"Oh, no, there's like a bajillion others, I just don't really want to throw you at any of them until you have more context on this dimension and we have a better sense of your abilities. I guess maybe we should put together some kind of crash course on important things to know about Sunnydale and Earth as a whole."

"That sounds useful."

Maybe they can only slightly understate their abilities and get pointed at the right monsters without advertising too much.

"Okay! I'll see if I can get some basics written up before three." She checks the time. "Do you you guys need to be dropped off anywhere until then?"

"I would not expect so. Can you apprise us quickly of the local laws so we don't break any?"

" - well. There are sort of a lot? Um - don't attack anyone and don't - just don't touch anybody without permission, say, and don't walk in the streets until somebody's shown you how to cross them safely, and don't steal anything from anyone, and if some guys with blue uniforms and gold or silver badges come by just, uh, do what they say and we'll sort whatever it was out later? And probably err on the side of not doing any magic at people for now, since I don't know what magic stuff to warn you not to do." She looks at Alex. "Am I forgetting anything obvious?"

"Don't make an enormous fuss about the existence of women, that's not a law but it'll make you stand out and might get you into trouble. Even with permission don't do extended touching of people in public. Wear clothes. Don't flash the gold or any weapons - again, not a law, but it'll attract trouble."

"Yeah, all good advice. Does that all make sense?"

"It does. Thank you. - I don't know what we've done that prompted the warning about women, so I don't know how to avoid doing it?"

"Just treat everyone like people and don't go 'there's a girl fighting vampires'."

"I apologize," he says to Karen. "I didn't mean to offer an insult."

"S'not a big deal. Just - seemed indicative of something potentially off, and we don't want you guys to go getting in trouble before you have a better sense of local norms."

- nod.

"Cool. And then if you guys are good I will go ahead and pay your bill and let you eat however much more you're gonna eat, and then I guess we'll see you guys this afternoon. Don't spend the entire day in here, and you don't need to clean up the table or anything when you're done, the waiter'll take care of it."

"We'll see you later. Thank you."

"Mhmm!"

You driving me to school? Also when I say that I am paying I mean that you are paying, because you are the part of this party that has money and a job.

We could have stuck them with the bill, they have money. But he pays it. I'll drive you to school and we can go over what we know now.

It's very impolite to invite someone somewhere and then make them pay without any warning. And yeah, sounds good.

You're not wrong, I just don't mind being impolite to them.

They get in the car. 

Fazil does all their talking because in his world being chosen by your god gives you credibility, other people will mostly trust you and expect you're playing fairly and so on. I don't think he's in charge, exactly. Their going theory is that you're - some kind of nobility? That there's some kind of title of vampire slayer and accompanying magic, which you might be concealing or might just be in line to inherit or whatever - and I'm deferring to you for that reason and the local government will too. Not wildly far off, considering how little they have to go on. They spent a bizarre amount of time thinking about how you might magically bind your bodyguards to not - they're really really hung up on the gender thing -

They need more power to go home and they think fighting things will let them get it. I'm not sure how. 

That is so weird. I guess I can see parts of where they're coming from? But man.

If Gary Gygax is a warlock, and if we assume he's accurately reporting on how things are in some other dimension - in D&D you gain experience by fighting things. This isn't unique to D&D, lots of video games use a system where defeating enemies gives you a certain amount of experience points and after a certain amount of experience points you level up and gain new abilities. Pokemon is like this too. I assume it's an abstraction of something realer that makes more sense, but it's possible that they do need to get into fights to gain access to more spells, somehow.

Huh. They want to take our stuff back to their world and sell it but that seemed pretty harmless. Last night they briefly had a conversation about whether they could just stay here  - they were really enthusiastic about hot water - but they concluded they couldn't because of the women. 

They're planning to lie to us about what they're capable of but only by a little bit. Understate it so that if we try to kill them it's harder than we expect.

I guess that's fair of them. What about women makes it impossible to stay here??

I'm not entirely sure? - summarizing uncharitably they were generalizing from you and some foreign countries on their own planet to conclude that no one here is worth marrying or can be trusted to have their husband's children? But it was really just a throwaway couple of minutes of conversation, I could be missing something.

Oh, I guess if you definitely wanna marry someone someday you'd probably wanna do it with someone who had the same cultural norms and stuff as you.

- I am morbidly curious what I did that means that all women here are unmarriageable but this actually doesn't matter at all and I should stop thinking about it.

Yep. I'm gonna stop reading their minds since they're not evil or anything and they can take their stupid opinions back to the Middle Ages when they leave.

I suppose this is the right thing to do.

Should we be looping anyone else in on the presence of our new guests? Faith, Angel, did you tell your brother -