"I assume he's taking it as seriously as he takes anything, but he's treating my people's needs like a serious annoyance. And that does make us angry, yes."

"I mean, I don't know the man, I've never worked with him before. But by our standards he doesn't have an obligation to work on this at all; if he didn't want your problems solved he simply wouldn't come. And instead he sought us out to ask how the situation was going - after having been told that it would be better if he wasn't involved, so it's not that he thought we might need him - and sat there while you repeatedly insulted his god. He is trying."

"He was probably trying when he spent ten minutes with the GCP person and teleported out too."

"I think he's doing the best he can. I agree that it's not good enough, but he's the only cleric of Fharlanghn we have."

"And you already know what I think of him." He sighs. "I'm not a diplomat. I heard you wanted military, so I came. If he needs somebody to pick up after all his mistakes in every conversation you want Leonor or something."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Her office is right next to mine."

"All right. Thank you for your time." He tries the next office down.

"Just a moment, please!" A minute later out comes Leonor. "Hi! I'm Leonor, how can I help you?"

"Hi, I'm Zanel, one of Pelor's clerics - I was here with Fharlanghn's cleric Raafi to talk to Luiz but it didn't go well, I think we need to talk to someone a little more diplomatic."

"Well, that's my background, I was the chief ambassador to Federated before I got this chair, what can I do for you?"

"I should probably start from the beginning, can I come in?"

"Sure, have a seat. Cocoa?"

"Thank you." He takes a sip while he gathers his thoughts. "I'm not sure how much you know about what's been going on, feel free to stop me if I'm repeating things you're familiar with. But - Ganymede happened, right, and now everyone's on lockdown and it's a huge problem. We're trying to get that solved, in a way that works in the long term. Pelor's clerics, and also Raafi, I mean - there's not very much that Raafi can do, but we still need him if we're going to do it the way Luiz wanted to - I'm getting ahead of myself. We've been trying to just solve this for you, and not ask anything else of you - your president seemed to like the idea. We've got something in place in the short term, we have a team watching for the Ganymede daeva, and Shining One is making himself available to send them back to their realms if they're summoned. This is - really not sustainable at all, to be honest, we've been trying not to make that your problem but it's putting the people of our world at risk, having his attention tied up here. We need something better. We were hoping to get help from your specialists in figuring out how to handle daeva without him, which is why I was talking to Luiz in the first place, but he wanted nothing to do with it; he wanted to go back to the way things were before we got here, and then I think he was willing to use our magic to confine the daeva to their realms and let them go, but he kind of went back and forth on it."

"Went back and forth? How do you mean?"

"When Raafi tried to get him to commit to it he just got angry."

"...huh. Maybe I'll ask Luiz about it later. You were saying?"

"Right. So... jailing the daeva again like you were before isn't something Fharlanghn usually allows, if you try it he'll just come back and free them, the same as he did the first time. The only way it works is as a temporary measure, with oversight from one of his clerics, and Raafi is the only one we have. He seems willing to help with that - which, I want to point out how much of a stretch that is for him, it'd be like asking me to condone torturing someone - but he has certain responsibilities, if he's going to. I don't know what, exactly; getting the commitment to use the spell once it's developed is the one he mentioned but there might be more. And it seemed like Luiz was offended just to be asked, and wouldn't do it, and just kept provoking him instead - he left, I'm not sure where he went, it got to the point where I think it might have been a choice of that or attacking him."

"'The spell' being -"

"Pelor's developing one to confine daeva to their realms, so that they can't be summoned. It's not clear how we'd get close enough to a hostile daeva to cast it, that's what we were originally asking for help with."

"Hmm. I think I see a pattern in some of the Oerth-Revelation interactions where we don't know what we're asking of each other. I don't know whether it's the translation effect or something cultural or what, but it seems like over and over again, people ask things of each other, and they turn out to be really big asks, and turning them down is also really big for whoever asked. So it's not clear how many chances we get to explain, or how much room we have to develop a positive relationship by asking for things that make us feel more trusting and comfortable instead of trying to get a bare minimum and refusing to compromise on it."

"Most of what we've been calling translation problems seem to be cultural underneath, but we've noticed that too. We're trying to be as patient as we can, but I don't know what we can expect from Raafi - he's in a very stressful situation with very little support, from what I've seen."

"Is there some support that would help him?"

"I don't know him very well. Guessing from what I've seen - the only thing we can do that seems like it will help is being careful of how we speak of Fharlanghn. It obviously upsets him to hear him spoken ill of."

"Uh, the jailbreak is popular in some circles..."