The non-Maitimos crowd around to divvy up peering at sections of it. Pelape says, "There's a 'Belmarniss'."

"That's not Osirian. - I'm not sure what that is, actually -"

"Doesn't say." She points out the entry.

"They would've had to file more paperwork with the insurance." He sends someone off to go fetch it.

"Not seeing anything else phonetically plausible."

"Our families' phonetic correspondences aren't all that reliable."

"It seems moreso for us."

"Belmarniss. Elf. Country of origin Noctimar. - we have never heard of a Noctimar. Conceivably it could be on the Elf planet? Occupation, adventurer, god, none, next of kin none, history of deaths no, criminal history no..."

"Is it enough for us to scry on her?"

"Ah huh." He reaches for a fresh crystal ball; someone hands him one.

"I think one of us should do it, how's this work?"

"You take it and concentrate on the name and other identifying information you have on the subject."

Pelape takes it. The others encircle so nobody else can see. "How soon do I know if it's working, I don't see anything?"

"If it's been two minutes and you can't resolve any images then it failed. Most likely because the person was magically unscryable or deflected us, but that'd also happen if they were nonexistent or apparently if they were on Mirelótë's plane."

After two minutes Pelape passe Cor the ball.

"It's dark," he reports.

"That's not what spell failure looks like."

"So it's just in fact dark? They could be asleep in some other time zone."

"Yes. Or be underground, there are peoples who live entirely underground."

"Elves do that?"

" - actually yes. An evil race of elves called drow lives in the Underdark and has their own society and nations and so on down there. - could explain why the country name was unfamiliar."

"An 'evil race'?"

"Drow sacrifice a lot of their children to spiders at birth, and then cull them throughout childhood for being rebellious or unpromising or slow or not ruthless enough. They have a population that's half slaves, which one has to be very brutal to the slaves to maintain without revolts, and buy and sell men as slaves; like children, they can be killed at will by the woman who owns them. Elves are mostly longlived but drow don't die of old age too much. They are nearly all condemned to the Abyss."

"Wow, rough."

"But this one's up here, adventuring..."