It's not hard to determine that the strange woman is being truthful, Leareth thinks, when half of the information they're collecting is straight from her mind and she's just as confused as them, far too short of context to be planning an elaborate deception even if she somehow could make that stick in her thoughts as well as her words. (Most people cannot do this at all.) 

:Ask about Nefreti Clepati: he sends. :And - the background of why this Nefreti was called in to send her somewhere: 

:So you think you were sent here using powerful magic by someone called Nefreti Clepati: Lacie says. :Can you explain who she is, and her background and goals?:

:She's a mystic theurge of Nethys, our god of magic. She's one of the most powerful spellcasters in the Inner Sea. It would not be very surprising for it to be another world because they specifically went to Clepati because she knows how to Gate to other worlds, and then they asked her to do something about me, so I imagine she sent me somewhere far enough away I couldn't cause trouble, and probably somewhere where people don't themselves know how to travel between worlds.: She wants to be mad about the sending her tied up, which could've gone horribly, but probably Clepati also arranged specifically for her to land in the custody of these people who now know enough to probably not murder her unprovoked.

:I don't know anything about her goals. They call Nethys the mad god because he's omniscient and he tends to drive his followers mad too. I know she's ...Osirian? And at least a hundred years old, and I know she gives advice and does True Resurrections for pay but the temple makes most of its money off intelligence-enhancing wine.: She had occasionally contemplated how to finagle permission to go to Osirion and try it.

:Intelligence-enhancing wine? ...Nevermind, come back to it. Ask who the 'they' is who went to Clepati, and why she needed to be sent somewhere she could not cause trouble: 

Lacie, who is starting to feel quite overwhelmed and out of her depth, asks this question almost word for word. 

:A man from another world arrived in ours in a magical accident and ran into me. This was discovered by an order of paladins who serve Iomedae, the god of the war on Hell, and apparently it's very valuable strategic information so they kidnapped me so I couldn't report it to anybody, only wizards are hard to safely hold prisoner, and if they just executed me I would go to Hell and could warn them, so they were looking into - ways to execute me so I didn't get an afterlife - or other options - and I guess they did this.:

This is relayed, along with a faint pleading note of 'Leareth help???'. 

:All right, that was the correct thread to pull on and now I think we need to back up several steps again. Who is Iomedae, what is Hell - they have afterlives?? Why is there a war on between Hell and Iomedae, who is Iomedae anyway, what is the historical context here?:

Lacie takes a deep breath. :We - haven't heard of this god 'Iomedae' or this war - or of...afterlives in that sense in general, really, as - polities that can be at war with other polities, is that right? Can you give us some background: 

:The Outer Planes are planes where people live, and where gods have the seats of their power. There are nine of them. Hell is one. Heaven is another one. They're at war. My understanding of the war is that it's because Heaven finds Hell's treatment of its inhabitants objectionable and thinks murdering them is a good thing to do about this but I am sure their explanation would be different. I don't think our world always had afterlives and it's - possible that yours doesn't -: Now she's terrified. At least if they'd turned her into a statue the statue would eventually in however many thousands of years probably have gotten destroyed enough to kill her and then she'd have eventually made it to Hell but if this world has no afterlives at all -

What a fascinatingly different solution to the problem of people dying than the ones he's been considering! Leareth doesn't voice that right now, though, it doesn't seem like the time yet. 

:You can reassure her that souls continue to exist after death, here, if not - fully - and that we do not intend to kill her, which ought be believable because she is obviously very useful. Ask what treatment, exactly, she thinks Heaven finds objectionable: Pause. :- Also if people in Hell who are murdered go somewhere else, or...disappear...: 

:People here don't just vanish when they die: Lacie clarifies, trying to push in as much reassurance as she can - which is tricky given how alarmed she feels right now. :They don't - go keep being people elsewhere, exactly - but the gods can reincarnate them, including sometimes with a lot of their memories, though usually it's as babies and they don't remember. And it would be very stupid of us to kill you anytime soon, obviously, when you're bringing over such incredibly valuable intelligence on other worlds. So...we've got a long time to figure something out, we hope:

Sigh. :I understand you only have one side of things, yourself, but - what exactly about Hell's treatment of its people do you think Heaven objects to?:

It would be stupid of them to kill her anytime soon. She's scared anyway but probably that's just because she's - scared as a habit, at this point - she wants to go home - she wants to have reported Kyeo the second she met him - she wants to have screamed, when they came to kidnap her -

:In Hell you are reshaped and improved and it's painful. Humans - aren't very good at thinking about that, right, because in our world things being painful is aversive and scary, but when you're just a soul and not a mortal being who might die of it, the way you relate to it can be very different, and also - the timescales are very different, something can hurt for a thousand years and that's still worth it if it makes you better for the rest of eternity. People who've been through it don't tend to regret it as far as I know, and I've talked to some, though not about this topic in particular.:

:I see: She doesn't at all, but she relays it to Leareth anyway. 

He's also dubious but now seems like not the time to dig into it. :Move on. Ask about Kyeo - not by name, that makes it obvious we are reading her mind, ask about the man from another world:

:Can you tell me about the man who came from another world in a magical accident?: How many worlds ARE there anyway, aaaaaaah. :What's that world like?: 

:They abolished money and I don't think it worked very well for them. They have planet-melting weapons and I think that's what Heaven's interested in: though she's not going to think the implications through in too much depth because that will just make her miserable and scared - though at least there's no longer the additional constraint that her life might depend on converting - :I think they've invented things we haven't but not things Kyeo knows anything about.:

:Huh, they abolished money? Why?: That seems like such an inexplicably weird thing to do! 

:They claimed to have thought that there wouldn't be poor people if you just didn't have any money. I don't know what was really going on, Kyeo wants to go back so it would've been rude to make him think about it. There was talk about bringing in a cleric of Abadar - the god of money - but they ended up going to Nefreti instead.:

:You...have a god of money? What does that even mean, what does He do - give people gold when they pray to Him?: 

:...no. That is not how gods work. But he makes merchant ventures go well and his priests have a better truth spell, because law is so important to commerce.:

:Hmm. I don't know how your gods work, I think, ours - do things, but they don't directly lead wars or give people magic consistently or do anything as legible as 'make merchant ventures go well'. ...Also can you tell me what you mean by 'law' being important to commerce, it...sounds like you don't just mean countries having smart policies around taxation and trade, or good enforcement of punishment for breaking contracts and theft and such: 

:Law is one of the forces of the universe that the gods see the world in. For humans the parts of it we can understand mostly cash out to good rule of law and punishment for breaking contracts and there not being bandits on the roads, things like that. But I think that's just a fraction of what Law is.:

:...Law is - a force of the universe? I'm guessing you don't mean physical or natural law, like how objects fall downward and, uh, how water boils at a lower temperature at higher altitudes, things like that...: 

:I think that's pretty much what I mean. Or, well, temperature is a property of objects and Law is a property of actions and of people.: