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An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
They trek there, fortunately it's a smaller city than most in Cheliax and doesn't take that long, but it is getting very hot and humid.
The father's wife answers. Apparently Ratek and his fiancée are shopping for wedding apparel in the nice part of town. Mama Raine thanks the lady gruffly and forges off with Ramira in that direction.
Ramira knows Endure Elements but she didn't prepare it this morning because no one told her this morning there was going to be a war which would involve mercenary recruiting in another country. Instead she will suffer. She reminds herself that it is a taste of the world to come, and you get used to that.
They find the Adept mage and his girlfriend at a fancy shoe store. The streets in this part of town are cleaner and there are no beggars in alleyways.
Ratek seems pretty distracted by the burden of organizing a wedding. "Yes, what do you want?" His girlfriend is flushed and beaming and hanging off his arm.
"I need some Gates very badly. Today. I know you're getting married really soon but we could pay absurdly well and it'd just be one day of work. My country was invaded this morning and we need to move our army so we can fight back."
Ratek hears her out and seems sympathetic to her plight and also very, very tempted by the promise of help with wedding expenses; he keeps glancing at all the clearly very expensive stores on the block.
His sweetheart, however, is almost hysterical about the prospect of her beloved going off to help with a WAR which might be DANGEROUS and he could DIE on the eve of their wedding! She doesn't want him to do that at all! She's spent the last three years worried sick about him every time the company went off on a contract and he PROMISED he was done with that life and they could settle down and have a civilized, safe, comfortable life in the city!
"We can include in the contract a paid-for resurrection if anything happens to him," she tries to assure the girlfriend. "And you could start your new life with enough money neither of you ever have to work again."
Okay now both of them seem to think she's probably lying because they've never heard of resurrection as a real spell that actually works, the Adept is pretty sure it's impossible and now wants to question all the other details of her story too.
Gah - She's from another world. Her magic doesn't work like theirs; she doesn't know exactly how theirs does work but she can demonstrate Tongues, which is about to run out anyway. And she can demonstrate that there is more gold in her Bag of Holding than ought to fit in there, she hasn't seen anything like that in this city yet and maybe they don't have it. Different world, different magic, including resurrections, perfectly standard term of a contract, see, it's mentioned in some of the sample contracts she has on hand.
Wow, huh, all of that seems pretty convincing even though it's also absurd, and Ratek is starting to look tempted again and his fiancée is placated by the ridiculous amount of gold and looking hopefully across the street at a dress store.
- and then a little boy comes tearing down the street. "Hey pretty lady sorry to bother you can you please please hold this for me for a bit I'll be right back–" and he shoves a bag into her hands and keeps running.
...well maybe they can negotiate contract terms right here, then, if she wants to ...stay so that she can hold onto that bag for that random child?
They start discussing contract terms, with the active cooperation of Ratek's sweetheart -
- and then the City Watch shows up again, five of them, with an angry shopkeeper on their heels, and they break up the conversation and start loudly accusing Ramira of stealing jewelry, gesturing at the bag she's holding, one of them has cuffs and wants to cuff her right then and there and haul her off to the watchhouse.
Oh, good, she's glad someone came to pick up the jewelry, she was worried there was something suspicious going on there but leaving it in the middle of the street seemed worse. She's been engaged in contract negotiations for mages all morning and been with people the whole time and also obviously wouldn't have stolen anything because there are five hundred pounds of gold in her cargo bag, but it makes sense they'd want to clear things up, do they have truth magic?
The city guard don't themselves seem to have truth magic, also the shopkeeper is not buying her story at all and is on the spot concocting a different story where she's obviously conspiring with one of the child street gangs, probably she's their pimp too, he's heard all sorts of tales about that.
Mama Raine does not seem to want to get involved in this one, and the girlfriend looks incredibly embarrassed to be seen in conversation with someone now being accused of theft and pimping out orphans, and is trying to tug Ratek away.
The shopkeeper's eyes light up with greed, if he gets that plus his jewelry back he will totally go away.
The City Watch, however, would like to take her to the temple to Anathei, they think the priests have some sort of truth magic and then they can confirm she is definitely not pimping out orphans - she looks like a respectable nice woman but sometimes criminals do and they really have to follow every lead they can on criminal street gangs.
- of course but can they please please get this cleared up really quickly there is an army marching through the streets of her homeland right now and this mercenary contract is her best hope of saving her family and her country.
The temple is nearby so it shouldn't take long. They march her over to it, looking kind of apologetic but firm.
The priest is a kindly elderly man in simple robes, who comes out to ask what he can help them with.
She would like to state under the local truth magic that she has to her knowledge abided by all local laws since she got here, and definitely hasn't stolen anything, and has never talked to any children in street gangs, and is kind of worried about their child street gangs and would be delighted to come back and set up schools and orphanages in the name of her god once she has saved her country, and really needs to go now if that's all cleared up.
He nods, seriously, looking her in the eye, and seems very sympathetic, and then his eyes go unfocused...
"- Oh, you poor, poor child." He blinks back to awareness. Reaches out and takes her hands. "I am so sorry." There are tears welling in his eyes. "Your world - your country... I can hardly fathom it. But the gods of your world speak to the gods of ours, now, and so I can tell you. Aroden is indeed returned to reclaim the land from Hell - your country will be safe, soon." The tears are spilling down his cheeks, now. "But you - the darkness in your soul... Please, please, would you stay here? And perhaps we can redeem you, and your soul will not go to this - plane of horrors - when your life ends..."
What the fuck.
"Uh. I'm fine. Nothing's going to happen to me that shouldn't happen to me. And I don't - care whether it's Aroden invading or somebody else invading, they're invading, my country is not safe, and I need to get back there to defend it."
The priest sighs, releasing her hands. He looks deeply grieved.
"You should arrest her," he says to the watchmen.
They look baffled. "Did she or did she not steal the–"
The priest to Anathei ducks in close to the head Guard and whispers something in his ear -
- the man's eyes widen, and he gestures to the others, who grab her and start cuffing her.
"- am I accused of a crime or just of serving a god you got fed some nonsense about." She thinks it's permissible to Teleport out if it's the latter, she bets they don't have a law about locking people up for being Asmodean because Asmodeus heard about this planet this morning and this planet, apparently, heard some propaganda about him just now.
"You are accused of recruiting for foreign criminal activities, which is a crime in our books," the head Guard says stiffly. "We will, of course, take down all of the testimony you wish to give and consider this matter properly. At the watchhouse."
"Thousands of people are already dead. It'll be so much worse if the invaders have several days to dig in before we're able to respond. I'm recruiting for the legitimate Queen of Cheliax, the sixth in her dynasty, and I've never been involved in any criminal activities and my country isn't perfect but it doesn't have orphan street gangs and you have no right to tell people that it's tragic, that they might care about that more than they care about the afterlife being full of flowers and fucking bunnies."