"Makes sense, though. Is evil people repenting a thing that happens much?" 

"Does it not happen in your world? Lots of people do evil things but regret them, in ours."

"We might have less infrastructure for 'repenting about it' to be a very productive thing to do. And I guess I've always...personally defined what 'evil' means, as doing bad things and not regretting it." He looks down. "I've done a lot of things that harmed people. I think most of the Heralds have things we regret, after the war." 

"Hmmm. I've done things that hurt people because I didn't see a better option. I would like to have had better options but, well, I didn't. I've done things that hurt people and had a better option I was too young or inexperienced or overwhelmed to think of, and I regret that. That doesn't usually make you evil, assuming it's more like 'we were attacked by bandits and killed them even though in hindsight we could've taken then alive with more experience fighting' than 'we murdered some people in a botched robbery.' But, like, lots of people murdered some people in a botched robbery, and they kind of wish they hadn't done it, or they try not to think about it, and they're still going to be Evil until they actually spend a long time - changing as a person, and making the world better, and trying to make it up to the people affected. And it's mostly that group of people you're trying to convince to repent instead of doubling down and deciding they're fine with it."

"Mmm. That makes sense." 

Food arrives. Vanyel takes his with a smile for the page bringing it. The young man looks kind of scared of him. When his back is turned, Vanyel grimaces slightly about it. 

"Anyway. I think I should Gate to k'Treva and ask them that. And - if I'm doing that anyway, I might as well find out what they know about the history before the Cataclysm." 

"Sounds good." He casts Delay Pain for him.

"...At some point I guess I should test if Nefreti is right and Gates don't hurt unless I'm expecting them to. The problem is that if I try without Delay Pain I will be expecting them to even if that's circular..." He makes a face. "And I'd better eat, and ask Savil if there's anything she wants me to pass on to them."

"We could do it where I secretly flip three coins and cast Delay Pain unless they all come up heads, in which case I cast something else that doesn't do anything? I'm not sure that's the right approach, though." He takes his lunch.

"Maybe? I'd have to not watch with mage-sight or else I could tell it wasn't that." 

Vanyel takes his own food and goes to eat quietly in his room. After a while he Mindspeaks Savil. She agrees that the Tayledras definitely deserve to know everything and that's a much better use of his afternoon than sitting around in meetings, especially since Fazil is the one who knows the answers to any questions the Senior Circle is likely to have.

He has Yfandes pass this on and then Gates to k'Treva. 

Savil does, in fact, turn up to collect Fazil a candlemark later. 

He is happy to head over with her. Well, 'happy to' in the polite sense not the emotional sense.

King Randale seems genuinely happy to see him! (Shavri still kind of looks like she wants to pin him down and study him all day.)

They can occupy the afternoon asking a lot of questions about his world, mostly more background detail on its different kinds of magic and its gods and its geopolitics, in both the material plane and the various afterlife planes. 

His world has lots and lots and lots of kinds of magic users, it's quick enough to explain the things that ninety percent of them are doing and hopeless to get to all of the other ones.

There are five continents, but travelling between them is hard even with teleportation (you need a seventh-circle Greater Teleport and to know where you're headed), so people know only vague things about the distant ones, called Arcadia and Tian Xia. Some of the same gods are worshipped there, and some different ones.  He knows Gerund, where Osirion is, quite well; it has various neighboring countries and the Mwangi Expanse of dense jungle and the Mana Wastes, scarred by a war between powerful wizards four thousand years ago. North of Gerund is Avistan, dominated by Cheliax, its colonies, and its former provinces which have broken loose at varyingly terrible costs. North of that there's the Worldwound.

East of Gerund is Casmaron, dominated by the Kelesh Empire of which Osirion was a tributary until Khemet the 1st took it back in a nearly bloodless coup three years after Aroden's death. 

Their world has a lot of gods; he mostly only knows the ones who are worshipped in the Inner Sea region. Asmodeus rules Hell. Axis has lots of different cities, some of them claimed by gods and some not, each of them with a well-defined legal code but not all with the same ones. Abadar's is the biggest, and the face of Axis to the rest of the multiverse because he's made it safe to travel to. The many districts of Axis are connected with portals, so even though it's a massive sprawling city of unfathomable size no two parts are actually far away once you learn your way around, which reportedly takes centuries. 

Heaven is the Lawful Good afterlife, and dedicated to the study of magic and tactics so Evil can be defeated and moral philosophy so that people can figure out parts of the pursuit of the Good that are more complicated than whether Hell needs to be fought. Nirvana is neutral good, and a significant portion of it is dedicated to healing and recovery, and to the redemption of evildoers - Nirvana attends every trial for every soul, and argues that they belong in Nirvana, and sometimes they win and get lots of people who are not neutral good by any conventional definition. Elysium (chaotic good) is an infinite wilderness, dotted with magical cities and settlements and academies and so on. Both Elysium and Nirvana intervene in the Material World as much as they can, not in armies like Heaven but individually as advisors or assistants or rescuers or teachers. 

The neutral afterlife is called the Boneyard. It is mostly full of babies, because lots of people die as babies and in lots of countries it's legal to kill them, especially before they're born. There are also people who lived a long life but didn't acquire an alignment at any point during it, but those are rare; Pharasma prefers to send someone on even if they're only loosely a fit for one of the afterlives. The chaotic neutral afterlife is called the Maelstrom, and its reality is so fluid it's hard to describe it as having any particular traits. Over time the dead there mutate into things called chaos beasts, which are terrifying and confusing but not intrinsically unpleasant to become, necessarily. 

Hell is lawful evil, organized into nine layers, ruled by Asmodeus. Mortals are mostly enslaved to advance the aims of Hell. Abaddon is neutral evil. They just hunt and eat all the petitioners sent there. The Abyss is - it might be the Abyssal Plane, they're not sure, but it's at least similar enough that they're not sure.

The Heralds listen attentively, and take notes, and look thoughtful about Nirvana, and seem deeply incredibly horrified about all of the evil afterlives. They're fascinated by the concept of afterlives that actually intervene in systematic ways in the mortal world (and the appropriate amount of disturbed about Asmodeus' interventions in particular.) 

Vanyel is gone all afternoon. When he Gates back, after dark, it's with Starwind and Moondance k'Treva both in tow.

:We're back: Yfandes relays to Fazil. :They have a lot of questions. Enough that Van brought some of his friends from there over to talk to you directly: Pause. :Well, probably tomorrow. It's late: 

:I don't actually know very much about the Worldwound but I'd be happy to try to answer them.:

Savil is honestly shocked that the Tayledras couple were willing to leave their land (and also their eight-year-old son), but she goes to catch up with them, and gets them set up with a guest room.

The next morning, they have a meeting to discuss the Worldwound, at least what Fazil knows of it.

It opened up shortly after Aroden died, in a country he thinks was called Sarkoris at the time. It was a tear that opened into the Abyss, rimmed by black flames. Creatures poured out of the Abyss and quickly overwhelmed Sarkoris's defenses; the whole country was lost by the end of the decade. Eventually some powerful casters put down four wardstones of nearly unimaginable power that maintain a magical barrier over the whole area. Demons frequently try to destroy the wardstones, but they're defended by armies from the surrounding countries. Some demons are powerful enough to cut, fly, or teleport through the magical barrier, but they're usually quickly brought down on the other side. Occasionally a crusade is called and the armies fighting the Worldwound try to gain ground; if the wardstones could be moved in to cover a smaller area the magical barrier would be correspondingly more powerful and fewer demons would have a way to cut through it. But gaining ground is difficult because the land has been defiled and is now magically distorted, full of rifts and cliffs and hard to advance through. Also full of demons, of course. The fourth crusade wound down a few years ago basically a failure.

Cheliax has committed substantial forces to guarding the Worldwound, which means that if there's a war with Cheliax - and they think there probably will be - then it'll abruptly lose about half of its defenses, which has the potential to be disastrous. 

That sounds like a terrible situation and they're sorry to hear his world has a such a predicament! Their own magically-defiled lands are difficult and dangerous to clear but they've at least been able to make slow progress on it over the centuries.

The Tayledras don't have armies to offer. They do have scouts and powerful mages who are experienced with work in magically-distorted, treacherous land. They also have a small number of specialized magic users called Healing-Adepts; his partner Moondance is one. Healing-Adepts have a sense for the magic inherent in a patch of land, called 'earthsense', and can use a number of secret techniques to cleanse it. 

k'Treva would consider lending Moondance to help with the Worldwound, under the condition that the rest of a plan is in place to make it not unduly dangerous for him.

Also, (and Moondance half-glances in Vanyel's direction, apologetically), they've heard from Savil that Golarion has magic to raise the dead? If that would work for non-natives killed there, it would make this considerably less risky an offer for k'Treva to make. 

Yes, Golarion has magic for that, and has confirmed that it works for people from Velgarth who die in Golarion. He can do it personally as long as there's a body and Osirion would likely be willing to commit to doing it for everybody who comes from Velgarth if Velgarth can supply the diamonds though that's not actually a guarantee he can make himself. Probably they should wait for an update via Mindspeech-through-a-scry from their allies in Golarion, and can ask for that at that time.

That makes sense. They can wait to hear. 

Meanwhile: Moondance has been trying to answer Vanyel's questions about the Cataclysm? (Starwind and Moondance also just learned today that Vanyel has been TALKING TO LEARETH, his destined enemy, for TEN YEARS, and they are kind of in shock about this, but the Heralds seem to be taking it in stride.)

If Leareth is claiming to have been around at the time of the Cataclysm and even been involved in it, he was probably the mage who fought Urtho, a hero and forefather of the Tayledras people, which cannot say good things about his character and they're pretty worried. Their purely oral histories are incomplete, though. The Shin'a'in keep written histories and probably do know more of that awful time in their past. 

That is indeed what Leareth was claiming. They would love to talk to people who might know more.

Moondance has had a feeling that it would be good, if they knew more. Unfortunately the Plains are about eight hundred miles south of Haven, and none of them have been there before in order to Gate there.