Thoughtful frown. "I've never heard of it happening, but if most planets don't have teleportation I don't know if I would have, people go missing on Golarion all the time and for all I know several of them went to other planets. I'm keeping the possibility that it was divine intervention in mind but not doing anything that relies on it either way." It might be something to ask when she can cast Commune, if it does turn out to be actionable, but she's not making the existence of Commune public yet.

"People go missing on Golarion all the time." You'd think a world with lots of powers like Samora's would be safer than Earth Aleph, let alone Bet. What's worse, she clearly doesn't realize that she just said anything grim or disturbing. He should read her blog posts more carefully; her world may be more like life at the time of the apostles, with lots of overt holy power, but lots of demons for it to war against, too.

And then he catches the other implication. From her family's perspective she's just missing, maybe forever. He's been focused on what this means for Bet, but he is in fact Called to spread his net a little wider than that. So: "And now you're one of those missing. I'm sorry for your family's loss, and for yours."

"Thank you. I'm very fortunate in having a spell that lets me send short messages home, for all I can't return. If my kind of accident is common, perhaps some rumor will reach the next person. And I'll see them again eventually, in Heaven."

He nods. "That's a blessing. To answer your question...so long as most people think of your clerics as weird capes, they won't have any trouble. They'll be welcome, even, if they can heal like you can.  But our Bible is pretty strict about not worshipping other Gods.  If one of our believers got picked by one of your gods, well, at best they'd be real upset.  At worst they might be in danger from their neighbors, or even from themselves."

"I guess exorcisms don't do anything to you?  We can't cast cape powers out of people like the apostles did demons, that was tried back in the eighties.  That helped calm things down a bit, come to think."

"Clerics can renounce their gods by declaring that they're doing so while intending it to stick, and I don't expect any god would pick someone who'd immediately renounce them. I'll make sure that goes in a blog post. I'd want to know more about this world's exorcisms, what they consist of and how they work, before agreeing to get one, but if they work the same as the ones on Golarion I'd be happy to. The ones I'm used to only get rid of undead." She doesn't think anything they have on Earth is likely to separate her from the Inheritor, but it's not a thing to risk lightly, especially here where she's the only person who can cast Atonement until someone else hits fifth.

"Undead? Like ghosts? Ours works on possessing spirits of all kinds. Those spirits aren't always overtly evil: there was another incident, around the same time as the Simon story, where an apostle cast a spirit that was telling fortunes out of a slave girl. Her owner was quite upset, because he'd been charging money for people to hear her. Many folks hoped that the more dangerous capes could be dealt with the same way, but as far as I know it's never worked even once."

"I take that as a sign that powers are gifts the way a keen mind is a gift, or a way with words is a gift. A lot of people feel the same way. But then again nobody goes around saying that their powers come from a foreign god."

"That makes sense. I once helped a young woman drive out a being who was haunting her dreams, and it wasn't what I would call an exorcism but I could see calling it one." The terminology isn't the question, the question is what it does. "I'm definitely not possessed, but I do have an ongoing connection to an external power in a way that someone with a keen mind doesn't and capes presumably also don't."

Right. All their conversation is happening through a translator, and the translator isn't perfect. He's been forming a specific idea of how Samora speaks, her vocabulary, her accent, how she uses pauses and filler, just like he would with anybody. But those details he's hearing are made up by her power, or her goddess, or however it works. It might be a good translation, there's no way to know, but it's not a perfect one. It's a distracting idea, enough that he almost misses the turn of the conversation.

"Oh, I wouldn't think an exorcism would work on you anyway. If God didn't want you here, you just wouldn't be here."

That was a little more blunt than he'd really planned to be. But, oh well, he stands by it.

She doesn't seem bothered at all. "Makes sense. The Inheritor wants to cooperate with other Good gods, not interfere with their plans. It's possible I'm here by accident and will cause problems that aren't worth the intervention budget of preventing, but I'll do my best not to."

"Oh I doubt very much it was an accident.  Very much indeed."

"You see, each dispensation started with a great upheaval, something that changed the way the faithful lived.  The first humans were cast out of paradise -- there wasn't time to talk about it this morning, but that's how the First Dispensation got started.  They were forced to learn all kinds of things they did not want to learn, but they managed. The Second arrived when Jesus did, and it took a few centuries for things to really settle, but even at the beginning Jesus was preaching some things the religious leaders of his time did not want to hear. But some heard, and listened, and ultimately the church prospered.  But here in the Third, there's been a great change and no great revelation to go with it. We have plenty of wonders, but not so many signs. A lot of folks think Scion was supposed to deliver that new message, and we just haven't found the right way to talk to him. Aren't worthy enough, maybe. But I don't believe it." He goes a little distant, with no need for showmanship, then pulls himself back.

"Anyway, now here you are, apparently by the grace of our Lord and Savior, preaching some new doctrine and doing things we haven't seen since the time of Christ himself. You can see how it might get my attention."

She nods thoughtfully, buying time to think about that perspective. "I can see how that fits together. Something about the existence of capes relating to it being the right time to—invite the other gods back, I suppose. If you're right, it bodes well for the possibility of more clerics being chosen." She shrugs, as though resettling something on her shoulders. "Fortunately we don't have to know the whole plan to play our parts in it, for all it would be wonderful to know." 

The prospect of doing what she's doing, she notes, feels more intimidating if there's a plan than if there isn't. This is, on reflection, not really correct. If she came here by accident, there's a sense in which she can't fail to live up to expectations, but now that she's here the Inheritor has whatever expectations of her She has. And the stakes are the same either way: the survival and health of civilization on Earth Bet. The biggest difference is that if Samora was purposely selected as someone with good odds of doing a good job, she's more likely to do a good job than if she's here at random.

Anyway, she doesn't need to not feel intimidated; she needs to win.

She's easier to read when she's not talking. He can see the moment the sense of responsibility hits her, and the moment she accepts it. It's thrilling, the way the high point of a good sermon can be thrilling, or a shared prayer. It's the feeling of the Holy Spirit. Yes. This is real. Thank you, Lord, for putting me here.

He'll have to learn more about her world's theology, to figure out how it fits into the picture revealed by the existing Word of God. Lots of people will try that eventually, Marks is sure. But the one who's working with Samora directly is surely the one God has chosen for this work, and why shouldn't it be him? God must have brought her here. For what purpose, if not to found His new church?

And they'll be able to afford whole glorious cathedrals, not small subdivided chunks of run-down warehouses.

And in those cathedrals he'll preach to an audience of hundreds, not twenty-five in cheap folding chairs.

There's much more he can glean from her blog, but: "Are there any parts of your theology that you don't want to share publicly, but that you could tell to a priest of another Good God? I think it might be very important that I learn as much about it as I can. I'd offer to return the favor, but our theology doesn't really have secrets in the first place; we're called to share it as widely as we can."

"We don't really have secrets either! I'm keeping some things back about the details of my powers that I don't want villains to know, and I won't talk about the Evil gods in detail lest they become able to see Earth more clearly, but everything I know about the theology of the gods worth worshipping is going to go up on the blog once I have it written down."

He wants to ask her more questions, but he hasn't even read her blog properly yet.  He just needs to make sure he gets her email address, so he can write to her later.  For now: "Did you have other questions for me?"  He makes a little waving gesture with one hand, to include Gabby in that invitation.

Gabby just got over hearing the sermon and understanding it, and now she's having to cope with the fact that he seems to be taking her crack doctrinal theory seriously.  Samora has to carry this conversation on her own.

"How would you describe your church's and your god's relationship to other Earth religions? I mean the ones that follow gods other than Jesus." 

"Oh, nowadays there aren't any. Not true ones, I mean. Like I said, it's just barely possible there used to be other gods, but at this point it's just us."

"Yes, I don't mean the gods, I mean the people who remember the other gods the way you remember yours even though They don't empower anyone. The Muslims and Buddhists and so on."

"Oh, them. We get along OK. The big thing nowadays isn't Christians fighting Muslims or whoever, it's everybody with any faith at all fighting people who don't believe in anything but themselves, or who've given up on the world completely. And you can't fight that with weapons, you have to go soul by soul. Sometimes it works." He allows himself a short moment of pointless worry for Ben and Eric, then locks back in.

"Yeah." Sometimes Samora does have to fight that kind of person with weapons, but this man doesn't and shouldn't. "I'll talk to some of the clergy of other religions, to be sure I have the whole picture. I think my last question is if there's anything we discussed that you would rather I didn't put in a blog post, or did or didn't attribute to you."

"Not at all.  There's nothing I've said here I wouldn't tell the whole world."  But then he catches himself.  "Though, since you ask it, I wonder if I could ask you a question, one you'd leave out of your blog."

"Scion was at Denver, just like you were.  Did you see him?  What's your sense of him?"

"I'm afraid I didn't get a look at him, I was in the field hospital at the time. I don't know anything that everyone else doesn't."

He's having a lot of thoughts, mostly too fast for him to catch, and where he lands is, "If you ever do meet him up close -- at another Endbringer fight, let's say -- I'd appreciate hearing your point of view."

"I hope I do, and if it happens I expect I'll be excited to share it."

That sounds like a nice warm note to end on. Unless they resist, Marks will escort Samora and Gabby to the door.

"Don't be strangers. My e-mail address is on the church web site, feel free to write any time you feel called to. Samora, may I have yours? I expect I'll have more questions later, once I've had a chance to read your blog again and pray about it."

What should they call this new church? Marks joined Christ's Church of the Third Dispensation because he thought their doctrine was true, and that belief sure paid off today, but there's no denying that the name confuses people, and that's an uncomfortable place to start evangelizing. You can tell it was made up by theologians, rather than by people who work with the faithful directly. That's fine for the teachings, but for the name..."Golarionite Church of Christ"? "Christ's Church of the New Revelation"? You want "Christ" in there somewhere so people can tell it's still Christian, but none of these are right. Way too clunky. He'll think about it some more.