

Sigh. Nod.

"Are you injured?" he asks the man.

The man nods feebly. 

"Can you afford a healer?"

The man shakes his head.

"Are you dying?"

He shakes his head again.

"Is your house insured?"

Nod.

"Then that'll cover a healer. Go get one," he tells somebody. "Everyone who isn't contributing to firefighting efforts, take ten steps backwards, then form a line outside that radius if you saw something you want to tell us about. Not you," he tells the foreigners, "you stay here and stay out of trouble."

This order is obeyed with a minimum of muttering about foreigners. 

The roof of the house collapses.

Well, the last time she was kidnapped by humans and then dealt with the law about it she was sentenced to death, but these guards seem a little more worried about, like, anything useful than the other ones did, so she'll give them the benefit of the doubt for right now.

She nods and stands and thinks about going out of her way to look extra inoffensive. She has a lot of practice. It would probably be easy.

She crosses her arms instead. 

He'll just be over here staying out of trouble and looking inoffensive!

That probably explains why the guards are mostly glaring at her and not at him. Though there could be some other factors here, like that he's a human (so are these people) or that their average skin tone is closer to his or that he wasn't wrestling an injured old man when they showed up. 

Honestly she really suspects that it's because she's an elf wearing armor and a sword - it usually is - but the wrestling an injured old man thing, that's fair.

She's not gonna do anything about it. People can glare at her if they want. They'd heal the old man if they could, but they can't.

The sun is starting to rise; it's not visible yet but it is less dark. The guards route the crowd of staring and gossiping people to one side of the road so other people can use it to get where they are going. 

They put out the fire. A woman in a vibrant green headscarf comes by and takes the injured old man's hand and heals him. 

       "Officer, is this really necessary -"

"Almost certainly not. We've probably got some troublemaking foreign adventurers who tried to rob the place, open and shut, hope they like where they're headed. But the law says, if someone's alleging a restrained person is a magic-user of any kind, you settle that first. He has insurance."

        "He's a good man."

"You know him?" 

         "Not well. But he has insurance, makes offerings for a dead wife, never been in trouble -"

"Did you know the wife?"

         "No. He moved here after she died, I think."

                   "Sold the farm for money to go and see her," someone volunteers.

A tall, balding, bored-looking man walks up. The crowd parts, and bows; the guards nod their heads slightly. He pokes her, and says something. Pokes Draconis, and says the same thing. He steps back and stands.

"Now you can say whatever it is you wanted to say," the guard tells her. "Mind, lying's a crime."

"Thank you. We were pulled into the house's basement several hours ago, magically, by this man. We asked him where we were, he tried to cast another spell, I tackled him, he disappeared. We broke out of his basement and then out of the house, and tried to get a guard, but couldn't find anyone who spoke our language. We decided to stay in the house until morning. He came back, tried to kill me, first with some kind of summoned weapon and then with lightning, and then lit the house on fire when we defended ourselves. We pulled him out, restrained him, and yelled for help before the fire could spread."

The guard looks like he does not believe a word of this. "All right. We're bringing him and you to the courthouse while we investigate this. You'll surrender your weapon and armor, as well as any magic items on your person."

- well that sucks but if they run they are not going to make it out of the city, not alone and without fade access.

"All right. My friend's clothes are enchanted, he'll need something else to wear."

Sigh. "Go get him clothes," he tells someone. 

"Where are you two from?"

"Ferelden. In Thedas," she adds, in case they have somehow ended up not in Thedas.

"Never heard of it. Is that even on this plane?"

" - not really an expert on planes? I still don't actually know where I am."

"You're in Sothis, the city of the Pharaoh."

"I've never heard of that, either."

"In Osirion?"

"Never heard of it. - have you heard of it?"

Headshake. "It's not in Thedas. Different continent or different world."

"The pharaoh is chosen by Abadar, but he might be known by a different name in your world - the god of the First Vault, of Aktun, of commerce and cities and merchants and law -"

- she should probably not automatically label people heathens if they might be on a completely different plane of existence. Possibly the Maker has not been as clear about everything over here, and he's not always very clear even where they're from.

"I'm not aware of any gods besides the Maker. - some elves think there are others, I think, but I wouldn't know their names."

"- what, you've only ever heard of one? Do you live within their realm or something?"

" - I am not sure I know what that means."

"Many gods have a realm that's theirs. They directly control everything in it and are present everywhere in it and every aspect of it suits them. I... think you'd know, if it were that, you'd've seen and served and known them."

"I'm from a city like this one. Smaller, I think, and colder, and with a different language, but a city, with elves and humans and the occasional dwarf. It's the capital city of Ferelden, where our king usually lives. We worship the Maker there, it's a holy city because it's the birthplace of his wife Andraste, but he doesn't live there, not physically, he lives in - somewhere in the fade, I guess. I was not there when I was pulled here, I was in a smaller town that I was in for - complicated reasons."

"What're the teachings of the Maker?"

"Uhh, depends slightly who you ask? He created the world and everything in it, created spirits in his image and elves and humans with the spark of the divine within them? We're not to worship anyone besides the Maker, we're not to practice blood magic, we're not to enter the golden city, our mages are to treat magic as a tool and not as a master, we're supposed to, uh, try to not murder anybody or steal things or - do you want me to try to summarize all of ethics - "

"- so, like, lawful?"

" - we, uh, are supposed to follow laws unless they're unconscionable or illegitimate?"

"Where do you go when you die? If you're a pretty good follower of your god, I mean."

"....the fade. The part of the Fade where the Maker is, if you're pretty good."

"I don't know the word, can you describe it?"

"Uh, yeah, the place you go when you dream? - I guess I don't know if people here dream. Uh, we briefly got stuck there for a few days about a week ago when saving the Fereldan Circle of Magi, it's - very different in different places, and shifting depending on who's in it and how they're feeling. Things work differently there, you can change your shape or your size. Things are hazy sometimes, and don't quite make sense, like when you're dreaming, although I'm not sure if that holds if you're not being held there by a sloth demon. And it's the place where demons and spirits both come from. - I think you're supposed to get the parts without the demons, if the Maker draws you to him. Draconis could probably tell you more, he's a mage."

"Oh," he says a little coldly. 

"...everyone who dies goes there. Like, everyone."

"Not people here."

"I'll take your word for it. In that case I assume we are... very far away from where we were yesterday."

"Well, if you're telling the truth, I'm sure that'll be very interesting to some researchers and you'll do all right."

"We would really like to go home fairly soon? We were - sort of in the middle of stopping an apocalypse. Time-sensitive on an order of months at the outside."

"If you're telling the truth, I'm sure it'll sort itself out."

"Okay. Then I guess we'll follow you to your courthouse whenever you want that."

They get Draconis some long green robes and then they will take their stuff and take them to the courthouse.

Yeah, sure, fine. Draconis'll take a long time to forgive her if they don't get it back, but if they don't get it back that will indicate that they have lots of bigger problems anyway.

They follow people to the courthouse.

"Courthouse" is a little bit of a nice gloss; it's a prison. Maybe it also has a court in some other wing. They separate them. Different people come in to get her story of what happened.

Great. She'll give her story as many times as she has to. She wants to know what they're going to do with her dog.

Is it a familiar or an animal companion or a shapeshifted humanoid? Is it intelligent? 

It's... an animal and it's her companion? It's intelligent. 

Then it will be questioned and judged separately.

...okay. He can't, like, talk. Or read. And he's intelligent but he's also, like, three years old. Just so they're ballparking his capabilities right. And he will probably want to be reassured that she's okay with them being separated first.

Three isn't a child for a dog, right? She can tell him she's okay with them being separated if she wants to.

He's not a puppy but he's not really the same as an adult humanoid, either? Whatever. "Be good, boy. No biting. Even if they deserve it. And no lying, just stop engaging if you can't engage any more. We have enough problems. I'll come get you later."

He whimpers, but licks her hand and goes.

"Do you have problems other than this one?" her interrogator asks politely.

"I am being kept in a cell in a foreign nation while mine is overtaken by darkspawn, which will soon overwhelm the entire surface world, a problem that only I and my friend are currently qualified to solve before the country is overrun. Other than that I'm good, thank you."

"What are darkspawn?"

"The Chantry says they were created when the Tevinter magisters who entered the golden city were hurled back to Thedas. They're twisted, tainted humanoids who usually stay underground, but during a blight they swarm to the surface and kill everything in their path. Not like animals, either, they mutilate the bodies of the men and children they find, leave every settlement they come to a - festival of carnage, or something. If they can drag women underground before they die or kill themselves, they can transform them into broodmothers by force-feeding them filth and the bodies of their comrades. They become so swollen they lose the ability to walk, can barely sit up under their own weight. And they rape them, I guess, and produce more of their kind to ravage the countryside. Those are darkspawn."

"Why are you in charge of fighting them?"

"I was conscripted by the ancient order responsible for fighting darkspawn and ending blights, and then most of my superiors were killed. I'm not claiming I'm the only person who can fight them, though, I'm just the only person who has access to the treaties needed to finish gathering our forces."

"Your society conscripts women?"

"Not often." Like, this is kind of a weird part of this to object to, but the military and the wardens are in fact both majority male, so.

"Alright. I'll see if we can get this case seen to today, at least, then."

"Thank you," she says, with genuine emotion this time. "I appreciate it."

"If you're lying, you know, it's better to tell me now. They'll use spells and they'll be able to tell, and it's worse to be lying once you've wasted their time and several spells."

"Oh good, and here I thought I'd have to actually convince people of my very implausible story. I'm not lying."

"It is a very implausible story."

"I wasn't consulted on it before it happened."

"Well, you're lucky you're in Sothis. Most places aren't so thorough."

"I believe it."

The people who cast the spells come in a bit later, gold-robed, and cast two of them. The first one feels like a punch to - something; it makes everything a little hazy and uninteresting and unimportant. The second one doesn't seem to do anything at all.

They'd like her to repeat her story.

Gladly.

Did she see any of what was written on the alter? Can they see her burns from the lightning? Why did they decide to go back to the house where they'd been summoned earlier? Does she remember where she talked to a guard in the night?

She doesn't remember what the markings looked like and didn't know how to read them. They can see her burns, they haven't healed up much. She... didn't have anywhere else to go and knew it was currently unoccupied? One street over to the left as you leave the house, she thinks, near the tavern.

They confer.

Does she, if released, promise to obey the law and be humble and grateful for the grace of the pharaoh and stay out of further trouble?

....well she doesn't know all of their laws, and feels really uncomfortable promising that without knowing whether any of them are, like, 'if people in fancy hats come to kill you you should sit still and let them do that' or are otherwise terrible?

" - look, I can't release anyone who doesn't promise to try to follow the law. I especially can't release anyone whose deity is chaotic and who doesn't promise to try to follow the law. If you don't know what it is you can go to a temple, maybe, and ask them for lessons in law? We aren't ourselves set up for them."

"I will follow all of the laws I know about."

"And you understand you're responsible for following all of them, whether you know about them or not, and had better go and make yourself familiar with them?"

Sigh.

They don't have better options.

"Yes."

"Alright. You can go. And you can pick up your possessions at the door."

"What about Draconis and the dog?"

"I can't comment on other people under investigation."

"Is there somewhere I can wait for them to be released?"

"At the public entrance, I guess, though your language spell's going to wear off in twenty minutes or something so if I were you I'd go make arrangements first and then come back for them if they're not out already."

"I have no idea how to make arrangements. I don't even know whether my money is any good here."

"I am sure someone will exchange it for ours but at a much better rate if you speak the language."

Annnnd her language spell is going to wear off, right. "Okay. Thanks."

She'll pick up her stuff, then.

Having determined that she is not an arsonist they seem to consider none of the rest of this their business. They show her out. Draconis and her dog are actually already there.

Oh cool. "Language thing's going to wear off soon, so I guess we can compare notes later. Right now we need to find a place to stay."

She doesn't have a better idea for this than asking random people whether there's an inn anywhere around here, so she'll do that.

Foreign adventurers usually like the glamorous places on the other side of the canal. (They gesture. In the direction they're gesturing there is an enormous bulbous black thing that towers over all the buildings, at least a couple hundred feet high. There's presumably also a canal though it can't be seen from here.)

...do these places have virtues other than being glamorous. Like, possibly more people who can cast the language spell.

That and moneychangers and magic shops and licentious women and it's a good place to hear about expeditions and it's not so threatening walking around in armor and a sword, if she takes his meaning.

Not sure she does! But she'll thank him and head over across the canal, and if she can do this before the spell wears off she will ask around for places to stay again.

Lotta foreign adventurers at the Sphinx's Promise, up there crowding the lip of the canal, or at the Adventure's Cradle, across the street, or hnak akhar ealaa altariq, eh?

She bows and waves goodbye. Adventurer's Cradle it is. 

She will just... look for a place that looks like a business counter and then ask for a room in her language and hope they get the thing about her not speaking theirs? And wave one of her gold sovereigns at them in case that helps.

Does she speak Common or Kelish or Vudrani because if so they have her covered!

Unless their common is the King's Tongue, no.

Weird. Sure, she can trade gold for a room for her and her companions.

They have little carved wood beds with which to attempt to communicate the question of what bed arrangement she wants in her room.

Two beds.

Of the same size and height?

...yes?

Here's a big metal key and an escort up to the associated room. It's on the third floor and overlooks the canal - which is so full of boats at this time of day that one can't even see the water - and has two beds and a fireplace.

Okay. Great. She thanks them even though they're not going to understand it, maybe they'll get the tone. 

"Okay. We have enough sovereigns to stay here for a little while. We don't want to stay here very long, we need to find passage back. If they don't get interplanar visitors often then that could be tricky. We might need to find and convince the guy who brought us here, assuming he's at all accessible anymore. We will probably need to figure out how to access their translation magic to get anything done."

"Sounds like it."

She flops on one of the beds. "Why is everything complicated."

"I think I'm supposed to say something about life being like that, here? But I have actually seen even less of the world than you have, so I'm not sure I'm qualified to hand out life lessons."

"Ugh. Learn anything interesting at the courthouse?"

"They were a pretty normal amount of freaked out about the not following any gods thing, and they wanted to know whether I had magic."

"Huh. They wanted to know about the darkspawn and why I was fighting them and thought it was weird that the Gray Wardens conscripted women sometimes."

"Huh."

"Yeah. No mention of being an elf, come to think of it, I wonder if that's less marked here. Anyway. I... guess we'd better get to work on procuring magical translation so we can ask about going home. And something to eat."

She heads back down to the counter and asks about food. Mimes eating. She has copper pieces here.

They have bread with honey and dates, and beer, and fish and birds and eggs and cheese and butter. - for the copper pieces they only have bread, actually.

Food is weirdly expensive here, then, but they won't be staying, so maybe it's fine. They can have silver pieces and her party can eat.

Then bread and honey and figs and fish and birds and eggs and cheese and butter it is. 

People keep coming over, trying to talk to them. When this fails they point at someone in the corner playing a musical instrument and point at the two of them again and then give up.

...she will try talking to the person in the corner playing a musical instrument?

"Well, well, hello and well met, woman warrior! - and you," he adds to Draconis, "...and you?" to the dog. "Were the winds that blew you here troubled ones? You look ill at ease."

"We were pulled here from somewhere very far away by some kind of mage. We'd like to get home as soon as possible, but we're not sure how."

"That's the most boring one I've heard today. You could add some polish. You were pulled away from a desperately important battle, say, and the mage pulled you here to sacrifice you to an evil cult, and your true love awaits you at home and the gods themselves are holding their breath."

"Sorry, I thought I'd be polite and cut to the immediately important bits. Our homeland is embroiled in a civil war and being threatened by an ancient mystical evil that won't stop until it's destroyed every civilization on the continent, and we alone are capable of defeating it before it before it overruns the country. I'd add something about a true love but it seems presumptuous, we haven't had any important relationship discussions since I learned he was the son of our late king. I'd certainly like to get back to him so we can talk about whether his status as possible heir to the throne destroys any chance of romance with a commoner. Is that better?"

"There you go, see, that's fantastic. A natural talent."

"Well thank you. Any idea how someone goes about finding their way back to their home plane around here? We have gold. Not a lot, but some."

"How attached are you to a particular arrival location? Because plane shift's off by as much as five hundred miles last I heard."

"Thaaaat has a really good chance of landing us in the ocean. We'll take the chance if it's the only thing available, though, kind of have a world to save."

"That's my girl. Improved plane shift is more accurate, but a whole lot harder to find. The standard one's four hundred fifty gold pieces, typically? You might not be able to find better than five hundred but anyone offering six is cheating you."

"Thank you. I don't think we have that much on us, any way to make money quickly? - we usually have magic, but it doesn't seem to work on this plane, so at the moment our skill set is pretty much stabbing things. Very good at stabbing things."

"That was very well executed," he says approvingly. "So what you need, dear, are investors. Investors want to find the most promising adventurers and connect them with interesting opportunities to face danger and return with astonishing riches. Investors wlll do all the paperwork for you and give you money for supplies up front; in return they get a cut. And investors, you see, they like a story. Merchant ships are objectively a better investment than adventurers. Solid returns, enough risk even for those who have a taste for it. What people get out of funding adventurers is a story to tell at parties. And you have a lovely story. Melodrama and high stakes and a personal touch and a reason you need money and a reason you'll go away afterwards! You just need some spellcasters. Investors like to see four people, maybe five, on rare occasions six. Two and a dog just isn't enough to get the job done, do you see what I mean?"

"I do! We usually have more, but I'm afraid we've left them behind where we came from. Any chance of adding ourselves to someone else's group? Or just me and the dog, I guess, I'm not sure my friend is eager to throw himself headlong into danger without his magic."

"So I know two groups that might be just right for you! Lots of spellcasters and an uninspiring narrative. To investors they're a dime a dozen. You will help them stand out. And a fighting girl, right, adds a touch of the exotic." He waves some people over. "Fazil, Mahdi, Hagan, meet the warrior girl!"

She waves. "Aria."

"Pleased to meet you," Fazil says brightly. "I'm a chosen cleric of Abadar. My mother died when I was young and -"

"Yes, yes," says the man who introduced them impatiently. "Her story's better so you'll be using that one."

"Pff. I'm sure your story's great, we're just a tough act to follow, is all. Love to listen to it later, but unfortunately I can't talk to anyone here without help."

"This casting of tongues will last through your investor meeting," the man says, "but after that you're on your own. On the other hand, I don't know that much communication is needed for adventuring! You see horrifying undead monstrosities, you stab them."

"What is it you speak?" asks Hagan, who is wearing a hood and a mask through which only his eyes are visible. "I have a great many languages. Razatlani and Varisian and Taldane and Tien and ancient Orisian and Vudrani and Kelish and some Elven."

"Unfortunately we seem to be from a different plane. I call my language the King's Tongue. It's technically an old Dwarven trade language, but if we're right about being from a different plane of existence then I'd be really surprised if anyone here had it."

"Huh," he says. 

"So what is your story?" asks Fazil.

"We were pulled here by some kind of mage yesterday. Not sure why, but given how he tried to kill us we're expecting him not to be a lot of help in reversing it. Before that we were from a place called Ferelden, which is currently both embroiled in a civil war and facing an ancient mystical threat called the darkspawn, which if left unchecked will destroy every civilization on the continent. We're the only people who have a shot at gathering the forces necessary to oppose it, and we need to get back to do it soon, before the country is overrun. - also I recently learned that the person I'm in love with is the son of our late king, and I'd like to get back to him so we can talk about the whole thing where he's a possible heir to the throne and I'm an elven commoner. This is obviously much less important than saving the world, but apparently people like drama."

"You were pulled here by an evil mage who wanted to use you in a dark ritual," offers the bard helpfully. "Tightens up the opening. And I don't like 'talk about the whole thing' as much as 'win my father a title in the fighting', personally. 'talk about it' isn't very compelling as a goal, it doesn't sound like a happy ending."

"Father can't hold titles because he's an elf. The happy ending here is the one where we resolve the succession crisis some other way, Prince Alistair assures me that I am much more important than any dreams he has of royal life, and we are too busy rebuilding the Gray Wardens to listen to anybody's opinions about it. - the probable ending is the one where we die fighting the archdemon and its darkspawn horde, but I can be flexible on that."

"I like her," says Hagan. 

"'die by his side fighting evil' is a perfectly good happy ending," says Mahdi.

"Unless the prince is resurrected," says the bard. "Too much complication. Just leave it at returning to your true love."

"I must return to my love to see if the son of a human king and the daughter of an elven tailor could possibly have a future together. How's that."

"Yes, that seems all right."

"Do people have issues with elves where you're from or something?"

"So you don't here! That's one thing this place has going for it, then. The humans wiped our civilization out and enslaved us like a thousand years ago, and it's only in the last little while they've stopped seeing us as property. We're still working on improving that to 'people'."

"Well, probably some investors will like feeling socially progressive," says Fazil doubtfully. 

"You want the Andorans," says the bard. "Because they're Andorans, mostly, but also that fellow's at least a little bit elf, which can't hurt."

"I haven't pitched to them before, what do you -"

"Make big promises, sound very angry about oppression? Of anyone by anyone, they're not particular. If anyone's Good, play it up. They're not very sophisticated investors. They use the intimate tense all the time but they're not deliberately being rude. Don't get onto the subject of politics."

"Well I'm a fan of them, from that description. Minor logistics stuff, I will need someone to help me buy a shield later if you want me at my most useful, and as a rule you guys can handle healing but not armor, so I should take all the hits while we're in the field?"

"That's the idea, yeah. We don't have the kinda budget for resurrections, so don't get youself into anything you can't handle."

"Cool. We don't have resurrections where I'm from, so I'm pretty much gonna assume that death is a game over. Please keep me in one piece or my entire world is doomed. Where are the Andorans, and do I owe you anything for the spell or the pointers?"

"The universe has its ways of repaying good deeds," says the bard peaceably. 

"We tip him if we make it back in one piece," says Fazil. "The Andorans are that bunch over there."

"Solid. I can tell a story, but please jump in if they want to know anything about how you actually do things, because I arrived here literally twelve hours ago."

And she can go talk to the Andorans.

The Andorans are lighter-skinned than the locals and wear more closely fitted clothes. They size up the four of them and then order drinks. "So who are you?"

"Aria Tabris, not from this plane of existence. I was kidnapped by an evil mage for use in a dark ritual last night, and since he tried to kill me immediately afterward, I'm guessing he's not going to be very much help in getting home. Home is currently embroiled in a civil war, and simultaneously facing an ancient mystical threat known as the darkspawn, which will wipe out every civilization on the continent if they're not stopped. Unfortunately, I'm about the only person who can rally our forces before the darkspawn horde overruns the country, and I'm stuck here. Naturally I'd like to go home and save everyone as soon as possible. Particularly because I recently learned that the man I'm in love with is actually the son of our late king and a possible heir to the throne, and I'd really like to get back to him and see if the son of a human king and the daughter of an elven tailor might be able have a future together. Normally I'd say it's impossible, since where I come from elves have a long history of being enslaved, oppressed, and generally treated like muck someone stepped in, but I just bet that saving the world is the sort of thing that makes people overlook that.

"I am tragically short on funds to pay for my trip home. I am, however, very good at stabbing things. I heard you might have something that needed stabbing."

"That's a little unbelievable."

"She doesn't speak any known language," Fazil offers in support of her. "And she was very surprised that no one held it against her, that she was an elf. And do you recognize the make of that armor?"

"And the rest of you?"

"Cleric, wizard, ranger. We just wanted to fight evil and, uh, oppression and so on, but when we met Aria we knew we'd been called here to help with her quest."

"What's the proposal -"

"El-Amara. It's the capital of the ancient Osirian province of Thuria, but it's been mostly uninhabited since the first age of the pharaohs. There's an imperial reward for clearing it out of monsters and cultists and, uh, slavers, so it could be settled again."

"Cultists of -"

"Ahriman."

The Andorans exchange glances. 

"The Pharaoh of Forgotten Plagues built Ahriman a terrible gateway to our world in the wastes of the western desert, and ever since then his evil followers have had a foothold there," says Fazil. "We have to protect our homeland."

"All right," says one of the Andorans. "Standard contract?"

"We want four hundred gold up front for supplies. Half the reward is yours, if we succeed, and half of incidental discoveries, and you are indemnified against liability for harm that comes to us or crimes committed in the course of the effort, except if a court finds you had a policy of recklessly encouraging criminal conduct among adventureres you'd invested in -"

The Andorans pull out some sheets of paper for everyone to sign.

Sounds good to her. ...she can't sign her name very well, and can't read the papers at all, but they don't speak her language anyway and if she gets it wrong it's not like they're going to know how her name is supposed to be spelled.

"That should cover getting you a shield," Fazil says. "All right with you if we leave at dawn?"

"Yep! I just meet you down here?"

"Yep! I'll get the permits done this afternoon."

"Cool. Thanks so much, I look forward to working with all of you. I'll see you at dawn."

"See you!"

"You're very pleased with yourself, aren't you."

"Extremely. We might actually make it home. What are you gonna do tomorrow?"

"Find something that looks like a temple and ask about the laws, so I don't get myself killed in the next week."

"I totally support this endeavor. We could go today if you wanted, even. Might be a good idea, so I don't do anything illegal while out adventuring. Kind of tired of talking to people, though. Might take a nap instead. In an actual bed, while we have them."

"I'm sure I can avoid being mugged for all of our money. - you should hold the gold. And the treaties. And maybe my entire backpack. But, like, conditional on not having anything worth stealing, I'm pretty sure I can make it back in one piece."

"Maybe take North, too? Just out of an abundance of caution, especially while you don't have your magic? But yeah, sounds good. Lemme know what you find out."

Well. He'll just head out and look for something temple-shaped, then.

Like this enormous elaborate stone building with a domed roof and a lot of gilding?

...yeah, sure, he can investigate that.

The interior is equally elaborate, with lots of stone statues of importantly-dressed people and counters on one side and alters to various gods on the other. There's some sort of religious service happening at one end; gold-robed people are singing.

He can head to the counters and try talking? He kind of hates the experience of trying to talk to people and hoping that they spontaneously cast a spell on him, but he doesn't see that he has a lot of other options here.

They try quite a few languages but don't seem to have the spell handy. Unless he has gold, in which case he should go over there.

Sigh.

If they killed for breaking some law they could not possibly have predicted then the gold will be pretty worthless, won't it.

He has five gold sovereigns. If it's more than that he's gonna need to go back to the hotel and get some more out of his backpack.

Nah that's enough (it's possible that fewer would have been enough but they take all five). 

What can they help him with?

He's from a really long way away, ended up here by accident, was told he was responsible for following all of the laws here, is not remotely confident that he can guess what those are, and was told that he should go to a temple to have them explained.

Huh. Uh, okay. Has he any family or did he end up here all on his own?

He has one friend who also ended up here by accident and also has no other connections.

That's difficult. All right. Uh, this novice here with nothing better to do can explain the laws to him. Where in the city is he staying, different parts have different laws.

They have a room at the Adventurer's Cradle right now? It's not that far from here.

Then he can get a lecture on the laws of Osirion. Osirion has a pharaoh. He's appointed by Abadar and the closest thing to a god in this world and his word is law. Because he is a perfect representative of Abadar his laws are all very just. Obeying unjust laws is an important virtue and some people think it's more effective for cultivating your own lawfulness than obeying just laws but Osirion has just laws all the same. You can get practice at the other thing by obeying unjust relatives, or whatever. 

You aren't allowed to steal or assault people or try to kill them except in self-defense and it's not self-defense if they aren't trying to kill you or someone else right at that very moment. You cannot slip drugs or poisons into peoples' foods. You cannot set magical traps except on your own property and only then if you have filed the appropriate paperwork. You can't interfere with or lie to the city guard or the royal guard or a church official or anyone else acting on the pharaoh's behalf. You have to pay taxes and so on. You cannot file false police reports. On some streets you are not allowed to set up a vending cart and on others you have to have a permit and others are closed to non-residents at night, here's a map. You cannot offer people bribes. If you offer someone a bribe and they accept, you can report them and they'll serve the sentence for whatever crime you stood accused of and you get your money back. If Osirion is invaded you can be conscripted to defend it. You cannot maim or rape your slaves and if you do they will get taken away. You can marry only as many women as you have the income to keep in separate households and if any of your households are uninsured or underinsured or if one of your wives or children has died in the last year you can't marry any more women. You can marry men only with special permission from the church. You cannot proselytize for chaotic gods, or evil ones.

He takes notes. That all seems vaguely sane. It'll be obvious if he has to pay taxes, or does he have to know to do that in certain situations - ?

Unless he's starting a business it should be really obvious, some sales will be taxed and the business will handle that and some jobs are a tenth for the pharaoh and the work orders will reflect this.

Cool. - and the self defense thing, if someone attacks him without intent to actually kill him and he can't run or yell, is he, like, in the clear as long as he doesn't try to kill them about it, or can he just not take aggressive actions in the course of escaping at all -

Should be proportionate, so, like, if someone shoves him he can shove them or if they punch him he can punch them but if they shove him he can't knife them, even nonlethally.

That makes sense. His friend is a girl and an elf, there aren't any, like, different laws for girls or elves? Also his other arguable friend is a dog that might or might not be as intelligent as a person, he's honestly really unclear on this, are there any extra rules about dogs.

Well women can't be conscripted and can't start a business or take out a line of credit unless they're widowed or magic-users. And if he's a relative then he has to sign contracts and approve marriage for her and she's not allowed out at night in these places that make up most of the city (map), though guards are allowed to overlook it if she's penniless. And she can't abandon a newborn to the elements unless she was a victim of rape.

She's.... pretty much a widow? She's not related to him, can she sign her own contracts if she doesn't have relatives? When does night start, and can she not go out during it at all or is it okay if she has him with her?

If he's not a relative then having him with her doesn't help. If she has no relatives then... probably that's the same status as being a widow? Night starts twenty minutes after sunset.

Well conveniently she is also actually a widow. All of this only applies inside the city, if she's out in whatever lies beyond the city at night that's fine?

Well it'll probably get her killed but it's not illegal.

She's pretty hard to kill. That's all the relevant laws, then, if he follows those and doesn't start a business or anything he won't have guards dragging him to prison?

He also shouldn't sleep with other peoples' wives, or with any children, or any nonhumanoid creatures, and he shouldn't summon, or make deals with, demons or devils, and he shouldn't try to overthrow the pharaoh or tell other people they should do that or spy for a foreign government or -

- but eventually he has a complete list and can be reassured nothing else will get him in trouble, yes.

Okay! Cool. That's extremely helpful, thanks.

He'll just head back to his sort-of-probably-commanding officer and report his findings, then.

"I can't go out at night because I'm a girl?"

"In most of the city, not all of it. And it's not, you know, objectively more restrictive than how either of us lived when we were teenagers."

Heavy sigh.

"Charitably, I suppose it's - probably easier on the court system than processing lots of attempted rapes, or something, maybe that was a problem here before."

"Yeah, see, that makes sense. And - if you can't go out at night then neither of us can, right, I don't actually trust myself to keep myself safe if I don't have magic or you watching my back. Even with the dog."

"...this doesn't actually make me feel better about the system? But - I appreciate the effort."

"Sorry.

"We'll be home soon. And, y'know, you'll be an elf, but people'll talk to the crest again. Mostly. And we'll only be limited in where we can go by the hordes of ravening darkspawn and the possibly insane nobles trying to assassinate us."

"I am aware that this place is objectively better than home in most respects. Just - in Ferelden it's - I was about to say 'nobody's fault' but I suppose the elf thing absolutely is humans' fault - "

"But in Ferelden they don't talk about caring about oppression like it's somebody's eccentric personal quirk."

" - yeah. That.

"...thanks. Sorry for being a baby about it."

"You have never once called me out on being a baby about anything. I'm not gonna start doing it to you now."

"Alright. Thanks for the intel. We should get some sleep."

And at dawn she and North will be downstairs waiting for the rest of their party.

Fazil is wearing armor, today; it's shiny and gold (the color, not the metal) and looks high-quality, though of entirely unfamiliar design. Mahdi and Hegan are not armored; Hegan has a very heavy backpack, Mahdi has a tiny bag more like a purse, and between them they're holding a large roll of fabric. 

"Warrior girl! Want to get your shield before we head out?"

"Sounds good! Where do I get a shield around here?"

"There's a shop right near here but it'll be hideously overpriced. If we walk a bit first - specifically if you and Hegan walk a bit first, any shop the two of us walk into will also be hideously overpriced - then you can spend half as much. Four, five streets thataway, in the canal district."

"Awesome. I'll follow you?" she says to Hegan.

"Uh huh." He sets down the backpack and takes only a coin purse.

The streets are crowded this time of day. There's a lot of musicians playing and a lot of street vendors selling good luck charms and potions and enchanted jewelry and so on.

She's not going to buy anything she doesn't need but it's kind of a delightful atmosphere anyway. 

Hagan ignores everything and leads her into a shop with a narrow entrance between two other shops. It has a lot of shields. 

"See anything you like?"

She's gonna want to try some on. She is sort of picky about shields, mostly about the weight and how well the shape works with how she uses one. After a little while she is able to find something she likes, yeah.

"Cool." And then he sighs deeply and walks up to the vendor. 

      "She lost hers."

"She -"

      "Yeah."

"Is she any good?"

      "I hope so! Bakasy thinks so."

"He, ah, loves the eccentric, though."

      "Fifteen."

"Forty."

      "Twenty."

"With a woman carrying it? People won't take me seriously."

      "We're leaving town in ten minutes. It's a fair price."

"Forty."

      He turns to Aria. "We can try another place -"

"Thirty."

     He counts out twenty-five coins, holds them out.

"Fine."

She's gonna really enjoy destroying undead for these guys. "Thank you. And that comes out of the money for supplies?"

"Yeah. We also got two week's loan of the carpet, food, and some minor healing potions for if Fazil goes down."

"Cool. ...what's the carpet for?"

" - for flying there."

"Woah. This plane is neat."

"You guys don't have flying carpets?"

"Nope! We've been walking everywhere for months."

"Huh! Well, they're not faster than a ship but they can handle any terrain and you really need one to go adventuring in the desert, otherwise it'd be nearly impossible to carry anything back if you find it."

"Huh, that makes sense. - I think when the language spell wears off you should give me your word for 'stop', I don't have any words yet and that seems like a really important word to have if we're gonna be going out and fighting things. Don't wanna kill anything that doesn't need to be killed. I'm not sure what others it'd be good to have, but I ought to at least have that one."

"Yeah, can do. Uh, mostly we're going to be engaging monsters because it's safer and legal-er than engaging people but you should probably know the word anyway."

"Good, not a fan of killing people if we don't have to. Just don't want to end up making any mistakes that could have been avoided with about two seconds of preparation."

"Technically with people you're supposed to offer them the chance to surrender and bring them back if you can, but people are heavy and prisoners eat the whole carrying capacity of a carpet so mostly people just try to avoid getting into that situation."

"Mmm. Makes sense."

And they make their way back. 

The carpet is unrolled. It's shimmery and brightly dyed and about the height of a person and the length of two.

She's never boarded a flying carpet before, so she'll just - check to see if and how the others do that. And then ask whether they want the dog on it and whether he'll be able to keep up if he's not.

"There's room for the dog, and he probably wouldn't be able to keep up. What's his name -" 

"North. He's a good dog. Special breed that mages bred for combat and understanding speech."

"Hello," says Hagan to North. "I have an animal companion too - this is Fy -" he lifts his sleeve to reveal a snake. "And Mahdi has a familiar, but she can keep up with the carpet, she's a bird."

He barks happily and rests his head on Aria's lap.

And they can fly off. 

Outside Sothis, Osirion is desert. Endless rolling desert. The flying carpet moves fast enough to create a stiff breeze, and the adventurers mostly don't talk. Hagan watches North. Mahdi reads a book.

She watches the desert. It's not complicated, but it's very different from anything else she's seen before, and everyone'll want to hear about it back home, if she makes it home.

The sun rises in the sky and becomes unpleasantly hot; Mahdi casts something and then it stops being unpleasantly hot. At noon Fazil passes around sandwiches and a clear cool sweet drink of some kind. A while after noon, they pass a tall imposing black box.

She eats sandwiches and drinks the drink. She's bored by now but not about to make it anyone else's problem. She prays to the Maker, silently. She thinks about her friends. Sten would feel at home here, all the rules - and the stuff about women, come to think about it, Sten thought it was weird that she could fight too. He would be pretty freaked out about all of the mages walking around free, though, not even locked up in towers. Zevran wouldn't like it but he'd handle it. Shale... it's a good thing Shale isn't here, probably. Alistair would feel most of the same ways she feels and also be giving her snuggles whenever she needed them, although North is a passable substitute in his absence. 

She fidgets a little but doesn't try talking. Vaguely wishes she'd brought some knitting to do. 

And in late afternoon the carpet slows down and they start travelling closer to the ground, and a while after that they stop in the shadows of some towering building in the process of being slowly eroded into sand. They get out, and Mahdi opens the door. 

There's nothing inside. 

Everyone seems cheery about this and gets to setting up a camp. Hagan through some pantomime teaches the word 'stop' and also - pointing at Fazil and Mahdi - the word 'friendlies', or something like it.

Cool. She has two words, then. She can help with setting up camp, if there are obvious parts that don't require a lot of communication.

They're checking around for venomous spiders and scorpions and crushing them when they see them, and laying out bedrolls.

Well, she can check for spiders and scorpions and lay out a bedroll for herself.

They spend the last of the sunlight scouting out the other ruins in the area. There are some remnants of a wall and some remnants of fortress and some remnants of temples. They indicate they want to start at the fortress tomorrow, though she can't catch why.

Works for her. She waits to see whether they're keeping watches. They seem like the sort of people who would, but better to make sure.

Yep! They'll wake her when it's her turn.

Solid. Then she'll sleep.

(It's okay for her to sleep, nothing horrible and awful is going to happen, if she was going to have this anxiety she really should have brought it up before they trekked into the middle of the desert a day away from civilization. They've been decent. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that they are actually all horrible and evil.)

She sleeps.

Mahdi wakes her up when it's her shift.

Cool. She'll keep watch, then. 

It's a quiet night. There are some bats. There's, in the distance, a floating head with trailing...blood vessals or tentacles or something.

....how far in the distance?

Pretty distant. If the moon on the dunes weren't so bright it'd be hard to tell it was that and not just a roundish bird.

Okay, not worth waking anybody for. Creepy, though. Not as creepy as the broodmothers, or the settlements the darkspawn got to, but she'll give that a solid seven out of ten for creepiness.

In the morning Fazil casts Tongues again so she can be apprised of the plan. "The fortress should have six levels, standard for the time period. Food storage, armory, mess hall and chapel, bunks, battlements, watch towers. Usually when there's critters living there the ones up for a fight all come running at once, so we want to be in a defensible position when we start making noise. You're not evil, right, because I'm gonna do protection from evil - or magic circle against evil, depends on the layout of the place."

"I - don't know any objective tests for evilness? It would surprise me if I were?"

"Do you, you know, kill innocents, mistreat the vulnerable, consort with the lords of Hell, betray people, sell your soul... actually I'll just - Detect Evil. Yeah, you're not."

"Cool, good to know."

"The other one that's for you is sacred bond. It makes my touch-range healing reach you, which beats trying to run over and touch you in the middle of a fight. You have to wear a bracelet for it -" he produces one - "and I have to touch you to cast it, which I don't want to do now because it lasts seventy minutes. Yell at me if you need a heal, I don't want to track what kind of shape you're in."

"Cool, I'm used to that. Should work fine."

"Great." And they get ready to head out.

Cool. 

" - just checking, are floaty heads with tentacles normal around these parts? There was one hanging out way far over that way last night."

"Doru! Yeah, they are. Hard to kill, because they fly and turn invisible. Evil, if you hadn't guessed."

"Huh. Well, be on the lookout, I guess. However one looks out for invisible things."

"We put on goggles and Mahdi casts glitterdust," Fazil says, tossing her a pair. "It's pretty annoying even with the goggles so we'll wait to see if they bother us."

"Neat." These guys are so cool. Not that her usual party isn't this cool. ...actually her usual party is maybe, yeah, more of a mess than this, but they would be, they're a bunch of random people who happened to be willing to fight the apocalypse. (...Shale is cool. Like, a complete and total disaster, but you can't say Shale isn't cool.)

She puts her goggles on to test whether they mess up her vision little enough to be worth having on all the time, or whether she should just be ready to put them on when people yell.

They're pretty annoying.

She'll keep them on top of her head until she needs them, then, better to be able to see.

And they can head off to the fortress!

Woo. She makes sure North is with her at the front, he needs to be in clawing distance of nasties to be much use. And she's ready to be a human shield and stab lots of monsters.

The fortress contains vicious batlike creatures with venomous fangs, some honestly fairly useless skeletons wielding rusted armor, some hardier zombies, half a dozen of the flying head critters none of which get within combat range but all of which hang out being annoying and occasionally forcing them to cast glitterdust, and a ten-foot-abreast lioness with piercing black eyes, which moves astonishingly fast. The party is nonchalant about all of this but the last, which they seem to think Aria should maybe back off from.

Well, is there a way to back off from the lioness without putting anyone else in danger? Because if yes she'll defer to their judgement, and if no this lioness is losing its head or getting stabbed through the ribcage or sliced through the belly, whatever's handiest.

It's possible they have a plan for an orderly retreat that can't be followed but if so they can't communicate it exactly. 

The lioness bites very hard and takes a lot of all three of those things to go down.

Well, that sucks, but you'd expect that of anything that big. The time they fought a dragon wasn't a cakewalk, either. 

When it's dead she winces and yells to Fazil for a heal.

He can do that. And once they've determined the fortress is empty he can do mutual comprehend languages - "holy shit, I've never seen anyone fight like that. The recommendation is to get the hell away from those things unless you're sainted, or of equivalent strength."

Oh good, she's cool too. "I can see why, they're really fast! I'm lucky I had you to patch me up after. Didn't look tougher than a dragon, though, even with the insane speed."

" - it is also not recommended to go up against dragons at our level of ability, yeah. Wow." He shakes his head. 

She is obviously very pleased with herself. "Well, I hope we don't run into any more. Probably that's enough real excitement for one day."

"Yeah, we should spend the rest of it checking if there's anything to be found here. And cutting off the bats' teeth, you can sell those in the city. Might be able to sell her carcass, too, I'll have to look it up."

"Cool. I can cut the teeth out but I'd probably wreck the hide if I tried anything with it. I guess we look around, then."

"Hagan's our guy for that, he's spectacularly good at it. Full price on everything. And yeah, let's look around."

There is a lot of rusty armor and three magical weather instruments that must be pried out of the watchtower with some spell that changes the stone around it to soap, and some wine in the wine cellar that Fazil declares to have only mediocre resale value. "The bats should do us nicely, though. A couple days of this and you'll be comfortable for some plane shifts, even if you need a couple of them. - plane shift's up to eight willing people, just so you know."

"Wow, nice. Maybe we can even find someone with the version that probably won't land us in the ocean. It's just me and the dog and my friend Draconis who need to go home. I'd love to recruit more, we're insanely shorthanded, but I don't know how they'd get home, and there is the thing where we're still all probably going to die."

"I'll have plane shift in a couple of levels. If you'd want us, I think we'd come."

"I would totally want you guys. Granted I want most people I run into who can hold a sword, but I think you guys would be really useful. I'm pretty sure a bunch of your spells are things we don't have at home at all. Increases our options a bunch. I can't guarantee a huge reward at the end, but, y'know, we'd definitely try to repay everybody who had a hand in saving the world."

"We're not really optimized for assisting an army in combat but we could look some stuff up when we get back."

"Well, between you and me, we're not so much an army as a band of a dozen random people who are traveling across the country trying to remind the real armies of the ancient treaties they signed with our order in case of another apocalypse. Like I said, really shorthanded. I guess we're also solving a bunch of other problems as we go, since, you know, apocalypse, everybody feels like they have their own problems. But I think you guys would fit right in. How'd you get into adventuring, anyway?"

"Joined an order when I was, like, twelve. My mother was dead and my father was, ah, distant, and we were hungry, and I mostly figured, god of wealth, that's probably the way to go, right? They have the novices run around doing errands and praying and studying and so on, and it paid anything, and we ate sometimes, and it'd pay enough once I was an adult. And when I was fourteen I got a miracle. - that's pretty rare. One in a hundred ever get it, maybe, and mostly not before adulthood. Suddenly I had a lot more choices. I could do healing or join the civil service or start to learn combat skills for the military or to be an adventurer - 

I wasn't - unusually directed, or unusually pious, or unusually diligent, and I don't think I trusted Abadar very much at all back then, so I couldn't quite figure out why me. Now I think it's because I knew what was important to him, and why it mattered. A lot of foreigners make some odd assumptions about the god of wealth, you know, it's a bit of a - temporary sort of thing, to be obsessed with. And a selfish one, you hear that a lot. But - Axis and the good afterlives don't have material scarcity but for whatever reason they are places you reach as people who lived on this world, which does. - I'm off topic.  I tried things out and I liked fighting and if I joined the military I wouldn't see much action unless there was a real war, and if there was a real war I could always join up anyway. I stayed around and did healing until my siblings were all grown up and then I started hanging out in adventuring places."

"Wow, cool. How long have you known Mahdi and Hagan?"

"I met them I think two years after that? Mahdi was recommended to me, his father knew my mentor in the church. Hagan hung around the foreign inns, like me."

"Cool. I'm glad you have a team that works well together. - man, the one really annoying thing about this place is that I can't talk to people without spells. I'm lucky the spells even exist. But I guess if we work together for a while I'll have plenty of time to ask the others how they ended up here, too. Eventually."

"If we make a ton of money you can get tongues permanently. - I think it's something like seven thousand gold, though."

"Woah. Stretch goals, maybe, though we are on a bit of a schedule. - I guess if you're eventually able to travel back and forth I might be able to do more adventuring after we finished saving the world, maybe I could get it then. It'd be neat. Obviously the possibility of being off by five hundred miles makes transportation pretty far from trivial, but it's not, like, impossible."

"Once Mahdi has teleport it'll be more straightfoward."

"Woah, yeah, that sounds awesome."

"He's right at the point where wizards start to get incredibly useful to have around, yeah."

"Well, I look forward to that. It's great how much more accessible magic is around here, in addition to how much more it does. I can't tell if that's that you have more mages or if they're better trained, or what. - I guess your magic must be a totally different system than ours, actually, or at least be calling on a different place, since Draconis says we can't access the Fade at all here."

"There are different sources of magical power. But many of them are pretty well understood, yeah, and you can go to school for them - or at least in the case of being granted spells by a god you know what spells you'll get later if you keep being worthy of it, and so on."

"I guess the gods thing helps, too. We've got one God and he's not much for granting people magic powers, not these days."

"Huh. Yeah, if a god stopped making clerics then probably he'd lose worshippers to gods that kept making clerics, over time. It's - obviously it's a virtue to have faith without direct personal daily communion but it helps to know some people are getting that, so you have - lights to steer by."

"He talks to people, sometimes. - actually there's some debate about that, but where I come from people are pretty sure he does. Just, not very many reliable God-given magic powers, not until we've shown him we're worthy of them again. We do have mages, but they're different than miracles, they work by pulling things out of the Fade and using them on the other side of the veil."

"Mahdi's kind of magic is different than mine but not like that. And Hagan's is probably a third kind, though some people think that some nature gods just make sort-of-clerics of people who don't worship them but live the right kind of way."

"Huh. I think most of our magic is the same basic kind of thing, though of course people specialize different ways. Like, one of the people I have back home is mostly a healer, and another one of them specializes in shapeshifting, that kind of thing. And I guess you could count enchanting differently, that's a kind of magic you don't have to be a mage to do. Can't do it safely if you're a mage, actually, though I'm not sure I could give a good explanation of why. I think it's 'cause mages can't safely handle the necessary materials."

"Huh! You should tell us more about your world, at some point. If we're going to go visit it."

"Gladly! Maybe after we finish up for the day I can tell you guys about the whole mess we're in. Or some of it, anyway, it's quite the mess."

"Sounds good!"

They finish dismantling the place and chopping up the bodies and head out later in the afternoon. Hagan shoots some doru at a very impressive distance on the way back but they don't otherwise encounter any signs of trouble. 

"I have a leftover spell," Mahdi says over dinner, "so how about if we can actually talk to Aria for the evening?"

Everyone agrees this is a good use of his leftover spell, whatever that means.

"What do you guys wanna hear about?"

" - your world!" says Fazil. "What's it, uh, like, aside from the neglectful god and the impending apocalypse?"

"Well, let's see. Honestly I hadn't seen much of any of it until last year, since, elf. We live in these walled alienages and don't get out much. It's better in Ferelden than in other places, though, to the north in Tevinter they still keep all the elves in slavery. Anyway, hm. I got conscripted by the Gray Wardens and taken to Ostagar, this huge ancient ruined fort left over from when Tevinter ruled the whole continent. That's where we met the darkspawn horde. They killed our king, killed almost my entire order, killed lots of our military. Very nearly killed me and Draconis and Alistair. After the battle we figured we were most of what the Gray Wardens had left, and happened to be the only people in possession of copies of certain ancient treaties. First we headed to the dwarves, who were also having a succession crisis, so we had to solve that for them, and clean out this criminal gang that had taken over half their city, and track down this lost paragon who had gone way down into the caves and gone totally insane, we're talking feeding her entire extended family and followers to the darkspawn. - have I told you guys anything about darkspawn? Darkspawn suck. Dwarves are cool, though, they all live underground and fight the darkspawn all the time, even when there aren't any surface hordes. Unfortunately the blights are giving them fertility problems, long-term exposure to darkspawn is pretty bad. And they have this weird caste system - stop me if you have any questions about any of this - "

"Lots but let's get the whole outline first -"

"Okay, cool. So we hung out underground with the dwarves for a kind of excessive amount of time, because the dwarves had a lot of problems for us to solve before they'd think about helping anybody else. Eventually we traveled far enough into the deep roads to find this ancient dwarven king named Caridan who'd been turned into a living stone golem. He was great, we really wanted him to come back with us and help rule, but instead he committed suicide by jumping in lava. He did leave us a crown to bestow on the rightful ruler of Orzammar, though, so we were able to fix their succession, and of course after that the king owed us, and was totally willing to make good on the treaty his ancestors had made.

"We picked up a dwarf fighter on the way, too. At this point it was me, the two other Gray Wardens, North, this Qunari we conscripted after finding out he'd been sentenced to death, this rogue-turned-religious-sister who said she'd gotten a vision from the Maker about us, and oh yeah, Morrigan, this apostate mage who saved our lives after the battle of Ostagar. Oh, and Shale! Shale's great, but she's been stuck as a golem for centuries. And on the way out of Orzammar we picked up Zevran, who - actually he was an assassin who was hired to kill us, since the noble who seized control after the king died is trying to kill us for reasons I don't completely understand. Anyway, fortunately for us, Zev was suicidal, and was mostly taking the job to get himself killed, and when we didn't want to kill him he figured he'd die fighting the darkspawn. He's not as bad as he sounds. Got sold to assassins when he was seven. Never really had a shot at anything else. And that's everyone we have, then, apart from Wynne, who we picked up last week at the Circle of Magi.

"So let's see, then we headed to Redcliffe, which is where Alistair grew up, and that's when he told us he was actually the son of the late king Maric. He's a bastard, so normally he wouldn't be in line to inherit anything, but it happens we're completely out of more legitimate heirs, so suddenly his parentage matters. Anyway, Redcliffe had been taken over by this demon-possessed little boy, and it turns out there's only one way to un-demon-possess someone, and it requires a whole lot more powerful mages than we had. But the Circle of Magi was only, like, one day away by boat, so we figured we'd just grab some mages from there and do the ritual. Except when we got there we found out the tower had been taken over by a sloth demon, and most of the mages had been killed or turned into abominations. It actually pulled us into the fade, which would normally be a game over, but we managed to find each other again and kill it first. There's some neat stuff about the different dream worlds people got stuck in, but it's a little less neat if you don't know the people. Anyway, we freed the tower and got the mages to pledge to honor their alliance, and we also got them to come over to Redcliffe and help us free the kid. And it worked, he's fine now and the town's safe.

"Anyway, we were in Redcliffe when me and Draconis got pulled over to this world. The next thing on the agenda is tracking down this mystical artifact that we think might cure the Arl of Redcliffe of his deathly illness, because he might have enough political clout to get people to quit it with the civil war stuff and focus on fighting the darkspawn. After that the only other people we need to contact are the Dalish elves, and that'll be pretty much the all the forces the country has to offer, which might be enough to defeat the darkspawn before the Archdemon reaches the capital."

" - I know that's a lot, even summarized. Like I said, it's a mess."

"What you need is a bard," says Fazil. "To straighten it out a bit and add supporting detail, in the ridiculous parts. - also a chosen cleric who can cast restoration and cure most deadly illnesses, which, hi."

" - woah, yeah, maybe you can get him to stop being in a coma. That'd be pretty great, our next best option is pretty much chasing legends."

"Are we in, then?" asks Hagan.

"I am," says Fazil. "You two can stay at home and wait for me to come back a highest cleric, if you'd like."

"Good parties," grumbles Mahdi, "this is exactly what they warn you about," but he's smiling.

"Hey, if we get the king situation straightened out and save the world, the new monarch will owe all of you big time, and I can't imagine there not being some kind of reward in that. What are you guys here for, if not that? How'd you get into adventuring, anyway?"

"Oh, Fazil's the one with the backstory," says Mahdi. "I wanted to be a wizard and I passed all my reading, deciphering, memorization and reasoning tests so my parents figured they'd scrape together the fees, and they did, and I became a wizard, devout of Nethys, moderately good at things, and then - eventually, wizards get to the point where they can't learn anything new just from books - though you still need the books. You have to be using magic in time-sensitive situations under pressure. Medical triage works, or combat, or some people claim they've gotten there with sparring but it takes a lot longer. So I started adventuring."

Everyone looks at Hagan. He has at no point taken off the hood and wraps that cover most of his face. 

"I grew up in a happy home with twelve siblings. Then one princeday, all of them were eaten by the Tarrasque. I chose it as my first favored enemy."

"...what's the Tarrasque?"

"He's being - the Tarrasque is a terrible monstrosity that has on occasion ravaged the continent. Not for thousands of years, though. No one's ever gotten an answer out of him but it's a different one each time, and all of them that - obvious nonsense, if you're local," offers Fazil. "Give her another one, come on, she doesn't know things here -"

"I hatched from an egg," Hagan says. "What kind of forces do you think you'll need, to take the darkspawn?"

"It's all about killing the archdemon, really, that's what you have to do to end the blight. After that you just have to clean up the stragglers, they won't keep pouring from underground. The tricky part is getting to it, with so many darkspawn in the way. I'm not sure I should be the person in charge of strategy for the next big battle, I'm not a general or anything, but I guess I'd say you want a big mass of soldiers to meet the darkspawn and break their lines, somehow, and then a smaller force of elite people to meet the archdemon itself. Including all of our surviving gray wardens, I think we're supposed to be the only people who can actually end blights. I'm betting it's tougher than a dragon, but, y'know, someone's gotta engage it directly. Doesn't have to be you guys if you don't want to die, though, we could definitely use the help just healing the Arl and getting to the Dalish without getting killed by assassins or the darkspawn's advance scouts. And solving whatever problems the Dalish inevitably present us with, I guess."

"What've they got with flight?"

"Honestly not sure anybody in this situation can fly besides the archdemon itself. It can fly. Looks an awful lot like a dragon, last I saw, though it's not one."

"Mahdi can fly, and so can anyone he likes. So you might be able to get by without the big mass of soldiers, though it's always good to have, like, backup plans -"

"Oooh, that'd be useful. Of course we would probably immediately die if we were the only people in an area full of endless waves of darkspawn and a dead archdemon. And they do have bows."

"Yes," says Mahdi solemnly. "We should definitely not charge the dragonlike thing alone. But - it sounds like it would help significantly for us to be there."

"Yeah. I think it would."

Shrug. "All right."

"What do they say about Good adventuring parties?" Fazil asks him.

"That you end up saving the world for a pittance. Which seems true as far as it goes but - odd in emphasis."

"Well. I didn't expect to be extremely grateful for having been whisked off by an evil mage to a land where nobody speaks my language, but - I think I am. Conditional on us not plane shifting into the ocean and immediately drowning on the way back, that would be really depressing. Although I guess it's less of an issue when flying's in the picture."

"Luck can be a strange thing," says Fazil. 

"I have a scroll of teleport for emergencies," Madhi says. "It's above my level so there's some chance, worse under pressure, I'd fail to cast it, and it costs more than we'd earn from ten of these trips so I strongly prefer never to use it, but it exists for situations that'd otherwise constitute immediate death."

Nod. "Well. We'll do our best never to need it. But I think maybe the world has a shot."

They keep watch in turns, again. There's nothing about tonight, or at least the floaty heads have all decided to be invisible.

All right then. More adventuring in the morning?

Yep! They want to stay out here at least five days, to cover their travel costs, and if they're all in good shape they'll go seven.

It's on the morning of the third that things go wrong. They're exploring a section of a temple when suddenly there's a snap, like a plank breaking - but the floor is stone, not wood - and then there's a much much louder snap and they're falling, for one second, two seconds, and then they're drifting towards the ground in complete darkness but at a very gentle pace.

"Daylight," says Fazil.

They're in a cavern. It's bigger than a stadium, bigger than a city center. There are - at least ten of those lionine things, looking up at them, and hundreds of eyeballs, and a couple dozen two-story-tall demons with bewildered expressions and holy symbols -

Below them there is a sudden scramble for weapons. 

- well fuck. 

Exits? Exits anywhere? Can she even see the edges of the cavern? Can she see light coming from anywhere except the daylight spell?

In the corners of the room there are doors. If there's light coming through them it's drowned out by the daylight spell. 

Beneath them the creatures they've intruded on are drawing bows and moving their hands through the gestures of spells. 

"- cleric's feather fall, I think," says Fazil, and the gentle fall cuts out abruptly, and they hit the ground hard as several dozen spells arc into the air and explode over their heads. 

The daylight spell goes out.

She gets a little bit of healing from somewhere. It's not very much.

Maker preserve us, she prays, automatically.

She can't see at all now, but the only possible ways out were those doors, so she'll - if she can cut a path to them then at least the others have a chance, right, even if she has no idea how she'd communicate it without giving away her position - 

She guards with her shield and rams into whatever the first thing between her and the nearest door is.

It snarls back at her and smacks her backwards, hard. 

"Darkvision," says Mahti; this does nothing for her so presumably he was doing it for someone else. Someone grabs her. "Teleport." There's a snatch of light; something caught fire. "Wall of Force. Darkvision," and now she can see. There is this invisible barrier encircling them and a whole lot of critters smashing themselves up against it and two inside.

Well, she can dispatch the two inside before she gives up, that seems like it needs doing. Everything hurts, but she can still swing her sword arm.

"Seventy seconds," Mahti says. 

    "Do you have another one?" Hagan asks him.

"No."

     "Teleport failed?"

"Yes."

      "Can you fly us -"