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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.
That's very impressive and clever, especially for someone who doesn't have Aroden's godmemory intuitions for how spells are put together. Aroden just invented a "Detect life-force" spell, from a god's perspective it's closely related to all the various other things one can detect about a person, like Detect Aura. He's never actually used Scribe's Binding but he invested in having it as an option.
Inventing spells is not just difficult but a lot riskier for most people, though. Aroden has invented hundreds and never had one explode on him, though sometimes they don't do what he was hoping for. Nefreti does it his way, which is partly because he taught her for the first couple years of her magical education, and partly because she's...Nefreti. And her spells do explode with some frequency.
Carissa has never invented a spell, for precisely that reason where they explode, she just learns them off everyone who showed up and would talk to her, and in this case she just modified her shield spell to let through the percentage of life energies she calculated ought to be approximately correct. If she'd had one then she could have checked and known Batty was safe and not attended the dinner party and - well, objectively that would probably be a worse situation, but still.
Leareth definitely thinks that would be a worse situation; probably Carissa would have gotten caught eventually, but it could have happened under circumstances much less conducive to her liking him at all.
"Unfortunately I probably cannot teach you how to invent spells my way, it does not transfer well, but I am of course happy to teach you any spell you would like to have, and if you curious if a particular spell even exists, I can likely find out or invent it for you."
Carissa looks like someone has just offered her the most ridiculous bribe in the entire universe.
Leareth gets that. Having a chance to work closely with Aroden is an excellent bribe in a number of ways.
"I am curious how it works to make a magic item for a spell you cannot yourself cast? I suppose this is doable for our magic, but mainly in cases where the spell on a talisman or focus is too complex for a human to cast by themselves at all."
"Glibness is a Bard spell. Bards are spontaneous casters - more like you than like me, right, if they know how to do something and have the energy for it they can do it at any time. Glibness doesn't stabilize and so I can't prepare it myself. I can weave the pattern right onto the artifact, it's just much trickier than doing it for a spell I can stabilize."
"Fascinating! It might be more similar to the way Velgarth mages always make artifacts, then, since our spells do not stabilize in the same way."
"You need a focus, usually quartz but sometimes other elements, and you cast the spell almost the same way as usual, but with - attachment points, is the best word I can use to describe it, and also a reservoir to add more energy to power it, since normally the power for a spell comes directly from a mage. None of our magic items last forever under their own power, which makes them unfortunately less useful to non-mages, but a single Adept can refill the power on a very large number of, say, shield-talismans, in a day, so it is still feasible to use them in military settings and such -" Leareth has lots to say about this topic and it's less high-context than the god one.
"Huh!" And she has a bunch of questions along the lines that the magical researchers explored when Leareth first arrived in Golarion.
Oddly it doesn't even feel repetitive; he's enjoying just the fact that she's asking the questions.
After dessert is cleared away, Aroden suggests they move to the comfy sitting area with sofas and armchairs.
Parmida, dear, Leareth thought she would benefit from - talking to you about what it is like to be married to me. If you can arrange an opportunity for her to talk to you if she wishes, that could be good.
Leareth sits down on the same couch as Carissa, though not touching her. Remembers the first time he cuddled with Khemet, and he feels something but isn't sure what it is.
Parmida can change the topic of conversation to how she met and married Aroden, in the famine year after his death. "He was - haunted and only halfway there most of the time - but he let everyone assume he'd had a wife and children in Cheliax, killed in the disaster, and that seemed like enough explanation. He was very clever and yet didn't know anything - I really should've guessed sooner but on the other hand how could anyone possibly guess..."
"We had a family meeting about how to get through the winter and we came up with suggesting to him that he take one of me or my sisters, and he talked to us. He wanted someone who'd make his laundry business more efficient and he didn't want more children immediately and he wanted us to learn magic too. I remember thinking I liked him very much and had better temper my expectations by assuming he was a mean drunk or something. - he isn't."
"He needs the normal things a man needs from a wife and children but not in a way that'll cause him to go and get them. We'll have a lovely evening and he'll never try to do anything like it ever again and I'll say 'oh, did you not like it', and he just - forgot that that was a good enough reason to do things. Or has put enough priorities on his plate that it isn't. It bothered me, a lot, until I learned who he was, and then -" She smiles fondly at him.
She wants to ask 'did he ever actually want you, in a human way', but there's no polite way to ask that at all. She asks about what Absalom was like a hundred years ago, instead, and what the study of magic was like, and glances at Leareth occasionally.
Leareth is also glancing at her every so often, and thinking that she's just as clever as he had guessed, and unsurprisingly interesting to talk to, and - she looks quite pretty in that dress, huh, he doesn't normally notice things like that but he's doing some amount of deliberately leaning into it right now.
It's helpful that he's already been dating Khemet and so he knows what it's like to want someone. And - he doesn't, with her, not yet, even if he appreciates looking at her and listening to her more than he usually does with a randomly chosen person. It feels like the seed of it might be there, and he doesn't know if it needs more time or more trust or something else entirely.
And eventually she says apologetically that she had better go set up her new apartment, and is grateful for the invitation and once she can afford some ink will definitely take Aroden up on copying some spells from him.
Leareth asks if she would mind letting him know her address, so he can drop by or send a letter when he's planned a date to take her on. If she does mind, she could maybe visit the palace again in a few days.
He can have her address. It's Guerreco's building on East Row and Thirtieth and her place is on the third floor and he probably would want to send a letter, as he'd stand out, but he's of course welcome if he'd like to visit.
