Dr. Blackwood has a little more background on the whole leadup to this mess, now. 

The stranger wasn't with the demonstration.

No one has ever seen the man in Cedar Hollow, before, and it did not actually take long to establish that, almost certainly, everyone involved in the demonstration had met either at the old bookshop or the Moonrise Café.

Not all of them under known identities. There were masks, apparently. "It's a treaty re-negotiation year, and people are meeting Earth-side of a crossing in masks to write political manifestos about how Earth is insufficiently taken seriously" should, itself, perhaps have been taken more seriously as a harbinger of, well, problems. 

(It's been a long time coming. Sixty-eight years ago, when the last treaty was signed, one could already have noticed the trend. Nobody knows how many people live on the Other Side, but whatever the numbers, they're half or less of what they were in the year Dr. Blackwood was born. The Earth-side population, on the other hand, is nearly three times what it was, and - the world is changing in more ways than just that. Even the Summerlands are importing more from Earth than they're exporting, now.) 

...But, anyway, there is at this time no reason to think that the maybe-sorcerer came in with the idiotic children - and some old enough to know better - who arranged that little show. 

Which leaves Dr. Blackwood with a different set of questions, about who exactly did send the man, and why now. 

The language barrier is a puzzle. But Dr. Blackwood has been sitting around waiting for a full thirty minutes, and the good corporal was able to provide a sharpened pencils and some unused forms, blank on the back. Dr. Blackwood learned to draw anatomy long before photocopier was invented. They're capable with a pencil. 

Dr. Blackwood has four high-priority questions: 

- How, exactly, did the man reach the plaza in the first place. 

- Who or what or where is "Ayomeday". 

- How limited is the healing, and when and how often could he do it some more. 

- What the fuck was he thinking by doing all of that without the token of the healers' Compact. It could be interpreted almost as a hostile act, showing up on one faction's ground under the insignia of a different faction nobody even recognizes, and saving some people's lives without asking and without the neutrality of a healer standing between you and them. Plenty of people will assume the man wanted to collect them. Dr. Blackwood...is not making any assumptions, yet. 

And now the man seems to be finished with his prayers. Excellent timing. Dr. Blackwood drew some pictures for him. They're quite detailed. 

Are any of these a reasonable depiction of his method of transport? 

........item II is not completely ridiculous as a depiction of the snake that ate him? He guesses? Maybe? It would have to be a front view and it does not show any of the snake at all. The snake could have posed like that but it would not be a natural pose for it, probably, and it is not an informative pose to draw. .......maybe he can have the pencil and paper? And draw the rest of the snake?

...Sure, pencil and paper can go through the bars. 

The next question, in drawn form, is hanging loosely in Dr. Blackwood's other hand. Is "Ayomeday" and the insignia meant to represent something more like a ruler, more like a house, more like a country or region, or more like a vocation or calling akin to the healers' Compact (except, apparently, MISSING HALF OF THE USEFUL PARTS.) 

Well, that question is easier to answer but the answer is "all of the above". Maybe not the building one? He could be misunderstanding any of these actually. If they don’t know Iomedae he can hardly complain that she should be depicted in armor but is that supposed to be a queen rather than a goddess? .......He’s going to finish drawing the snake tail and show it to the person of indistinct gender in case this gets him forwarded directly to the Department of Plane Shift Snake Refugees while this person mutters that they can’t believe they forgot about those. When that doesn’t happen, that’s what Share Language is for.

(Dr. Blackwood frowns faintly at the snake drawing. It doesn't seem to be familiar to them.) 

...What 

Well, it answers some questions. Or rules out some answers, one of those. 

Because Dr. Blackwood knows the magic of the Other Side as well as anyone, and whatever the man just did, isn't.

And Dr. Blackwood knows the magic of Earth as well as anyone, and it isn't that either. 

"You are an Outsider?" Dr. Blackwood says, in the language that they did not speak ten seconds ago. (And it feels like they said something significantly more specific than they meant to, just then, the language magic glomming onto a concept that only half matches...) 

"....I am from the Material Plane within Creation."

As opposed to the plane not made of materials?? How would that work?

"You arrived before to - we call it the 'Other' 'Side'," both words in the phrase can be translated literally but Dr. Blackwood has a feeling that the phrase isn't hanging together like it would in English. "Which is a plane where objects are made of materials but I suspect that is not the thing you meant. You are currently on -" Does 'Earth' translate with the language magic? 

There is not a proper noun for that in the idiolect Dr. Blackwood has been granted.

Just the syllable of it without translation, then. "'Earth' is a planet with a sun and moon, not a plane– no, in this language I think 'plane' might include the kind of place it is in? But one that is extremely large and mostly void. - The planet is still made of materials, there are just very large gaps." 

It's always seemed like such an inefficient use of space to Dr. Blackwood. The humans write stories about traveling to the stars in their sky, but there's so much emptiness, and no shortcuts, it would take centuries. And humans have such short lives. It's not a very practical idea. 

"I am also from a planet. It's called Golarion. We use the word 'outsider' to refer to beings from other planes, which I think tend not to have planets in them though I couldn't swear to it."

This conversation has a very high information density and yet still feels like it's not keeping up with the newly-introduced confusion. 

"Ah. The word in our language is less specific than that. Is Golarion known to be linked by - snake portal crossings, to -"

Actually, does 'Faerie' translate into the other language, it's not really the politically correct term in English anymore but another planet would have its own conventions. 

"No. I've never heard of that kind of monster before in my life."

Yes, there are words for faeries and their locations in Chelish.

"It is possible that what we call the Other Side, your language calls Faerie. I have not heard of crossing-points to planets other than Earth, but," a small snort, "I do not know literally everything. ...I am gathering that perhaps you did not intend to enter the warm lands as an emissary of Iomedae in order to intervene in the treaty negotiations? Your timing was - convenient." 

"I was on my way cross-country, encountered the monster, failed to kill it before it - passed me through its face. I do not know what its motives if it had any may have been but I had no intentions regarding anything I landed on. I didn't have any context on where I landed at all."

It's such convenient timing. But it doesn't seem as though it's going to help, really, to be blatantly suspicious to the man's face. That's not the winning strategy for getting answers about the healing. And apparently the not-actually-Outsider-magic doesn't stop at 'healing'. 

Also, the last thing this situation needs is a powerful and ignorant stranger giving everyone the impression of political aims by accident. 

"Would you like to hear some context now?" 

"I would appreciate that."

Well. What are the first five things that a man from another planet needs to know. Dr. Blackwood has never actually had reason to mentally prepare that list. They've prepared it for people who didn't know about magic, but that's not quite the same. 

"The," 'flux' doesn't translate precisely, "the - magical nature - of the Other Side, as well as its peoples and their faction groups, have traditionally been stabilized by a series of treaties with a maximum duration set at 72 years; I am sure at some point there was a good reason for that number. Going by the histories, this was stable for millennia. Eighty years ago, when the prior treaty came due to renegotiate, there was an - unnatural winter - the humans would call it an ice age."

Dr. Blackwood thinks that phrase translates to something sensical, if not necessarily idiomatic.

"The treaty negotiations failed. There was a gap. A very large number of people starved, or were frozen in their homes, before the factions reconsolidated into the Summerlands," did that translate as the thing Dr. Blackwood meant?, "and the Winterlands as they are now, and they were able to coordinate on meeting and agreeing on something to sign. - the riverfolk of the Deep River were also party to that treaty, which was a departure. This was sixty-eight years ago. In the year 1899, there was still a neutral ground - one not belonging to any specific faction - that could be reached by all and could safely host several thousand people. The ice took it within the decade, and then all of the others. The Summerlands offered to host talks. Four years early, just in case."

What next, what order to put it in...

"In the meantime, the town we are in has become one of the key crossings on this continent, perhaps the last one remaining that is still open daily. Over that same period, the peoples of Earth - mostly humans, mostly unaware of magic in these days - have been multiplying rapidly. They invented better methods of farming, and better medicine such that most of their babies survive childhood now, I think that is most of it. - In any case, there are supernatural species native to the Earth-side, whose numbers track the human population, and also humans who can touch magic in other ways. Two hundred years ago, their numbers were a rounding error next to the peoples of the Other Side. That changed. The Summerlands invited a number of Earth-side factions to attend and witness their negotiations. For some reason that I am not entirely clear on, a number of those who grew up on Earth found this very insulting? There have been young people - and people old enough to know better - flocking to this crossing all summer to do politics." Dr. Blackwood spits it out like a curse. "Culminating, today, in– I am not actually sure what was supposed to happen. It seems unlikely that what did happen will make anybody happy, so - one assumes they had imagined it going differently. There would have been deaths. If not for a man who claims to be of another planet, with magic unknown to either world I know of, arriving at the exact right moment to intervene."

Pause.

"...And collect four life-debts, I am told. It seems more likely now that this was unintentional. Does your planet lack the concept of healers' neutrality? - I am not ungrateful. I do not think I could have saved everyone. But if you go around doing things like that, here, then people will get the impression that you did it on purpose." 

"Summerlands" and "Winterlands" do not have their own native Chelish terms but are cromulent compounds and Blai doesn't evince bewilderment at those words.

"It was not intentional. I do not intend to - collect on - those debts, being as they weren't something anyone had a chance to agree on in advance - I don't see how healers being neutral could posisbly work."

'I don't see how healers being neutral could possibly work' is making Dr. Blackwood feel like the translation magic broke something in their head and words have stopped meaning coherent things.

Just. What. What set of life experiences could possibly lead to someone producing that sentence with a straight face???? 

('I do not intend to collect on those debts' is also a statement that could be parsed as hostile, to the extent that it implies a plan to just, what, leave them hanging forever? ...That was probably not the intended meaning. Dr. Blackwood can address it later.) 

"...I think your planet has different expectations of its healers," Dr. Blackwood manages. "Perhaps deeper differences as well. Where does the magic come from?" 

"Most healers are clerics with magic from our gods. My goddess is Iomedae."

....So Dr. Blackwood's first guess was right, after all, it is Outsider magic. 

"Is that...generally considered to be a wise idea?" Ninety-nine times in a hundred it's a terrible, no good, very bad idea to go mucking around with Outside entities for magic, there's a reason sorcerers have the reputation they do, but - another planet. Maybe they have better infrastructure for it. "Do these gods have political opinions, then? I would not actually have expected that." 

"...how wise it is depends on the god. It is not unwise to accept Iomedae's powers. I would expect every god to have some kind of political opinion if they are interested enough in mortal affairs to be known among mortals at all but some of those opinions are such uncontroversial material as that the undead are not to be tolerated."