"Yeah, that was definitely on my ordered list... on my list of things to try.  I reciprocate... for your game-theoretic... oh my ass, does this language really not have a less than ten-syllable way just to say 'thank you' - there it is.  'Thank you' for your helpful help, which I do understand to have been offered in a spirit of intended mutual future profit and not just friendship."

There's a polite dath ilani thing to say when you're thanking somebody and you're not sure how much of their help was pure altruism or not, but if he tries to say that thing, it'll take eight thousand syllables and then the other person still won't know how to interpret it colloquially.

The wizard reminds himself of the thing he's been reminding himself of for the last eleven minutes which is that this is an alien and even if they look deceptively human they don't think that way. 

He nods. "You're welcome. The spell expires every day. Since it's only [second-circle], Sevar can cast it for you when it needs refreshing. People find that after a couple months of it they usually just know the new language even without a spell, at least for the words they in fact use. Cheliax is glad to have you here, and hopes for the success of your endeavors, and hopes that your genius will be represented in our children."

"You're welcome.  But I'm not - smart, or not more than 0.8 root-of-average-of-squares-of-deviations-from-average smarter than average.  I just know some things that weren't taught here."

He raises an eyebrow at Carissa. 

"Eighteen," she says. 

"That's four, uh, root-of-average-of-squares-of-deviations-from-average, for Golarion's unenhanced population."

"There's a spell to check."

"That's a fucking planetary catastrophe what the ass happened."

" - Earthfall?" the wizard says uncertainly. "But that was eight thousand years ago and I don't actually have reason to think people were smarter before that, I have always assumed that we're just - at the intelligence level we were created at, or if you like at the right tradeoff between the costs of creating us and the benefits of having things at our intelligence around - my time is expensive, why don't you get oriented on things like 'history' and 'average intelligence' and then if you want to buy some of it later you can spend it better." And he's supposed to report to the Queen. 

"Absolutely fair."

Keltham is still fundamentally shaken by the notion of a -3.2sd g world.  It changes everything, on the same level as magic... no, a lot deeper than that.

"Also, hi, Carissa," he says out loud.  "I noticed you came along, was wondering if you were just here to do the local equivalent of checking in with a Keeper for alien thought process exposure, or are you thinking of joining whatever project gets set up?"

She's so absolutely been entertaining heresies since her last mind review and she's relieved his society has that concept too. "I assume they'll send a priest along for that eventually but I was -" She's enlisted and goes where the crown sends her, which is here. " - thinking of joining whatever gets set up. My time isn't comparatively expensive and I can top you off on translation spells and the weather magic we do instead of air conditioning. And, you know, a girl doesn't get mysterious alien strangers dropped on top of her every day, and wouldn't want to spend the whole rest of her life wistfully wondering what they got up to."

(The other wizard teleports out.)

Most of Keltham is still trying to get to grips with the local intelligence level.  It's like something is optimizing for making his previous life narrative as unworkable as possible.  +4SD g is at the level where you don't need to master an impossible art of nonconformity, to look in a direction no other nonconformist tried looking, in order to see what nobody else saw.  At +4SD g you're just going to look at random poo and see improvements on it, because you are the very smart people who are as smart as the smartest other people who looked at the random poo.

He is nonetheless a teenage male, and some things are capable of catching his attention even so.

"Wasn't somebody named Sevar supposed to do the translation spells -"  Is that last line flirting?

- she probably only wants him for his brain -

- okay he can work out how he feels later, first he needs to preserve optionality which means he needs to flirt back -

(Of course Keltham has ever had instruction on how to flirt, in the institutions that dath ilan has instead of colleges.  He is familiar with the theory of common-knowledge-avoidance that underpins how standard flirting works.

Dath ilan isn't going to fling its children out into the world with no concept of how to find, explore, build or maintain a romantic relationship.)

"And if I'm not in the news everywhere, it means I failed.  Unless you're looking for a bit more detail than that."

Should he smile after he says the last part?  No, that's escalating way too fast.  This may not even be flirting, what with the enormous cultural gap?  The whole careful common-knowledge-avoidance process makes even more sense than usual, in this case.  The appropriate level of signaling back is exactly enough to show that he didn't completely miss the potential implication, if it was an implication, but no more.

Keltham keeps a straight face throughout.

Oh, are they doing straight faces. "Sevar's my family name. Carissa's my familiar one. Do they not have that, where you're from?"

"No, with nearly a billion people, we calculated globally unique names would need to be too long to remember.  We go by birth order for unique IDs.  Two syllables is long enough that you'd be moderately unlikely to be good friends with two people with the same name, so it's what most normies like my parents use in the modern generation.  I've considered changing mine to something four-syllabled just to be Chaotic about it, but common wisdom says I should let my personality finish shaking out up to age 25 first."

"Well you'll have to decide before you're in the news all over the world, I don't see how you'd change it afterwards."

That gets a smile out of him that he decides not to suppress.  "If nobody else has it, that's good enough for me.  But yeah, I'll check whether there's anyone else on the planet named Keltham before I go public with that one.  Wouldn't want to snare any innocents into the dreadful mire of my search shadow."

"It's not a Chelish name but I don't know how you'd check the whole planet - we don't all speak a common language, or have, uh, a common mail system or whatever you're imagining. The most powerful wizards I know of are Nefreti Clepati and Felandriel Morgethai so four syllables wouldn't even be pushing what you could get away with, really."

"Ha.  I'm Evil, but I'm never going to be Evil enough to wantonly make people memorize seven syllables just to say hi to me."

"It is also traditional, I think, for Evil wizards to have a menacing tower that turns everyone who approaches it into a chicken, so as to only be interrupted by people who are very competent or have priorities important enough to them that they'll be turned into a chicken about them."

"Your world possesses housing options my world did not, but not entirely unintriguing ones.  Speaking of which, I should probably figure out domestic things like where I'm sleeping before I hit up the nearest library for some quick page glimpses.  You're relatively more local than I am, want to point out my next step or meta-step there?"

On reflection, Keltham decides, he should hesitate to flirt any further than this before he has actually thought at all about Carissa/Sevar.

"Well personally were I given the run of the Archduke of Sirmium's summer villa I would go look at all of the bedrooms before I decided which one I was claiming, and probably take his own personal bedroom unless he's decorated it grotesquely, like with the skulls of his enemies, but if you're terribly eager to go to bed we could just ask the staff what their plan was and I'm sure they'll have a skull-free, very lovely bedroom."

The skulls of his - they can resurrect people, right, it just costs money.  That must sure make for some weird social dynamics.

"At some point I'm going to have to figure out the larger social process I'm embedded in, but I appreciate that it is taking the matter seriously.  And it's not that I'm eager to get to sleep, it's that I expect to be predictably completely sucked in by the new planet's library, until I finally stumble back, vision blurring, to finally shower and get to sleep.  So I need to have planned out all of that final process, and asked all the relevant questions about it, before I do anything as stickily-self-motivation-altering as stepping into another planet's library.  Sort of thing that drives all other thoughts out of your mind, I expect."

"You talk about libraries like wizards talk about magic." She waves impatiently at - a child? A person proportioned not quite like a human child but about the height of one. "Show us in so Keltham can look around."

    The person bows to Keltham. "Of course, master. This way."