"Jane - you said you can make diamonds easy -"

Her surprise is giving way to a different sort of shock.  This will change all sorts of things and reopen all sorts of stories that were ended.  The whole idea of ending stories will need to be changed.

"Can you raise people who died of anything?"

"Sadly not, Your Majesty. Revival spells cannot revive anyone who has died of old age. It...has to do with how souls are retrieved from Pharasma – the goddess of the dead. Further, Raise Dead cannot revive anyone who died because of a death spell. By that, I mean that certain necromancy spells are able to prevent the raising of those they kill. However, Resurrection and True Resurrection are able to get around this. As an aside, coming back from the dead is taxing on the body and soul. People who are raised usually come back weaker, but this can be healed via Restoration. That's also a divine spell I can't cast."

Now's probably the best time. "As a Lawful faith, the Church of Asmodeus offers revival services for the price of the required diamond and the cleric's time and spell slot. The fees are comparable in price to Abadar's church, although Asmodean churches do not offer resurrection insurance. Er, resurrection insurance is something very rich people or adventurers take out to ensure they are revived if they die or get killed."

Oh.  So some stories will stay the same, at least, because people will still be dead of old age in the end.

That will still be sad in a way, but they will have lived a good life.

And Barvid probably doesn't know that sort of necromancy.

"I think we should all get that insurance.  We can't rely on anyone being able to bring the diamond afterwards."  Also, she'd rather not put herself in the hands of the god of tyranny's church.

"I agree, Your Majesty." Him? A first-circle caster, getting resurrection insurance? It's...absurd. Not going to argue that, though. Honestly, it's disappointing that Asmodeus's church doesn't have resurrection insurance and Abadar's does. That's probably heresy and he is not going to think that. Asmodeus is Asmodeus and Abadar is Abadar.

"We can visit a temple to Abadar in Ostenso for that. Cheliax permits other Lawful gods to set up places of worship. It will be much more expensive if you do not provide a diamond. To clarify, you can give them a Resurrection-grade diamond then and there, and they'll use it for you if you die. That's an option you can take when signing up for insurance. It's cheaper if you do it that way, because then they don't have to go through the trouble of sourcing the diamond themselves."

"...The question is, does Adabar even cover our putative service area?  I wouldn't want it to turn up too far away...Maybe I should learn the spellwork, set it up on a contingency basis; I probably 'count' as far as 'has divine spellcasting class levels' goes, given some of my...youthful indiscretions, and it's yet to be too far away like that.  Certainly works here, at least.

"Also, I'm going to want to watch you cast Comprehend Languages, because while I have my own tricks, that one is one I'm only making do for rather than actually making work; the last place was more of a Babel Fish about translating, and only sort of covered written language, so if I'm not still covered by that, a reliable way to do such for arbitrary languages would be grand.  I've got plenty of tricks for the spoken word, but not any for writing, yet." 

She's rather glad she does have such tricks.  They're probably going to be -- "Speaking of which, I would like to teach and learn your languages by way of my own spell.  Well, I say 'my own spell', but really it's someone else's spell I...hm, reverse-engineered isn't quite the right word for that, but it's not exactly plagiarizing either...  I've got the spellwork, regardless, and it's mostly a black box that I've figured out how to plug things into, rather than something I necessarily fully understand, even if I do know exactly where it came from.  Still, teaching and learning your languages in turn is well within its remit."

"I'm not sure. I do know that there are planes which the gods of Golarion can't reach. Though Abadar is an ancient god, not like Iomedae or Norgorber. He has a wider range, I would think. Sadly, I can't cast Comprehend Languages. I already used up my two standard spell slots for school, and my specialist school is transmutation. Comprehend Languages is divination. I can cast it tomorrow, though. And that spell you're talking about sounds fascinating. It sounds similar to Voluminous Vocabulary. Not a common spell, but diplomats and envoys use it."

He currently has Expeditious Retreat prepared in his specialist school slot, although that fact is not evident. He offered to cast it on Lila earlier, but he'll just keep it in his back pocket for now. It is a wonderfully useful spell. The name is misleading, too, since you can use it just as well for attacking. He is not the sort of person to run away.

"I'm going to operate under the assumption that we will need to test whether a cleric on Golarion can resurrect someone on Lila's world somehow.  Do...you know where your brother's body is, Lila?  I can get arbitrary diamonds; we can make Resurrection happen, it's just going to need something of him for the spell to focus on, something that was him when he died.  And then we'd want Restoration, to shake off the negative level.  Or we could do Reincarnation, that's an option too, I guess, which is...certainly an option, but not one I'd really prefer, too random.  Maybe even True [Rez: Resurrection-but-it's-one-syllable], which would mean not needing to visit his grave, but there the limiting assumption is 'is there a cleric or other divine caster capable of casting a 9th level - circle, I mean - spell'; you don't get those every day any more than you get wizards who can cast something as absolutely bullshit as Wish.  It's highly unlikely that Abadar has one stationed in Ostenso; I'd expect such to primarily be in his faith's place of greatest prominence, not out in the middle of Asmodeus Land.  High-level adventurers are power projection in and of themselves; it's rude to swing them about without permission."

"As far as the spell I'm talking about...Well, it's called Communication Through Essence, and while I've done a bit of tinkering with the spellform's targeting, it's still mostly in the state I plagiarized it from, but to my understanding, it works by a different method than Comprehend Languages or Voluminous Vocabulary.  It's spiritual communication, rather than extra knowledge inserted into your head.  Which is why it only works on living beings; most objects can't talk back.  ...I should see if it works on computers sometime, I know it works on plants and I know materials do have a Presence characteristic in that cosmology, which is what the spell's limits are tied to natively even if I reworked that bit to be less of a pain, so we can determine that soul is an emergent behavior, and if I'm carrying that metaphysics around with me...Anyway. 

"It'd basically be me 'saying' 'the concept of English as I currently understand it' at you, and you hearing and understanding that, and some instructions for the...mental motion I needed to figure out how to encapsulate broad concepts like that in the first place, so that hopefully you can do it in turn.  Biggest ask I've made of this, really; I've used it to 'say' images before, and transmit abstract concepts, but not an entire language yet.  ...and I can't really think of a way to make Milliways' translation effect useful for machine translation that wouldn't be an absolute pain, so Comprehend Languages is probably what I want to get; then I can pair it with some sort of language-learning algorithm and any actual study of linguistics and anthropology.  ...I have to admit, speaking of Milliways' translation effect, that I'm very curious what I'm going to hear on the recording of all this later.  ...And whether it varies depending on whether I'm in Milliways or not, because if it works on recordings...And if it works on sign language!"  She tests this hypothesis with the pidgin sign she's picked up from working around military types; saying something that's approximately 'I will advance to the objective, calling air support; you two hold position.'

"...And, say, could you Prestidigitate some more, when I get back?  If I'm not going to run you out of spell slots.  I don't think that's a thing for even prepared casters' cantrips in any of the third [ed:edition, as a one-syllable word] alikes, and I know 5e doesn't have spell slots for them, but I don't have as much practical experience...  Anyway.  I've got my own solutions for a lot of what it does, but how the fuck can it handle flavoring things?  It has to be operating on a mechanical level, because it's not mind-affecting, but you hardly have to tell it the chemical structure, and it can mask scents as well as make them..."

Her door opens to a bustling street, and she makes sure it stays open with a shim of force anchored to an actual shim as she sticks a sign on the door, pulling it from what's probably a bag of holding; some sort of hazard symbol, perhaps, from the bright coloration?  A line, inside a circle, inside a triangle, black on shining yellow, and, after a moment's thought, a cordon of caution tape from a reel that seems to just be yellow before it goes through a device attached to one end.  "Warning: Magical Bullshit Behind This Cordon, Enter At Your Own Risk."  Then she sticks another warning sign, a red octagon with a stick figure having been punted into what's probably a portal, beneath the first.  Having reclaimed her screens, she does something with them for a minute or so, and makes a satisfied nod as she steps back inside, letting the door swing almost-shut, as the bustle of the city continues. 

"Alright, my bike's gonna be here soon enough, and I've placed an order at the fab for riding gear and comms for the both of you, which you're going to wear for this, gender roles be damned; I don't care if you wear something else over it right now but I don't want either of you getting mugged to death and this is the best way I have of preventing that that doesn't take more time than I have patience.  ...I'd better suit up properly, for that matter."

"Fraddir's not my brother; I hope his body's found and buried by now, but I didn't stay around to see...

"We're all going?  Shouldn't one of us stay behind to make sure the door doesn't close?"

"Ah, my apologies.  Don't know how I gathered that impression.  Still, having someone who actually knows what they're doing with your world's magic around can only help when it comes to repairing the thing and making new things, if we can but find him.  And I can make very sure the doors don't close, short of a high-level caster deciding that this specific door being a smidge open has offended them specifically and deciding to do violence about it.  I'll add an order for a couple of security droids, plonk them in here, set their shields up against the door..."  Tap tap tap tappita tap, go her fingers once again. 

"...Bar, if I'm on the other side of a different door and my door closes, am I on my own for getting back there, or is the, connection, held open by people passing through it?  If you know.  ...Same for if a door closes while someone from another world is on the other side, for that matter.  But regardless...the one world I would have a pain making my own way to a specific instance of the hard way, really, is Golarion.  There's too many of them to have much reliability finding a specific one that I've only seen and casually interacted with just from knowing the general story, if I don't have a unique native or narrative to point at.  Though at this point I think I could probably specify both of your worlds well enough that I'd be able to land in their space first try, with only a little winnowing; interacting with Milliways is quite distinctive, if nothing else."

He barely understands half the words Jane is speaking, but it seems to him that he's about to get a bunch of otherworldly ?magic? items from her homeworld, so he doesn't complain or interrupt. Apparently she can make infinite diamonds? He...is going to refuse to consider the implications of that for him. Not thinking about things is a vital Chelish life skill. He's not as good at it at Lucia, but he's passable.

"Yes, I can cast Prestidigitation as much as I want. Cantrips can be recovered after casting them. It's one of the first things you learn in wizard school."

:I don't advise that. If your door closes, I cannot help you get back, save for the Milliways itself leading you back to here.:

"I can always go home when the adventure's done, Bar.  's the rules.  's the story.  And I know how to get back to my beacons.  The question is more, 'if Conrad leaves through Lila's door and Lila closes it, does the door still work because Conrad's on the other side of it, the same way I can open and close my door all I like while I'm in here'.  And Conrad, if you wouldn't mind going wild with Prestidigitation, just hitting every possible use if you can, and telling me what you're doing and how you're doing it as best you can, I'd really appreciate it."  She's staring intently at the wizard.

:It won't work anymore unless the Milliways sends him back here. Which may or may not occur. My apologies.:

"Well that's...problematic. We could buy a few scrolls of Plane Shift and Teleport for that. And a tuning fork for the Prime Material. Those are expensive, but I've been led to believe that money is not an issue, yes?"

"Sure, I can do that," Conrad says. He can lift small objects with it, though using Mage Hand is better. It can make things clean. It can make things dirty. It can make things change color temporarily. It can heat up or cool down various things, not just food. It can change the flavor of food. It can create tiny, ugly, and fragile sculptures.

"It's really quite a versatile spell, I agree, though the main use of it is cleaning. We're taught how to clean our clothes and ourselves using it. It's important once you're at the Worldwound or deployed on a mission. Although it doesn't make you feel clean."

"Hm.  Thank you, Conrad, I still have no idea how Prestidigitation does that, but I've got a good idea of what it's doing.  And no, money's not an issue.  If you know the specs I can make it myself.  The plan's going to have to be modified, probably; we send only the people who aren't from the world we're going to on missions there, and the person whose world it is operates via telepresence.  It's a bit more than I'd like to deploy, and probably going to cause a riot if the crashed spaceship and its tiny god gets wind of it on the Golarion side, and speaking of which what year is it on your world, but in the interests of not stranding anyone, I think it's worth it."  She starts pulling out a series of things much like, but clearly different from, whatever device is on her bracer and was previously handed out to Conrad and Lila, and begins assembling them together with some sort of telekinesis while she spools out some sort of wire from the device in her bracer and connects it to what's probably a work surface.  There's a bing! noise, and she hums.  "Don't mess with this, it's basically a ritual working and you will not be happy with what happens if you mess with it."

She's actually popped the entire screen-and-board combination out of her bracer, now, and sets to work doing some sort of arcane but non-magical test sequence, and then what's clearly a magical test sequence, because it involves floating lights, much akin to the Dancing Lights cantrip but operated entirely by artifice.  "Alright, we've got acceptable thaumic flux...now pass the precompilation through the optimizer, set this and this and that..."  A bar on the screen fills up.  "And here, we, go."  Tak, goes her hand on the biggest button, and with a flash of a runic diagram of a form only almost completely alien in shape and nature to Conrad, the low-resolution circle of white-and-black on the floor expands into a solid black cylinder, about the height of a human, consuming light that touches it, as magic is put to work.  "Gotta keep the build environment clean, so I can't drop the shield all the way or for the entire process, but I could probably detune the light absorption 'round the visual spectrum and let you watch; nothing in this stage is photosensitive during assembly and if you're smart enough to figure out how I'm doing this just from watching the compiled work, you deserve to be able to do it yourself."

And with that comment, she pulls open the metaphorical curtain, revealing an intricate diagram in the center, plus a boundary circle of some sort.  It appears that nothing's happening...until, suddenly, something is; parts of some mechanism simply start appearing in-place.  Occasionally, the inner diagram flashes white-on-black for a second, then more parts start appearing.  It seems to be some sort of six-legged...something, about the size of a large dog, made primarily of silvery metals.  "The wonders of technology, hm?"

"Yes, by all means, let's resurrect Fraddir!  He'd love to be back here and help us finish this story!"

(She's a lot easier about that then resurrecting anyone from her actual family, for some reason... maybe it's just that they weren't a part of this story?  But she's not going to think about that just yet." 

"Yes, let's get the Tuning Forks, if you're both going into my world.  There is still a portal out of there that I could probably reopen... but that's the one they shoved our own god of tyranny through, so goodness knows what's on the other side these days --"

Lila cuts off and stares in awe at Jane's mechanism.  "What... does it... do?"

"Security!  In this case...hold on, I'll set it up and show you, now that I need to get her moving anyway.  ...No, there's not an actual mind or gender in this.  It's a she in the same way as boats or natural disasters or temperamental furnaces or what have you, are."

She plugs her cable into the now-finished droid.  "Normally, I'd do this wireless, but I'm being more paranoid than usual because, there's a crashed spaceship that would just love to get its hands on minions like these."

"In this case, I'm loading Minion One here up with the best in 'hold this position' I can make.  Which is, if I dare say so myself, pretty good.  She minds the person whose door she is assigned to keep open, in this case I'm figuring it should probably be yours on account of needing to gather a couple things from your world...and if I'm building a telepresence 'bot, or just having you ride along with VR gear while I travel, we probably don't need to worry so dearly about keeping the door open.  Not that I'm going to not stick her in the doorway regardless, but it's not urgent.  Anyway, she minds the door, and keeps it held open by the simple expedient of having 'shields: yes' in the way of attempts to close it."  The shields, it seems, are by default softly glowing silver-white hexagonal panels about a meter across, based on the idle muttering she does as she tunes the (several redundant) emitters to be best suited to bar Lila's specific door, then Conrad's, then hers.

"Right, that's one set...Well, set...but what I've additionally done is anchored a ward inside the chassis that I can target at specific objects, to reflect force, which I'll apply to the doors.  And that's enforced by the equivalent of...well, I don't think you know what a Faraday cage is, so that it's the Faraday cage to an antimagic field's EMP doesn't help any in explaining.  Anyway.  The project started when some people who hated magic started throwing antimagic nets at my friends; I stole some samples, and basically turned the effect inside out, such that instead of dampening magic, instead of prying apart a void in the Weave, if you're Conrad - wait, do you have Mystra, or - no, no you do not, nevermind then, that's a different world's thing.  Or if you do have a Weave it's someone else's.  But since we're talking about the Weave, let's use a fabric metaphor!  Imagine a blanket of some sort, woven with yarn thick enough that you can see individual threads.  Instead of prying the threads of fabric apart, like an antimagic field does, this grabs hold of the threads that're already running through that area and sort of pins them in place, but that explanation is really, really simplified.  Magic's a lot more...wibbly than that, in my experience.  Still, it keeps antimagic fields from crossing the barrier."

"And then of course it can physically jam itself in the doorway if needed."

There're so many new things here that Lila isn't sure where to start asking questions.

"Do you have another one of these to fly us to the forest?"

"I wouldn't use this design to fly with, unless it was the only tool I had, but yes, I do have transportation fit for at least two, that I can actually fit through the doors."  She eyes something on her screen, and starts another print cycle.  "I think the bike's going to be here in..."

And then her bracer goes bing, and she pulls what someone from a modern world would peg as a sci-fi motorcycle through her door.  It has Tron lines, for all that she immediately starts testing the active camo, because she is an absolute nerd whenever she can get away with it.  "Now, apparently.  This, is kind of like a mechanical horse, but many, many times faster, and yes, it can fly."  It's already hovering, but somehow she conveys the impression that that's not at all what she means by flying.  "Speaking of which, flying is dangerous, so I'm going to give whoever comes with me safety equipment, and it will be used."

This mechanical horse looks great!

Lila holds one hand up to the motorcycle's headlight and strokes its handlebars with her other hand, just like she would a horse.  "I used to watch the birds and wonder what it'd be like to go flying with them.  That was all I could do for a year or so, while Fraddir and I were hiding in the woods and he was studying magic...  Birds and foxes and rabbits and such; my ring of undetectability was such a great friend."

Oh wow. The...headless horse machine does not appear to be magic. And is levitating of its own strength.

"Yes, I would indeed like to have safety equipment. Well, assuming I get to use it. How do you use this thing?"

"...Yeah..."  She seems to be lost in contemplation for a moment.  "Being in hiding for a year, with whatever problem had forced me to it beyond my capabilities to even reasonably affect, would have driven me spare.  I...have to admire your resilience and resolve.

"But speaking of your ring of undetectability, I'm quite curious how it works; do you know?  Is it an illusion, a somebody-else's-problem field, some sort of 'phase off and to the left of reality' thing?  And I'm quite curious if my gear has any way of piercing it.  I'd like to experiment, if you wouldn't mind?"

And assuming that no-one vehemently objects, the party gets to see what this lady's adventuring gear looks like!  It's...something very much not unlike scalemail, perhaps; there's certainly rune-etched steely metal scales in a shape that reminds one of gemstones, woven into a black undersuit.  Her boots have some sort of springy not-a-heel stretching from mid-calf to the ground, for a reason as-yet unknown.  Across her hips sit what's clearly some sort of weapons belt; Conrad can definitely recognize "wands, but weird" (and, oddly, tied to the belt via some sort of integral mechanism, unlike most of the magical items Conrad knows), both can recognize a seemingly bladeless weapon hilt, and there are some other things clipped to her belt that might be recognizable as holstered guns, albeit that one of them has a tank of some sort attached to the frame, as well as a pressure meter, and both scan as having magic involved in their operation, if Conrad has another Detect Magic in him (or Lila has magic-sensing capabilities).  There's also several color-coded magazines of ammunition tucked away, and, oddly enough, a cape that rapidly adjusts shades from a rich purple to a soft blue as it unknots and drapes itself over the back of a chair.

Also she has a tail now, armored in much the same way for all but the slightly bulbous tip (that looks to be some sort of nozzle and three-pronged manipulator), idly weaving back and forth in a way that makes it quite clear that it's somehow under her direct control.  "Fun fact: Any human that came into existence via natural selection instead of divine intervention has the mental hardware necessary to easily adapt to having a tail.  Equally fun fact: that world out there can make artificial limbs to spec and interface them with your flesh, and includes a lot of tail-having people.  So I made myself a tail, though the one I use in daily life is a lot more easily tucked away when I don't need it.  It's pretty useful!"

"As far as the safety equipment I'm going to give you...It's going to be a stripped-down version of, well, this.  Mostly just the undersuit; you don't have to worry about hypersonic bullets crashing the party which is what the scales are for."

"And, you don't use this unless I'm out of the action entirely, but you accelerate with the right-hand trigger, brake - slow down - with the left, and steer by turning the yoke left or right; it helps to lean into the turn if you're going fast enough but isn't precisely necessary, unlike how it would be with a motorcycle that rolls on its wheels.  If it comes to flying...we'll get to that when we get to that.  There's an autopilot, anyway."  She busies herself with putting words into action and setting up the field fabricator to make those basic suits for the two, with slight alterations to the design because they will need to get in and out of them the hard way.

You know, it would probably have been a better idea to give the clearly very high level wizard adventurer more respect from the beginning. It's not a good idea to be rude to high level adventurers. Especially high level adventurers with magic (and non-magic but still magic) items up the wazoo.

Scalemail. That will interfere with his spellcasting. Not a good idea. Though he still wants it. 

"I should tell you that wearing armor as a wizard causes issues with casting spells with somatic components. I haven't been trained in spellcasting in armor."

Tail? Why would you want to make a tail? Tail means tiefling, and tiefling means second-class citizen. Although it's likely that her world doesn't have tieflings. Or discriminates against them, so it's moot. 

Lila tries to dampen her sudden fear at Jane's testing the ring.  "If you want to test it, sure?  It doesn't affect people's minds; it... yes, you could say it phases me out from the world sort of?  It was... really helpful.  Fraddir made it."