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Carissa Sevar walks around her room, once she's left alone, swings her arms - the paladins tried to nudge her to exercise but it was unpleasant to walk around while chained up, she kept feeling off-balance, and it felt like they only cared because they were pretending that it was somehow less of a wrong to her if company and stew and words like 'marriage' were thrown around, or maybe because they genuinely get Good points as long as those boxes are checked, which feels somehow even worse....

She detects magic, and studies the wards on the walls. They are not comprehensible, not really, but - she could probably learn, with enough time. She probably will learn with enough time. 

She does dancing lights and races them around the corners of the room and breathes, and once the dancing lights have systematically determined that there's no one invisible in the room she curls up and cries for a long time, which is stupid but she's too tired to do anything about it. 

This might be okay. She won't be able to get word home, but - honestly it's hard to be too invested in getting word home. It is hard to imagine Asmodeus doesn't already know about other worlds, millions of them, and he has his plans, whatever they are, and if she went home she would...well, maybe evade being executed for being stupid in the first place, but maybe not, and even if she did she wouldn't be the clever youngest wizard of her class who can get scholarships someday for travel to Absalom and to drink Nefreti Clepati's wine in Sothis, she'd be - entangled in this mess, and scared forever, and she's so tired of being scared.

She should be careful that she doesn't let being tired of being scared tempt her into not being scared here, though. She arrived at a location she knows nothing about, and was within ten or fifteen minutes in a nicely appointed cell with magic wards and a telepath and a sorcerer on hand to figure out what was going on. If Nefreti dropped her in a random location that implies terrifying logistical capacity. If Nefreti dropped her in a secure location in an important building she knew to conveniently already have an empty cell then it's much less impressive. There's no way to know.

She is valuable to them. It would be stupid to kill her right now. It'll stop being stupid to kill her once they know enough arcane magic to derive the rest themself. They'll want her to teach them. How can she stall, teach it slowly, without making it suspiciously obvious? This is an interesting question and she considers it awhile. She can avoid admitting it's possible to start with cantrips and make them practice on first-circle spells first, make out cantrips to be an advanced technique you can only master once you have the basics down. She can reject spellbook ink as inadequate. She can probably buy six months, which is enough time to figure out whether they're likely to kill her once she's disposable and maybe enough time to do something about it if they are. 

Some conjuration specialists learn to jump through space without even having to cast a full spell, pinching the plane around them and slipping right through. It takes years to learn, but she's probably learned some of the relevant concepts already. Maybe... and she loses herself in trying to imagine how you'd do it.

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A while into this, the Mindspeaker watching calls Leareth over. :You're going to want to see this yourself. - I don't think it's much additional risk: 

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No, probably not, they know this strange woman from another world, who serves a god who publically calls himself Evil - serves an ideology that claims the act of having goals is in itself evil - in any case, they know she doesn't have offensive magic she can cast right now, however her magic works it needs to be prepared in advance. (No wonder; he saw an attempted diagram of the translation spell, drawn by the mage afterward, and it's so complex and rich and beautiful...) 

Leareth is thoroughly keyed to the wards; he made them himself. So he sits on the other side of a wall and reads Carissa Sevar's thoughts - wishes he could afford a deeper probe than what he can pick up passively from the surface around her odd native shields, but she would notice that - 

Leareth sits and does his best to follow her meandering thoughts about her strategic plans and objectives - feels admiration for it, her goals clearly aren't his but she's smart and she's trying and that's...really rare, actually. 

(Maybe less rare in a country serving a god like Asmodeus, but...no, he doubts it.) 

Leareth watches her think about magic, just passively observing he can only catch the surface of it but he can guess at the rest, he's very familiar with interplanar mechanics - a Gate is, in a way, pinching the plane around itself and slipping right through... 

He wants to talk to her. But he's feeling the sleep deprivation, at this point, which means it's not at all a good time for a fraught, delicate conversation.

He hands back off to the Mindspeaker and another mage, asks them to arrange shifts for the night and call for him if she does anything unexpected and hostile, and goes off to eat supper and sleep. 

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Some different stranger brings Carissa meals, and asks if she wants a change of clothes, or hot water to wash up, or paper to write on. 

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Carissa would be very grateful for all of those things. 

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All of those things can be brought to the room, and after that they let her sleep, and in the morning someone brings her breakfast. 

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And in the morning, a different person arrives. He knocks first, politely, before entering. His body language is very still and his dark eyes are unreadable. 

"Sevar," he says. "My name is Leareth and this," he gestures around, expansive enough to indicate he means a lot more than just the room, "is my facility. I think that we ought to speak." 

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In the morning she can prepare spells. She fetches her spellbook out of the ethereal plane, which to her relief works, and spends a while waffling over which ones she wants and ends up preparing a bunch more Share Language because that'll almost definitely come up and leaving most of the rest of her slots empty. She needs to know how their magic will work to guess whether Detect Thoughts is a good idea.

She decides that the first thing she wants and doesn't have is Nondetection, which will help if they're reading her mind, she might have plans that are easier without that. She doesn't consider what plans, especially. And she wants whatever precursors exist or can be derived to Dimension Door, and she wants to see if she can get materials for magic item making, and she wants Dispel Magic - 

- magic research is stupidly dangerous, she should figure out first whether her situation is dangerous enough to warrant it -

 

She puts on her new clothes and ties up her hair and sends dancing lights racing all over the room again and then is interrupted.

 

He's scary. 

She tries not to let this show. She nods. "Of course."

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There's a chair at one end of the room. Leareth takes it and brings it closer and sits. This does not make him appreciably less scary. 

"I have a great many reasons to be interested in your world," he says, levelly. "Most of which I cannot share, at this time, but - obviously the existence of many other worlds at all is a huge resource, which I intend to explore in due time. However, I also wish to understand why, exactly, this Nefreti Clepati who serves the god Nethys decided to handle the paladins' request by bringing you here. I...am generally very suspicious about this sort of interference, and it makes no sense to me, which indicates I am missing an important piece of the picture here. I think it would be in both of our interests to figure this puzzle out, honestly; I assume you have just as much desire as I do to understand how and why greater Powers are using you as a pawn in Their schemes." 

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- honestly Carissa has mostly narrowed her desires to not ceasing to exist forever. She does not have the slightest intentions of being honest, there, though.

"I suspect I'd need to know more about this world to even begin to guess at that," she says.

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"Of course. I will do my best to summarize the relevant pieces and then you can clarify where you are confused." Leareth takes a slow breath, his hands still in his lap, his expression still illegible. "This world is called Velgarth. We have different magic than Golarion - at least, arcane magic was never discovered here, it does appear to work and I assume we could learn it. All of our magic is in the form of inborn Gifts, I think what you would call 'sorcerers', but these come in many varieties, some of which are quite specific - Mindspeech, for example - and one of which, mage-gift, is extremely general. - Your magic lets you sense other magic, I am guessing? In which case you have likely noticed the wards and shielding on this room. All of those are done by a mage." 

He pauses for a moment, eyes resting on her. 

"- Also relevant context, is that I am immortal, and about eighteen hundred years old; I was born shortly before the Cataclysm that Lacie explained briefly to you. I - have spent a very long time trying to address various problems in this world. Many of them are the sort of thing that Cheliax seems to do quite well - roads, trade, schools, medical treatment, enough food for everyone. The gods here are not on our side in this, however, and in particular seem very opposed to civilizational progress. They are - more cryptic than Golarion's gods, They seem to perceive the world mainly via Foresight and operate mostly with subtle nudges and coincidences, such that it took me a long time even to realize that my various projects failing was too consistent to be merely bad luck. They are not very interested in talking to me or negotiating a compromise here, I have tried; I think it is likely They are fundamentally not the sort of beings that can communicate with humans in that way." 

Sigh. "Anyway. I have a plan to improve this state of affairs, but I would prefer a better plan, which is most of why I am interested in your world. I also have significant concerns about attempting to work with gods, given my past experiences, and - the goals and values of your world's gods both confuse me deeply, and seem to lead to vastly more inter-god conflict than occurs here. I have no desire to involve Velgarth in that. Also. I mean no offense, but you are not an unbiased source, here, as the follower of one specific god among many, and - I have significant concerns that Asmodeus in particular is not very well aligned with my goals. That is much of what I wish to discuss with you." 

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She has no way to verify any of it but it's not like powerful wizards can't make themselves unaging, if they wish. 

"If your gods are against civilizational progress then that seems very inconvenient," she says carefully. "I guess I should count my people fortunate that Asmodeus wants our nation to be prosperous."

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"That - does seem a point in his favor," Leareth acknowledges. "I would like to hear more about how Asmodeus runs Cheliax, and - what his goals are, in doing that." 

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She's so tired. 

This is more straightforward than the paladins, though. The paladins cared about Good, and the things this man described caring about are just - reasonable things. Prosperity. 

"Cheliax is ruled by House Thrune, one of our ancient noble houses. After the King Gaspodar invited ruin in the calamity of a hundred years ago, there was a civil war, and it lasted nearly a decade and was very terrible, and House Thrune won and brought it to an end. They had allied with Hell, for help winning the civil war and rebuilding the country afterwards. Hell has lots of resources, and it is not traditional, for the gods to intervene so directly in the world, but - the war among the gods broke prophecy, and I guess that changed a lot of things. Asmodeus wants everyone in Cheliax to worship him primarily, and for the country to be prosperous and return to the role it had in the world before the great disaster. We have to be strong enough to close the Worldwound and win the allegiance of our neighbors and check the expansion of rivals, all of that. I do not know what Asmodeus's ultimate goals are but I would expect Cheliax being prosperous to be a priority for a long time, there are few advantages to being weak. I have heard it said He intends to eventually conquer the other Outer Planes."

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Nod. "Why does Hell have so many resources? Or do the other Outer Planes also have this and simply avoid intervening in the material plane with them?" 

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"Some of both, I think? The Chaotic planes don't have anyone who could organize large-scale long-term trade with the material plane, random individual warlords can and do sometimes do it I think, when they want specific things. I don't know why Heaven doesn't do Good things in the material plane much but maybe they do in some place I haven't heard of or maybe you don't get Good points for it that way for some reason, and either way Heaven is much weaker than Hell so they'd do much less of it."

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"Hmm. Why is Heaven much weaker than Hell?" 

Leareth is confused and moderately suspicious and is now paying even more close attention to all of her surface thoughts. 

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She doesn't really expect it to matter for grand strategic things what she convinces him about Asmodeus because Nefreti wouldn't have sent her here if she could get back, but it probably matters a lot for what happens to her once they've learned the basics of arcane magic from her. She thinks that Asmodeus has reasonable goals and sounds like a vast improvement on the local gods in terms of how things work out for his humans, but honestly this guy sounds like he probably wants Abadar, if he could get the attention of a god for some reason, but it might be treasonous to suggest that instead (...but it doesn't matter, because Nefreti wouldn't have sent her here if she could get back...)

"Hell is unified under Asmodeus; Heaven has several main gods with different definitions of Good. Erastil likes farms and made a big chunk of Heaven just farms where people are farmers forever. - outsiders don't even need to eat, He just wants them farming. Shizuru... quit Her works when Her lover died, I think, and now She doesn't do anything. Iomedae does things but She's a new god and very weak compared to Asmodeus and also one of the main things She did was ally with Aroden on causing the great disaster, and Aroden died in it, so I don't know where that leaves Her. Aside from that sometimes Her paladins kidnap people from the Worldwound and give them to Nefreti."

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Wow, a god of farming making people who don't need to eat farm sounds - incredibly pointless - though he wonders if Carissa even has accurate information there, or if she'd know if Heaven actually exported that food to living humans in the material plane who do need to eat...

"- Your gods are the sort of entities that can have lovers?" Leareth shakes his head. "Nevermind, that question is not a priority, just - our gods are not nearly humanlike enough for that to make sense. Do - you happen to know what Aroden was trying to do, when He ended up causing a disaster? Since I assume that was not the intent." 

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"The lovers thing is almost certainly a metaphor but it's a licensed one, from their official priests and everything. In Tian they conceptualize all the gods as having familial relationships to each other, brothers and sisters and in-laws, and it's wrong but - anything humans imagine about gods is going to be wrong, it's a useful way to understand how they'll be allied. Familial relationships aren't as useful as alignment for imagining how our pantheon will be allied, I don't think.

Aroden was supposed to usher in an Age of Glory for Cheliax."

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"...Interesting. That - seems like a worthy goal to me, anyway. What was Aroden's alignment?" 

(What does Carissa think about Aroden - does she feel like she's allowed to think about it...?)

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"Lawful neutral." It is probably vaguely treasonous to give the impression Aroden's plans were a good idea but she doesn't know enough about them to convincingly argue they were bad. And if they were good aside from how they didn't work and instead caused a disaster, that's a kind of being bad, really.

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Which, Leareth is thinking, is a fair point. 

"Anyway. Given what we have discussed, do you have - any ideas or theories at all, even very speculative ones, about what Nefreti or Nethys might have wished to accomplish by bringing you here in particular? ...Nefreti dropped you in - a remote location in my territory, but one with detection wards, so it is predictable that I would find you very quickly and end up speaking with you as we are now." 

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Information about their capabilities but mostly obviated by thousand-year-old spellcaster, if he's telling the truth about that; it's easily within the bounds of what a thousand-year-old spellcaster can do. Most things are within the bounds of what a thousand-year-old spellcaster can do. Probably it is very nearly futile to get anything past him while he still finds her interesting. But he won't forever, and she can work on magic - she closes off this line of thought before it touches on any of her planning from last night. 

"I don't know. Maybe it serves the god of magic for people in more places to learn new kinds of magic. Maybe it was the likeliest place around to have me not die forever right away and also not have any way to learn" scrying, which works across planes and which she can use to contact Asmodeus "seventh-circle spells, which are what I think I'd need to get home."

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Leareth's mind races through quite a lot of thoughts, very quickly - it's half in shorthand, jumping back to all the thinking he did yesterday while he was reading Carissa Sevar's mind from the other side of a wall. None of this shows on his face; his black eyes are like still pools, fixed on her. 

...He likes her. Feels admiration for - what? Not just her obvious cleverness - for the fact that she's not giving up, even though it must be tempting, she has so few avenues to get herself home. Her thoughts are so careful and paranoid. He's impressed by that. 

He doesn't trust her. He mistrusts her more than he would just on the grounds that she's a single, inevitably biased source from a world with a dozen factions and incredibly complex politics. The specific way that her thoughts are cautiously strategic is - concerning, in some vague way he can't name, and - he doesn't trust Asmodeus, he doesn't trust her to be telling him everything relevant, she has an agenda and on priors it's not his agenda and in addition to that some evidence is mounting that it's not. 

He's not exactly sure where to go with this. Possibly he wants to make contact with Golarion; possibly he wants to definitely avoid that and just learn everything she knows about arcane magic and go from there. ...Either way he could best accomplish his goals here if she were an ally, and she isn't - unsurprisingly - and he's not sure how deep that divide goes... 

He needs more information. And to - keep as many paths open as possible, for now, though he's not sure how that cashes out. 

"Well," he says, after only about fifteen seconds of silence, "I certainly would like to learn about your magic. Also it is possible I wish to help you reach your world so that I can propose an alliance with Asmodeus, but for that I need more information." And he has a feeling she's eliding quite a lot and will keep doing that even in her thoughts. "As a start, can you tell me what your day to day life in Cheliax was like?" 

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