We - can't offer them alliances with gods. And I don't think I know enough of our magic to win it decisively for them- I guess we could call Aroden in, maybe he can Gate here once he has specific instructions -

<Or we could go back for him with the ship, if absolutely necessary, the travel time is not that long once we know where we are going.> Mental sigh. <I will think about it. There...is some chance it would be enough just to provide a neutral channel of communications, but that would mean making ourselves known to both sides, which is - fraught.> 

Carissa is scared and sad and has no idea what she wants except obviously not another Earthfall. She suddenly wants the topic of conversation to be something different, except they've rather exhausted most topics of conversation, on the ship.

...They could get drunk? Not too drunk because they need to do things tomorrow, but if they go back to the ship in orbit, there's basically no chance anything will happen overnight. He's very sure at this point that no one on the planet has spacefaring capabilities, large numbers of sorcerers or not. 

....sure. Just a little bit drunk.

The shuttle flies back up to the ship in orbit and Mhalir wants half an hour to update his notes and brief his staff on what they've learned, and then they can have a couple of drinks and try to relax and find some non-war topic of conversation. 

How about they watch Earth spy movies. It'll be good for her soul.

Sure! They have a large database of Earth movies saved and can have a look. Does she want a comedy spy movie, an action spy movie, or a drama spy movie? 

She's only heard of movies secondhand or from hearing other people watching them on the ship while she was working on magic, so she has no idea what the genres of movie are.

He'll have a poke around. 

...They could watch Aces Go Places (comedy), a film set in Paris, where King Kong (Sam Hui) is kidnapped by a British secret agent whose mission is to retrieve one of the Crown Jewels which has been stolen and is located in a Hong Kong Police Headquarters vault.

Or they could watch Black Eagle (action), where a martial artist and special operative for the American government codenamed "Black Eagle", is summoned by his superiors after an F-111 carrying an experimental black ops laser tracking device was shot down over Malta by Russian forces. 

Or they could watch Eye of the Needle (thriller), about a German spy in the United Kingdom during World War II who discovers vital information about the upcoming D-Day invasion and his attempt to return to Germany while he is stranded with a family on a remote island off the coast of Scotland.

None of those nouns mean anything to Carissa but Black Eagle sounds the most fun. 

The movie seems to assume a level of familiarity with Earth and particular American culture that neither Carissa nor Mhalir possess, so a lot of its references are confusing. It's also implausible in multiple ways, and occasionally makes him want to scream at the characters for questionable planning and tactics until he remembers that they're fictional. At least Mhalir finds the martial arts fight scenes fun and satisfying to watch, plausible or not. The setting is very scenic, with aesthetic medieval-Earth ruins in the background. At one point the main character, "Black Eagle", goes deep-sea diving without a scuba tank, which the narrative implies should be impressive. 

It's amazing! It is the best work of storytelling she has ever encountered, it's all compressed so neatly and told with full use of the visual field, there's no reason you couldn't do it with illusions, but no one has, probably no one has thought of it - 

She doesn't care about plausibility, it's a story, they're not supposed to make sense.

Going deep-sea diving without a scuba tank seems like it'd be really hard if you didn't have magic! He's obviously a high-level adventurer, which explains why he can do it and also why he's mostly uninjured by things that'd kill a normal person.

Mhalir wouldn't previously have thought to experience awe and delight about Earth movies, which he's...probably seen at least one of, or snippets anyway... (He doesn't think Earth humans have the kind of high-level adventurers who end up physically tougher, they don't have magical healing at all, but he'll concede Carissa's point that this isn't what stories are for.)

Earth has so many movies and he's excited for them to watch more so he can watch Carissa being excited and thinking about how to imitate the entire genre with illusions. They don't need a lot of sleep so there might be enough time for as much as several more movies. 

After one more movie Carissa will have her fill of whatever it was she wanted when she wanted to watch a movie, it's not that she's not enjoying them still but her mind is starting to wander to Predain and Tantara and the war. She feels like she understands exactly how the Andalite/Yeerk situation got locked in on its stupid trajectory and she doesn't feel like she understands that at all here. But probably they don't need that; they need confirmation that Ma'ar is ....Mhalir's story, repeated....whatever that even means which is still deeply confusing...and then -

"Oh, you know what I should do," she says five minutes into the third movie, "is try scrying someone who we'd expect to be shielded but not exceptionally dangerous if they do notice the scry - so not Urtho or the Mage of Silence if they're not the same person, and not Ma'ar, and not the King of Predain - but we should find someone who meets that description and see if we can scry them. Because their magic might defend against their kind not our kind."

<Oh! Yes, that is an excellent idea. We know the location of many shielded buildings, now, all we would have to do is do surveillance to determine who their staff are and when they will be inside the shields.> 

Yeah. And then another thing I want to look into is, no one we spoke to could tell that I wasn't a mage but that one barmaid was thinking it was possible to tell with magic. I want to know how I show up to that. Maybe you want to send some people to the opposite end of the planet and try to recruit a voluntary mage? 

<Oh. Yes, that is worth trying. I could have them look around in the Haighlei Empire, there are regions of it which I think have very little contact with the Predain-Tantara area, since the mountains are close to impassible at their tech level.> 

And we can also check that way if their telepathy makes it obvious that there are two people in my head, or whether the wig helps, or whether the Nondetection helps, and they might also know what would help if those don't. I think probably I want to just continue being suspicious in outlying provinces where word will be garbled by the time it makes it up the chain of command and their descriptions of us will be wrong. I suspect I could avoid being suspicious but that'll make it much slower to learn anything. 

Also I want to start working on permanent Detect Thoughts...permanent, Persistent Detect Thoughts. In an artifact.

<Oh, that would be excellent to have. Especially since it sounds as though they have an entirely separate - bloodline of sorcerers? - with innate telepathy-magic. And, yes, I think it makes sense to use strategies that will get us information even if we stand out, as long as we have an escape route ready - also we should make sure to vary our cover story, maybe vary the claims you make about your magic abilities, so they have less to connect the dots on...> 

I bet Tantara's not talking with Predain, but yes. Maybe next time I will be a very weak mage who can only make sparks -  it's a cantrip - and worried I will be conscripted. 

<That makes sense. I do worry that even if Predain and Tantara have no official lines of communication, if Ma'ar is a me, he will have tried very hard and been very clever in his attempts to have spies there - and at least from here it appears to be a considerably easier task than it was with us and the Andalites.> 

It does look that. Let's do an outlying province, again, ideally one far from the front lines of the war...

<Yes, that makes sense - we can go for the southwestern region of Tantara, I think that is less directly affected by the war.> 

And I want to figure out some experiments to determine whether blood magic is a local phenomenon or just something that only their kind of sorcerer can exploit - I've heard of necromancers who can do similar things I guess but it's very rare and I don't think it lets you do anything that valuable...