Gate. Hopefully less terrifying Gate this time. 

It's an Inquisitorial Chamber, so it's brightly-lit. There are couches. Have a seat!

This has gone from her favourite day to her least favourite day so, so quickly. 

Before they leave, she turns around, hmms for a moment, and fixes the circle.  Now that she's made her point to the Inquisitor, there's no need to be a poor guest, and leaving a hole in their defenses against Void-horror-type bullshit would make her quite a poor guest indeed.

She would offer Naevys a reassuring pat if she thought it would at all be welcome, but she doesn't think so, so she won't do that.

(This room actually isn't technically inside the Academy. Have you seen the kind of thing people summon in here? The door is just a portal. That's why it's possible to do things like Scry or conjure monsters in here.

...But point taken.)

It would help, actually, but she has no way of communicating that.

"There probably isn't Anyone who can hear us in here, and if there is we've probably already lost. You already know far too much. Yes, there are other gods. Not all the heathen 'gods' are creative demons or noble fairies or ancient saints we conveniently forgot about until syncretism time - well, only technically. Yes, there are Evil things as powerful as gods. Yes, we burned all the books about Them. Yes, some magic is Evil. Further questions?"

"...Do the names 'Pharasma' or 'Ao' ring any bells?"

"...All right, that's a bit eldritch even by this conversation's standards. No, they don't. Unless  you're me or one of maybe a dozen other people who've entered the Archives and read about the Far Realms. They aren't just far away like you were, They occupy - entirely different quiddities, interaction is probably impossible - there's nobody left alive who could explain properly. The ancient Church wanted to slay or convert Them. To be clear, they were very far away from succeeding."

"...Considering the sorts of things I know both of them did to their local cosmologies, I certainly don't like them either, but it's worth noting that theirs are the cosmologies I've heard about that most closely reflect the things I think stand out about this one.  Assuming that this isn't an illusion-of-transparency thing and we're not talking about entirely different high-handed deities that are nominally In Charge on some level.  Speaking of deities, though, ah, which ones are officially recognized?"

"...Oh, and: Is there Law/Chaos as a recognizable metaphysical axis, as well as Good/Evil?"

Exciting! It was thought that realities that distant and different would be unknowably alien. She will file this knowledge away for when she wants to see how loud the other dozen people can scream. 

"What things did stand out to you?"

The alien personally disapproves of Greater Horrors from Beyond the Veil. Galora likes her already.

"Questions about Law and Chaos are strictly forbidden even in the very halls of the Holy Citadel itself. Not anywhere else, it's just that once people start arguing about them they don't stop. They're a part of some influential schools of hermeneutics, but the exact meaning isn't clear, any more at least. The Five Gods we recognise are Pelor, god of the sun, justice, and authority; Aphrodite, goddess of love, sex, beauty and lightning; Moradin, god of trade, order, and the forge; Mystra, goddess of the moon, knowledge, and compassion; and Sirenna, goddess of battle, hunting and liberty. Under most theories, Lawful, Chaotic, Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic. Familiar at all?"

"Yes, and strangely so because it's a bit of a pick-and-mix of different pantheons I already know of!  I think.  Actually, now that I'm thinking about it more maybe it's mostly one with a bit of another; I don't precisely recall which deities were which but I'm at least 70% confident that everyone but Aphrodite is 3.5...  Although I've never heard of Aphrodite having lightning in her domains before.  I vaguely expect she picked it up during the Cataclysm, because she's the only one of the pantheon-I-recognize-her-from, here, and previously lightning was held by the chief god of that particular group.  As for what stands out...  Axiomatic Good/Evil, similarly probably-axiomatic Law/Chaos, spell circles, use of specific valuable material components in casting, many spell names and their associated details, most of the gods you've named other than Aphrodite who, I mean, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if she's present in some of the other cosmologies, that pantheon was - popular, let's say, for all that that world didn't evidentiarily have miracles - but I don't associate her with them."

"I suspect I'll recognize a large amount of the Names To Run Away From Really Fast, too, but, ah, I probably shouldn't just start listing them."

"...Oh, and it's so damn obvious to me that I nearly forgot, but the whole 'there was an ancient empire and then it blew up' thing.  That's a commonality, to some degree."

Goddess have You been up to something again. 

"There are, possibly, some passages of ancient works that might make sense in that light. And yes, do not do that. Try not to think about Them too much either. Running wouldn't especially help."

All right, it's very early to say anything either way yet, but this is encouraging so far. The only frustrating thing is that the alien doesn't make sense to her yet, the pressures that shape people in her world aren't quite the same. Using magic to learn about her might upset her, and more importantly is cheating. The not-fun kind.

"Ancient empires do have a habit of doing that. That's actually our whole problem. Exactly how long did your world have widespread powerful magic for?"

"Ooh, that one gets complicated!  Either 'pretty much Yes, though "powerful" might not be quite the right word compared to "strategically useful"' and I don't know if you mean 'in the hands of people', or 'approximately a decade', depending on whether you're counting the outside or inside view and whether you believe Last Tuesdayism to be relevant.  There is a known starting point for the world that is much later than the start of history, if you take the outside view."

All right, she's picking something up. Wizards are the same everywhere.

"Last Tuesdayism* is very relevant. A false history could take arbitrary shapes and therefore tell us nothing about the true future."

Are they going to have to solve the implicit problem that defeated every other civilisation in history more like this year or this millennium, is what she wants to know. 

"I mean, how long have most things in your world relied on magical power instead of labour, inside actual chronological time?"

She has to hand it to the Goddess, She was absolutely right when She said Galora's life would be more interesting this way.

* She's familiar with the idea. Cartesian doubt is more important when demons really can control your sensory inputs sometimes. And she gets the good translation magic.

"Oh, goodness... Well, it depends on your definition, but I'd say that that's definitely true of Villarosa for all of 'live' history, and I'd hazard that over half of the distinct cultures of the planet have definitely reached that point even when using particularly stringent definitions, and - well, active magic is a fact of life pretty much everywhere on the planet.  As contrasted with, I presume you know, the whole 'everything's technically magic' thing.  ...Is there a particular reason you're asking?"

"Oh, I'm trying to keep the world from ending. I keep all my things there, you see." 

If the spread of magic on that scale happened in this woman's lifetime, and it's only been ten years... On balance, she should check first.

"The problem seems to be specifically mortals using magic. The world has no shortage of wonders, believe me." Her gaze grows slightly distant for a moment. "The Old Kingdom lasted centuries at its peak, but it took a long time to develop. And it still ended. Most magical empires don't last that long. My worry is that maybe in five years' time someone in your world has a clever idea and everyone dies. And if your magic spreads that fast here, well... even the gods couldn't stop the last cataclysm. Maybe They do stop most of them."

"...Hmm.  The funny thing is, is that - it's actually pretty dang hard to concentrate enough power to even look like you might cause an actual apocalypse instead of merely causing some damage in, oh, a square mile or so under the absolute worst possible conditions - and people will see that coming, too, and that generally means 'time for adventurers to come in and wreck your shit' if you're being both stupid and evil.  ...Hell, the gnomes don't have that problem and they're practically throwing raw chaos at everything, I'd compare their risk of exploding due to Experimental Stupid to the average wizard's and those explosions have never blown up a mountain or anything.  Even the ones that're trying to.  Mortal magic operates on a mortal scale, and if you're norming to me, well, I'm an outlier - twice over, actually - and should not be counted."

"There's also a fairly basic and effective 'things exploding' suppressant."

"...If anything, I'd say that probably the larger overall threat surface would be Void-derived cognitohazards, except that I panicked over that once already and worked out that they're self-containing.  You can't make a thing that explodes someone's mind through Void magic without first exploding yourself with it and then the spell's gone so they won't explode even though you did, sort of thing."

"Someone with subtlety and patience could be a problem with Void-based fuckery, but they're not going to destroy the world or turn random people into gibbering cultists of Outer Gods.  I think you're already equipped to handle that threat profile."

That is in fact a completely terrifying set of answers. But she's never really seen the point of being terrified, it's not like it helps. 

She still doesn't know enough to steer this conversation the right way, but who else would do a better job? She can imagine what the Council would say, and then the world would end.

Her turn!

"Power? It doesn't take a lot of power. You only have to make one little joke to a king the wrong way, and you lose your head, or start a whole war. Outside our lands, anyway. Magic works the same way. Did you know, there's a First-Circle Spell that can probably kill most of a country under exactly the right conditions? I might tell you about it if the two of us get along well enough."

She turns and kicks her feet up on the couch. 

"Anyway, we burnt every copy that we know of in holy fire. Your world is only ten years old. Someone could discover that Spell tomorrow. Unless you're sure you designed your magic so well a thousand people cleverer than you could never find a flaw? We're already trying to reach your plane and warn them, of course, but we might well be too late by the time we do."

How is she reacting to all this, exactly?

"Heroes putting down Dark Lords works most of the time. What happens when once every few hundred years you get someone like Acererak or Lum or gods help you the Nameless Queen, and the world's heroes die in agony before they ever get to meet in a tavern?"

(The translation Spell is having to reach pretty far to do something with this reference to the Tragedy of Baron Lum, a play reconstructed, in the time of the Old Kingdom, from papyrus fragments found under a sheet of glass in the Kharidian Desert several dozen miles wide, and recently rediscovered.)

"That's not even the whole problem. Evil doesn't always start from Evil. We obviously don't know exactly how ancient kingdoms fell, but - the Doom of Adaveiga, the old books say, started as some kind of national defence programme. They got the magic slightly wrong, we think, and I'd invite you to write that on ten million tombstones if there were anything left to bury. There's really not much left even in the darkest dungeons, which is saying something."

Old High Draconic does have a word for "cognitohazard", which is concerning once you think about it. Dragons aren't very perturbable creatures. 

"And unfortunately here there are some things more resistant to - cognitohazards - than, for example, most peasants. Even normal Spells would drive most people mad to comprehend. And wizards are allowed to use those!" 

(She winks at Naevys, who is sitting very still and trying not to breathe and hoping everyone's forgotten she's there.)

"So maybe your magic is safe where ours isn't. Maybe it's even safe in combination with ours. Maybe both worlds will be just fine. Or maybe you're as clever as you look and you're worried too."

"...I agree with you that you have reason to be concerned.  And - were I in your position, I would most definitely share it.

"However.

"It is my magic.  It will not be used to cause an apocalypse because I won't fucking let it."  And it is in this moment that it becomes clear why she did describe herself as 'maybe a creator god, if you squint really hard' - because the world around her ripples with the weight of her words, as the Twisting Nether itself flares behind her eyes.

"But that would not reassure me, in your shoes.  So let me argue, instead, that the priorities of the force that actually created the world in question, are...

"...It would not be a happily ever after, at the end, if three years later, the world ended in a ball of nuclear fire.  I did not ask for a world with apocalypse behind every blind corner.  I have enough trust in the people involved to believe that I didn't get one."