"The legend is that that's what Tumen did but if so it just meant they were very vulnerable when the portal closed. We do not have a generalized replicable way of making stable portals between planes, and in fact I've heard it claimed there are some extraplanar entities who make a point of shutting those down when they exist."

"...I mean, reasonable of them, if we'd use them to steal their resources for our use." 

"I don't know if that is their specific objection but it would be a pretty fair one. Interplanetary portals are similarly hard but it sounds to me like we ought to be able to Plane Shift from here to the Elemental Plane of Air or something and then Plane Shift from there to Velgarth, and the only reason no one has done that is because they wouldn't have had enough targeting information about any other worlds. And then we can do it under our own power instead of having to hire a ninth-circle wizard."

"Can we, um, survive. In the Elemental Plane of Air." 

"I picked Air because it's the most survivable. You want temperature control, which our magic can do, and ironically you also want breathable air because there are different kinds of air and you're not guaranteed to land somewhere where the mix of it is tolerable to humans, and you need to be flying, obviously, but if you have all that you should be fine. Air's sparsely populated and mostly not with things that would attack on sight."

"My big hesitation about this is that it's two Plane Shifts to get there and it seems possible Abadar can't give me spells there and then we're stranded. But that's probably possible to ask about while asking about whether it's a good idea to visit."

"Right. All of that makes sense. I'm not in a huge rush." It's possible he should be, if he's honest with himself, it must be awfully inconvenient for Randi. But...Haven doesn't feel like a very welcoming place, right now. There's definitely a sense in which the path of least resistance is to put it off, especially when there are genuine, justifiable reasons for it, like entire other worlds worth of magic to learn about. 

"You could get a Sending off today, probably, so no one worries?"

"Oh - what's that? And how would I, um, address it to the right world?" 

"Distance communications spell. It works across planes, I would assume planets are easier than that? Mahdi, do you know -"

"I don't know. Probably someone somewhere has checked but it's not common knowledge."

"It has a twenty-five word limit and I'd have to be familiar with the person I'm sending it to but you could probably tell me enough about them that I could target them."

"I'll think about what to send and to who." 

Nod. "Are we heading out to Tumen now?"

"I don't want to keep burning three Teleports getting us anywhere but if you and Hagan can ride in the cargo bag then we can leave now."

"If you leave us to suffocate I will haunt you."

"And I will sue you."

"I did not forget you it just seemed wise to wait two minutes and you were both fine!"

"...Um, what?" 

"We have a cargo bag. It's an extradimensional space. In case we want to carry big things back, you know. We can get around the limit on how many people I can teleport by having some of them in the cargo bag, but there's no air in there and you can't get out from the inside. On one occasion five years ago I Teleported - from a scroll, I didn't have spells that powerful yet - into a kind of awkward situation that would've been made moreso by immediately letting several people out of my cargo bag so I talked my way out of it first and then let them out but now both of them bring it up every time it makes sense to do that."

"You almost murder your best friends one time..."

"That sounds really awkward. Um, I think we're unlikely to run into trouble that I can't get us out of by fighting or shielding or, I don't know, illusioning the bag so no one sees. And I promise I won't forget." 

"I'm not that worried, just can't pass up the opportunity to give Mahdi a hard time."

And they climb into Mahdi's bag and then he Teleports them out to the middle of the desert, where a few crumbling stone buildings stick out above the sand. 

Mahdi opens the bag immediately.

Hagan pulls his mask down and takes a deep breath, relieved. "Ah, the airs of not-Sothis."