For quite unexpectedly, the rock that she was napping on, bathing in the warm magical energies of a Nexus, has transitioned into a full Gate, dropping her humanoid form somewhere else entirely, with a snap-hiss of twisting magic that quickly fades away.

She is awake, and panicking slightly, before she hits the ground, blinking and looking around and reflexively turning herself invisible a moment after she lands.

She finds herself in a city, in a district of creaking boardwalks and shacks built atop older stone buildings. The streets are cobbled and filthy. Smoke rises on the horizon.

In the distance, alarm bells can be heard clanging, with the sound of violence carrying on the breeze. Five equioid winged creatures with armed riders fly overhead toward a castle atop a pyramidal hill. One of them rains blood from a wound, and within moments that steed is overcome by the blood loss, crashing with its rider into a large statue. Closer nearby, a tiny red-skinned winged humanoid brawls with a miniature dragon, both of them viciously clawing and biting at each other as they tumble through the air and across the rooftops. 

If any of the local shanty-town residents have noticed the sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance of a person with fox features, none of them are in the mood to leave their shut-up residences to investigate. 

UM.

She does not know which side of the fight to join, on a moment's glance! Either the flying ones or the brawl!

She tries not to get involved in people fights without it being pretty unambiguous who's the bad guy. But if she rushes, invisibly, closer to that location maybe she will be in a position to figure it out? Or save bystanders?

Actually, those are more, like, big dog sized. The flying things might be a bigger threat. She'll sprint after those.

At her speed, she can soon reach the fallen one. The flying creature has avian legs but in an equine configuration, with large dark gray wings and leather barding. The human on its back also wears leather armor, and her sword and crossbow have been scattered from her grasp by the crash. Both are at minimum unconscious and seriously wounded with many broken bones on top of the existing wound that brought the mount down, if not dead outright. The statues they have crashed into are some of the hundreds of stone arms protruding out from along the road, and the sculptures well up with black water where they have been damaged.

The survivors' flight is harder to follow, as their route passes over a forbidding structure of black marble blocking the way. The surrounding streets are roamed by mobs brandishing cudgels, torches, and tools, shouting angrily and looting as the opportunity arises. 

Okay, Christ, this is one of Those Messes. She'll have to just. Do what she can. The rioting is going to be making a lot of mess everywhere. This is the worst.

But first.

That shit cannot be healthy. Can she. Are either of them moving? She is stronger than her frame would suggest, she could manhandle them into the open and try to bandage wounds and set bones???

Getting that close will allow her to determine that the mount is already dead in all likelihood, unless these creatures can survive with thoroughly broken necks and no breathing. The rider is still alive, but her breath is shallow and she's losing a lot of blood from a compound fracture of her collarbone. She's also hard to manhandle out from the wreckage, because she's strapped into the saddle by a sturdy arrangement of buckled leather straps.

Uuuuu blood well she can cut the straps with glowy claws of light that extend from her fingers and - if she gives them enough oomph her illusions become real enough to have physicality, a bit - illusory floating arms carefully move her away from the poor horse thing, on her back.

Uuuuuuu blood. But she does know how to - roughly - set a bone and dump disinfectant on a wound and bandage it tightly. Quickly quickly. 

With the bandage applied, the rider is no longer in obvious danger of external bleeding, but she probably has more broken bones and may be at risk of internal bleeding if moved.

One of the purple dragons, the size of a housecat, descends and lands next to the rider. It makes eye contact with Weiss, its nostrils flare and a little wisp of silver mist escapes them, and then it presses a paw onto the rider's shoulder like a cat kneading. Once, then twice, a soft glow surrounds the limb and spreads into the injured person's body. Her breathing becomes a little less ragged, her face a little less pale.

But... She's invisible?? And healing is hard??

This isn't Tirra. She feels something in her gut sink at the conclusion.

Okay, well, uh.

Deep breath. Don't spiral. She bows to the small dragon. "Thank you."

It cocks its head, then makes a noise like speech in a language she doesn't recognise. Then another, with more hisses and clicks, and then a third with clipped tones and narrowed eyes.

When she appears to understand none of them, the little dragon shakes out its wings like a shrug, stretches smugly, then settles back on its haunches on one of the statue arms to watch what she does next.

"Yeah I guess not. And you know not Atsosi?" Shrug. Glance around thoughtfully...

She can't just stand here and babysit this - soldier? - but uh. Mobs will uh. Produce people in need of help pretty consistently.

Maybe she will put them on a roof. Bit of a risk to worry about forgetting about them. And other stuff seems to prowl the roofs... Maybe the Woods Between, that's a safe place.

How're the mobs doing? Or rather, what do they seem to be doing right now, how close are they to creepy arm street? 

The mobs are also avoiding Creepy Arm Street, though maybe not for creepy arm reasons: Most of the shouting and sounds of violence is from further into the wealthier parts of the city, in the approximate direction the other riders were flying, and taking the time to look around reveals that further along this street are a large half-built military tower on the walls and an out-of-place upmarket building with a turtle sign surrounded by a blazing curtain of shimmering violet fire.

Thaaaat purple fire feels like an active defense, which is cool. It makes her smile for a moment.

With nobody soldier-y visible, she thinks she'd better take this downed person to the Woods Between. They seem... Stable?? In a way that people with massive wounds mostly aren't on Tirra? Gut feeling. Okay.

She spins up a little illusion of Creepy Arm Street and vague figures of red critters and rioters surrounding, then her touching the soldier-type, and the background changing to a pretty sunset autumn cedar forest with no such threats, and then herself popping back to Creepy Arm Street while changing into... A Large fox. (She might as well combine this move with a transformation since she's spending the energy to transit the barrier anyway, she prefers to do any fighting as a quadruped...)

And then puts action to words. Shifting fully into the Spirit World with the stabilized soldier, and returning-

As a great fox, powerfully muscled and wearing a mostly decorative cloth garment around the upper body. This has intimidation bonuses and diplomatic detriments, but the choice has been made.

The house drake watches the illusions intently. It startles into the air as she reappears in fox form with a reflexive wingbeat, then does a loop in delight and claps its forelimbs in approval. 

"Hihihihi!"

A friendly lick might be taken the wrong way. She will mime it at least, mleming the air, and give a tail wag.

Okay! It is time to move fast and do things!

She will start running towards sounds of trouble, avoiding approaching within like thirty feet of people if she can, and leaping up to any convenient roofs for a better view, a routine action without any real chance of failure for her unless they are especially high or precarious. The goal is to try and identify fights that look... Break-up-able? Or people in clear need of help not in an active fight. She can't just assume anything not on two legs is bad, given this cute/helpful minidragon...

The drake is bolder and gives her ear a lick before flying alongside her.

Leaping up, it turns out the roofs are surprisingly convenient? At first glance they seem to be just as disorganized and haphazard as the buildings across the river, but on a second look many of the slanted roofs are aligned the same way into a sort of above-ground street, with gargoyles and chimneys as handholds to swing on at the corners. 

They don't seem to be entirely safe, the little drake gives a hiss of warning when they're both looking in one direction, but they make a good vantage point to survey the city.

The next street over, a lone man with wild hair roams around, screaming something and banging on the doorways with a stick. Further along, a band of a half-dozen laborers has formed a semicircle around the mouth of an alleyway, which she'd have to get closer to see inside. In the distance, from the castle, another voice is repeating a phrase in a voice that cuts through the din, but which seems to provoke more ragged cries from the mobs in response.

Huh. Neat. Ugh, languages, what even are they. She has no means of interpreting stick guy's actions, and the castle situation makes it feel more like... A revolt? No participation in that without Significantly More Context.

The alley people are probably defending their families or turf; She has a bit of a closer look at said alley and on a whim she throws up a nice and subtle sticky illusion--- Wait, no, they're facing in.

Well, her closer look stands.

She can get close enough to see that trapped within the alley is a beardless young man in much nicer garb. He has a well-made rapier out, but is pressed back against a wooden wall and appears to be wielding it defensively. 

Noble? Who knows if he's a good one or not, and much sympathy to the plight of the proletariat and all, but cornering someone with weapons is... Eh.

Okay, this looks like a break-up-able fight. But something something the upper class usually holds the monopoly on violence and ehhhhhh.

She hates dithering!

So: She peers down into the alley from the roof and barks, once, to see what reactions this prompts.

Everyone looks up. The laborers come to a common conclusion that a Dire Fox is not something they want to fight and they make a hasty disorganized retreat, while the noble sinks down against the wall with an expression of horror. He keeps his rapier pointed at the new arrival, but the point is wavering as he quakes.

"Hihihihi!"

Yes, flee in terror go home and rethink your actions!

She does an illusion of boards across the open alleyway with only a lil bit of power, so it'll expire in a few minutes when noble guy has collected himself, and moves on, looking for more trouble to intervene in. In the general direction of the fighting, probably?

As she continues inwards towards the castle, a rumble issues from the streets below. A moment later, the bricks crack apart, long fissures spreading, as the road surface bursts upwards, casting chunks of rocks into the air! 

The stench of sewer filth billows from the breach, and out from within come three tentacles. They latch onto anything they can grab and pull up from the sewers a rough-skinned three-legged creature that seems to be mostly maw. Those tentacles then start reaching for some of the commoners shrieking in terror at the eruption. 

WELP.

This thing may indeed have a rich inner life and a potent grudge against the surfacers who have mistreated it terribly, driving it to a mindless rage.

Unfortunately, it is currently attacking presumably-innocent bystanders.

And is making her think of Cryptids, which raises her hackles. So she has to take this seriously. (Is the minidragon still following her? She wouldn't want it to get hurt!)

These thoughts flit through her head as it's still emerging, and then she SCREAMS at it, with the sound reinforced with illusory power to the point of being damaging (at least to the thing itself), and surrounds its - head? main body? - with a cloud of darkness, and shoots down blue foxfires to surround it as fast as she can flick her tail, all while jumping down towards it.

The creature screams back, evidently damaged by her roar. It is momentarily confounded by the cloud of darkness and flinches away from the blue flame, but then the uppermost tentacle rises up like a periscope and reveals a mass of glaring eyes at the end of the appendage. The other two tendrils leave the commoners alone and lash out to grab her, tipped with barbs and trying to yank her down from the rooftops towards the big fanged mouth. 

The purple dragon is still following her! Seeing that the creature is distracted, it swoops down and around to exhale a cloud of silvery mist at it from behind, but to no apparent effect. 

Periscope eye tentacle can get a cloud of darkness tethered to itself too as a quick action snap reaction.

"JUST GO HOME!"

She doesnt need to Kill the magic beast, she just needs to buy time for people to get away, and maybe scare it off. She'll do her best to dodge the strikes and deflect with her magically resistant tail, and keep the foxfires going, surrounding more thoroughly. Yep, just look at her - or don't - and stay there.

After the first tentacle-slaps crash into the rooftop or are parried by her tail, the expanded darkness prevents it from doing anything more sophisticated than blindly sweeping the appendages along the rooftop where it last saw her.

Whether or not the creature understands her language, it gets the message that smashing its way to the surface is unwelcome and will be met with stinging fire and piercing screams. With a few more petulant flicks, the creature descends back into the darkness on its three thick legs, grumbling to itself in a deep growling voice. It makes no effort to clear up the hole in the street or all the wreckage left behind. 

Most of the civilians have already fled by now or are continuing to flee from the spellcasting giant fox. One of the better-dressed men is staggering to the door of his shop after being released from a tentacle when the purple dragon lands on his shoulder. The two of them launch into an animated conversation as he fumbles to unlock the door and get away from the stinking pit, the dragon gesturing up at Weiss insistently.

Oh yay.

This is getting kind of tiring in the way that lots of shit happening at once is. And the stench is nasty.

She will take a brief break, flopping on the edge of the roof and contemplating fleeing people and the giant hole in the street. She could cover it with an illusion? But it'd end at the WORST possible time, that's just her luck. Nothing for it probably. 

After a few minutes the little dragon returns, beating its wings heavily as it strains to ascend back up to her rooftop with a pair of vials clutched in its forelimbs.

Dropping them next to her, it catches its breath, then rolls both vials towards her and picks up a couple of pebbles that were thrown onto the roof by the eruption. With one in each forelimb, it demonstratively swaps them behind its back, hidden by a screen of flared wings, then offers her the choice between the two closed paws. 

Headtilt?

Oh shit she's just been sitting here while the Trouble continues. Right. She gives a big shake to shake herself out of her stupor and then uh... Minidragon is clearly an actual person now that she thinks about it. It attempted languages at her for Erius's sake!

-Noseboops the left one she guesses?

It nods encouragingly, handing her the pebble she picked and keeping the other. Then it gestures for her to do the same with the vials.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm sus

But she can probably trust minidragon to have her [best interests or something in that rough sphere of concept space] at heart right now?

She does visibly consider it for a bit, then shuts her eyes for a moment and picks...... Left again.

It mimes drinking one of the vials and then opens and closes its forepaws like two mouths speaking to each other. 

Seeing her pick the left one, the little dragon works loose the cap of the right vial with some exertion. It upends the container and chugs the contents with remarkable speed. In less than six seconds it's swallowed the lot and sticks its tongue inside to lick up the last drops.

...Huh? Oh, so it's like a witch's translation spell. Great!

...She can't actually do that, given her current teeth and paw situation. Or can she. Illusory white-glove hand to the rescue, holding it and uncorking and upturning and shaking. They kind of suck for doing things but if she's going slowly and looking directly at it it can work!

She clicks her teeth when done and asks, "So how does it work?"

In the distance, the repeating cry resolves into recognizable words even as the sound doesn't change. "The King is dead! Long live the Queen!" 

"Hey fox lady! We got ten minutes to talk now, that's what the potions do. You're a druid, right? What brings you to the big city? And what languages do you speak, even an otyugh knows Taldane." 

The little dragon turns out to be a chatty one! It's switched back to the hiss-and-click language, and it speaks at a rapid pace in that tongue. The word 'otyugh' comes with a vague impression of the kind of creature that erupted from the sewers.

"Wait, do druids get Mage Hand?"

"Just ten- Better be quick yeah? I'm a foxspirit, I think this isn't my original-" 'world' wants to be either 'planet' or 'plane' "-planet or plane? Not sure. Fell through a rift. Those happen sometimes. Notal and Atsosi and a lil bit of Khesian and English. No idea what's going on here but it sure is a lot, gotta help while it's happening. The hand is an illusion with enough oomph to be real-ish."

"Ah, a rift," the dragon says, nodding sagely. "So you're a Fey, and you put the marine somewhere safe in the First World?"

The meanings the potion supplies for those words are wrong for her. 'Fey' comes surprisingly close, but the First World describes a whole other plane full of Fey rather than the Woods Between.

"Me, I'm Rixpar, they call us 'house drakes'." Those words come out in the first language he tried with her. Either the name or first-person pronoun also carries the connotation that Rixpar is male. "Wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to stick around once you've dropped her off again at a temple. I swear Korvosa isn't usually this much of a garbage fire."

"Wouldn't be much left standing if this happened every Sunday. She's in my little pocket of the Woods Between, should be safe there. A lot safer than a filthy street with mobs running around, at least. Uh... Cities are fucking messy and I usually prefer dealing with things that are definitely evil, less complicated, but needs must. Speaking of needs, I want to go keep looking for trouble?"

Off in the distance, a shout of “The usurper must die!” can be heard.

Rixpar laughs. "Yeah, easier to be Good if you live that way, they call this place Little Cheliax for a reason. If it's trouble you're after, there's an imp nest not far from here that you could clear out fast, or we can go further in and put some fear into more of the mobs together. Humanoids are always doing stupid stuff when they're angry or greedy or horny."

"On the one paw, too right. On the other, oi, I'm humanoid half the time! Hihihi."

Headtilt.

"I don't know what an imp is but if I see one menacing people trying to run away I'll stop them? Getting people to just - go home - or helping those who're just trying to stay out of it seems like what I wanna do, but you know this place more than me."

"It's worth doing. Queen Ileosa isn't going to be a good ruler but neither was her husband, and it's not like they're going to overthrow her and institute drake-inclusive Galtan democracy armed with sticks and stones."

He takes to the air, circles around, then swoops back down again to point her in a direction. "Looks like it's getting nasty over by Midland, university students are always spoiling for a fight."

She starts roof-hopping off in that direction.

"Democracy can go great or so badly. Really what you need are good people... Oh joy. Magic school?"

"Not the magic school, and always annoyed that the Academae is the one everyone thinks of first!"

They shortly arrive to find several knots of unrest, groups of students roaming and making trouble, shouting and facing off against other bands of workers or locals who are eager to settle grudges.

She will work up a suite of subtle illusions that make her look scarier- A bit of dramatic wind ruffling her fur, a sort of subtle shining outline, gold glowing eyes, that kind of thing, and wreathe herself in blue foxfires, and run down between the closest knot of belligerents. 

"Hello, all! I would really appreciate if everyone just went home and had a nice nap or dinner. Much harder to end up regretting your actions from that position!"

"I should've said, the potions only let you understand other languages, not speak them," Rixpar whispers.

He raises his voice. "Listen up, idiots! My magical mighty friend here would like it if you all hurried back home, before you start a fight with someone dangerous like her!"

The groups find this a persuasive argument. They continue to hurl insults at each other, but do so while backing away into their own territories and paying more attention to whether the obviously magical fox is about to cast a spell at them. Living in a town with a magical university means any experienced group of rioters knows to quickly disperse so they don't make an attractive target for a 20' spread.

She will pace a bit and tooth-click and wave the blue fires for emphasis. It's a little gratifying, being the scariest thing in the nearest city block.

"Good stuff. An ounce of prevention and a pound of cure and all that. Do stop me if it looks like I'm about to make a big mistake, please. Haste makes waste, but fortune favors the bold..."

And then repeat with any other sets of people menacing each other in the nearby surrounds?

They have an effective routine going! Obviously magical creatures are scary, and unfamiliar ones with unknown capabilities even more so. 

As they're en route to another site of brewing violence, Rixpar speaks up. "The main thing is the language barrier. You got a few options if you don't get language spells yourself. Potions like these don't run cheap, and you don't get a chance to save an alchemist every day. If you do have the cash to keep buying 'em, you're better off going to the coin-priests thataway, spells're cheaper than potions since you can't carry them off to drink as you need 'em."

"The sun-priests can help gratis if you're not loaded, but only if there's nobody needier and that's a queue that's getting a lot longer with all this going on." His stinger lashes in the air, gesturing at all the unrest of the city. "Or you could go to the King - no, Queen now - or the guard, they'll have wizards who can help and they need all the help they can get. Normally the Academae would be full of spellcasters to sort you out but it's shut up tight. And lastly..."

Rixpar looks over at the complex to the east walled off with black marble that the riders flew over. "Okay, they summon way too many imps, but one good thing from all the wannabe wizards of the Academae is that they also have a ritual for binding a familiar and now we drakes know it too. If you do that, so long as we stick together I get tougher scales, you can land touch spells through me, and we both get a private language so I can translate for you." 

"Oh, different gods maybe? I can figure those out later. Yeah, I'm going to need to talk to people and I'm not short on coin. Well, depending on how many, but it's probably fine, cursed spirit lairs tend to have valuables. Don't like nobles I don't know, generally. Coin priests, then, it's a lot easier to just throw money at merchants. Uh... Not really sure about the familiar thing when I'm so out of context. You're fun and helpful- Uh I've got a humanoid name by the way, 'Weiss Faron' or 'Weiss', and mostly go by it- But that's a 'read the books first' sounding thing."

"Yeah, figures, I'd not normally be the type to tie myself down like that either. Here, if you scare off this lot with one of those screams, I'll write you a message for them saying you want to pay for a Share Language of Taldane."

He settles down on the next roof, collecting a tile that has dropped into a gutter and scratching letters into it with his claws. The spell also allows her to read them, confirming it's what he said. 

Well, it is always kind of fun and cathartic to let out a very loud fox screem.

Rixpar cackles as the people scatter, and offers her the etched tile once he's done. He does a double-take, before more hesitantly holding it up for her to carry in her mouth.

She whaps it with her tail, actually, and the tile disappears smoothly into the fluff.

"Thanks for all the help, Rixpar, I'm going to go look for coin priests now. Follow me if you like but if not good luck and maybe we'll meet again!"

Rixpar accompanies her as far as the temple, where a wall of serious acolytes and guards with crossbows stand ready. 

"Hey, don't shoot, she's here on business!" He tells them as he flies ahead. 'Here on business' seem to be the magic words for Abadarians, because the human wall parts to allow her entry even if they keep their crossbows ready.

He returns to part ways from her with a wave. "Apsu's strength to you!"

While the temple defenders are distracted by the giant fox, Rixpar flies off to sneak some sips from the font of holy water. 

Okay, these people mean business, alright. 

"Yeah uh hi?"

She produces the tile and a string of gold coins (a literal string, with holes in the middle and knots to keep them in place), with a flick of her tail, holding them up with an illusory hand.

...Actually, uh.

Here is an illusion of the soldier lady, with any heraldry she saw and her injuries. Here is an illusion of soldier lady floating into the building? Head nodding on left and head shaking on right.

After a whispered exchange that involves the words "resurrection insurance" and "Breath of Life", a woman with a crossbow and a gilded set of armor engraved with designs of keys and scales steps forward to deal with her. 

"There's someone injured? From the Sable Company? Yes, bring her to the channel room, they're insured. I'll tell the guards to let you through again when you return."

She then reads the tile and lifts the coin-string to feel the weight of it. "There's a premium charged for foreign denominations and for open slots under these circumstances. It'll cost you twenty of these to get the spell tonight, a little less if you can wait until tomorrow."

Snort.

And-

-Flickers away for about three seconds-

-Here she is, carrying the Sable Company soldier on a plane of softly glowing light, and catching her message and coin string in the other hand. She makes to hand over the coins.

There's too much she doesn't understand. She feels impatient, and the communication difficulties are annoying, and being scalped is ANNOYING but the only way out is through.

The guards startle and raise crossbows, but the representative holds up a hand and they lower them again.

"You were the fox? Bring her through here." She accepts the coins and counts off the required amount like beads on a rosary as she leads Weiss into a large round chamber sixty feet across with multiple levels and several mats already occupied by the wounded awaiting healing. "It'll take me fifteen minutes to prepare the Share Languages. Can you wait out in the hall with me once you've set her down?"

Nodnod, at the question. Yes, she was the fox, see this illusion of her shifting.

Her rescue will be gently set down, and she will follow or wait wherever, trying to chill out a bit. Deep breaths. Pacing, but in a contained way.

By Tamamo and Illumine, dealing with Erius-types can be either so soothing or so stressful. Her mind goes back to a meme from long long ago- 'shut up and take my money!' Making her smile briefly.

It's less than a minute of waiting before the background chatter in the temple fades back into gibberish, Rixpar got her here just in time. 

As she waits, a couple more injured people are brought in on stretchers and lowered onto the floor of the channeling chamber. A dark-skinned man in lavishly embroidered yellow robes walks through, acolytes presenting ledgers and verbal reports to him as they follow. Another round of shouting issues from outside, muffled by the thick walls of the temple-bank.

Fifteen minutes later, the priest returns. She holds a key in one hand, and offers her glowing knuckles for Weiss to touch. In her other hand she returns the remaining coins of her string. 

"Will you be needing this spell regularly?" She asks, once it takes hold. Receiving a shared language is a subtly different experience to comprehending it, her thoughts shifting to accommodate the new word orders. "It typically takes a month to learn a new tongue through sharing and immersion."

She's used to translation magic doing weird things, thankfully.

"Gods if I know. I'm here by accident. And real low on context. If I stay in the city, yes, but that will sure add up." 

She checks how many coins were taken.

"How long's this one last? The last one was only a few minutes and there are probably more people in trouble, I gotta get back out there."

It's such a relief to be able to talk and expect to be understood!

"Twenty-four hours. If you speak to a clerk, they can get you scheduled for another casting at the same time tomorrow."

The priestess rubs her key with her thumb thoughtfully. "If you are low on context, it is unwise to intervene blindly. Abadar advises us to present our offerings and accept the highest bid for them, that our skills and creations may be received where they are valued most. For a nominal fee, the Bank can list what you are capable of and share that with other patrons of the temple, or put you in contact with likely buyers. Or you can pay for the time of someone here to offer impartial counsel."

"A full day, gotcha. Uh... Oh, you guys really are like Erius priests huh. Everything is worth what someone else will pay and all. I've been breaking up fights mostly. Your listing does not sound like a fast process? And there's fighting in the streets now. Then again I did pay for this to be less running around blind- Uh, maybe there is someone else whose time is less valuable I should talk to?"

The priest gives her a smile. "There are costs of attention in tracking every transaction, and costs of time in seeking out the very best offer. If you want to help now, the Guard will be hiring, and the Arbiter's Hall is that large building just across the road. A merchant seeking protection can likely pay you more, but as you say will take longer to make that arrangement. As for paying me for a few extra minutes of my time, why don't you decide on a fair price when you see me next based on how much my words have helped you?"

"Mmh, sure. I heard there's a new queen and people aren't happy about it. I fought a tentacled thing that came up from underground until it decided to go back. I broke up fights by being scary. I can do really good illusions, being a giant fox, lots of fire. I'm nimble and pretty good in a physical brawl, especially on four legs. I have a good perception of movement around me. I have a few mixed scrolls and wands. And I wouldn't mind any of this being listed for hire, though I won't do anything, uh... Evil.

"What should I do if I plan to stick around here for at least a few days, don't really know how magic or anything works around here and am kind of curious, and want to help people pretty generally but not stick my neck out too far? And what's your name, I'm Weiss Faron?"

She takes a quick note of those capabilities. "I am Clerk-Militant Jana. No fire inside the city, please, the buildings are flammable and it's been a dry spell. For that kind of broad introduction... It sounds like it would take long enough that I or a colleague would charge for it, but one of the junior acolytes would only charge a few silvers per hour and would be no less trustworthy. Normally the Academae would be the natural place to direct you for questions of magic, but who knows how long that will stay closed off for. As for gathering rumors and taking quests, taverns are traditional, the Three Rings is only a few streets over." She says that last part like it's an obvious reference.

Nodnodnodnodnod taptaptap the floor with her foot in nervous energy. Her ears and tail are startlingly expressive.

"It's pretty good at only burning what I want," lil blue orb on her tailtip, which pokes up in front of her, and she waves her hand through it, "But I will take that under heavy advisement, burning someone's house down would be... Bad. Okay, well. I'm... Not super great at taverns but if it's the done thing... City Guard, hmm... Okay. I'm going to be back for more languaging tomorrow almost certainly. So I'll give you whatever internal judgement says as bonus for this advice then, M- Clerk? Jana. Crisis may be ongoing so I'm going back out there. Probably to the tavern, briefly, then the guard. Or vice versa. Can you lot uhh- Hmm no, okay, I'll just be back tomorrow if you-the-temple end up posting all that about me and receiving inquiries, inquirers can pay any fees to hold and deliver said messages? Silver ecu to cover the listing fee?"

"How big is an ecu? Yes, that will do." She accepts the silver coin.

"Peace and prosperity upon you," are apparently some Abadarian words of parting.

To a Golarionite, the Three Rings is a tavern in the Galtan style but lacking Galtan sensibilities. 

To Weiss, she will find a subdued drinking-house serving mead and wine along with hot tea and coffee, the scents drifting out into the street. It remains open despite the unrest, thanks to its proximity to some of the city's concentrations of guards and enforcers and its own burly bouncer. Enough merchants and tradesfolk have stayed home that they do have trays full of uneaten Varisian sweetbreads and pastries, baked in anticipation of a breakfast rush that never came, and the seven-fingered landlady perks up at the sight of another customer. 

The patrons who are present are of the bolder sort, traders having urgent conversations about how to fill their orders when no ships will dock until the turmoil ends and complaining about what this will do to the price of grain. A few swashbucklers are listening in for opportunities to sell their sword-arms, one of them loudly talking about how he had his rapier silvered in case the wererats make trouble again.

-And also with you. ughhhh no brain whyyyy she thought she had purged all the Christianity.

She will... Hover a bit, just inside the place, feeling awkward. She - does not do cities very much, at home, though much of that is the inherent anxiety and assumptions that people place on kitsunes. Wearing an illusion of someone not too remarkable helps, even if whiskers or a paw sign or weird tattoo always shines through.

...She feels underdressed and embarrassed, ears going flat and tail trying to cover herself near-reflexively until she pushes past it. Clothes selected for literally not caring about cold and maximal comfort while conforming if barely to the notion of modesty exposing more skin than might be usual. And she doesn't know these people, and doesn't know the quiet Social Rules for this place, reading the room or so on.

...She decides to make herself tiny little foxfire earrings and fingernail-adornments, subtly glowing, just to mark herself out as Mysterious instead of Weird.

And get a sweet pastry- If a silver ecu will suffice for that? If not, or the foreign coin is too suspicious, she'll move on without rancor.

Right. Let the fear slip away and play a character. Does it truly matter if she embarrasses herself here in some sort of quiet faux pas? Is worrying about who and how and what to talk about truly what she wants to spend some of her energy on?

She finds a good spot and projects her voice to the room at large.

"Hello, all. I'm Weiss Faron. I'm in the city unexpectedly, and I want to help people. I may well come back here later, but there is trouble afoot now and I have confronted some of it and I intend to go stick my foot in more of it."

Illusion blooms above her head, specifically of her confrontation with the Otyugh (not that she knows the name), with a falsified introduction of her shapechanging mid-leap to start it off and ending with its retreat below some twelve seconds later. She conjures a bit of foxfire and plays with it, dancing in her hands, to help sell the connection.

"I'm not asking for pay or anything right now- If anything, pay me in the chance to help! Perhaps someone here needs an escort, or knows someone who is in trouble or needs rescue, or something like that. I'll leave to look around the city myself in a few minutes, regardless. Thank you, that is all."

The pastries are discounted and the owner is glad to get anything for them before they go stale; an ecu will buy her two.

'Let me help you for free' sounds far too good to be true at first blush to the cynical citizens here, but even Little Cheliax is not without Desnans and Sarenites who are that kind of Good. Weiss' expressiveness is a far cry from a schemer's golem face¹, too.

"If you could calm things down at the harborside, that would go a long way. At the moment nobody wants to unload goods in case they get looted before the sale goes through or their ships catch fire at anchor," one of the merchants says. In case she is Good and not just playing the part for a con, he adds: "If the city goes hungry for want of grain shipments, there'll be far more trouble to come."

That he has a small fortune tied up in one of those shipments is beside the point. 

"How big an area do you think you could cover?" One of his companions asks. If they can only reopen a small part of the docks, that's worse for the city but better for their own profits. 

¹ The expression derives from the Varisian bluffing card game 'Golem', not the magical construct the game is itself named after. 

Yeah, she's not blind, guy.

Still, she'll walk up and talk to that little knot a bit quieter, trying to look serious. (She's still missing tons of context, but something tells her to at least not actively bring it up.)

"So... Keeping the markets open is not unhelpful. The city needs to eat, and going back to normal will help everyone, so in the lack of information on people who need immediate rescue, I think I should do this. How much I could cover depends on what I am protecting against, so, a bit hard to say. How large are the docks as a whole, exactly? I would just ask those present here to, on your own conscience and in the Abadaran style, donate perhaps let's say a tenth of the money you are preserved, thanks to my actions, to the poor and needy or organizations supporting them."

She is not willing to actually kill just to protect goods, probably. As ever, only a sith deals in absolutes. Though... Nobody needs to know that even if they guess. And she can still be deterring.

A Large fox pacing around and staring intently at gathering knots of troublemakers does turn out to be an effective deterrent, especially as word of the unusual sentinel spreads.

Back at the Three Rings, a rat scurries out from the rafters, then transforms back to its true form.

It's amazing what people can get accustomed to, to the point that they no longer even think about it. 

For example: The fact that they share a city with hundreds of fiends, more cunning than the average person, that can see in total darkness and turn invisible or take the form of a rat or raven at will.

In fairness to the residents of Korvosa, although a given imp could easily kill a given resident at no risk to themselves thanks to their hellish resilience and poison sting, they have a natural predator in the form of the house drakes². Usually when a local sees an imp, the imp is getting befuddled and mauled by the friendly little purple dragons, which does tend to diminish the apparent threat. And most of the imps flying free above the city are those whose summoners failed to bind them or later died, without worldly masters and without any way to contact more powerful fiends.

² As for how the native pseudodragons evolved so rapidly into house drakes better-adapted for fighting fiends, the gold dragon Mengkare does have several years unaccounted for between his return to Golarion and the start of his Glorious Endeavor of perfecting humanity, years that line up with those early decades of the Academae. 

The fact remains that no lemure is elevated into an imp without the hierarchy of Hell being ground into its being. Even the unbound imps of Korvosa, lucky enough to find themselves masterless and beyond Hell's immediate reach, remain conditioned to establish a pecking order and seek out more powerful fiends for the comfort of knowing which way the torture and deference should flow.

The upside for Hell is that any imps who are on the Material plane for a purpose can insert themselves at the top of that hierarchy and command a city's worth of underlings without having to coerce them all individually.

Being the familiar of an eighth-circle master helps. 

By the end of the day, the tension in the air remains thick, but the riots have been quelled by the actions of the Hellknights, the Guard, the Sable Company, and a certain recent arrival. 

Several ships are able to dock without disturbances, and a little under ten percent of the income (after tax) is donated by the merchants to the Temple of Sarenrae in the Heights. 

No urgent crises present themselves as night falls. 

.....She's fairly surprised the 10% thing actually worked.

Well.

Hmm.

Back to the coin priests. She does want to get a basic idea of what the fuck is going on and how things work around here.  They seem like people who can be paid to keep her ignorance and weird questions secret. And also, is tired.

(And drop a Sol for that one Clerk Militant since she did actually point her to an opportunity to get people to donate to what seems like a very reputable Light Goddess?)

Highlights of the question session are: What's up with this Academae thing, how come the minidragon could see her even though she was being invisible, what even was it that she fought (Otyugh) and is it a person, and wherever her immediate curiosity turns after that.

Clerk-Militant Jana accepts the Sol with a smile. Confidentiality within the bank is already included in the consultation fees, with a modest extra charge for the advisor not to discuss anything with their colleagues either.

"The Academae is one of the greatest schools of magic on the continent. If you'd arrived here a few weeks ago, you could have seen the Breaching Festival where guests compete to break through the wards, though none have succeeded for centuries."

"House drakes have an innate ability to see invisible creatures, it's said they developed it to better fight the imps of the city. It's like the blindsight of true dragons, I think?"

"Oh, that's an otyugh! Despite appearances they're intelligent, they keep the sewers clear by eating any big blockages or something like that, but they shouldn't be bursting out onto the streets. I don't think they're mistreated? By all accounts they like eating garbage."

Jana is trying not to yawn as the questions continue, not for want of payment or interest but because it's been a long and stressful day for most everyone in the city. 

She has a lot more questions actually. They wander, sleepily, as she gathers up some patchy common knowledge.

And eventually: To the Woods Between rather than try to find an inn room at this hour.

And back out again some time before noon, on the steps of the temple.

When she reappears, a guard is descending the steps of the temple. She startles, then does a double-take.

"Excuse me, are you... Weiss Faron?" Her guess at the pronunciation is not very good. 

Instantly on guard. "Um, yes, actually? Uh, 'Weiss'." There's almost a v sound in there. "What's up?"

"You're not in any trouble." She pats her hands on her thighs, wrist launchers and spells that emanate from the palm making the open-hands gesture of Earth more fraught. "Word of your efforts yesterday has reached the Queen, and she would summon you to Castle Korvosa for your reward."

"...Huh."

A queen, eh? Either someone who is really on top of things, or... Oh, hmm. Korvosa is just the city, not a full on empire like Noten, she thinks. So this is more like a Countess or Marquess from home. That's less intimidating.

But why her? She just showed up yesterday, though she did admittedly make a big splash. Running around in a riot and not even attempting to hide.

Kitsunes aren't a known a quantity here. She never regrets cutting loose and going open, but people are always just a bit... Off, about foxes who might be girls, back home. She's had to smack some people. But here, she might be a druid, or something weirder, and it's perfectly normal noble behavior to try to understand who the magically powerful person in your town is. She always has to demur feasts and such after helping little frontier towns with monsters. 

Can she demur this without causing Problems? A reward, so pretending or actually being nice. It just seems like generally a bad idea to deliberately piss people off, but she doesn't fit in at fancy places.

And now she's pissing herself off over spirals of social expectations and signaling and all the bullshit rules of society and soft and hard ways that those in charge stay in charge and-

She can always just hit da bricks if it sucks too much.

"Suuure. Yes. Good. Upon consideration I'd be delighted."

The guard hides her relief much better than Weiss hid her conflicted reaction, and she leads the way to the castle.

Castle Korvosa dominates the city. Built atop a four-sided sandstone pyramid at a cyclopean scale, the castle itself is made of the same black marble as the Academae. Successive monarchs have made their own additions to the structure, remaining consistent in the neo-Chelaxian³ style and little else. It includes a clocktower and a hippogriff aerie from which the Sable Company marines can be seen flying out of on patrol. 

With the guard escorting her, Weiss is able to ascend up the broad ramp on the West side of the pyramid, through the lines of guards armed with swords and crossbows, and into a public courtyard overshadowed by the castle itself. 

"If you would wait here, please," her escort says, before going to notify one of the servants of their arrival.

³ Doompunk.

The aesthetics are not making her less tense.

(Hehe, confronting things is good for you. But... Just in case, Tamamo will very quietly start "adjusting" some "things" in that place between places you call the Woods Between. As a prank, see. Not because she's feeling protective. Definitely.)

Weiss is collected by an imposing woman in full plate armor with a bright red plume and cloak, one that stands in contrast to the more somber tones of the marines and guards of the city. 

"Sabina Merrin," she introduces herself curtly. "My queen will see you now."

She turns and marches up the steps, expecting Weiss to follow. Unlike all the other Golarionites she's met, Sabina moves with the confidence that she would be the one to win if it came to violence.

The main stairs lead up through an archway landing, designed as a chokepoint against invaders with a portcullis and murder holes. Through there, they turn a corner and rise another story, onto a lavish floor of magnificent tapestries and polished marble stonework. A spacious and well-lit entrance hall is lined with busts of stern-faced statespeople. 

Sabina pauses for a moment before the final doorway. 

"My queen is to be greeted with a curtsey, addressed first as Your Majesty and then ma'am if she should grace you with conversation. Do you have a title by which you should be announced?"

Thankfully, she had changed out of her 'casual outfit' into a 'city outfit' in the Woods Between. It's essentially a nice sundress, white with blue trim. With pockets (that she doesn't need) because NYAH, an unobtrusive hole for her tail, and a hem about halfway up the thigh. And unobtrusive high socks and shoes, hair tied back, and a simple silver bracelet on each wrist. No bags, Tail of Holding and all.

Noble Shit always makes her so incredibly twitchy but, like, reward. And if it's longer than a brief audience, there's usually food and maybe the food will be nice. And it'll be over sooner or later either way.

She does a curtsey in Notal style, skirt flare duck down and head point down, hold for a moment, and back up. "Like so? Mmh. If one is required for formality, perhaps I can come up with something but I'd as soon not."

That is evidently satisfactory for Sabina, because she pushes open the double doors and steps aside for Weiss to enter. 

"Presenting to her Royal Majesty, the Radiant Queen Ileosa, Weiss Faron!"

The throne room is opulent and grand, the light through the stained-glass windows soaked up by the deep red drapes framing the iron throne.

Upon it sits Queen Ileosa, a vision of beauty even through her black mourning veil. 

"Rise."

Her eyes are red-rimmed, flickering between the ears and tail before she regards Weiss with warmth. A small silver coffer rests in the lap of her black mourning dress. 

"Here on my darkest day, you come before me as a glimmer of hope. Tell me, are you indeed the mysterious fox that has been quelling riots and rescuing my citizens from harm?"

Most kitsunes turn out somewhere in that general region of pretty, it doesn't seem especially remarkable to her, though maybe it makes her a tad more comfortable.

Let's get this over with.

Curtsey. "Your Majesty, I know not the rumors which swirl around me but it seems so. I can, and did indeed, take the form of a large fox, and I did seek to preserve lives and peace during the chaos yesterday by driving belligerents apart."

"Then you have done me a great service. Please, accept this reward as a token of my appreciation."

Sabine had silently taken up a position at the queen's left hand. She takes the small silver chest and presents it to Weiss. The warmth of the queen's touch lingers on the metal, and the dense contents give it a significant weight: Inside the red-velvet-lined interior rest 12 gold ingots imprinted with the royal seal of Korvosa.

"Tell me, where do you hail from? What has brought you to my fair city?"

There is a fascinating rhythm to her words, though they are phrased as gentle inquiry. The monarch of Korvosa has her full attention fixed upon Weiss, and that is an intense experience even when no words are exchanged. 

"Thank you, ma'am, I-"

-huh. This. Is sort of like Crpytid bounties perhaps. Okay. She immediately tries to convert it to gp, mentally.

And then- How much to say? This place is strange, and also strangely familiar, and a little scary. They know about different planets and different planes and portals, those came up in her - well it's not a wiki walk if it's another person- uh-

She considers lying for a moment, but she's bad at it in most cases and it feels weird and wrong here. She can be vague about certain things, maybe.

"On the planet Tirra it is a known but rare phenomenon for magic to build up to a high level. It's... Relaxing and restorative to some to be near those places. But occasionally it builds up to a level such that... Passages form, lasting anywhere from moments to months. I fell through one." Shrug.

She should... Probably try to keep some of the things she can do secret, thinking about it... Nobles are nobles and kitsunes are kitsunes...

"Does that passage remain open?"

Wild magic that casts Gate? That's not something she's ever heard of, but there are all sorts of strange stories from the Mana Wastes, and wizards say that there are other planets with people living on them. Being from another planet would explain the ears and the language barrier.

"I don't actually know because the moment I arrived I saw a Sable Company marine fall to a probable death on that street with the arm statues, and busied myself trying to save her and then with the riot, and forgot until now. I suspect not. It'd be visible and you'd have gotten reports of it."

"You saved her life. Part of your reward is in gratitude for that."

She pauses in thought, glancing away.

"We have had no such reports. Do you have another way to return to... Tirra?"

This person is not: A, a kitsune. Or B, a priestess of the light gods. Or C, cleared by a trustworthy kitsune or priestess as 'cool'. So the immediate instinctual result for things that touch on the Spirit World is: Deflect.

"She seemed stable at the temple of Abadar but I'm glad! Oh, don't worry about me on that front."

The queen nods and looks aside wistfully, gazing at or out through one of the stained-glass images of a previous monarch.

"It was necessity that brought me here, at first. I have grown to love my city, but some days the pangs of homesickness return."

"My husband loved Korvosa as I do. His death has shocked the city as it has me, but I will not see his legacy destroyed in death, and I shall not see my city torn apart. For as long as you choose to remain here, I hope you will continue to serve the crown."

Oh boy, here comes the difficult bit. They sometimes react badly to this.

"I usually serve the good of the people, not that of the crown. But these are not necessarily unaligned."

"Indeed."

Ileosa is silent for a moment, as though considering whether to confide in her. 

"My seneschal has vanished; whether he has died or fled is unknown, some even say he was my husband's murderer! Without a seneschal, the Sable Company are accountable to none and cannot be ordered to defend the castle or the people. Their commandant is reluctant to appoint a replacement, delaying as long as possible in claimed anticipation of his return."

"The guard are little better. Already, groups of them have deserted, claiming territory like brigands." Her tone is bitter with frustration. 

She draws herself up and collects herself.

"This civil strife serves nobody. Sabina, take her to the reception room. Perhaps you can suggest some opportunities for Weiss to serve crown and citizens alike. I need to retire to my chambers—my grief has drained me."

That was not terrible actually.  And the gold will buy more dang translation spells and maybe help the needy.

('The Needy', that awful abstract appellation. The Needy is her some number of decades ago, in the moldy apartment with the deadbeat dad and the cold shower. The Needy is Arwen Bechter, a fifteen year old child of two brickmakers who dreams of learning magic but likely never will, even with her gift of a forged letter of recommendation. The Needy is Xin Wu Shao nee Kong, a woman who married a man she barely tolerates out of social pressure, to keep her old house, to keep her slightly more comfortable lifestyle, out of fear of breaking her back working the fields. The Needy is the hordes and hordes of people crowded into every nook and cranny in the cities of Noten, afraid of the monsters and danger on the frontiers, those lost in the cracks the priestesses cannot all cover. The Needy is everyone who languishes without cheap food, cheap metal, cheap transportation, and cheap fuel, all due to the lack of a true industrial revolution.

She is aware that she is kind of... Hypocritical claiming to be good and kind but not throwing her entire self into it. But, again, that just snaps you in two.)

...Curtsey to the Queen again and then look to the slightly scary Knight for what next?

With a whirl of the hem of her mourning dress, Queen Ileosa is gone from sight. 

Sabina escorts her through to the next room, a chamber decorated with tapestries and florid fretwork on the ceiling. A long dining table stands in the middle, without a chair to be seen.

Some food has already been left ready for them beneath cloches; Sabina lifts them to reveal steaming soft-boiled oysters, deep-fried strips of clam meat arrayed around a bowl of what smells like a spiced hummus, and a pyramid of more fried balls of what might be crab meat drizzled with a brown sauce smelling of cinnamon and mint.

"Have you eaten?"

In a motion not unlike the lifting of a cloche, Sabina doffs her helmet to reveal a scarred face and starts consuming some of the Korvosan delicacies herself. She eats with a soldier's mechanical efficiency, paying little mind to the taste of her sustenance.

Meanwhile, in the Domina's Study...

"You never told me she's adorable⁴. Those ears! We could have a whole conversation without her needing to say a thing. Are your minions already checking whether her Gate is still there?"

⁴ Lit. 'pathetic'.

"Imps are not known for their aesthetic judgment, your majesty. One of them even thought her a vulpinal, no matter that she needed translation."

Togomor looks pained, but then he usually does.

"They have been dispatched nevertheless."

"Fine. If she is putting on a brave face about being trapped here, that's where you come in with a project to get her home that can stretch on endlessly. Who else could possibly help her, Toff?"

"If not, that puts her at what, fifth circle? Then we'll squeeze our Good little fox-girl for all the fifth-circle service she can offer before she turns tail. Perhaps she can be poisoned against the nobles as well..."

She carelessly scribbles a note in the margin of an ancient tome.

"Keep an imp on her. I want vices, gold clearly isn't one of them. Now, how are you getting on with that efreeti?"

Yesss she knew nobles usually have good food. And this food is pretty good actually! You have to enjoy the little things.

"This one is not entirely unlike sushi... Sort of. Not really. This one reminds me of a, uh, famous restaurant called Chipotle..."

She gravitates towards the fried and sweet.

"I admit, I've never given much thought to what life is like on other worlds. What's 'sushi'?"

She obliges her tastes by taking the dish of oysters for herself, holding it for want of a chair. 

"Rice, seafood - usually raw, though traditional sushi was never my absolute favorite compared to nicely cooked and sauced stuff in little finger-food rolls. And seaweed to hold then together. They do something to it to make it nicely sticky and savory, I don't recall what."

She waves a hand negligently and illuses... The essence, at least, of a sushi cooking video. She remembers the bit how they make a long roll and cut it up into finger food, at least.

"These ones reminded me of them, a bit, because they're crab? Lots of crab sushi. Hmm, I don't remember how to make soy sauce either. Though I have a bottle."

Tail of Holding, ho! She daubs a tiny bit of it onto one of the crab spheres. "Mm!"

Sabina holds out an oyster in a wordless request to try some of this 'soy sauce' on it and watches the illusion video.

Most of her thinking is really on the combat implications of a Tail of Holding. Being a body part, it would be easier to use offensively for capturing disarmed weapons, you'd need thick-soled boots to chase her down if she could scatter caltrops from it as she runs... Her posture subtly shifts as she recalculates how best to defeat her. It's not anything personal.

"Sushi looks tasty. I think I saw something similar being served as a snack at the Jade Circle once, that's a teahouse in South Shore."

"Jade, eh? Sounds Atsosi, which is where they do sushi. Sorta. Ish. Ahem: A journey of one thousand li begins with one step."

Shrug. She will do a quick pour of soy sauce.

"Anyway... Nothing seems to be actually on fire today from what I saw on the walk over, which is an improvement."

"Yes, though we don't know if the Guard and Sable Company will be as much help when unrest flares up again. It does give us a narrow opening to address some problems that could fester if this turmoil continues."

Soy sauce gets an approving nod, then she devours the last oysters and puts the helmet back on. 

"The two topping the list are the reports of a necromancer operating in the Gray, and of hidden tunnels beneath the Longacre building. We do not want an undead problem brewing if more people are going to die, and we do not know whether the tunnels are being used to free convicted criminals or abduct them. A small elite strike force is being assembled to investigate, and you've shown you'd be a strong addition to it."

"Necromancy is... Very bad. Some places you rise as a skellie or zombie if not given last rites back home, but people doing it deliberately..." She does a full body shiver.

"Quite. If you're willing, I'll introduce you to the rest of the team you'll be working with."

Her ears do a flicker of annoyance at 'team'.

"I probably should be with people. For familiarity with the environment reasons if nothing else.  Is all this happening now? Not sure how long a necromancer problem can keep, don't they need to pray for spells like the priests?"

"It's not urgent on a scale of hours or days, that much is correct, but we don't know how long we have until the next outbreak of violence that consumes our attention and provides them with many more corpses to work with. Does your world have contagious undead? There are some here, thank the gods they generally never spread far but they're a menace if left unaddressed."

"No, they're not contagious unless you have a single powerful - demon? Not quite, maybe fiend? - that can do that."

"I don't think I'm ready to go off after a necromancer right now, I need to get the lay of the city more. Maybe do some shopping. I also don't recall exactly when the share language wears off. But we could meet the team if they're here now and plan?"

Visit some temples, listen to some of the ones not wearing the stompy boots, you know.

"Understandable. The rest of the team will be meeting here shortly before sunset to plan so that they can prepare spells accordingly come the morning. If you want to help, that would be the time to introduce yourself."

"Here? In the doom castle? Well, I suppose nowhere else I'm thinking of seems more appropriate. Okay, smells like a plan, around sunset."

Actually- She schools her reactions ahead of Actually Doing It- But she has a surreptitious look around on the way out, tail lashing in thought, at how much magic is around? She usually only does this when it seems called for. Might be prudent to do it more often.

The castle is not without its magic. A glance at Sabina on the way out will reveal multiple enchanted items and one or two spells on her person, while several of the guards stationed in key locations also have weapons or other equipment that bear magic. Some of the doors have spells on them, as do many of the light sources. 

(To a Golarion native, this might seem almost negligent in how limited the magical defences are. Where are the permanent Forbiddances, the Guards and Wards? There are a few reasons for this:

First, the threat model: Korvosa is a city-state, one that controls some valuable trade routes, but it is also remote, loosely affiliated with Cheliax and with no rival powers that could launch a land war against it. From the founding of the settlement, the main dangers have been raids by the Shoanti, internal strife, conflict with Cheliax, and a dragon attack. Otyughs and reefclaws have probably killed more citizens than any would-be conquerors. Layering magical defences on top of the mundane fortifications would hinder few of the potential attackers except Cheliax, and so for most of the city's history investing in such protection would only have invited more trouble by signalling an intent to break away from the empire.

Second, the spellcasters: The Acadamae has the expertise to provide those kinds of wards, as exemplified by the Breaching Festival, but its relationship with the crown is one of cordial distance. To call on the wizards to ward the structure would both put the crown in their debt and at the same time provide them with privileged access to the whole building. For all that the headmasters have had little interest in ruling beyond the Acadamae walls, it would be hard for them to resist that kind of opening to install a backdoor in the defences through which to depose any monarch acting against their interests afterwards.

Third, the decision-makers: The kings and queens of Korvosa are not known for their long lives, the legendary Curse of the Crimson Throne that ensures none of them die of natural causes or sire an heir remaining unbroken. Under such circumstances, when one's demise seems an inevitability, why spend a fortune on spells that may never be needed in one's lifetime when that same fortune could be spent on living lavishly? Not only that, but the city charter grants complete control over the pyramid and any structures built atop it to the seneschal, not the monarch, adding an extra layer of political friction to the efforts of any far-sighted royals.)

Somehow both more and less than she expected? Tirran wards would cover the windows too and all be connected with little circuit lines, and you'd attack those, maybe, though the clever ones scream if they disconnect (which sometimes leads to alarm fatigue). Actually, serious dukedom-level wards would be a fair bit more elaborate. A few really good knights, a bunch of not so good guards, a little magic here and there, that's a County, maybe even a Barony, not a Duchy. She revises her estimate of this place's importance down a bit again. Bit of a relief, really. Though it's an odd city in a lot of ways. It has some of that denseness that Tirran cities do, but it's weird. Layout, materials, the roof-run- Sort of like the third floor storefronts in winged-subspecies-heavy towns.

Aaaaanyway awayyyyy from the doom castle. She asks someone about the temple of Sarenrae.

Conveniently, the temple can be pointed out from the top of the ramp, a short distance down the road at its base. It's a turreted building of white marble, gleaming in the sunlight, with wide streets and low neighbors to keep that sunlight unobstructed. There is a mid-size crowd outside it, but they look to be peacefully waiting to enter.

Hmmmmmm... She on the way down she, going just slowly enough to take advantage of a little change blindness, conjures enough clothes to not blatantly stick out (hood, big long coat for her tail, both attempting to match the style and color that seems common around here) and lingers with the crowd, listening to conversations.

The talk of the town is, unsurprisingly, the king's death.

"I hear it was one of his mistresses that did it! He was never the type to stop his dalliances, only got better at hiding them once he married. When the king's smuggling you into his bedchamber under cloak and mask, through secret passages to bypass the guards, what better opportunity for revenge?"

"That's the curse of the throne, isn't it? All that power and wealth, but you won't die well and your line ends there."

"He was an old man! Both my parents died younger than he did, nothing unnatural about that. People are just stirring trouble, giving thieves and those little blue river ghosts a free hand."

A little under half of the people outside the temple are nursing injuries, bandaged cuts or broken bones. There are a couple of clergy at the entrance who are talking to them, slowly letting them inside after exchanging kind words and asking about their ailments.

Oh, right, channels are a thing. This is a sensible way to use them, packing people in.

"Blue river ghosts?" But she'll let the gossip wander along without her, mostly.

When at the entrance, she says she wanted to see what this place is about and wonders what they do with donations.

(It's not actually hidden, per se, that she has fox ears and a tail, she just didn't want it to be obvious from 200 feet away.)

"You know, the little sneaking things you sometimes glimpse dragging drunks and vagrants off the street to drown."

The person she finds at the entrance is a lay priest, a middle-aged red-haired halfling in a white tunic trimmed with yellow. He's standing on a stool to better speak with the majority-human crowd.

"This is a place of healing and peace. We heal the sick, end feuds, and support criminals and evildoers in finding redemption. Any alms you have to give, we will distribute to the needy and desperate."

The priest gives her a warm smile, but he is somewhat distracted by all the other visitors. A glimpse of her ears and tail doesn't seem to provoke much of a reaction.

Oh, "Might wanna talk to someone when you're less busy. About gods and such."

Channeling times would be the worst, yeah.

She wants to help, but like. What? More gold? Back to the bank priests to change it for the local stuff first if so...

...The soldiers had magic stuff, a few of them. That sounds like it could be really neat and useful amd different than Tirran ones. She doesn't even have a lot of magic trinkets just because they tend to be redundant with things she can already do. But maybe it'll be different here.

To the rich part of town, inasmuch as one can identify it from the street! And looking around for Lots Of Magic In One Place.

"It'll be less busy after the noon channels!" He adds as she departs.

Fortunately for Weiss, she's already in the Heights, the rich part of town. There is one likely magic shop that she may have seen from the ramp, a multi-story building capped by a shining orrery that slowly rotates under the power of a spell, and a cluster of several different shops forming a semi-circle at the end of another of the main roads leading off from the citadel.

And what kinds of magic stuff is on display, pray tell?

The more straightforward shopping experience is at the Gold Market and the shops of Eodred's Walk enclosing it.

Through the carts selling huge flatbread pastries fried on the backs of tower shields and tiny chewy sweets of honey and maple syrup held together by flour and caramel, magic can be sensed in the potions sold from a shining silk tent.

At Basha's, scrolls are held in glass cases behind the counter, mostly those bearing niche spells and of an unfamiliar make compared to the sort that Weiss is familiar with.

Hedge Wizardry sells reagents and vials of spellsilver in oil, with some items useful in arcane crafting also on offer.

The best enchanted weapons of Slicing Dicers are kept under lock and key, but according to the proprietor they include a warhammer that will always knock someone out safely instead of killing them and a spear that can strike ghosts and turn red-hot on command, with more on offer for the discerning customer. 

Several varieties of magic arrows can be found in Trapper's Hole, able to put targets to sleep, erupt into vines, or specialized for the killing of particular targets like beasts or dragons. 

Even humble little Gemshare Jewelers has a byline in magical gems, such as a ring to charm animals with or another that provides enough fire resistance to ignore Burning Hands or Scorching Rays entirely.

At the Gilded Orrery, a plump little woman with wispy gray hairs gives Weiss a mirthless smile. "We only sell to wielders of arcane magic, dear."

The shelves of the first floor are mostly filled with books, but the floors above are dense with dozens or hundreds of different auras visible past the apprentice tasked with keeping any non-mages from exploring them. For the most powerful items available to buy in Korvosa, this is the place to go. 

The nonlethal warhammer is very intriguing. She asks after other nonlethal weapons. Maybe something that can be used with paws?

She has a little fireball in her left hand and a raised eyebrow, at the last.

"Perhaps I don't count? I'm not a wizard, I admit."

The warhammer is unfortunately the only Merciful weapon in stock. The shopkeeper says that he can keep an eye out for other examples of that enchantment, but if she wants something exotic like claw sheaths or a tail blade then she'll have to commission it from someone who can craft that.

"We welcome sorcerers too!" The Gilded Orrery's shopkeeper says quickly, on seeing the fireball start to form. 

The apprentice steps aside, allowing her to explore the upper floors. There are enchanted suits of armor that divert magic or guard the vital organs, a shield that can deflect even the best-aimed arrows, and racks of wands to cure wounds or blindness or teleport short distances or implant a reasonably-worded compulsion lasting for hours. The top floor is the most secure, the display cases including a silver headband decorated with red and orange gemstones that promises the permanent effects of the Eagle's Splendor spell, a silver-sheathed staff decorated with golden sunbursts that can produce various light spells, one rod bearing the head of a serpent that only functions for Evil wielders and another that produces unpredictable effects at random when activated, and a ring that doubles the first-circle spells available to a wizard each day. 

"Ooooooh I heard of that from the Abadarans," she says of the headband. "I might buy a casting of it, to check- It sounds like it might help me with my magic. That is probably one of if not the most expensive things here though, yeah?"

There's a different member of staff watching this floor. (And she can also sense a small invisible creature following her about, now she's off the bustle of the streets.)

"Sixteen hundred platinum crowns," the assistant affirms. "If you have proof you're good for it, you can try it on."

"Yeah no I'd need to go back to the coin priests for that I bet? Because I have gold Sols and d'or, not platinum crowns. Might be cheaper than getting the spell cast too. Oh hmm, I have some scrolls but they seem to be... Entirely different to the ones here, I couldn't cast any of the ones you're selling. And a wand which anyone can activate, acutally. Of Sinnah's Fly. That something you-as-the-shop might be interested in?"

They totally have hidden magic precautions around all this expensive stuff. The invisible guy is probably a guard.

"The wand could be, I'll let Ms. Weagra know so she can appraise it." 

He turns aside and... whispers to a corner of the room? Not even the corner that her invisible watcher is skulking in. Nonetheless, the old woman's footsteps start climbing the stairs.

She inspects the wand carefully, not touching it directly, and rattles off some questions without looking at Weiss. "You said that anyone could activate it? Is there a command word for it? How many charges does it have left, and how long does each casting last?"

While she's engrossed by the unfamiliar design, the student adds "We have a wand of Abadar's Truthtelling to verify the details, it'll be a charge of fifteen gold if you're unable to confirm them under the spell."

"I mean, I might need it so let's hold off on the truth telling now, once I Investigate all options and see if I'm selling we can verify all the verifiables. Uh... Yeah, command word which I will say when I'm not holding it. Eight charges of ten. Sinnah can put them back and so can other people who use the same magic but they have to be pretty good. They're not here, obviously. It lasts abooooout half an hour? A bit more? And does a feather fall- Oh hey you have a phrase for that- At the end. I should warn you it's somewhat skill required to use and won't stop you from slamming into obstacles. I hurt myself like that first time I tried it. You can just keep accelerating in a direction until the wind is pushing you back as much as you're accelerating. I've crossed the Great Canyon on one cast of it which puts it at at least a hundred sixty miles per hour going all out, but the wind kinda hurts at that speed."

"Hmm, hmm... Extended Fly, if it can be recharged then it is less a wand and more a miniature single-spell staff..."

Ms. Weagra thinks aloud, but she is hard to read.

"Two thousand platinum crowns would be the approximate cost for a staff of that power, including the decrease in value for the missing charges."

(In fact, she's referring to the cost of crafting such a staff, not the usual sale price, and the partial-charge discounting only makes sense for nonrechargeable wands, and her phrasing leaves out the perk that anyone can activate it without any special training. On the other hand, she's made the assumption that it can be recharged by anyone with Fly and Extend Spell, ignorant of the fact that it's come from the separate magical traditions of Tirra; if nobody on Golarion can recharge it without extensive research, all her mercantile tricks will have led to her her overpaying by about double instead, unless she can find a research-minded buyer.)

She gives Weiss another smile that doesn't reach her eyes. 

"Oh, take all the time you need to decide."

"Oh, by the way I'd buy it back empty for most of what I sold it for, say 80%, take it back to her for refilling."

Uh... Hmm. That seems like... A lot? Not to cut off my own feet or anything but Abadar might be mad if she's deceiving the shopkeep. However that works. 'Hmm -4 Law for you'. On the one hand, never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake. On the other hand, a magic shop is not her enemy? Erius would definitely be mad if she thought it was too high a price and didn't say anything. And that clears things up for her instantly.

She makes the sign of the bird with her hands, mostly unconsciously. "That seems high. I think you may be working under a misconception, but I'm not sure where."

What kind of advanced negotiation technique is this - oh, she's doing a hand thing, she probably worships one of the gods of the weak and thinks she can make one of their afterlives.

"Is that so? We'd better add an Identify when you come to sell."

Ultimately most of the money spent on items or spells flows back to the Acadamae, back to her family, so she's not going to complain about throwing in an extra spell and getting a better price by doing so. 

Headshake. "Well, I'll be back later about it, anyway. Gonna go to the coin priests and liquidate some stuff. Good day."

And out. Her head's spinning a little bit.

Maybe down the riverside, listening to gossip and letting her brain cool off? Or something? Bleh.

The cliffside overlooking the sea is closer, and the raging waves crashing against them make for some soothing background noise. At one end there is an ominous temple in the shape of a red star, the points joined by lower blocky buildings in white and with a central glass dome. At the other end is a tavern precariously perched on a peak, which looks to have a great view of the surroundings if Weiss doesn't mind the uneven steps to get there. Or she can follow the cliffs around to the north to the road of creepy arms, with the river and all the bridges joining the island where she first arrived to mainland Korvosa.

Ooh, she'll go up to the high tavern on a whim! Bad stairs cannot stop her, she might even leap a couple dozen at a time since she's got a target instead of just wandering.

The view of the city is dramatic. From here she can see the great pyramid upon which the castle is built, and over the Acadamae walls the magic-drenched halls within. The Jeggare river winds away to the east, and the Sable Company riders and house drakes and imps turn and wheel above the rooftops.

The tavern itself looks to rely on its location for drawing customers, the service and furnishings leaving more to be desired. The floorboards, swollen by sea spray, creak with each step, and with the odds of the whole building toppling into the waves one stormy night the innkeeper sees little reason to make repairs. There is however a respectable assortment of drinks available: small beer and ciders and ulseberry ale, Korvosan wine and port, and stronger and stranger Golarion beverages like Chelish pepper whisky or imported Vjarik.

Anything non alcoholic tho? ...And good? Who all is hanging out way up here?

Non-alcoholic or good is a tall order, but the barkeep does begrudgingly brew a pleasant cup of spiderberry tea that's usually only served as part of a mixed drink. 

As for the other patrons, they're few and varied: Another merchant anxiously glued to the windows, staring out for any glimpse of sails on the horizon; a pair of students talking in low voices, hunched in a corner, hiding from trouble downhill; an old mariner swaying on his stool; and a dark-skinned man in a fine yellow coat puzzling over some papers. 

Tea is fine. She's in exploring mode, getting a feel for the city; She really should go to the poor areas invisibly like she wanted to before, next. But best to talk to at least one person here.

Hmmmmmmmm merchant. "I'll make you an illusory telescope that lasts a few hours if you'll tell me why you're looking for a ship so urgently."

"Does an illusory telescope... work?" She asks.

"There's a shipment overdue from Cheliax, but the weather's been stormy this past week and it's all been House Leroung halfling-ships coming in. There's a little money to be had just in selling word of the new ships on the horizon, but not nearly as much as when one pulls in with barrels in the hold in your name. But if they've run into a dragon turtle or a dire shark..." 

Her attention drifts back to the window. 

She spins one up. Brass stand and all. If you pay attention to the optics and know how reflector scopes work and are her, it totally works! Should be about 50x magnification.

"Go ahead'n try it. ...Halfling ships?"

She has a sudden rising dread about that.

"Cheaper to crew. Lower wages, smaller berths and provision-stores, more room for cargo. That's how Leroung made their fortune," she says absently as she studies the telescope and tries it out. "Worse odds against pirates or monsters, but most ships won't survive hostile boarders even with stouter sailors."

"I've never seen a design like this. You look in the side, not in the end? Oh! That's a Jeggare flag, to see that at this distance..."

The merchant jots that down in a cramped script, only taking her eye away from the aperture to dip quill in ink.

"How much to get a real one of these telescopes?"

Oh phew! Not slave carriers!

"Man, I'm not a smith. You'd need... Fancy mirrors and stuff..."

You know what, better set it to pop if it's disassembled too far. She tweaks it so. Merchant and potentially valuable information and all. Are reflector scopes not known here?

This is Golarion. Everything can be found here — it's just not evenly distributed yet.

The merchant makes a distracted noise of disappointment, and adds another note on how close the load line of the Jeggare vessel is to the water's surface.

"I'm not from Korvosa and not used to how the markets work locally. Shipping would be far cheaper than overland due to economy of scale? That being why cities tend to be on coasts. For bulk goods at least, I'm imagining really high value like magic items get personal couriers or teleporting."

"That's the gist of it. Shipping is faster and cheaper, and any monsters on the way tend to move on instead of digging in like bandits and needing to be cleared out for passage to resume. You hear about schemes for bulk teleportation, or flying goods by air, but they all tend to involve putting a lot of trust in whoever's doing the teleporting or flying. Mere merchants like us can't do much to stop a rootless fifth-circle caster from stealing the whole shipment if they so choose, not like a vessel or caravan with dozens of staff who have friends and family at each end of the route they'd have to leave behind."

"And I guess fifth circle Abadarans and the like are thin enough on the ground and have enough other stuff to do. Maybe mention it to them though."

"They're the sort you go to when you do need to send a magic item or a letter fast, but as you say, they're in high demand."

Scratch scratch scratch, is that one of the crew vomiting over the side? A quarantine would be valuable information - no, that's a seasick gnome, they must have bought passage.

"D'you happen to know where's the best place to get good coffee, and maybe spices and such? I'll leave you be after this one, and the 'scope should last-" She gauges the energy she put into it. "-Bit under an hour from now, maybe less if you move it around a lot."

"You'll want the Green Market in Southshore. The Arkona shopfront - their crest's a black and white shield with a gold dragon on it - can sell you most spices, and for thilieu bark there's a few rival Varisian vendors."

"Gotcha. Good luck with your spotting."

...Back to the temple of Sarenrae. Some of the gods mentioned during her sleepy rambling questions sounded distinctly not Light, and the Good/Evil thing is... Well, it's probably more complicated than it sounds. Or at least more alien. She should talk to at least one priest across some of the spectrum.

The Sarenite temple is less busy after the noon channels have passed, but still not exactly quiet. The red-haired halfing is there again, and seeing that she's not picked up any injuries in the past hour or two he gestures for Weiss to wait a minute while he continues seeing to a mother with a loudly bawling child. 

Shortly after, he returns, and invites her to walk with him down a pillared marble corridor enclosing a sun-drenched internal garden.

"You had questions about the gods?"

"I'm from... Very far away and I don't actually know much about the ones people are following here and want to know more! Which ones are worth looking at, and what they teach, and maybe how I can help. Sarenrae seems kind of like Ilumine to me. Ilumine is- Everything can be okay. Things can be better. You can heal, you can repent. You should hold out hope and try to make things better. And dreams."

Things she ignores herself, sometimes, really.

"You must be from very far away! Ilumine does sound like Sarenrae. Our goddess teaches patience and compassion and forgiveness, though we are also expected to stop those who refuse redemption."

The walls lining the garden have relief sculptures on them, depicting many of the gods of Golarion. He points out Sarenrae in the Neutral Good area, a goddess with feathered wings and burning hair, bearing a scimitar and the sun shining over the pastoral landscape of Nirvana. 

"As for the domain of dreams, that is associated more with Desna, who presides over the night sky and all free travel beneath it, dreaming and waking alike."

To the right, the carved sky turns to a starry night, a butterfly drifting among them over the wilderness of Elysium. 

"Oh, Erius covers travel and he's otherwise a lot like Abadar." She giggles a little bit.

Nice art.

"I asked people to donate 'to the needy' yesterday- In exchange for protecting the docks- And from what I heard they seem to have all chosen this temple. What do you do with donations?"

"Travel is a domain of Abadar's as well! It is said that the overlapping concerns of the gods reflect the commonalities we all share."

(Abadar is represented as a richly-dressed bearded human standing at the gates of a vast city bearing a crossbow and key. The temple was constructed prior to the Third Age of Osirion, and so he is depicted as Taldan rather than the modern Osirian style.)

"Even the Evil gods share interests with the gods of Good, and through those interests even they may yet be redeemed in time."

(This position is not entirely orthodox, but the clergy of a city with such strong Chelaxian influences will tend to have a more expansive view of forgiveness by necessity.)

"There are some wealthy donors who support the upkeep of the temple as a whole, so that we can keep hosting priests and sharing channels. Your donations will generally go towards feeding the hungry, treating the sick who require more than a channel to cure, and otherwise helping those who lack the coin to look after themselves and their loved ones. In doing so, we alleviate the desperation that can compel hearts to Evil deeds. In times of plenty, when there are less urgent needs, some of the donations we receive may go towards stocking up on scrolls and potions, to better respond when crises strike. And in dire times, we may commission parties of adventurers to strike at sources of problems that ail the people and are beyond redemption, like plagues of the undead."

"Not a bad shape of things. There's- It's not centrally my thing but someone has to try and- Yeah. It's good that someone is, and they should- You should have the money you need to try. Um. I think I'm interested in talking about - the shape of good, and also of law and chaos - I'm going to pay an Abadaran too, and maybe find someone chaotic if I can, get perspective. We don't really break things up that way on Tirra, law and chaos and good and evil- There are the Light Gods, who are generally useful and generally more Good than Evil and run the gamut on law, and there are the other ones, which you don't think or talk about too much."

"It would probably be better if people didn't pray to the Evil gods," the halfling agrees. "Scripture is unclear on whether it strengthens them, to call out for Asmodeus for advancement or Lamashtu for release from nightmares, but it is generally held that in praying we make ourselves more like the recipient of our prayers to draw their attention towards us, and that alone is unwise."

Each of the gods are pointed out in their own domains on the mural. This walled garden has a place for them too.

"Good and Evil are the more intuitive scale of Pharasma's sorting. Everyone has inside them an instinct to care for others and see them flourish. Even if they have been taught to treat it as weakness or only grace their closest loved ones with it, it is always there, and through doing good we can nurture it in others. Nirvana is for everyone.

"As for Law and Chaos, the Abadarans will have a different perspective, but Sarenrae is positioned between the two extremes because of what they represent for redemption. Law is discipline, that resolution to hold to a course that both the Abadarans and Asmodeans share. But as they show, that commitment can lead in very different directions, enriching oneself or tyrannizing others. 

"Chaos, on the other hand, is change and flexibility. Desna and Calistra do not inspire us to constancy; dreams and vengeance are both unpredictable, and they invite us to reconsider where we are in our lives and what we tolerate, to choose in the moment to do something different. You can find shrines to them in the Pantheon of the Many."

He gestures south for that temple, then out towards the harbor. 

"Good is not so simple that we mortals can simply decide on a rule of 'always be good' and leave it at that, and nor can we live with no rules at all. Like a ship's pilot, we must always check ourselves for whether we have gone astray. When we find that we have, we must change our course to make up for it, and hold ourselves to that change with discipline, whether that is giving up a pesh addiction that was driving us to crime or resolving to treat our step-children with more kindness. Even Sarenrae has erred, and realized, and changed herself, and held to that commitment. We mortals are no less imperfect than the gods."

"It's a really weird way to think about things, to me! We don't categorize it like that. Though the sorting brain that likes to sort things into boxes is trying, now... Erius is for sure Lawful and Tamamo is definitely Chaotic... She's all about the whims and luck. I'm not sure if Erius is Good or not. Or Tamamo for that matter. And of course morals and ethics aren't simple."

She suddenly goes sober.

"Yeah... I've fucked up in the past. I mean, I've been around for a while and- It sounds stupid to complain about being powerful, but it's not always a good feeling, your mistakes and inaction hits harder, you're a bigger lever. And I can not just - instrument myself for maximum saving people everywhere always. Got a bunch of people killed by accident a couple times. Sneaky fucker with life drain, oopsed a revolt that got messy."

The lay priest takes a seat on a bench and invites this powerful adventurer from a distant land to sit as well.

"Would you like to talk about what happened?"

"Sorry if I'm- It's just-" she waves vaguely. And starts pacing.

"Count Rosewell was using dirty tricks and general corruption to put people in debt, then taking them as debt slaves. I- The whole plot kind of got away from me very fast. There was a lot of anger built up."

She probably came here via Cheliax, maybe because of the fallout from that, the halfling notes. He makes a thoughtful noise.

"It sounds like it would be a difficult situation for anyone, with or without the power to intervene."

"Yeah what I should have done is call the fucking Duke or Inquisition down. Gather allies, convince people of the problem. But I was younger. And believed the story of- The heroic rebel who makes everything better when they take up torch and pitchfork and toss down the tyrant and everyone cheers as the curtain comes down. So what I actually did was raid the mining town and start a riot, then lead said rioters back to the county seat and start another riot- Guess what? Soldiers stab rioters! And rioters beat soldiers to death. Even when I was trying for nonlethal. I figure the whole mess got about two hundred people killed by the end."

Sigh.

"I don't know why I'm rambling about this... It does stil bother me, I guess."

"Perhaps it always will. Some mistakes we can't erase, not with all the gold or diamonds in the world, and all we can do is keep going despite how they weigh on us."

He closes his eyes to face up at the sun, thinking about his own misdeeds.

....Headshake.

She doesn't want to be the kind of person it doesn't bother.

They sit in silence. A cloud covers the sun, casting them in shade, then passes.

"The dawn brings new light," he says, with the cadence of a prayer. "Each new day is an opportunity, a promise from Sarenrae that things will get better, here or in the afterlife to come."

Sure, from Sarenrae and not the natural order of the world, or the harmony of forces dancing that happen to have produced the current situation.

Oh, shut up, sarcasm brain.

"Well... Haaah. Sarenrae seems nice. If you guys need guarding or illusion services I could be moved to help maybe."

"The festival of Burning Blades isn't far off, illusionists are always welcome for adding to that spectacle," he says, brightening. 

"As for guarding, few Evildoers would ever dare to attack a temple of our goddess," the halfling says with pride. "Though if some of our faithful should need defending beyond this sanctuary, how should you be contacted? Shall I introduce you to the high priestess so that they know you for a Sending?"

He guesses that would be more reliable than expecting an adventurer to have a fixed address.

"Ooh, a festival. That would probably be easier than what I was imagining! Which was receiving messages at the coin priests' place. Weiss Faron, by the way."

"Ranik Brogan," he replies.

Ranik describes the goddess' festivals as they walk and wait, the ceremony where hundreds of worshippers dance with blades dipped in burning pitch and the mystery plays recounting her role in the defeat and sealing of Rovagug.

The high priestess is a busy older woman with darker skin than most of the locals, paging through a holy text to prepare the sermon for before the sunset channels as she receives the pair.

"Weiss, was it?" For a moment, she stares at her, then blinks, apparently enough of an impression to use the spell later. "How dangerous a guard duty would you accept, if we were to call on you?"

Huh. So at that festival maybe she'd be adding SFX and music and lights to a play? Something that might merit a rehearsal. Sounds fun.

"I'd rather not die but it'd be more a lich than a petty necromancer that'd do it. And I probably can't stick around forever, but chances to help in efficient high-impact ways are surprisingly hard to arrange, so, yeah! In fact, I'm probably after one of those later today. Petty necromancer, that is. I've fought a Gargantuan magic centipede before and that took a full party and army backup to finish if that helps calibrate."

She seems busy. 

(Most languages of Golarion of course have distinct terms for each of the size categories and an accepted ordering of them, because in a world where people can encounter giant predators ranging from horse-sized to taller than most trees it is much more important to have the words to quickly distinguish those.)

That puts her at around the high priestess' own level of might by her reckoning, fourth or fifth circle.

She nods and returns to her sermon-planning - she is busy - but offers them some candied orange pieces to take with them as they go. 

Yummy! 

She'd like to hear a bit more about Burning Blades from Ranik so that she's not working at cross purposes if she ends up illusing for it? Whimsy has its place in art but she doesn't want to crash someone else's festival.

Then he'll happily recount the usual order of events, spending the day in fasting and prayer, dancing with the ceremonial weapons as the sun goes down. There is a whole elaborate choreography to allow for dipping them in pitch as the sky darkens, and then the high priestess will light hers from the temple brazier, the flames spreading out from her as the whirling blades brush against each other until the whole crowd is banishing the shadows of night. 

"It's not as dangerous as it sounds, everyone's already spinning with their arms out fully so they can't reach much further even if they trip, and the ceremonial weapons are mostly blunted," he adds, in case that's a concern.

"Do you think dancing firelight in the sky would help the effect without disrupting things?"

"That sounds pretty, do you think you could make the wisps of flame rise up from the dancers' blades or make a pattern in the sky?" 

He'll excitedly suggest a few symbols of Sarenrae that could be displayed in the firelight: The sun, the dove, the ankh, and some of the constellations of the Cosmic Caravan if the skies are clear. 

Oh, that might be tricky for others but she bets she can do it, animating nice symbols in glowing fires rising from the festival... Especially if she goes and gets that headband.

"-I think I know what I wanna do between now and my appointment, is go back to the Abadar people and get a writ of me being good for 1600 platinum so I can try on the headband and see if it really would help as much as I think. I mean, it sounds like a lot so I'm not sure if I am truly good for it, in fact. Thanks for the chat and introductions, Ranik, I think I'm off for now if there's nothing else?"

It might mean she doesn't get around to seeing what life in the slum-y bits of town are like, but it doesn't really feel wasted.

...It's nice to be able to walk around and only get 'adventurer' looks instead of 'kitsune' looks.

Ten minutes later, she is back at the temple-bank of Abadar and shown through to the appraisal room, lined with lead sheeting as an inexpensive mundane anti-scrying defense and occupied by a lay appraiser. He does startle noticeably at her appearance, though he does his best to recover with some professional courtesy.

"Lock me! Ahem, my apologies, you are here to have some valuables, er, valued?"

"Lock-? Er, yeah! I want to see if I can get to sixteen hundred platinum in assets verified or whatever so I can try on this headband I saw in a shop up on the hill. If I can't I might want to buy a Splendor or rent a headband of same for five minutes if that's cheaper, to check how much it helps. So, I have gold silver and copper coins, some gems and stuff, a few magic items - wands and scrolls - that I think aren't really in the local paradigm, some jars of spices and travelling supplies... I think that's about it for major assets."

Ah, an adventurer. No doubt just returned to civilization from plundering an ancient tomb, the coins spanning three millennia and the jewels freshly pried from the eyes of an animated statue by daggerpoint. Maybe she'll have something to challenge him, like one of the trials of St. Neddelsohn. He opens up his reference book on Thassilonian numismatics in advance, and gives his usual pre-appraisal spiel of confidentiality and coin-weighing and scratch-tests. 

"...and an Eagle's Splendor from the temple will run you ten platinum, or six if you're willing to pay half in advance and wait until morning," the appraiser finishes.

Okay, laying it all out, she has...

Her travelling supplies. Clothes, slightly magical tent, masterwork stainless steel camp stove, a nice but not exceptional steel longsword that she barely uses and mostly only has for appearances, a make-safe-drinkable crystal glass bottle that you have to channel magic into, some preserved rations and about two dozen largeish containers of various spices and sauces from across Tirra. Of that, the spices and water bottle are the things she's most willing to part with. Maybe the sword.

A pile of Tirran currency, various mintings.

The small copper coins are honestly almost too much fuss to bother with for such low value but this place seems like a good place to dump 'em all at bulk rate. She's fine with losing, like, a relatively large portion of their value here.

The large copper coins, silver coins, and small and large gold coins at least purport to have consistent weights and compositions according to Atsosi-Noten Standard, but, well, they vary. By about 1-5% in her experience. She has quite a lot of them though, from decades of steady bounties on lesser monsters and the occasional big bounty for big monsters, and not really spending it in quantities beyond securing a decently comfortable lifestyle back home.

A motley pile of small and generally not-too-rare or high quality gemstones, kept as a more value dense reserve instead of being fenced, and also just because having a bunch of gemstones is a nice feeling, okay, don't judge. There are no big standouts in here, while there are a few diamonds but they're mostly real little. None of them are in the standard sizes except by coincidence.

Her wands and scrolls. Almost all made by her ??friend??/acquaintance and sometimes party member Sinnah, who invented Sinnah's Fly, but Tirran wizardry is NOT local wizardry, like, at all. Something is up here because the magic shop lady said 2000 platinum for the wand of Sinnah's Fly with eight charges left and that seems like Way Too Much.

Sum total here:

Wand of Sinnah's Fly with 8/10 charges. It lasts thirty two minutes and can reach 200 miles an hour, and requires skill to use/does not have safeties against hitting things, and casts Feather Fall when it ends.

Three scrolls of Mind Purge, which removes all ongoing mind-affecting effects, including things like drugs and curses and sometimes trauma, both positive and negative.

Five scrolls of Golden Chains which is sorta like Hold Person except it manifests temporary physical restraints in the form of magical glowing chains.

A wand of Golden Chains with 4/6 charges.

A scroll of Blizzard (120 foot 60 degree cone ice damage, knockdown/obscure vision)

A scroll of Sunfire Beam which has special anti-undead properties (hits harder than Fireball and less hard than Meteor Swarm),

One each scrolls of Repel Filth, Stop Bleeding, Seeking Arrow, Message, and Stop Pain, which are 1st circle ish and do what their names say.

And finally, the big bucket: Loot from the latest Cryptid hunt, which ended up in a long-abandoned missile silo where they defeated The General, as they nicknamed it, and purged a vast nest of cursed beings with fire and magic. Sinnah and Marquess Fortinbras claimed most of the magic stuff and Vee claimed most of the weird trophy-like stuff, leaving her with mostly valuable bits of metal and gems and a few miscellaneous bits.

A few impressively tough ceramic-titanium-alloy-of-some-kind armor pieces, gauntlets and gorgets and such not full chest pieces, designed for Large humanoids.

A dozen unpolished but high quality ruby rods, finger-width and about ten inches long, pulled out of weapons that fired searing light.

A pile of miscellaneous silver and gold jewelry with various gems (and thaaaaat's a Wish diamond but Weiss doesn't seem to realize it's special),

A bunch of silver-platinum and copper-gold medals/ribbons/uniform accoutrements.

Some Tirran challenge coins (mostly silver, each carrying symbols of a specific long-dead military unit),

Some ancient Tirran coins and gold bars a couple millennia old, looted by The General.

An unenchanted dark metal titanium bracelet with white sapphire insets.

An extremely well made and elaborately embroidered red and black cape that The General was wearing. Actually flexible metal and not cloth, some kind of flexible shape-memory alloy.

Some more bits of aluminum and titanium scrap, mangled weapons and such, kept on the logic that they're pretty rare metals even if she doesn't know any specific smith who'd want them.

Longsword: 15gp
Tent, masterwork, minor magic, used: 100gp
Stove, masterwork: 20gp
Decanter of Purify Food and Drink, mages only: 1250gp (provisional)
Trail rations, 4lb: 2gp (Adventurers.)
Spices, exotic, assorted, 24oz: 50gp (provisional)
Copper coins, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 15lb: 10gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Silver coins, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 4lb: 16gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Gold coins, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 6lb: 240gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Gemstones, moderate semiprecious to moderate precious, assorted, non-standard cuts (?): 3000gp
Wand of 'Sinnah's Fly' (extended Fly?), 8 charges, eighth-circle duration (?): 7500gp (provisional, subject to upwards revision on confirmation of maximum sustained speed)
Scrolls, 'Mind Purge' (Third-circle analogue to Absolution or Break Enchantment?), x3: 350gp ea., 1050gp (provisional)
Scrolls, 'Golden Chains' (Second-circle analogue to Hold Person or Shackle?), x5: 150gp ea., 750gp (provisional)
Wand of 'Golden Chains' (See above), 4 charges: 350gp (provisional)
Scroll, 'Blizzard' (Fourth-circle analogue to Ice Storm?): 630gp (provisional)
Scroll, 'Sunfire Beam' (Searing Light?): 350gp (provisional)
Scrolls, assorted first-circle, x5: 25gp ea., 125gp
Armor pieces, mixed, Large, unknown material (mithral?) x3: 1000gp ea., 3000gp (provisional)
Ruby rods, flawless, unpolished, approx. 180 carat (?), x12: 1600gp ea., 19200gp (provisional, consult expert on Numerian gemology)
Jewelry, mixed —

The appraiser frowns and takes out a couple more tools when he gets to one of the items of jewelry. He inspects the specific piece more closely, holding it up to the light, doing a quick scratch test. Then he suddenly starts speaking a lot faster.

"This diamond appears suitable for use in casting Wish and so is worth substantially more than all other items here combined (with the possible exception of the ruby rods), you may wish to know that for windfalls of this magnitude we can also offer the service of erasing the past five minutes of my memory and having the Archbanker take over the transaction to better safeguard information about your valuables, but with that five minute time limit you would need to come to a decision on that soon, the charge would be, um, song-sorcerer scroll, fourth-circle - rush fee - Archbanker's time - memory loss compensation - ah, approximately 2500gp, under a tenth of how much the diamond may be worth."

He starts rummaging around for small hourglass to track how much longer is left on that option while awaiting her reply.

"Uh whyyyyy would I want that, that's a big chunk of the staggeringly expensive headband, that could buy a lot of, like, famine relief or orphanagery-"

"Because, the usefulness of diamonds for wishcraft is enough to tempt an archmage to theft? Or anyone else who wants an archmage's favor. The marginal odds of you being targeted because my mind happened to be read are probably less than ten percent, true, but if you were to be robbed they might take other valuables or cause other damages in the process." But he does slow down his speech again as she seems to be unconvinced, and relaxes a little as he resumes appraising the rest of the item the Wish diamond is set in.

"That's... Diamonds are useful to wizards but mostly as dust... Uhhhh I'm selling it so it becomes your problem. And then I get a number in an account that I'm good for and that's a lot less of an issue right?"

Jewelry, mixed, set with gemstones, major precious, assorted, non-standard cuts: 35000gp (provisional)
Military uniform accessories, assorted, mixed metals: 100gp (provisional)
Military coins, assorted, mixed metals: 5gp (provisional)
Gold coins and ingots, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 23lb: 920gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Unknown metal (Mithral?) bracelet, white sapphire insets: 2000gp (provisional)
Masterwork cloak, unknown metal (?): 1000gp (provisional)
Metal scraps, unknown (Mithral?), 31lb: 15000gp (provisional)

"That is the sensible course of action, what I'd do in your position, yes. If you are still willing to sell, knowing its true value, we at the bank are of course willing to buy."

Other than that surprise, the transaction goes smoothly from there. A basic account is free to open while a safe deposit box in the vault below is available for an annual fee. The prices the bank is willing to buy for do not change significantly when other experts are called in to check the items in question, though she is advised that if her magic items do come from a different tradition as she says then she may be able to get a higher price for them from a wizard when the unrest settles and the Acadamae reopens. Some of the more assertive acolytes also politely nudge her for details about how she came to be here and whether any kind of regular trade with her homeland might be possible.

Okay, all that adds up to... A lot, actually. Huh. It's really convenient to have a place that will just... Buy it all. She feels off balance, yet oddly reassured.

She'll keep all her travel stuff, and all the scrolls and wands for now. The Tirran copper coins, sure, but she'll keep the silver and gold because they're recognized and traded with back home, so. Not the ancient ones though, they're a pain to resell usually. The big diamond and most of the rest of the jewelry she will also be willing to sell; she keeps some personal favorite pieces. The General's loot can all be sold, and the armor, and the bracelet, he was an evil bastard. She keeps the challenge coins, some of the ribbons, and three of the ruby rods- They might be interesting to experiment with at some point and she'd hate to not be able to find them again. Also, do note that there are two different metals here, mixed in the loose scrap- This one is very light and not quite as strong as steel, and this one is lighter, tougher, and holds up under heat MUCH better than steel.

The sale list looks, thus, like:

Copper coins, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 15lb: 10gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Gemstones, moderate semiprecious to moderate precious, assorted, non-standard cuts (?): 1000/3000gp
Armor pieces, mixed, Large, unknown material (mithral?) x3: 1000gp ea., 3000gp (provisional)
Ruby rods, flawless, unpolished, approx. 180 carat (?), x12: 1600gp ea., 14400/19200gp (provisional, consult expert on Numerian gemology)
Jewelry, mixed, set with gemstones, major precious, assorted, non-standard cuts: 33000/35000gp (provisional)
Military uniform accessories, assorted, mixed metals: 50/100gp (provisional)
Gold coins and ingots, assorted, unrecognized (?), mixed purities and sizes, 23lb: 920gp (incl. re-minting fee)
Unknown metal (Mithral?) bracelet, white sapphire insets: 2000gp (provisional)
Masterwork cloak, unknown metal (?): 1000gp (provisional)
Metal scraps, unknown (Mithral?), 31lb: 15000gp (provisional)

For a total of around... 70380 which is A WHOLE FREAKING LOT MORE than she expected from that dungeon loot really, but she's not complaining!!! Do they happen to have any lines on a Merciful weapon she could easily wield? Maybe armor for a Large quadruped, she fights in that form and she's been getting injured a lot more than she prefers lately.

(As for regular contact, she demurs and thinks about it. The Rift is semi-random, and she can go home, but getting back again is probably going to be really iffy. And there seem to be a bunch of high-power, messy things here. She's particularly unsure about the whole INTACT EVIL GODS thing. It's pretty alarming! Tamamo? Erius? What do you think?)

There are some pretty significant transaction costs here. The paradigm of Tirran semi-isolation is a long negotiated deal that has advantaged us in some local respects and exceptions to the negotiated agreement are very expensive. Even communicating anything about this in the context of Golarion is going to be very expensive. The juice is not worth the squeeze; Your arrival there has been a happy accident and a lucky break, which does happen sometimes.

No answer.

Yeah sorry buddy even I have to balk at the expense involved here.

I did point someone else towards the Rift, tho. Maybe they'll fall through it before time's up, maybe not. But I can't TELL you this.

Gosh, god-conflict negotiated standoff suuuuuuuucks, it's so BORING and it limits your actions so much, on days like these I'm almost glad we sacrificed everything we did back in the Cataclysm.

Also no answer.

The Abadarians are ignorant of the deific discussions going on but happy to connect Weiss with local businesses and take her advice on the differences between the strange metals. As for her new liquid wealth, they ask that she give them some advance warning if she wants to withdraw more than five thousand gold pieces or so at once. 

"The only Merciful weapon available for purchase that I know of is in the Gilded Orrery. As for armor for a Large quadruped, the best place for that is the Galloping Ghost. Old Patch isn't the friendliest, but he crafts all the Sable Company hippogriffs tack and barding. If anyone can handle your commission, it'll be him."

"Do you have anyone advertising services of making Merciful weapons? Or I could put out an ad about looking for Merciful, like, paw gauntlets? Because I really want that now that I know it's a thing, it will open up options, and isn't your whole thing about throwing money at what you want?"

"Not... exactly? Abadar's symbol is the key, because it is a product of artifice that allows only those entrusted with it to open a door or chest. Through the crafting of keys and locks, walls and roads, trust can spread and laws can be enforced to make new trades possible, and those transactions in turn enable more constructions..."

That long-winded acolyte gets side-tracked by a question of theology, and in the meantime a lay clerk offers some more helpful advice. 

"Normally the place to go for ordering the enchantment of an item would be the Acadamae, but they're closed until Headmaster Ornelos decides otherwise. For some kind of paw gauntlet, Patch might be able to make you a prototype of those, or else Slicing Dicers might have something suitable. As for the enchantment, the Churches of Sarenrae or Asmodeus are the most likely to be able to provide that, for around eight thousand gold pieces. The other option would be an Amulet of Mighty Fists, that would apply to all your unarmed attacks in any form while worn but it would probably take a druid to craft it. They're hard to find at the best of times, let alone trade with, but we can let you know if any opportunities come."

Well she'll ... look into that later she guesses. Visit the mentioned stores. Thanks for the advice.

Can she get a note stating that she's good for 1600 plat, and separately, a pouch containing 1600 plat?

The note is easily provided, the pouch may be heavier than she'd like as they don't have that much platinum on hand so would need to make up some of the value with trade bars of lesser metals, and for a small fee they can send someone to liaise with the temples on her behalf should she prefer.

That works. Or a cheque of some sort if the magic shop would be liable to accept that?

She'll talk to the Sarenrites herself, she wants nothing to do with Evil gods on general principle. Thanks for offering though.

Yes, she can get a banknote instead. 

This has all been somewhat time consuming and it's getting on towards sunset. Probably. Maybe? Or does it just feel that way? She checks, and also feels out her magic level (about 70%? Need to sort out refilling) on the way back to the magic shop.

It's late afternoon, the taller buildings are starting to cast long shadows.

Gasta Wegra greets her with another insincere smile as she enters. 

Yes hi (of course the clerk is just doing Customer Face) she has this note saying she has the money in the account, and would like to try on the headband to see: 1, how likely it is to come off in a fight or if she changes form and 2, how much it actually helps with her illusions.

(She idly thinks to focus on her vibration sense and check for that invisible guard again, as she enters.)

Her invisible watcher isn't waiting inside - it enters the shop a few moments after her, landing with a flutter of wings. 

Meanwhile the clerk nods, beckoning her upstairs and snapping her fingers for an apprentice to take over the desk.

"There isn't much space for acrobatics," she says. "These headbands are made to resize themselves snugly and securely, they won't come off under normal adventuring activities. If you are concerned with someone pulling it off your head, which is what it would take, there are hats tailored to hide it, or even some Sovereign Glue!"

".....Hmmmm. I don't suppose you have anything else for defense?"

Audible illusion that only she can hear: "Only you can hear this. Is there supposed to be an invisible person following me in from the street? Shop guard?"

Gasta shakes her head minutely. Hands hidden from the newcomer by her desk, she takes out a pair of wands.

"Defense of the headband, or more broadly? For archmagi, it's said that they tend to cast Instant Summons on their signature items so that they can teleport them back or find out who stole them, but the spell doesn't tend to be scribed as a scroll very often. As for more general protections, we of course stock the usual staples, Rings of Protection, Cloaks of Resistance, Amulets of Natural Armor, and so on."

She keeps up the saleswoman's patter even as her eyes dart about in search of the invisible intruder.

She does a little motion shimmer - again, carefully selective - around where she can feel breathing. It's not really pinpoint but she can narrow down a five foot square, easy.

"I'm a little dubious about literally gluing a headband to my head, I admit, but there's always tradeoffs. Defenses more broadly. Personal magic defenses weren't really very available back home. The tradition focused much more on static wards, on buildings and such."

A five-foot square is more than precise enough for her.

"Glitterdust!"

Gasta casts the spell and a plume of shimmering gold dust fills the space, adhering to the surprised and blinded imp to outline its invisible presence.

Aaaaand she darts for the door to block it, around the golden cloud, and also starts spinning off blue foxfires to surround the figure ominously.

"Damned pests!" Gasta says.

The shopkeeper follows her own spell up with another that evokes three nails of force that unerringly ram into the body of the imp. The little fiend takes to the air again, blindly trying to fly in the direction of the exit, flapping through the foxfire and ignorant that Weiss has interposed herself. 

Wait, she heard about this, she asked that banker lady about what the friendly dragonling was fighting, this is an imp, and they're apparently 'outsiders' who are 'always evil'.

-That looked like a serious attack. But she still hesitates a bit. Her foxfires converge on it... And do nothing. Because it's immune to fire. Okay fine.

-The shopkeeper is attacking it for real, and these are supposedly evil, and she HAS fought humanoid Very Evil Things before, and you need to act fast in a fight, and that crystallizes into: Transform and magically enhanced claw-strike.

A magically-enhanced claw-strike from a Large fox form is enough to knock the imp out, throwing it to the floor. 

"It'll be back up in a few moments," Gasta says. To the apprentice, she barks, "Go get one of the silver knives, finish it off. It probably had a scheme in mind, best make an example of it."

...It makes her a little queasy to just casually... Well. It invisibly invaded a shop, and she did - mention it - to obviate responsibility a bit and check-

They disperse when slain, like Curses, but are intelligent enough to plot and that makes her mind go to Cryptids which makes this Srs Bsns Time.

She puts a paw on its chest and another on the tail just below the poison stinger, and waits. But it kinda sucks that violence was apparently the answer, here.

The apprentice rushes back downstairs and quickly cuts through its neck with about as much emotion as if he was cutting the head off a carrot. The silver of the blade makes the imp's flesh sublimate into foul-smelling black smoke at the touch, and when it cuts all the way through both head and body start to collapse in a slower version of the same process.

Gasta cleans up some of the mess with a Prestidigitation.

"They're not usually so bold," she says, not quite an apology. "Could you dismiss your fires, please? Now, where were we?" 

"They won't catch unless I let them," but yeah, the fires go away. She gives a Large sigh. "What a shame. I want to try that headband still, and quite likely buy it. I was also asking about magical defenses of various types- And do you have any magic that might have to do with the moon or moonlight for a special interest?"

She would really like a way to rapidly regenerate magic that is not her naked moonlight dance and there is lots of weird stuff here, but would rather talk around this instead of, like, admitting it.

"Do you have proof of wealth? If so, you can try it on, along with any of the defensive trinkets you like. As for... moon magic, let me see..."

She heads up the stairs and beckons for Weiss to follow, stopping off on the third floor to open a locked cabinet that contains various pieces of clockwork and astronomical equipment. From within she takes a small disk-shaped device that opens like a pocket watch. Inside, a set of dials display the phase of the moon.

"This is a Moon Clock. It tracks the phases of the moon, useful for timekeeping underground, and can be broken to release a burst of moonlight that will force any lycanthropes back into their original forms."

She produces the Abadaran note for display. She's less dexterous like this but not completely incapable. The paw looks a bit weird, holding things produced from dipping it deep into tail fluff.

"Huh. One time only, it seems, for the moonlight?" She bets it'd work though. Maybe for emergencies. How big is it?

It's about the size of the larger of her gold coins. 

"Yes, the enchantment is shaped in such a way as to fail in that manner reliably. It is priced at 2,650 gold pieces." Which she now knows Weiss is good for.

Gasta politely refuses to react to the eccentricity of her continuing to go about in fox form.

She doesn't want to waste magic, obviously.

Bit pricey for a one time contingency. But it's nice on its own, too.

"...I'll consider it. Headband?"

The cabinet on that floor is unlocked too. Gasta waits a moment, then will awkwardly lift up the headband to put on Weiss rather than have her try to take it off the mannequin with her paws.

It's as if, suddenly, she just knows how not to embarrass herself. She can read the room more, that customer service smile, and that's fine, this is a shop, no need to go feeling awkward about it-

"Oh. I like this. I can- Hmm! One moment..."

She plays a complex scene in her head, losing herself in it and filling out all the details. It's... Not easier, exactly, she still has to clearly visualize everything and figure out how it should react, but... Yeah her usual patterns for body language and clothing design and facial expressions and tone of voice all seem so amateurish, now.

She wills it to life, a startlingly complete image of Sinnah, her bored yet interested expression, the way her fingers twitch slightly when she moves, the curling flick her tail does- And how the shopkeeper's eyes dart to it, and what parts of it draw the eye- She makes the Sinnah illusion scoff dismissively, then vanish.

It's not even just the illusions though. Wearing this- And maybe she should have been a little more hesitant to wear mind enhancing magic but too late- It feels like walking down the street openly back on Tirra would be less overwhelming, less embarrassing. Like she can let the opinions of idiots wash over her, unaffected.

Aaaand back, to see how it settles- Just a teensy bit uncomfortable around her ears but she'll get used to it-

"Very good, don't want to ever take it off."

She pulls out and offers the promissory note, kept separate from the one that just said 'this person has at least X in their account on Y date'.

Gasta already has a quill ready for filling in the details of the purchase. It's always entertaining to watch someone put on a headband for the first time, even if it does give her a pang of envy that Uncle Toff never thought enough of her potential to permit her one of the family headbands.

"I think that's all for now. I hope you have a good rest of the day!"

There's probably time for a quick snack, and then 'an hour before sunset' will be close so after that it will be back up to the ominous castle.

The castle is not any less ominous on her second visit, though this time she is shown through the security cordon more quickly.

Sabina is waiting for her in the reception room.

Also present is another soldier, wearing similar equipment that looks to have been freshly provided from how she's adjusting the buckles and straps. She is also standing, because there are still no chairs to be found.

"We are expecting three more," Sabina says.

Since the food last time was a success, there are a couple of Oliphant Ears on the table, huge flatbread pastries traditionally fried on the backs of tower shields that ooze with butter, dusted with dried herbs, each big enough to be split between three people.

She'll spin up six chairs, why not. Ooh, that's like, garlic bread. Nice snack.

"Good evening. So, in terms of intelligence on the enemy and likely foes, I have little of it and for the mission to go well I could perhaps know more- Not even specifics about where and who that would be discussed later anyway, more like - common features of the undead and necromancers, in case they're different than the ones we have back home."

The other woman tests a chair then sits down heavily with an appreciative grunt.

"Been a long day, and been on my feet for most of it."

She does an obvious double-take at Weiss' ears. 

Sabina remains standing. 

"Undead are... formed from negative energy, or the spells of necromancers, or from unusual deaths without the proper rituals, or from being killed by the sort that can spread. The bodiless ones are hard to damage without spells or magic weapons. The most common ones are simply mindless, but some can be cunning. All are driven to harm the living, whether out of hunger or mindless instinct or from being the kind of person who turns undead by themselves. Destroying them is a mercy because their souls remain bound after their deaths, tormented and unable to move on."

"Necromancers are vulnerable in the usual ways spellcasters tend to be, reliant on words and gestures and materials, with a limited number of spells. Most of their magic is used on creating and controlling their undead, which does give them plenty of bodies to hide behind. Once you get past those, their school also has fear magic and rays or touches that inflict curses or weakness, but they have to be at least fifth-circle for any of the spells that have a chance to cause instant death to someone of comparable power to them."

She does a deliberate flick of the ears.

"Okay... Mostly similar basic undead traits, good to know. I've only fought one person that could be called a proper necromancer before, and even she was more using an ability than spells."

And she didn't even finally take her down, the Rose March branch of the Inquisition did, with heavy losses, while she held off the horde in the forest.

"Going for the necromancer past the undead, or wearing out their spells..."

"Just so."

A few moments later, the rest of the party is led in by a servant: 

A human woman with a scroll case,

an elf in magical chainmail,

and the hippogriff-rider whose life was saved!

She freezes on entering. "Are you... Weiss?"

"Ooh, oh, you're back up! How did the coin priests treat ya? I am, and I don't actually know your name."

Weiss' response seems to put her at ease.

"It took three channels, but they honored their duties. You have my thanks for rescuing me. Afterwards, well, bedside manner costs extra, but you won't hear me complaining."

"Caron Chantsmo. Formerly of the Sable Company."

"The elf is Tisharue, the wizard is Vavana, and the guard is Oriana," Sabina supplies.

"Rixpar the house drake is to thank too. You might not have gotten that far without him."

Her voice changes to serious mode. "And I'm Weiss Faron. We're after a necromancer."

She nods, repeating the name to herself. 

Sabina shifts into delivering the briefing. 

"There are signs of activity in Potter's Ward where the poor of the city are laid to rest. Footprints, noises, corpses going missing or being purchased for delivery there. The district is riddled with tunnels and tombs, and the Pharasmins can do little more than contain the undead when they spill out. With all the new dead from the recent unrest, they are in no position to pre-empt the threat. We are."

"Our suspected necromancer is a human, with long brown hair and a goatee. He has been buying dead bodies, having them left by the headless statue of a sword-wielding gargoyle. Pick up the trail from there."

A gesture indicates that is Caron's job.

"Track him down and bring him in, dead or alive. That is your mission."

Oriana exchanges a look with Tisharue. "I take it we're the front line? With this new armor my thinking's I'll leave my shield behind, two-hand my sword to chop through zombies better."

Tisharue nods in curt agreement.

"As for the necromancer? My plan was to prepare a few Acid Arrows for the tougher undead and to disrupt his casting, and a Touch of Idiocy for capture or close combat."

She looks at Weiss, tilting her scroll-case.

"But with a headband-wearing ally, perhaps you have other ideas?"

Oh no she's being questioned. But the headband helps. A lot.

She splays her hands. "I'm strange. Think of me like a sorceress. Illusions, including unusual uses thereof - I could replicate Glitterdust as a basic example, fire - which only burns what I want, and being also a big 'ol fox-" Handy illusion of her fighting form! "I prefer to fight like that for, y'know, speed and power and toughness. Magic-damage claw strikes. I'm not so much on the investigating side of things but I do have canid-quality smell like that, much to my regret at times, and I can track and react to movement well. What circle are we expecting this guy to be? Because I might want to hop right past all the fodder and smack him. I do not have a Merciful amulet of mighty fists, alas. If anyone has a line on where to buy one I'd appreciate it."

"What about if we gotta go into the crypts, would a big fox be too big for that?"

"Ordinary foxes do fine with burrows, I don't see why a human-size fox would struggle with human-scale tunnels? Scent would be helpful, in any case." She glances away out the window, with a look of regret.

But Glitterdust is Conjuration, not Illusion, any Acadamae graduate could tell you that Right, think of her like a sorceress. At least magic claws mean Vavana won't be stuck as the only one who can damage any incorporeal undead.

"If he's collecting bodies to animate, a fourth-circle wizard. Possibly a third-circle cleric, but if he can heal he'd have other routes for corpse-collecting."

The hippogriff was in much worse shape, but mood.

"Yaaay. Interestingly unpleasant smells... I can handle most tunnels a human could. Worst case, I shift back- I try not to do it too often, changing is what takes magic, not being in either form. I can set up - what I call party chat. Linked illusions on everyone that carry what is said clearly to everyone else's ears. I can muffle sound for us too, probably with a trigger everyone can use to override it. I can also invisible everyone but that's much harder to keep up for long. And that's about all from me as far as prep and planning goes, everyone else here probably knows necromancers and Korvosa better."

"Oh!" She remembers suddenly, slightly embarrassed. "Share language is going to wear off in... I think probably around four or five hours, I got it during the riot last night."

"That 'party chat' sounds useful. As for my spells, I can prepare a couple. Gravity Bow so my bolts land harder and Deadeye's Lore to track our quarry better?"

...what kind of not-a-sorceress is she. She can't possibly be casting a variant Baleful Polymorph on herself to change back and forth, can she? Maybe she's a werefox, a spell that lets her control the shift instead of needing the moon would make more sense. Or a druid of the fey that gets illusions instead of plant and animal spells?

"Relying on Share Language could be trouble if it's dispelled. Do you know any Varisian, Vudrani, Shoanti, or Elven?"

"Or you could memorize the essentials. 'Yes', 'no', 'fight', 'retreat', and so on."

"I do not, and I haven't had much time to study but that does seem prudent."

She can say things in Taldane and then Notal, how about, and record her doing so into a loop attached to one of her ears for later reactivation and periodic review. 

"Meet outside the Pharasmin cathedral gate at the morning bell?" Oriana suggests. "Track the bastard down quick and we can be in the Shoreline Drinkhall by noon, how about it?"

"Wh- Oh I thought we were going now. Okay, that works."

More opportunity to find a spot to recharge in.

"I for one need a good night's sleep to recover my spells."

"Not objecting, I just feel a little silly now. Cathedral gate, morning bell."

When she leaves the castle, the sun has set but the moon is out, and the city is aglow with lamps and streetlights. From the top of the ramp, she can see Jeggare Island just off the coast, barren and dark except for its understaffed fort; the newly-built luxury of South Shore with the Pantheon of the Many rising above the shops and townhouses, and then across the wall the cathedral of Pharasma standing as a bastion in the Gray. Beyond the city limits, the lights fade, and a pine forest stands a short distance away. 

Yay, moon.

So. Magic charge options.

She's at maybe........ 650-700/1000 of the maximum she can comfortably hold? The numbers are made up anyway.

Expensive sweets and other nice foods- Call it about 10-20 per really nice meal? A good bonus but not really sustainable or efficient, when she can burn through hundreds in an intense fight.

Relaxing in the Woods Between- Maybe 1 or 2 per hour, good over a long rest but not for fast charging.

Hanging out in graveyards and otherworldly places tends to get her about five an hour.

Hanging out chilling with friends can be a pretty nice steady rate but she doesn't have her friends, here. And the 'go find a hookup' option just isn't one, actually, as far as she's concerned.

The moonlight dance really works much better; She can get 10 to 20 over an hour's dancing in her usual outfits, or 20 to 30 in a skimpy one- The phase of the moon can vary it that much as long as it's visible at all, but clouds disrupt it, and a totally new moon does too.

Except a nude moonlight dance is somehow much better, far more so than the additional skin would suggest. Thank you, Tamamo. Eyeroll. That's her mainstay for charging. It'll hit 75-100 an hour easy.

So. What are her options for acceptable privacy with a view of the sky... Empty dark parks and gardens? The woods outside the city? Both of those sound kind of... Dangerous. But she can set up alarm-ward illusions, and she's not exactly a soft target. Being attacked while naked is embarrassing as all hell but it's not like it's the end of the world.

She wends woods-ward via rooftop. Any convenient isolated/abandoned places along the way?

(Of course, she notes when the full moon is, out of habit. Her powers find themselves maximized, under it. Back home, at least.)

There's little in the way of parkland to be found within the city limits. Any space that can have a tent or shack propped up on it is generally already in use. The main exception is Gray, but the patches of greenery and isolated unbuilt parts of the undead-haunted graveyard district have their own disadvantages. 

Yeah, no, Silent Hill Medieval Edition or the actual woods, probably also creepy in some way: She chooses woodlands.

To the gate and out?

There are guards on the gate, but word of Weiss has spread far enough that they don't give her any trouble about leaving.

How creepy and cursed are the woods 1-10? She can handle anything up to about a 5 probably. Find a little clearing somewhere, set up her alarms, and get to her nice relaxing dance. It always centers her.

To all appearances the woods are completely normal and unremarkable. They don't even have a name, let alone a local monster population to menace the city with. Her only company consists of rats, squirrels, and other ordinary woodland creatures.

Oh good.

She'll spend several hours in mixed meditation, dance, and thought, feel her magic creep back up to a reassuring fullness, and then set an alarm and sleep in the Woods Between.

And then go back into the city sometime just before dawn?

The morning dawns cool and wet. 

The next watch of gate guards don't give her any trouble either. They do however greet her in Taldane, a language that she can no longer understand with her spell expired.

Ah.

She manages to string together "buy share language taldane" from memory, for both the gate guard and the Coin Priests.

With that problem resolved, she can head back to the south side of the city. Beneath the grand cathedral, carved with spiral patterns that recall seashells and galaxies and whirlpools, a Pharasmin priest is waiting for her party. 

Oriana is the only other member to have arrived so early. She greets Weiss with a wave.

"Morning! Hey, uh, sorry about the - ears thing, yesterday."

"Ears thing? -Ah, perish the thought, was nothing really. I'm used to worse."

"Yeah, I know what it's like to be too eye-catching for your own good. Anyway."

An awkward silence stretches.

"Oh it's worse when your species has baggage attached. It doesn't here, which is grand! So I won't be describing the baggage."

"Right, noted." 

"Uh... What species is that? That you are, I mean." 

"Share language wants 'kitsune' but that's not quite right. Maybe 'Tirran kitsune'? Oh, hello ma'am," she says to the person she doesn't recognize. "Coming with us on the necromancer hunt?"

"No, we're busy enough as it is. Once you're all here, my job is to tell you what not to do if you want to get out of here alive and be allowed back in alive or dead."

"-Alllright then. Oh, I should set a will with the Abadarans. After this."

"Yes, you should," she says, a little less sharply. "Too many people live their whole lives without giving a thought to their ending and judgment."

Sheeee should not blurt things out randomly even if she's tempted to retort.

Chair. Three chairs. And sits and starts going over Taldane vocabulary again.

Oriana sits down with a grin. "That's got to be my new favorite spell." She's willing to help Weiss practice until the others arrive.

They do so over the next twenty minutes, Tisharue then Caron then Vavana.