“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."

"Of course I'll be in charge!"

"None of the Powers I know, that might otherwise take an interest in buying passage or aiding your journey, will submit themselves unconditionally to a mortal captain.  Mortals are simply too changeable, from a Power's perspective.  Abadar, if He led, would be a known quantity, He would not change from the goals and methods He had already demonstrated.  Even from the perspective of those Powers that were once mortals themselves, it is just not possible to know a mortal well enough to trust them wholly; whatever you have seen of their past, mortals can change."

"Did I and my husband lead such an expedition, we would not ask any allied Powers to submit themselves to us unconditionally; there would be a contract to which Powers were signatory.  Have you composed such a contract of passage?"

"Perhaps you should go make your own ship, then, for all your Powers, for I'm not wasting my time in the doing of favors for beings that cannot regard mortals as worth bargaining with, and if I have agreements, they are for people whose company I might desire."

"I am here and bargaining with you, am I not?  And my husband has never held himself too good to bargain with mortals, and has treated with courtesy all those who sought him with that intention, whether they were weaker than himself or mightier.  Nor have I asked you for any favor I haven't offered to pay for, and my husband shares that spirit."

"Then I might write you a contract of passage, and you can see what you make of it."

"Perhaps.  I'd worry that as you stand now, it might not be a contract I could swallow.  I'd think that perhaps you'd value my possible contributions more dearly, once you failed to find any great ship for sale here that could sail even the lesser Maelstrom, or after you'd verified how the Maelstrom grows more corrosive as you steer towards the edges of Creation."

"But there is one cautionary omen that must be given you immediately, if you mean to undertake this quest and be its hero."

"Buy only twenty-five Wishes this day, not thirty.  Do not augment your Wisdom."

"Hard no," Ione says out loud.  She's increasingly worried about where exactly this thing is trying to steer Fe-Anar, and though she has nothing terribly clever to say, she wants to check what happens if its attention is directed more toward herself.  "Nefreti Clepati specifically warned me to make sure he didn't somehow end up with augmented Intelligence but no Wisdom, no matter what kind of tricks fate seemed to be throwing about that.  Nefreti Clepati is a ninth-circle of Nethys, and she knows things that gods don't."

"Nefreti Clepati has only one trick and she uses it for everything.  If something is happening that's unparalleled in her visions, she's as blind as an ordinary god after prophecy's been shattered.  You should aspire to better, young oracle, and not rely so heavily on your master's guidance."

"I think I have enough Wisdom to be getting on with," Fe Anar says, cheerfully enough.

Oh HELL no, Ione says into their Telepathic Bond, still taking pleasure every time she uses the word as the curse that it should be. Fe-Anar, don't you think it's alarming that the incredibly suspicious entity is requesting you not to augment the one stat Nefreti said to make sure got augmented, and that stat is the Trickery Resistance and Awful Mistake Avoidance stat?

And Fe-Anar is weirdly willing to go along with that, Fe-Anar WHY, Ione doesn't even know why she should be panicking but she clearly should be!

It's absolutely suspicious, he says cheerfully back to her. Quite possibly we shouldn't do it. But it wouldn't surprise me very much to learn that this careful game you all are balancing in fact falls apart if I see through it, in which case I definitely want to do that but can believe that this minute isn't the most convenient possible time.

When these Telepathic transmissions have ceased, and only then, the old woman speaks again.  "Wisdom is also closeness to divinity, and distance from divinity can also be a resource.  You will need all you have of that resource, when the time comes to spend it."

"See," he says, "I really like that explanation, which is why I don't trust it at all."

And NOW Ione is trying to figure out the chance that the 'old woman' who's presumably a divinity or a herald or something is able to snoop on their Telepathic connection, maybe even their actual thoughts; or if she's just reading past Fe-Anar's not-so-great Bluff - Sevar did warn them that the Selectively Permeable Mind Blank might not ultimately be as solid as the original complete Mind Blank; it's mainly meant to resist standardized Discern Location from a distance, not divinities staring at it up close -

Fe-Anar isn't even considering whether she's able to snoop. Obviously she is. There are a lot of beings that can do this kind of thing (Ione's one of them) and it's always exactly this annoying; he appreciates that in this case Ione's getting a taste of her own medicine.

"Indeed.  But it is not in my interest to tell you all of my knowledge that you could benefit from, while you still seem little to esteem my aid.  I do have my pride as you have yours.  I don't say that you could never sail beyond Creation unassisted, given time enough to build your own vessel and somehow lay hands upon the energies of Creation.  But you are not conducting yourself like a person who has no time limit on his endeavor; you are here hoping to buy a planar ship already-made, instead of building one special to its purpose.  You mean to flee Creation and you need to do it soon.  That you cannot do without allies, any more than I myself could do it alone."

"If you want to deliver a lecture on how to flee Creation, I promise to act appropriately overawed at your genius so your pride can be assuaged; it must be difficult, being prideful and unable to assuage your pride merely by actually achieving things."

"I've no use for your or anyone else's fawning; I've heard far more than enough such, from those who mistakenly think I care to hear it.  But to have one's contribution undervalued is a troubling thing, for it implies a corresponding lack of repayment; and the same, if the payer seems too much to overesteem the coin in which I am being paid."

"Mouthing words of praise is easy.  I want something harder.  I want the respect you give your shoes."

"If you have something valuable to me, I'll pay you for it, and respect you for it; if you have something of great value to me, I'll pay you well for it. If you don't, then I won't."