"Seems like a good thing to know before we go sign up to be mercenaries regardless of whether Rahadoum is -" Handwave. I doubt he's spying on us but it wouldn't be technically difficult.

:Good to know: 

Unless the others have anything else to discuss, Leareth will head off to find the magical artifacts and researchers he was promised, with plans to slip off and Gate back to the buried palace in the evening so he can check back with Nayoki. 

Magical artifacts and researchers are as promised! The pharaoh has some metamagic rods and some crystal balls and a necklace of Fireballs and paired mirrors for communications and some items of clothing that provide shielding, healing, flight, teleportation, and transformation into other kinds of creatures. The researchers are fascinated by Velgarth magic and try heroically to occasionally let him do things rather than being inundated with questions the whole time. 

Despite Vanyel's predicament in the back of his mind, this is one of the most enjoyable ways he could possibly spend his day! Leareth is pretty open with them; he'll talk about any branch of magic which is known of in Valdemar, demonstrate spells for them, look at their various artifacts and describe what his mage-sight can pick up. 

He also leaves his Thoughtsensing open to passively read any nearby surface thoughts, though he doesn't go digging for them. 

Most of the researchers are shielding, in the odd local way that looks like he could maybe find a way around it if he tried but which in any event doesn't leave their thoughts easily accessible.

Most of the servants who occasionally bring in meals or requested magic items are not; they are thinking that this is an astonishing number of magical artifacts just out to play with and that the waves are great this time of the year and that the interdimensional guest is super hot but Zakiya said probably not and if she was wrong about that she'd handle it herself.

....Well. Leareth isn’t entirely sure what that’s about, but “probably not” seems right. 

He excuses himself to eat supper, and then checks on Vanyel (who has been sleeping all day) before Gating from his guest room back to the buried room where the crystal ball is. He tries for Nayoki.

Nope.

His spymaster? 

Works!

Perfect! He relays a quick update on his end, describing their meeting with the pharaoh, and asks about the diamond and about any news, particularly of events within Valdemar. 

They've got several leads on diamond procurement but none confirmed yet. They can't get a spy into the Senior Circle meetings, despite throwing a lot more resources and risk at it than previously, but reports from Haven hint that something is going on, and there are definitely Herald redeployments happening around the Border region. 

Does Leareth want them to do anything about this? 

...Not yet. He'll think about it. The difficulty is that falsifying their very reasonable assumption of Vanyel's kidnapping is pretty much going to require sending Vanyel to Haven, anything else could be faked, and Vanyel...isn't in any shape for that right now, even if they could risk taking him there and leaving Yfandes behind in another world. He might not be able to reassure them effectively anyway, if his Companion is still off in the wilderness considering whether to repudiate him.

Leareth tells them they're doing very well. He repeats that they should not, absolutely not, be gearing up for military action against Valdemar. 

He Gates back to the winter palace. 

His rooms are as he left them.

Leareth updates his notes and then slips out to join the others, and hopefully receive some updates on the feasibility of Abadar talking to Velgarth deities. 

"We've made contact. Your deities and ours are not precisely the same sort of thing, and they are working now - well, Abadar's working now - on finding configurations that let them communicate effectively. 

Divine magic will not stop working in Velgarth," he says, mostly to Fazil. "That said it is going to be significantly costlier to provide than it is to provide here - in attentional capacity, power and a resource I understand less well that is relevant to smoothing for disruptiveness and minimizing side effects. I would not use it casually."

"Thank you, your majesty."

"What's 'casually', here -"

"Abadar and I do not currently possess enough information about what you're trying to do to guess at which uses of magic are worthwhile to achieve it. Abadar could probably select another five low-level clerics here in Osirion with the resources He would instead be dedicating to ensuring you possess your ordinary capabilities while in Velgarth, though it's not a perfect comparison because there are some different limiting factors, and the marginal low-level cleric here in Osirion is worth less than the average one so the comparison will mislead you if you're not careful thinking about it."

"I imagine," Leareth says, neutrally, "that having more context on what we are trying to achieve and why would help." 

"It would."

Glance at the others. "Do you have time for a longish explanation now, or would it be better to address it tomorrow?" 

He has a Ring of Sustenance like Vanyel's. "I have time now."

Leareth settles in. Doesn't look at the notes he's made for this purpose.

"I will start with some quick background on myself," he says. "I am immortal - as far as I know, one of the only cases in my world - and about two thousand years old. I have been trying to fix various problems in my world for that entire time, and frequently found myself stymied by our local gods. They are not so helpful as to explain why they opposed my various projects, or speak with me at all; my current model is that they like their current power balance, and dislike change and unpredictability, and thus a high rate of innovation and advancement in human civilizations, largely because it renders their Foresight less useful and threatens to upset their current standing with one another."

"I eventually decided that this state of affairs was unacceptable long-term, worth disrupting even at a high cost, and that the only viable method to doing so involved creating my own god with more human-friendly values and better communication abilities. I have done extensive research on why I expect this can work. The first step in enacting this plan involved - I use past tense because I hope that contact with another world will give better options - involved acquiring an empire. I was going to start by invading Vanyel's kingdom."

"The gods - I am not sure which ones - intervened to give Vanyel his remarkable mage-powers and provided him with a Foresight vision of fighting me. Then, for reasons I still do not understand, we became able to speak in the dream. I hypothesize this is the work of a different god. We have been speaking in this way for about a decade. After Vanyel was pulled into your world by mistake, he learned that his king assumed I had kidnapped him and were anticipating an invasion. He decided to address this by, well, kidnapping me, so that he could question me under Truth Spell in conditions where he held the upper hand, and confirm whether or not I had been sincere in our past conversations. I had. I suspect that Vanyel's next move would have been to discuss working together rather than fighting, however, at this point his Companion - a magical, god-created being soulbonded to him, this is part of the system of government of his kingdom - became very upset at the prospect of fighting gods, and blocked their bond while she left to think. This is causing him extreme distress and we cannot really discuss anything else with him until that is resolved, somehow." 

"It has been tried, in our world, creating a god with human-friendly values. It didn't work out well here."

"I noticed. I am not sure what lesson to draw from that, yet, but it certainly calls for a halt on my current plans and return to the drawing board, even if that were not overdetermined by all the other factors. Anyway. Vanyel also lost a soulbonded romantic partner, a decade ago, which is why we are trying to determine if your resurrection magic works in Velgarth. We are not sure how much it will help with the current problem but it will surely help somewhat."