"- I have unusual skill at building mage-artifacts, that is true." He could try to bluff that they're not his work, but anyone with Adept-level skill would be able to recognize his magical signature on the work. "And I can cast Gates without a doorway to use as scaffolding. The skill is difficult, but not so difficult; mostly it is not something mages of other countries think to train."

It might be worthwhile to volunteer other abilities, but he'll see where this gets him. Ideally what he wants is for her leadership to remove the compulsions on him, while he still has some secrets in reserve. 

(And if they're mindreading him, well, he's almost certainly lost and the only way to mitigate it is continuing to notice that he doesn't actually mean them harm, based on what he knows so far.) 

"I'm specialized in crafting magic items, too. I don't even know how I'd start on doing something like this, though. Maybe when the war's over you can show me."

"You seem to have been trained to use magic in a very different way! You were able to cross the barrier, but it looked nothing like a Gate." 

And whatever she did to his head is vastly overpowered and differently-laid-out from a compulsion, but he's not going to poke at that quagmire just yet. 

"When we're not at war I think it will be a lot of fun to show you all the things we can do and compare notes! Probably there are some useful combinations of techniques."

"I imagine so! Anyway, thank you for the explanation. I badly wished to know what was happening in Iftel, which is why I was hovering nearby, and - now I know more." 

Leareth smiles a little, then closes his eyes and lets his head rest propped against his fist, as though just realizing that he's tired. (Which he is.) 

It's fairly clear by now that Carissa has concluded - not wrongly - that Leareth isn't acting on behalf of a state, but rather leads an independent group. She's probably assuming a military-focused group, and she didn't dispute that characterization when he slipped it in. She knows that he's unusually skilled in magic - and she doesn't seem to find this odd or surprising - but Leareth thinks she still has no idea of the scale. 

...All right. Just to test if anyone in here is paying attention... At this point he's fairly sure they're not, the woman questioning him is visibly exhausted, for good reason after that fight, and it would be an epic challenge to act that well after the fight they had. But still.

Leareth, still in his tired posture, spends fifteen seconds thinking about BUILDING A GOD. (Without covering any specifics.) And, with his peripheral attention, watches for any reactions. 

Carissa is staring off tiredly into the middle distance, contemplating whether that's as much as she's going to get out of being friendly and it's time to switch to threatening him. She has another half hour of Tongues, so she shouldn't leave it too long. Maybe a few more minutes, give him some time to think, and then - suggest gently that when he wakes up the First Arcane is going to want to use magic to extract the rest of the answers they need, and it'd really be better if Carissa could just know them already.

She is not reading Leareth's mind and cannot react in any way to the idea of BUILDING A GOD.

Leareth would have quite a lot of thoughts about this, probably, if he had any way of knowing what Carissa was thinking! 

...He is, in fact, after his quick test, trying to check whether if he relaxes in the right way he can trick his mind into "extending his Thoughtsensing further to absently scan his surroundings" not being a volitional action. It's in fact something he does often, as an instinctual rather than voluntary motion, but it's not a continuous effect the way his passively-open Thoughtsensing is - he's pretty sure he could get thoughts off anyone unshielded, with that, but everyone here seems to have adequate shields - maybe when they move him later... 

He's going to keep trying to hit the right half-daydreaming mental motion, though, until it either works or his captors interrupt him. 

She interrupts him a couple of minutes later by reaching into her backpack for paper and pencil. "I'm sure you would love a nap, and I would too, but there's a bunch of geopolitical context on the world we actually need first, let's do that really quickly. I get the sense people in Iftel don't know much about anywhere else, so it's lucky we ran across you. You mentioned - the Haighlei Empire? Where's that, relative to here?"

"Far to the west. On the other side of an impassible wasteland. I know of it and some of its history - it can be reached by sailing around from the far south - but it is quite inaccessible from this region." 

Leareth is fairly sure that at some point, someone - who may or may not be his current interrogator - is going to stop playing nice. (And also that none of them are currently reading his mind, so now is a good time to give simple straightforward answers while he considers any longer-term plans.) 

"What're the closer countries?"

Iftel has maps. They're a prosperous country; plenty of merchant caravans cross their borders and the barrier, even if no military forces do and mysteriously all his attempts to slip in spies fail. He's fairly sure that naming some countries isn't giving away intelligence that these invaders - their leaders, at least - don't already know. 

"Hardorn - directly south. Valdemar, mostly west. Karse, west of here, south of Valdemar. Rethwellan, further west from Karse. Jkatha, south of Rethwellan. Velvar, south of that. Seejay, east of Velvar and - Karse, I think...?" 

She's trying to draw a map. "What're they like? What's Valdemar like - it's the closest, and we'll want to get along with them -"

Leareth thinks briefly through the categorization system she explained. "...Valdemar is very Lawful Good, by your reckoning." 

"Huh. Well, could be worse, I guess, unless it's the kind of Lawful Good where they'll hear we're Evil and invade right away. The Lawful Good countries at home are - all right, I feel kind of sorry for everyone involved but they're not bad neighbors."

"My impression is that most places in this world think of Good and Evil in less - black-and-white - terms. And then there are the pragmatics, of course. Iftel and Valdemar formed an alliance a generation ago, and so Iftel must have already requested aid," this is true and he's just omitting the part where he knows it directly because he has a network of spies, something no random mercenary would have, "but Valdemar of course has - resource constraints. And Iftel did not offer help in their last war. ...It would depend, I suppose. If your army were murdering babies for blood-power then I cannot see the Heralds leaving it be." 

"Is that common? Seems kind of like burning your seed corn."

"- It is not common, no. Killing infants in particular is rare outside of some odd cults in the far south. Valdemar - would also have ethical objections to an invader taking blood-power from the deaths of enemy soldiers, who they were killing anyway, but... I am less sure they would intervene on those grounds alone. Anyway, currently I think neither I nor they have any indication that your forces are doing that." 

Carissa has no idea what technique he's even referring to but doesn't care to reveal that. "If we sign a treaty with them we'll abide by it, even if it bars something we'd otherwise find useful. That's why Lawful Good countries generally make okay neighbors, you can hash out whatever you each care the most about and then let live. At the Worldwound we fought alongside Lastwall, which is Lawful Good. - how about Karse, what're they like."

"...Rather messy, recently," Leareth confesses. "They were at war with Valdemar for four years, and a little over a year ago they brokered a peace treaty, with a state marriage between their two rulers. The leadup to that peace treaty is when Vkandis performed a Healing miracle, supposedly. There are pockets of civil war. Their priest-mages used blood-magic and personally summoned demons during the war, both of which I think that Valdemar - and I assume your world's categorization - would see as evil. The current administration is clearly very dependent on Valdemar's goodwill, though." 

" - Vykaendis did one healing miracle to communicate his support for the alliance? Are ...miracles that rare?"

"- Yes? Are they less rare in your world?" 

Their unit doesn't have a cleric because he died two days ago but every unit has one. She's not allowed to share information about the capabilities of their forces. 

"Healing is a very easy miracle with our magic, and Good clerics usually do it at the slightest provocation. They'll enter a village and everyone'll run up to them for miraculous healing," she says instead. 

Iftel definitely has Gifted Healers, so mentioning that won't give anything away. 

"- Perhaps our gods offer that at one remove?" Leareth suggests. "Healing is a Gift, here, analogous to mage-gift - and many people believe that the gods can nudge toward a certain number of Gifted children being born, in Their regions." 

"Huh! I rather like that, actually - in Good countries Healing is all through the churches, so you'd better be on friendly terms with them if you want it. In Cheliax it's done with wizard magic but that's much more expensive. I haven't heard of anywhere where a significant number of people are just born with a Gift for it. It seems like our version serves the gods more, offers them finer control - they can take cleric powers away if they're displeased with a follower -"

Leareth shivers - tries to hide it - decides against trying to hide it... 

"Given what I know of most gods," he says as lightly as he can manage, "I - would not find that reassuring at all."