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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.
"I am going to spend the first six hours of my night with a very disabling headache, and if I am incapacitated I would prefer it happen in a place where no one can Gate or Teleport in."
"Ah, I understand. When I need to remember being a god, it has the same effect, and I usually do it in my demiplane."
"He offered me a demiplane, you know," Leareth says, his lips tugging into a smile as he glances at Khemet. "As payment for their permanent Gate-terminus. I am very very tempted."
"He really wants to get hard currency for his permanent Gate. I've thought about arguing that I could extort you more on the True Resurrections but then we'll have to start finagling who Vanyel considers himself to be making his endless stream of diamonds for and it all sounds very distracting. After the war we still hammer out something formal and maybe I can throw the demiplane in."
"One of us is responsible for inventing and refining the diamond spell." Leareth is grinning.
Aroden is thinking that they're adorable and he has to tell Parmida all about it later.
"We can do that," he says out loud.
"Vanyel says that you have assassinated him twice, whereas I have assassinated him no times and resurrected him four, so I feel like I can claim more credit for his being here in diamond-making condition," he says to Leareth.
Then Aroden's comment reminds him they are grownups having a grownup meeting. "Thank you," he says more formally. "Do we have a tentative timeline on the war with the Star-Eyed?"
Aroden doesn't seem to consider the diamond debate to be notably un-grownup at all. "Nefreti and I think we will be ready in a month. Perhaps as little as a fortnight if I de-prioritize everything else in Cheliax, but I would prefer not to do that unless the situation seems more time-sensitive than it does to me currently."
"I'm not under the impression it's particularly time-sensitive, no, aside from getting a hold of Starwind and Moondance. Take good care of Cheliax."
And they can wrap up the meeting and send Aroden home, though he wants to give Leareth at least the opportunity to stay.
Leareth bids Aroden goodbye but stays where he is; if the pharaoh dismisses him he can take that cue.
"I would not say that you are, although perhaps Abadar is. I spoke with him about ideas for using my god-research to teach him how to communicate better with humans, you know. Ironically, I will probably have a worse headache for it, since we spoke for longer."
"Oh no." He looks very sympathetic. "I really hope you succeed on that. It would be really nice if Abadar was straightforward to talk with. I know the ex-human gods supposedly are."
"Aroden said that Iomedae and Milani were both fine to talk to." He pauses. "I think I will ask Iomedae for advice on finding a compatible wife, I might as well. Abadar said he would try to nudge people who are compatible with him to visit our palace, he does not otherwise know how to assess marriageability but at least we might obtain some talented bureaucrats that way."
Leareth doesn't mention having kind of pointlessly asked Abadar for advice on how to make Khemet happy. He's a little distracted; even without the pain, talking to Abadar leaves him feeling sort of distant, disconnected from the material world.
"Abadar said that he predicted my god plan would have worked as intended, from the parts I showed Him," he says. "If the local gods had allowed me to use the Heartstone, which they would not have. I - am nonetheless rather flattered and pleased by receiving His seal of approval here, even if I never end up carrying out this plan after all."
"Huh. I would be too. Designing a god seems like the kind of thing that'd be - astonishingly hard."
"It was incredibly hard. I spent a thousand years working on it. And recruited many other scholars to help and to check my work in the last several centuries."
