"Uh, it's kind of to give me a sense of the problem space? I don't want to show up to bother Pharasma without something more substantive than 'how fucking dare you'. I assume she gets that, uh, not all the time, but now and then."

Snort. "Probably."

"So I want to know who's going where and why even though really no matter what I find it boils down to 'how fucking dare she'."

"Fair enough."

"There aren't that many people who could get my dad back. Been a while."

"Have an ear?"

"Fished a bone out of the soup."

"My brother could but it'd be hard to explain why you figured he would. They're okay? The Abyss is dangerous, right -"

"I wouldn't go through you, ideally, I'm imagining maybe I develop enough cachet as a cultural consultant to ask. For both of them and my sister too once there's parents to put her with, if I'm going for broke. I have confirmed that they both continue to exist within the last year, though obviously that could change at any time and it's hard to get a sense of how perilous their immediate conditions are given what there is to look at in the Abyss."

"I'm sorry."

"Lots of people in the Abyss, they're not, like, objectively special. Lots of people in Hell too."

"Yeah. But - it's hard to work, when people you care about are in danger."

"Haven't tried it the other way. Maybe it's amazing."

"Spent a lot of time being really really glad I didn't have kids at home before I figured things out. But at least they'd've been, like, fine, pretty unlikely on the whole to be snacked on..."

"Yeah, lotta things about it would suck but at least not the material comfort now and hereafter part."

"Osirion sucks but they're doing - something it's really reasonable to be doing, you know?"

"It is a valid project and an earnest country attempting it."

"And yet I am glad to be out of there as fast as possible."

"Well, afterwards we will need to return with a bolt of silk and exciting news, although if you feel that strongly about it I could sell you to a mushroom farmer."

"Have to be one heck of a mushroom farmer."

"What is it that you look for in your mushroom farmers?"

"Well they had better at minimum have detailed Pharasma-overthrowing plans."

Giggle.

And they can descend into the Underdark.

It's dark. Belmarniss starts mapping immediately, sometimes making a circuit of a cave she can't see clear across to note the number and directions of the entrances. There aren't a bunch of drow right by the aperture, though there are some signs that people have been through - signs of wear on the stone, a couple dropped items of no value.