"If we want him later I can have someone make a personal demiplane and wake him up there."

"You guys can do that? That's cool. How big are they?"

"If I make one without doing anything complicated it'll be fifteen hundred cubic feet. I didn't prepare it today, though."

"- the reason this matters to me is we don't know how many habitable planets there are in our world or how many of them will be already taken when we get there," she explains, "I guess that isn't urgent."

"I am concerned that even if we teach you magic you'll have a hard time getting anyone who can cast eighth-level spells, but if you could, then demiplanes can be made permanent and made larger by casting the spell repeatedly."

"Why wouldn't we have anyone who can cast eighth-level spells."

"In general, you can only learn advanced magic by repeatedly using the magic you've got in high-stakes life-threatening situations. And once you're high-level there aren't that many situations that qualify as genuinely threatening, especially not in a world that doesn't have other magic. If you have a lot of wars between competing armies of mages you'll get high-level ones but I really recommend against that, it's horribly destructive and it kills ninety-nine in a hundred of them."

"Space exploration could be dangerous. ...disaster relief? Coast guard stuff?"

"Should count."

"How'd you do it?"

"I didn't earn my cleric levels, I have them because I am an aspect of Abadar."

"Any other shortcuts? Is it actually about being in danger or is it a stress response, could people just, like, get adrenaline injections and then do magic."

"It works to have the person think they're in danger even if they are, for reasons they couldn't have guessed, not actually in danger. Being under the effects of a fear spell isn't enough to make normal magic practice count, though. I do not know of anyone who has tried adrenaline injections."

"Iiiit's probably more like a fear spell than like actually thinking there is circumstantial danger."

"What's the deal with that Starstone thing we think our local version is going after, is that a good shortcut?"

"No one knows anything about the tests that surround the Starstone, but people who touch it ascend to godhood. People who die trying and are resurrected report no memories of what happened after they crossed the abyss to the island where it's kept."

"Spooky. Where'd it come from?"

"A very long time ago some powerful enemies of the powerful human civilization of the time dragged a planet out of its orbit to impact ours. Through the intervention of our gods, the impact was mitigated enough to not extinguish all life on the planet, just plunge it into a thousand-year ice age that destroyed all the extant human civilizations. The incident was called Earthfall. The last survivor of the lost civilization of Azlant was an immortal human named Aroden. He found the Starstone at the bottom of the ocean, at the heart of what had been the meteor. He ascended to godhood, raised the surrounding area into the island of Absalom, and put protections around the Starstone so the unworthy wouldn't touch it. I don't know what kind of test of worthiness he had in mind; he's now dead."

"Even your gods aren't properly immortal?"

"Yes, under exceptional circumstances they can kill each other."

"Well, that makes the local's plans probably simpler in some ways and more complicated in others."

"Aroden's death incidentally destroyed half a continent and kicked off three civil wars. I'm not saying one should never kill a god if they can but - I hope that's not their core strategy."

"Well, sometimes you gotta, you know. Maybe they have a better idea."

"I know. But there are a lot of evil gods and not that many continents left." He gestures for someone to give him the list of all of the people with adventurer's resurrection insurance purchased in Osirion. 

It's a long list. Though Osirion doesn't have the 'bel' or 'pel' consonants, which means the list of names that include one of those is considerably shorter.