"So, I am not an alchemist? There's particles of the four elements, which are at least plausibly the smallest unit of elemental matter. Low-energy experimentation can't break them down, and high-energy experimentation is probably illegal. Most substances are not actually single-element substances unless you're on the relevant Elemental Plane. Even the Air and Water and Earth samples I've shown you all have some Fire in them, which is why they're not freezing to the touch. Each element depends on its respective field to exist, and these fields also enable the relevant state of matter. For instance, in the absence of an Earth field, Water wouldn't freeze solid no matter how cold it got. It's difficult to fully suppress an elemental field, but in outer space away from Suaal they get increasingly weak. I can put up some textbook pages on the projector if you like?"

…this sure seems to be a set of claims that really do not match up with chemistry as dath ilan and Golarion know it.

"And these four elements can compose into bodies like mine or that of your colleagues? Do you know the details of how that works?"

Bioalchemy is at least more familiar territory than the elemental fields! Griffie pulls up a textbook on the projector (the text of which is not actually readable to Keltham), finds some diagrams, and starts explaining bioalchemy. It's like some weird twisted parody of the chemistry Keltham is familiar with, as if someone was inspired by dath ilani biochemistry when designing their four-element system, but ultimately more committed to system consistency than to sticking close to normal-atoms chemistry. There are known experiments Griffie can cite regarding eir claims, and they have a DNA-analogue which Griffie is aware of the function of.

The particles have electrical charges, but nobody seems to know of charge-carrier particles, which plausibly makes sense for them not to have figured out? The interactions are weird, and really don't fit with the atoms Keltham is used to. Also, they probably won't want him to teach them the scientific method and they definitely won't want his chemistry knowledge.

He glances at his body, which looks deceptively normal. (Aside from the fakeness.)

"Tell me about the godwar."

"So. Gods gain strength from quintessence of their types. Quintessence comes from beings doing stuff. Strength can be used to cause beings to do stuff. If you're on the Material Plane, this forms a feedback loop. You start existing, you get some mortals and make them more you-ish and help or force them to do stuff that makes you exist more, you use that to create or take some more beings which get you more power. And you're an idealist, you believe in what you do. You want everyone to cower under your adamantine fist, or enjoy delicious rice products with their families, or have access to libraries, or whatnot."

"So you notice that the people who are cowering under that guy's adamantine fist are not getting to enjoy rice products with their families! You don't like that! And she's noticed that the people enjoying rice products with their families are not cowering under her adamantine fist, and she doesn't like that either! And you both go and form coalitions, and try to fight with the others, and work on getting more powerful, and by the end of it … the guy who took her empire has equipped all his infantry with swords that let them manipulate time, you and your friends have done the same, he's using truth-value-manipulating magic to make your plans not happen, you're making custom truth values so that it doesn't work, he destroys the possibility for your faction's color to weaken you a bit, you hit back at a concept that might be structurally important that he hasn't reinforced too much, Aiquzall is not really holding up to the strain and pieces are flying."

"And then you find yourself in the metaphorical ashes, holding weapons you don't really understand, one step away from returning to your former power, and your allies and enemies and such are all there too. And you look around, and go 'do we really want to do this again?', and you don't."

"…I probably shouldn't have told that in second-person, should I. Uh, that level of detail isn't known, but the weapons I mentioned all were a thing and all three of those possibilities are things that gods do want."

"When you say 'custom truth values', do you refer to points in the space between true and false?"

This doesn't really fit with the claim Griffith is making, but it's also the sane and sense-making answer, so he's going to check.

"I do not. The, uh, good news is that these custom values were used pretty sparingly and have been illegal for the past, well." Ey makes a gesture that's plausibly analogous to air quotes. "'Thirty thousand years.' Well, actually, twenty-nine thousand five hundred twenty-four years, eighty-two days, six hours, forty-one minutes, and twenty-nine seconds. Except it probably wasn't actually illegal in the first seconds per se? Just … that's how long it's been since the godwar. According to ancient empires thousands of years ago, that is also how long it was before the godwar. In our earliest records, that is also how long it was before the godwar, and it just took the gods a really, really long time to clean up. History compresses. We're not really sure if this is a problem or not."

He will start by engaging with the topic that is not custom truth values, what the flamingnoodles. "That is, indeed, not how time is supposed to work."

And now, moving on to … this. "Explain everything about 'custom truth values', please."

"I haven't interacted with them, just, uh, been exploited in a way that would have failed if I had been using them. At the time I learned about them I didn't have the clearance for too many details. I … probably formally don't have more clearance now, honestly. I can tell you that they were typically created as single-use things? I'll ask for more information, we'll see what we can get."

"I'd say that throwaway custom truth values are too absurd to be believable, but if they're offscreen like this maybe there will be consequences downstream of them I have to deal with and such, so I don't even get to totally dismiss them."

"I guess it's fair that you don't trust my sources here as much as I do. I will admit to not actually having seen samples of these." Also, why is Keltham using a shadow puppets metaphor instead of saying 'offstage' like makes sense for someone with his delusions?

"Thank you for the information. I'll share my perspective now."

"I was recently in a world called Golarion, where I screwed things up and gave an tyrant god's slaves a bunch of information I wouldn't have wanted them to have had I known what they wanted it for. Eventually I figured it out and got to work on solving my mistake, but ultimately concluded that I'd need to augment myself to the point of plausible loss of continuity of identity to have a decent chance. I was hoping that if I did that, and actually I was worried about fake problems and not real ones, some entity would wake me up somewhere else, where I didn't have inaccurate beliefs about the stakes and my interpersonal life was less of a mess."

"And, well, here I am, and I can intuitively tell that all this is fake though it's a bit obtrusive, and your culture seems more advanced in terms of reasoning than the one I was in, and you certainly aren't going to try to push me to teach you physics and alchemy and technology dependent on those because they're clearly not the same here! And the threat I'm supposed to care about is just a bunch of deaths, not a bunch of torture and slavery! So, whoever put us here is clearly cooperating with me somewhat, and I in turn will cooperate with the story where I prevent some deaths if it doesn't ask too much of me, even if I don't think the consequences of the, what, handful of people here who actually exist all being sent off to unfamiliar and weird places is actually that dire compared to last time."

"That is an interesting perspective, and not what we expected. I'm so sorry to hear that that happened, it sounds deeply unpleasant. You're correct that we wouldn't consider getting information from you on exotic-matter alchemy and alternate physics a high priority. Our current plan is to get you fully informed of our situation and see if you have ideas, but you don't have to."

Griffie develops an awkward expression. "Unfortunately, we aren't willing to immediately let you leave. You're in violation of interworld import laws we don't want to be prosecuted for breaking, and the information we thought an Aiquzall refugee would need to orient is somewhat classified. If we disguise your soul and you credibly promise secrecy or agree to memory redaction we can let you go. We regret this planning error on our part, we assumed you'd be more willing to trust us than you are."

"I would prefer not to be held in captivity at all."

"A very reasonable preference. If there's anything that would make this less awful, please let us know. We can also arrange for you to be unconscious until a means of disguising your soul has been readied, if it's not possible to make this easier on you."

The place has a tyrant god, and these people are trying to prevent the end of the world, and they're also in some ways acting as friends to him. This is a potential problem.

"I'll think about what information I want to share. If it wouldn't increase the costs of memory redaction should we go that route, I would like you to summarize the current situation."

Griffie sighs. "If we go that route we're paying for an expensive enough version that a few more secrets, at least of this grade, don't matter."

"Charon is winning. He's manipulated my party, specifically, into fulfilling multiple prophecies, both secretly and overtly violating interplanar law as needed to do so. And sometimes doing stuff that predates interplanar law, he's cursed all souls to age to death and pretends it's natural. In the absence of intervention, we don't know how long there is left, but going by intuition maybe a year to a decade. We'd like to stop him. Our current strategy can, ah, best be described as flailing for resources and information. And here you are, a bundle of information. …we aren't going to force it out of your head, don't worry."

"Why isn't Pharasma doing anything?"

"Would you be willing to tell us about this 'Pharasma'?"

"Built the universe and the alignment system and treats the whole place like a way to sort souls to an 'appropriate' deity. With some absurd inhuman definition of appropriate. Children, sent to planes of torture, for being at the wrong end of a spell or set up to fall by everyone around them. From what I've heard, possibly designed aging herself, so that people would see being forced into someone's 'afterlife' as less of a bad thing. And maintains the whole awful structure from the outer gods. She could stop it, she just won't. Soul-eaters raid her precious system, and so those who are 'Neutral Evil' get a choice between the soul-eaters and the torture planes. She could offer that choice to anyone destined for a torture plane, she just doesn't."

"That's not a role anyone's playing here. Axis, the Plane of Law, is maintaining an order and preventing outer god incursions, both hostile and plausibly-friendly, but for all their talk they don't own the world. Nobody here does. They just try to figure out what the balance of powers would be anyway and try to get there with as little chaos and conflict as possible."

"And your goals here, to be specific, are?"

"Defeat Charon. Actually defeat him. No more 'rights' to shred someone's soul as long as he does it slowly enough and destroy means of immortality he doesn't like, no chopping bits off every soul as they detach from the body, actually uncovering the full extent of his machinations and stopping them. Which, uh, is almost certainly going to involve returning to open godwar, whether we make the first strike or not. And at that point, who can say for sure what'll happen? Obviously we'd like a full victory for the Upper Planes. I'm theoretically partial to Heaven but, really, every archon would be thrilled by an azata victory and vice versa."