"...I am not sure I fully understand how that would work, but I will take you at your word. Though this would only be useful in the case where you could observe while you were there and find out if the Maiar are alive and simply trapped, which may not be possible?" 

"I wouldn't expect to be able to see them or anything. It's possibly worth trying if at some point we have a next step from there."

Leareth nods, gets up, and asks Bar if she can make him some paper and a pen to keep notes. 

"...Bar is the better pharmacist and librarian but I can do paper," Cam points out, while Bar provides.

"Fair enough, I will keep it in mind for future." Leareth sits down again. "My thoughts from here have to do with the fact that I believe the Gate technique to be much more general that it might appear. You read the section on this?" 

"I looked at it. I didn't absorb the theoretical magic stuff well, I lack experience to let me kind of test out models against my knowledge of reality."

"That makes sense. I can explain my intuitions here, as best I can." 

"Starting with the Void. The various planes have different physical properties, including a property that one might compare to temperature or pressure. If a conduit is opened between two that is capable of channeling energy, it will flow from the 'hotter' to the 'cooler' plane, as water flows downhill. The Void, so far as I can tell, has a 'temperature' of...nothing. It is a very odd place; it contains mage-energy, in fact, energy moving in all of the planes will eventually drain to it, but it is too chaotic to contain matter in the usual sense. Space and distance between things also behave differently; I would not say that they do not exist, but the space between any two points in the Void is in constant flux, such that distant points regularly become close. This means that a search-spell routed through the Void can find the point there corresponding to a particular destination in the material plane, and can then temporarily pin the distance between those two points at zero within the Void, so that a threshold between them can be created. Does that make sense so far?" 

"I... think so... but this is making me pessimistic about doing Valdemaran magic in any other world if it relies on access to these planes."

"It would not take long to test, if you could briefly open the door to your world."

"Maybe we can convince Nechar. I don't care to let excess time pass in mine. I'd have to explain it, for one thing."

"...Do the people of Arda not know what you are working on here?" 

"Since I found the door I haven't let any time pass there except for enough to get an Elf in here as emergency backup."

"I see. Well, perhaps we can ask Nechar, then. It does seem a good idea to test it before we spend any more time considering theories." 

"Yeah. This way." Cam shows Leareth to the security office.

"'Sup," says Nechar.

"Hey, can you open the door to your world? We -"

"Not on duty," says Nechar.

"Hm. Thanks anyway."

Lissa, who trailed after them, looks disappointed. "Does he mean he's not on duty right now, or he won't do the door while he is on duty?" The main thing she's thinking right now is that Nechar is decently attractive, and maybe would be less like flirting with a rock wall than Cam. Leareth is still too intimidating. 

Nechar is in fact as attractive as a person with total control over his appearance who has ever used this control but doesn't have a lot of time to field test it. "Won't do the door while on duty," Nechar says. "I can when there's somebody new in here."

"Would you mind swinging by when that happens to let us try something?" Cam asks.

"I can do that if you're around, I'm not going to go looking for you at the bottom of the lake."

"Super reasonable."

Maybe Lissa will hang back and see if Nechar is willing to chat when he's on duty, it's not like she can understand any of what Leareth and Cam are talking about anyway. "Do people often spend time at the bottom of the lake here?" she asks. 

"Sometimes, yeah, most people come through the door but sometimes somebody swims in and winds up in the lake."

"Huh! How does that work - are they usually a species who live in the water all the time, or just people who happened to be going swimming, or what...?" She tries to gauge if Nechar actually looks interested in talking to her. 

He doesn't seem to mind! "Usually it's an aquatic kind of person, but once it was some humans in a diving bell!"

"Ooh, what's a diving bell? I've never heard of that." 

He conjures up a little diving bell. "Like this. Keeps air in and water out so they can look at fish and stuff."

"What a neat idea!" Lissa leans against the door of the security office, swinging her leg back and forth. "Anyway, what sort of world are you from?" 

"My world's really nice! Everybody who wants to do magic can, but it's easier to do stuff nobody objects to, because everyone's kind of doing magic all the time and you have to push against them to do something they don't like. So it's way nicer than most of the places I hear about here."

"Ooh! I bet it's nicer than my world, mine is kind of terrible." Lissa is going to keep making conversation, hopefully she'll spot a way to steer it into flirty territory soon – she's really not sure how to do that with people from other worlds, in a locale other than a tavern where everyone is drunk and generally there for the same thing.