"It is the carapace of one of the spawn of Rovagug - uh, Rovagug is an evil very powerful god who wanted to destroy the world and was defeated only by all the other gods working together, and his spawn are a series of incredibly powerful magical creatures that ravaged the ancient world. None of them have been seen for centuries, though, and this one was destroyed long ago, the First Pharaoh destroyed it. It's impenetrable to magic, and you can't Teleport or Plane Shift or scry or anything across the barrier. The royal palace is in there, and most of the nobility."

"When I met him Mahdi's life goal was to have a fancy house in there where you can't see the sky."

"The sky is overrated."

"Huh! I guess that's a pretty useful security measure for your Palace." 

What's their plan next? 

"I will check in with a report on the dragon situation and see if they'll pay you, they should. You three can maybe tour town before it gets hot -" it is already horribly hot -"and then we can rent some rooms and have a strategy meeting about how we want to make you a lot of money."

Hagan taps Yfandes and casts something - very subtly, it's only noticeable to mage-sight - and then it doesn't feel horribly hot at all (for her).

Awww, that's so sweet of him!

Vanyel will cheerfully, if somewhat distractedly, follow the others around for a tour of the capital city. 

It's bigger than Haven; five hundred thousand people in the city itself, Mahdi thinks, depending what time of the year you count them. "Absalom's got more than a million, biggest city in the world. Well, in this world. Aktun, Abadar's district in Axis, had twenty-four million six hundred thousand at the new year."

Sothis is built around the mouth of an enormous river, wider than any in Velgarth, and one entire district has canals rather than streets. It has a sprawling and loud market. In the middle of the city there are walls that encircle what used to be the boundaries of the city, now long-outgrown; inside that, the buildings are more upscale, and the people on the streets more likely to be wearing magic artifacts like Mahdi's. As it gets hotter they can duck into a tavern there; it has high ceilings and wall-sized murals of people fighting outrageous monsters of some kind, and is full of men, mostly either armored or shielded, talking and gambling and listening to musicians play. 

"Are you planning to let the whole story circulate or try to play it a little more boring," he asks quietly once they've settled into a corner near the window. 

"...Oh, the story of where I come from?" (He has shared so much less than the "whole" story, Vanyel thinks.) "I think play it boring? Er, to the extent I can actually pull that off. It seems like my magic is kind of conspicuous, here." 

"I mean you're not local but plenty of people don't say where they're from, and you're a weird kind of sorcerer but not very conspicuously, it wouldn't be that surprising to learn there were your-kind-of-sorcerers in our world. Probably don't do the telepathy and I doubt people will think twice."

          "You were supposed to be by yesterday," a man dressed in black with a dagger at his belt is saying to Mahdi.

"Got an urgent message that there was a dragon up on the Junira harassing people, and like a fool I'd prepared Teleport exactly once."

         "Huh! They pay all right for those."

"They do but we didn't actually get a chance to even shoot at it, another guy happened to be in town and had it taken care of." He pats Vanyel on the back. 

         The man's attention turns to him. "What, on your own?"

"I didn't kill it or anything. I'm, er, a sorcerer?" He says it with a bit of a question mark still. "I'm pretty powerful and I could hold it off the village with shields and make eating the villagers look like a lot of hassle, and that bought me time to negotiate buying it some livestock instead and having it go look for, um, easier pickings elsewhere." He feels bad about that part still. "It was a lawful dragon so it'll keep its end of the bargain. Hagan was very generous and lent me money to buy the livestock because I didn't have much on me." 

"Damn. Are you looking for work?"

Vanyel glances at the rest of the party. "I want to stick with them for now, but - in general, yes."

"Galt's hiring."

       "Nah," Mahdi says.

"So's Rahadoum."

       "Fazil couldn't go."

"Is that a no?"

       "I'd consider it if it's a one-off that'll take us a week or something, but not if they're looking for something long-term."

:Yfandes also probably couldn't go:, he tries thinking at Vanyel. :Rahadoum bans all servants of all gods.:

:I can’t go on a mission without Yfandes:

So Hagan shakes his head slightly at Mahdi. 

"We'll pass. Do let me know if you hear about anything else, though."

      "Sure."

Vanyel nods to the man. "Thank you." 

Mahdi looks at them questioningly once the man walks away. 

"Yfandes might count. I dunno how Rahadoum implements their thing but no point testing it."

"Right, makes sense."