She attempts to sit gracefully on the ground, but kind of half collapses instead, both knees to one side and her free hand on the ground to steady her.

"Originally, Morrow; most recently, Reikos, although I'm fairly sure we'd been pushed over the border into Therunin. I was attempting to reach civilisation after being separated from my unit. I didn't intend to come here at all, I think I fell through a regio portal. Is this an Autumn pocket or something else?"

She is too exhausted to come up with any particularly convincing lies; it might be incomplete, but none of it is a deliberate falsehood.

He does not know any of those place names. Nor does he know what a 'regio' or an 'Autumn pocket' is. But neither is it a lie, so either she has some sort of divination-blocking item, is very good at concealing her own thoughts from herself, or is deluded. Or some combination from the above. He clearly can't handle this on his own. Likely the wizards will know what she's talking about.

"I'll be back in a few minutes." Before he goes, he casts See Invisibility.

There are no invisible entities in the cell.

He leaves the dungeon and asks whether someone has Share Language and Lesser Geas or Geas prepared. Conradia does, so he fetches her, and explains the current situation along the way. A few more people go with them, but they remain outside the dungeon.

The woman that comes back with him is visibly older, but not by much. Whereas Manus wore a simple and ergonomic tunic and pants, Conradia appears with wizard robes that would shine brightly to Detect Magic, as well as a bunch of other magic items. She has some sort of bluish cape or cloak trailing behind her, and there's something like a leather strap or circlet around her forehead that's studded with gemstones and metal pieces.

Her face is neutral, and it doesn't have that undercurrent of vigilance and concealed aggression that Manus has.

"Hello, Allegra. My colleague has explained things to me. My thought is that you somehow came here through another plane, though a Plane Shift like effect," she says in Imperial. She explains like she was giving a college lecture.

"I'm keen to talk to you more, but I would like to cast a spell similar to what my colleague used to understand and speak to you, so that you'll be able to speak our language. It's a touch range spell, so you'll need to stick your hand out through the bars." She, as a seventh-circle wizard and important person, has Permanent Tongues on her, but most of the five hundred or so people in the Bronze Orchard don't. 

Allegra resignedly struggles to her feet, trying to retain what scraps of dignity she can muster, and presents a hand through the bars.

At actually being touched, she startles and just about manages not to snatch her hand back, her muscles tensing like it took a considerable effort of will; like she doesn't touch anyone at all very often, like it's uncomfortably intimate; she doesn't seem to have expected to actually be touched, just for the caster to come close enough that she could in principle touch her.

She doesn't bother saying anything until this is done, assuming that it's necessary for the new person to understand her, even if she can understand what they're saying. She's also carefully watching and listening to how the spell is cast, like she might be able to tell something about it from how it's done.

"Thank you," she says after the spell is cast, as much to try it out as anything else. She stays on her feet, swaying slightly.

It takes her three seconds to cast Share Language. She incants, though not in Imperial. Her right hand makes a few sweeping gestures, and then lands gently on Allegra's hand to place the spell.

Conradia debated whether to give her Abyssal or Taldane. Taldane is the lingua franca of the Inner Sea – it's sometimes called Common for a reason. But they don't speak Taldane in here. They speak Abyssal. It's a requirement for initiates. She decided to give her Abyssal and not Taldane. Were she to try and escape, she would only be able to speak Abyssal. Which would be highly suspicious, given that Abyssal is the language of demons.

Any member of the Bronze Orchard can leave at any time, but she isn't one, and she hasn't been proven not to be a threat or of strategic value. This Citadel Guard of hers might want her back. At the same time, it behooves them to treat her with decency and not like how they normally treat prisoners, in the case the Citadel Guard comes to fetch her.

"This spell will give you the facility to speak and understand our language, as well as read and write in it. It only lasts twenty-four hours, however."

She makes a slight smile. "Would you like some food? We have beef stew. We can get water for you as well." She really seems like she needs it. From the way Allegra is swaying, she looks like she's about to faint.

It's always stew of some sort: that's the only thing the Cauldrons of Plenty can make. It took her weeks of research to figure out how to alter the cauldrons' enchantments to produce other types of stews or soups. Beef stew was Conrad's favorite, so when He made the cauldrons in His mortal life, He made all of them produce only that. Fortunately, her alteration was not ruled as heretical or sacrilegious by Rendon.

"Sadly, we will have to ask you more questions before we let you out, although we will let you eat and drink before that. Actually, given that we might be here a while, I think I'll get some food for myself as well."

"I would..." she starts, and startles a bit at how the words actually sound; she hasn't been the target of something like Share Language before, and certainly not with quite such an alien language, considerably different from whatever the first guard was speaking. It would be fascinating, if she had the spare capacity to think about it much right now.

"Yes, food and water, please," she continues, a little hesitant about word choice in the very unfamiliar language. "Many apologies for accidentally trespassing in your domain, your suspicions and questions are entirely reasonable and I intend to cooperate fully." She wonders vaguely about sitting down again, but actually deciding on a position seems like a lot of effort; once it seems clear nobody is about to react suddenly, she does reach out gently and steady herself on the bars.

Manus looks to Conradia, and she nods. He leaves. 

She runs a hand through her hair unhurriedly. She walks over to a desk and pulls out a map from a drawer. It's a map of Golarion.

"My colleague will get us food and water. By any chance, could you recognize either your place of birth or country that employs you here?" She doesn't expect her to be able to, if her hypothesis over Plane Shifting was correct. Neither has she heard of any of the place names she's talked about. It pays to do you due diligence, though.

"I would also like to ask you what an 'Autumn pocket' or 'regio portal' are. They sound like terms of magic? And it also sounds like it was the latter that brought you here. Could you tell me what those are? Oh, and 'Spring rituals' too. You said that working on those was your job in the Citadel Guard." The Plane Shift hypothesis is supported by the fact that, if such things existed on Golarion, she would have heard about them even if they were only tangentially related to magic. She doesn't think Allegra is talking about the seasons here, although there does exist some magic that's dependent on the seasons.

Allegra dutifully studies the map. It's getting a bit hard to focus her eyes on things. It's pretty clearly after a while of carefully tracing the coastlines that there's nothing that matches the map of the Bay of Catazar that she's familiar with.

"No... no lines that match... this one could draw you a local map with tools? Whole world is not mapped by us, we control land from ice to desert around a great bay, but not back to temperate lands again, not joining side to side; this could be across the ocean.

This map is bigger than any pocket unless the places are very small. Magic - magic we know, not magic by this word - comes in seasons and times of day? Spring summer autumn winter day night. Autumn is most likely to have - stone buildings, cities, well built dungeons. Spring is - growth, life, healing, decay. Regio is - a place of power? Portal is - there is a proper word for portal, so probably just that - usually between our world and a pocket, but can exit again in another place.

Rituals, rituals are, magic that consumes power, material power? We condense it into crystals, use those, but other sources can work. I know several Spring rituals, for healing, for corpse disposal. We cast them together; I can cast some alone, not as efficient."

She is very unfamiliar with this system of magic! She is very excited by this confirmation. Her face doesn't show it, though. She merely says, "I see," and nods, as if it was something she had heard before and merely needed prompting to remember. The way she speaks implies that she is fully truthful and that Conradia should be less initially doubtful of what she says, or that she's a very good and Charismatic liar. There's an easy way to test that.

She incants and thrusts a hand toward Allegra, but doesn't touch her. Detect Thoughts. Aside from reading her surface thoughts, it will also tell her how Intelligent Allegra is. Unless she makes her Will save successfully, she wouldn't be able to notice the spell's probing effect, although the casting is noticeable.

"I'm casting a divination spell on you," she says, technically not lying. "I want to know what magical items you have, if any, and what properties they have. You were holding a rod earlier?"

There is a permanent Mage's Private Sanctum placed on the entire headquarters, which blocks many Detect-type spells, but the dungeon is excluded from its area. She rarely casts Detect Thoughts anymore, now that she's no longer working for Cheliax.

"It's not an - enchanted item? It's a - focus, for spells. I don't have any enchanted or - wondrous? - items."

Allegra reflexively makes a will save, without understanding that she's doing so, but fails it. Her intelligence is 18.

when is the stew coming... hope it's not too spicy... what is 'hallowed' in this language anyway, none of these fit... is it going to look worse if I sit down or if I collapse...

Manus enters with a large pot as well as bowls and cutlery. He's strong enough that he can hold the pot with one hand. He sets it a little before the bars, and sets down three bowls and cups. He takes out square cushions and puts one into Allegra's cell through the bars. He makes a show of ladling the stew into the bowls from the same pot and cutting the loaf of bread in front of her, placing each slice alternately on each plate. He doesn't want her to think they want to poison her.

He pours water from a pitcher into the cups, and then passes them through the bars. He sets the two cushions near Allegra, about a meter away, and sits cross-legged on it.

"Feel free to eat."

Conradia does the same and sits down.

She complains about the beef stew, but it's actually very good. It's just tiring to eat the same thing every day. And not spicy at all, so that's good for Allegra. It took Conrad a lot of work to finagle the enchantment to make it flavorful – normally, Create Food and Water makes edible but bland food.

"Hm, I see. Do sit down, you look tired," she offers. She's a skilled enough wizard that she can talk normally even while focusing on a spell, although it takes effort. Hallowed? Does she mean the spell Hallow? But no, if she meant that, Abyssal has a word for it. She's struggling to peer through the links of meaning there. And an Intelligence of 18! She's surprised she doesn't have any wondrous items on her. An initiate with that level of Intelligence would be fast-tracked through the wizard curriculum immediately.

She doesn't seem like she's lying about not having any items save for her rod, which she says she uses as a focus, though she plans on checking that with Detect Magic later.

She sighs. "I believe you now when you said that you came here on accident from another plane with different magic. I'll ask you more questions about how your world's magic works, but I think it would be good if we explained where exactly you have ended up." She'll let the inquisitor explain – she's known Conrad from before He ascended, but he's the one who was ordained and went through seminary. She looks at him, and he nods.

Manus speaks as if rehearsed from memory. His tone, while not hostile, sounds profoundly unamused with the current situation.

"You are currently inside the Bronze Orchard, which is the church headquarters of Conrad, the Contender, the Lord of Staff and Sword. He is the god the two of us worship. I am someone ordained by Him to protect the interests of the church – an inquisitor. We share the Bronze Orchard with the worshippers of Damian, the Fragrant Petal, the Lord of Flowers and Allures. They are ascended mortals, and our churches are allied and interconnected, since They were lovers in Their mortal life, and continue to be lovers today.

The Bronze Orchard is located deep within a mountain, and is hermetically sealed from the outside world. There is no way in or out save for teleportation, and unwanted visitors who try to teleport in are redirected by the protections laid on this place into this cell which you are currently in right now. This is why I was initially hostile towards you. I had interpreted you to be an attacker or spy." Which, to be clear, he's not entirely sold she isn't, even if Conradia might be humoring her. And it's not like he's going to apologize for potentially having attacked her – he has no obligations to her.

He asks questions more forcefully than Conradia, and generally has a more imposing demeanor, despite the fact that Conradia is an order of magnitude stronger than him, and could probably take on a dozen of him in combat. 

"What is your alignment? I tried to divine it, but didn't get a result. Are you attempting to conceal it? Don't lie, my god's blessing allows me to tell. Or is it that you are too weak to show up to it?" 

Okay, so they're carefully showing the food isn't poisoned. Probably not worth trying to subtly cast Purify on it then, they look like they are paying attention. Cushion clearly means sit down before you fall down, so she does, lowering herself gently using the bars instead of almost falling over this time; she's not quite flexible enough to sit neatly cross-legged, especially not this tired out, but just generally she is not very happy sitting on a hard flat floor.

Food, blissful food, must remember to eat it very slowly even though it tastes so good, sip the water gently rather than gulping it down.

She tries very hard to pay attention to the explanation even though the food is taking up almost all of her concentration. Ugh, gods. Titles sound a lot like Eternals in a funny hat, ascended mortals could just mean they ate them or could be they actually usurped another one's position. All sounds a bit Suranni for comfort, but they didn't seem abjectly disgusted with magic, so there's that.

What the shit is an alignment. Does the language have anything to say about this. Okay, it does, it's kind of like dedication but weird; she reckons that 'chaotic' is a shoo-in and 'evil' is, uh, probably on the cards (a woman in a similar uniform in the woods, their throat slit by the knife she carries), but that doesn't sound like the safest thing to admit to these nice people?

"I don't know how strong you need to be to show up to it. I'm only second rank in Spring? I'm not concealing it on purpose, I know of items and potions that probably could but I'm not bound to any or have taken any, that I know of."

Second rank in Spring? If he extrapolates rank to mean circle, then she would indeed be too weak to show up to it. You usually need to be at least third-circle to reliably show up to alignment detection spells.

Discern Lies says she isn't lying, and Conradia would have told him if she saw there was some effect that would have concealed it, or if Detect Thoughts didn't go through.

His face relaxes, but he maintains his sharp gaze. He starts to eat, and lets Conradia explain what alignment is.

Conradia wipes her lips with a napkin and explains.

"In our world, when we die, Pharasma – the goddess of fate and death, and also the creator of the universe – judges each mortal based on the actions they did in life, as well as their outlook on life and philosophy and their intentions when acting. There are two axes which she considers: Good and Evil, and Chaos and Law.

Good represents altruism, charity, treating other people as nice as you would treat yourself, taking other people's preferences into account. Evil represents prioritizing your own welfare, taking only your own preferences into account, and selfishness.

Chaos represents refusing to be bound or fettered, preferring options that retain option value, refraining from constraining your future self, and not placing value on precedent. Law represents preferring stricture and regulation, and  permitting your current self from making binding decisions that constrain you in the future.

A person who is balanced between the two poles on an axis, or, more likely, is indifferent to either pole or hasn't done enough to tip the scales in one direction, is said to be Neutral on that axis. Each person is assessed on each axis separately, thus creating nine separate alignments. Which alignment we are judged to be determines which afterlife we go to when we die. We have divination spells that detect alignments, but only for people who are strong enough. This is both because stronger people have stronger, and hence easier to detect, alignment auras, but also because weak people affect the world very little, and so are more likely to be True Neutral. True Neutral people do not detect to alignment spells, except for See Alignment tuned specifically to detect it. For example, babies which die, either from abortion or miscarriage, sort True Neutral, having done nothing in the world yet, and the same is true for very young children.

That's not all that these concepts are, but they're close. Pharasma's concepts roughly correspond to our mortal conceptions, but not exactly. She is an ancient gods, and ancient gods, as a rule, do not think like mortals. Ascended mortals don't either, being that they are gods now, but they retain parts of their mortal selves that lets them more easily relate and talk to us.

As for us, our gods are demon lords, and so are Chaotic Evil. Most of us here are." Ha. 'Nice people'. Oh, Allegra. She has to stop herself from smiling. If she is Chaotic Evil...perhaps she might be both worthy and willing to join. Perhaps it was Conrad's divine intervention that led her here.

She does not put special emphasis on her penultimate statement, and continues eating.

Great. Lovely. So this is a Suranni setup, but she's managed to get herself caught by the fucking Hand of Dumon.

Oh well, at least she has got a good meal before dying stupidly in one of their chaotic schemes. And maybe she can be useful to them, if their wider society has been trying to keep magic from them.

They've clearly got some weird language thing going on but that could be a specific Boon; they already know detect magic so they've got the basics; it's unlikely they have everything in Imperial Lore and she has the background to re-derive most of it if they'll let her.

"I suppose... I should be working out how to be... useful to you, then. Is there anything else you want to tell me to... make that more likely?"

A little food and she's really crashing now, her digestive system would like the rest of her energy to start making use of it. Just got to persuade them not to get bored with her too quickly first...

What's a Suranni? She is pretty sure she's not a part of the Hand of Dumon. Whatever it is, it seems that for her, it's a real pain to deal with. And Imperial Lore...Conradia thinks that that's what they think of as magic, or, at least, the manner by which magic is performed.

She smiles. The way Allegra would be most useful to them is for her to tell them what she knows. She's conducted interrogations like that, where she asks specific sets of leading questions to induce someone to think about something specific, then read their thoughts as their memories surface. Still, the best way to get someone to help you is to get them on your side.

"I have been reading your mind for the past few minutes," she says calmly. "We are not Suranni, and we are not the Hand of Dumon. I don't know what exactly you mean by those, but I was able to get a little information based on your thoughts about them. They seem similar to us, but I'm quite sure we don't worship the same god.

And we are not against magic! My god, Conrad, has Magic as one of His domains, and he favors those with both martial and magical ability.

Normally, we would only permit someone into the headquarters if we thought that they were a worthy initiate. That means being aligned with the goals of Conrad – or Damian, although you'll have to talk to the Damianites for that one. He is concerned with...power, and growing, and becoming stronger, and not permitting yourself to be bound. That's a very rough summary. I will seek the leave of the High Priest to see whether you could be treated as though you were an initiate, with the status, privileges, and responsibilities that that entails.

We will ask you to teach us more about your world's magic, and see if it can be replicated here.

All initiates are permitted to leave the Bronze Garden and renounce Conrad or Damian at any time, but I'm unsure whether the same privilege would be afforded to you. Probably yes, despite the circumstances, given that Conrad values...hm...the ability to exit situations. Although if you do do this, we would not be able to see if we could return you to your home plane, if you do wish to return – I'm not sure that you do – and we would have to erase your memory of being here. We have a spell that can remove the episodic memories of someone in a specified period. If you do wish to leave, we will remove all your memories from the time you arrived here up to now, and then Teleport you to a city of your choosing no more than nine hundred miles away. Although, such an option being available to you does not necessarily mean that it would be wise for you to take it – you don't even speak any of our world's languages."

She takes a sip of water. She hasn't dismissed Detect Thoughts yet – her thoughts on this topic would be just as important as what she actually says, even though she knows now that her mind is being observed.

They're what?

No. That's not even a thing. It violates the fundamental limits of magic. They're just lying about not knowing her geography and have made reasonable inferences. If they know the Suranni then they know what they look like, even if they're not them.

It's also clear they know Urizeni, that pitch sounds suspiciously tailored to her. Or at least the Empire as a whole, some people would be stubborn about the god thing but 'play along and we'll make you stronger and by the way we value freedom' would be a good pitch to most Imperials that weren't too religious.

"Those sound - like my concerns. But of course I'd say that." 

I was running away anyway, she considers and then doesn't say. Even if they claim to like freedom there's such a thing as too much rebelliousness. And she has no doubt they could make her consent to the memory alterations if they wanted to. In fact, now she's doing an internal inventory of her physical state to see if she can spot a previous discontinuity...

She nods her head sagely and closes her eyes.

"Hm, you're doubtful that mindreading spells exist. My spell is called Detect Thoughts, and it's a second-circle spell. It's not very difficult in the grand scheme of things."

She should probably invoke more things that she thought about.

"What is Urizeni? Hm, I can tell that's a name, but I can't tell what it's a name of. A place? A god? An ethnicity? Our church will make you stronger – that's our whole purpose, but I can ask the Damianites to assume custody of you if it's pleasure or sensual experience that you desire instead."

She frowns slightly, and her expression is wistful. "I am sympathetic to your position. Decades ago, I too was a formally trained soldier-wizard, although in my case I was a part of Her Majesty Abrogail Thrune's legions, deployed to the Worldwound. She rules Cheliax.

I defected from them and turned to Conrad's side. Conrad and Damian were also the same as me, although they did not formally defect – they fulfilled their entire term of service before embarking on the path that would lead them to apotheosis. Trust me when I say that it would be very out of character for us to impede someone like you, whose goal is to run away to lead a freer life." She would say that it's very likely to be heretical, but she's not going to make pronouncements as to what's heretical or not while there's an inquisitor sitting beside her.

Okay, they clearly want her to play along with the thoughts thing, let's play along with the thoughts thing. Maybe she should experiment like a good Urizeni? If you can hear this, I'm thinking of a purple monkey washing dishes.

"Urizen is the nation I'm from. The Citadel Guard is their army."

She's kind of tempted by Damian to be honest, she does like a good sensual experience and she has a pretty broad horizon on what that means, after the Druj. Being stronger is good for her survival chances but sounds like a lot of hard work. She doesn't want to cause any trouble and she is so not in any state to make complex important decisions right now. It's all sounding pretty encouraging as 'running into a dungeon by accident' goes. Maybe they'll let her sleep first.

What should she say. Well, if they're reading her mind, she doesn't have to say anything, right? Clearly they've already got all that and she can save her mouth for stew. More stew, mmmm.

She chuckles.

"I can hear that, yes. Well, not 'hear' – reading thoughts is a sense unlike any of the other senses. You're thinking of a purple monkey washing dishes. Although you must be formally accepted by one church in order to be in here at all, under normal circumstances, at least, there's no issue with interacting or working with members of the other church. We regularly train with them, and share many of our facilities with each other. There are cases of people formally switching which church they belong to, but that has only happened a few times in our history. 

If you want to sleep, we can get you a blanket. I'll need to ask the High Priest, Rendon, how this situation ought to be handled anyway. And yes, you don't have to say anything. So long as you think it, I can hear it." She laughs.

The Damianites would likely want one of their own to talk to her too, to see what she's like. She'll ask Rendon about that too.

Okay so that's a thing. That's just a thing now. There is no point frantically worrying about how that is a thing, it's just a thing. There is also no point cringing and grovelling in apology for thinking rude and flippant things earlier, terrified fawning child in the corner there, stop that at once, it's undignified (and you know what happens if you're undignified...).

She really wants to finish this stew very carefully and then pass out and yes a blanket lovely, no complaining, it's better than the forest floor (and much better than passing out shacked to the wall, ugh didn't she get rid of most of those memories for a reason).

She deliberately thinks about how she will be very useful and accidentally thinks about how she's now mostly sure enough they won't randomly kill her in her sleep or at least there's nothing else she can do about it.

Allegra's thoughts are getting distinctly less coherent as she lets herself actually believe she can stop desperately holding it together for a bit, at least to sleep and get a bit sharper in the morning, hopefully. 

"It seems as though this is a good place to end as any. We'll get a blanket for you. You can choose to eat the remaining stew in the pot – we brought extra in the case you wanted to eat more, or you can just leave it there."

Conradia looks away and dismisses Detect Thoughts. Allegra's thoughts are a little too similar to her young self's thoughts, being a wizard student in Cheliax. She feels for her, but, of course, she shouldn't. Allegra is not a part of the church, and she must treat her as such.

She leaves and goes to consult Rendon about what they ought to do with her.