The streetlights are magic, the waste disposal containers are magic, the items in the shops labelled "Magic Shop" are magic. When they get to a tavern and associated inn that caters to adventurers, all of them are wearing a lot of magic stuff.  

Hagan strikes up a conversation with the nearest adventurers, which is always way more fun if you're doing it on an undercover mission to find out secret things than if you're doing it normally. He asks about the work, how they manage healing, whether there are any interesting side quests.

(They manage healing with Permanent Symbols of Healing, presumably imported as it's divine magic. They mostly kill divs and daemons spilling out of the House of Oblivion; it's fine. Gets routine pretty quickly, which is probably a bad thing if you're here to level, but this guy is here for the magic item he will get as payment for a year's work, a magic ring that gives you twice as many third-level spell slots.)

Mahdi is impressed, asks more questions.

Leareth listens, mostly doesn't ask questions because he lacks a lot of context on adventuring. 

He reads the minds of everyone he can who's within range and not shielding. 

About half these people can hedge him out in the obnoxious way that locals sometimes can; none of them are doing the thing the pharaoh does, which seems like the only local shield that's actually comprehensive enough to always stop Thoughtsensing. The other half are comparing notes on magic, comparing notes on battles, speculating idly about whether this is really all there is to the job, trading recommendations for sights to see and girls to sleep with in the city.

:Is there stuff we want to do here before we head out to the lines in Thuvia?: he asks them after some chatter. :Try to get near various people and get a read on - I assume they won't look like Aroden -:

:One assumes. I can use mage-sight; I would expect him to be the one who has a highly paranoid level of magical protections in place: Assuming Aroden doesn't also have methods of concealing said protections from mage-sight. 

:What kind of range do you have on that, you probably want to stay well away while you check.:

:Quite far - miles if I push it, though at that range it becomes very annoying to target a specific person: 

:Well, maybe we can swing by a block away from the government buildings tomorrow and you can see if you can get a read from there.:

Leareth agrees that this seems like a reasonable plan. 

Then they can go upstairs. They share a room and keep watch, even here; Mahdi can Teleport them out if anything seems amiss.

It doesn't.

Leareth is not especially worried about that (if only because he's wearing a lot of shielding), and sleeps solidly for his block. He is mildly concerned about Vanyel's impending visit to Velgarth, but it's not productive to dwell on that now so he doesn't. 

Then in the morning they can swing by a block away from the palace and Leareth can check if anyone happens to be ridiculously covered in magical artifacts.

Leareth checks. Carefully, in case Aroden uses protections against mage-sight-like techniques that also bite. 

Nothing bites him. There is a lot in the way of magic items in the palace region, some very powerful, which makes it hard to pick out more detail. There seem to be rooms that are shielded against magic-sensing, presumably intended for local magic but broad enough to hit mage-sight as well.

He does not notice any specific people who are unusually decked out with magical protections; some rooms are more heavily protected than others but that's not helpful for figuring out which person is Aroden. 

:The general layout and security have the flavour of something I would design, but I did not find any obvious candidate to be Aroden: he tells Mahdi and Hagan. 

:Huh. 

If you were letting some adventurers in on some plans for an invasion, how'd you decide which ones?:

:Hmm. I think - not immediately. I would wish to see their work on the public facing aspects first - perhaps arrange to slip in some subtle tests of character - and then I would reveal things in several stages. Also, in my actual organization, everyone working on the most sensitive projects is under a voluntary compulsion not to give away their secrets:

:There's a spell I could prepare that'd let me see that. Uh, not any details, but whether there was an enchantment in place. Tomorrow, maybe, and then we'll know who knows more, if that's another similarity:

:That makes sense: 

Leareth is content to spend the rest of that day exploring the city and talking to other adventurers. The translation spell can give him the language but he wants to pick up as much of the other cultural context as he can, to avoid standing out in ways he can avoid. 

Mahdi and Hagan seem to be in comfortable territory. Golarion's adventurers seem to be generally a higher quality crop than mercenaries one can hire in Velgarth; maybe the local might-be-Leareth is screening stunningly well even at this early stage, or maybe it's the promise of eternal torment for being a bad person, or maybe it's the intelligence-enhancement and wisdom-enhancement headbands that nearly everybody is wearing, or maybe the fact that locals have to get into fights to develop the channeling capacity for powerful spells means that the pool is just much less heavily selected for people who just kind of want to do murder. (There are not none of those.)

In general if you kill summoned outsiders you just send them back to their plane of origin but if they came through via a planar portal or tear, like these ones did, when you kill them they are dead. 

Mahdi tells people Leareth's a protean-blooded sorcerer which seems to succeed at being mildly interesting but not, like, very interesting. 

:What is a protean-blooded sorcerer: Leareth clarifies with Mahdi. :I should probably know this: 

:It means one of your distant ancestors was one of the outsiders from the Maelstrom. I've never heard of it and no one else will have either but there are people who are various other kinds of outsider-blooded and it does sometimes give you sorcery so it's vaguely consistent with what everyone expects while not actually causing them to make any predictions.:

:Ah. Clever: 

Leareth participates a little in the conversation once he feels like he has the hang of things more, but he's mostly going for 'quiet' as a persona. 

:Should I restrict what magic I use when we do go to Thuvia, in order to be consistent with what sorcerers in your world can generally do?: he asks Mahdi at a quiet moment. 

:Sorcerers have been documented who were capable of everything wizards can do, though they usually have less versatility. Uh, don't do Gates, don't demonstrate that you have all-day telepathy with ridiculous range, but other than that it shouldn't stand out. Van's dispelling magic looks weird but not so weird you can't just go 'oh, yeah, I've been told I do it weird' about it.: