"He hates scrying."

"It takes an hour."

"Would you like me to entertain you for that hour by singing you traditional drow songs some of which are about baby murder? It'll be fine, you won't understand the lyrics so you won't know which ones."

He makes a face.

"Think about it. If we go to the government now, we get told to stay out of it, we retire, you have to sell scrying for the rest of your life. We go track these pirates down and learn why everyone in the Inner Sea is paying them, you make ninth level, you get to sell Teleports instead -"

"I'll try the known associates and if they don't work Belmarniss can go back and ask for more associates. And bring pie."

"I was thinking something I could tuck in my sleeve, you think they'll let me haul in a pie?"

"Oh, I have no idea. You could haul it in my bag -"

"They have antimagic up."

" - guess not, then."

"Maybe some little hand pies. Or just some candy."

"She can peg our power level at somewhere between 'can get her some fancy candy' and 'can cast seventh-level cleric spells easily'."

"It'll add to my aura of mystery."

"Is there delicious drow candy you can get her?"

"I guess I could go down a ways and see if they have sugarwebs here but I'm from under Taldor, so I can't assume much culinary similarity."

"Would that be risky? - not that it's remotely worthwhile in this case, I'm just wondering whether drow have international tourism."

"Some, though there's lots of political drama all the time so it fluctuates. I'm not certain how all the underdark borders match up with the surface - for one thing there are caves under the sea some places - so I couldn't tell you if we're even over drow or something else here, let alone whether, if drow, they're from Nemret Noktoria or Shraen or Shazeun. Though it'd be one of those unless something major's happened in the last few years."

Nod.

"Should Osirion be, like, trying to have trade relationships with drow or something?"

"I feel like the chaotic evil thing would be a speed bump?"

"Little bit. But who knows, maybe everyone'd meet in the middle."

" - so, in Abaddon?"

"We have trade relationships with most of our neighbors and lots of them are chaotic, or evil. Admittedly not both."

"Nemret Noktoria and Shraen and Shazeun all at various times managed productive trade relations with Noctimar, where I'm from. Whatever your best practices are for trading with chaotic and/or evil people might work and you could maybe sell 'look, Abadar is just majorly into trade' as a justification to anybody suspicious of Osirians sniffing around downstairs."

"Abadar is just majorly into trade. Reportedly tried to open negotiations with Hell once but they were too difficult to work with."