It should not be possible for her to be here, at all. 

It is very alarming that she is here anyway. They are, to put it shortly, panicked. 

Someone screams. Someone else shouts something slightly more coherent than that and still unfamiliar. Several people who were standing against the walls spring at her from the walls, holding swords. 

The person she nearly landed on reaches for a piece of jewelry at his neck. It pulses with light.

"Dictum." he says. This creates a powerful rush of air, a bit like the feeling of being around a Maia who doesn't know how to be around people, but does not do anything. 

He seems somewhat relieved. He raises his hand, just slightly, and the sword-people halt just short of stabbing her. 

"Did you mean to come here?" he asks her. It sounds like he's speaking perfect Quenya.

"No, I'm as confused as you are. Are those swords? Why do they have swords?"

" - Detect Alignment.

- this is the palace of the pharaoh, in Sothis, in Osirion. It's supposed to be impossible to land here. Did you get plane shifted by someone very very powerful, by chance?"

She pings lawful good.

"Well, possibly, but I really did think he had cut it out with interventionism. Also if I'd been told this morning to expect Eru to drop me on another planet I would not remotely have been able to predict the part where he would use a snake monster to do it."

"Your grace," one of the men holding a sword to her throat says, very unhappily. 

He stops looking happy and engaged and goes back to looking distant and reserved. "Our security needs to verify that there's not a threat here. They'll ask you some questions. We'll speak to you later."

"...all right."

The guards tug them away from each other, very firmly.

Fine, fine, she will let them tug her along.

They tug her through the palace. 

It's not bad-looking or anything but it's pretty bizarre that it's a palace; it looks like a person of about average talent and about average access to materials designed something perfectly livable but not, like, notable in any way. There are a lot of people standing about, most of them wearing either guard uniforms with swords or half-transparent dresses. 

They tug her into a small room that is quite ugly.

...she will wait and see how long they need her, but if it's more than a few minutes she will maybe close her eyes. "What is it you need to know?" she asks.

"Bestow Curse. Zone of Truth. Did you intend or expect to arrive in the palace?"

"No."

"Did you intend or expect to cause the pharaoh any harm?"

"No. Regardless of who you mean, but if you want to ask any more specific pharaoh-related questions you might want to confirm for me that he was the fellow I spoke to earlier?"

"Yes, that was the pharaoh."

They want to know if she intended to harm anyone else. They want to know if she knows any more about how she got here. They want to know what god she follows.

She does not. She can give some more circumstantial details about the snake monster but is honestly pretty confused about both the immediate monster-based transit mechanism and what Eru might be trying to pull. As for the last - "do you mean which is my favorite, or...?"

" - I suppose so? Some people are devoted to one or a few particularly."

"It seems odd to play favorites. I could tell you my least favorite but... if you have heard of any of the names I'd be sifting through I would think you wouldn't need to ask... so probably you haven't."

"...okay. Where are you from?"

"I was born on a planet called Endorë but moved to one called Valinor when I was a child. If you want it down to the city it's Valimar when I'm working, Tirion when I'm not."

"Can you describe the star, and the planet's relation to the star?"

Sure, she can natter on about their respective stars, including the binary system.

They seem confused by this. They whisper to each other a bit and write it down. 

They have a bunch more questions which all seem to be variants on whether she plans to betray or murder anyone here or sell their secrets to other people who might betray or murder everyone here.

"Would this be faster if I swore to it, by any chance, because I'm happy to, if you just haven't wanted to be presumptuous about that..."

"Not considered advisable to rely on with a translation effect in place, though I appreciate it," the man says. "We're almost done - family? Are you married?"

"Oh, it's an effect, I'd been going to ask why you spoke Quenya. I'm married, no siblings no children, my parents also live on Valinor."

"Is your husband here?"

"No."

"What's his name?"

"Rúmil."

"And yours, if it's different?"

"...my name is not the same as his, isn't that a confusing practice? I'm Mirelotë Ambela."

"People say Mr. Rúmil and Mrs. Rúmil, to distinguish them, but it doesn't work well if you've got several wives. That's all the questions. I'll take you back in, then."

"Thank you."

And they walk her back into the palace, up some flights of stairs. 

"You kneel for the pharaoh," an attendant tells her, "and wait for him to address you and give you permission to look at him or stand or speak."

"All right."

"This is the interplanetary visitor?"

       "The pharaoh wanted her. Your grace."

"I'm pretty sure he's occupied, I was just talking to him."

      "Then we'll wait for him, your grace."

"But I could talk to her while she waits. What's her name -"

      Sigh. "Mirelóte Ambela."

"Mirelóte Ambela," he says delightedly, with immense care for the words. "Did they pronounce that right, Mirelótë Ambela -"

"They have accents. It's Mirelótë Ambela. I'm half surprised the translation effect didn't just translate my name."

"It's a horrid spell and I hate it but it doesn't translate names and sometimes you can get anywhere with that. Mirelótë Ambela." This time his accent is correct. "Did you know, we didn't even know you could have a livable planet around two stars. Why do you look so much like we do? Species that were created independently on other planets usually don't."

        "The pharaoh's father, the Price Fe-Anar," says the attendant, bowing and looking less than delighted.

"Don't they, are there many? I don't know, perhaps Eru took design inspiration from you or vice-versa from your inventor. I believe the planetary engineering was an enormous headache and the god of the sea in particular complained but was outvoted because the double sun arrangement is so pretty. What does your name mean, mine is 'jewel beyond'."

"Star-souled. They managed two habitable planets in the system with two stars, or is Endorë elsewhere?"

"Endorë's twenty-five light years away.

I have a friend named Fëanáro which means 'spirit of fire' and you are uncannily reminding me of the time I came home from my honeymoon and he wanted to know everything I had picked up about orc dialect speciation in case they had changed since he'd last got an update."

" - had they?"

"Yes, orcs have a lot of children very quickly, compared to Quendi languages it's really breakneck and everything I told him was probably out of date by the time I got there to tell it."

" - but how long could that possibly have taken? If you've got two worlds you must have a gate between them?"

"...no, it's twenty-five light years away and it took twenty five years."

" - huh! Your species doesn't age? Or just very slowly?"

"...don't what?"

" - the gods on this plane got frustrated with how people'd get all upset when they died when their time was up, so they invented aging. Life gets steadily more unpleasant and the body steadily less good at functioning, until you die."

"That's stupid. Where do they live?"

" - lots of different places? The god who advises and guides this country is Abadar and he's in Aktun but he's not the one who did aging. I think that was mostly Pharasma."

"Well, where does Pharasma live?"

"The Boneyard. I don't actually know more specifically than that. You are not allowed to, uh, just go visit her."

"I'm envisioning a multi-step process, so I suppose the first several steps can be arranging that in some way."

"Well, the pharaoh wants you, the pharaoh is Abadar's conduit on this world, that's probably your first step. But you should tell me more about your society, first. How many species? How many languages that aren't mutually intelligible? How many languages that are distinct to a listener?"

"Three incarnate species - Quendi, orcs, and Dwarves - plus our gods, the Valar, and Maiar who are smaller versions of them; and I suppose you could if you were even more generous with the word 'species' call Eru a species." And she has Fëanáro's figures to give him for the latter questions.

Bounce bounce. "I can't ask you about the languages while you have the translation spell up but it shouldn't last that long  - or even better, when you're done talking with the pharaoh you can get it dispelled -"

"All right." Where is the pharaoh, anyway, they haven't been waiting all that long but if he weren't in any sort of hurry she sort of would have expected to have been offered a glass of water or something. Oh well. She waits kneeling like she used to do for the Valar.

The pharaoh walks in. 

Prince Fe-Anar kneels like her.

The attendants kneel further, press their faces against the tile floor.

...she looks at the attendants, shrugs minutely, bends over the rest of the way.

"But of course my father got here first," he says. "You can look at me." And to his father "What were you asking her about?"

"Her planet. Are you going to be a while -"

"I very well might! Something sent her here to me and given the power necessary involved I'm disinclined to call it coincidence."

"When you are done I would be grateful if you'd arrange for the language spell to be dispelled."

"We'll keep that in mind." He sounds very faintly amused. He turns back to Mirelótë. 

"Do sit comfortably. Do you have any guesses about why you might've been sent here, if you were sent here intentionally?"

She sits back. "Only if it was in fact Eru, who is my top guess but without my knowing much about the gods you have here. If it was him he thinks it will do something... entertaining... which is probably bad but not necessarily unsalvageable."

"Eru is one of your gods?"

"Eru created our universe, and the Valar and Maiar, and the Quendi - the other two incarnate species were Vala-designed. He was omnipotent but has been handing off his power to the Valar in installments for some time now, though he's still more powerful than they are."

"Huh. We've heard of none of those, and the competing stories of the creation of this plane always feature at least two gods."

"I don't currently have a reliable way to distinguish between the hypotheses that you're from a completely different dimension Eru didn't make, or that you're a project of his he's been hiding."

"We'd be interested in helping you figure that out, if there's a reliable way to do it. We would be surprised to be a project of Eru's; Abadar ought to know."

"The Valar were not fully apprised from the beginning about Eru's details."

"Hmmm. 

Do Eru's projects have characteristic features?"

"He likes tragedies.

We'd been told he was going to take up reading books like a normal person."

"We could describe Osirion and our world, and you could help us determine if it sounds right?"

"I can."

"This is the Material Plane. It's very big; it encompasses all the stars and all their worlds, in theory, though we don't know if they have the same gods and we know that they don't go to the same afterlives. Most of the planets around this sun have life on them; Golarion, this one, has the most individuals, the most races, and the most civilizations, as far as we know. We have humans and elves and dwarves and halflings and orcs and drow and kobolds and goblins and ratfolk and catfolk and gnolls and various hybrids of most of these races. Osirion is a very old country, with nearly eight thousand years of history, dating all the way back to shortly after Earthfall, when asteroids destroyed the earliest intelligent civilizations on this planet and gave way to new ones."

"...hm. If it's an Eru project it's a very different one but I can't guarantee unshared authorship based on that. Afterlives sound important, your father mentioned you just wear out and die for no good reason -?"

"Various reasons are given. We could imagine you might not find any of them good. When people die, they go to Pharasma for judgment, and then to an afterlife that suits the traits they displayed in life. Cruel people get cruel afterlives. Good people get pleasant afterlives. Most people get distinctly mediocre afterlives, though if they're law-abiding they get Axis which is a safe, pleasant and meaningful place. 

In some of the afterlives there's no particular risk of further harm; in some you near-inevitably die. If you die in an afterlife you are, as far as we know, gone."

"This could absolutely be Eru and I am very put out with him if it is."

"It has some drawbacks, as an arrangement."

"There are fifteen Valar with various specializations one of whom, Melkor, is evil but individually stronger than any other single Vala. He terrorized Quendi on Endorë until the Valar noticed that Eru had put us there without warning them about the timing - they were expecting us eventually, just not then - and took Quendi who agreed to settle on Valinor there, and also imprisoned Melkor. Eru would have had everyone believe that Melkor just sort of did all the things that he did on his own unexpectedly but Eru was omniscient, not that this means it would be safe to later parole Melkor as had been the original plan."

"Around a third of our gods are evil. They and the good ones worked together to prevent the destruction of the universe, and we think the state of the afterlife is something of a compromise between them."

"...if this is an Eru project I would expect the detente to be unstable, although I wouldn't actually bet heavily against the side of good in the instability, I'd just expect getting to the end to be really rough. However, it's possible that my having appeared here is a good sign for heading off any plot you were due for."

"It doesn't look unstable on short time scales? I wouldn't bet on another eight thousand years but I'd be pretty surprised if anything changed in my lifetime."

"I certainly couldn't place the destabilization very precisely in time. I don't know how long it takes your people to die for no good reason?"

"Around a hundred years."

"How long are your years?"

"The translation spell should be mapping to a close concept, for you, though if you've got several planets I don't know which planet's year it'd map to. A year has 380 days. It takes about twenty years for a child to reach maturity. It takes less than a year for a pregnancy to gestate."

"...about like an Endorë year and you mature about like orcs, then. Oh no."

"Hmm?"

"You're just all so young, and dying, and this is an emergency, is there any local way you could potentially contact the Valar so they can help - I was trying to orient myself a bit more but -"

"There are ways to contact gods, we could check if they work on your gods. You're sure they'd take it well?"

"Yes, they'll want to help, they'll need to know more but all of them together can be more efficient about it than just me."

"We will consult Abadar for advice on this."

"Thank you."

"That should take about ten minutes."

And he leaves.

"What exactly are you imagining that your gods can do?"

"...well, since one of your gods is implementing the wearing out and dying thing they'll probably have to start with diplomacy, but if they can get permission to do so they should be able to fix it and if anything is governed by a multi-god balance of power adding fourteen good ones sounds like it would help."

"Well, obviously I wish them the best of luck. I ...don't want to say you're overreacting, exactly, it is not a very good world for mortals in many ways, but - most people do do all right, to be clear -"

"Your palace is full of people with swords."

"Do your rulers...not have guards?"

"They used to have ceremonial ones but not for decades now. Valian decades. Our years are about ten times yours."

"I feel like this obliges your rulers to tolerate an awful lot of assassination or else to spend a lot of mental energy on their own security."

"...no, it doesn't, because people don't try to assassinate them."

"That sounds awfully unlikely."

"Orcs and Dwarves have some non-ceremonial security but not like this."

"What would happen if someone teleported into your ruler's palace at home?"

"We don't have a translation effect so someone would fetch Fëanáro to figure out how to talk to them, if they didn't speak any languages any of us knew. I suppose if he wasn't available the nearest Maia might do."

"And you wouldn't worry that he meant to destroy the whole city or summon a demon or trap the ruler's soul in a sword or so-on? What if he did mean to do those things?"

"Those are not going concerns at home. We do have emergency services, they can get the Valar."

"Huh. Maybe your gods are more interventionist. Abadar would help us in a war, or if another deity attacked us, or if something on that scale happened, but if the pharaoh got murdered by people who stole his soul so he couldn't be resurrected, Abadar'd just pick the next one, it's not his job to make sure nothing bad ever happens."

"Some people prefer lower levels of intervention and live farther away from where the Valar are walking down the street all the time but would still get ahold of them if somebody died. - our souls may not be the same as yours, but still."

"People die too often for the gods to take any particular interest in it. Abadar does take particular interest in the pharaoh, but - he still expects the pharaoh to do the actual work of protecting himself and his country without oversight, it'd be bad incentives if he bailed us out when we were careless."

"Maybe it would be less work if anyone were staying on top of it. And if you weren't dying for no good reason all the time."

"Maybe. Don't get me wrong, your gods will be very popular if they raise people all the time."

"They might not be able to do your species. Dwarves still don't come back if they have an accident because they don't have the same kind of soul as Quendi and orcs, and Aulë, who designed them, hasn't convinced Eru about resurrection yet. - he invented them before they'd learned as much as they know now, it wasn't obvious to him at the time that there was a design flaw in irreversible death, but they still don't just wear out and die even if nothing happens to them."

"I mean, souls here are supposed to be here temporarily and then get sorted to the afterlives. I think making the afterlives better and more permanent is probably more important."

"Supposed to by whom?"

"The local gods. And also lots of people, people work hard to get the afterlife they want."

"Well, the local gods do not seem universally to know what they are doing and if people want to move somewhere I do not see why they have to die about it."

Snort. "Fair enough."

"These days Ulmo lives on Endorë to do re-embodiments there if someone brings him a soul, but if someone manages to die so that their soul is destroyed, the data makes it to Mandos, the Vala of the dead, who can make them a new one. Then they're on Valinor, because that's where Mandos is, but they can still get on a ship and fly home. Orcs are generally shipped home in chip form, Valinor isn't suited to them, but still."

"Well, if they'll take over doing that here it'd be very convenient. What are their teachings?"

"...I'm not sure what you mean."

" - like, what do they tell their followers to do, what kinds of people do they select as their clerics. Abadar teaches that trade is good and that people ought to be responsible as far as possible for their own affairs and that it's important not to steal or present yourself defiantly to authority and that war is wrong and that you ought to work with people despite ideological disagreements as far as they're capable of cooperation. Whereas, say, Shelyn would say that art and music and beauty are important and that you should believe in everyone and love your enemies and so on. They wouldn't necessarily disagree but there are differences in emphasis at minimum, and of course some gods do disagree."

"They mostly don't go in for that sort of thing more than anyone else does? I could list their opinions but I could just as well list the opinions of random Dwarves I have met. Dwarves teach that trade is good, they're very emphatic about it. Uh, the Valar used to be a bit more opinionated but they were basing much of that on things Eru told them which turned out to have been for stupid Eru reasons, and now they use more consensus-building approaches."

" - huh."

"Hm?"

"I think your gods are working on a different model than ours. It sounds convenient but it makes it seem less likely that they're just the same sort of entity but from farther away."

"Well, if they're not the same sort then probably Eru didn't make yours."

"I'm still not clear whether to consider that good news or bad news."

"It could go either way. It suggests different approaches."

"Can people in your world become gods?"

"No. Well, I suppose unless Eru took it into his head. I don't think I'd like it very much, they're a bit psychologically odd and some of it seems necessary to interface with their powers."

"Like how being pharaoh changes you, but moreso, maybe," he says, nodding.

"- oh?"

"The pharaoh is chosen by Abadar and some people say the pharaoh just becomes an aspect of Abadar, as much of him as a magically-enhanced human can be. That's inaccurate. But he did change, quite a lot."

"How so?"

"Much more reserved. More patient, less inclined to joke, or ask for reassurance, or explain himself, or ask for help. More lawful, which makes sense. He used to talk to everyone, all the time, I don't think he spent a waking moment alone."

"Hm. What does 'more lawful' mean in local terms...?"

" - more inclined to follow a process or to use established principles and procedures for decisionmaking, more respectful of authority and precedent, more concerned with being predictable."

"Is he your eldest?"

"Yes."

"Of seven?" she wonders.

" - how'd you guess?"

"Fëanáro has seven. They're called Nelyafinwë Maitimo, Canafinwë Macalaurë, Turkafinwë Tyelcormo, Morifinwë Carnistir, Curufinwë Atarinkë, Pityafinwë Ambarussa, and Telufinwë Ambarussa. Youngest two are a pair of identical twins."

"Manetho, Masaharta, Telcar, Merenre, Sa-Anar, Ankhu, Apepi."

"I don't know what this means exactly but it's curious."

"It is. Hmm - Masaharta loves music, mostly does that - Telcar ran away years ago and we only intermittently know where he is, though he was still alive as of a couple months ago at least, Merenre's a cleric of Abadar and on the Council of Sun and Sky and does a lot of our trade policy, Sa-Anar studies magic and language with me, our youngest aren't yet of age -"

"Yes, that's all pretty well analogous. Is your wife a sculptor?"

"Yes! And an architect."

"How far out does this go - Curufinwë has a son, Maitimo has a boy and a girl -"

"The pharaoh has no children yet, because he doesn't like any of his women. Masaharta has four so far. Merenre's just married, no children. Telcar might have a dozen scattered all around the world for all I know, he's not supposed to but he's not supposed to have run off either -"

"Huh. So it's not perfect or at least not always as tidy as your seven all in order."

"Must not be. - did my father take more wives, in your world -"

"He has two. It's very irregular, there were special circumstances."

"It's not very irregular here. Better to give Abadar as many choices as possible, and lots of people prefer it."

"Huh. Well, Finwë has two, Miriel and Indis, the former being Fëanáro's mother, as of her return to life."

"Mine wouldn't come back."

"Ours wouldn't either for a long time."

- nod. 

"The pharaoh is returning," the attendant announces.

She plops into the appropriate position.

The pharaoh returns. "You can sit comfortably," he tells them. 

"Abadar doesn't know of your world or your gods, which we expected. He says you're of another plane, not another planet."

She sits up. "That doesn't surprise me."

"Do you know how to contact your gods from a distant plane?"

"No. We didn't know of planes as a phenomenon."

"We have spells that communicate across them, and we can try them, but I'd be unsurprised if they failed to work, given that Abadar didn't know your gods. We've ordered them attempted anyway."

"Thank you. Do you need anything from me to do that?"

"Enough information to aim for someone in particular."

"What sort is useful?"

"Any of a name they're known by, a place where they'd be and where no others would be, a particularly notable cleric of theirs..."

"You could try Varda. I can name the others if it's not too costly to retry or might have different results with different targets. Or my husband can contact them if it might be useful to aim for someone more closely connected to me personally since I'm here, I don't know how this works."

"Contacting your husband would be safer, contacting deities has some risk of overwhelming the caster and causing brain damage. We can try that first, and try the deities if that doesn't work."

"Ah. They've learned to be less overwhelming over time but perhaps it won't affect this channel. My husband's name is Rúmil."

"Abadar's quite personable but if you contact him through Contact Other Planes you still run the same risk of backlash. Is the name uniquely identifying?"

"I believe it is unique as a mononym, but some other Quendi may have it as one of two names and I can't guarantee that given all the orcs and Dwarves there are that none of them have it. Are there other helpful characteristics -?"

"Family name or anything?"

"Apart from the Noldo royal family's habit of sticking 'fin' into the name of Finwë's every descendant, that's not a custom of Quendi. I can give his parents' names? I'm also confident my full name is unique if that helps."

"Parents' names should work."

She provides her in-laws' names.

He says something to an attendant. 

"We'll keep you informed on their progress."

"Thank you."

"In the meantime perhaps you can tell us more about your world. What's it like?"

"Some of this I've already been over with your father - it was created by an entity called Eru, who at the time was omnipotent and omniscient. He made the Valar and their lesser cousins the Maiar, assigned them tasks, and proceeded to do very little while they did astroengineering and terraforming projects over millions of years. One of the Valar, Melkor, is evil, and noticed before the rest that there were Quendi that Eru had placed on Endorë, the planet where I was born. He did assorted evil things, the details of which I do not know to be of interest apart from that there thus resulted the orc species. Another Vala, Oromë, visited Endorë for approximately recreational purposes and encountered Elves, some of whom agreed to visit Valinor, the planet where I live now. They confirmed for the rest of us that it was nice and some of us moved there, while others stayed behind; the Valar fought Melkor and tried and imprisoned him and everyone else got on with our lives. The Vala Aulë invented and implemented the Dwarf species, on Endorë, and Eru agreed to wake them up. It eventually became clear that Eru was not as he'd presented himself an omnibenevolent deity with very good reasons for having permitted Melkor and made various other peculiar decisions but was instead using all the people in the universe as toys to act out dramas of his omniscient devising with more verisimilitude than fiction. We were annoyed. He agreed to carve out bits of his powerset and stop steering in that way and everything's been pretty lovely since. I'm eliding a lot of detail, I'm not sure exactly what will be most immediately relevant."

He blinks at her like he's trying to put something together. Shakes his head, very slightly. 

"What about this place stands out - aside from the swords?"

"...different architectural standards for palaces. Magic that incarnates can do, as opposed to just Ainur. Various minor cultural assumptions but I can't guarantee some of them aren't artifacts of the translation effect. The species you all are, of course. And a peculiar and inexplicable mapping between your family and the Noldo royal family in vague name similarities and approximate personality - I noticed your father first but it sounds like it doesn't stop there."

"- we'd love to hear more about the Noldo royal family."

"The king is called Finwë; he's been the king of the Noldor on Valinor since convincing us to move there from Endorë - there are also two other Quendi tribes living on the planet with their own kings. I'm a friend of the family; my husband is one of Finwë's advisors. Finwë has two wives, Miriel, Fëanáro's mother, and Indis, sister to the Vanya king Ingwë, whose children are called Findis, Nolofinwë, Irimë, and Arafinwë. Fëanáro has seven -" she lists those too - "and two grandchildren Notellë and Aratarya from Maitimo and his husband Findekáno, and a grandson Tyelperinquar from Curufinwë and his wife -" She can go on elaborating on family trees as long as the pharaoh seems interested, though she's watching for reactions all around to "his husband".

He seems fascinated. He seems utterly unsurprised by 'his husband', as does his father and the attendants. "Who are the children by?"

"A Maia friend of theirs named Ardilorë carried them but didn't contribute to the children's - does 'genetics' translate? The phenomenon that makes family members resemble each other. There's a Maia who's managed to do a sufficiently high-fidelity body to actually reproduce but Ardilorë isn't she."

"- so the children are related by blood to his husband?"

"Yes. Ardilorë brags about it insufferably, he says it was very difficult."

"I bet!" Regretful sigh. "We don't have that here. Nor do I have any wives who'd be delighted to do it, I don't expect."

"Well, maybe you'll be able to borrow Ardilorë, depending on the results of the contact attempt."

"That'd be - we'd have to ask Abadar. But perhaps. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Your acquaintance with him is the reason you've been giving the names, while you speak?"

"Yes. Was I right?"

"Yes. I was confused who'd have given that advice and not various - other advice which might be inapplicable due to cultural differences or something."

"- hm?"

"The kneeling. You're thinking of it oddly. And possibly something about how people are dressed? - we're not offended, but it was an odd combination with knowing things about me that most people don't know."

"It's... been a long time since anyone I interacted with was particularly choosy about being knelt to. I haven't been paying very much attention to anyone's clothes... probably you're picking up on my trying not to look at people's hair, actually."

"Oh?"

"Please don't worry about it on my account, Dwarves and orcs don't have the same hangups about it either and I'm capable of pattern recognition which indicates my species is the odd one out, but we do not cut it short and we do not wear it loose in front of people we are not married to."

Nod. "That's probably it. If you happen to be stuck here for a while your servants can cover theirs."

"That would be kind of them."

"Is there anything else you will need, if you're staying here a while?"

"I sleep every two or three days, I eat - I don't know whether to expect everything you eat here to be safe for me but I can test little bits to check anything I don't recognize. If some of your guest rooms are not at least as pretty as what I've seen so far I need one of the prettier ones or a decorating budget. Or both."

" - you do," he says, a little wonderingly. "We haven't met peoples who need things to be pretty before."

"I could just go around with my eyes closed constantly singing but I believe this would be inconvenient. I have one of the higher tolerances for ugliness as we go, by which I mean I can spend an entire day in an orc city at a stretch and don't need to make adjustments to my soul that causes the orcs not to look like orcs to do it."

"Most people have to?"

"No, most people in Arda are orcs. Most Quendi need the soul adjustment or smaller doses or wouldn't attempt tourism in orc countries in the first place."

Nod. "Humans don't need things to be pretty in order to survive. Just food, water, ideally interaction with others occasionally, and physical touch when we're very young."

"I've never actually heard of anyone dying of ugliness and I'm sure Melkor has done the experiment but it's distracting and unpleasant."

"Melkor's your imprisoned evil god? He sounds like he'd fit right in in Hell."

"Perhaps he would."

"You must have some questions about how things work here."

"I'm very curious about the magic here, what it can do and how it's learned."

"There are two main kinds. Arcane magic is innate, or learned through study; divine magic is granted by the gods. Abadar empowers the pharaoh with divine magic. It can do - quite a lot of things, it might be easier to get you a book and a spell that'd let you read it. We mostly use ours to speak to Abadar, observe our people, assist our advisors, and raise the dead."

"I'd be delighted about a book. Observing your people takes magic?"

"Well, if I go out into the streets then I mostly see them kneeling. If I use a spell I can just watch them about their business."

"Ah."

"I didn't choose it."

"Who did?"

"For a long time, Osirion was ruled by foreign countries, and not very well; countries never care as much for the flourishing of their colonies as for their own people, and don't understand them as well, and don't have as much to gain by strengthening them. In my grandfather's day we became independent, and we returned to many of the traditions that remained from the last time Osirion was free, enabled by Abadar's assistance in selecting a pharaoh and ensuring a stable succession. - in most countries the succession is a major problem, and causes many wars. The pharaoh is, in the faith of Abadar, a holy symbol, an emblem of the god's presence in our country and in our lives. The pharaoh is sacred to people."

"Hm. I'm not sure I have the context for all of that to make complete sense to me with only a paragraph to go on, but I'm glad it's working for you."

Someone walks in, says something to him quietly.

"They were unable to reach your husband. We'll try the gods next; sometimes it's easier for more powerful entities to hear one."

"- if it would be safer for the caster to try a Maia, I can identify some."

"Slightly safer, yes."

"Their herald is called Eönwë."

He nods to the attendant, who leaves.

"Can magic fix whatever it is they're risking - I think the upside potential is worth it but -"

"No. But they'll recover in time - not more than a month - and we'll compensate them for the inconvenience."

"All right."

"There's no real - danger - in your world?"

"Not any more. Well, except for Dwarves, we still don't know how to get those back if they have accidents. I'm old enough to remember when there was, though."

"Even if we had very cooperative gods it's hard to imagine there wouldn't be danger. I guess perhaps none of it could be irrevocable."

"There's a crime rate on Endorë but that means you have to lock up your bicycle or someone might steal it, not that people in their own homes go around armed all the time."

"Most people do not go around armed all the time in their own homes. Or elsewhere, really. The palace is both a home and a major seat of government so it's a little unusual."

"All right, that was unfair of me. Still, it was striking compared to what I'd expect if I teleported into an orcish hall of parliament."

"I regret that we startled you. You're not in danger here. - I guess you might be, compared to your homeland. You are in awfully little danger here."

"If I die you can get my soul out of the back of my neck," she gestures, "and hang onto it in case my people ever find me; Mandos may not be getting updates so the physical copy is important."

"Huh. Will we interfere with your world's system if we try to raise you?"

"If Mandos isn't getting updates, then no. I don't expect Rúmil to decide there's no realistic chance of getting me back and have me forked from when I left for a thousand years. If Mandos is getting updates, then - maybe? Depending on some details of how your system works. But nothing worse than there being two of me would happen and while I haven't chosen to do that on purpose I expect we'd manage."

"Do some people choose to have two of them?"

"Yes, and we're expecting it to get more popular once we have faster than light travel and can settle lots of planets according to interesting experimental schemes and people don't want to have to pick."

"We have instantaneous interplanetary travel."

"Which is very exciting but I still think contact with this world will delay recreational colony experiments for a long while compared to how long it was likely to take Fëanáro to crack the problem. You have a lot of things you could probably use help with here."

"I guess we do. Other places more than Osirion, I think."

"I was mostly thinking about the bad afterlives."

"Those are very bad. A lot of places for the living are also quite bad, but more temporary."

"Which we'd also want to look into. Or just me, I suppose, if they can't get ahold of anyone from home."

"What sorts of things will you do if they can't get ahold of anyone from your home?"

"Well, I suppose I'll see how long I can avail myself of your hospitality, learn the language, read a lot of books, and see what improvements I'm positioned to make alone."

- nod. "They should have an answer for us in a minute or two."

Nod.

The person who comes back in a minute later does not look like they've just encountered a dozen new good gods and solved most of the problems in the world. They talk with the pharaoh quietly for a moment.

"No luck. I'm sorry."

She nods again.

"Why don't I set you up with a room here and some people who can get you oriented, and we can speak again once you have more of a sense of what your priorities are here. We can research whether there's any other way to contact your family."

"All right. Thank you."

"- augh!" says a spontaneously appearing young adult human.

The guards object just as strongly! More strongly, even, maybe!

"Hold Person. - you know this one?" he asks Mirelótë.

"I've never seen him before, we don't have the species at home."

He can't shed any light on this situation at the moment.

The guards take hold of him.

"We'd like him back here quickly," he tells them. "It's hard to imagine this is happening for no reason."

And to Cor, "you've teleported into the palace of the pharaoh of Osirion, which was thought to be impossible until quite recently. My security will ask you a few questions and then we'll introduce ourselves properly."

Security drags him out. 

The pharaoh frowns. "Do you still want to get a room and get situated, or would you prefer to stay here and meet our new guest?"

"I'm more curious than tired at this time."

"All right. We'll have someone bring in refreshments."

He sits down.

The newcomer is very unhappy.

So are these guards.

They want to know his name and whether he has magic and where he's from and how he got here and whether he means anyone in the palace any harm and whether he means to spy for any foreign countries and what he thinks of the pharaoh and whether he understands that local law is very strict about magic in the pharaoh's presence and some questions that nearly duplicate these ones.

"Corbelan. Yeah I do. None of your business. Some kind of portal Maia or something. Reserving judgment on that. No. Seems kind of trigger happy. Kind of implied by how you phrased the question."

Well. 

What species is he. Does he rely on his magic to live or succeed at basic tasks such as eating and cleaning himself. 

"Human. No."

Fine. They're putting him in an antimagic prison for now. Anything that he would like conveyed to anybody on this plane or in reach of it?

"If my friends come looking for me what are you gonna do about it?"

"That depends on whether they break any laws or intend to hurt anyone here or cooperate with local authorities."

"They'd just want to figure out why I haven't come back."

"Then we will explain where you are and release you to them, if they promise to leave or follow the law while they're here."

"You could just let me leave, too, if you weren't putting me in antimagic prison."

"We might do that once we know more about how you surpassed the protections on the palace."

"I didn't do that, some kind of Maia that looked like a snake did it."

"Sure. Once we know more about how it happened, or you make up your mind about whether you intend to hurt any of the people we protect."

"I'd be way more confident on that point if you hadn't immediately attacked me."

"Were you injured?"

"Not physically."

Then they'll escort him to the antimagic prison.

He doesn't make a fuss about it.

" - unfortunately it sounds like we won't be able to meet the other mysterious guest," he tells Mirelótë. "At least not any time soon. He told our security that he hasn't decided whether he intends to attack anyone in the palace, and people who feel that way are not allowed in the palace."

"Oh. Where is he?"

"In prison near here. We'll send someone to talk to him and try to figure out what's going on."

"You put him in prison?"

"Yes."

"Are humans okay like that?"

"...I mean they need food and water and conversation and a way to productively employ themselves if it's going to be a long-term thing but for a short term one, yes, they are."

"I will have to take your word for it."

"We can have him released onto the streets of Sothis if we want to but we can't bring him here."

"Because you think he's dangerous?"

"I think he probably isn't. But the law is that palace security doesn't go off my personal judgments, it goes off whether they are willing to affirm some facts about their intent."

"Did he say anything about why?"

"Said he might be more sure he didn't intend to hurt us if we hadn't attacked him. Which is fair, but means we can't meet him."

"The situation is... awkward in its asymmetry."

"I guess it must seem that way. I wouldn't expect anyone from my plane to parse it that way. Law enforcement arresting you is not doing the same sort of thing as you are if you attack them. And teleporting into someone's home, even accidentally, is the sort of situation you had better be willing to resolve with a lot of reassurances about your intent."

"If you'd decided to throw me in prison over some initial confusion I would have died."

"We do ask first. What species someone is, and if it's a familiar species whether they need their magic either to live or to care for themself. If we didn't know the species we'd ask you what was safe."

She nods. "Do you suppose I should talk to him?"

"Do you want to? We'll send someone, and you might be advantaged by not working for the people he's annoyed with."

"Maybe it'll be easily cleared up but supposing it's not I'm happy to try."

"Thank you. And perhaps we can think of something more reassuring to do for the next person, if there's another one."

"How'd you choose what magic to try, it was different between me and him."

"The spell we tried on you was much more dangerous. If you'd been unlucky it might've killed you and if you'd been an enemy it would hopefully have made you unable to fight the guards. Nothing like this had ever happened before so I was reacting to it as an extraordinary threat. When he arrived we had some reason to think it was another random accident, so we used a spell that couldn't possibly have hurt him but that would've been a worse choice if it was an attempted assassination."

"What are your other options like?"

"We could get an arcane caster in here to put people to sleep. We could use spells like Dictum which will kill nonlawful people. We could get someone in here who can use nonlethal force rays. We could...turn them into toads, which I'd expect to be far more threatening than Hold Person but which I mention for the sake of completeness."

"Well. Given your options the thing you did makes sense but if another Quendi shows up maybe prefer sleep to the immobilization thing."

Nod. 

An attendant leaves, presumably to implement this.

"Are all Quendi going to be lawful good, they sort of sound it."

"I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that."

"The alignment system that sorts us into afterlives also characterizes people who are still alive. You parse to it as lawful good, which is imperfectly reassuring but somewhat reassuring about your intentions and motives and so on. You describe a whole species of people who worship good gods and never break laws, which sounds like maybe they are all lawful good like you. If they were, then it'd be entirely safe to use spells that only harm lawless or evil people on them."

"Well, we do vary and I don't know how picky it is, but perhaps."

"Not as a first resort, at least."

"Are all the people who seem to have Quendi versions here the same alignment? That might be a usable clue."

"Not all, no. Most of us are lawful neutral - Abadar's alignment - but my father is occasionally true neutral - that is, not lawful - and my brother Telcar was last I saw him chaotic good."

"Well, Tyelcormo lives on Endorë tromping around the wilderness rather than traditionally participating in society but I wouldn't expect him to steal a bicycle. ...I guess unless he really needed a bicycle? I could imagine him doing less due diligence than most Quendi about trying to legitimately borrow a bicycle."

This almost makes him smile. "I wouldn't expect Telcar to steal a bicycle either. I know him to have stolen some slaves, though."

" - and given them some money and let them go."

"Oh, I wasn't making that face about his behavior. Where is he finding them?"

"From slavers, whose caravans can be found on most of the major roads and in boats, or from individual slaveowners. There's also a slave market but we couldn't tolerate him stealing from there and he knows it."

"I'd like to go settle into my guest room now."

He gestures for someone to take her there.

She settles into her guest room and pulls her little note-taking device out of her pocket and she sings.

And someone brings the prisoner food and water and asks how he's doing.

"Sitting in a prison cell, and yourself?"

"Two people teleported into a facility we had assumed was impossible to teleport into today, so I'm going to miss my daughter's wedding. This is all safe for humans; I'm allowed to taste it if you want me to do that; if you have religious, personal or medical dietary restrictions we accommodate those."

"I don't."

"Well, here you go."

He kind of picks at it.

"Any questions I can answer for you?"

"Anybody shown up looking for me yet?"

"No."

"I would like to go home. I can tell them whatever you want me to tell them about your stringent behavioral standards for teleporting visitors, might be useful."

"Would you be willing to stay a few more hours? We are trying to figure out how this happened and whether it's going to keep happening."

"If you care a whole lot about whether I'm willing I feel like perhaps you would have done something other than stick me in an antimagic jail cell."

"I'll ask about getting you sent home. It'll probably be fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Thanks."

He comes back fifteen minutes later. "Can you leave under your own power, or do you need a spell from us?"

"I can do it. Need some fine ash or soot and about a pint of reasonably fresh mammal blood. And presumably not to be in an antimagic cell, if it works on my kind of magic."

"All right." He leaves again.

Cor gets through about half his food but does not have much appetite.

And then people will escort him to a different cell and ask him under magic whether he's going to do anything other than go home with the soot and blood and so on.

"No."

Great. Then he can have it.

He gets out of his shirt and starts drawing on himself with it. "If this isn't mammal blood then trying this will kill me, so you're aware," he remarks.

"Do you want someone on hand with Raise Dead?"

"Don't know what that is apart from probably what it sounds like."

"If you die of your spell they would bring you back to life."

"That sounds useful but it working and me dying will both look like me vanishing."

"Ah. - gods keep you, then, I guess. You read chaotic good, when we checked."

"I don't know what that means either."

" - it means that if you die you'll get a nice afterlife. I don't mean - there's nothing wrong with the blood, but most people find that information reassuring."

"Uh-huh."

Paint paint paint.

"People find the sort of chanting my magic system requires very ominous, fair warning."

And he chants. It's very ominous.

- and absolutely nothing happens.

"- what the fuck."