Leareth isn't sure! He sort of mentally pokes at the compulsion pinning his mind in place. How specific would that exception be? 

It's not very obvious from the inside, either. 

She sighs. "He won't be able to tell until we do it. We'll try it after you step out," she says to the First Arcane, switching languages. 

       The First Arcane nods distractedly. "Numbers in his organization?"

"How many in your organization."

...His answer is going to surprise them, Leareth thinks dully. 

(He had vaguely been hoping they wouldn't ask, but he manages to keep that thought, and the concern about it, tucked away behind his deeper shields.)

"Three hundred combat mages. Another hundred more academic specialties." He can't help his thoughts drifting a little toward the content of said specialties, but the flickers of math, math, and more math - and domains more obscure than that - probably won't mean that much to outsiders. "A little under a thousand support personnel, for them." 

Which is, in fact, the main core of his organization, though the military troops who report to him number...a lot more than that. The agents in other countries come to a much smaller total number. Various contractors don't particularly count as part of his organization, Leareth thinks; everyone relies on external resources sometimes, it's a different thing. 

"Avernus that's a lot of people. That's - practically the size of the Academae." 

         "He's not lying?"

"He's not lying - or if he is he's very good at it - sir, I think we'd better feed him."

"Valverde, Cardejal, there's a farmhouse up the river, yes? Hit them up for supplies, retreat if you're engaged by anyone a Fireball can't handle."

          Valverde stands up. "Can we grab a girl? There's room for one more, in the Rope Trick -"

"No," snaps Carissa though the question wasn't even directed at her. "It's unprofessional and we're trying to build rapport, here. Once we have some facilities, I don't give a shit, but we're in the middle of an interrogation."

- the First Arcane slaps her. With a cantrip; it wouldn't have the right effect if he'd had to scramble halfway across the room for it. Now her cheek is bleeding. - fair enough, really, she answered that like he wasn't in the room. 

"It's a no," he tells Valverde. He doesn't say anything more to Carissa about it; he doesn't need to.

- yes, that definitely got a reaction. A stronger reaction than anything else yet. His first impression is of an...overall positive reaction? Leareth can't understand any of the words, of course, but they seem impressed. There's a flurry of new instructions being given. 

Then the female wizard who's been leading the questioning barks something in a tone that sounds frustrated and angry. And then Leareth's mage-sight catches the spell as the other wizard - the one he thinks is senior - uses it to hit her. In the face. 

It catches Leareth off guard. It's hardly a level of violence that would normally make him feel threatened; he shields against physical and magical attacks by default when in combat, natively as well as with his talismans, and they didn't actually bother to remove the talismans other than the Thoughtsensing one.

But he's currently helpless on the floor, prevented by a compulsion from moving voluntarily. It's already been taking an ongoing effort of will to stay calm about this; letting it bother him won't help. Startled, though, he tries to move back and raise a shield - can't - the alarm shades into an edge of panic - 

Orient. 

Instinctively, without deliberately choosing to on any level, Leareth extends all of his Othersenses to their full range and power. Which doesn't help all that much, he can't See past the bounds of their odd magical pocket-of-space.

But it does boost his Thoughtsensing enough to get past the odd semi-opaque native shields of everyone nearby not using more active mental protections. 

She's quite focused on keeping her face still, and not checking how much it's bleeding. She lost the Detect Thoughts, which only had a minute left on it anyway but still, the expectation at third circle is that you can hold a divination with your hand in a fire, and it doesn't really matter that she wasn't a combat wizard a month ago. What were they on before - right, his mercenary company. It's very big. She had been under the impression that mages in this world were rarer than wizards in hers. The entire country they'd been discussing a minute ago had a dozen mages! (Blood is running down her cheek, now; she's ignoring it.)

He's worrying about the rescue operation that is presumably being planned. You don't have to be competent or have the alliance of the local gods if you have hundreds of high-level casters. They haven't evidenced the ability to get through the barrier - they were spying from the other side - but that probably shouldn't be counted on - what's the fastest he could plausibly get back to Cheliax, if he decides this warrants expending all their emergency resources - 

- the guy at the door is thinking irritably that his superiors get paid enough to be all work and no play for the entire duration of the war but everyone else does not. He is planning to obey orders, though, and not bring a girl back.

- oh good they're not reading his thoughts right now. That was close. Leareth shields also snapped back up to full strength when he was startled, just as non-volitionally as the rest, but he's not sure that would have hedged her out when she was already reading him. Either way, they probably didn't notice, but - he needs to be more careful than that. 

He is, in fact, fairly sure that you do need to be competent to pull off a rescue attempt that Vkandis personally wants to prevent. And Nayoki won't have any context on Cheliax's magic; he barely has context, he has no idea how the pocket-in-space works or whether it's findable from the outside with mage-sight. 

If they decide to hustle him back to Cheliax that's...unfortunate, overall. Reduces his options. They have the upper hand here in a lot of ways; to the extent he's kept most of his important secrets, it's because they're not throwing everything they can at it. And because they have no idea what the relevant questions are to ask. 

He doesn't need to exert willpower to hold still, which is one convenient side effect of the stupid compulsion. His face probably did look surprised, but everyone was distracted, and he's already smoothed his expression back to its previous neutral calm.

He waits for the interrogators to collect themselves and keep asking questions, and deliberately doesn't think about what his Thoughtsensing is doing, it can just keep doing its thing in the background. 

She doesn't indicate that she's lost Detect Thoughts, it'll probably keep him more honest if he thinks it's still up. "Well. The suggestion that you name your price still stands but you could probably name a pretty high one. Tell us about what all mages can do."

"Heat and light spells are very simple, even self-taught mages usually figure it out. Fire, levinbolts, for combat magic; more powerful Gift-potential matters more than training and skill. Shields - physical, magical -"

Leareth lists off all the basic mage-techniques, the ones taught nearly everywhere. He doesn't mention compulsions, since in fact not all mages "can" do this, it needs to be taught and a lot of places don't teach it. He does mention Gates, but adds that only Master-level mages and above can channel enough power to Gate useful distances. 

"What differences have you noticed, between our magic and yours?"

Their compulsions are stupidly overpowered and way too broad-encompassing, and also bizarrely useless for specifics? Leareth doesn't say this, and is aware that she can't tell he's thinking it. 

"Your magic is - more structured? You seem to have techniques that I am unsure are possible for us. The translation magic, for example. And - whatever this place is. It also appears that your people can fly, which is not impossible with our magic but is almost never practical." 

There are a lot more things, but it's not like the compulsion can force him to be thorough the way a second-stage Truth Spell would. 

"What do these artifacts do?"

"The ones I am wearing are all protective. You took the one that shields against mindreading. The others are for magical attacks and physical attacks. I also have an artifact to assist scrying, and one to assist with a communications-spell."

They're in his pockets, but these people have something equivalent to mage-sight - though interestingly it looks like it's an actual spell they have to cast, not a passive sense like vision. And he doesn't think they've actually noticed, yet, that his method is different. It hasn't explicitly come up, and he was keeping that sensory input still tucked behind shields. 

"How are they made, what materials are required?"

"It requires a crystal for the focus - quartz is perfectly adequate for most kinds - and a mage with the plans for the design and adequate training." He quietly doesn't mention the part about needing a mage on an ongoing basis to re-power them.

"There are many other kinds of artifact as well. What kinds of talisman would Cheliax want, if I were willing to sell them to you." 

He isn't sure whether this is something he would want to do, but he's gotten away this long with having Thoughtsensing extended, Carissa isn't reading him, and he may not have many more opportunities to fish for more information about Cheliax. 

The spell resistance, obviously, but she waits for the First Arcane to say it so she can translate it. 

"The magical shielding. That's expensive to do with our magic. It only requires a crystal? Not spellsilver - rare metals that can hold onto magic?"

They're being inconveniently disciplined in their thoughts. Can he get anything off the First Arcane, who seems more likely to be planning the team's response to his recent revelations? 

"No. What is 'spellsilver'?"

"It's necessary for the kind of magic artifact I know how to make." She's confused about how you'd power it, otherwise, but she can pick his brain about magic artifact making later - or just try her hand at duplicating it herself, it might be possible. - it's not the time to try to understand the artifacts, tempting as that is. The important takeaway here is the high-level one that mages will be an extremely valuable resource for Cheliax, for reasons probably already known to the Queen, and possibly that Leareth personally is very valuable to Cheliax - these are higher quality than anything they've seen Iftel's soldiers wearing, but they mostly haven't engaged Iftel's elite units -

The First Arcane is thinking he should escalate this before Leareth's people try to rescue him. The problem is that they are operating very far from Chelish-controlled territory; he can personally cast Overland Flight, probably, though he's not fully fifth-circle yet and it'll wipe him out for the day, and then he could fly back to Chelish territory almost certainly unimpeded, higher than the gryffons fly (but vulnerable to interference from Vkandis, maybe - but it seems plausible Vkandis wants Leareth taken to Cheliax?) But Overland Flight's self-only, so it means leaving the unit here, and Sevar will be out of her depth if there's a rescue attempt by dozens of skilled mages - on the other hand, she's been in nine years, if it does work out badly she's clearly senior enough that the blame for that would be easy to pin on her -

What are the alternatives. Get Phantom Steeds up for all of them and head back towards the rift, hoping to run across Chelish forces before opposed ones - easier for Leareth's people to track him for a rescue attempt, easier for Vkandis to interfere with if He wishes, decent odds of running across Iftel's forces first - and it's a bad plan because it works out worse if the war is going poorly, and is most likely to work if the war is going well, and a game-changing thing like this is most important if they're losing. 

He prays, briefly, not expecting an answer. Make me an instrument of Your willl guide me in how my life can be best spent in Your service -

- Leareth appreciates the fact that Carissa is curious about his artifacts, wants to ask him questions, is tempted to do that right now. He also, separately, appreciates that she's withholding for strategic reasons. 

The First Arcane is thinking ahead and Leareth respects that too. He's not sure which option he would scheme toward, assuming he had any non-terrible options to scheme at all, which is...dubious. He definitely could, if he were trying, help them come up with plans more likely to succeed at returning him to Cheliax...

Leareth doesn't know if he wants that. It's - certainly the fastest route to learning more about Cheliax, and so much of his decision-relevant reasoning here is bottlenecked on his lack of context.

It...would also reduce his options, substantially? Presumably they would be throwing substantially more resources and stronger capabilities at both keeping him prisoner and reading his mind. 

- It's not that hard to find a way to kill himself. It wouldn't take that many mistakes on their end, to allow that. As a fallback, at least that would drop him back in Velgarth, with some salient memories... 

It doesn't actually make sense to try keeping this particular secret from them, and Leareth is curious if this explains the difference. "...Our artifacts do require a mage at intervals, on an ongoing basis, to re-power them once they are drained. Do yours require this as well?" 

"No, once they're made they work forever. There are magic items that require refilling but - talismans you wear to get spell resistance wouldn't be that kind. I wonder if we can refill them - maybe later you can show someone how it's done -"

She is also realizing they need to escalate this. The guy is clearly more like a head of state than like a powerful adventurer, even if he's taking having been captured more like an adventurer would than like a head of state would, thankfully. If they can bring him around -- or get more out of more closely targeted geases - they could settle the war a lot faster, and it'll also be game-changing for Chelish capabilities in Golarion.

"Maybe later, yes," Leareth says noncommittally. 

It seems that the situation is on its way to escalating, and he has very little opportunity to intervene. Whether or not he wants to, in either direction. He mostly just doesn't have enough context to know what he wants, yet... 

- He does know enough to prefer that his people arrange a rescue in time. He's learned a lot. Albeit not as much as he would prefer, but enough to have threads to tug on, and Nayoki could undo the overpowered not-compulsion, giving him freedom of action... 

But of course there's nothing he can do either way, from here, to make that more or less likely. 

He listens to Carissa and the First Arcane's thoughts, and waits. 

"All right," he says after a second. "I'm going to make a report. Expect further instructions in ten hours. Sevar, you need to learn to hold a spell in a combat situation." And he pulls something out of his backpack and tosses it to her. "A passing grade is ten minutes holding it against your wrist with Detect Magic up consistently. If you're not contacted you can heal it tomorrow."

It's an emergency heating stone. It's not safe to touch them directly, they'll burn you. That's - being mildly a jerk, on top of having responsibility for the team and for the prisoner in enemy territory for the rest of the day. He must be annoyed about earlier. 

She sets it against her wrist and raises an eyebrow at him. "We'll await instructions."