Fommok Madinah. Some people don't speak Ignan but everyone Fe-Anar's been interacting with recently has Tongues and so no excuse. And even if you were to insist on translating it, 'City of Brass' is a horrendous one, and the popular supposed close-translation, 'Devouring City', hardly better. It's Fommock with an ɤ, not an ɤ̞ -

- for anything resembling a planar ship that could sail the Maelstrom, keeping an eye out for quintuple-Wish-sequence sellers along the way.

Their path crosses the form of what appears to be an old woman in white, wearing something like a blindfold made of old and rusted metal, leaning against a brass post of a great brass building.

As the two planar travelers pass her, she lifts her head, and if not for the rusted blindfold her gaze would point at Fe-Anar.

"You will not find in this city what you are seeking here," says she in Ignan.

"What," Fe-Anar says automatically, "anything I think of seeking?"

Possibly a slight trace of a smile flickers on the old woman's lips. "I spoke of what you are seeking. Not of what you have sought or will seek."

"Right," says Fe-Anar, slightly disappointed as this implies much less power to manipulate the markets of the City of Brass. "Who are you and why should we care what you say?"

"To you, I will seem at first like a strange entity who knows too much.  Your business is secret, and you will wonder if I know even more.  I will say that I know you mean to buy thirty Wishes, and you'll think that I could have guessed this by tracing the paths of the six travelers who came to this city before.  I will say that I know you are looking for a ship that can sail the Maelstrom, and you will think that anyone who was spying on your current trip could have learned this.  It will still concern you, and so you will care what I say."

"Well, then, say it, we're in a hurry."

"You're looking for a ship that can sail beyond the Maelstrom into the primordial chaos that lies outside Creation.  And you are not seeking to do this only from curiosity or an exploratory spirit or from chafing under Pharasma's restrictions.  You fear that Pharasma's Creation might end, for reasons ultimately springing from that same anomaly which enabled you to obtain so many diamonds; and you are trying to live on, to ensure that something born of Creation survives."

All right, he's paying attention. But he's annoyed about it.

Ione is a lot more concerned than that, terrified even.  Nefreti didn't warn her about this and Ione does know, by this point, in a general sort of way, that things have gone off-track from what was Supposed To Have Happened.  And Fe-Anar has less Bluff than zero somehow, and is now visibly Paying Attention in order to clearly inform this entity that its guess was correct.  About a piece of information that Nethys and His allies have spent some really incredibly extraordinary efforts to keep confined only to beings who won't or can't use that information.

Outwardly, Ione will not look terrified, or annoyed, or bone-horrified, about any of these things respectively, because Ione has more Bluff than zero.

"In honesty, I know more.  All of that, is only what I could and would have guessed even if I knew no more.  It is only what I would have predicted and foretold in any case, through my having considered in advance how Creation might end or how others might seek to escape its ending; and having always kept a watch on the City of Brass, with certain agents."

"To notice when someone seems like they might be buying too many Wishes, in those planar markets that sell those - to set watch upon those purveyors that someone might wrongly imagine could sell an ark in which to flee a dying Creation - if I had to make the reasoning sound reasonable in mortal terms, I might tell that story."

You deal with it, Fe-Anar says through the telepathic bond to Ione. I have already expended all my tolerance for Nethysians.

I'll try, but I think it's focused on you, and I'm sure it's not a Nethysian.

"What more do you know?" Ione asks it.

The old woman goes on addressing Fe-Anar.  "Even if you could find here a vessel to sail the Maelstrom, it would disintegrate within hours once exposed to the blind eternities beyond.  To truly escape Pharasma's grasp is more difficult than you realize.  I tried, in my own time.  To forge an ark like that is a millennium's work for a god; and even then, to endure beyond Creation it must be protected by somewhat of those energies that underlie creation itself."

"If I did not know more I would say to you, that I did not think you had all the resources required to it, but that I considered it worth my time to inquire."

"If I did not know more I would say to you, that even if I concluded that you stood a chance, the price of my own knowledge and aid was not only my own place among the refugees, but that I and my husband would take with our chosen people, and we would also lead in that expedition - so I would demand, for there are greater resources required to this work than diamonds."

"In fact, I do know more.  But I must play out how things would have gone otherwise."

"Right," says Fe-Anar, with genuine irritation now, "then, I'd say that I don't believe you and you're wasting my time, and that I don't care at all what the gods say is impossible, because the word of the gods isn't worth the paper it isn't written on, and that you can come along if you're useful but you're not in charge of a damn thing, because I'm not going to all this trouble just to obey some new equally tedious god."

"And I would smile a little, then, but briefly, before I told you that I knew where to find the ark you will not find in this city."

"You being already from Golarion, I would not need to explain the Starstone to you.  I would ask instead if you had the strength to pass the lesser of the Starstone's two tests, and reach the Starstone in its Cathedral - as have many previous souls who touched it and were never seen again."

"But those are the less impossible requisites.  The energy that sustains Creation can be found in Pharasma, in Pharasma's Spire, above all in the Seal at the base of the Spire, and in very few other places.  I'd inquire of you where you meant to lay your hands on it."

"I can't fathom why I'd answer any of those questions, or for that matter why you'd ask them."

"And I'd reply that I was, possibly, interested in having you join with me to escape Creation - or less probably, that I might join with you, though that would require you to have greater resource than I expected.  But that I was interested in fairly weighing the measure of our contributions, with neither of us seeking to dominate the other by force."

"If you can escape Creation entirely without my aid?  Then I and my husband are but two would-be passengers upon your vessel, prepared to pay any fair price you ask and submit to any lawful governance; and we know others interested as well."

“Right, well, you’d have said that if you thought some thing you don’t think, and that’s about as much as I want to talk about things you don’t think.”

"I wouldn't be saying all that if there wasn't a reason.  My time is valuable to me, as yours is to you.  But I'll offer price for trying to answer as you would have answered; even as my less-knowing self would also soon have offered you payment to continue conversing."

The old woman reaches into her shawl-coat, slowly, unthreateningly, and takes out what looks like a bar of metal, coated lightly in glass by some means.  "Two pounds of spellsilver still holds some value even in Golarion.  I offer this as payment to continue this conversation, as my other possible self would have done the same."

....he holds out his hand to take it. "Well, I suppose having noticed one might want to escape Creation, and also that while it'd be hard to survive outside it it probably isn't impossible, puts you a cut ahead of most people I'd hire, but I'm not joining any projects run by mysterious strangers who think that instead of Pharasma we should have them."

"As much as I wished to leave Creation," the old woman answers, "I would not have cared to take my chances on a vessel all of mortals without any divinity to aid them.  Gods are like ship-caulkers and wainwrights, to an undertaking like that.  But not all gods are so noxious, or so it seems to myself.  If Desna or Abadar had been the keystone of Creation then I would not seek so much to leave it."

"I don't have any grievances with Abadar -- or rather, the ones I have are all very personal and specific. Desna can be helpful if She wants, but wouldn't, I think, announce that She were actually in charge, and if She did then that's not being helpful and She can leave."

"For a long time we will be a tiny ship of order in a sea of chaos, and most islands we happen across will not be friendly nor trustworthy.  It's not as bad as mortals are led to think from interacting with only the spawn of the Far Tapestry that Pharasma doesn't trouble Herself to keep out; for those alien things that'd speak to us in plain numbers and trade us knowledge have not been permitted entry to Creation.  But it will still be long before anyone has an option of leaving our vessel without their soul immediately dissolving, and where disagreement cannot be resolved by exit it must be resolved some other way."

"Someone or something must be in charge.  Had you meant not to appoint yourself and also not appoint any other, my estimated chance of your success would plummet sharply."