And Mahdi pulls himself to his feet and asks Fazil for a lesser restoration - "I think usually I'm bottlenecked on something else before I hit the point of magical exhaustion but today has been exhausting -" and then leaves for Absalom. 

"I'm not sure what else it's most important to orient you about. Did Vanyel explain how the afterlives work?"

"It has something to do with your strange alignment system? What is my alignment, by the way, I am curious." 

"You are lawful evil. If you died here and didn't have the arrangements that I understand you to have you would go to Hell. And yes -" and he gives the explanation of the alignment system that he gave to Vanyel and also explains the thing about polarization of magic because it seemed to help Vanyel get an intuition for the system. "One of the shields I am maintaining, Protection from Evil, will work if you try to hurt me but do nothing if Vanyel does."

"Fascinating." Leareth eyes the shield with mage-sight. "...Is there also Protection from Good?" 

"Yes. It's entirely symmetric, on a fundamental physics level."

"Can any spell be polarized this way, or only some? Can you only cast your own alignment, or would you memorize different discrete spell-chunks?" 

"Only some. Clerics can't cast against alignment at all, but wizards can do it by changing the spell-chunks around."

"Is there a quick-to-explain principle behind which spells can be so aligned?" 

"Protective spells can, summoning spells can. Energy spells cannot - lightning, or fire, whatever. Divinations can't. More divine magic than arcane magic can."

"Does magic work in the afterlife– Actually, hold that thought. Would you mind lending me paper so that I can take notes. There is a rather a lot of background here." 

"Yes, sure." He produces some. It's smoother and finer than paper in Velgarth. "If I were to Plane Shift us to Axis our magic would work fine but I won't retain it when I die; it makes more sense for Abadar's goals for him to invest those cleric levels in someone who can act on the Material Plane. Arcane casters mostly don't retain their magic either but I'm less confident of the mechanism there."

"Mostly do not? Do they retain some, or do a few of them retain it and the others lose it?" 

"They retain some. I don't know if it's the same across all afterlives and all people or not; Mahdi probably knows."

Leareth makes a note to ask Mahdi later. 

"What magic exists other than arcane wizard spells and cleric spells?" 

"Well, lots of people are arcane casters and not wizards, they have some kind of innate aptitude for it, like you and Vanyel. And some people have divine magic that isn't cleric magic; rangers and druids get some that's either from a very very incomprehensible nature god that has no teachings or from some other force that functions in the same way despite not being agentic at all, and occasionally but rarely people get divine magic that they don't have to request in advance of their god at dawn. And then some people make pacts for magical power with extradimensional entities that are short of being full gods."

Scribble scribble. "Any quick encapsulation of the strengths and weaknesses of the various magics?" 

"Sorcerers - our word for arcane casters who have innate ability instead of needing to work through a spellbook - are more flexible. Wizards can do very nearly anything with preparation. Divine magic is much better at healing and considerably better at resurrection, interplanar travel, prophecy back when prophecy worked, anything else the gods are better at than mortals."

Leareth asks more questions about the technical details of cleric and wizard spells, which ones Mahdi and Fazil have access to, and whether and how they can be combined with Velgarth magic, other than refilling spell slots which he's already seen. He takes copious notes. 

Fazil has access to all cleric spells except those against Abadar's alignment "and I hope if I asked for the spell that damns the person targeted straight to Hell he'd ask me some pointed questions but I never have". Mahdi knows sixty or seventy wizard spells "but there's hundreds he doesn't", and he in particular has never learned the style of magic suited to enchantment or necromancy spells, it taking a long time to learn a school of magic and being sometimes useful to be able to promise you don't even know how to do those things. (Fazil can do enchantments when the party needs them anyway.) 

"If fighting Velgarth mages I'd have Mahdi turn them all into frogs, mostly; it's a fifth-circle spell but it neatly gets past all your defenses. Hagan also bought a bow that ignores shields because it shoots arrows of pure light. I think you're unlikely to encounter enemies who have never encountered Velgarth mages before who have better solutions than those two - and the bows are extremely expensive and rare - but once they've encountered you maybe they'll think of something better than we did. Our scrying ignores your shields, and the reverse might also be true, though in both cases I bet with research people can develop defenses against each other. We don't have anything like Fetching and Van's very effective with it; wizards can't cast without their spellbook and clerics without their holy symbol."

"So Fetching away the spellbook or holy symbol would take out enemy casters?" He frowns. "I think we ought avoid revealing any more capabilities than necessary - avoid revealing the other world at all, if possible. In case I do wish to try to take back Cheliax from Hell at some point. And I should research whether I can invent a shield that blocks the frog spell. How annoying would it be to demonstrate it?" 

"Hmm, I don't know if there's a safe way to - so a voluntary Polymorph works only with the consent of the target and leaves your spirit operating your body normally, the body's just wrong. It's temporary, as a result, and wears off after just a few minutes. For involuntary Polymorph, which is permanent, it's like your spirit ends up competing with the animals' for control? And sometimes people lose, because finding yourself in a frog is very disconcerting. You can get the person back once you've reversed the spell but it's quite a thing to risk."

"I see. Do you need to be aiming the spell at a person in order to cast it, or can you demonstrate it on, hmm, an insect or something, so that I can see what it looks like?" 

"Mahdi can cast it on some mice for you if that'd help with spell research, sure. Most wars aren't fought between groups with many casters that high level, mostly armies are flinging fireballs at each other."

"It would help, yes. I assume even if most combat mages are at the fireballs level, they would send the high-level ones after us." Pause. "What was the spell that you used to kidnap me? It was very impressive."