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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.
He has no trouble believing either of these and can supplement by telling the story of how when Vanyel showed up in Golarion he fought a dragon without even knowing what dragons were, and then when he realized they were intelligent decided to negotiate a peaceful resolution with the dragon instead. And then a couple days later did the same thing with an enraged elder water elemental.
Awww, that sounds exactly like Vanyel! Savil gives him a one-armed hug and smiles fondly at him.
Glasses of wine are refilled after dinner and the conversation turns to darker topics. Neither Savil nor Vanyel has had a chance to catch up with Starwind and Moondance since Sunhame. Nor for the last three years of the war, not properly, there was just a brief conversation by a Gate once.
There are a lot of songs about Vanyel's heroic exploits from the war that Vanyel hates because the memories he attaches to them are awful, but he can be coaxed to tell Starwind and Moondance and Fazil about the Demonsbane incident. The battle where Mardic lost his Companion - hours after he Gated back from k'Treva the previous visit, actually, and he'd gotten himself stupidly stabbed by an assassin with energy-sucking magic blades and so couldn't intervene. He mentions, because he might as well, that this is the first time he considered and decided against using blood-magic. He talks about the battle in Highjorune where Mardic and Donni died, although not the events of the night before.
War is fascinatingly different when many people have the powers of Velgarth mages and none have Golarion magic but this would be insensitive to say much about; he just listens quietly.
Eventually Savil shoos a subdued Vanyel to bed. "Sorry to be so morose," she says to Fazil. "We - I guess we get like that, sometimes."
"It is. Even when it needs to happen, one way or another." She lets out her breath. "I could really wish we didn't need to send Vanyel right into another war. The last war's barely over and it was really, really bad for him. But - if there's a way he can help your world too, he's not going to walk away from it."
In the morning, Leareth Mindspeaks Vanyel via the crystal ball. :We are back:
:I am not going to say too much via this communication method, but - we learned some things. We are concerned about interference and so wish to move quickly - the current timeline is one week. We are researching transport option on this side. For your part, it would be helpful if you could ask the Valdemaran leadership about the earlier proposal for their aid, here, and determine what numbers they can have available on that deadline:
:Thank you. There are further items we ought to discuss, but - better to do so face to face, if possible. If I contact you again at noon, does that allow time to speak to the others?:
Vanyel sits down on his bed and puts his head in his hands. He's not upset, exactly, just - very, very startled.
After a few minutes, he gets up, sticks his feet into slippers, and goes to knock on Fazil's door.
Vanyel raises a privacy-barrier and switches to less-tiring spoken words. "He was being kind of vague, I think he doesn't trust the security of the crystal ball Mindspeech thing as a communication method, but - pretty sure they confirmed what we were guessing. Also, apparently they've moved the invasion up to one week from now."
"Maybe? He said he would check back in with me at noon. Wants me to talk to the Heralds and see what they can have ready in a week, I assume for the Worldwound. Says they're sorting out transport, which I assume means they're working flat-out to crack inter-world Gates in time to move an army around. And - right, I think if we want to talk about details with him, it'll have to be from there." He frowns. "You can safely Plane Shift us back, right? It'll just be a burden on the pharaoh if we then decide we need to come back here to talk to the Heralds some more."
"That's right, yeah." He has been preparing Plane Shift and Word of Recall every day so he can vanish from here on five seconds' notice if he needs to.
"How many people can you Plane Shift today? We should maybe check if it makes sense to bring others. For one it'd be good to know if Moondance can do his thing to the Worldwound land before they fire off the invasion. Though I don't know how easy it'd be to get him close enough safely - unless there are other places that are similar where he could try..."