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book 6 Vanyel meets pathfinder
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"Have you checked when you knew one of us was using mage-sight?" He frowns. "Actually, if you have checked me at all, I was probably using mage-sight, I nearly always am." 

What does the dome look like to his Othersenses? 

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It is very powerfully and determinedly magic and hard to look at with magic senses, because it scatters magic the way a prism scatters light.

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Leareth is pretty uneasy about going in there! 

It's important, though, and he's already thought it through and decided which way to bet, so he keeps following Hagan. 

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There's a large stone door with guards standing there; they look at them and blink rapidly. One of them gets it well ahead of the other. "Prince Telcar." They both bow. 

"While adventuring I learned something that may interest Osirion and our god, and for which we require Their guidance. We would be grateful if you would convey the news of our return, and our desire to be of service." He isn't having the problem where words don't come out of his mouth anymore but he is sure not managing the correct affect.

"Of course. This way, if you will -" And they are directed not into the Dome but into a stone building built right up against it.

"Step in here, please, sir," says a different guard to Leareth.

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Leareth keeps his expression level and follows the guard's directions. He's not trying to actively probe anyone with Thoughtsensing, but his senses are passively on the alert for anything he might pick up. 

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He's not getting anything off the guard, who casts the local truth spell and asks precisely the questions Hagan said he would about his intentions towards everyone in the palace and the reason for his visit and whether he understands that he may not use offensive magic in the Dome even in self-defense.

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Leareth has no qualms about promising his peaceful intentions towards everyone in the palace; he's not-exactly-pleased, but is fully honest, when he swears not to use offensive magic even in self-defence. (He probably shouldn't use even purely defensive magic, since the locals won't recognize it and might get alarmed.) He is accompanying the Prince Telcar who has important news for the pharaoh, learned while adventuring. 

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They let him through. 

 

Inside the Dome it is pleasantly cool and stunningly spacious; there is actually a long row of fancy houses before you even get to the palace itself. Floating magical lights reflect off the ceiling, to sparkly effect. The Dome looks just as odd from the inside.

Fazil and Hagan rejoin him. 

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"Now do we wait?" he says to them, quietly. 

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"I bet they'll send someone any minute."

They do. They are escorted to the palace. There are more guards, who move aside. It's a spectacularly nice palace, at least as nice as that of the Pharaohs of Ascension, vaulted ceilings several hundred feet high, everything in white marble, rooms partitioned by yards and yards of delicate half-translucent fabric.

There are other people visible at a distance; guards in uniform and servants, all of them young women wearing shimmery sheer floor-length dresses in a fabric Velgarth doesn't have at all. 

Hagan sits down in the room where they'll wait for the pharaoh, on a plush and comfortable couch, and thinks very intensely and quite loudly that he wishes he would die of being eaten by a random dragon or something and now he's wondering if the dragon that Vanyel ran into when he arrived was random at all or if Abadar wanted him to meet Fazil and Hagan and Mahdi - that would be impressively fucked up of Abadar if so and maybe Hagan can fight Him about it and then DIE -

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Leareth sort of wants to talk to him, but he's not very good at being comforting, and he's worried that Mindspeaking might show up as some kind of magic and get him murdered, so he gives Hagan the closest he can manage to a reassuring look, and sits as well. 

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The pharaoh is announced. Hagan gets off the chair and lies down on the floor and thinks about how when you DIE you get to frolic forever in magical wilderness and there are no kings and no goddamned gods. No offense Leareth it sounds like you make a pretty good one all things considered. 

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"Please sit," says the pharaoh, once he has entered and settled onto a comfortable chair across from them. "I will confess some nervousness about what news could be so terrible as to bring you home."

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"This is Leareth. He's from another world." And he's having trouble making words again, why does that keep happening.

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(Leareth is not someone who has ever considered kneeling let alone lying on the floor for actual, literal gods - which it sounds like the pharaoh isn't, not even that direct a representative. If anything that makes it a little less internal-scream-inducing.) 

He gets up and sits, his posture dignified. Glances at Fazil. "I arrived here from a world that has never heard of yours, with different known gods and different magic. We are here to ask Abadar whether arcane and divine magic from your world will work there. If so, my country at least would be open to mutually beneficial trade with your world, and likely so would others." 

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"Huh! Welcome to Golarion. What's your world like, how did you arrive here? Is it on this plane?"

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"We are not certain of its relative location, though I think it is most likely a different plane, since magic seems to work differently. I was summoned here," it sounds better than 'kidnapped', "by an acquaintance," he feels more comfortable saying that even though apparently Vanyel calls him a friend, "after he was transported here accidentally."

And Leareth can go into a quick summary of Velgarth. The way its magic works - mages seem roughly equivalent to sorcerers except less limited in the number of spells they can learn; there are also the other specific Gifts, Mindspeech and Empathy and Healing and Bardic and the various others. Its gods, apparently less directly-involved than the gods of Golarion, but Foresight still works for them. He touches very briefly on the current political makeup and history, since he doesn't really feel like getting into the previously-planned invasion with Valdemar. 

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"Golarion would be delighted to have trade relations with Velgarth, and it seems likely that a first step of that is learning more about the gods of that world, whether we can communicate with them, whether the expenditure of Abadar's power in their territory would cause any problems we should address before we attempt it, and whether your souls, should you die there, could find their way home - do people in your world know anything about their afterlives -"

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"Most people know very little about it, and in fact I doubt we have afterlives in the same sense. We cannot communicate with them, and do not have resurrection magic native to our world at all. Souls are sometimes reincarnated, but - blurred, missing much of their memory." A flicker of a smile. "Your setup is much more reasonable. In any case, I am - not on speaking terms with any Velgarth gods. If you require someone who is, I suppose I will see what I can do." 

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"We would expect it to work better for Abadar to try directly, but if it does not we may ask you for that. Is your acquaintance here in Sothis as well?"

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"Abadar is welcome to try. And he is, yes, though he is not well right now and did not accompany us to the palace." 

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"Oh no. Was he taken ill here? Is there anything we can do?"

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"...It is complicated. I can ask him if he would like your help, if you are offering." He should ask if they have Mindhealers, but he should probably ask Vanyel first if it's all right to do that, it hasn't seemed like enough of an emergency to be worth going behind his back. 

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"Would Abadar happen to know whether our resurrection works on people from Velgarth."

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