Oh good, a nice complicated question that can burn up all the time until Armsmaster wakes up. Dragon's explanation will take a while, with examples, but basically: PHO has robust identity verification for people posting under their real or cape names, and a strong team of moderators who keep the discussions somewhat civil and organized. But making sure that everything on PHO is true is a task beyond human strength, so until Samora learns to recognize particular posters she has to treat everything she reads as gossip from a stranger. One maybe non-obvious dynamic: the most knowledgeable people mostly won't have a lot of time to post online, so most of the text on PHO was written by people who aren't very busy.

(The identity verification is thanks to Dragon. The strong team of moderators is also Dragon. That she can't audit everything on PHO for accuracy is...probably not her creator's fault, if she's honest.)

The wiki part of PHO is pretty up to date, over all, but everything there is a summary. There are books worth of material, with continuous new additions, for the really major players. But in terms of stuff Samora specifically should know about: here's Nilbog and his kingdom in Ellisburg -- maybe Break Enchantment could do something there? It's supposed to work on Polymorph, right? It isn't widely known but local villain Lung actually fought an Endbringer in single combat at one point, don't escalate with him unless you have a plan for that. Boston and New York are two other places Samora should look at; they're both close enough that she could get there to assist even without a teleport.

Dragon doesn't think there's a central channel for Master victims, no. If and when Samora decides to go for it she'll have to advertise some -- a PHO thread would be a reasonable way to do that.

At 10:14am, Samora receives a reply to her email.

Returning to the Rig now. Will most likely be ready for our experiments in half an hour.

This does mean that Samora won't be able to keep her tentative appointment with Pride.

Not a problem! There's always next week.

(Unless, of course, she gets sent back to Aurora to resume her duties, in which case the meeting could still happen but Pride wouldn't get to see it, which...strictly speaking she doesn't have to be a part of this anymore. She just really, really, wants to be. She'll put in for some personal leave; the notice is very short and the PRT is not generous with that but she frigging died; her therapist will sign off and then she'll probably get it).

That leaves time for a little more villain talk.

The Slaughterhouse Nine are who Dragon most had in mind, when she was asking about Scrying earlier. They're very dangerous, but more than that they're hard to find most of the time: they pop up and create violent, messy encounters with lots of civilian hostages, and then vanish again. If Samora could find them in the middle of nowhere and target a strike team...well, it's something they should try, sooner or later.

And then Armsmaster arrives, armored and masked up. His voice sounds like it's coming from the bottom of a rusty drain*, but he's standing straight**.

* He keeps meaning to build a voice modulator to cover fatigue, but hasn't yet.
** This he's built a mode in his suit for.

"Samora, Dragon. Shall we?"

"Yes, let's," she says, because just because she can handle a bad result doesn't mean she isn't dreading this in the way where she wants to get it over with as soon as possible. Armsmaster sounds exhausted but he's an adult and can choose his own sleep schedule. "I've prepared two Summon Monster Three's in case you need more time—I think I can get the same archon twice—and also a Share Language to make you fluent in Celestial, because it might help to be talking in a single specific language and not through Truespeech."

Armsmaster can choose his own sleep schedule, but when his peers in other time zones are debating resurrection policy it's a privilege best left unexercised, at least if he wants to have any say in the outcome.  But he's not too exhausted to be intrigued.  "That's a test in itself, come to think of it.  Does it last long enough for you to use it on me now?  I'd like to try a few things."

"Yes, it lasts 24 hours and I need to tap you for it. Through the armor is fine." She holds out a hand; if he extends his own she makes a gesture and says "Share Language" and now Armsmaster is fluent in a new language.

Celestial is a pretty language. Subject-Object-Verb order like Japanese, but almost none of the thing where how you say something depends on who you're taking to with the exception of lots of ways to shorten things in a hurry. Heavy on the prefixes and suffixes, very regular in its conjugations and declensions. Lends itself well to dactylic hexameter, though Armsmaster may not be interested enough in poetry to notice this.

Oh. He thought it would be a translation effect, but no, Samora's description was literally right; he knows Celestial now the way he knows English.

"This is what Celestial sounds like," he says aloud, for Dragon's benefit, then switches back to English for the same reason. "It's complicated, with its own grammar, definitely not a thin layer over English. Possibly a thin layer over some other language? We should show this to a linguist, if we're still uncertain after today."

Celestial again. "Antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium." All four come through with their own names, which is promising. "Spellsilver?" That's a word unto itself, no connection to any element name he can think of, which isn't. "Spell, magic, cleric, prayer, spell slot, spell circle." All nice short words, as expected. "One, two, five, ten, one hundred, one hundred sixty three." Base ten numerals, sure. "Zero. Negative one. Square root. Exponential. Quartic. Sigmoid. Integral. Partial differential equation." He's not a great mathematician or physicist, that's not how Tinkering works, but he knows those phrases and apparently Celestial does too.

How about "My handheld spectrometer outputs about three watts of power, and has a resolution of one hundred and thirty electron-Volts"? He can't figure out how to say it. He has words for the kinds of measure "watt" and "Volt" are, but doesn't know the unit conversions. Samora's power implanted a lot of knowledge into his brain, but not that specific thing.

Ah, when he puts it that way: "I'm declaring this portion of Samora's powerset classified, pending review by Branding and Director Piggot." He has to consciously remember to say it in English, in a way he never had to with French. Then he remembers something else: "That doesn't apply to you, Samora, since you're not a Protectorate member, but I'd strongly suggest that you take advice before talking about this publicly. Powers that grant overt effects to others, like strength or speed, aren't rare, but powers that implant knowledge are, and the most famous person to have one was a notorious criminal."

"That's helpful context and I'll keep it under my hat, thank you. And, review by what and Director Piggot? That didn't translate."

He tries for it in Celestial, and comes out with "Image and reputation management." Could be worse, but he'll continue in English: "They consult on costume and name choices, and other aspects of self-presentation. More broadly, they're responsible for the way ordinary people see the Protectorate and its capes. We want people to trust us, and feel comfortable leaving complicated and dangerous situations in our hands, but if we look like a pack of crazed killers then they won't, even if our track record is solid." He's quoting his first image consultant; he's forgotten her name and face at some point over the years but that line, delivered in her ironic alto, is somehow still right there. "They also advise on power expression, for some capes. That's most common for Tinkers, since we tend to have a lot of control over the look and shape of our devices, but it will probably come up for you too, for more spells than just this."

And then he adds awkwardly, "No matter how our experiments today come out," because he'd forgotten for a moment what they were here to do, and what he expected to see.

"Oh I see, thanks." That makes sense as a thing to have when everyone's powers and personalities vary so much, and she doesn't want to scare people with spells her culture thinks are fine. She watches Armsmaster curiously, wondering what other experiments he might think up.

"Give the English translations with each term, please, Armsmaster?"

Oops, right. And he should be looking at more chemistry-centric parts of the language, shouldn't he. He'll say everything over again, in Celestial and then in English, and then move on:

"Atomic weight. Atomic number. Periodic table. Noble gas. Atom. Molecule. Proton. Electron. Electron orbital. Energy level. Quark. Spectrum. Infrared. X-Ray. Ultraviolet. Sun. Star. Galaxy. Black hole." All translatable. He's getting distracted again, Dragon hasn't said anything through the phone link but he can feel her amusement.

Samora's allegedly low-tech civilization has a lot of high-tech vocabulary, he's noticing.

What if that's because Golarion's Heaven is more advanced than Samora's people, and more than Bet too? "Dragon, what are some unsolved physics problems unrelated to powers?"

"Dark matter? CP symmetry in QCD? The mass of a neutrino, if it isn't zero?"

"Mass of a neutrino is perfect."

Mass of one neutrino.

Nothing. He knows what unit it would use, but that's all. Same result for mass of a cubic meter of water. Inconclusive. But, a missed opportunity for the power to give him something concrete; in that sense it's not a great sign. Dark matter doesn't have any suggestive associations in Celestial, either.

Let's back off and try a different angle. Is there anything from high school that he remembers in French before English? There is. Can he translate it directly to Celestial? After a moment he hazards,

Tomorrow, at dawn, when the countryside lightens,
I will leave, for I know that you are waiting for me.

He's not quite sure enough of the rest to keep going. Thinking of Dragon, he'll give the French too. Does Dragon speak French? Probably.

"In case this is useful information, I have no idea what you're talking about with most of that stuff."

There are lots of people in this world, even in this building, who would pick up on that right away. Not Armsmaster, though.

Instead, he looks up a list of unsolved mathematical problems. A lot of the titles don't translate, and most of the rest use words like "conjecture" or "surmise", but the Hodge conjecture comes out as "Irreti's Theorem". Armsmaster entertains himself, and maybe Dragon, for a few minutes by translating the conjecture and its underlying concepts as he reads about them. The translations come out very cleanly, with lots of short distinct words; Celestial is weirdly good at expressing topological ideas. He'll show Samora the associated illustrations, just in case they mean something to her.

What else can he learn about hypothetical-Golarion from this language? The different sorts of Earth clouds all have names in Celestial, which says something about the kind of weather it must have. The staple crops he tries all translate, and so do the spices. "Diamond" of course translates, and there's a distinct-but-related word meaning "diamond suitable for Raise Dead". "King", "president", "prime minister", "dictator", "judge", "jury", "voter", all in there.

He's just stalling at this point, isn't he. He doesn't know what experimental result he's going to get, but he suspects and he doesn't like it.

What exactly is he going to ask the lantern archon? "What is the atomic number of spellsilver? What are its stable isotopes?" That sounds like a good place to start. If the answer turns out to be "the square root of minus one," or "the color of a rose under a quarter moon," he'll just have to improvise.

When he's ready for her to summon the lantern archon she'll do so. She asks for one that knows a lot of chemistry and is interested in talking about it.

Here is a sparkly flappy ball of light! They take a second to look around and determine that this isn't a combat summon, then say, "Hi there! How can I help?"

 She points at Armsmaster. "My friend has some chemistry questions!"

It's good that he practiced this; it's odd to address a floating lightbulb this way. "What is the atomic number of spellsilver? What are its stable isotopes?"

"That's a trick question! Spellsilver is just a term for any thaumescent* metal! But the most thaumescent metal is Lanthanum and the atomic number of Lanthanum is . . ." the lantern archon gives an ineffable impression of counting on the fingers they don't have. "Fifty-seven! And the stable isotopes are the one almost all of it is and the one almost none of it is, I don't remember the exact numbers."

*Translator's note: Armsmaster can tell this word has the same root as the word for magic and that it's in a category with words like fluorescent and phosphorescent and triboluminescent, but not a lot else. I have attempted to induce a similar state in the reader.