"Not all of them, there's a lot of small amplification built into some runic devices. The powerful ones have to be big, though, and so they're either part of things like ships, or they're basically buildings into themselves, like Runic Transceiver Arrays. But they have Jump Matrixes in some pretty small ships, so I don't really know how small they can be, other than they have to be big enough for the ship. And...it might or might not be a permanent borrowing, it might be some kind of ambassadorial mission. You know the discussion about influencing other cultures, but the risks of not doing it? If your world is facing some kind of...like...demon invasion or whatever, or regularly starving from lack of food or metals, I would be at least writing a report about the justifications of trying to take action, and I think Montoya would be too, just in a more formal way. Especially if we were formally requested to help by some sort of official entities on your side."

"That would be--very helpful. Potentially game-changingly so. If that's a possibility, I should prioritize finding some way to get back and forth repeatedly, so I could bring an embassy without stranding them on Golarion."

Probably that looks like summoning an angel who can teach her how to attune a fork; she knows anyone who can cast Plane Shift can learn how to do it but it's fiddly and complicated and she had never made time for it. Unclear whether that was an error; "sent to an alien civilization of potentially extremely helpful people" was not predictable even in hindsight.

"I should give you more context on the demon invasion. I mentioned the Worldwound was a Planar rift to the Abyss and demons come out of it, but it's less a single invasion and more an ongoing series of waves that's been going on for most of a century. There's a barrier of Wardstones around the Wound that it's hard for demons to cross, and fortresses with patrols of the border to kill the ones that get through, but sometimes a demon is powerful enough to get a bunch of them working together to attack a fort and the Wardstone line gets pushed back. And occasionally we take some territory and can move the line in. We're losing ground, but more slowly than we were at the beginning, and we learn and the demons don't, but there are always more of them and only so many defenders, so--it's hard to say what the long term looks like."

Forrester blinks. "Well, shit. I'm sorry about that. How more of an ongoing war is it? Like, you talk about waves, but...I guess you wouldn't know any of the wars I might compare it to."

"There's been five Crusades in the time the Wound has been open--those are the times the forces of Good and Law have gathered up more forces than they could deploy sustainably and pushed to take back territory. But someone from any given fort will see action any given week if not necessarily any given day, and fight off an at least somewhat serious raid a few times a year. One saving grace is that they can't keep a large enough force together long enough for a full encirclement and siege most times, so you fight them off that day and see how sustainable your losses were. Also this is all just from what I've heard; I haven't gone up there myself yet." 

"Hmm. So low intensity, but....basically always going on.That's not good," Forrester says.

"It's probably the worst thing on Golarion I'm aware of. Definitely top three. . . . Top five if you count things that aren't actively causing problems right now but would be a lot worse if they stopped being contained."

"That...is a troubling list to consider it sounds like," Forrester says. "It makes our situation look a lot simpler, at least we're not fighting some big war."

"We're managing, but it's sort of a 'keeping things going until we find some way to really change the game' situation. And hey, maybe this will turn out to be it!"

"Hopefully," Forrester says, trying to look happier as she starts to lead Samora out of the serving area to the seating, a mix of small tables and longer cafeteria-style benches, filled with a mix of people in casual wear, officewear, work formalwear, and Marine uniforms or physical training outfits. None are in the armor the Marines on duty in the lobby were, and several of the Marines' eyes catch and hang on Samora's armor and sword as they become visible to the seating.

Forrester's smile turns into a laugh as they pass a last display. "Here, try one of these too," Forrester says, and slides a plastic-wrapped brownie onto Samora's tray "One brownie, totally mundane, just as the Mage-Liaison ordered."

That gets a chuckle. "Thanks. If nothing else, it's good to know that there's at least one other human civilization and it's doing better than mine. Sometimes people who've had one too many drinks get all, oh maybe it's good that the world is full of monsters because that's how humans get stronger, where would legendary heroes come from otherwise, and I always thought that was a load, and now I have evidence."

"Differences make us stronger, that's a lot of the idea behind the Protectorate," Forrester says, leading Samora to one of the longer tables, a few seats down from the nearest group of other diners. "Even Legatus, who spurn magic and a lot of mass culture, have developed a lot of new technologies to stand in, stuff like advances in lasers or augmentations. Um, an augmentation is like a machine that can replace a part of the body that's lost in an accident, or even do a better job than the original, and a laser is like a concentrated beam of light, but so strong it doesn't just give you a sunburn, it can burn through metal and damage ships or people, depending on how big and powerful it is."

"I have a light-based damaging spell that sounds sort of like that--I actually have a copy today, even, because I have a handful of domain spell slots that can only have a handful of options in them and that's one. And I've met some people who attached machines to their bodies to make them stronger combatants. They're . . . well, I wouldn't want to do it, and their whole culture has some problems, but they stood with us against the devils when it counted and fought as bravely as anyone." She lifts her plastic water cup in a casual toast. "Here's to working together with people who are really different from you."

Forrester matches the toast with a mug of coffee.

Time to stop talking for a bit and sample the foreign food! The waffle is decent but the syrup is really sweet. The green fruit is good and the orange fruit is even better and the yellow fruit kind of feels like it's trying to burn her but the flavor is fascinating. The potatoes taste exactly like they look like they will and the ketchup doesn't taste like it looks like it will at all. The brownie is fantastic. She comments enthusiastically on all of this!

Forrester explains "honeydew melon", "cantaloupe melon", and the economic history of some of the foods as they eat, including how "pineapple" went from being so expensive to ship internationally that people would rent them as a showpiece to being cheap enough to ship interstellar and stock in a middle-of the-road canteen breakfast assortment and the dietary efficiencies and flexibility of potatoes.

Neat! Once they're done eating, should they go back and see how Mage-Liaison Montoya is getting along, or is his research likely to take long enough that they can go learn about guns first?

Montoya is apparently not done, but has decided that the best way to amuse somebody with a sword until he has a chance to figure things out might be to sic the Marines on her. When they finish their meal, Forrester checks their messages, and then leads Samora off and down several levels. The Marine areas are, like the rest of the office, slightly oversized and set up to be expanded when the small permanent security force gets augmented by the larger amount for the surge of Royal Testers passing through or basing off the station for the infrequent (but Compact-required) Mages tests on Flytrap. The man waiting for the two in the when they arrive is an older man, grizzled, but grinning.

"Junior Liaison Forrester! I believe I warned you if you kept taking all the night shifts you'd find something more interesting than you might be prepared for eventually?"

"Yes, Sergeant," Forrester says. "I don't think you meant 'new diplomatic contact with extra-planar civilizations' though."

"It might not be the most unbelievable thing I've seen in my career on a night shift," the sergeant says, then turns to Samora. "So, the Lieutenant and the Mage-Liaison want me to evaluate how much good that gear is doing you, and familiarize you with what kind of threats you might be dealing with, so we can figure out what kind of protection you might need here, or to let you protect yourself better if you're leaving this fine hole in the wall. Shall we begin?" 

"Certainly!" Samora follows the Sergeant to what is even across the culture gap obviously a gym, and starts taking her armor off and explaining what it does. 

Samora's breastplate is a completely normal breastplate of approximately 12-gauge steel. Her shield is a perfectly normal metal-edged wooden shield apart from the glowing crystal attached to it with a lot of twine. Her holy symbol is rugged enough to double as a gorget, but that's not what it's for and she's not taking it off. Her right gauntlet has a piece of white cloth attached to the wrist, which is embroidered with a golden sword; it can make her sword hit harder in two different ways for a minute a day each. Her left gauntlet is a completely normal gauntlet. Her sword is a meter of extremely sharp steel, beautifully pattern-welded and diligently polished, with a line of silver inlay down each side of the blade and runes etched on the crossguard. It is enchanted to cut even magically tough creatures and can stab ghosts. The sword and the gauntlets, she explains with obvious pride, were presents from her father, a highly regarded master smith, and they hold enchantments so well because they're among the best that human skill can make.

Samora's headband is bronze, finely and elaborately etched; it makes her wiser and thereby better at magic and she'll get fewer spells tomorrow if she takes if off for more than an hour or so today. Her cloak, scarlet with brocaded trim, makes her better at dodging and healthier and more resistant to hostile magic; her hat makes her more resistant to mind-affecting magic in particular. Her belt, leather tooled with oak leaves, makes her stronger, and that one other people are welcome to try on so long as she gets it back later--it's a lot of fun. 

The explanation of magical artifacts transitions rapidly to demonstrations. The various enchanted items draw intense inspection, and the Sergeant has fun with the belt's strength effects. The armor's workmanship draws compliments, but the materials comparison to the Marine's composite materials in their clam-shell service armor and soft "low-profile" anti-ballistic materials leave the Sergeant musing on what could be done with those. The strength augmentation of the belt and various other protection leads to a demonstration of a Marine exosuit, with its built-in mechanical strength augmentation and stronger armor. The exosuits are bulky, though, just barely able to fit into normal hallways even as they effectively turns a human operator into an up-armored forklift able to turn aside almost all normal weapons and acting as a firing platform for what would otherwise be vehicle-mounted heavy weapons. That leads, in turn, to careful sparring out of armor. The Marines focus more on unarmed combat than adventurers do, since if they're in melee at all, it's because it's usually something you can't just shoot, and so if Samora can't get a good punch in before the Sergeant can get a grip on her, it doesn't go well for her, but she hits hard enough to leave him sprawled on the mat a few times himself, and he's impressed by how fast she keeps getting back up. "Tough, I'll say that," he says. "You said you wanted to see the range?"

Sparring: it's great! Winning one time in four is actually a lot of wins compared to what she's used to, because she's usually sparring sword-versus-sword with Marshall and he can beat her ten times out of ten when there's no magic in play. 

"Do mages here not get tougher like fighters do? Back home anyone with my amount of casting could fall off a three-story building and laugh it off. Anyway, yes I want to see the range!!"

Both the sergeant and Forrester eyeball Samora. "Depends how metaphorical you're being," he says after a moment. "If you mean that literally, and without casting something to absorb the impact or some kind of exosuit armor, then...no, basically no one could do that here."

"I'm being very literal. On Golarion, getting in fights and winning makes you stronger, and part of that strength is being able to take more attacks before you go down. Not just because of better defensive spells and better gear, because of being innately tougher. You mean to say everyone here dies of the same amount of injuries?"

"I mean, there's some accounting for physical conditioning, specifics of the injury, and just plain grit and luck of the draw," the sergeant says. "But mostly...yeah."

"Weird! Maybe a good thing, though, if it levels the playing field between ordinary people and people who fight for a living, and you don't have giant monsters who need to be killed by someone who can take a firebreath to the face."

"Not so much of those, no," the marine says. "We don't have many of those, and the few places that have native animals that are anything like that kind of problem...well, that's the benefit of stand-off weapons."