"Remind me of the alignments and interests of the Starstoners?"  Keltham remembers that Norgorber is the god of crime, but was pretending not to be carefully memorizing that at the time.

"Norgorber, Neutral Evil, god of crime; Iomedae, Lawful Good, god of fighting Evil, particularly Abaddon and the Worldwound and Zon Kuthon but She's not best friends with us either; Cayden Cailean, Chaotic Good god of drink - uh, of mind-altering substances, and freedom and adventure. Aroden, dead Lawful Neutral god of colonization and population growth, sometimes glossed as 'god of humanity' because He was strongly in favor of more of us."

"Oh right, I've been told not everyone here is human."  Which did seem potentially kinda important, especially the species that supposedly couldn't interbreed with humans, and might therefore be actual different species instead of heritably shapechanged humans.  But there were just too many important things at once and Keltham didn't want to interrupt his lesson to ask.  "Who are the nonhuman ascended gods?  Could those gods talk to humans after they ascended?"

"Uh, the elves have their own pantheon, I don't think it has any ascended former elves in it. Milani was a half-elf. There is a god who is an ascended rat, Lao Shu Po, but I've never heard of anyone successfully talking to Her. Sarenrae's an ascended angel but She doesn't directly talk to Her followers, She sends heralds."

"How... did the rat manage that.  This drastically contradicts my fragile picture of how I thought anything did or possibly could work."

"Ours too. I do not know the answer to that question. The conventional one is that She ate the corpse of a Tian god and thereby ascended, but that's hardly more satisfying."

Keltham spends more time attempting to acquire knowledge and debug his current theological problems, sort of losing track of time actually, not least because he does not have a wristwatch or any other means of keeping time, and taking away a dath ilani's wristwatch when they're already in the middle of asking Additional Questions is sort of like yanking the breathing tube out of somebody who already wasn't breathing.

He acquires a slightly better and still incredibly confusing picture of Golarion theology, with certain selective omissions and alterations.

And it absorbs lots of time, which is good, because hopefully downstairs everyone is all briefed on Taldor. 

No plan survives first contact with the enemy but they're as prepared as they can be.

What do you mean it's already lunchtime!?  Somebody should have informed Keltham before this!  Now he doesn't have time to prioritize his remaining Additional Questions and ask those before he has to go!  Oh no, has Carissa been waiting patiently in her bedroom for him to show up and get his shirt laundered this whole time?

This researcher doesn't know that but he can take letters, if Keltham thinks of further questions.

Carissa even had enough time to prepare spells and she's delighted about it. (She prepared the ones for the Improbable Escape, mostly.) She's sitting alone by the window in the dining room, looking through a book about The Year of Four Kings, from when Taldor and Cheliax were unified, that they decided didn't require any modification.

"Good morning well not morning any more but same essential principle!"

"It's morning somewhere! ...is it all right with you if I convey the information needed to settle the sadism bets, which is just 'yes' or 'no', or should I not do that, it occurred to me this morning that you might have privacy intuitions or something."

"Oh, yeah, it's fine.  I mean, maybe run it past me before you release exact details of what we did together, not saying no, just saying not sure how I'd feel, but the general fact is fine."

Carissa gives a table across the room a thumbs-up. There are giggles. "I'm not planning to say anything else," she assures him. "I don't quite understand the whole concept of spoilers but that seems like it might fall under it."

Keltham tries a new question, gets a surprising internal blip.  "Though - if it's not somebody planning on sleeping with me at some point - actually I seem to have emotional reservations about you telling all of the exact details to Security and Governance?  But I'm also aware that this may not be reasonable or the most important consideration.  So, maybe ask me if they need all the exact details, and I can decide in more detail what to feel about it.  Also happy about routing it to any entities with no sexuality, but don't assume that's necessary if it's incredibly expensive."

"That describes lots of devils but they're probably pretty expensive, yeah. I don't think they should need the exact details, rather than broad things like 'no I'm not pregnant, no you don't have such extremely narrow tastes that we need to start a nationwide search'. If they ask more than that I'll ask you."

Keltham knows he is probably supposed to find something flirtatious to say but his mind is coming up blank and it's still blank and it goes on being blank and finally Keltham gives up and says, "Well, for whatever it's worth, your attractiveness remains a stable aspect of yourself between yesterday and today.  Oh, and I've got the notes for some of the sexual questions and topics I managed not to talk about while we were in the middle of fucking.  But I probably shouldn't hand all of those to you right now, should probably be more of an evening thing."

"For notes on sexual questions I can make some time in my busy evening schedule. Anyway, I'll have a headband by then, maybe it'll make me better at explaining things."

"Oh, that's good news!  Project resources coming through?"

"No, actually! I tromped over to Acquisitions this morning once it seemed like you were occupied and asked what the delay is and they were still like 'eh, couple of weeks, we don't think it'd be beneficial to rush', so I said, fine, I've been at the Worldwound for six years, I nearly had a headband amount of money saved up anyway, I'm getting paid much more now, how much of a loan on my future salary are we talking about, and it was six days, so I bought one."

Keltham almost asks how much she is getting paid, but the financial amounts are conspicuous in their absence from her sentence and there might be some reason for that; he'll ask later in private.  Or he'll just ask - "I should probably go talk to somebody about, like, project resources, rushes or not rushes, whether Governance has any priorities, and all that.  Though before then - I don't need Share Language until tonight, and could arguably wait until morning depending on timing, but can you wizardboop my clothing at some point before I talk to any Serious People."

"Yes." And she does that. 

So long as that's happening anyways, can Keltham feel the magic at all, while it's going on next to him?