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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're numbered on the outside, in ancient Kaled'a'in, but totally are not labeled.
When they reach the superweapon storage room, Starwind is waving to them from the balcony. "We found a number of boxes of records. We have carried them out for now but ought probably make copies rather than take the originals."
"I can do copies. Uh, I can do forty notebooks worth of copies, that's all the blank notebooks I brought. I guess we can come back later and get the rest?"
"There are more of his notebooks than that, he wrote a great deal, but I am skimming to prioritize," Karna says. "They are dated, I think we want the ones from Ma'ar's time as a student and from the war, and I will go through to look for other mentions of his name. Also I brought paper, although still not enough for all of this, we have several crates full."
"Should we bring them down to you? It might be easier than doing it on this balcony."
"Speaking of that, what's our plan here - are we camping out down here tonight? I'm not delighted about camping in the room with all the superweapons but they are behind doors and I'd also prefer not to do a ton of extra Gates. - wait." He stops dead. "Fazil, did you cast Delay Pain before I did the Gates today?"
"In that case I don't mind Gating us to the surface, it's really short range - I was just worried Delay Pain would've worn off, but if I didn't have it before anyway..." He seems sort of awed. "Anyway we've still got some day, I think. Don't actually know what time it is but we got here in the morning - I guess if I go up the stairs again I can Mindspeak Yfandes?"
"That sounds good. We can get a bit more copying in, sleep outside, come back tomorrow?"
"Sure."
Yfandes confirms that it's only midafternoon, and then Vanyel helps lower crates of records to the nice spacious room to work on copying them.
Starwind and Moondance and Vanyel can all do that too, and with teamwork they're able to get through all the notebooks and catch a couple dozen mentions of Ma'ar in between the student years and the war year, which Karna then reads more thoroughly so she can bookmark where Mahdi ought to start and end the copying. It'll fit in less than forty notebooks but it's still quite a large number of pages to copy.
He won't finish it all today, then, but they've made solid progress and they still have tomorrow morning.
"Should I Gate us back up?" Vanyel says once he notices himself yawning.
Vanyel does so.
(It doesn't hurt.)
They start setting up camp for the night.
Mahdi actually is going to show off a little bit and put up both an opaque, lit-on-the-inside bubble of force that maintains a comfortable internal temperature, and, inside it, a sturdy wood cottage with a door, two shuttered windows, eight beds, a table with eight chairs, and a fireplace.
There are appropriate oohs and aahs from the Tayledras, though Moondance has otherwise been very quiet and subdued.
Day four, midmorning.
Leareth sets down his half of the two-way mirror and sighs, letting his head fall forward into his hands and keeping it there for a moment. Malduoni...isn't entirely convinced, he can tell, but in the end, he agrees that it's Leareth's decision.
They have the interworld Gate. He and Nayoki, with the help of an entire team of scholars back in Velgarth and copious reference to his books and notes in his various libraries, finally cast a miniature demonstration Gate a few minutes ago, after which he immediately excused himself to go contact Malduoni and give him the news.
(Malduoni is a little displeased that Vanyel and the others immediately went back to Velgarth for some sort of Herald coordination there, and still aren't under geas, but at least the travel between Velgarth and Golarion is very tightly restricted now, the communications almost as tightly, and no one in Cheliax should even know Velgarth exists much less know enough about the Heralds to try to scry them.)
Leareth stands, puts away the mirror in a pocket of his tunic, and goes to the door to ring for a servant.
"Is the pharaoh available?"