Will they have mindreaders? Leerans can do that, right? Do amulets of Nondetection work on Leerans? Presumably her hair will not. Is there anything she should keep in mind about what to be thinking about? Is it dangerous for her to mindread them? She knows how to extend spells now and can by burning pearls of power and using all her third-level spell slots do it for two hours a day. She should really make an item so she has it ongoingly, which would also make it slightly less of a hostile move to read them. What will they want done with her while he's in the Pool. 

Leerans can mindread but only at a range of a couple of yards and they look like this, pretty distinctive, and Yeerk illusion tech is bulky and he knows where they will and won't have it, so if it's in a place they don't and she has more clearance than that in the room around her, she's almost certainly not being mindread by a Leeran. He doesn't have the faintest idea how Leeran mindreading would interact with magic, he didn't have a chance to test it much while he had morph and he does not, currently, have morph. (He's sad about that although obviously it was not by itself a sufficient reason to hold onto Alloran and he gets along with Carissa so much better.) He doubts it'd be dangerous for her to mindread them? He doesn't know if there'll actually be any Leeran controllers on-site, though, they're aquatic so travel is inconvenient for them. 

She's a voluntary host and so the standard protocol applies, she won't be allowed to leave planetside while he's in the pool but she won't be locked in a cage or anything, on his last trip the Council secret base had a nice room and sitting area for the hosts to wait in and amuse themselves. 

She can teleport but if they are willing to let her stay in the nice room and sitting area she will not, in fact, escape. Without a really good reason that she doesn't at present have, anyway.

She has more fretful questions. Can she read the Council's minds.

Honestly Mhalir is fine with that. He doubts they'd think to ask one of the clerics for truth spells and question her about it, since both sneaky mindreading and truth magic are new to them, and if they do for some reason he can come up with an explanation for it, and he's very curious what they're thinking, it seems useful to know given the stakes of the situation. 

Mhalir is very generous and she appreciates it and remains sort of the slightest bit freaked out by it.

She prepares some extended Detect Thoughts and does it before they go in to meet the Council.

Mhalir has by now prepared a summary of the situation that, without actually literally lying, makes it sound a lot less like he's very incompetent and a lot more like he was planning this the entire time. He explains that Golarion has some extremely powerful alien entities they refer to as 'gods', which can form telepathic relationships with the local humans and give them 'magic', and the gods have goals that sort roughly into these alignments, he's made a chart. Here are the reasons he does not want to ally with Asmodeus, #1, he will want all the Yeerk souls in his extraplanar afterlife and will torture them, can we agree on not that. Here is what he knows about Iomedae and why he expects Her to keep her word and not be biased toward the Andalites over the Yeerks, She wants the Yeerks to stop enslaving people but most Yeerks disprefer involuntary hosts anyway, and She also wants the Andalites to stop murdering people and finds war distasteful in general. She sent some of her people as voluntary hosts and they're willing to rotate with other Yeerks as well so they can check for themselves. 

Carissa takes turns mindreading everybody and doesn't say anything so as not to distract him. She keeps wanting to fidget, probably out of nervousness. She does not try; probably he wouldn't let her but he might feel bad about it and it might freak her out despite being predictable. 

How's the Council taking it?

They have so many questions for Mhalir and there are many different feelings, including suspicion, but none of them are plotting assassinations right now. 

He answers their questions patiently and thoroughly and spends the entire time wishing it would stop already. 

I'm sorry, she thinks at him afterwards. I'm an idiot - there's magic for this - for making politics go well, I mean - I don't know any details but I know it exists and I should've thought of it before we jumped. We can grab it when we go back. There's things for - sensing how people are taking what you're saying and being persuasive and probably other political skills I don't know much about. She still feels very silly for not thinking of it. 

<What, really? How does that work? Surely 'politics' is not a fundamental subdomain of reality and causing it to go well is not easy to specify!> 

I mean, causing you to talk people into doing what you want, whether that's a good idea or not you've still got to figure out by yourself. It's charisma, not intelligence, and I don't wanna swap headbands but we could get an ioun stone for it and maybe once I've gotten good at putting two spells in the same item we can have charisma too. Though she actually tried on a sorcerer's headband, once, at the Worldwound, because she was curious, and it seemed to mostly make her more memorable and attention-getting so she was not a huge fan of it. I think it functions mostly by - you know how sometimes you have a conversation and then an hour later you think of the perfect thing to say? Instead of that you just think of the perfect thing to say.

<...I somewhat dislike the idea of - being more able to talk people into what I want regardless of whether it is a good idea, because apparently I sometimes have bad ideas. I can see why it might be justified in very fraught situations, though, and I do think I have more context on the correct choices here and more time to have thought it through than the Council.> 

I'm not sure you being more persuasive earlier would've hurt either! It might not have helped but I can't think of anything where anyone you were talking to was - better off not listening to you.

<Maybe.> He's so tired and it leaks through in his thoughts to her. It turns out that the world ceasing to make sense and changing his mind about everything he thought he understood repeatedly is exhausting and he hopes that someday it's going to stop. 

She remembers the feeling though she isn't feeling it right now, mostly just paranoia about the politics. Cheliax went through six kings and queens in the last three decades. You have to be really really paranoid to not fuck up at politics. 

She vaguely wants to give Mhalir a hug, which is dumb, he is her. Does technology do really nice hot baths. 

<Oh! Yes, it does.> Mhalir has literally never that he can remember sought out a nice technology-enabled sensory experience - mostly because doing that with Alloran would be entirely swamped by the misery, why would he bother, why try to pretend he's being kind to his involuntary prisoner in any way - but he's suddenly feeling very pleased and proud about showing off local amenities to Carissa. 

Hot baths are great. She is probably richer than the King of Cheliax. She is probably richer than Abadar's god-king in Osirion. ...though apparently he has Andalite buddies so maybe not. Where could he possibly have gotten Andalite buddies.

<I am very confused about that! In hindsight I wonder if the old wizard learned of us because the cleric of Abadar tattled. He might have...read Alloran's mind or something? And then Abadar would know. Are gods here powerful enough to go find aliens if they want to?>

She's not sure! Gods can do lots of things but there are all kinds of balance-of-power agreements about their activities on the Material Plane. There is a ridiculously powerful mystic theurge of Nethys in Sothis. Maybe she has something to do with it. Unfortunately Sothis is hard to scry so they're probably not going to be able to learn much about it, unless they want to use Carissa's hair and the fact they can cheat Truth Spells by changing who controls the body...this is an incredibly dumb plan but she's entertained anyway, imagining how she'd try it.

Mhalir is also entertained. He likes Carissa's planning. 

<What is Nethys like?> he asks her. <...I suppose I will have to take the Asmodean explanation with a grain of salt and perhaps I had better ask one of the clerics of Iomedae as well to compare.> 

I bet we weren't misled about that one. Neutral god of pure magic. People say he knows everything but it doesn't matter much since he doesn't do many things. You're allowed to worship Him in Cheliax if you want to, though you can die for it if they decide you're primarily worshipping Him above Asmodeus. He's one of the least human gods. Legend has it He tried appointing a follower pharaoh of Osirion once, and then gave the follower visions of the true nature of reality, which promptly drove him mad and he tried to burn down the whole country. I don't know anything about His mystic theurge but it was covered in a class on kinds of wizard that there are. She's a ninth-circle cleric of Nethys and a seventh-circle wizard and she can mix and match divine and arcane spells depending what she wants that day and she can cast two spells at the same time. She once did a contingency and a true resurrection simultaneously, working one with each hand, for a show. She is incredibly jealous.

Mhalir knows enough about magic from Carissa to get why she's incredibly jealous! <Aww. I am a little disappointed that apparently the true nature of reality drives one mad, I wanted to know it.> 

Well, maybe it only drives humans mad. 

<Hmm. I do not really want to be the first nonhuman to test it.> 

He relaxes into the hot bath and thinks random formless thoughts about Good and Evil and Law and how he's tired.

The next morning they can do more meetings and conversations between the Yeerks who have clerics of Iomedae as hosts and other Yeerks, and logistics for arranging which Yeerks will trade places with those Yeerks to learn things about Iomedae. It - seems to go fine? The Council isn't yet convinced that they should agree to a formal alliance with Iomedae but they're not exactly doubting Mhalir.