"So. Leareth, if I wished to advance the timeline on the invasion and also to take you up on your offer, how quickly could you have your army ready to move?" 

...Wow that is diving right into things and also why is he surprised. 

"My official contingency-plan is for four days. That is assuming nothing goes wrong, which is a dubious assumption, and also does not take into account the existence of other worlds or the fact that I do not think we have yet mastered inter-world Gates. So, a week." 

Malduoni nods. "I imagine this draws on your easily available forces, not all of them. How many." 

"I could give you twenty thousand soldiers on that much notice. Assuming it becomes feasible to transport them. Three hundred mages."  

"And you think Valdemar would lend their forces for the Worldwound, if not the invasion itself. How many?" 

"I am guessing there. Both at their willingness and their available numbers. My not particularly justified estimate would be five thousand troops and - perhaps thirty to fifty Heralds with combat experience? Not all mages but they have Gifts of various types." 

"We can get them back if they die here, right, this is probably relevant both to commitments of forces and to whether Van will do that thing where he can die and kill everything around for half a mile -"

"...Did he volunteer to do that?" 

"I think," Malduoni says slowly, "that I am going to need a much more thorough explanation of your world's magic, Leareth. I assume you have already put some thought into clever ways it might be combined with ours." 

Really that should go without saying, so Leareth just nods. 

Malduoni turns to Hagan. "And do you have a prediction of what the pharaoh will do? In general, and also in the scenario where I decide to move a week from now and with Leareth's aid." 

"Osirion doesn't fight wars. I think he'd probably raise people for you, though someone will have to supply him if you needed more than a few of them, and I think he said he'd be willing to do infrastructure in Cheliax afterwards. Abadar could probably coopt a bunch of the Asmodean church unless - are you planning to be a -" he runs into the geas and makes a face. "I think you should talk to him. I'm not clear on Abadar's constraints." 

"Noted." Malduoni frowns. "I am not sure whether Velgarth natives can be raised if they die here. And I am not sure of, well, a way to test that less costly than the most direct test." 

"That is also something that Abadar might know." Leareth drops his gaze. "I was expecting to end up speaking with him anyway, after this mission. If we are going to be coordinating on this anyway, then I suppose I could ask ask him some questions on your behalf." 

Thoughtful nod. 

"What is the state of secrecy on the capabilities of Velgarth magic?" 

"A number of the pharaoh's researchers know of it. Not everything, but a great deal. They have been asked to keep it to themselves, but are not under geas, so - my guess is that it is secret now and will not remain so indefinitely. Velgarth's existence is less closely held but is certainly not widely known at this point." 

"Another reason to move quickly." Malduoni lays his hands on the table, briskly. "All right. I think we had best cover the intricacies of Velgarth magic now. Hagan and Mahdi are already quite well-informed of this, I imagine, and so might as well be present to help generate ideas here." 

"They worked closely with Vanyel for a time, so I imagine so." Leareth looks over at them. 

"To a first approximation they can do most arcane magic that's not transmutation or conjuration, where they're limited because they have to do all the work themselves, they don't have access to any scaffolding that enables things like polymorph effects. I've wondered whether they could be taught to use the thing we use for scaffolding but I haven't given it a serious try. Instead of teleportation they can open a portal to somewhere else on the same plane, they call that a Gate. And all of it's much more flexible since it doesn't have to stabilize but maybe sorcerers here are like that too, I've never watched one closely and I think mages in Velgarth get a lot more specialized training in the use of their magic than sorcerers here. They can imitate a Pearl of Power for wizards, not for clerics. They can dispel magic in a clever way that looks like a very minimal power expenditure and they can do very very low-power enchantments. They are bottlenecked on how much they can do in a day mostly by exhaustion, which responds normally to Lesser Restoration if you have any way to get that here."

"We also have magic-specific senses, similar to Detect Magic but present in the background unless we are shielding them - they do take a minimal amount of effort to use, but comparable to, say, standing up, it is not something one will ever be too tired for except in very unusual circumstances. I can directly observe magic as I cast it, and as your casters work. This is how we can disrupt your spells with less power expenditure, by seeing the most brittle part and aiming there. We have many varieties of shields and wards, many of which are lower power than yours - thus perhaps easier to dispel with your Dispel Magic - but correspondingly cheaper to place, and also quite flexible." 

(He is perhaps going to wait until he's alone with Malduoni to discuss blood-magic and the implications there.) 

"There are also a number of other, more specialized Gifts in Velgarth. I have Mindspeech, which is a form of permanent telepathy, receptive and projective. We have our own variant of Healing - actually, this might be of great use to you, since you do not have clerics. It is not as good for injuries, but is in many ways more flexible, and also comes with a type of Sight useful for diagnosis and triage..." 

He goes through a list of all the commonly-known Velgarth Gifts.

"–and Mindhealing can also work similarly to compulsions, though that is not its main use in Velgarth," he finishes. 

Malduoni's expression goes still again. 

"Is it also visible to our spells for detecting enchantments." 

"...I am not sure, I do not have it myself and have not tested it. I suspect not. It is not visible to mage-sight. I do think that enchantments would be clearly visible to the specialized Mindhealing Sight." 

"Interesting." A long pause. "I wish to politely request that you keep this between us, unless the pharaoh asks directly. Though I suppose Abadar may know of the Gift's existence via the Velgarth gods." It's not necessarily going to be salient, though, or packaged in a form useful to humans anticipating his moves. 

....he is increasingly suspecting that, like, a significant fraction of important people in Cheliax are already mind-controlled which is terrifying and kind of brilliant.

Malduoni hears that, of course. He doesn't smile.