- a moment ago he was in Menador. In the summer. He wasn't wearing his coat. He - casts Endure Elements first - it's too cold for Endure Elements, he scrambles for the coat in his bag and manages to get it on without having to stop and cast a Light. It's got a balaclava, kept by from when they were briefly standard issue. It's got gloves. It buttons up. He busies himself with these features. Then a Light.

It is now possible that he will not get frostbite.

Even with more opportunity to look around, there's not any particularly obvious landmarks aside from the beam.

With the sun out of the sky he does not have a great guess of the directions around him, though it's possible that as long as he's been magically transported somewhere frigid that this is the south end of the globe, which in principle should be having winter while the Worldwound itself is having a relatively mild summer? At any rate he should be moving and the beacon seems a fine place to aim.

As he approaches, the beacon's base resolves more in his vision. Whatever it is, it's glowing red.

That isn't what wardstones look like. Maybe this is a strangely placed wizard tower.

His eyelashes are beginning to develop a layer of frost.

Also, some kind of horseless carriage with more red lights is heading towards him. Someone in it is shouting very loudly, but not in any language Blai knows.

"I only speak Chelish, Common Taldane, and Infernal!" he calls back, changing languages at each comma and putting his hands up.

The carriage continues heading towards him, but it doesn't seem to be aiming for a high-speed collision. Someone tries yelling more things which might be in a different language but are no less incomprehensible.

Hands UP but he does not actually stop walking because that would make him colder. "I can prepare Comprehend Languages in the morning!" And Share Language but that's less common so less recognizable as a verbal component.

Eventually the vehicle pulls up near him. The driver, looking somewhat frustrated, opens the door to reveal an empty seat and motions towards Blai.

- okay, sure?? "Thank you," he says, only deviating from "hands up" as much as necessary to get into the seat.

The driver looks somewhat skeptically at Blai's light source, which has no obvious off switch, and reaches for it.

What if Blai communicates VISIBLE ALARM WITH HIS FACE

Defensive-sounding speech!

The driver picks up a small item. Click, it glows red. Click, it stops glowing. He gestures towards Blai and gives him an expectant look.

(There's enough light to see by even without the Light spell.)

They want him to dismiss the Light? Okay?? How was physically touching the holy symbol supposed to help with that at all - he drops it.

The driver smiles and says words in a positive tone and makes a gesture of closing his fist and extending the thumb upwards.

Then he opens his door and makes eye contact with Blai while re-closing the door.

...Blai can try closing the door on his side. If he were making an autonomous carriage thing that traversed the vast ice at tremendous speed while glowing red he'd probably make it so it could close its own doors but what does he know.

He'll attempt the same maneuver with his seatbelt.

That Blai does not understand at all but he is cooperating!

Great. Now the carriage starts moving again.

They approach a group of buildings which are not really the right shape to be a wizard tower, though some of them are on stilts. The snow is flattened around portions of them. The driver brings the carriage into a building (not one on stilts, it doesn't fly), leaves the carriage, and motions for Blai to follow.

He takes a couple tries to get out of his seatbelt and to open the door but can do these things.

He's in a room with other carriages, now. It's not windy anymore.

The driver leads him towards a staircase.

This part makes sense. Well, the exact nature of the staircase is slightly odd but not in a way where it's out of place from the odd setting already.

They head up a long spiral of stairs and through some pairs of very sturdy doors and then they're suddenly in a brightly lit and comfortably warm hallway.

...that's a lot of lights.

He's not instantly warmed through but he will at least pull his balaclava down.

The driver looks somewhat confused by his face.

Also, he's hanging up his outdoor clothes, and wants to prod at Blai's for some reason, though he doesn't seem to be insisting Blai remove them.

Blai will take off his coat at this time too, the Endure's catching up all right to the now perfectly reasonable temperature, and doesn't object to the guy examining them.

Are any of the clothes wet?

There is a little melting frost on them.

He'd like Blai to take his gloves off, then.

Sure. When the guy is done looking at them they go in these pockets here.

He is mostly interested in looking at Blai's hands, actually.

...okay. Here they are.

Confused smile!

Eventually they reach a room with chairs, empty tables, a table with a stack of small plates and a large plate of cookies as well as some things in colorful packaging, and various unrecognizable devices. There are what might be large windows on one wall, but they're all covered.

Someone else is sitting at a table, with a sort of metal book-thing that they have open in what seems like the wrong direction and which is glowing with a bluish light. He looks tired and confused.

Blai will........ sit down, he guesses?

If Blai would like to ignore the cookies and other items that is his prerogative.

The person with the metal book rotates it so Blai can see the inside. On the lower half, there's bits of raised metal with letters, but not in any script Blai knows. On the upper half, there's a glowing colorful thing, displaying a map with color-coded regions and a lot of flags.

The cookies aren't his! The colorful packages aren't his and don't make any sense!

He dutifully examines the letters and the map. Shakes his head with nonrecognition.

Metal book guy frowns and touches his face briefly before talking to the driver more and then closing the book, which he tucks under his arm.

Could Blai follow him to another room?

Oh okay sure?

He would like Blai to sit in a big chair and then a third person, who also looks tired and frustrated, would like to look at Blai closely and point devices at him and have him breathe into a device and put a device on his finger and such.

That's all kind of disquieting but he will breathe? He's always breathing?

The devices don't hurt, though they do produce lights and noises.

Now the third person also looks confused.

That makes, uh, four of them.

Would Blai like a small round white thing? It goes with this picture, if that helps.

............he will let them put a small round white thing in his hand but he has absolutely no idea what to do with it?

It's for putting in his mouth and then swallowing with water, like this cup of water here. (The cup is made of some lightweight and thin translucent material and comes from a big stack of cups in a dispenser on the wall. The water comes from another device.)

He doesn't have Detect Poison today. He does not really want their water or their swallowable white thing.

The person who offered the thing and the water does not look upset. He briefly raises his shoulders and takes them back if Blai attempts to hand them back over.

Oh good, he didn't really want to have to figure out how much he didn't want their water. He will pull his mug off his belt and create some water into it, see, he's fine.

The person's mouth falls open and he drops the cup of water on the floor in astonishment.

......Blai taps his holy symbol helpfully?

The person is now yelling. He's not obviously yelling at Blai, nor is he obviously angry with Blai, but he is yelling. He does not seem to treat the symbol as an important aspect of the situation.

Why is he yelling if he's not upset about the Iomedae thing though??

He gets up, starts pacing, wipes up the water on the floor, and eventually stops whatever rant this is. He opens the door and yells something less rant-like and more directed.

Shortly afterwards, metal book guy is back.

......hi metal book guy?

Metal book guy gives a friendly wave and gestures for Blai to head back with him to the large room that had the cookies.

He points to himself and says "Chris Clement".

Blai points to himself too. (He took off his coat but he's still got the chainmail.) "Select Blai Artigas."

Chris makes an expansive gesture at the room around them. "Scott-Amundsen Station."

He re-opens the metal book, pokes at it, and brings up the same map. He points to a spot at the bottom. "Scott-Amundsen Station."

Blai peers at the map and dutifully repeats, "Scottamundsenstation."

Chris gets out a pencil and draws a rough airplane shape on a corner of paper napkin, then tears it off and holds it up near the screen near some other spot, and moves it towards the bottom center of the map. "Chris flies to Scott-Amundsen Station."

Now it is Blai's turn with the pencil and the rest of the paper napkin.

Is that a - bird? He's got a giant bird? Sure, that might as well happen.

Is there a way to convey through facial expression alone that he can answer this question but he knows full well that the answer sucks? He'll do his best and then he will crudely draw the snake monster. And himself facing it with his mace, though he's basically a stick figure with a holy symbol and a slightly misshapen stick.

Everyone here is kind of yelling with their faces compared to what he may be used to, but he can perhaps also yell with his face.

Now Chris is yelling with his face that, yeah, the answer does suck.

He goes to get an empty cup, keeping an eye on Blai the whole time. He gestures expectantly at Blai and the cup.

...sure. "Create Water."

Chris is not nearly as shocked as the other person was, but he still looks pretty befuddled, though he's also trying to act appreciative.

He sticks a bit of paper in the water and sniffs it and dips his finger in but doesn't drink any.

That's his prerogative, they have their own water thing. Blai sips from his own mug.

Chris shows Blai a flag on the metal book and also draws it on another napkin. (He doesn't have any hatching scheme for indicating colors, he just draws a box and draws stars in it without any shading and fills in some of the stripes with a vague squiggle.) The flag has some relation to Chris and Scott-Amundsen Station.

Would Blai like to draw anything else on a napkin?

.......Cheliax is between flags right now. So not really.

Statement not really directed at Blai. Book poking.

It is now showing a few pictures – a fancy looking bed, a pot of food, and what might be a weird toilet.

"Select Blai Artigas?" Chris asks, gesturing at the book.

He does not especially need any of the - oh, he'll tap the pot, he can use his Create Food if they'll get him some dishes.

Chris grabs a small plate and a thing in a colorful package and unwraps it and puts it on the plate. It looks like some kind of oat biscuit, maybe.

He says something to himself with a contemplative expression, grabs another thing in the same packaging, unwraps it to reveal a matching biscuit, takes a bite, and sets the bitten biscuit on the plate next to the untouched one.

He then holds the plate out to Blai.

No, that's not what he meant. ...will they let him rummage in the cupboards for pots and plates.

He can grab plates and cups and bowls but he is not permitted to rummage in cupboards.

Plates it is. He spreads them out on the table, leaves some clear space for some bread bowls and such because without a few big pots he cannot get a whole casting's worth on just these plates, and makes sure no one looks imminently about to interrupt before he starts the casting.

Chris does not look imminently about to interrupt, though he is watching intently.

It'll be ten minutes!

Then there's food!

Chris gives the fruit a very longing look but does not move to take any.

No? What if Blai hands him an apple? And picks up a different apple to bite into?

Chris looks very torn and somewhat miserable. He sniffs the apple.

It smells like an apple.

Blai eats through his apple efficiently and then rummages in his bag for his rock salt.

Chris will eventually set down the apple, though he doesn't look happy about it.

He pokes at the book a lot more rapidly, not really trying to show Blai anything.

Can he have the core of Blai's apple, once Blai is done with it?

Oh he actually made it without a core? It does have a stem. He can have the stem.

Now Chris looks more confused and less longing. He pokes the book-thing more.

Someone else comes in and stares at Blai and the food. She says something brief to Blai involving his name, then talks to Chris, who holds out the apple Blai gave him and the stem on a plate.

Does she want an orange? He pauses in scraping salt onto the roll with a hardboiled egg inside it that he's just cut open to offer her one.

…sure. She has a clear bag, would Blai like to put the orange in the clear bag to go with the apple Chris is putting in there?

That's... not really what it's for, but it's not like he can eat all this himself. Sure.

She leaves.

Chris continues watching Blai and not eating the conjured food. He does get up to get a cup of some hot brown liquid from a device.

Perhaps they are as suspicious of created food as he is of device water. He has the roll and a mini chicken pie and a bowl of beans and greens and cheese and then he's full.

Chris will show the pictures of the bed and the toilet again, if either of these are of interest. He also offers the napkins and pencil again.

Yes he'd like to know where the toilet is, seems useful.

Chris will lead Blai to a room behind a door with a symbol representing a humanoid with broad shoulders who isn't wearing anything drapey. (It's next to a door with a symbol of a humanoid with narrow shoulders wearing a tunic.) Within the room are toilets in little stalls with doors that don't go all the way to the floor or ceiling. The stalls have simple mechanical latches.

The toilets have water in the bowls and have handles behind them. Chris, with a mildly displeased expression, pulls a handle, and the water in the bowl is replaced.

This is weird, but it is not hard to grasp. Blai nods.

The room also has more water dispensing devices, and something with a pink liquid. Chris demonstrates using those to wash his hands. The pink liquid is presumably a soap. It certainly forms suds like one.

What a weird soap, but okay!

If Blai shows no interest in using the facilities, they can head back to where he left his food.

Cool. Do they have other things they want to do now or nah?

Chris does not seem to particularly want anything from Blai right now other than knowing what he's doing.

Okay. Chess set time.

This provokes another confused expression and more interaction with the book-thing.

That's their prerogative. He plays against himself and nibbles on grapes.

After some time, someone else enters the room with a folded chess board tucked under his arm.

A promising sign? Or they're suspicious of the Prestidigitated one because it's poisonous unfamiliar and want to swap it out.

He takes a seat at the table and waves. "Select Blai Artigas."

He points at himself. "Leo Kirby."

He unfolds the board, gets out the pieces, and holds out a black pawn and a white pawn towards Blai.

Blai... taps the white pawn? What's wrong with the Prestidigitated set though never mind.

Then Leo will set up the board for Blai to play white.

Chris says something to Leo in a light tone.

Leo laughs and replies in a similar tone, then returns his attention to the board.

Tomorrow: Comprehend Languages.

But now: chess!

Chess!

Blai is content to play chess and nibble on the Created food till he's tired, which will be in about eight more hours, but of course he can be interrupted by whatever his hosts care to introduce.

Is he up for creating water in another room full of weird devices, actually?

...sure? How much do they want, can they communicate this by gesture?

If he is offering large quantities they can get a large container, which they would like mostly full.

Sure. Five gallons at a time.

Everyone continues to be very impressed by this.

It can't be Rahadoum, Rahadoum has an Inner Sea climate and, like, knows what clerics are... He will figure it out in the morning.

There is a period in which a bunch of people show up at the room with all the tables and get meals, but it is not accompanied by any discernible shift in outdoor light levels, what with the covered windows and all.

Some time after that it may feel dawn-like to Blai.

He has occasionally wondered what happens to clerics who go even farther north. Fortunately it seems to involve getting spells.

He doesn't have, like, a bedroom, yet, so he will try to find an out of the way corner in which to kneel and pray.

Chris is still staring at him but does not interrupt.

Well, if he both stares and doesn't interrupt for the whole hour he'll get to see a whole lot of Blai kneeling there, symbol in hand, not doing much.

Then he gets up and offers Chris his hand.

Sure, Chris will take his hand.

"Share Language."

Chris returns to looking astonished.

"What are you?"

"- I'm a cleric. I serve the goddess Iomedae. I didn't have this spell prepared yesterday, because I was expecting to be in my own country, and unfortunately I didn't recognize the monster that sent me here any more than it seemed you did."

Chris does not seem to feel like this explains much. "I've met clerics. They don't do magic. And where is your country?"

"...it sounds like you have met lay priests and not empowered clerics, empowered clerics do magic. My country is Cheliax on the continent of Avistan? ...on the planet Golarion?"

"If empowered clerics could create water we'd have a chaplain here and I'd get to shower every day. …anyway. You're on the continent of Antarctica, on the planet Earth, in the, uh, Milky Way Galaxy. This base is run by the United States of America, which isn't located on this continent."

"I don't actually know a name for the galaxy Golarion is in, it could be the same one. What is the base for? - also the food is safe to eat and it will disappear after it has existed for twenty-four hours so it's a bit of a waste not to have anyone but me at it, it should feed fifteen in that time."

"It looks delicious and the offer is much appreciated but we don't actually know if magic food that vanishes after a day is safe for us to eat, and nobody's going to starve without it. The base is for science, there's a lot of stuff you can't do anywhere else."

"I'm not allowed to lie but I suppose you would not know that independently either... I had you in mind when I made it so even if you are different from Golarion humans in some important way it ought to be fine."

"The scientists are looking at it, maybe they'll agree and we'll get to eat fresh food."

"I should warn you it comes out undersalted."

"We have salt. …So, you're not supposed to be here, but there won't be any flights for a while."

"The giant bird is wanted elsewhere?"

"The giant – it's flying machines, not birds. It's dangerous for the flying machines to fly here in the winter so the pilots don't fly them here in the winter, normally. If you are going to die if you stay here we could ask for a favor."

"I don't see any reason to think I would die if I stay here, especially since even if you only have enough food put by for the number of people manning the station I can make my own. I might also be able to make it on foot if there are parts of the continent that are warm enough to settle but it would be a gamble, Endure Elements is not rated for this level of cold and I'd be betting on being able to make a sufficiently insulating quinzee to sleep in."

"We've got years of food, it doesn't go bad out here. Please do not try to cross hundreds of miles of ice alone on foot. I know it's been said that with God all things are possible, but…"

"...I'm not sure that is said on my planet. I would definitely also be relying on the coat."

"You need a better coat. Oh, also. A few things. One, we're going to be monitoring you while you're here. Your whole thing doesn't really make sense for any of our rivals, they shouldn't be able to do this, but we can't completely rule out some kind of threat. That's why I keep following you around. Eventually I'm going to sleep and by then someone else will be picked to do that."

"That makes sense. Is there anything you need from me to cooperate with this, besides not actively sneaking off?"

"There's a bunch of things we don't want you to touch and rooms we don't want you to go in. If you try we will tell you to stop."

He holds out his hand, palm towards Blai, fingers up.

"This gesture means stop. We might also shake our heads to mean 'no'."

He shakes his head from side to side.

"If you want or need something, and you can't communicate it with words, you should use pictures – we have lots of writing utensils and paper – and not try to search for it yourself."

"I should be able to do this spell and also one that lets me understand and read but not speak, every day. Share Language lasts 24 hours, Comprehend Languages a bit less than an hour but I can do it more times if I'm not using those spell slots for anything else."

"Anyway, I'll talk to you more soon, and I can answer questions, but I should go reassure everyone else that I haven't gone mad, and they might have questions for me to relay to you."

And then he's back to using the book-thing, for a bit.

Blai supposes he will sit on his question about how that works.

"All right. …before we do more complex questions, I should ask if you feel dizzy, tired, confused beyond how this situation is confusing, nauseated, or like it's hard to breathe."

"No. Is it high here? If there were a treeline, would we be above or below it?"

"It's high. It's about … so this is one foot, I'm a bit under six feet tall, the air thickness here is the same air thickness you get in a normal place that's a little over 11 thousand feet above sea level, right now. We're not actually that high but the air is thinner down here so it's like we are. I don't know about tree lines."

Book-thing poke.

"Apparently tree lines can be at different heights in different places, actually."

"Oh. Well, I was walking in the mountains and before that was stationed at a fortress that is high enough to make people a bit stupid for the first few weeks if they don't get there gradually enough, and I feel fine now."

"That's good. Maybe still don't exercise or drink alcohol for the next several days, though. If you do start to feel bad, let us know, we have a machine that gives you extra air. The pill you were offered is also supposed to help."

"I don't normally drink alcohol anyway. What does the - pill - do?"

"It makes you breathe more. The way it does it is kind of complicated and it does have side effects."

"Side effects like what?"

"You might feel numb or hear ringing or feel less hungry or vomit or get tired. If you're feeling fine without it I can see why you wouldn't want to take it."

"Well, that and I had no idea what it was any more than you're familiar with created food."

"Fair enough. Want to ask me any questions?"

"What was the problem the person who collected me had with the light on my holy symbol?"

"Some of the research depends on everything outside being mostly dark. Red light doesn't count, though."

"Huh. But it's fine inside if anything should happen to the lights you have here?"

"Yes."

"Is there anything else that might be unintuitive to avoid?"

"I have no idea what is and isn't intuitive to you. …uh, one thing to know is that there are groups of little holes in the wall, like this."

He points at one.

"Don't stick your fingers in there. Don't stick most metal things in there. If you do that, you will be shocked, like a lesser version of being struck by lightning. There are more complicated rules for using them, so other people will be putting some special things with matching metal tips in there and they'll be fine, but if this is unfamiliar to you you're not ready to do that."

"Understood. Is there a good place I should store my armor and things?"

"Wherever we end up having you sleep should have some space, but for now you should feel free to put things on a table if you'd like. …why are you wearing chainmail, anyway?"

"...in case of monster attacks, like the one that sent me here, though the armor did not help in that particular case. Or bandits or orcs or anything else where I'd need to fight."

"I have more questions about that but they aren't urgent."

"I take it there are not things living around here that need fighting."

"There are not."

"It does seem even more inhospitable than the Worldwound. I'm curious about the research you do, though that is also non-urgent."

"I don't know how to explain all that in a way that you'd understand. Do you know what a telescope is?"

"No."

"It's a tool for looking at far-away things. Often they use lenses and mirrors. We have a big one, and it can see light that humans can't see, and because our nights are so long we can use it to look at things in the night sky for a long time."

"So you're astronomers?"

"Some of us. Some of us do other research. Some of us clean the base, and cook the food, and maintain the tools we use for the research, and whatnot. I'm mostly here in case someone commits a crime."

He nods. "Will you want me on water creation duty? - the water disappears if it's not consumed within 24 hours, like the food. The food-creation spell can make longer-lasting water if that's important but it's not something I can do many times a day like water creation is."

"Probably we will, but I don't know what water disappearing after 24 hours does to the machines we put water in. How does the water know whether it's been consumed or not, anyway?"

"...water doesn't know things."

"What is the system that causes water inside you to not disappear, but water in a cup to disappear?"

"...you might have to ask a wizard that sort of question, and I'm not one, I get my spells entire from Iomedae and I know what they're for but not the details of how they play out."

"Well, I'm sure the researchers will want to watch their water disappear once it's time. Do you know if plants can use the water?"

"I believe that works fine. I haven't tried it personally."

"I'll pass that along. …I agree water doesn't know things, it's just, our water also doesn't have that kind of complex contingent behavior, so yours sounded like it knew things."

"There are water elementals and I can summon one if you like, though it will only stay about thirty seconds. Those can know things. But the water I make is just water, good to drink but not to keep."

"I'd ask you what planet you're from but you already said and it didn't make me less confused."

"Well, I can answer other questions about it if they might help."

"Do you remember what the stars look like at night from there? I won't be able to use that information, but it's possible an astronomer might, I don't know, and your memory isn't getting any fresher."

"I know basic stellar navigation as applicable to the area around where I was posted, but it didn't come up very often, there were usually other things to follow. I can draw out what I can of those constellations but this will result in you knowing less than I do because I am no artist."

"I see. How about you give it a try anyway, no real downside."

"For context, we don't have any magic at all, everything you see is stuff people built normal ways. If we want light we run electricity through – wait hold on that's another potentially unintuitive thing. In the past we used to use fires for lots of things but now we don't use them nearly as much, and places like this are delicate. So no starting fires, okay?"

"Understood. I had a fire spell prepared before but not since my most recent prayers, it's warm and lit in here and there's no fuel outside anyway. The lights are electrical items? ...which are in some way not magical?"

"Yes. The short version is that we burn fuel, which spins a special wheel with magnets, which makes electricity. And our current lights are complicated, but it used to be that people would run the electricity through a very thin wire in a glass bulb, so the wire would get very hot and glow."

"Huh. I will avoid interfering with them." If there's something to draw with he'll start drawing out constellations and marking them with what season they're seen in and where - "You'll want to copy these over in your own language so that your colleagues will be able to read them, as well as yourself after the spell expires" - but most of what he knows is how to be sure he's identified the polestar Cynosure.

"That makes sense." And he seems to be doing it.

Eventually he has exhausted his astronomy knowledge.

"So what are your goals, in the long run?"

"Do you mean more like, what was I on my way to do at the time the monster attacked, or like, what do I believe Iomedae's high-level objectives are and how do third-circle clerics tend to fit into them?"

"More the second one, and also anything you know about what you'd want to do on this planet."

"I don't think I should make long-term plans on this planet for at least the next few weeks because it's possible I'll be noticed missing by someone with the wherewithal to collect me, but if that doesn't happen, Iomedae is the Lawful Good goddess of victory over evil and triage toward that end, so I would need to do a lot of research about what that could look like somewhere so different. ...if I'm the only cleric on the planet, as you seem to imply, it would not be an unreasonable use of me to park me in a church somewhere to do healing."

"There are some people who claim to be empowered clerics in the modern day but they aren't very credible. If you'd like to join the military I'm sure they'd take you. If you'd like to do healing you'd probably want to do it at a hospital, sometimes churches run hospitals but the sick people and the religious services go in different buildings. I don't actually know what kind of healing you do and if it's in demand, though, our non-magical medicine has gotten a lot better than it was when chainmail was a common choice of armor here."

"Twice a day I can heal injuries within a thirty foot radius, Lesser Restoration will handle a lot of what that doesn't, Remove Disease and Remove Blindness/Deafness are both third circle so I can do those once a day, those are the big ones though there are also some kinds of symptom I can suppress on a temporary basis."

"And just to be clear, when you say victory over evil, you do understand that you are not in charge of the base and if you see someone doing something that looks evil you should not rush in to attack, right?"

"...are you expecting this to happen, if you're expecting that to happen it would really be courteous to warn me. But I understand now that you have said this that it is not within the regulations of the base for me to take on this role and I can comply with that. Do you have similarly restrictive rules about self-defense?"

"Sometimes on our planet when people think that God commanded them to be victorious over evil, they decide to have very violent wars with people who are worshipping the same god but in a slightly different way. I don't know what Iomedae says is evil. You are permitted to defend yourself proportionately. If some idiot gets drunk and tries to punch you, and then you stab him several times, that's probably not going to be seen as proportionate. The thing to remember here is that nobody besides you is capable of leaving this base alive on their own, and we don't have that many people, so if someone commits a crime and you know who it is, we can catch them later."

"...I don't think there are holy wars on Golarion between adherents of the same god except possibly the god of war in particular. I think you are using the drunk idiot punching me example as a particularly clear example and I might benefit from less clearcut cases and your policies on how to handle them. I would not normally stab - well, actually, anyone, my knife is for eating, my weapon is a mace - but I would not normally respond with lethal force to a drunk punching me. If someone stabs me? Stabs a third party? Stabs me but so ineffectually that I'm pretty sure I can just stand there while they do it ten more times, heal myself, and see if they keep going? Since I am being monitored am I limited in where I can run away to should the need arise?"

"I'm not a lawyer. If someone tries to stab you, you can escalate to lethal force. If someone tries to stab a third party who objects you can also escalate to lethal force, but some of our medicine involves putting needles in people and cutting them, and you shouldn't use lethal force on a healer doing that. I can explain more about that if you'd like. If someone stabs you really ineffectually you might still be able to get away with responding lethally, but it would be nice if you, say, took the knife, screamed for help, that sort of thing."

Chris seems to consider saying something else but decides against it.

"I don't know where you'd want to run away to. If you want to leave a building you should give your escort time to dress under normal circumstances. If someone is, I don't know, chasing you with a knife, then it would be reasonable for you to leave even without giving your escort time to dress, and I would say any security issues are to be blamed on the person chasing you with a knife. Most years nobody tries to stab anyone, though."

"Definitely good to know that there is needle based healing, thank you for telling me. If I call for help, what is the help going to do, it's possible I could prepare spells with the desired outcome in mind, or pull strikes if the idea is to have them knocked out but stable, or something -"

"We can't really do knocked out but stable. It happens in stories but in real life a head injury that leaves people unconscious is also at risk of killing them. If you can do that, and the person is just as good at thinking afterwards as they were beforehand, that's likely to be acceptable. Probably we try to restrain the person, take their weapon, keep an eye on them, send them out where there's prisons and courts at the first opportunity. If someone poses a sufficiently imminent danger that can't otherwise be prevented I might kill them, but the hope is that that doesn't happen, people like me in Antarctica haven't had to use lethal force yet. Historic lethal crimes here have mostly looked like someone getting extremely angry in the heat of the moment and usually those people will cooperatively wait for transit to stand trial once they've calmed down."

"I can do that so long as I don't hit hard enough to kill them immediately," Blai confirms.

"That must be nice to be able to do."

"I have not spent any time in combat situations without this ability. Though also most of my combat has been against demons who one does not want to stabilize and restrain."

"What are demons like?"

"They come in an extremely wide variety and sometimes one will pop up that isn't of any known strain. But all of them are Chaotic Evil and the ones that wind up on the material plane are typically there to harm people."

"Are you talking about invisible spirits who arrange harmful coincidences and tell people to hurt each other, or, like, the kinds of beings I could see, if they were in the room with us, who harm people through means like stabbing them? Or a third thing?"

"Some of them can turn invisible but most of them are corporeal and do things like stabbing, or more likely clawing and biting and magic. Though sometimes the magic is mind-affecting and can induce people to hurt each other."

"Oh, unrelatedly, I should ask – do you look like this normally, or did you shapeshift to look like our species since you're here and we seem to be the main species present?"

"This is what I look like. Clerics do not have much in the way of disguise magic."

"I don't suppose you know how your species came to start existing on your planet. I would have expected that someone from another planet wouldn't look quite so much like us."

"...I have heard that elves are originally from another planet, but I have not heard this about any other species. I have heard that gnomes are from another plane, but likewise. But there have been plenty of opportunities for historical knowledge to be lost."

Book-thing poke.

"On Earth, we have animals that look like this." He shows Blai a picture of a chimpanzee. "Do you know if Golarion also has those?"

"I don't recognize it."

"Huh. …I've asked you a lot of questions, you can ask me more if you'd like."

"Should I know anything about how to prepare for the possibility of incursion by other forces who have bases near here?"

"If anyone shows up at … the South Pole … in winter … we do what we did with you and bring them indoors and make sure they don't have frostbite. There's a treaty saying we don't fight wars here and, uh. If we were going to, we'd presumably fight them in the summer. Plus the main concern was us fighting a war with a country that doesn't exist anymore."

"I am accustomed to my prayers happening first thing in the morning and might want to move my sleep schedule to match that if there are people active at all hours here but I can simply not do that if the schedules are synchronized instead. ...also normally I'm prompted to pray for my spells first thing in the morning because it tracks dawn, and I'm not sure what it's tracking here, though mercifully it's still happening at all."

"We follow New Zealand time but some people are on a 'night shift'. I'm going to go to bed before usual, because I got woken up in the middle of the 'night' for this. Your prayers happened around 'late morning' according to this, which wouldn't be a crazy time for you to wake up, but you'd miss the galley breakfast."

"Late morning is all right. How much longer should I expect to be awake if I try to go to bed with everyone else?"

"Around 11 hours. If you continue not wanting to try our chemicals, that's fine, but the drink I got a cup of does help with staying awake if you'd like that."

"I should be able to stay awake another eleven hours without it."

"Great. I guess it makes sense to be careful, you're from another planet, for all we know you're allergic to some staple of ours."

He makes another face. "…you said no to a bunch of symptoms, you're not sick right now, right?"

"I am not sick right now."

"That's very good. Does Golarion do the thing Earth does, where we expose people to a very weakened or dead disease, so that their body learns how to fight the real thing?"

"...no."

"It's useful, everyone else here has done it. You might want to be ready to cure yourself of some disease the rest of us are resistant to on short notice. We don't invite people without the exposure here so we don't actually have the samples to expose you even if you did consent."

"I did not prepare Remove Disease this time but can tomorrow. But more powerful people get sick less often. I haven't caught a mundane disease in years."

"That's not how things work here. Being young and fit and getting a healthy diet all help but they only do so much for us. I do hope you keep up your record, though."

"There's a spell that I can cast at will which will help, but again I don't have it today."

"Maybe prepare it tomorrow."

"I will. Do you have other guesses about what I should prepare tomorrow?"

"I don't know what you can do. At least two of the language-sharing spell, for whoever's on shift watching you. If the scientists approve you should do another round of Create Food, and everything you're not going to eat should probably be fresh fruit or such. Maybe smaller fruits so everyone can get a whole one, if that's possible, we have 48 people. … oh, and you were going to make more water anyway, presumably, since you don't trust ours, but I'm reminded that if you want to bathe with as much water as you can conjure we can get you a tub. You'll probably want a Comprehend Languages so you can read the program handbook. You're probably not going to need to walk on water, please don't turn water into wine, if anyone gets injured they'll likely still be alive the day after so I don't know that preparing healing in advance makes sense but it might. Some people might like Endure Elements but we have clothing that is made with the assumption Endure Elements doesn't exist. You might like multiple Comprehend Languages? I'm sure someone brought a copy of the Bible and you might want a look at that, though it's a long book."

"Walking on water would displace the Create Food. I can refrain from preparing Tears To Wine but am curious why... I'm actually not accustomed to baths, personal hygeine is usually handled magically where I'm most recently coming from, but I can accustom myself to it. I have nothing in particular against your water now that we can talk about it but it was an awkward presentation with the pill that you weren't able to explain. I have a Comprehend Languages today if there is a copy of the handbook for me to read. I don't have to prepare healing in advance. What is the Bible?"

"If we tried to ban alcohol entirely, people would just brew their own in secret and make themselves sick, but we can at least make people buy it with their own money and not just provide free drinks."

"…and there's lots of laws about selling food and drink which you're not equipped to follow."

"Tears to Wine doesn't make normal wine, it makes magical wine which in the important ways makes people the opposite of drunk."

"…impressive. The scientists will want to look at that before anyone drinks it, though. Anyway. If you have a spell that replaces bathing you can likely use that. We have soap and you can use our showers, but we don't allow much water for them so it's probably a bad time to learn to wash that way. We can get you a copy of the handbook today. The Bible is the word of God. …uh, the holy book for the most common religion both in the world and here. It doesn't mention an Iomedae, I don't know how she fits into everything."

"I do technically know the cleaning spell but I am very bad at it - it's a wizard spell, not a cleric spell, and I only ever got it to do the thing where I can make chess pieces. A tub will be fine. Iomedae's holy book is called the Acts of Iomedae and I have two copies with me; if there are particular Bible passages you want to point me to as edifying about how people in this area expect others to behave and aspire to conduct themselves it may be worth some Comprehend Languages usages but I don't know that I'll want to read the whole thing. Possibly unless this god also went by the name Aroden?"

"He did not, he went by Jesus Christ. Maybe also Jehovah? I never spent that much time in church. Anyway, one of the pieces that lots of people are familiar with are the Ten Commandments - don't kill, don't steal, don't lie, don't take the Lord's name in vain, honor your parents, don't commit adultery, don't get jealous about other people's stuff, observe the Sabbath – we do try to give a bunch of people time off on that day … ugh, that's only 8."

Not-book poke.

"People don't even agree on how to divide the list? Anyway, we're also supposed to not worship other gods but yours might end up looking awfully tempting. And I forgot the one to not make 'graven images' because everyone ignores it and draws things anyway. Or at least everyone here. Maybe we should see if you can borrow a machine like this and look at our copy of the, uh, big encyclopedia thing I'm looking at, but it might be a lot."

"I would not know how to operate the machine. Are these commandment reflected in the regulations of the station? - I don't expect Iomedae in particular to hand out more clerichoods, She's having an expensive year."

"We have laws against murder and theft but they have those over at Great Wall Station too – uh, it's named after a different wall, the wall isn't on the continent – and China's not very Christian. Otherwise no."

Blai nods.

"If I'm going to be assigned quarters perhaps I could put my armor in them now? It's pretty heavy for just sitting around when nothing's likely to attack."

"Sounds good. Ideally also the mace and your knife, we have smaller knives here for eating food with and you can use one of those."

Not-book poke. "I can show you to a spare room. You are ideally expected to leave it in the condition you found it in. You will be able to lock it, but I and some others will still have keys to all the rooms."

"Understood."

Blai's room has an elevated bed with a ladder leading up to it over a desk. The bed has a pillow and sheets and a blanket. It has a window which is covered. There are more of the lightning-y holes in the wall.

"Don't uncover the window until sunrise, we'll tell you when you can. This switch" he flips it demonstratively "turns the light on and off, please leave it off when you're not in the room. You'd normally have to wash the sheets at some point, but there's a machine for that and someone can show you how to use it, you won't need to scrub them by hand."

"Good, I never actually learned how to do that." Armor: off. It's a slightly laborious process.

"Do you need a hand?"

"Are you trained to assist in removing armor?"

"No, but if there's something I should hold still, or pull in a specific direction, I could probably do that."

"No need." Mail off. Gambeson off.

Chris makes a face.

"Thaaaaat needs washing. Do you know if it's delicate?"

"...if it rips in the process I can repair it with magic."

"Okay! Let's rustle up some spare clothing so you can get your clothes in the wash! Uh, we have a cultural norm where people are usually supposed to cover their genitals and their rear and women are also supposed to cover their chests, so we don't want you to just be naked in the laundry room. And we have a machine for drying clothes, but that machine can damage more clothing than the washing machine – not just tears, sometimes they shrink – so you might want to hang up your clothes to dry."

"All right. I do not have my own spare clothes, this is my only civilian outfit."

"Makes sense. People pack several changes of clothes, we should be able to buy something your size off someone. I'll make a post about it. In the meantime you could borrow some of mine but it's not going to fit very well."

"A post?"

"Devices like the one I was using can be connected to each other, with wires and by sending invisible signals through the air, so someone can enter in a note on one device and then other people can view it on their devices. A lot of the devices like that on the base are connected with each other. We can also exchange information with the broader world that way sometimes, we'll probably get a chance later today, but not right now. That's how the encyclopedia-thing works: the broader world has a big encyclopedia-thing and people add entries to it, and we brought a copy of it here, so we can look at it on the devices here even when we can't exchange information with the broader world. …which reminds me. If you want to be a secret we need to figure that out before that time, because otherwise someone is definitely going to tell their family."

"...if you want to treat my presence as sensitive information I'll cooperate with that but I do not particularly wish to be a secret."

"Well, in that case I'm not telling people to shut up. If the program wanted any aliens to be kept secret they should have warned the only law enforcement officer on the base that aliens were expected. …they might still declare you're supposed to be secret and we'll tell people to not talk about you if so, but I'm not doing it in advance."

"Understood. I can't cast any of the spells that would let me contact anyone I know; if someone comes looking for me it will be in several weeks when I'm late for an obligation I was traveling to."

"…let's follow up on that once we get your clothes in the wash. Up for borrowing mine? You'll need to cuff the sleeves and the legs."

"Yes, that's fine. Does the supervision interact with the modesty in the one way or the other?"

"If you're willing to be seen naked I … I was going to say you don't have any parts I haven't seen before but now I'm actually not sure, maybe you do, either way you can change in my room and I don't care all that much. If you're not you can, I don't know, stand behind my desk so I don't see you below the waist."

"I do not particularly care. It was too cold for casual nudity at my posting but it happened when I was in basic training," shrugs Blai.

They head to Chris's room, which looks an awful lot like Blai's room but with more stuff in it.

"Oh, I should give you a tee shirt, that'll be easier."

Chris hands Blai a mildly stretchy short-sleeved shirt with no obvious fastenings, long pants which have a button and also an interlocked metal thing as well as belt loops, a mildly stretchy pair of short pants with a very stretchy thing at the waist, socks, a belt, and a clear bag.

"The bag is for what you're wearing right now."

Blai unlaces his shirt and takes it off and inspects the knit material like he's never seen anything like it and then pulls it over his head and tucks the shirt into the bag. Then before he repeats the like procedure with the pants he investigates the zipper like he's never seen anything like it and can't derive by looking what's going on there.

"…that's a zipper. You pull the slider down and it unzips and you pull it back up to re-zip it. I can demonstrate."

Blai will try it on the strength of this explanation, nod, and then change pants. He doesn't have any parts Chris hasn't seen before.

Probably a good sign for him being able to receive medical care if necessary.

They can swing by Blai's room, grab the gambeson, and head to the laundry room, which is loud and smells odd.

Maybe it's supposed to be like that. "How does this procedure go?"

"You open the lid on the laundry machine like so, and then assuming someone else didn't forget their clothing in the machine and it's not full of water due to a problem or such, you put your dirty clothes in. You need to make sure nothing's in the pockets, and I've heard clothes hold up better if you turn them inside-out first. After that, you add a little scoop of soap to this compartment – there's a soap container with a scoop in it, use that size, and it can't just be any soap it has to be laundry machine soap. And then normally you adjust the dials and press a button, but you can't read the text next to the dials, so I'll do it. Also normally you'd set a timer to remind yourself to come back to the machine when it's done, but you don't have one of those, so I will."

"Thank you." Blai follows those of these instructions that he can accomplish.

"I'm setting this to a normal cycle, but telling it your clothes are heavily soiled, which means it's going to run longer."

He closes the lid, adjusts the dials, and presses a button, causing the machine to start making noise.

He pokes at another device. "This will beep when your clothes are done, it'll be less than two hours."

"And we wait here?"

"We could but normally we don't."

"All right." He will follow wherever Chris wants to take him.

Back to the room with tables and chairs and food. Chris gets himself a plate of food, none of it from Blai.

Blai nibbles too. Casts a Prestidigitation and starts trying to clean the nearest thing that doesn't look perfectly clean. The gravy off his fingers, if nothing else.

And someone gets Chris a book. It's thin and it has some mountain climbers on the cover.

"This is the program handbook."

"Ah, thank you." He licks the gravy off rather than continue to stare at it and casts Comprehend Languages to set about the book.

Highlights from the early pages include:

• People in the program are supposed to read the book before they deploy.
• At least allegedly, there are animals native to the continent, but no people.
• Nobody owns Antarctica. Instead there's a treaty recognized by a lot of countries designating it as a peaceful research area and they try to work together.
• Allegedly, Blai could get more information about various topics on "websites".

Blai points at "website". "What is this?"

"It's a … thing that devices like this one show to each other, when they're connected." He gestures to the book-thing.

"The encyclopedia-thing I mentioned is one of them. There are lots of web sites we can't access because we aren't connected to the big group of connected devices, just our little local one."

"Are the ones this book refers to included in the local one?"

"I don't know. It probably varies."

"The treaty?"

"I've got a copy of the treaty."

He takes his metal book and re-opens it. Types some things.

"This is showing the first two pages, let me know when you're done reading those."

(Author's note: The treaty is extremely similar to this one.)

Blai needs "nuclear" and "radioactive" explained. He wants to know if there are presently any observers from other stations at this one or expected soon and if there is policy about conduct around them if so. He would like to know the last time there was a jurisdiction dispute and how it went down. Other than that this all seems pretty straightforward.

"There are not presently any observers from other stations and we're not expecting any soon. I don't know how you should conduct yourself if any show up, usually they focus more on infrastructure but usually we don't have an alien. Nuclear explosions are a kind of very big explosion. A single nuclear explosion could destroy an entire city. Radioactive things emit invisible energy that can make people sick. Lots of things are a tiny bit radioactive but some things are very radioactive and they have to be stored in special ways. We haven't had a jurisdiction dispute yet."

"Do I count as obliged to this treaty and if so is there a procedure according to which I could withdraw if that became necessary?"

"I think you do not. It's between countries and you're not a country and yours didn't sign it."

Blai nods. "Not that I mean to make any difficulties for you, it just affects how closely I need to read and how firmly I need to memorize."

"Would you like a paper copy?"

"I'd appreciate that."

"I'll arrange it. …do you want it soon, so you can take notes right next to the text while you can still read it."

"I don't think I need it soon. Comprehend Languages is a first circle spell and doesn't trade off against much if you're not going to want me on maximum Endure Elements."

Chris nods.

"So, you mentioned the prospect of someone collecting you within the next few weeks. What would that look like?"

"I cannot be exhaustive about the possibilities because I don't know everything the archmages of the relevant party can do, but the mainline expectation would be that someone would appear, much like I did but probably better targeted, maybe in a small group instead of alone, and make some brief attempt at understanding the situation and perhaps let me pack and then disappear again with me in tow. They might send me a message first and I would try to let you know if that happened."

"Thank you. If they appear outdoors near the base, will they be prepared for the weather and altitude?"

"The weather almost certainly, the altitude might surprise them because it wouldn't be obvious in a scry but I would not expect it to much trouble them."

"If they can come here once, they can come here again, yes? I would be shocked if the United States is not interested in ongoing diplomatic relations with such entities, do you know what their interests are like?"

"...well, recently they conquered my country and appointed one of their number Queen, and then another one established a Constitutional Convention, which wanted church representation and is what I will be late for."

"Huh. And you … feel positively towards them and would cooperate with being picked up by them?"

"Yes, of course. - the country was previously Evil."

"If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to, but you've mentioned evil a lot in a way that seems to assume a lot more shared understanding than I think we have. When you say 'evil', what do you mean by that?"

"Is the answer you're looking for something like 'there is a spell called Detect Evil' or more like 'Evil people and institutions hurt and kill people in various ways such as torture, creating undead, collaborating with the Lower Planes, forbidding the practice of Good religions, etcetera'?"

"Both of those! …Is it not just the case that all the religions call themselves good?"

"...no, that would be pretty obviously false for the Evil ones as soon as anyone detected Evil, or checked where their worshipers tended to go when they die, or noticed that they spontaneously harm instead of heal. I suppose it is possible that specifically Razmir is attempting this con but he isn't a real god."

"I think here all the major religions call themselves good. Anyway. Congratulations on your country no longer doing that and I wish them luck rebuilding. If you'd like copies of our Constitution and some others for inspiration you can have them, that's a big responsibility."

"I'd appreciate those, in a format I can bring with me. But it's also possible that my absence will go unremarked or at least not remarked upon enough to warrant archmage intervention. I was invited but I am probably more complicated to access than the typical no-show, who will have just died or something."

"More complicated to access than dead people? How does that work, especially with how creating undead is evil? You don't have to explain right now but it's a bit mind-boggling."

"Resurrection doesn't create undead, it restores people to full life. The arch-healer Naima Cottonet is said to be able to do it without even expending a diamond, which is normally called for. This place on the other hand is not spoken of at all that I'm aware."

"We can make diamonds, if they pick you up you should tell them we can make diamonds."

"- I will absolutely relay that. Yes. - I can't cast these spells, to be clear, they start at fifth circle and I'm third."

"That's too bad. To clarify, we can't make diamonds here. Manufacturers on Earth including in the United States can make diamonds. If we could trade those for returning the dead to life it would in many cases be a good trade."

"The price would fall to that of any other fifth circle cleric spell, presumably. Still expensive, but not quite so dear."

"You mentioned Iomedae not handing out more clerichoods – do other gods do that?"

"Hand out clerichoods? Yes. It's one of the things that defines a god, though some other kinds of beings can also do it."

"Is there a special procedure for asking a god to do that that we might have lost track of?"

"No. I mean, prayer, but it's possible for gods to reach out without being asked, though my understanding is that it's always possible to renounce one's god and the power granted thereby. If the popular god of this planet doesn't do it - you said 'Jesus Christ'? - then either he can't or there is some reason not to create clerics on this planet in particular. Iomedae continuing to grant me spells suggests it's not the second thing - some ways I could imagine this planet being a no-cleric zone would involve pulling my spells upon my arrival - but not overwhelmingly."

"Yes, Jesus Christ. I'm going to pray to him later about this but I doubt he'll make me an empowered cleric even if I bring up the possibility with him, there isn't much reason to do that with me and I'm not very holy. …the things I brought up earlier, when you were asking what spells to prepare, like turning water to wine or walking on bodies of water, those are things he did when he was on Earth. I don't know what to think of that."

"Technically I would hover about an inch above it. It would also be useful for making progress on the ice if I were trying to do that. And the wine spell will work on any nonmagical liquid."

"That's not – It seems possible that you have no idea how famous you are going to be, if you stay. We have billions of people. Most of them have the option to hear about sufficiently big news from other continents. People will want you to endorse whatever it is they're doing, condemn their enemies, sign your name on miscellaneous objects, bless things, et cetera. Possibly people will attempt to break into your house for the opportunity to see you, proposition you sexually, call you the Second Coming of Christ, call you the Antichrist…"

"What is the purpose of the signing my name on various objects? Was Jesus Christ reputed to be able to bless things remotely that way or something?"

"No. People want anyone famous to do it. They ask athletes and authors and singers to do it and none of them are supposed to have any magic powers. It's optional."

"I don't think we have this custom." Sigh.

"I'm curious, are you more concerned by that than by potential stalkers and if so why?"

"- no, everything you said sounds concerning, I just have fewer questions about the rest of it, unless you were about to tell me that the sexual propositions aren't optional or something."

"Ah, okay. The propositions are optional. Usually what people do is they sell things they signed for a lot of money, and then people like you would donate the money to some kind of charity, maybe run a charitable foundation."

"...huh. I suppose that's acceptable."

The device in Chris's pocket beeps.

"Let's go get your clothes. I can tell you about how the drying machine works while we head over."

"I thought I was hang-drying mine?"

"That's what I originally suggested, but I figured if you knew how the machine worked maybe you would be able to guess if your clothes were compatible."

"All right." He will follow.

"The clothes go into a rotating drum and get spun around while hot air is passed through the drum. The clothes shed little bits of fiber that forms lint, and some garments can shrink."

"...which ones are the ones that shrink?"

"I think wool's particularly at risk but I don't actually know, so maybe let's stick with the original plan."

"It's all wool."

"All wool. Nice. Let's stick with the original plan, then. You can hang things on the frame of the bed in your room, how about, the air's very dry here and your room's not very crowded."

"The Worldwound border is not as cold as it is here but it's still cold enough that one wants to be wearing lots of wool. And fur, the coat has fur." He will wring everything out into the tub of the washing machine and then go hang things up.

Things are actually fairly wrung out just by the spin cycle but there is some room for improvement.

It's impressive how it was clearly all soaked through and now only dribbles a little when squeezed but the gambeson in particular needs the squeezing, it's padded.

"In American culture it's customary to wear a freshly cleaned shirt, underpants, and socks every day, but people here are limited in their packing allowances and washing machine use is usually authorized only once weekly, so I don't know if you'll be able to partake in this custom while you're here."

"It does not sound very practical. I don't have a spell for creating new clothes. But I can work on the cleaning application of Prestidigitation and perhaps eventually get somewhere with it."

"We have machines that an operator can use to sew faster, that might help. …so, 'prestidigitation' is something you work on, it's not that a god hands it out?"

"Prestidigitation is a wizard spell but I was taught to cast it as a sort of educational experiment in my cohort. It admits of more fine control than most divine magic and I do not have most of its functionality working but it would not be impossible in principle for me to get it fully operational with practice, I've just been occupied with other things and do not quite have the Cunning to make it smooth and easy."

"Are you in a position to teach what you know?"

"I am not remotely qualified. A particularly exceptional genius could possibly get somewhere with what I have."

"One in a thousand? In a million?"

"......my impression of how common extreme ability is has been very much colored by the fact that to demonstrate it legibly people have to become powerful adventurers of some kind and this involves surviving lethal danger on a regular basis. I would expect, say, the Archmage Cottonet to be cunning enough, but I have no idea how many men like him died when they were second circle, or sixth; I don't know how it affects rates of retirement, to be that clever, or how much it improves the odds of survival against like challenges faced by a less cunning wizard. And clerics don't get the spell that let you just read someone's mind and see how bright it is."

"If you don't go to the convention we can probably convince some geniuses to figure out magic. There's one who has a disease that means he can barely move, if you heal him he'll probably find his schedule more open. But that's a future issue. For the next few weeks … well, doing research down here is expensive, you have to be fairly bright to have a research plan that the government pays for. We have tests that are supposed to tell you how bright someone is, though they aren't perfect. We could ask everyone if they've taken the test and how they scored and see who the highest scorers are who are willing to make time for this."

"This would, to be clear, get them one cantrip the primary use of which is laundry that you already have devices for."

"I don't know if everything exciting in technology goes through a phase of being a very expensive way of accomplishing nothing much, but there's definitely a pattern."