It rears back, stunned, and a bunch of people with swords jump in to start clobbering it, and one of them grabs him by the arm to drag him to his feet.

OW his head hurts. Are those swords. These people don't look like they're even from the Ibyatok system, was he concussed through an entire jump? Apparently he was concussed through an entire jump. He flicks the safety on, since he's being dragged around, but maintains a tight grip on his raygun.

They yell at him incomprehensibly and then are distracted by another massive horned acid-spitting thing crashing through the wall - it's some kind of force field, actually - behind them, and turn from him to deal with that.

Kyeo is so glad Ibyabek doesn't have wildlife like that! He rubs at his temple a little and then aims at the wildlife to zap that one too. It's big enough he has a really clear shot over their heads.

Their yelling is still incomprehensible but it sounds appreciative, now. 

When both beasts are down there's a lull and someone takes off at a run towards him, and starts demonstratively tugging him towards a - stone fortress, it looks like - that's not too far behind them. There are people on its walls with longbows.

The weapons here don't make any sense. Even if they don't have reliable electricity here or are having problems paying their bills they should fall back on slugthrowers, not arrows. He goes where he is tugged, safety back on, trying not to moan out loud about the headache.

Incomprehensible conversation! And then, suddenly, comprehensible conversation. 

"Hey. Where're you from? Also what is that."

She speaks startlingly good Ibyabekan, wow. "I'm from the Five Virtues of Ibyabek, we must have crashed, and it's my sidearm."

"Is that a ...ship? We didn't see anything crash - does it have some number of charges per day or what -"

"Yes, it's a ship. A big cruiser. I recharge the gun off the ship's reactor."

"I don't know what that is. And this front is several hundred miles from the ocean."

Oh dear. Did these people just... colonize this planet a hundred years ago and immediately lose all their technology somehow... and forget what a spaceship is... "A space ship."

" - like in Numeria? You don't look Numerian but I guess someone can run you down there tomorrow, probably, or sometime this week - are you injured, we're allowed to go to Abadar's clerics for healing if we don't talk to them."

Oh, okay, this is some kind of - intraplanetary fragmentation situation, where Numeria still has technology and everyone else is resisting Numerian authority and has to fight off the acid-spitting megafauna with bows and swords. He doesn't know what an Abadar's cleric is but this doesn't seem like the time, considering he's concussed probably. "I think I hit my head."

"Well, I can walk you down there. Do you have money on hand for it."

"...Ibyabek doesn't use money. The ship might have some for - bribing other ships or something, I don't know, but if you didn't even see it crash I'm not sure how to find it."

"I can spot you if you let me look at the side-arm. Ibyabek doesn't use money? At all? Do you barter everything?"

"No, it's all distributed to the people by the state - do you just mean look at it or handle it, you haven't been trained to handle it."

"Nah, I just want to look at it, I'm a weapons enchanter, I like learning how different places put weapons together. Does it take a lot of training?" Out of this building and along a dirt path to a different building, where she switches languages to say something reassuring to the people at the door.

"It's not hard to use but it's hard to be careful enough with."

They walk into a big circular room, thirty feet in diameter, with a man in robes at the center and a dozen other people in various reaches of the room. She walks up to the center and puts some coins in a box and walks away without speaking to the man there. 

"Do you know if it can be recharged with spells?" 

"I am... pretty sure... that it cannot be recharged with spells." Wow, he's glad their revolution covered the whole planet and no Ibyabekans have fallen into superstitious barbarism.

"Too bad. Healing's in ten minutes, going off the clock, sometimes they're early or late but I'm not allowed to ask."

"...what do you mean, healing's in ten minutes?"

"Uh, I paid for healing for you and in ten minutes it will happen and then we can leave and go back to our barracks and workroom."

This is probably just confusing because Kyeo has a concussion. Or she doesn't know the vocabulary for "doctor" and stuff like that in Ibyabekan. "Okay."

Four minutes pass and then an armored man staggers into the room with a horrifying, definitely-shouldn't-be-survivable gouge running from his shoulder down across his torso and taking a chunk out of his leg. The instant he's in the room the man in the center of it chants something and then -

The armored man stands up, totally uninjured. His armor is still shredded. He walks without a limp towards the center of the room and leaves some coin. 

Kyeo's concussion is gone. 

"Right, let's get out of here."

Kyeo does not get out of there. He stares at the cleric and the guy with the shredded armor, speechless.

"It's neat but you gotta be Neutral for it and so does your god. Come on, it's not decent to linger here."

"I'm confused."

"Mmm?" She starts walking.

He follows her. "What just happened?"

"We're at the Worldwound. It's a big tear to the Abyss and demons pour through it trying to devour everything. There are magic protections holding them back, but some of them get through. All the Lawful churches and countries have people here to fight them. Neutral clerics - and Good ones, I guess - can channel positive energy, for healing, fifteen foot radius, so they build rooms like those, and you go pay to hang out in them until the next time the cleric does a channel, which is usually on the half-hour but he did it early because that guy was not going to live five more minutes."

Kyeo has been captured by hostile parties and they have given him SO MANY DRUGS, that's what's going on. He is high on painkillers and who knows what else and they are talking nonsense to see if he does something stupid.

She relaxes when they get back to the other building. "Can I see the sidearm now?"

He should probably... shoot her? Actually, no, he probably shouldn't shoot anyone while he's high, he has no idea what's going on. He makes sure the safety is on and draws it for her to look at because if they've got him captured it is unlikely they couldn't just take it.

She examines it quietly for a minute, with Detect Magic up even though it seems not to be magic. Identifies the metals. Admires the really clean precise make. "I've never seen one of these before. I guess if they can only recharge on their ship that makes sense."

There are reactors on the planet too. Perhaps he shouldn't tell her that in case that is somehow sensitive information in a way he can't determine right now because he hit his head. Probably he shouldn't say anything but name-rank-serial.

"I've got like twenty minutes of Tongues left," she says when she's done studying it. "I can give you Taldane in the morning but not right now, so if you have other questions you should ask them now. If you go shoot some more demons I'm sure people will feed you."

Welp he's going to starve after he runs out of charge in another thirty-three shots, then, isn't he, if that's how they've decided to kill him. He should get it over with, the first few days of going without food are the worst ones. Or maybe he should go shoot wildlife a bunch first? So they can't use the gun on his crewmates, wherever they are? He doesn't really have a procedure memorized for being captured by people pretending they can do magic.

She's now looking at him with some concern. "And you could go to the paladins after that, if you wanted, I think they can't let anyone starve who is in their field of vision or something like that."

Is he supposed to know what a paladin is. What is the point of this entire operation. He's still a cadet, for crying out loud, what do they think he knows?

"...do they not have divine casters, in Numeria."

"Ibyabek," he corrects, which is written on his uniform and not really secret information even if it isn't name-rank-serial.

"Huh. Okay. And you're not allowed outside worship?"

Why is he on Pretend Superstitious Barbarians Planet. What a stupid planet. Maybe if he just actually volunteers his name-rank-serial she will get the picture. "My name is Kyeo Sebe Luk, star cadet, 01992350."

"My name is Carissa Sevar, weapons enchanter with Her Majesty's Seventh. Ibyabek has...a million soldiers?"

More than that, some of the serial numbers have more digits. He doesn't say that.

She boggles at that for a second but probably Cheliax could field a million soldiers, even more, if it conscripted everyone between sixteen and thirty-five. It'd be short-sighted but they could do it.

Probably this is the part where they torture him and that's going to suck. It may actually suck more if they use weird barbarian torture methods instead of something modern like electric shocks. Oh, it's that thing where the world feels like it's ending. At least it is not distracting him from anything he was trying to do.

" - are you not supposed to talk to people with another god at all, is that what this is -"

He is not on enough drugs to be hallucinating gods.

"Fine. Whatever. I'm going to stick you in the men's barracks and give you Taldane in the morning and ask around about a ride back to Ibyabek for you." Though she's not actually sure that the place he's from is one she's heard of. It might be somewhere in Tian Xia.

She reaches for the stun gun.

He holsters it. He's pretty surrounded but that doesn't mean he's going to LET her.

Well she feels that she deserves compensation for all of this trouble she's going to but she's not going to wrestle a fighter for it. "Okay. We can talk more in the morning." When she can have Charm Person prepared. "Barracks are this way."

Fine, he will go to their "barracks". What is the POINT of all this though.

There's someone there. 

"This guy has a very impressive weapon and is from some place I've never heard of, I assume a teleportation accident though he doesn't remember 'cause he hit his head, he's maybe not allowed to talk to followers of foreign gods, keep him out of trouble, okay?"

       "What're you - doing with him -"

"I want to figure out the weapon. And learn about Tian Xia. That's my assignment, here, learn about faraway places. And if they're not allowed to talk to followers of foreign gods we're not going to have many opportunities."

       "Sure."

She waves cheerfully at Kyeo and leaves as Tongues wears off.

Kyeo doesn't understand this conversation, of course. He looks for an unoccupied bunk.

There are some of those.

He sits on one.

People look at him curiously as they come in but none of them bother him. Eventually the sun goes down. As they do not have electric lighting, it's dark when that happens, aside from a gas lantern someone has and some glowing orbs someone else has.

He doesn't like these drugs.

He pulls the holster around so it's under him while he lies down, and sleeps.

She comes to tap him with Share Language in the morning. She hates being in the men's barracks so she tries to tug him out, after that. "Hey, come get breakfast."

THESE ARE SUCH WEIRD DRUGS.

He will follow her to breakfast, fully expecting it to be some kind of stupid prank where actually breakfast costs money or something.

Breakfast does not cost money but it is not the highest quality of breakfasts because all the important people have rings of sustenance and many of the rest can Prestidigitate it tastier. There is oatmeal, and jerky.

Wow, jerky. He will eat it if they give it to him, though he's prepared for there to be some sort of unpleasantness where they kick him in the stomach later, that's the sort of thing that probably comes up sometimes. They already obviously have some way to deliver substances so this doesn't change much.

She casts Charm Person while his back is turned. "So," she says. "I know we scared you yesterday. The Worldwound's not the safest place but no one has it out for you in particular."

"The Worldwound?" ...that's a question, not a statement, it's probably fine.

"The place where you landed. Where the demons attack from."

"That's what the dangerous animals are called, demons?"

"Yeah. They're not all animals, some of 'em are intelligent. They're all chaotic and trying to devour everything, though."

"This planet has intelligent alien life??"

"...yes. Does Ibyabek not?"

"Nowhere does! Unless this place has been keeping it secret for however long the place has been inhabited!"

"The Worldwound is not a secret, people from all over the world come here to fight."

"Since when?"

"Uh, since 4607."

Kyeo mentally converts that into Ibyabekan years. "It isn't 4607 yet."

"That's, uh, Absalom Reckoning. It's sixty-eight years since the Thrune Ascendency? It's, uh, eight thousand since the Age of Darkness."

"I don't know how long an Absalom year is. In Earth Standard Years it's 2152."

"I don't know what those are. Also haven't heard of Ibyabek but you look Tian so I figured it was somewhere there."

"It's the second planet in the Ibyatok system, which used to be called the Sohaitok system."

"You're from another planet?"

"I told you! I'm from Ibyabek! It's a planet."

"I didn't know it was a planet! Okay, that's your problem, now you are on Golarion, which is a different planet."

"I've never heard of Golarion. Is it a Kularan planet, or - Xeren, or - where is it, who does it belong to?"

"...lots of people claim different bits of it. It doesn't belong to other planets."

"Okay. But where is it?"

"I don't think I know enough to answer that for someone who knows of lots of multiplanet empires. I know our sun has eleven worlds."

"That doesn't really help, I don't know how many planets the suns I didn't think were colonized have. Sol, Earth's sun, has eight... how long ago was Golarion settled?"

"A really long time ago? We think human civilizations are at least ten thousand years old and some other species were around before us, I think."

"- ten thousand years ago humans hadn't invented agriculture! Did - some spacefaring aliens - kidnap your ancestors and put you here -"

"Maybe? I think we in fact hadn't invented agriculture, back then."

"Okay. Well, that's - interesting - what are the kinds of aliens? The, uh, various civilizations descended from Earth as a spacefaring planet in its own right, haven't found any intelligent life on other planets yet."

"Man. Uh, there's elves and orcs and halflings and gnomes and goblins and dwarves and giants and trolls and hags and...titans? and merfolk and bugbears and, uh, tabaxi, there's hybrids of many of those, there's outsiders who are originally from the Outer Planes and elementals that are originally from the Inner Planes and hybrids of most of the kinds of outsider with humans, there's dragons, there's trolls and titans and giants and mind flayers and beholders and algolthulls. And that conceals a lot of - like, dragons are as different from each other as we are from bugbears, there's hundreds of kinds, we just call 'em all dragons and they call us all humanoids."

"That's a lot of aliens - are most of them genetically engineered or something -"

"I don't know what you mean by that."

"Uh, modified from existing animals somehow?"

"Oh. I think yes in some cases but I don't know how."

"I guess that explains it." Sort of.

"Where you're from, lots of people know how to travel between planets? For us that's very hard."

"Did the species that originally put you here... die? Forget?"

"The gods might know. They haven't told us, if so. The great empires died in the Age of Darkness, thousands of years ago, but I don't think they travelled the stars, I feel like we'd have heard about that."

The gods are probably just powerful aliens or something. Who forgot how to build spaceships. That's still weird. "Okay."

"If you know, we would be very eager to learn."

"I've worked on building spaceships but I don't know how to do it from scratch." Also maybe he's not supposed to? But since he doesn't know how he doesn't have to explain that to this nice lady.

"Well, if you know bits and pieces maybe people can work from those. In Hell, if not here."

"In Hell?"

"Uh, our gods have realms they control directly, not in this plane but in other ones, and Hell is a very prosperous and powerful one. Do you know of it on your planets?"

"No, I don't know where any of these planets are."

"Hell is technically a plane not a planet. The difference is that no amount of travel would get you there. We go there when we die, but I don't think people from where you are go there when they die or I'd have heard about that."

"That sounds... imaginary," he tells her, though he's not sure it's really kinder to tell her than to let her go on believing that.

"I am not sure what you mean by that. Planes sound imaginary? Specifically Hell?"

"Planes sound fairly imaginary but mostly going somewhere when you die."

"Do you just not go anywhere when you die? You...all turn into ghosts?"

"Ghosts are also imaginary."

"Then...what happens to your soul when you die. Does it just - immediately get eaten or something."

"...Souls are imaginary."

"...okay, then how does resurrecting people without a body work, and why, if you've cast Trap the Soul on them, is it impossible to resurrect them until you've smashed the gem that you in the conventional parlace 'trapped their soul' in."

"I do not think I am on enough drugs to be convinced that you can resurrect people."

"- right, sorry, I forgot you don't have divine casters - you can actually do it with a Wish too but I don't know that people would've been confident they had a safe wording, if there were no divine magic - you are not on any drugs, I don't think, and I don't see how that'd cause me to be claiming to you that we can resurrect people while you disbelieve me, drugs don't do that."

"Magic is imaginary."

She does some dancing lights. 

"I don't know how you did that but I'm still pretty sure it wasn't magic."

"Wanna go watch people fight demons?"

"I had a concussion last time but I remember swords."

"The fighters use swords and the wizards cast fireballs or blind people or whatever but they mostly save them for when they'll do the most, since you can do swords all day and you can't do fireballs all day."

This is all extremely imaginary and he has no idea what the point is! Are... Numerians with high tech... infiltrating the superstitious barbarians... with technology they're passing off as magic... to keep the demon population down, or spy on people or...

She Detects Thoughts when he doesn't say anything but it's not very illustrative. "Is there something that would convince you that there was magic."

"I never really thought about that before."

"I guess you can be skeptical about magic if you want to. How do people sail their space ships without magic?"

Uhhh what's common knowledge that it won't be a huge betrayal to say. "They need a lot of electrical generation capacity, same as what charges the gun, and in-system propulsion is different from what jumps between stars -" And he can explain in the loosest possible terms what the deal is there.

"Electrical generation? Do you know how that works?"

"There are a lot of ways to do it. I don't know how to build a modern reactor from scratch."

"Well. Maybe the crown will fund an expedition to Ibyabek to learn."

"How would you get there without a ship?"

Sigh. "With magic."

Well, he got here somehow. He has no idea how though.

"Are there things your world has invented that mine has not that you do know from scratch? Even if they're things that are trivial to your people they might be very impressive here."

"I... know how to make bricks?"

"That one I think we know."

"Modern technology is more complicated than bricks."

"Cheliax is the greatest country in the world and we have the most people in - jobs that require you to be very smart - and if anyone can figure it out I bet we can."

"I'm not an engineer, though." And even if he were he wouldn't go around telling strange planets behold to alien genetic engineers how to build spaceships.

"What do engineers study?"

"...engineering. Physics and materials science, I suppose."

And probably he wasn't tracked for those. "Okay. I guess we can put it together ourselves, or go there and see it and learn from your people."

"I would appreciate the ride home if the... magic... works that way." Assuming being ?drugged? by aliens isn't the sort of thing you have to go to the hospital about but it's never come up and there's no sense borrowing trouble expecting it.

"If they can do it with a Gate it'll be open for a couple minutes and if it takes an Interplanetary Teleport they'll probably do enough of them you can arrange to be on one of them. I think. Needs of the Crown first, of course."

"That makes sense."

"Do you have questions about this place?"

Lots. "Some. I remember you mentioned 'paladins'?"

"Yes. They are - soldier orders. Specifically Lawful Good ones, if you're Lawful but not Good you become a Hellknight instead."

"...if you're lawful but not good?"

"The gods see things in terms of Law and Chaos and Good and Evil. They're - the fundamental kinds of choice that there are, I think. Law is about order and keeping your promises and doing your duty. Chaos is about doing whatever you feel like and not having responsibilities. Evil is about having goals and being willing to achieve your goals even if there's a cost. Good is about - doing things narrowly and properly and very carefully and never stepping off that path. You get different afterlives, depending."

He is about to comment that this sounds very weird in Ibyabekan, which is when he notices that he has not been speaking Ibyabekan all day. Which, now that he thinks of it, she totally told him, but he ignored her because magic is imaginary, except he is pretty sure drugs cannot make you speak entire languages suddenly? That's very strange. He thinks he's... lawful... good...? except these seem to be made-up categories. That were in fact by her own admission literally invented by aliens! So categorizing himself is a silly impulse.

"When you're powerful enough, people can read it off you, and so it's useful for knowing what people are about. Most people don't know for sure until they die, though."

That part still sounds very fake, magic is one (very big) thing but souls and an afterlife is obvious nonsense, but he isn't going to harp on it. "All right."

She waits to see if he comes up with more questions.

"Is going to the paladins the best way to eat while I'm here? My gun will not last through a lot of fights without recharging."

"No. I think it serves Cheliax to keep this a secret from the paladins, for now, so we'll feed you. Out of my stipend, until I have enough to convince someone important."

"Why a secret?"

"We are allied to fight the Worldwound but we don't agree on much else."

"And the thing that's wrong with them is that they are 'good'. - how does this, uh, language magic work. On Ibyabek we think being good is good."

"Yeah, they do well on the propaganda front. Being Good is really really hard and people can only do it if they spend practically everything trying to do that and not doing anything else."

"We don't have any aliens around trying to convince us that we should do alien things."

Well. 

"The gods are - they care about better stuff than humans do. They're bigger, deeper, there's more to them, they can see farther, it's kind of like how we'd feel about people who could never want anything that wasn't going to happen in the next five seconds. Or like how we feel about, I don't know, cows. That's not to say none of the gods care about things that I don't think people should bother with. Many of them do. But - it's a mistake to decide you'll just do people stuff and ignore the gods, you'll be ignoring almost everything important."

That is sure a very emphatic recommendation for completely replacing all his values with those of some aliens he has just now heard of who can't even control their planet's megafauna problem. "Cows. I see," he replies blandly.

"Some people go for ants." Sigh. "I guess if you just dissolve when you die you should be focused on immortality and not on religion. Or are your people immortal already, does the future learn how to do that?"

"No, we don't have that. We live longer than we did when we used swords, though."

"Some people are immortal but it's very hard, is my understanding, and some forms of it might require having a soul, though I don't know how you'd check if you've got one."

"It's very hard?"

"To become immortal. - it's what I'd be focusing on, if I were going to just die forever at some point."

"What do you mean by it being very hard?"

" - you have to be a very powerful ...inventor and very good at research."

"Why can't... just one person be very good at research?"

"I don't think the gods would let someone invent a general version of immortality. They want us to die since this world is kind of mostly a sorting mechanism for them to allocate souls across the afterlives and it wouldn't be a very good sorting mechanism if everyone got to stick around."

Kyeo isn't sure people are in fact supposed to be immortal, philosophically speaking, but if they aren't he is pretty sure it's not because the entire point of being alive is to let an alien put you in a box, because that's stupid.

Kyeo sure thinks that most features of reality are fake or stupid. She wonders if people from atheist countries are always like this. "Can you tell me more about planet-empires? How are they administered? How hard is it to travel between planets?"

"It's not very hard within a system. A ship that can jump is more complicated, and it takes days to get between systems depending on how far apart they are."

"Only days? To go by ship between entire worlds? That's - faster than we can go from one city to another by sea -"

Well, yes, they have... swords, which probably means no airplanes or helicopters. "Yes. It takes about eighteen hours to go between Ibyabek and the other inhabited planet in our system, about a week to get to the nearest other inhabited system. Though that's after you've already gotten into orbit above the planet, in the first case, and out of the way of the planets, in the second, both of which steps add travel time."

"Do you know anything about how your people go so fast?"

"Not much, I'm not an engineer," and Ibyabek does not have an alliance with this planet. "I could do some limited emergency repairs on the Five Virtues if a common engine problem happened but that doesn't tell me how to build it."

She is not exactly trained in getting people to desert but it seems probably possible, when they're entirely stranded. "Are the engines made of stone? Metal?"

"Mostly metal and some weird stuff but I don't think any of it is rock."

Nod. "Ibyabek must be a really wonderful place."

"It is! Best in the galaxy."

Oh good, an angle. "What makes it better than other places in the galaxy?"

"The others so far as I know all still make people pay for things, even things they need to live. Their people are weaker and softer and decadent, and they have gender roles that won't produce a strong next generation."

"What gender roles produce a strong next generation."

"Well, so far we don't know how to make babies grow outside of women, so they mostly need to be focusing on that and not being careerist or frivolous instead. Can magic do that? I think it might be good if magic could do that."

"Magic cannot do that but it doesn't require, uh, focusing on? It doesn't even benefit from it. The babies will kind of grow no matter what else you are doing with your life."

"Well, if you can think of a way to have a career in nine months that you spend feeling sick I guess that's fine but I'm not a philosopher."

"Do you have the women immediately get pregnant again once they're done? I guess filling a whole planet with people would take a lot of work."

"I'm not married but my understanding is it doesn't always happen right away? They have to be ready for it, though."

"So they can't have any careers ever in case at some point they get pregnant and turn out to be one of the people who is too sick to do things while pregnant?"

"Something like that, I assume the girls' schools have more detail but I obviously didn't go to one."

"Mmm. Some countries here do things that way but Cheliax doesn't. Obviously."

"I noticed."

And if they have to in order to make things work with Ibyabek that would be awful and maybe she doesn't care to tell people about Ibyabek after all. "You might like Osirion or Qadira, though. Women don't have any rights at all there. They can't own property and they don't get custody of their children and their husbands are allowed to beat them and I can't imagine they have the slightest problem with anyone being careerist."

"I wasn't trying to be rude." She asked! What was he supposed to tell her? He doesn't know what kinds of lies fly well with magic women who worship aliens!

"I'm not upset that you said so I'm upset that apparently even in places that have starships and can go anywhere in days people still think - that it's wasteful if someone could be available to a man to impregnate and isn't, but not wasteful if people spend their whole lives appeasing whoever they happened to get glued to and throwing up a lot."

Kyeo doesn't see what having starships has to do with gender??

She does not explain herself since this would involve admitting she's reading his mind. 

Well. If she's content to leave it at that Kyeo doesn't want to, like, hurt her feelings or anything. He's very good at being quiet.

"...say more about the not having to buy things? Presumably everyone doesn't just get whatever they want?"

"...well, not if they want, uh, statues of themselves or something stupid, but food and medical care and water and electricity and things like that."

"Huh. That's cool. How do you have enough you can do that?"

"Well, first electricity had to be invented. Now the people whose jobs it is to produce all those things... do their jobs."

"What part does electricity have in things?"

"Ibyabek's a warm planet so in the summer we need to keep buildings cool, and it also does lighting and charges things like - communication devices, and stuff."

"Does it make making things more efficient?"

"Yes, factories use it too."

"Factories?"

"Buildings where things are made, like - shoes."

"Why would you make all the shoes in one building instead of at home?"

"Most people aren't any good at making shoes! I haven't specifically spent any time in a shoe factory but most things are easier to make a lot of if you do them in batches."

"Huh. I wonder if that's related to why it's a problem for women to do things, I think a lot more women can sit in their own house making shoes while pregnant than go to a entire other building to do it."

"I don't know."

"Who is in charge of Ibyabek?"

"Glorious Leader Lut Naar Am."

"Is Glorious Leader Lut Naar Am - an inherited position? Chosen by, uh, not by gods, by ....fate? Chosen by a council?"

"He's the son of the previous Glorious Leader who led Ibyabek to independence."

"independence from who?"

"Sohaibek."

"What happened?"

"Uh, Pheon Naar Am was a philosopher and he saw that the way the people of Sohaibek lived and were governed was bad for them, and he convinced the people of what was then Inner Sohaibek to join together and resist the unjust government, and succeeded, but on Outer Sohaibek right philosophy didn't make it to enough people and they started a war, and Old Sohaibek, in between the two, was melted in their crazed attempt to prevent the Glorious Leader's ideas from taking hold there, but we were able to fight them off in the end and keep Ibyabek as it is now."

"The whole planet was ...melted? You can do that?"

"Yes. Well, I think probably some islands would still be habitable."

"Wow."

"It was a very bad war, one of the only times a planet has been melted in anger."

Nod. "I'm - sorry. I can't even imagine. The government that did this, are they still in power?"

"Yes, Outer Sohaibek's government has continuity with that one. Though they change leaders every few years."

Nod. "What other places are there? What's the biggest empire?"

"United Kular has the most planets but I think Xeren has a larger population."

"How many people is that?"

"Xeren? I've heard twenty billion. It's probably rounded and they have probably grown since then."

"...wow. And they all just. When they die, they just don't go anywhere because there aren't local gods to catch them?"

"There is as far as I know no afterlife."

"Maybe if we find them or vice versa the gods will be able to set up shop."

"Maybe." He has no idea what to think of that but fortunately she did not ask.

She feels like she is going to need to give a better pitch for Asmodeus but she's not sure what people who have entire planets care about. "What sort of things have been recently invented in Ibyabek?"

"Uh, why do you ask? I'm not an inventor, I wouldn't be able to explain any of it."

"No, no, I understand that, I'll stop bothering you about how to make things, probably our government will seek guidance from yours - I was just wondering, uh, what some of the most valuable things you do are, and for us inventing new magic is one of the most valuable things."

"Well, there isn't any magic. There are cars and helicopters and things. And spaceships. And the machinery in factories, and lights, and plumbing. I assume the engineers improve those sometimes."

Maybe eventually you have invented everything there is to invent and it's just tinkering. "What's a helicopter?"

"In-atmosphere flying machine. It has spinning rotors on top of it and they carry it in the air."

"Huh. Cool. Do people fly all around, the whole planet..."

"Sure, when they have something to do on the other side of it."

"That's so neat. What places have you been to."

"The best school was in the same city I grew up in - my father's fairly important, works in the capital - so I was mostly there, planetside, but military training was in another city about a thousand miles away and then I went into space."

"What's space like."

"There's no gravity except in the parts of the ship where the ship makes it. The view of the stars is very good. The ship has to be very sturdy to keep all the air in, and you need a spacesuit to go out of it, so we usually don't."

"Do you like it?"

What a weird question. "Of course."

She is feeling as if she's very incompetent at talking to this person which isn't usually how she feels. "Do you have questions -"

"I - suppose I need to know how money works? And how to get some." Since this planet is too primitive to have given it up.

"It's - coin, or paper, issued by the state, you're not allowed to make your own. You get it by working, you have to spend it for food or housing, though not at the Worldwound, when you're an active duty soldier you get fed and housed on base usually. But if, say, you come back to Corentyn with us when this shift is up," he doesn't have a reason to do that but she doesn't want to let this float into more important hands just yet, "you'd pay for a house, and for servants or slaves if you want those, and for food and drink, and then you want some savings for magic healing if anything happens to you, and some savings for new clothes. You pay by giving the coins or paper in the right quantity to the person who owns the house or the food, and then it's yours. There's ten copper in a silver and ten silver in a gold, which is called a gold but we mostly have bills, now." She shows them from her purse. "If you want things as fancy as you're accustomed to it'll be a lot of money probably since we haven't invented all those things you mentioned."

They have slaves? That's fucked up. Maybe the slaves will have a revolution soon or something? That is probably hard when the slaveowners have magic but it is probably also hard when the ruling class has all the guns and the liberators of Ibyabek managed. "Working on what?"

"Uh, whatever you expect people will pay you for? I'm an arms and armor enchanter, but people do all kinds of things."

"...I have been trained to serve on a military spaceship," he points out.

"Yeah, for you you'll just go to the government and I can give you a stipend in the meantime while we figure out, uh, the right part of the government to go to."

"You don't need your money?"

"I am a wizard, I have lots of money, I can do a stipend that will only slow down my headband savings by a month and that should be comfy unless you have very expensive tastes. Which I guess you might, we have very expensive tastes by the standards of hunter-gatherers."

"They don't let us get too pampered in the military but I don't know what you might be missing."

"Well, if you're willing to live like this you'll be able to save lots of money."

"If you say so." It's a little like being told that if he never sings - not that he can anymore - he'll be able to save a lot of oxygen. You have to fix the air recycler if you have this problem, not take shallow breaths. But he doesn't know how the revolutionaries pulled it off besides that it required a revolution.

Eventually Tongues wears off and she gives him fluency in Taldane and lets him wander off so she can make magic items.

He doesn't wander very far, but he paces out the area of the Chelish section of the Worldwound defenses, looking at this and that, sidearm ready should wildlife attempt to trouble him.

The horrifying creatures seem to burst through the force-field a couple of times an hour; the teams stationed nearby fire on them when they do.

...he will wander up to a team and ask if he should be helping. He doesn't really know what to do with himself; he is used to being more scheduled.

Yeah, definitely, he...doesn't look like he does melee, is he a spellcaster?

"No, but I have this." He pats his sidearm.

Huh, fancy. He can be with Luis and Consuela and Aspex on the east side, the adventurers they were hanging with left town.

He goes with Luis and Consuela and Aspex and stands at the ready.

Fourteen-legged acid-breathing horned thing bulldozes through the forcefield!

Oh yikes that's big. Zap zap.

One of his new companions, who is shooting a longbow, whistles. "Where'd you buy that? How much is it?"

Another one fireballs the creature, which rears up angrily on the back four legs.

"Didn't buy it -" ZAP. "- issued in the Ibyabekan military."

" - and they don't sell them? Damn, that's a brilliant way to get your adventurers to stick out a term." He lifts the creature about a foot off the ground; its many feet scrabble for purchase.

"Things on Ibyabek aren't sold." Zap zap. "We've advanced beyond the need for money."

" - what, do you not have magic item shops?"

"No." How many zaps does this thing require?? He's going to run out of charge before bedtime at this rate.

It stops moving a couple of zaps later; Luis charges in and decapitates it and then they can move on. "That sucks," says the wizard sympathetically. "I assume you're allowed to keep things you bought elsewhere?"

"It's never come up, this is my first time on another planet."

" - it's on another planet?" The wizard whistles, and then fireballs a flying worm thing. "Do they do trade with other worlds, could Cheliax buy those?"

"There's some trade, yes, but I have no idea where this is relative to Ibyatok." Is the worm thing dead or should he help.

Worm thing is shot in the eye, falls out of the sky, and splatters. "What gods do they worship in Ibyatok?"

"We don't." Why are these people so obsessed with gods? Were old-timey people normally this obsessed with gods and old-timey movies just don't mention it because it would be distracting?

"What, none of them? No money and no gods...what do you do all day."

"I am in the military and serve on a spaceship. I'm not actually sure how I got here."

"Sure, but off shift."

"People - sing and chat and play games and watch movies - you probably don't have movies - how does having money and gods occupy your time off shift?"

"Uh, you can go out drinking, or hire a girl, or read an adventure novel, and you're supposed to attend religious services and festivals and so on."

"We have novels and occasionally festivals but not religious festivals. I have seen people drink occasionally but it's not a popular vice. Respectable men get married."

"One of those places, huh. I guess if it suits you."

They talk only occasionally as they fight demons; they complain about the demons, the weather, their coworkers, the paladin orders, the food. They make plans for how they'll spend their money on leave; nice furniture, slaves, merchant ventures, magic items, in one case a line of racehorses.

It continues to be repulsive that people have slaves.

Kyeo uses up the charges in his gun and retreats to the barracks.

About an hour after that there's a whisper. "Hey. - don't make a big fuss about hearing this, but you can reply by whispering back, if you want. You're - not Chelish, are you."

...right. Magic. Kyeo will never get used to magic. "No," he whispers.

"The Chelish are - not good people to listen to. Do you want to get out of here and go somewhere else?"

"Uh, one of them has been paying to feed me," he says dubiously. "I don't have any money."

"We can feed you. And we won't want your soul for it either."

"I don't think I have a soul. - what are you going to want for feeding me -"

"- we feed people if we can because it is wrong for people to go hungry! And we're curious about your world."

Well, that seems better than "you can save money by living like a soldier even when you're at home" as an economic philosophy. "Where would I go?"

"I can come over and take your hand and teleport us out of here."

"I can't shoot the gun any more, it's out of charge. If that matters."

"Probably take it with you anyway so the Chelish don't reengineer it. But it's fine. We'll take care of you."

"Are you paladins? She mentioned paladins."

" - yes. I mean, I am personally a wizard. But I'm with the Order of Folded Steel, which is a paladin order of Iomedae. We fight evil. We...noticed you out there fighting the demons, today."

"They seem like a problem! Uh, okay, I'll go with you if you can - magic me wherever -"

And something takes his hand and then he's somewhere else, in new barracks that look much like the old barracks.

"Got him," someone says triumphantly, and there's a thump and then he's not invisible; he's a man older than Kyeo and of the same ethnicity as the Chelish.

"Hello," says Kyeo.

"Hi," says someone else, armored and also of that ethnicity. "Welcome. I'm Eliar. I'm a paladin of Iomedae - I don't know if you've heard of -"

"He asked," says the wizard. "Of course, I'm sure he got the Chelish version."

"Right. Uh, Cheliax is Evil, and they lie to their people about everything."

"She said something about paladins not letting people starve. If that wasn't meant to be flattering then... it failed."

"Probably it wasn't."

"Some of them do make it out, eventually."

"But probably it wasn't meant to be flattering."

"In Cheliax caring about people is considered a weakness. And - vaguely disloyal, I think."

"What does that have to do with people starving?"

"Well, not letting people starve would be a kind of caring about them, and thus fairly suspicious. - I'm really not an expert on Cheliax, mind. We're not allowed to evangelize to them and they're not allowed to talk to us and we'll be killed if we actually go there, so."

"...I see." He doesn't.

"Why don't you sit down, I'll get us dinner," the wizard says, and leaves.

"How did you get here?" Eliar says. "Were you, uh, aiming to go here?"

"I don't know. I hit my head and don't remember the circumstances. I didn't know this planet existed and my ship was not exploratory."

"I'm so sorry. Have you done a Sending back to your ship, to let them know you're here?"

"I don't know what that is. Is it magic?"

"Yes. It's a spell that sends a message, even over a great distance."

"I haven't tried it. Maybe if the ship is still intact somewhere they'd be able to pick me up."

"Kalidae!" he shouts into one of the adjoining rooms.

"Yeah?"

"Do you have a Sending?"

"Yeah."

"The traveller from another world needs to contact his army."

"Sure. What do you want to say? And to who?"

"Uh, I need to tell Captain Hwan Neul Ryung that I, Star Cadet Kyeo Sebe Luk, am alive, and where I am. - in terms that would make sense viewing the planet from space, like, the Nth biggest continent so many miles from which coast. Also this needs to be in Ibyabekan unless the message magic also does translation."

"Oh. It doesn't. Uh, you can say exactly what to say and I can repeat after you?"

"You may want to practice first, to make sure your pronunciation is all right, and you'll... have to tell me where this is, since I don't know."

"This is the Worldwound. It should be very visible from space. There's a planar portal to the Abyss. We're on the northern end."

Kyeo experiments with attempting to speak Ibyabekan around the magic; it turns out he can do that okay. "Captain, Star Cadet Kyeo Sebe Luk reporting by proxy via ostensible magic, alive and whole, at the north end of a visible planar portal, 'the Worldwound'. I await pickup or orders."

"It's a bit too long, can you trim out four words -"

"Uh. Kyeo Sebe Luk reporting by ostensibly magic proxy, alive, whole, north of visible planar portal, 'the Worldwound', awaiting pickup or orders."

She repeats it with an air of intense concentration.

"That's understandable," confirms Kyeo.

The captain replies, but is obviously unfamiliar with Sendings. "Who is this - does this have to do with - who do you report to, what planet - stand by while I go and get, ah, someone -" and then he's cut off.

"I didn't understand that, did you?" says the wizard.

"Yes. Well - he sounds confused and doesn't want to tell you anything in case you work for Ibyabek's enemies, I suppose, which makes sense. I - guess I should maybe try again later?"

"You should probably try a scry, so you can sustain a longer conversation. That one takes an hour to do, though."

"I don't know... anything about magic, so you may have to explain a little more what it would do."

"Right. A scry is a spell that lets you look at a target over a great distance. Sometimes you can do simple magic through the scry, in which case you can talk to them. It lets you talk for significantly longer than Sending, so it's probably the best way to get in touch with your ship. However, it has a long casting time; if I start now I'll be done in an hour. It might make sense to talk for ten minutes first. It's up to you, though."

"The reply didn't sound like he'd be ready in ten minutes."

"No, I mean, it might make sense to talk for ten minutes about magic and what you're doing here and what Ibyabek is like, before I start a spell that takes an hour. In case we think of some other plan that makes more sense. Your world doesn't have magic at all?"

"Right."

"Do you know how you got here?"

"No. I hit my head at some point."

Sympathetic nod. "What's Ibyabek like?"

"It's the second planet in the Ibyatok system. It's governed by Glorious Leader Lut Naar Am."

"Wow. Is it mostly humans?"

"It's all humans. Humans evolved on a planet called Earth and colonized the galaxy from there. I have no idea where you came from."

"...I guess probably Earth if that's where all the other humans in the galaxy come from? How do you know that? How long ago was it?"

"Humans first left Earth hundreds but not thousands of years ago."

"...then that doesn't explain anything, we've been here much longer than that. What is Ibyabek like? What are your gods?"

Why does everyone expect Ibyabek to have gods?? "We don't have gods."

"....what, none of them? Huh. Okay. What's that like - that's not a very helpful question? Who organizes, uh, courts, and aid to the poor, and banks, and orphanages and so on?"

"The state handles that class of thing except we don't need banks and don't have poor people, having progressed beyond the use of money."

"- you ...don't have poor people?"

"...no, because we don't use money." Kyeo is pretty sure that poor people are people who have less money than everyone else, so.

"But do you have, uh, people who are hungry sometimes, people who are sick and can't get a healer to come heal them because they don't have anything to trade in exchange, people whose house is too small for all of them to live in..."

"Nobody has to pay for food or medicine," Kyeo says. "Although we don't have any magic healing. I think people's houses are generally the right size."

"I guess most people could just grow their own food," she says, but she sounds slightly confused. "Are there not cities or armies? Is everyone a farmer?"

"There are cities and armies and we don't all grow our own food," he says. "I'm in the military."

"How do the people in the cities get food? Do they trade city goods for it?"

"No. People on less civilized planets have to make exchanges to get things they need but on Ibyabek they don't. The farmers grow food, and the truckers bring it to the city, and then everyone gets food, because otherwise people might starve. The farmers do also get things that are made in cities when they need them but it's not a purchase."

"Huh, okay. Will they give our starving people food, once we can contact them?"

"I think maybe you'd have to become part of Ibyabek? Or the starving people could move to Ibyabek."

"What would becoming part of Ibyabek work like?"

"I don't know, we've never had an annexation on another planet before."

"Which gods do you permit the worship of? ...I guess if you don't have any maybe you've had no reason to figure that out -"

"Who does your military fight?"

"How would they end hunger, if we joined..."

"We have to defend our part of the solar system against various bad actors. I don't know the logistics they'd need to do to get another place up to Ibyabekan standards."

"Right but just - in general, what kinds of things would they be doing, do they have... crops that grow better?"

"I don't know how much magic is helping yours but there have been improvements over time relative to the last time any Earth-extracted human used a sword."

"Do we ...have to join Ibyabek for them to teach us those?"

"I don't know. Probably not, there are planets we trade with that aren't part of the Ibyabekan state."

Nod. "The Chelish people who captured you. What were they interested in?"

"The sidearm and spaceships."

They exchange grim nods. "What did you tell them about that?"

"I don't know much, I'm not an engineer. She looked at the sidearm but didn't touch it."

"Just one person? The one who found you?"

"I exchanged words with other people but not as many."

"How long has it been since you arrived -"

"I landed yesterday."