Haha. He totally can just do that, though. He's camped at the Worldwound before, as part of training. Although admittedly he had his spells during that time. Prestidigitation is useful, but it can't do everything.

He's confused at the last sentence. He's not under the command of the other person, so they don't have a responsibility to keep him alive. If he dies, why should the man care? Whatever – this is not relevant. He pushes the thought out of his mind.

"I plan on using the road." Thirty miles. Assuming there's at least eight hours of sunlight left, he can cover that distance just by walking if he walks briskly, reaching at nightfall. Although he's not sure what season it is. If it's winter, or close to it, night would come early. Just have to walk faster, then. Or run. He can keep himself warm to a degree without Endure Elements if he uses Prestidigitation to heat his clothes. Very inconvenient to have to repeatedly cast while walking, but it's not the worst thing in the world.

The man gives a (perhaps exaggerated) sigh of relief. He doesn't talk much on the rest of the walk, it's only maybe half an hour until they're at the side of the road, a good and solid stone-paved highway, two and three quarters lanes wide. Notably, when Conrad steps onto the stones, the coldness of the air instantly and noticeably drops. "Alright, the facility's up that way." The man points one way along the road, broadly aligned with where he pointed earlier as one would expect. "Need anything else?"

...surprising! He's never felt any magical effect like that before. Assuming it's magic, although if it's not magic, then what else could it be? The warmth is very welcome, though.

"What's the time now? How long till nightfall?"

The man retrieves a pocket watch from one of the several pockets of his pants and checks it before stowing it again. "Quarter to one, so about four hours to sunset and maybe five until dusk. The facility's open all hours and road's metabolic keeps wild animals away."

Five hours. He can work with that. He'll reach there if he jogs. It sucks that he doesn't have Light prepared, but evocation is one of his opposition schools anyway – he would rarely have prepared it even if he did have his spellbook.

The road's metabolic? From the position of the word in the sentence, it seems that it's a noun rather than an adjective. That's probably the warming effect.

Right, he should be polite.

"Thank you. There is nothing else that I need." If the man has nothing else to say, he's going to run off in the direction of the facility. He'd rather not be caught out here at night, even if the road is magically warm and animal-free. 

The man waves Conrad off with a smile. "Safe travels!"

As Conrad jogs up the road, he may also notice that there is something subtly wrong about the road underfoot. Or, perhaps not wrong, but strangely right? It almost feels as though it springs under him, lengthening his strides and reducing the energy each individual step takes, without throwing off his balance. He'll make good time to the facility.

As he makes his progress, the terrain of the valley changes around him. The walls of the valley close in, becoming visible on both sides, imposing black cliffs rising above the progressively less-managed-looking forests. Eventually an oddly box-shaped building becomes visible as well, squatting against one of the dark cliff-faces like the cornerstone of some enormous unfinished monument. The echoic research facility, as confirmed by a sign Conrad sees (literate in the local language as well as conversant, apparently), adjacent to a packed earth trail splitting off the road and up towards the facility.

At the end of that path lies a simple iron gate with a small gatehouse, housing a guard, a short and rotund man with an untamed abundance of blond hair. "Hello there! What brings you to the Swarthwalls Echoic Research Facility?" The guard asks with odd cheer for someone on guard duty on a cold, damp night.

This road is strange and delightful, and he doesn't know whether to relax or to stay vigilant. It might just be unnerving by virtue of the fact that it's new to him. He tries to push the apprehension out of his mind. It feels like this is what Longstrider would feel like, although he's never cast it or had it cast on him, since it's a druid spell. Perhaps Expeditious Retreat? Hm, no, the sensation doesn't feel quite right.

Right. He should have thought of this obvious question instead of getting distracted about the road's properties. He decides to give a non-answer and fish for information.

"I am visiting," he says matter-of-factly. "What is it that you do here?"

"Well at the moment I'm just a-- Oh, you mean the facility? We study echoic anemonomastics, and echoic phenomena in general, like the name says." The guard leans forward and a conspiratorial look is partially visible under his messy hair. "Everybody's been on high alert since earlier today, running around all excited, coming and going a lot. I'm pretty sure something big happened. Might be hard to find someone to give you the tour, but..." He shrugs, before leaning back and pulling a lever (which resists him for a long moment, requiring him to put some of his weight onto it before getting unstuck), opening the gate up.

Shit. Shit shit shit. He doesn't enter through the gate just yet.

He doesn't understand why he would give him a tour. Conrad doesn't have any money – he doesn't look like he has any money – and neither is he a noble or someone important...it could be that they already know he's been Recognized and that this whole rigmarole is futile.

"Do you know anything about what happened?" He wants to affect a casual tone, but doesn't have faith that his Splendor will come through. Instead, he says it plainly. "I have an amateur's interest in echoic anemonomastics too." He hopes he takes that well. Yes, he's allowed to hope now. He's not an Asmodean anymore.

The guard sighs. "I wish, man. Nobody tells me anything. I've been trying to get a position here since I graduated and all I can get is a job sitting in a box." This is the first thing he's said so far that has broken through his cheer with some dejection, though his positivity returns quickly. "Still, I'm here! Maybe if I make friends with one of the researchers-- Sorry, you didn't ask for my life story or anything. Anyway, this is just my guess, but I think that somebody got Recognized nearby, probably somewhere in the valley."

Internal screaming. Which is suppressed.

He's going to assume being Recognized is rare and interesting. But he's unsure as to whether that bodes well for him or not. It's usually better not to attract attention if you're in a potentially hostile environment in general.

"Why are Recognized people of interest?" He adds hastily, "Sorry if that's an obvious question. I'm new to the field." It feels strange to say 'sorry', but he knows that it would be appropriate to say that there.

"Yeah, it can be easy to think there's not much to, like, study about Recognizants, right? They're just on their own, unique, case-by-case bullshit. But there's actually a whole bunch of weird interactions between them and normal anemonomastics! It's been, like, over a decade since one has visited the facility and let them study their invocation, let alone a fresh one that maybe hasn't even got an invocation yet, so-- Well, if I'm right and this is all about a new Recognition, then everybody's scrambling to try and recruit them to the facility so that we can have one here full-time, or at least willing to come by and do tests on a regular basis."

...testing.

"What's an invocation? Relatedly, do you know what sorts of tests they do on Recognizants?" 

Conrad may or may not run away back the direction he came based on the guard's answer.

"It's the sort of, uh, ritual-but-not-a-ritual that Recognizants can do, where they just call on the wind that Recognizes them to do a thing and it does it for them. That's the really basic overview anyway. And, I don't a lot of the specifics, they're pretty hush-hush about most of the stuff from the last time a Recognizant came by. I think they want to try and keep anyone from running off with the papers and getting them published somewhere else. I figured it's mostly surveys of what communicating with the wind is like, what their relationship is like, experimenting with their invocation and what it can do, what its limits are, maybe some direct scanning rituals, that sort of thing."

He nods and makes thoughtful noises.

"What is life like for Recognizants? Do you know?" He's going to assume that being one isn't illegal, given that there's a research facility interested in them operating openly. But it could be a case where it's de facto illegal, like how any Chelish citizen can leave it at any time, it's just that the inquisitors will take you in for questioning if you don't have a letter of transit and keep you in their dungeons forever.

There might be a danger here in that, once he lets himself enter the facility, that the researchers won't let him leave, fearing that he'll go to some other facility. He's leaning towards taking his chances here, though. It's not like there's anywhere else he can go to.

Should he pray? This is an appropriate time to pray, no? He would pray to Asmodeus, in this situation.

«Lord Echo, if You would have me bring glory to You in this world, lend me Your strength and guidance, such that I may evade danger.»

The guard shrugs. "I know the stories about the, like, big ones. The Road-Builder, of course, and the Mother-Maker, and probably some others if I put some effort into it. That's all, like, stories, though, half of it probably isn't even true. I have no idea what the life of an actual, modern-day Recognizant is like. Probably it depends a lot on their circumstances? If they're well-connected when they're Recognized, whether their invocation does something big or important, what they do with it, that sort of thing."

Echo's mental presence rises in response to Conrad's request.

<I would have you strong and guided in this world.> It replies first, with the same mental voice as him, as it did before.

<Here's the lay of the land.> It says next, though now with a voice like the man Conrad met out in the woods. This is accompanied by an understanding of the layout of the facility building and it's immediately surrounding grounds, including the purposes of all the rooms and how people tend to move about the building at various times of day.

<She's good people. She's trustworthy and understanding.> It assures in a third voice, echoing the guard Conrad is speaking with right now. This is accompanied by knowledge of one Doctor Melissa Bishop, one of the senior researchers present in the facility at this moment, including her appearance and a sense for her character, gentle and considerate and curious and empathic.

Eeeeeee. Wait, so they worship Recognizants here? The man who led him here said there was a shrine to the Mother-Maker nearby. Okay. Well, that makes him more confident in being open about being Recognized, at least. Either he'll have the social status to shield himself from Bad Things, or that he'll be imbued with power such that he can escape whatever bonds might be put on him. Although the alternative hypothesis is that a powerful Recognizant might want to squish the lesser, newer Recognizants to avoid being usurped.

He's taking an awfully long time to respond. INT 16 makes you quick thinking but not that quick.

He's going to need to get used to a deific entity 'talking' to him. The familiar voices are a little unsettling, but he can deal with it. He's surprised at how...efficient Echo is in imparting information – it would have taken him ten minutes or more to memorize that amount of information.

«Thank You, Lord Echo» he replies mentally. To the guard, his face twitches slightly before adopting the same neutral expression he's had since the start of the conversation.

"Thank you for answering my questions. I actually came here to meet someone – is Doctor Melissa Bishop in the facility?" Hopefully she doesn't require people make appointments beforehand.

<You are welcome, Conrad.> It replies, again in his own voice, before the presence fades to previous levels.

"Oh yeah, Dr. Bishop came in just a little while ago, one of the ones who came back for whatever's going on tonight. You got here at the right time I suppose! You know where her office is?"

"Yes," surprisingly. He's going to walk on in if the guard isn't going to ask anything else of him.

What does the inside of the facility look like? He's going to try and pick the route that intersects the least with people's activity at this time based on the information Echo told him, although he's not sure if the information he was given was based on past trends that may no longer be relevant in this exceptional time. Don't doubt the god that just cleric-ed you, Conrad, that's a very bad habit.

If he spots anyone else in the facility, what are they wearing? It might be productive to Prestidigitate his clothes to be a similar color, or maybe Prestidigitate his hair blonde. He's only met two people here so far, though, so he has no idea whether blonde hair is common or not.

...although it would raise a lot of questions if someone observed him for more than an hour and the Prestidigitation ran out.

The inside of the facility is clean and white, tiled floors and papered walls. It's filled with light, as well, shining down from bright rods embedded in the ceiling. There's a desk and several chairs in the entrance room, but nobody's stationed at the desk or sitting in the chairs. Indeed, everyone present seems to be in another part of the facility at this moment, and consulting his mental map, it's easy for Conrad to find a path to Dr. Bishop's office that avoids areas of typically high traffic at this time. This information seems to be good as well, as Conrad only encounters three other people on his way, all of them being rather a hurry and hardly noticing him at all. They're all dressed appropriately for late autumn or early winter, sweaters and pants, jackets and hats on those who seem to be headed outside. The three weren't wearing any unified colors, though they did seem to trend towards greys and browns and oranges, though one of them had a bright blue strip of cloth tied around their neck and tucked into their sweater. Two of the three had black hair and one brown, and it was cut fairly short for all three.

The bright rods aren't surprising to him: Ostenso Wizarding Academy had similar Permanencied Light spells built into the ceiling. His hair won't stand out, so he doesn't bother Prestidigitating it. He momentarily considers Prestidigitating his uniform, but he decides against it. The important part would be to remove the Chelish insignia on it, but the time and place are unsuitable. He should have thought of that earlier.

He knocks on the door three times.

"May I speak with you, Dr. Bishop?"

"Just a moment!" an older-sounding feminine voice replies from behind the door, followed by the sound of books and papers shuffling, of several things tumbling to the ground, the voice quietly cursing for a moment, and then the door opening to reveal a small, silver-haired and dark-skinned woman. "Sorry about that, we're all in a bit of a rush tonight. What can I help you with, young man?"