In a respectable country home, a wizard is working, far too frantically to be safe, on some sort of summoning circle. Later attempts to figure out what the actual goal of said working was will be largely unsuccessful, mostly because said wizard, for some reason, appears to crumble into red dust just as a party of adventurers finally broke down the door.
This is the scene Khalida arrives to.
Most things that a party of adventurers find in a botched summoning might have tentacles, or far too many claws, or shapes the mortal mind fails to comprehend. Most things might fling themselves at the barrier, or catch fire, or perhaps in honey-sweet tones persuade any onlookers to let them out. It's really quite unusual to instead see a completely human-looking young woman in clothes too warm for the season appear out of thin air, stumble and drop the book she's holding, utter a burst of confused- and frustrated-sounding possibly-swearing in some unfamiliar but definitely mortal language, and stoop to examine the circle.
And then she notices the adventurers in the broken doorframe, and freezes.
“Uhhh.”
”Quick, who has tongues?”
”Aren’t you the wizard?!”
”Well, sure, but I didn’t prepare it!”
The cleric sighs, rolls her eyes, and turns toward the probably-human woman. “Don’t suppose you have a permanent tongues?” she asks hopefully. When this doesn’t work, she glares at the wizard until he starts trying languages. Draconic? Aquan? Abyssal? Undercommon? …three words of Celestial?
To Khalida’s eyes, the party consists of a male elven wizard (judging by the robes and spellbook), a human female possibly-sorceress (robes, no spellbook), a dwarven woman who’s either a paladin or cleric (armor, unfamiliar holy symbol of a stylized shield), and, for some reason, a panther.
She cautiously unfreezes once they start trying languages, picks up the book and stands, hands carefully in an I'm-not-casting position. She blinks a bit at Draconic but doesn't respond to any of them, until, looking even more confused than before, she responds very haltingly, "sorry, I don't speak Celestial?" She tries a couple of unfamiliar languages in return, starting with what might almost be a different mutually unintelligible dialect of Draconic.
(Khalida's got a black-and-white mask on a cord around her neck where a holy symbol might go, and a satchel that looks about the right size to hold a spellbook, but no visible adventurer's gear unless you count the probably made-over but quite good quality winter coat with unfamiliar markings.)
“Well, fuck.”
”Why do you know Abyssal, but not Celestial?”
”It’s better for summoning demons, obviously.”
”Why would you be summoning demons?!”
The sorceress, meanwhile, makes an exaggerated apologetic face, shrugs, and points questioningly towards the circle and pile of red dust.
Return shrug. Sweeping circular gesture off her other forearm that hopefully might still signify 'tomorrow dawn' in whatever weird country she's been teleprted to this time, tap her ear and nod- wait fuck, didn't she hear somewhere nodding means no in Tian Xia? Tap her ear and smile, tap her mouth and exaggerated sad face?
The circle and dust gets an even bigger shrug, and she squints down at it again- puts the book in her bag, still moving slowly and carefully, and attempts to mime 'casting' without giving the impression she's actually about to cast something, point at her eyes, point at the circle, questioning raised eyebrows and hopeful 'hmm?'
Is it possible to mime, “the red dust was previously a guy engaged in sketchy necromancy.” This question is much more relevant to her life than previously expected.
…This seems worth a cantrip. Prestidigitation.
Image of a guy in, hm, black robes with an unreasonable number of skulls on them, drawing a circle. The guy is now red dust. A figure that could sort of look like Khalida from a very far distance if you didn’t have great eyesight in in the circle.
Continuing to look baffled! Another shrug and headshake.
Guy with skull robes probably signifies a necromancer? Or a Kuthite, but she has no idea how to mime 'I'm not whatever sort of horrible thing a Kuthite would summon'. Point to her mask- tap on the light/smiling side of the mask specifically- mime holding it up (without actually taking it off) while grimacing and holding her side, then straightening up with a big smile?
...she has no idea whether she successfully conveyed "I'm alive" instead of "I'm undead and channel negative and I'm happy about that".
…Yeah, she’s got nothing. Oh well. They can… leave this basement while her comrades loot, perhaps? Does holding the door open and gesturing accomplish that?
But she still doesn't know how this summoning circle works- she'll go ahead and cast Detect Magic, they seem to be on nonthreatening enough terms, and... that's weird, is it actually keeping her in at all? She squints at the runes, trying to see if there's anything there she recognizes, and tentatively pokes a hand towards the edge of the circle.
Huh. Either this circle was only made to contain whatever specific kind of outsider it was intended to summon, or it was meant to do something instantaneous, or it somehow burned itself out getting her instead. ...or Red Dust Guy was a dumbass, that's also an option.
She'll step very cautiously over the circle, then, both in case it has some kind of concealed wizard-blasting powers and in case she startles the other adventurers.
...hoooow impatient does the woman at the door look. Can she point at her eyes and at the circle again, and make writing gestures, is that going to be incredibly suspicious...? Probably she should try to indicate she doesn't want to do her own random adventurer summons somehow- she points at the dust pile and makes an emphatic frowning face and shakes her head.
She’s definitely not thrilled about an unknown wizard writing down a circle from a sketchy necromancer but she will not physically stop Khalida from doing so. She will gesture up the stairs again.
Yeah not surprising. She'll tap her holy symbol again - she doesn't recognize the cleric-or-paladin's but Nethys sees all of creation, probably He's also known farther afield? worth a try at least - and make big innocent eyes, but follows willingly enough.
What does the not-a-basement of this city/world/plane look like?
No recognition; if they know him here, it’s not by that symbol.
Well, first there’s a quite nice, if clearly pretty old, house, but the adventurer’s going to hurry her out of there if possible.
Outside, the most obvious feature of the area is probably the trees. There are mostly various evergreen species in the immediate vicinity, at least. Spruces, pines, an assortment of shrubs. Most seem pretty normal; a cluster are oddly symmetrical, with black bark.
There are a lot of shrubs. There’s a thorny vine that looks to be working its way up a tree. Starbursts of rich green leaves grow close to the ground.
It’s warm, but not hot. It’s the Silver Marches; heat’s not normally an issue, this far north.
(She's still got a few moments on Detect Magic, anything in the house stand out? For that matter, anything the ?sorceress? is wearing? She's not an item crafter herself but they're still fascinating to look at.)
Khalida grew up on the edge of the desert and under normal circumstances would consider this weather pleasantly refreshing, but she's currently dressed for a tundra fortress where all coal is supplied by Teleport. She shrugs out of her coat immediately once they're outdoors, patting the edges of her scarf back into place reflexively, and- it won't fit in her satchel, just bundles it under her arm for now.
Nothing in the house is enchanted, although some items have had Continual Flame cast on them. The sorceress has a Cloak of Charisma +2, a Vest of Resistance +1, a Ring of Protection +1, and several scrolls in a pouch on her belt.
Oooh, fancy... is that Resistance, do they put it on vests instead of cloaks here? She squints at it- and then realizes what it must look like she's staring at and hurriedly turns the last few seconds of Detecting on one of the symmetrical trees instead.
Are there horses around, or an obvious good road? Or is this maybe a Teleport-level party. (They're definitely stronger than her either way, but she can't quite tell just by the gear how much stronger.)
Those sure are a lot of trees. She doesn't recognize any of the kinds, but that doesn't actually tell her if she's in the Mwangi Expanse or Tian Xia or Castrovel, she's not really a trees person. Omar would probably know. Unless she's further away than Castrovel, she's pretty sure even Castrovel has the same dragons. She really hopes this party's wizard is taking good notes and not erasing the circle and burning the dust.
There isn’t an obvious good road. There is an obvious road, but it really could not be reasonably described as “good.” The most that can be said for it is that it’s not currently made of mud.
The symmetrical trees have no magical aura.
The panther emerges after a few minutes, and sprawls down next to the sorceress. The other two party members emerge in two hours, looking irritated.
They appear to get into some sort of argument, involving some somewhat subtle pointing at Khalida. They eventually come to some sort of agreement, and will, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, starting walking down the road.
She's pretty sure Polymorph doesn't usually last that long, so probably that means the panther is a familiar and not a party member? Unless it's a talking panther, or a druid or something. If the panther is neither biting her nor demanding scritches, she's by that point bored enough to settle down against the wall of the house and pull out her notes. (Putting a chimney at her back if there's one conveniently nearby, but she's not about to go around the corner looking for one.) Summon Minor Monster is maybe the most relevant to the situation, if quite a bit of a stretch, and she can lose herself in the spell diagrams for the rest of the two hours quite contentedly.
...oh shit they're arguing- about her? What are her options, she can Glitterdust and run if they try to kill her but she doesn't super like her chances in an unfamiliar forest any better than against them... she puts her notes away just in case. She's got two channels left but that only proves she's a neutral cleric of a neutral god, and there's few enough people here that a high-circle evil cleric could maybe fake that with a Mass Cure- although in that case they'd at least have a headband, unless there's some kind of evil Irorite-equivalent sect that thinks magic items are cheating?
...okay, they're just, leaving. Do they seem to want her to follow them? Do they seem to want her to not follow them, because again, unfamiliar forest. And they were in there long enough they were probably taking notes and collecting Red Dust Guy's stuff instead of burning everything.
Yeah, they’ll indicate for her to follow. It’ll be a few hours of walking before they’ll stop at dusk. The sorceress and wizard will start setting up camp, while the cleric sits down and starts praying.
Ughhhhhh more walking. She really thought being not at the Worldwound would involve less of this. Tromp tromp tromp. What kind of party can afford magic items but not camels. It's not even cold out. Maybe there's horse-eating monsters in the woods like some people say Absalom has. She's still not sure if she's been rescued or very politely arrested or what. And she can't even talk to them to pass the time because they don't have any common languages, and it's going to be all the way until next morning before she can prep a Comprehend. This suuuuuuucks. After a bit she gets bored enough to start Prestidigitating random plants into interesting colors, but that palls fairly quickly. It's probably super irresponsible to read while walking and let these strangers do all the watching for monsters, even if she could keep up this pace without tripping on a root and embarrassing herself which she's not at all sure of.
By the time they stop, she's in a foul enough mood that she doesn't attempt to mime an offer to help with camp chores, just flops down against a tree and sulks. (It doesn't occur to her that the cleric might be praying-for-spells, some people have regular-praying routines that are more often than that.)
It does occur to her after a bit that regular-praying is something she could do as well, instead of just sitting around going in grumpy circles in her own mind. She doesn't especially want to advertise that she's doing it and anyway she's pretty mad at Nethys right now, so she doesn't try to set up a makeshift altar, just pulls her knees up to her chest, ducks her head, and clasps her hands around her mask.
Hi, Nethys, I don't know if You did this or if I was going to be dead otherwise, but this sucks and I would really have liked some warning even if it would drive me mad. I'm really really hoping I'm here because I get to learn new things and weird magic and then bring it BACK and share that knowledge at home instead of just bringing new knowledge here, if that's an option please let that happen. I'm going to do my best to learn things and share knowledge either way but I was in the middle of kind of a lot of stuff. Please let me grow strong enough to learn Tongues so I can actually talk to people. If they don't have it here or I can't learn it I can do some experimenting if You'd want that. ...also please let me get enough sleep tonight, I really really don't want to be without my spells tomorrow and I don't think You'd want that either, and I don't think it's the same time here as it was at the Wound.
Hm, that might be more Desna's sort of thing actually? She adds her usual and please let the balors explode far away from the forts, and visualizes as much as she can remember of the summoning circle in case that helps Him somehow, and then moves on to the other gods, this is definitely a full-round kind of situation if anything is.
Desna, patron of travelers, I am really super far from home, far enough I don't know how to reckon it, and I could really use a good night's sleep tonight. Irori, I'm going to try to do my best, whatever I'm here for. Pharasma, Judge of Judges, please keep a special eye out for my squad when they pass into Your keeping, and all the soldiers, and Sarenrae please send them really really good lawyers, they're trying, and anyway if they're not it's not their fault. Also if any of the whores at the Broken Crocodile have died since I was there last, them too. Abadar, Lord of Trade and Keeper of the First Vault, if You help me get home there's probably arbitrage opportunities or something. Iomedae, I know You're doing whatever You think best but the commander is going to be short on backup again. Who else... Calistria, queen of vengeance, if a demon did this please help my squad get vengeance on it... actually, help all the soldiers avenge all their fallen comrades, there's so much vengeance going spare up there. Erastil, protector of hunters, let the archmage's cat have a glorious and successful hunt and bring down many demons, and please help Noor grow up big and strong. Uh, Cayden Cailean, please also look out for the Broken Crocodile and all its people.
And she'll mentally run through a couple of psalms, and after a few minutes real time, she's calmed down enough to uncurl and go find the sorceress and try to convey an offer to channel via mime, they don't look like they need it but it's not like the channels do any good if she doesn't use them.
Nobody’s going to attempt to get her to do any camp chores. The sorceress seems incredibly confused by the attempt to mime channeling, but eventually shrugs, probably under the assumption that it’s probably not detrimental if she’s trying to get permission.
After an hour, the cleric targets Khalida with a Tongues spell.
"What the fuck? What the fuck! Is that- how did-" She gets stuck, bites her lip and breathes deeply for a moment or so.
"Um. Hi. I'm Khalida."
“Are you unfamiliar with Tongues? My apologies for startling you, if so. I’m Brenlya.”
"No, it's- I mean I can't cast it yet but- did you just get that-" No wait, she's an idiot, the other cleric was probably saving it in case they needed a Cure on the road. Which is an entirely respectable reason even if it sucked for her personally. She flushes a bit and puts a hand over her mouth.
“…Yes, I just got that. Are you alright? Do you have any idea what happened, with the summoning?”
Is she from some sort of… weird cult of Lathander? There was a weird group of them saying he was some ancient Netherese deity, right, do they teach that only sun gods are Good or something? That would be incredibly inconvenient.
Tiny nod to 'are you alright'.
But then she asks a question about magic and Khalida can unstick herself- "No, I've got no clue- I mean, I didn't have Detect Magic up but I thought I felt something, and it might have been what Conjuration feels like inside-out? But this is way longer than I've ever heard of a summons lasting, and also most summons get, like, angels or demons or whatever, not random mortals, and also also I've never heard of people disappearing off the street to get summoned to other Material planes? Except I was in a hallway actually, not a street, but same difference. And-" She glances at the wizard. "Was that Draconic, that first thing you tried?"
“Filen, was that language Draconic?”
”Yeah, why?”
”Think our guest might be from another plane or something.”
”Ah.”
"Okay yeah I thought it was- I'm speaking in Draconic at this time-" she's never actually been under a Tongues before, she's not sure if you can deliberately make yourself not understood, "-did that work? It's like- it's not the same language but it's not not the same? Which is really weird, right, that's why all the old books are in Draconic is they got everywhere, so how far away do I have to be that it's kind of the same sort of language but we can't understand each other?" She pauses for breath.
She can totally switch to a different language!
”I don’t have any idea what’s with that, I don’t even know Draconic myself. We’ll reach a road that’s good enough for horses tomorrow, and then it’s two days to Silverymoon - sorry, can you ride?”
"Oh yeah- I mean, not like combat riding or anything fancy, but I can stay on a horse and keep it going the right direction. Also if you haven't got a spare I've got a first-circle spell for one, but it's gonna trade off with Comprehend Languages."
The wizard looks up at this!
"If you're willing to trade for it, I can prepare some tomorrow, it'll save us money on the horses. What schools do you prefer?"
"Oooh, probably conjuration, especially here, but it's so hard to pick, I really like illusions and evocation is usually more useful- or abjuration, I suppose, I've been doing Endures for weeks- oh, I'm second circle, so if you wanna do more than the one I won't have anything to swap for higher than that, I used to have notes on Fireball but I don't have them with me-"
And then her Wis finally catches up to her Int and she pauses. "Actually, if there's a spell we've both got we probably oughta check we can read each other's diagrams first, no sense negotiating the whole swap and then not being able to do it after all."
"Nope-" she moves closer and pulls out her spellbook, "Alarm? Feather Fall? -oh, I'm an idiot, there's fewer cantrips, we're more likely to share them- those are spells we've got at home, though, and it sounds like you recognized Mount? So that's promising- hm, unless Tongues just picks the closest equivalent, I guess, I wouldn't think it does but I haven't tried-"
“I’ve heard of those. I have Detect Poison, Detect Magic, Read Magic - Divination’s my best school. I’ve also got Acid Splash, Open/Close, Daze, Dancing Lights, Flare, Resistance, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, and Arcane Mark, of course.”
"Out of those I've got Read and Detect Magic, Prestidigitation, Mage Hand, Resistance, and Dancing Lights, and then besides them Mending, Light, Message, Scrivener's Chant, Ray of Frost... let's compare Resistance? I can get it as divine too, so that might help if we can't figure it out just from the spellcharts, didn't pick it today but I can swap at dawn. Or Detect Magic, I get divine Detect Magic every time but I used today's earlier."
Resistance is pretty much identical, accounting to notational differences.
”I’ve never heard of Scrivener’s Chant, what school is it?”
"Transmutation- it animates a pen to do copying for you, can't handle spellcharts but it's good for like treatises and pamphlets and stuff." Compare compare ponder. "So you're in the Azlantian tradition too? Did Aroden visit here, d'you know?"
“Oh, like Amanuensis. I’ve never heard the name; I think wizardry mostly derives from ancient Netherese arcanists?”
"Oh, huh, what's Netherese? Uh, where I'm from Aroden was the last survivor of lost Azlant, and preserved their magical knowledge and then ascended? And went off to a bunch of other worlds in between there, so I dunno if he might've been here too."
“Uh, Netherese is a name for the people of Netheril, a really powerful magical civilization that had floating cities and powerful items and whatnot, until one of their archmages, Karsis, tried to steal Mystral’s godly power and this wrecked all magic, and all their floating cities crashed into the earth, and Mystral had to sacrifice herself to prevent even more stuff from going wrong. And then Mystral came back as Mystra, somehow? Or Mystra took over her domains? Something like that.”
"Huh, weird, that sounds almost like Earthfall- except it wasn't a god, it was fish people- who somebody tried to steal the power of, I mean, it was a god who sacrificed Herself and turned into a rat. Except it'd be really weird for Aroden to go around to a bunch of worlds just in time for them all to have an Earthfall- maybe it's not weird, mysterious ways and whatever. Is Mystra your name for the god of magic? Ours is Nethys-" she taps her mask symbol on its cord, "and that sounds kinda the same to me but I dunno if it's just Tongues doing that, does it sound the same to you?"
“Nethys, Mystra… maybe if you’re missing some sounds, they sound reasonably different to me - wait, you mean Netherese and Nethys, don’t you. Yeah, those sound similar. No idea why.”
"Oh yeah, sorry. It might be coincidence? Seems like the sort of thing that isn't but I've got no idea otherwise. And there's only so many ways to get words with a human mouth, I guess. Um. Or elf."
He shrugs. “I’ll trade you Identify for Mount - if you want Mage Armor I’d be willing to let you look at it for free, it’s probably one of the most common first-circle spells out there.”
"Ooh, are you sure? 'S generous of you, I won't say no to both but I'd swap for Mage Armor straight." (She quietly adjusts her estimate of the party a circle or so upwards.)
“Yeah, it’s fine. Won’t say know to trading some other spells later, when we’re not on the road, though.”
He’ll show her the pages for long enough for her to copy them down in pencil or non-magical ink. Mage Armor is exactly how she’d expect it. With good Spellcraft, she can notice a few differences in Identify, like a different range, subtly different effect, different target, an added material component, and that the casting time is off by over two orders of magnitude.
…They’re both divination spells.
She'll open her own spellbook to Mount and pass it over for him to copy from at the same time.
Sketch sketch sketch squiiiiiint.
"...does this actually take an hour? Am I reading your notation wrong?"
He’s not as fast as her when sketching, but some of that is probably that he seems to have a compulsive need to check that he copied it absolutely perfectly every five seconds or so.
”Yes, of course. I’ve heard rumors that it’s possible to Quicken it at fifth circle, but I’ve never actually seen it, and I couldn’t figure out a way for it to stabilize.”
"Huuuuuuh. Maybe Tongues does just grab the closest equivalent- I wish I knew ours to compare, is it built on the same substructure as Detect Magic? Our guy back home definitely didn't take a whole hour, he'd tell us to come back sometimes but usually if he only had one that day and needed to batch them-" She's sketching away as she chatters, clearly skilled with a pen but also not making an exactly perfect duplicate, enlarging tricky bits off to the side and filling up the margins with notes in her native language. "I know some spells got optimized pretty recently but I thiiiink Identify is one clerics get, I'd have expected it to be one of the old ones...."
It is absolutely not built on the same structure, except insofar as they’re both divination spells that use a scaffold. He can show her his copy of Detect Magic to compare.
“This is actually pretty optimized! The divine version is second circle, and only clerics of Mystra, Corellon, and Hanali Celanil get it. Uh, the last two are elven deities. Corellon’s the elven deity, really.”
"Oh weird- yeah, that's a totally different spell with the same name, what does it do? Ours is Detect Magic but way better at items specifically- you can see my Detect once you're done with Mount if you want-" This is the face of a wizard who wants to take something apart.
“The cantrips that I saw looked nearly identical - maybe there’s only so many that hold together when they don’t have a proper circle? Or maybe Nethys did Plane Shift from Netheril after all, and Identify wasn’t invented until after?”
He’s absolutely willing to share his Detect too! They’re identical.
"Oooh, maybe- I should try and write down all the spells I've heard of so we can compare, I don't know when which of them were invented or optimized but I bet we could figure something out-" she pulls out a clean sheet of scrap paper and starts making notes- "yeah, that looks the same as mine- I wish I'd prepped it today, I don't usually need more than one when I'm not on the road-"
He laughs, a little startled.
”What else are you using your cantrip slots for, then? A full half of mine are always Detect Magic.”
Protection from Evil (Law/Chaos/Good) looks identical, and that definitely originated with clerics. Eagle’s Splendor does the same thing she expects. Technically he doesn’t think that Reduce Person is on any cleric lists, but Mass Reduce Person is, and the spellcraft to reduce the number of people to get it to first circle is reasonably intuitive.
…Her version of mending takes ten minutes, what in the world. How did he miss that? He’s absolutely certain that’s a cleric orison.
…Right, he’s going over this with a fine-toothed comb, this time. Protection from Alignment’s mental protection ignores alignment, if Khalida’s notes on the spell are good enough to differentiate it. His Glitterdust has an extra bit that makes the dust sticky and basically impossible to get out before combat’s over. That’s everything he noticed, but maybe he missed another spell that’s a few orders of magnitude off in casting time.
"...half? Why...do you need both...?" Maybe he's some weird variant kind of wizard with only two cantrips, no that doesn't make sense either...
Anyway! Spell comparing! She's not certain she remembers Protection From Evil And/Or Good perfectly, if she was going to rederive it she'd want to do it next to a big snowdrift with Mage Armor up, but she'd definitely have remembered if it was Protection From Mental Control And Also Evil, that would've been probably worth spending the ink on. Yeah, she can get Mending as an orison too and it takes ten minutes both ways. She hasn't inked Reduce Person yet but she has notes, it looks the same to her too, she hasn't heard of Mass Reduce Person being a cleric spell but she's been a cleric for like a month, that doesn't mean it isn't. Oh that extra bit on Glitterdust is fascinating, can she copy it, does he want like Message or something.
He does already have Message. He was trying not to look too hard at the unfamiliar stuff, out of courtesy, but he thinks he saw something that did arcane healing, he’d totally give an improved second level and a few firsts for that.
"I know right isn't it so cool- and it's first circle- uh, it does need devil's blood, I dunno if your cleric friend is okay with that? But if you're just keeping it for emergencies it should be easy to do enough good to make up for it- oh, and it's not instant, you have to stay still while it's working, or like not have to have to but you might tear something open again-"
He blinks. “I’d… think that devil’s blood’s fine, if difficult to procure. If it took angel’s blood, I’d start getting concerned.”
Flip flip. "Okay, if you don't- um. The spell is evil, I don't think I- said-" fuuuuck any more words are not happening and she sounds like an idiot, are spells polarized backward here or something, is he evil, is he judging her for knowing an evil spell even though it's really cool-
“Oh, okay. Only use it if the cleric’s down, then. Sort of a shame, though, it’d be super cool to have easy arcane healing. Uh, we only have maybe ten minutes of Tongues left. Does Infernal Healing and Mount in exchange for the improvement on Glitterdust, Mage Armor, and one-round Mending seem fair?”
More spells!
”Oh, you should know, the Wards of Silverymoon prevent any Evil spells from working. Also summoning, fire, and teleportation, but the Evil’s important so that if you see someone bleeding out you should run for a cleric instead of trying Infernal Healing.”
That's interesting enough to snap her out of hiding in the spell notes. "All fire spells over the whole city? -is it a city, I forgot to ask, what kind of a place is it, Who laid the wards?" She's not paying attention to whether the language they're speaking has god pronouns right now but if it does, she's clearly assuming city-sized permanent wards are beyond archmage level.
This language doesn’t unless you’re specifically trying for an archaic formal register.
”A city, yeah. It think it’s founded on some magic item from ancient Netheril that survived when the city crashed, but I don’t know more than that, the city doesn’t exactly go around sharing it’s security details. The Spellguard have some way to get around it, but otherwise yeah.”
"Oh cool. Absalom- that's the city full of wizards back home- they have to make do with making it illegal and trying to arrest people." Sketch sketch. "What're you going there for, did somebody there hire you to deal with the necromancer or is it just closest- oh shit, please tell me you got good notes on the circle? I couldn't ask before-"
“I copied it down, yeah, although I’m not sure how useful it will be - it’s pretty nonsensical.” He opens up a page in a separate book and offers it to her, shrugging. “Might make more sense in your magical tradition, though. We’ll get paid by the city for dealing with the necromancer, one we confirm with Discern Lies that he was actually a necromancer and not some random wizard we murdered, there’s a standard bounty.”
She squints at it for a bit. "Doesn't make much sense to me either, but I haven't done a lot of summoning- I can make a copy in the morning, even if recreating it doesn't work maybe somebody can still trace it backwards. Standard bounty for necromancers in general?"
“It varies based on circle and body count, but yes. Uh, to be clear, if you’re doing necromantic spells that’s fine, you just shouldn’t be raising the dead.”
"Mm, 's kinda like that at home too, not technically illegal but apparently there's all kinds of licensing and insurance and shit. And obviously killing people's still illegal whether you do it with zombies or a knife or whatever." She tilts her head and rotates the sketch of the circle one way and then the other.
"...uh, not that I would," she finally remembers to clarify, "I'm not high enough circle to be raising undead and I haven't even got any necromancy spells inked anyway. And also I don't like, want to."
Oh whoops. Shrug, point to her ear, shake her head.
Once Khalida's finished copying, she'll settle in with a clean leaf of scratch paper and try to make a list of- actually, all the spells she knows for sure exists, if she starts listing off wild rumors it'll take forever and be worse than useless. Then another page for the gods and their symbols and aspects (the decent ones anyway, she's not naming the Evil ones here), then a very bad map of Golarion the Inner Sea region, which probably won't mean much even if somebody Comprehends it but at least she'll have it to hand around.
...she probably should've gotten some words in their language while she had Tongues up.
He looks over at curiously at the holy symbols, if she lets him. He’ll point at a few and cautiously guess.
“Silvanus?” he asks of Gozreh’s symbol, but doesn’t seem very surprised at the no; a leaf isn’t an uncommon sort of thing. None of the other Inner Sea gods get any recognition.
When she gets to Ancient Osirion deities, he startles. He’ll identify Ra, Anubis, Bes, Hathor, and Sobek - although he pronounces that one as Sebek.
Emboldened by this success, he tried a few of his own. Two hands tied together? Skeletal arm gripping scales? Scales over an anvil? Hammer over an anvil?
Gauntlet? Gauntlet with an eye on it? Eyes surrounded by stars? A circle of stars, with no eyes?
A crescent moon, a heart, an oak tree, or a setting sun? A rose over some stalks of grain?
An incredibly bad rendition of a unicorn head? A worse attempt at a naked Drow woman?
"Oh huh!" She's really not sure what to make of her country's not very interventionist old gods being better known on another [plane/t] than like, Nethys or Sarenrae or Pharasma, but her sudden piles of questions are going to have to wait until one or the other of them has a translation spell again.
The two symbols with scales get a thoughtful squint, and she draws a set on her own paper next to the key and crossed paths, but smaller, with a wiggly uncertain hand gesture, "Abadar?" After a moment, she digs around in her pack and comes up with a couple of copper coins, passes them from one hand to the other, and sets them next to this set of symbols.
Hammer and anvil prompts her to add a tentative hammer next to a different name, "Torag?", gesture at about the height of her shoulder, and shrug.
Most of the others get shrugs; she taps the eye in a triangle on her paper and says "Aroden", gestures back and forth between her butterfly and his stars with "Desna?" and another shrug, and indicates that her sheaf of grain belongs to "Jaidi".
He sort of shrugs at the Abadar. “Waukeen?” he tentatively offers, pointing at the coins.
He points at the Dwarven cleric when Khalida gets to the hammer over the anvil. “Moradin,” he agrees, and adds a flame over an anvil as well.
Apparently his grain is Chantea. He considers the triangle and eye, and adds a symbol of his own. “Deneir,” he indicates.
The butterfly gets a headshake.
More shrugging. She'll put the coins back and get started on the map- nobody's going to recognize any landmarks but it'll save time on a translation spell to have it already drawn- and hopefully somebody else is producing some food at some point since she is not exactly packed for a patrol, but either way she has new spell notes to bury herself in for the rest of the evening.
Travel proceeds smoothly enough. The quality of the road steadily improves as they approach the city. The walls are visible from a distance, and are smooth stone. Buildings are visible over them, tall spires of stone, roofs occasionally covered with green and blue glass. There are a number of trees, as well, many nearly as tall as the spires.
A thousand yards from the walls, Khalida will notice a few effects. Firstly, she has gained a new sensory modality that will inform her of any scrying sensors within 40 feet. (There aren’t any.)
The other effects aren’t nearly as obvious, but Detect Magic and sufficient skill will be able to tell that she is now under the effects of Protection from Evil, Detect Scrying, Invisibility Purge, and Negative Energy Protection. Relatedly, the entire city is under a blindingly powerful magical effect. Part of it is an Evocation, similar to a Hallow, except using an arcane spell structure? The rest is indecipherable, unless Khalida happens to be an expert in ancient artifact-like wards.
"Oh whoa. Oh what the fuck." Khalida stuffs her book back in her saddlebag and glances around- if her accidental companions don't seem alarmed, she's going to spend the last bit of the ride in with a Detect up just staring at all of that. In between squinting and rubbing her eyes.
"Silverymoon?" They did eventually work out a bit of a phrasebook, once wiser heads claimed some of the translation spell time; she taps her ear for 'I'm putting up a Comprehend unless someone objects in the next six seconds.'
Her traveling companions mostly look slightly amused, as if this is a common reaction.
“Yes,” the cleric confirms, nodding. No one objects to the Comprehend.
As they approach the gates, she may notice that the walls are perfectly smooth except where they curve in flowing patterns, as if they were grown, rather than built. The gates themselves are a more normal wood.
A bored-looking human man holds a gemstone (moderate divination aura) up to his eye for a round as Brenlya places four copper coins in front of them, then waves them through.
Inside, Silverymoon is… odd. It certainly is a city - tall buildings, busy people, carts. The road underfoot is covered in moss, though, and apparently the reasonably heavy traffic has done nothing to wear it down over time. Trees line the side of the roads, and green-and-gold banners adorn the walls of the stone buildings nearby. Carved pots with herbs and flowers sit alongside staircases. The roofs are oddly flat for such a cold area, with gentle curves for water to run off.
Brenyla stops in front of a particularly-decorated building, even in this part of town, before turning to look at Khalida, looking a little awkward. “We’re going to collect the bounty. We… might be able to introduce you to someone official, if you like? I’m not actually sure if there’s a normal procedure for teleportation-based kidnapping accidents.”
She doesn't have 'druid' in their language yet but she's pretty sure this is a druid kind of city, which is not a thing she thought existed at all on Golarion. She can't remember what druids are supposedly like except 'don't make them mad', which would be more helpful if she knew what they got mad about. She's continuing to squint around with Detect Magic up, recasting it whenever it drops- are the city walls magic? Is the moss, or is it under a persistent magical effect, aside from the entire city's? How about the buildings?
"Yes," she confirms to the offer of an introduction, and, "wizard book house?"
The moss, which on closer inspection might actually be some kind of grass, has a minor aura of transmutation. The walls and buildings are not magical themselves.
Magic items are by no means common, even in this part of town, but they’re rare in a more mundane way. Anyone who looks reasonably wealthy, and a few people who don’t, have at least a few minor trinkets. Maybe one in fifteen people have a spellbook? That’s slightly less correlated to wealth, but the non-wealthy looking potential wizards trend young and elven.
She blinks. “A library? A university? Something else?”
Nod and wiggly hand, to try to indicate 'either of those'. "Official here, library-university later, Comprehend Languages yes?" Ugh she really needs more verbs. And time words. At least she's got more than one casting of it today.
