She had been in the middle of telling a joke, and then suddenly she was someplace else. She's been attacked by an illusionist before--a kidnapping attempt when she was a child--and she freezes, looking around to try to situate herself and figure out who would be so brazen as to attack the Duchess de Chelam's party.

The background hum of conversation disappears, replaced by--what is that sound? He looks around, alert, trying to make sense of his perceptions. His wife had been across the room, and now instead is lying back on the hill with him, obviously worried.

The hill is full of animal burrows. Small ones, so probably nothing too dire lives there. There is a little wooden awning over there under which there is a water bowl and a manger full of hay, not enough for a horse. The place is fenced in. There's some people in the distance, going into and out of the reptile house.

He reaches over and squeezes her hand.

She calms down. He, at least, is real; together they can figure out what else is.

They slowly stand up, and he will walk towards the people, checking to make sure she's following closely behind. How challenging does the fence look, to him?

The fence is designed for prairie dogs, and is more concerned with preventing burrowing out than climbing out. Still, it's tall enough to be genuinely prohibitive for an adolescent who thinks it'd be a laugh to go hassle the animals. Let's call it a DC 22 Climb check to get out without help.

He's wearing really nice clothing which he would rather not dirty. Let's see if they speak Taldane.

"Hello?" he calls out towards the people, waving his hand.

People look in his direction! Somebody calls back, "What the fuck are you doing in with the prairie dogs?" and somebody else says, "Somebody get a zookeeper!"

The effect is sort of like having Tongues up.

"I was hoping to ask you that," he calls back jokingly.

She is actually quite upset that a peasant would decide to swear at her! But she doesn't see any guards around, and Felip doesn't seem inclined to take offense yet.

A zookeeper is fetched and goes to unlock the door and let them out via a cunningly hidden gate in the side of the fence. "How in the world did you get in - what are you dressed as, should I recognize the film -" He has bright purple hair.

He files away "film" as something to ask about in a less embarrassing situation. "I'm afraid I don't know," he apologizes, "and am feeling rather lost. Where, exactly, are we?"

"The Shapto Zoo. Are you drunk or something, wandered out of a costume party?"

"We were at a party moments ago, but it was still early in the evening" he says, looking at the position of the sun in the sky. "Shapto is not a place I've heard of. Is it in Avistan?"

She is more interested in the man's hair. No illusionist would make it so obvious their victims were in an imaginary world. Have they been... teleported away or plane shifted, somehow?

"No, it's in Tapa. I haven't heard of Afistan, where is that?"

Should he tell them the tale of far-off Avistan? Unlikely. Or at least, this fellow seems unlikely to be the right person to read in to their situation.

"My home, and I fear I haven't heard of Tapa either. It seems like I should seek audience with the most learned of your wizards." Does this fellow seem like he wants to be their guide, or that he wants them to be someone else's problem?

Definitely someone else's problem. "...sir, I acknowledge that you are in full cosplay, but I am not part of your LARP and do not have a line I'm supposed to recite if you ask for wizards. Do you have zoo tickets or did you sneak in here somehow?"

"Neither. I suspect we were transported here by another." He's tempted to ask what a LARP is. "Whose menagerie is this, anyway?" Maybe that's their line of approach.

"Theeee Shapto Zoo is run by the Shapto municipal government at a small positive average return as an educational and scientific repository of animal and ecological knowledge and practice," says the guy with the purple hair, sounding rehearsed, like he says this twelve times a day.

"Well, thank you for your assistance in freeing us," he says finally, and then starts to walk away.

"If you don't have a ticket I'm gonna need you to leave the zoo. That's straight out that way, follow the white arrows on the paths, I'll page the security guards in case you get lost," or try to go look at animals without a ticket.

They will follow the white arrows, and he is quite interested in the security guards, actually. Does he even notice them, or do they look like the other guests of the zoo?

They're in uniform - gray uniforms with SHAPTO ZOO embroidered under a logo on the front of their right shoulders - and they've all got white or grey hair, while the attendees are not in uniform and have many hair colors. Mostly purple. Never, ever brown or black.

Unarmed? Where are they?

"Axis?" she mutters.

"Maybe." He'll try a Dancing Lights, and see what happens.

Everybody who was paying attention startles. "What the heck!" yelps a random orange, seizing her waist-high child away from the lights. "Holy shit!" shrieks a purple. The uniformed greys pull objects out of their pockets and move to clear the immediate area, everybody shooing very compliantly with only over-the-shoulder alarmed glances at the lights.

He'll make a short slashing motion with his hand, and the lights go out. "My apologies," he says soothingly. "I wanted to see if it still worked." Are they... going to let him leave the zoo?

Nope, he is no longer allowed to leave the zoo, he is supposed to come over here to the security office between the bears and the herons. Her too. "What was that," says the white-haired security woman who's directing them.

"A moment." He will subtly point at his wife.

It's not Axis, or it's a part where magic works and yet knowledge of it is suppressed. They probably won't be able to planeshift us back.

And in the meantime, we are strange creatures to them. There is a choice before them; to be timid or to be bold. Let us be formidable, then.

"I am a sorcerer," he says with finality. "I have several other spells at my disposal, the lights being one of the simpler and more benign effects. Is magic unknown, in your country?"

"I should say so! You sit tight and I'll have the place crawling with blues excited to help you out with whatever you need, how about." ("Blue" translates as the literal color and also as "aristocrat" and "civil servant".)

"Very well. What refreshments do you have available?" He is not quite skilled enough with prestidigitation to change their hair color.

"I can get you water? I don't think you'd better have any lemonade before some greens" (the color, and "musician" and "artist" and "scholar", but not "wizard") "make sure you can eat Amentan food, I saw a TV show one time where they had aliens and then the aliens died of eating bread, can't have that."

"I should be able to check that as well," he says with a smile. "Magic."

"Wow, okay, in that case I have lemonade." She pulls one out of the fridge; it's in a glass bottle with a metal cap. "And the weird basil soda that Tsintsi likes, he probably wouldn't make a fuss if I gave it to a magic alien."

What does Detect Poison have to say? There's a twinge that perhaps he should be trusting their scholars instead of his spells, but if they're unable to eat the food here it's not like they're going to last long anyway.

The spell thinks the lemonade is not poison!

Then he will bravely swig! It's... much sweeter than he's used to, but the contrast between the sour and the sweet is delightful. He'll offer some to Isidonia.

They really ought to have separate glasses. She's commandeered a chair, but she's adapting to the strangeness of this land much less well than he is. The drink is fine, tho the chill is quite impressive.

"So you have lights magic and also - Tsintsi, there you are, did you call the government in -"

"Yeah, they're coming, they want a video of the lights, can we do that?"

He'll make the lights again, and direct them around the room in the standard trap-searching pattern for dungeons.

"The others are more draining, so I would not waste them on demonstrations. Some of them are defensive, and others relate to sharpening the mind or enlarging the body, and then I can also summon some creatures to fight for me if needed."

"Like Creature Carriers?"

(Taking a video of the lights involves pointing a rectangle at them, apparently.)

"I fear our cultures are quite distinct. How do they do it in Creature Carriers?"

"They run around catching wild monsters and training them to fight other wild monsters and other people's tame monsters. My daughter's really into it."

He digests this information. Bloodsport for children is a worrying sign about their society, but if their problems with monsters are serious enough, he can see the argument for early training.

"I mostly summon ones from the celestial realm, and there isn't time to train them or develop relationships. More durable pacts are typically accomplished by spells I cannot cast."

"Huh. Well, maybe get used to saying 'no it's not like Creature Carriers', I guess."

"No, it's not like Creature Carriers."

He opens up another Message channel, but discreetly. 

How are you holding up?

Worried about the children. Worried about what happened to the Convention. Worried about what they will think of us.

She leaves unsaid the other worries--that they only have the clothes on their back, even if some of those clothes are enchanted. She is nearly as practiced at hiding their conversation; a subtle point from a hand in her lap while the other daintily covers her mouth.

He nods. I'm glad to be here with you. I'm not sure how I would have fared on my own.

She has felt quite useless, so far, and it's hard to hear that as more than empty reassurance. He's the one with magic; he's the charmer. But she tries to let it warm her heart anyway.

Besides, if any mortal can return us to Cheliax, Elie Cottonet can. He feels a spark of fear that they have moved outside of the reach of the gods. 

"I should ask about your gods, I suppose. Is knowledge of them widespread or will I need to wait for ... a Green?" he guesses.

"...I don't know what that is so probably you need to wait for a green, if it's like, a complicated physics thing you can do magic to or something."

He looks grim, hearing that, and will close his eyes for a bit.

She will remain attentive to their... Captors? Hosts? Hosts. She'll clink the lemonade bottle to signal that she'd like another.

"...you want another lemonade?" the grey guesses after a moment's incomprehension. She can have another lemonade.

Well, at least they're good for something.

He wishes he had retained more of the practical side of theology. Somehow people got the attention of the gods, and became clerics; he never had, and probably it is too late to do so now. If Erastil was watching Tapa, they would already have clerics of him. They likely don't have the components necessary to draw a god's attention and pay for answers, and no one who could hear the answers anyway.

The enormity of the situation weighs on him; if these people are subject to Pharasma's judgment and do not know it, how terrible for them and how important that he rectify the situation. If they are not subject to Her judgement, how terrifying for him, not knowing what they would see wise to do. And his own soul's fate, once certain, is now in question.

And eventually in come some blues and greens! They can be told apart by the hair, even if the language of Amentan fashion is fully lost on the alien visitors. "Hello! Welcome to Amenta!" says one of the blues. "I'm Kash Ekachta." (The Tongues-like effect thinks "Ekachta" means "link" or "referral", as in an internet link or a citation.) "Is there anything you two need immediate help with or should we just get you somewhere more comfortable?"

On the arrival of their notables, he makes another gesture, and at least for an hour, his fear is mastered and his thoughts are clear. 

"Well met. I am Duke Felip de Fraga, and this is my wife Isidonia, both lately of Cheliax, a nation on Golarion." He does not know how much of his meaning is translated; for him, Fraga is a name and a place and a lineage, all twisted together like the strands of a cord, and stronger for it. He doesn't realize that "Duke" might need translation.

Cheliax, of course, he has a much more complicated view of. Avistan meant nothing to the guard, but perhaps their scholar has at least learned of his planet. 

"Let us travel as you see fit."

The security office is--well, rather more functional than they're used to, and rather more sterile than he's used to when roughing it.

"Alrighty then, we've got security holding us a path out to the side exit, we can have you out of the zoo in a jiffy. Any chance you can tell me why the zoo?" says Ekachta.

"I'm afraid not; we understand what happened as little as you do. Do you have a guess as to why the zoo?"

"I haven't the faintest. This way, through here - thank you," he adds to the grey who gave them the lemonade, "write in if you need anything comped of course."

"Sure thing," says the grey.

They follow. She walks gracefully, head held high. He watches the people, noting the strange sights but keeping an eye on the faces and spaces that people could appear from.

There's a perimeter of more greys, in a different uniform from the zoo security, maintaining a corridor to the side exit preventing any of the guests from having line of sight to the path they're taking. At the exit, there's a car waiting. "If there's any immediate questions top of mind I can do my best to answer those for you or get you in touch with people who can," Ekachta says.

An enchanted carriage is impressive--no, it'd have to be something else. But that's secondary. Once they're inside, he asks the biggest question.

"What do you think happens, after you die?"

"- what a question! Are you two sick, should we be quarantining you just in case there's cross-species potential?"

He keenly feels the absence of his house cleric. "No, we're healthy, though separated from our healers. But the guard earlier didn't understand me when I asked about your gods, and that seemed like the right place to start."

"Huh. Well, that brings me to a question I'm sure all our linguists are tearing their hair out over, how is it you speak Tapap at all and is that mechanism something that might be failing on a word here and there? I don't recognize that one."

"There exist translation spells, but they are not within my abilities." He brushes past that mystery. "In all the realms I knew of yesterday, at a man's death he would meet The Judge, who would sort him depending on the deeds of his life, and then he would go to the appropriate afterlife. Sufficiently powerful wizards and clerics could look in on those worlds, or visit them, or communicate with their denizens. The living could, by magic, sometimes tell where they were pointed. The gods are the strongest of those denizens, able to empower mortals in their service, and instruct mortals in how to achieve their ends.

If that is not how things work here, well--you can perhaps imagine my disorientation. And if it is how it works here, and you are not yet aware, the costs of that ignorance seems staggering."

"...is this men specifically or is that a translation issue where you've got 'man' as metonymy for 'people', for some reason -" pipes up a green who is in their party.

"What's a cleric?" asks another green.

"Is a god like a... head of posthumous state?" asks another one.

She's following the threads between them, and by a subtle shift in her body posture indicates the middle Green.

"There are many types of magic," he says quickly, "but the two broadest categories are arcane, like mine or that of wizards, and divine, like that of clerics. They are renowned for their ability to heal wounds and diseases. Clerical magic comes from gods, to chosen individuals called clerics."

"And the clerics are... afterlife immigration officers in addition to magicians, or is that separate?"

He stops and thinks about that. "They preach the doctrines of their gods, which affect the behavior of people, which affects their afterlife. But they generally do not have the ability to determine where anyone ends up; Pharasma the judge decides that.

The gods... I think that calling them heads of states is half right. They have alliances and wars, they have servants and obligations. But many kings have little power beyond that provided by the obedience of their subjects, only live one day at a time, can only guess at the future, and only have two eyes in their heads. The kingdom makes the king, but the gods are themselves are fonts of power, minds the size of states."

The last line circles his mind, after he says it.

"So Pharasma is - afterlife immigration flow control of some kind, sending people to afterlives - based on their behavior? Not on the afterlife's capacity, or what skills are in demand there, or anything like that? - and gods are highly magical heads of state, with the states being located in these afterlives?" Ekachta says.

"That's roughly it," he says with 0 ranks in Knowledge (Religion). "And you have... nothing like this? How does your society choose what behavior to encourage, and what to condemn? Who to emulate and who to shun?"

If they're good at reading people, they can tell she finds this much less important than he does. But she's still watching the greens and the blues carefully, tracking their interactions with each other and their questions for Felip.

"- I'm not sure what relationship those things have to each other! Of course if we expected our citizens to move to another country after dying we'd want to make available the information they needed to make themselves - sortable? - into whichever appealed to them, but while they're here in Tapa they need to follow Tapap law which is based on what's good for them and their fellow Tapai."

He considers this. "Perhaps you have managed to match the wisdom of the good gods unaided, and if your lives end so soon, temporal considerations may dominate spiritual ones. The empirical question remains of whether you face Pharasma's judgment, or another's, or no judgment at all, but I fear my magic is not sufficient to settle it, and it does not sound within your power, or you would have settled it long ago." It would be sad if none of these people had souls, but if so they didn't have souls before his arrival either, and it would be cruel to dwell on what they're missing.

He glances at the blues among them. It is too soon to reach towards a deal, he expects; they are still exchanging basic information. But it seems important to keep things even.

"And what Tapap law is most important for us to know, do you think?"

"If our lives end so soon? Did comparative lifespans come up?" asks a green.

Ekachta waves her off to answer Felip's question. "I'd expect for the time being you'll be with people who can warn you if something you want to do would have an effect you might not predict. Of course we have laws against things like murder and theft, but I'd be surprised if that weren't the same everywhere, and the details apply more if you're doing something like running a business or having a child, not just talking to us. Does your translation work on writing? We can get you a copy of the legal code if that'd be useful to you."

"There have been signs we could read," he says after a moment. "The legal code can wait. As for comparative lifespans, I expected my first life to last another fifty years, if lucky, and my afterlife to be measured in centuries."

"After that is there another layer of afterlives?" says a green.

"Fifty years, that's - oh, well, I guess another question is how long your years are," says another one.

"It is... complicated, and we know much less about what comes next. It is challenging enough to have a good showing in one's first life."

He is stumped by the challenge of how to compare their years.

"We mark adulthood at around sixteen, for most purposes."

"A good showing? What does that mean?" asks Ekachta.

"Amentans are adults at four Amentan years and an Amentan year is 1475 days but the days may not match," replies Year Length Green earnestly.

"That suggests one of your years corresponds to about four of ours."

He hesitates a bit. "The afterlives I know have wide gulfs between them; a reward for the virtuous, and a punishment for the vicious. So for us, destination is of grave importance, and the idea that you might be facing judgment unwarned and unprepared was rather worrying."

"- oh, this is the first you've mentioned them being objectively different in quality. Those are... very different political missions than any Amentan country undertakes, let alone any I could imagine springing up that took immigration at the sole discretion of a third party... You're confident the information channels are good enough that this isn't a propaganda campaign of some kind, I take it?" says Ekachta.

"Not all of the gods have human interests at heart, and some delight in tricking and destroying them." he says grimly. "I am confident in the goodly gods and their churches, who oppose the evil gods, and in the Judge, who stands above them and has no reason to lie about her judgments. This morning we were in Cheliax, which many years ago was conquered by servants of Hell, who lied to the populace about judgment and the relative desirability of the afterlives, in an attempt to trick and coerce as many of them into Hell as possible. It was my life's purpose to defeat them, and then restore the country to goodness; we were engaged in the work of restoration when we suddenly arrived here."

One might reasonably wonder what their elaborate LARP costumes had to do with restoration, but--he's not going to notice that inferential gap on his own.

Maybe that's a normal thing to wear, where they're from! "Hell is one of the gods?" asks Ekachta.

"There are widely held to be nine major afterlives, of which Hell is one. It is ruled by a god whose name I will not say, and there are other lesser powers within it who can also have clerics. I personally pursued Heaven, home to Erastil, Iomedae, and Torag, among others, but also respect Sarenrae, Shelyn, and Desna, whose realms are in other pleasant afterlives."

As he says their names, he imagines their symbols, hoping to feel a tug of recognition in his soul.

"Why won't you say it, is there a magical effect?"

"They can see and hear, though their perception is not the same as mortal perception. Their attention can be attracted by their symbols, both name and sigil. I... wish I had studied more, about the gods and the nations and the planes, but I know that the gods vary in which regions they have a presence in, and the cosmic war is balanced perilously. An evil god I know may have ears to hear in this realm, but not yet have heard their name whispered on your world; if so, I would keep it that way."

"....goodness. All right. This sounds very complicated and high stakes and I'm sure we don't understand it all yet, so we'll defer to you on the wisdom of getting all their labels."

The carriage is taking them through a maze of glass towers. Going the other way they pass trucks and vans. On an elevated track among them a train crosses their path.

He's pretty focused on the people in the car with him. Magic can create quite the array of impressive visuals, and he's toured many follies. It will be striking once he realizes that it is mundane--that the trucks and vans are doing the work of porters and mules, not serving as decorations, that the towers are durable and spacious enough to be home and office to a whole town at once, and were built pane by pane by hand and machine, not by magic in a flash.

She is feeling a little nauseated, actually; the movement of the car is subtle but still enough to shake everyone inside, and some of the objects they pass whip by at a dizzying speed. She most expects that the lemonade is sitting poorly, however, and is wondering whether to make a fuss about that.

It's much less jostling than a ship or a horse, if still weird and hard to predict. He's doing fine.

"I am sure there is more we can do to determine whether or not the cosmic war I am familiar with rages here as well, or could, but probably not in this moment in this carriage. I worry that my now-remote concerns may be overbearing your local ones. If heroes had been sent to your world to solve some problem, what would you expect it to be?"

He is not particularly hopeful this question will work--most such threats build in secrecy until they explode--but if they do have a Worldwound, it would be silly to not just ask about it immediately.

The people in the car with them:

- Kash Ekachta, who appears to be taking point on this;
- another blue who hasn't spoken yet;
- three greens who have all piped up with assorted questions;
- one yellow who is deeply involved with some mysterious glowing rectangle;
- up front in the driver's seat beyond a plastic barrier, the purple driver, and beside her a grey;
- in back in a different compartment beyond another plastic barrier, two more greys.

"Well," says Ekachta, "that depends on who you were sent by! Nobody we know about has the ability to do such a thing; if an Amentan were bringing in exactly two magical aliens to help Amenta with something then probably they'd be specialized in one of faster than light travel or terraforming? But it doesn't seem likely than an Amentan did this, because it's not related to any technology we've gotten anywhere near, and we don't have magic, and furthermore it would have been both rude and clumsy to drop you in the prairie dog enclosure without an explanation or warning of any kind."

"When mighty magic is involved, what seems like clumsiness to us is often grace at a level we cannot discern. Perhaps you should tell us what you know of prairie dogs, in case some clue is contained within.

Terraforming is the province of other magic, but as for travel--well, I cannot teleport yet. But I thought it probable that I would be able to someday."

"That's very exciting! We know of some very promising planets we'd like to settle but they're too far to reach in our best ships in less than an Amentan lifetime, and we can't tell for sure without visiting them if they'd definitely be able to support colonies. I'm sure one of our greens knows something about prairie dogs...?"

"I'm not a rodent specialist," says a green, "but they're social burrowing animals, come in a range of shades of pink and purple, are closely related to squirrels, have a lot of squeaking-based communicative noises they make...? Does any of this sound helpful?"

He's actually a little offended by some unseen hand placing him with the squeaking-based communicative rodents, but he's able to set that aside for now.

"Not yet, but perhaps you should find us a book about them for later. The teleportation I refered to was shorter range; a continent's breadth in a moment. As for other planets--well, to shift between planes is the province of mightier magicians than I expected to ever become, and it was theorized that you might be able to hop astral distances through that method. But I had never heard a credible tale of one who had done it. It nevertheless remains the most promising pathway home I could walk with my own feet, remote as it is."

The nonspeaking blue glances at the yellow at the mention of a prairie dog book; the yellow nods.

"How is it your magic expands in scope over time?" Ekachta asks.

"Every type of magician is different, and sorcerers yet more different. While a wizard could no doubt give you six theories and explain the experiments that make them credible or incredible, a sorcerer's magic operates by instinct and shies away from deliberate study. I have lived a life of adventure and solved problems using my magic; I have fulfilled my responsibilities as duke wisely and well. Eventually enough drops fill up the chalice and my magic deepens, and worrying about the flow fills it up more slowly than worrying about my realm or my responsibilities."

"...so you may not be able to improve your magic here away from your duchy?" asks Ekachta tentatively.

"I did not come into possession of it until recently, but it has been the focus of my whole career. I am unsure, but--my previous efforts to return to it strengthened me, and I hope they will do so here as well."

"What form would you expect those efforts to take?"

The question is harder than it might seem, and he closes his eyes to think it through.

"Most people do not seek out danger and power, because their talents or their personality are poorly suited for it. Of those who do, they have the best chance of survival with a balanced team. My talents and magic fit my aristocratic bloodline; my magic has long been focused on coordination and amplification. Here alone, I doubt I can do much, but working with your heroes, there might be much that I can accomplish.

But not every war is fought with a swordarm; this morning I was debating laws for our newly formed nation. It may be that my statecraft is what you need. But I am well aware of the challenges that immigrants face in politics, and would wish to learn much more before attempting to embark on any such endeavors here. I also am not yet released from my old obligations; I would be loathe to make you dependent on me in any way and then depart without warning for my true home."

"So when you say 'swordarm' is that an archaic idiom, or do swords dovetail particularly well with magic, or are swords in fact the dominant martial technology where you're from?" asks a green after a silence.

"I'd hesitate to ask you to involve yourselves in a war on our behalf even if it were blindingly clear that you could affect the outcome," says Ekachta. "For numerous reasons, among them that most of the time we're quite friendly with our present opponent and have a short term local dispute; that we have anti-escalatory international law prohibiting the involvement of anyone who doesn't belong to the Amentan grey caste in combat and whatever you are I think it isn't 'grey'; and of course that we don't have a supply of other magicians we can learn from if anything should befall you two."

"The queen of Cheliax is a swordswoman of unmatched skill, but in the phrase 'swordarm' it stands in for the whole category of weapons. My retinue uses pikes and crossbows; my lieutenant is an archer, and the destructive powers of magic are many. Perhaps you should tell me more about your castes; of course we have our own bloodlines and social roles but they do not appear to align." He leaves unsaid that he struggles to respect any blue who is not also a grey; it would no doubt offend them and perhaps they have a good reason for their tradition of widespread cowardice.

[He is, of course, wearing a sword as part of his party outfit; he is well-practiced at not bumping anything with it, and so it probably just looks like a weird embellishment to his belt to them. It doesn't play any role in his self-defense plans--he needs his hands free to catch arrows--and so his unconscious movements haven't given it any more importance than the rest of his outfit.]

"I'm blue," says Ekachta, "hair color correlates very well at birth and even better once people grow up and dye non-matching hair to send the correct signals. So is my intern Patkeon. Blue is the aristocracy and landowning caste. These three - Tahu, Ashuao, and Hepka - are green; that's the caste for scholars and artists. Our assistant there, Muim, is yellow, for work involving organization and compliance and records and suchlike. Our security is grey, the caste also includes soldiers and police and athletes and dancers. The driver's purple, about half of Amentans are purple and they do things like farming and manufacture and retail and transportation. You might also meet oranges, depending on what you wind up needing and wanting to do while you're here; they're the caring professions - doctors and nurses and teachers and prostitutes and counselors. Some jobs are casted differently in different countries, of course, that's the Tapai breakdown, but the generalities are mostly the same."

He nods at this explanation, which sounds like a sensible arrangement. "Dye non-matching hair? How does one obtain permission to make such a change?" That seems like a safe enough spot to start probing their society.

"Oh, it isn't like that. Caste is matrilineal, though again that can vary by country, our ally and neighbor Anitam has patrilineality. But sometimes someone has an intercaste child, and the hair color might take after the non-lineal parent, or even a grandparent or more distant ancestor, in which case to avoid confusing anyone they'll dye it."

"My hair grows in purple," volunteers Hepka, "it runs in my mother's family though I'm not actually sure when it was introduced, we haven't had an intercaste marriage as far back as I've been able to find. But I'm green."

"And so, as both of our mothers were aristocrats, you infer that we are both blue. But a family's fortunes may wax and wane out of proportion to their number of children; what happens to the children of blues who cannot support themselves on rents?" Or, implicitly, to them, currently cut off from their lands, incomes, and investments.

He imagines Desna weeping at the people unable to follow their dreams, but holds off for now. The people in this car may not know how the system bends around its people, or may not be willing to share it in front of each other.

"Responsible blue parents don't seek a child credit - official permission to have a child - until on top of the face value of the credit they have a portfolio to entrust to that child which will keep them supported indefinitely. Investments, land, that sort of thing," says Ekachta. "There are always people who aren't responsible - but their children will then either make their own fortunes by applying their wits to the salaried professions blues hold, like the judiciary for example, or be unable to afford child credits in their turn, so the problem isn't perpetuated further. In your case, of course, you're the guests of the Tapai government and we'll be pleased to see to whatever it is you need if it can be found on Amenta."

"...what happens to a pregnant mother without permission to bear a child?" The question of whether or not these people have souls jumps to the front of his mind, again.

"It's vanishingly rare! We've got effective contraception freely available to absolutely everyone," Ekachta says. "If there's some kind of problem which results in an unintended pregnancy it can be safely terminated, though of course everyone much prefers it never get to that point."

She boggles a bit, at this, and tries to imagine what being a woman is like for them.

"For us, prematurely ended pregnancies result in children in afterlives," he says sadly, "and so we treat that option with perhaps more caution than you do. But if we can bring your method of contraception back home, and replicate it there--perhaps that's why we're here."

"- in that case we should get you some oranges to see if you're biologically similar enough to us for the full range or if only the more mechanical options will work! No one should have to worry about having a baby before they're ready. Muim, get us -" He rattles off a few more names.

"And I suppose by these child credits you ensure that the number of people fit for a role can match demand for that role? But how do you manage the costs of having a standing army that you must recruit years in advance of the need for them? Much of the defense of our towns and states is done by militias and levies, with retinues and trained adventurers critically important but a much smaller fraction of the fighting force."

"That's a major function of child credits, yes! There are peacetime occupations for greys. A lot of those industries wind up with suspended or shoestring operations when there's a war on as more greys join up."

There's something about the way that they said "peacetime occupations" that lands strangely. "Like monster hunting?" 

"...I guess if someone wanted to hunt a giant sea turtle they'd need to be grey, sure...? We don't really have... monsters."

He boggles a lot, at that.

"I am not sure I have ever been in a country at peace, in the way you understand it," he says after a long moment.

"I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope it's to your liking - as I mentioned we are actually at war right now but it's very localized and I wouldn't expect any of it to affect you."

He actually missed that! He's used to people being much more grim and fixated on such affairs, and the previous mention was more like an idle hypothetical. He would not have accepted a second dinner invitation from someone in Nerosyan who had been so relaxed about the Worldwound. But if wars aren't draining monster-hunting capacity from the homelands, and if the aristocrats are not themselves fighters, it's not actually clear there's much at stake for them.

"Could you explain that conflict to me, or would it be more appropriate for a grey to? Who made the decision to start this war, and who might make the decision to end it?"

"Oh, I can give an overview. We're fighting with Voa. Tapa and Voa are the two largest countries in the world but the fighting is over a specific historically Voan province; Voa exports a lot of food, allowed the supply to become contaminated, and won't hang the blue responsible, so Tapa's seeking a border province called Imde with a lot of quality farmland, as redress and so we can have independent food security. We expect to win; Voa's slowing us down but not committing the force it would need to do anything but buy the residents time to evacuate into the rest of Voa, though we're committed to accepting any who stay as Tapai citizens once the dust settles."

He nods. Honor violations of that sort seem like an obvious reason to go to war. "A province that makes the difference between food security and insecurity for one of the largest countries in the world must be a fertile province indeed. What fraction of the known world do Tapa and Voa hold? How many other countries are there?"

"Ashuao, pick a map -"

Ashuao pulls up a political map on her pocket everything. "Tapa's this one here, and we also control as protectorates this, that, and these here. Voa's here. Imde is this portion."

As the duke of a very densely populated region, he doesn't put too much stock into the size of countries on a map, but he still gives it a close inspection. "I see. And the fighting is constrained to Imde, or is along the whole border?"

"Imde and the immediately adjacent stretches. Everything else has heightened security but no battles."

"And the war will end... when Imde is fully held? When Voa sues for peace? How long has it been going on for?"

"It began just a couple of months ago and we think they'll probably surrender the province midsummer if not sooner. We're not in a bad enough food situation to need to rush it at the risk of escalating or taking more casualties."

He does not see any immediate avenues to help. He is trained in military tactics, of course, but with very different weapons and doubts his doctrines would transfer well. If it were a duel of champions, then perhaps his magic would swing things, but this sounds like a rather different affair. He does have questions about the underlying incentives and forces at play, but so far their description seems like mere background, and he would need to talk to the negotiators or generals in charge to learn more.

"Could you point out Shapto, on the map?" he asks.

"Sure -" Ashuao zooms in on the big lake. Shapto's on the southern shore of said lake.

"Thank you."

He will lean back, and look out the window of the car for a bit, collecting his thoughts, with a subtle point.

I mislike having picked a side without hearing out the other, but it seems challenging to do anything else as a guest.

They seemed shocked by even your mild description of the difference between Heaven and Hell, she responds. I doubt we are accidentally casting our lot with the Kuthites.

Besides, it sounds like they might not even let us near the war. He glances at the blues and greens; are they waiting patiently, or eager to ask him more questions?

They're watching them curiously. Hepka leans over to murmur something to Muim.

I am torn, he admits, between preparing to stay and preparing to return. It would be a simpler decision, if his son were younger, if Cheliax were still Infernal, if they were clearly in some archmage's puzzlebox instead of a truly foreign realm.

She is silent for long seconds. It is much clearer to her that their children still need them, that they cannot cast aside the past. But also--she feels the pull of peace, and the discussion of destinations has weighed on her. She does not pursue Heaven, the way Felip does; she believes that the nobility must make tough choices for the good of the realm, in a way Pharasma fails to understand or correct for. The thought of being outside of Pharasma's judgment is liberating in a way she did not expect it to be.

But also she does not have to answer the question now; she just needs to settle his mind.

I have always known you to be a man who can do both.

He returns his full attention to the car. "Where did you say we were going, and when do you expect us to arrive?"

"We're headed for a house in a suburb of Shapto - I expect it to be more comfortable and private than the seat of government and anyone you want to talk to can meet you there. Looks like..." He glances over to the GPS display the driver has on the dashboard. "Another ten minutes."

He nods. "And how will we discover who it is we would like to talk to? Until we have a better understanding of the landscape, I imagine we will want to accept many invitations, or have a social secretary of some sort."

"So, the first big decision is whether to make your presence on Amenta known at all or not. We can hush up the zoo appearance and nobody who reads submissions to the form the zoo staff used is going to blab without authorization. If you want a quiet life talking to greens about your language and culture and magic and society, that's the way to go.

"If you are publicized you will instantly be the biggest news in history - I do not exaggerate - to thirteen billion people and every single one of them will want your attention. Many of those people will handle this desire by accepting that they're not going to get it, but that's many as a percentage of thirteen billion. We can manage almost everything else for you and narrow it down to whatever invitations and meetings and messages you'd like to accept. We are not inerrantly flawless at this, though; you'd be running a bit of a risk."

Thirteen billion is--rather a lot of people, actually. Cheliax, which he was used to thinking of as large and powerful, was only a bit more than a thousandth of that size.

He also raises his estimate of the importance of the people in the car with him now. This morning they might have been regional bureaucrats, but now they are read into a secret of world-historical importance. He fixes their faces into his mind a bit more firmly.

A secret shared cannot be unsaid; but also his power is in his voice, and to hide means to delay its use.

"These prairie dogs," he says. "Are they secretive animals?"

"Well, they live underground," says Tahu. "Otherwise not... especially?"

"Then neither shall we be. There is perhaps wisdom in moving slowly, rather than painting it across the sky." He doesn't know how they're communicating, if they don't have Mage's Decree, but they did seem to view the decision as binary.

"So, no press release today, but we should start planning for one, do I understand you correctly?" says Ekachta.

"Yes. Do you have superiors who would rather read this news in a private report than a broadsheet?"

"- my superiors are alerted to the situation, they had to come to a consensus on who to send out of who was available on short notice and that was me."

Hmm. He is not immediately certain how to be delicate, here; it is not clear whether they are an envoy, or an investigator, or a decision-maker, and 'event of world historical importance' does not by itself mean 'you would have a fruitful meeting with our head of state'. He will, for now, trust that Tapa is being deliberate. He is not yet sure what to make of them letting him make the decision on whether or not to be revealed, especially in the middle of a war.

"Well, I'm glad it was you; you've made us feel rather welcomed. If you could set our schedule for the next few days, how would you do it?"

"I'd recommend you get settled into the house - we're going to assign you a purple with a security clearance to handle chores and such, so they'll need to know things like what you like to eat and what you'd want in a change of clothes - and get looked over by some biologists and doctors to confirm that you're likely to be safe eating Amentan food, and then I'd recommend a mix of you doing background reading and you answering some greens' questions about anything and everything. Then when you've got your bearings a bit it'd be time to revisit the question of whether to publicize."

A purple?

He nods. "Very well. And how many greys for the security of the house?" Shapto had looked quite a distance from the border, and so he doubted they had the wartime heightened security, but he had always tried to maintain good relationships with his personal security, and it seems all the more important when they are all fresh to the role.

"They'll be on shifts but there'll be at least thirty total on the team and increased police presence for a ways around - not read in, to start with, the house in question is also used for other sensitive guests and it's normal for them to have to be on alert when there's someone there or when they're drilling for the possibility, they don't know which of those things is happening."

"I see. Well, when some are read in, I would like to speak with them."

They pull up to the house. It's surrounded by generous tree and hedge cover; it's not a lot of land by manorial estate standards but it's a lot more than most of the houses they passed on the way. There's a garage and they pull inside before opening the car doors.

She is looking at everything with a careful eye. How is the house, as a house? What do the decorations say to her?

The house is three stories tall and in excellent repair. The garage is not decorated basically at all, it's bare concrete, though that in itself may be interesting. In the house itself it looks - impersonally lovely, someone had a decorating budget and they spent it on nice prints and wall sculptures and fluffy rugs and abstractly swirly wallpaper. "Do you want to pick out one bedroom or two?" Ekachta asks, walking them through the dining room (the kitchen is not completely open-plan, but it is visible over a counter on one side through a gap suitable for passing dishes) and towards the staircase.

They share a glance. This is really the question of whether or not they can trust this house and use it like they would their own house, or whether they are treating it as hostile territory. He is open and confident.

She is more guarded, but leaning more towards trust than fear.

"Two, I think."

"The house has twelve, so take your pick." The rooms they are shown up on the second floor - and the third, too, if they want to see more of them - have ensuite bathrooms and kingsize beds and windows and more prints and rugs and wallpapers in various color palettes.

She moves slowly through the rooms, taking in the details, touching the fabric. This house is not the handmade work of artisans, she thinks. No one stood in one of these rooms and decided what rug would fit it, and then had the rug made. This one is slightly too small, this other slightly too large. The decorations are simple art, not artifacts; this house is no one's treasury, there is no history they are trying to advertise. The windows are well-placed, and the rooms spacious--some perhaps a bit more than she would like.

There's a room whose palette is a dark color contrasted with a bright one, in a way that reminds her of Fraga's black and gold; she puts Felip in it, and takes the room next door.

That takes care of the nights; now the evenings. There was a dining room--will there be space for guests to sit together? To stand and speak? To dance? How do the rooms flow together, and into the garden or grounds?

The dining room can seat twenty, and the adjoining rooms could have the furniture cleared away for a dance for a similar number if that were desirable, though they are currently occupied with chairs and couches. Those rooms lead out to a sunroom and veranda and from there into the backyard, which has some yard furniture, little clusters of it suitable for groups of three or four to sit together and chat and a big flat deck for outdoor dancing or grilling. There's a hot tub out there, too.

Hm. No one will know the dances. She could teach them, of course--a pang while she thinks of her daughters learning to dance--but it will be a foreign novelty to them, not a deep tradition. And they'd have to recreate the music, somehow. She could find space to put musicians, but their instruments might differ too much. A problem to solve in the future.

Let us consider the day, then. They will have meetings with many people, no doubt, their books and notes and maps to consult. She doubts they will have to hold court, even though it was suggested they would be famous beyond compare. Probably best to only be seen in public at a spot they travel to, and keep the estate private and limited to smaller meetings. Is there already a library? Are there offices for the two of them? Meeting rooms, at appropriate levels of symmetry? (It doesn't seem like the sort of house to have raised thrones, but she could perhaps make do with a room with a large, solid desk and intimidating chair for them and an insubstantial chair for their guest.)

There are a few books on shelves in a corner of a living room! A dictionary, an atlas, a couple photography books, it doesn't look like the home of a book-lover. There are three offices on the second floor, two on the third, and one right next to the sunroom, though at present they all have matching sets of chairs behind and before the desks.

Well, she'll be able to figure something out.

She glances around. Who has followed her, this long into her tour?

Ekachta is there, and Muim; the greens have taken up spots at the dining table to murmur to each other and Patkeon is talking to the greys who came with them in the car.

How old do Ekachta and Muim look, to her eyes? Likely to have teenaged daughters?

"I do not know how it is in your realm," she says conversationally, "but in my home noblewomen would be attended to by others of nearly the same rank. Perhaps there is some young trustworthy Blue who would suit as a lady-in-waiting."

Ekachta might have teenaged granddaughters! Muim might have teenaged daughters.

"Attended in what capacity?" asks Ekachta. "I can put about that we need an assistant for you but ideally there'd be a clear job description - is it important for some reason that it be a woman? That they be young?"

"Assistant is about right," she says. Writing a job description for it--well, that'd be easier if she knew her own job description. "It must be a woman, for sake of propriety, comfort, and ease of understanding. I would expect her to live here in the house, and to be available as I need. No doubt I will require many points of your culture to be explained to me, and the use of your tools demonstrated."

She holds a chair for a moment, thinking of Lady Maria, hoping to see her again. "Youth is not essential, but is helpful." Among other things, it will make her a bit more controllable, which they have precious little of at the moment. "But a married woman would no doubt expect her husband to join the household as well, which it seems premature to do before getting our feet beneath us."

"Single female blue cultural consultant with round the clock availability?" recaps Ekachta.

She purses her lips slightly. "As a major duty, yes." How to cross the cultural gulf? "A lady-in-waiting is... a magnifier for her mistress. She can read correspondence, she can host guests, she can discuss the affairs of court, she can keep her mistress's confidences and scheme with her. She is much like a friend."

"Some of those things we're in the habit of employing yellows for but I think it folds into a blue job on the whole just fine. Cultural consultant and... attaché."

"Yes, that seems better."

"Do you want to interview candidates - that'll complicate information security, though not prohibitively - or read profiles and choose among them, or shall we just assign you someone?"

"Interviews would be best. If you got me some blue hair dye, we might not even have to let anything slip, although I imagine part of the appeal will be, well, the cultural novelty."

"Very much so, and - you sound like a native speaker of Tapap, but you carry yourself like you're important enough that anyone in a serious blue career track in your own country would expect to have heard of you, they might guess something was up."

"Well, it sounds like Felip plans to make an announcement soon enough that I doubt it will be too serious of a leak."

"Still, better to have a controlled release. I'll see who we can scare up by way of attaché candidates."

His tour of the house was somewhat faster than Isidonia's, focused on different things, and now he finds the greens at the dining room table and joins them.

"So, now that we're a bit settled in, do you have any more questions for me tonight?"

"Oh, absolutely - can you tell us more about the magic you can do?" says Hepka.

"I know about twenty different spells, across five different 'circles', which roughly corresponds to their complexity and difficulty." He'll gesture, and the color of a plate on the table flips from white to black. "That is a zeroth circle spell, which I can do without exhausting myself. The effect will fade after about an hour. Spells of higher circles deplete a reservoir of power, which recharges daily as I sleep. Many of my spells have subtle effects, which are nevertheless powerful. For example, there is a spell to create invisible armor and a spell to protect against arrows, which each last about a third of a day. I cast them on myself as a precaution against assassination or accident. The ones I use most often now besides those are one to draw forth someone's heroism, and another to allow them a moment of skillfulness. I can also enlarge someone's body, or cause them to move faster. Many of those spells last for a rather short amount of time--minutes or seconds. Useful in a fight, but one where I have to participate, rather than simply being part of preparations."

"Arrows in particular, or would it catch bullets too?"

"What does it mean to draw forth someone's heroism? Or allow them a moment of skillfulness?"

"...you use slings?" he asks, confused. It seems out of line with the rest of their material wealth.

"...no, guns."

Tahu pulls up a video of a grey shooting a gun and the fate of the paper target many yards away afterwards.

He has ever seen an arquebus, but he thinks of those as firing balls and this slim handheld weapon reminds him more of a wand with a curious grip. "Fascinating," he says. "That would be accomplished by magic in my homeland, and far too expensive to outfit every guard with." He'll also take a closer look at the device displaying the video. "Likewise this illusion. How are you creating it without magic?"

"A lot of our technology including pocket everythings like this runs on electricity. This grey in the video is a real person, with an electronic device pointed at her while she did these things exactly as you see them; it committed the events to recorded format, a video, and then I'm pulling it up on the internet, which is a network of many devices communicating with each other."

"And this pocket everything was... created by an artificer?" He didn't quite get an answer to his question--"runs on electricity" is about as informative as "runs on magic"--but he hasn't exactly been able to give them all that much detail himself.

"...it was made in a factory? A lot of people are involved in making them, and they're mass produced"