He sitting on cold and lightly damp leaf-litter, in the midst of what seems to be a semi-managed forest. It's daytime, with some heavy cloud-cover making it hard to tell hour. Most of the trees have dropped their leaves, though there are scattered evergreens visible through the branches. The air is a bit chilly, but certainly nothing like as cold as it should be if he were anywhere in Sarkoris. He is almost alone, but for the sounds of woodland life quiet in the background...and a strange sensation, like the feeling of a gentle breeze on the back of his neck or the whistle of wind in his ear except somehow neither tactile nor auditory, solely within his mind or perhaps his soul.

It feels like late autumn in his hometown, Laekastel. It's definitely chilly, but being at the Worldwound for several years kind of warps your idea of what's cold and what's not. His cotton twill Chelish uniform is thicker than most clothes, but it won't keep him warm during night. He thinks about potentially trying to climb a tree to get a better view of the forest and surroundings, when the sensation hits him.

Is this what a god-vision feels like? He's prayed to Asmodeus lots, but he's never had any response. This probably won't go well for him you're allowed to have hope now.

«Hello?» he thinks without speaking. Gods can just read your mind like that. Or...peer into his soul, but either way he doubts he needs to speak for whatever entity is contacting him to understand.

<Hello!>

The mental voice that replies is all but identical to Conrad's own, such that it may even take him a moment to realize that the thought was not his own, but it most definitely was not.

There's a sense of serenity to it that might, if Conrad allows it, help ease any anxiety he has regarding what has happened.

He will not allow it! Wizards learn the mental discipline and awareness necessary to detect enchantments cast on them in wizard school so that they could resist them. He's had Charm Person cast on him before. But – right, this is probably a god. You can't resist a direct divine intervention, so.

Is this how a god-vision is supposed to work? He paid attention in theology class and to the priests, but he actually doesn't know if he's feeling the correct sensations – the correct qualia. Okay. Assume the thing is a god. Presumably they can just read his thoughts and he already offended them by thinking these things but he's going to ignore that.

«May I know who You are?»

<You may know who I am.>

Suddenly, though not jarringly, Conrad becomes aware of several things. The entity he is communicating with is Echo, one of the four deific beings which inhabit this world (among others). He knows that he is one of its Recognizants, which itself brings a nebulous sort of understanding that calls to mind clerics, oracles, witches, and other such patronized spellcasters, though it seems to be much more limited than them in some ways and much less in others. He also knows that this world is not Golarion. Indeed it is not even any world that Conrad might happen to know of. In the language of the first local he is going to speak with, it is known as Pleroma.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA he braces himself for the god-vision pain he was taught to expect, but there's...nothing? He takes a few steps to the side to lean against a tree.

So, he just got Recognized, which is analogous to being a cleric? And it seems that he got thrust out of the Material Plane. Perhaps even a plane outside of Pharasma's Creation – he wasn't sure that there was even anything outside it, but apparently it's possible that there are some now. Oh, and he has a new language. 

«Thank You for the knowledge You have graciously bestowed upon me, Lord Echo. May I also know the manner in which I was transported here, and why You selected for me to come Here? What would You have me do, as Your instrument?»

Presumably if Echo 'cleric-ed' him and brought him here – and are there really only four gods in this plane? having a god talk to you is definitely not the time to doubt their words – then They want him to do something for Them?

<You may know, your world is one of interest, and you of interest within it. A story ended, a place easier to spy than most. I spoke you into this world, echo of yourself, to hear the story shaken out by your utterance.>

This is seemingly just a linguistic payload, with no additional knowledge tied to it, though there is a feeling of amusement to it.

It's very metaphorical. Well, at least his god is bothering to speak to him in actual words, and not just feelings. Also, really? A third-circle wizard's life is interesting? Don't question it – the god's intervention is why you're alive, Conrad. He tenses when he feels the amusement behind the words.

Echo did technically answer his question, although he has no idea what 'hear the story shaken out by your utterance' is supposed to mean.

Hm. He thinks on the words for several rounds before responding. He's quite surprised he hasn't been set on fire yet, with his impudence.

«Lord Echo, You say that You spoke me into being, and that I am an echo of myself. Your humble follower begs You to restate your words, as I am much less intelligent than one such as Yourself. Is there something specific that You would have me do, in exchange for breathing life into me?»

<You you you you are you are you are more than a third-circle wizard. You are Conrad Ferrer, and Conrad Ferrer's story can become many interesting things. I would have you live. I would have you be free. I would have you speak and listen. I would have you be Conrad Ferrer Ferrer Ferrer rer rer rer.>

Okay, that might have been a bit uncomfortable, with the odd metric stuttering.

At this moment, if Conrad is as hypervigilant as one might expect from a man in his position, he may notice the quiet sound of footsteps crunching across the forest floor, distant but approaching. From the timbre and cadence, he can tell that it's the booted feet of a humanoid, probably medium-sized, and definitely familiar with this terrain.

In what way? How? He wants to ask more questions, but it seems like the god is maybe having problems? They're definitely not Evil, though, which...surprising, given that he is. He knows gods can send visions to anyone, but that the cost increases the farther away they are to Them. No Evil god would just resurrect someone and ask for nothing. Well, Echo didn't ask for nothing per se – They asked him to 'be free' and 'speak and listen', which sounds Chaotic. Not that he would know Chaos – other theologies are censored in Cheliax.

He hears the noises. He doesn't have a spellbook, but does he still have his prepared spells? No. He tries to channel the energy in his arcane bonded greatsword – which is still in its dagger form – but he's lost his prepared spells too, except for his cantrips. Let's see: he has Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Detect Magic, and Mending. None of them are combat relevant. Demons have energy resistance, so you don't bother preparing the damaging cantrips like Ray of Frost or Acid Splash, unless you're planning on using them on people.

He draws his dagger and fastens the locking gauntlet in his right hand. It would be bad if he got disarmed: he needs his arcane bonded item to cast spells (not that any of them are useful), and because it's the only weapon he has. He's not going to command the thing to return to its full size just yet, and he's going to still himself and not take any steps that would crunch the leaves and sticks on the forest floor. Maybe the person is just passing by?

«My sincerest apologies, someone is approaching.»

<Someone is approaching, my sincerest apologies.>

The feeling of Echo's presence shrinks somewhat. It's far from gone, but perhaps it's now more like knowing someone else is in the house, while it was formerly as if someone was standing in the same room.

The person is definitely heading pretty much directly towards Conrad, though they don't sound very hurried. In another moment, they become visible through the trees, a tall and surprisingly lightly-dressed man, heavily built with the roundness of a workman's strength, hair thin and grey and beard thick and black, and reflectively Conrad becomes visible to them. "Ho there sir! You don't look much like a camper! Are you lost?"

This is definitely not any language Conrad knew before, confirming the small feat of prediction Echo displayed earlier.

Why is the god apologizing to them? It's...probably some fundamental aspect about the god, he thinks. They did say their name was 'Echo', after all. No time to think about that, because encounter!

He looks at the person for a few moments before relaxing his posture, bringing his left foot back near his right. He doesn't unlock his gauntlet, though, and he still has the dagger in hand.

He realizes belatedly that his red-and-black Chelish uniform is still what he's wearing, and that it is very distinctive. People don't really like the soldiers of Infernal Cheliax. But if this is a different plane, the other man might not notice it? It certainly cuts an imposing figure regardless.

Well, he's not going to just admit that he's lost, that would be weak and pathetic. His Bluff is below average for a Chelaxian, but Chelish people have different standards.

"I'm on my way to Relatchka." Which is a town name he totally did not just make up in the last round and is definitely extant in this plane.

The man continues approaching until he's within comfortable conversation distance, though no closer, not unaware of the knife. He does scratch his beard contemplatively at that. "Not familiar, though I'm hardly a geographer. Were you with a train or are you, uh," the man gestures at Conrad's lack of luggage, "traveling light? Do you need help finding your way back to the road?"

If this man recognizes the Chellish uniform, he is an excellent liar. More likely it just looks like some kind of foreign military or diplomatic outfit.

"Yes, I would appreciate that." He doesn't answer the question.

He unlocks his gauntlet and sheathes the dagger, and then hangs the gauntlet on a loop on his belt. He doesn't go any closer to the other person, though – he hasn't moved significantly since the encounter started.

"Do you know if there are any temples nearby?" It seems like a good proxy question to find out more about theology in this world. And whether Asmodeus has a foothold in this plane, although Echo implied that He doesn't.

If Conrad looks like he'll follow, the man will lead him through the woods. "A temple? Not nearby no, closest I can think of would be the Four Faces down in rock-carver country. There's a cleanser's church in town and a Mother-Maker shrine at the winery house though, if you're not picky."

Conrad will follow, keeping the distance between the two of them such that they can talk to each other, but not so close so as to seem threatening. He follows a little behind the man.

"I see," he says, affecting disinterest. "Are there any shrines to Echo nearby? Otherwise, I would like to know where the Mother-Maker's shrine is." Is Echo the name he should be using? There might be a respectful epithet he ought to use. He's not going to let that uncertainty creep into his voice, though.

The man gives a look back at Conrad at that, one eyebrow quirked and a chuckle in his throat. "A shrine? To Echo? No. There's the echoic research facility at the far end of the valley, they might be what you're looking for if you can stomach academic types. You'll be able to find them by following the Old Road, where we're headed right now, up to the northeast. If you want to get to the winery you'll want to head the other way, down into town, then take the Vineyard Road east. I'll point you in the right direction if you don't have a compass."

...why are you laughing?

Ah. So, it's possible that what he experienced was some sort of complex hallucination that's local to the area. Which is why they have a research facility about it. Probably a good idea to go there, although after that he needs to figure out how he's going to sleep and eat. He can survive in the wilderness with his training and cantrips, but it will be unpleasant, and he doesn't have money.

He can handle academic types. He's a wizard, so he technically is one. He originally wanted to enlist to become a Hellknight armiger, but he failed the entrance exam. So, he studied to become a wizard instead.

"I would prefer to go to the echoic research facility, yes. It is in the same direction where we're headed?" He'll follow the man all the way to the facility unless something happens, or if he asks more questions.

"Right now we're headed to the Old Road, which is mostly west of us. If you want to walk through the forest and don't care about when you get to the facility, it's..." He takes a moment to orient himself, turns around, points off at around a 45 degree angle, "that way, roughly." He turns back around and continues. "If you want to get there sooner than next week, you'll want to take the road."

"How far away is it?" It's going to be problematic if it will take days to walk there. If it only takes a day or perhaps two days, then he can just walk there and sleep rough, or maybe run there if it's close enough.

"Twenty five, maybe thirty miles, but please don't tell me you're actually planning on striking out in the woods with nothing but a knife and the clothes on your back. I really don't want to have to explain to the captain how a madman, or worse, a dead one ended up in the back woods on my watch."

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?"

He's not going to be upset at her being busy, given that he's the cause of the busy-ness.

"May I speak to you in confidence?" He would ask about her being Lawful and whatnot, but Echo has told him that she is to be trusted, and so he will trust him.

"It concerns the recent echoic phenomena in the valley."

The presumed Dr. Bishop's expression quickly changes from parental to serious as she nods, opening the door wider. "Please come inside my office."

Visible through the door, her office is dimmer than the hallway, though not dark, primarily lit some of sort of heatless lamp, situated on one corner of Dr. Bishop's desk, alongside some drafting supplies and a fist-sized stone cylinder whose curved side is covered in intricate and fine inscriptions. There's a well-upholstered armchair fit for the desk, as well as a mess of books and loose papers on the floor next to the desk that Conrad can guess was made just now. The wall opposite the door has a window looking out over the night-cast darkness of the valley, a handful of points of light visible through the mostly leafless trees, and a second chair sits before the window. Both of the remaining walls are occupied by shelves, one set full of books and the other a mixture of books, loose pages, and additional office supplies.

He comes in, but refrains from sitting, unless Bishop offers.

"Lord Echo bid me to come see you, Dr. Bishop. They say you are trustworthy." He keeps his hands behind his back, as if standing before his battalion commander. A part of his mind thinks about the window: he might need to jump out of it to make an escape. But Echo hasn't led him astray thus far, and again, it's very unwise to doubt the entity that just revived you. He's Wise, but not that wise, so he has to manually push away these thoughts.

As he enters, Dr Bishop quietly closes the door behind him, before stepping back to her desk and turning the stone cylinder upside down, causing it to briefly emit a quiet hum.

"Lord--?" She seems confused for an instant, then fascinated, though she quickly regains her composure. "So, you're the Recognizant the anemometry array picked up, and one who has some strange ideas about the winds, or at least about the echoic wind. You've been communing with it, and it directed you to me, specifically?"

He looks intently at the stone cylinder, then looks back at Bishop.

Conrad similarly loses his composure, looking abashed, before wiping the emotion on his face.

"Yes. I don't know what you mean by strange. I think...I believe that Lord Echo brought me here from another world. Specifically, I believe that this world is outside of Pharasma's Creation. Are any of these names familiar to you? Rovagug, Sarenrae, Iomedae, Asmodeus, Pharasma, Abadar? 

Yes, I have been communing with Them, and was...concerned for my safety. They said that I could trust you."

He's a little put off at the fact that Bishop refers to Echo as an 'it', but it tracks with the fact that they don't consider Them to be a god. Weirdly. Perhaps they have different conceptions of gods? Well, the Golarion concept of 'god' wouldn't track at all in a world outside Pharasma's Creation, now, would it? But he expected people to be more...deferent? To powerful entities? It seems like the sort of thing you would do. Even paladins of Iomedae speak respectfully of Her, even though She doesn't demand obeisance from Her followers.

Conrad can all but literally see the gears of Dr. Bishop's mind wheel and spin as she processes what he's said. "None of those sound familiar at all, no., and, I believe your special circumstances may explain some anomalies with the anemometry as well." She looks over Conrad again, noting his rigid posture and perhaps a hint of weariness from his trek to the facility. "Please, feel free to take a seat if you're tired. I can only imagine that it's been at least as long a day for you as it has been for me."

She offers as she begins to pick up the spilled books and papers, setting them on her desk and sorting through them for a moment before picking out one particular page. "Yes. We haven't picked up any Recognitions this close to the facility before, there were a number of differences between the measurements taken earlier today and extrapolations based on more distant measurements and measurements taken from other facilities. Most of the others chalked it up to some previously undetected property of the Swarthwalls' resonance, but I was in the process of comparing it to some records of non-Recognition echoic phenomena."

She plucks another page from the pile, and then another. "I'm going to look through these now, but I get the feeling that I know what the numbers are going to say, if your story has any truth to it. In the mean time, if you're comfortable, can you tell me what's happened so far? After you, ah, appeared here? And before then, in this other world of yours, if you're willing to share."

He sits wordlessly. He could have stood for longer, but he's not going to refuse the offer. He's willing to give the whole story, but he'll...omit a few details that pertain to his capabilities, in case he needs to make a hasty escape after all. He's also very curious about the process by which echoic phenomena is detected, but he'll hold off on asking questions.

"Normally, I would be much more reticent in sharing details about myself, but you were specifically called to be the one I ought to talk to." He looks up at the ceiling as he begins to retell his story.

"I was a soldier in Her Majesty Abrogail Thrune II's Tenth Battalion, in the fifth crusade against the Worldwound. The Worldwound is a planar tear from which Abyssal demons pour forth to threaten our world, Golarion. The country I am from is called Cheliax, and Cheliax worships Asmodeus, the god of tyranny, slavery, compacts, and pride. During my service, I developed...theological issues with Asmodeus, which is to say that I became a heretic, and defected to try and find refuge in some other church also at the Worldwound. I was killed by Chelish Security in the process of defection. With fire," he adds, in case that's relevant.

"I woke up in a forest, healed of all wounds, when Lord Echo began to speak to me. They gave me facility in your world's language, and told me a bunch of other information as well. Oh, and orders to 'be free', and to 'speak and listen'. I'm not sure how to interpret that.

They spoke...really weirdly. I'm not sure if that's heretical to say. I can recite their exact words to me, although they also communicated things to me that was information, but not in the form of speech. I cannot recite that for you.

A man – I'm not sure who he is, though he seemed to be...in charge of the forests? – saw me and gave me directions to nearby sites, and I decided to go here."

He feels tired. Not physically – his Constitution is high and the metabolic road made it so he expended less energy than he had to – but...spiritually tired. Perhaps all that one can hope for is to have a kind and understanding master. What's the afterlife situation here, if Pharasma's jurisdiction doesn't extend here? What's Echo's afterlife like?

Dr. Bishop listens to Conrad's story as she collates the data. She remains serious, but there's an unmistakable sadness or pain that rises within her, though also a kind of happiness. "I'm glad that you were able to reject your god. If I may be honest, they sound awful. And, I'm glad that, ah, Lord Echo as you call them, brought you here. I assume you don't have the winds in the world you came from? This is only a hypothesis for now, but, I imagine that the echoic wind's appearance to you has been shaped by your history. It is the wind which most strongly reacts to human experiences and concepts, and seems to naturally assemble them in a way, to construct a sort of familiar form through which it interfaces with its Recognizants. Strange speech-rhythm, repeated speech, reversed speech, and similar interpretations are all common elements reported by other echoic Recognizants. The charge to 'be free' and to 'speak and listen'..."

She sighs. "They aren't something I have any specific records of but, informally, they certainly sound like things the echoic wind would say. As for the man you met, I imagine that's one of the forest rangers. Swarthwalls has a considerable tourism industry and it's not uncommon for people to get lost in the woods when they go hiking or camping, so there's a ranger patrol to catch them and help them back to civilization."

Echo's presence remains distant, but seems to respond to Conrad's uncertainty. It's wordless, and fuzzier somehow than the previous instances of received understanding, there's still a strong sense of there being...more, after life. More life to live, and more than life, more than living, or living more than just life. It's not a very clear idea, but it stands apart from Conrad's ideas of afterlives as they existed in Pharasma's Creation.

He's going to also elide that he was a very devout Asmodean, and that he thought he was worthy of clerichood.

The forest ranger thing sounds very Good. Right, they...probably don't have the concept, do they? What with not having Pharasma.

"I call Them Lord Echo because it is wise to speak respectfully of powerful entities, and also because They are a god. At the very least, They share many abilities with Them. Namely: ability to send visions – not necessarily visual – to their followers, and the ability to choose specific people aligned with their goals and interests and grant them the ability to cast divine magic. During my Recognition – I had interpreted it at the time as a clericing – Lord Echo specifically invoked an analogy between being Recognized and being selected as a cleric by a god.

It has been my understanding so far that you do not worship – both in the sense of defer to and venerate, and also align one's goals and philosophies towards – the echoic wind, though I'm not sure about the other three. Lord Echo said that there were four. Why is the echoic wind called the echoic wind, by the way? I did not feel any wind during my recognition. 

Anyway, it seems that you treat Lord Echo impersonally, even though They are sapient? You, and the man I met, refer to Them with 'it'. We would not use such language to refer to deific entities in our world. But it seems that there are people who worship the Recognizants of the winds – the ranger said that there was a shrine to the Mother-Maker nearby, and offered me directions to it, but laughed when I asked whether there was a shrine to Lord Echo."

Dr. Bishop nods along as Conrad explains. "Calling them winds is I admit not entirely sensical, but it's simply how the language has developed. There have been many proposals to implement more accurate terms in the scientific community but none of them have found much real purchase among the laity. The original association of them with the cardinal winds is traditionally attributed to the Wind-Waker, but it's unclear if that is truly the case, if the Wind-Waker even actually existed, which archeology has yet to substantially evidence. I believe the metaphor is something like, they drive the world and everything in it, the way that the wind determines the fate of a fallen leaf, or something like that."

She pauses for a moment, having finished collecting the relevant papers, sitting down in the chair at her desk and beginning to review the papers in detail. "It's not actually unheard of for people to venerate the echoic wind specifically, especially its Recognizants and their followers, and such groups tend to have something of a poor reputation, which may have been what prompted the ranger's amusement. Regardless, aside from their testimony there isn't any tangible evidence that the echoic wind is any more personal a force than the poetic, metabolic, and chorismic winds. I'll refer to the wind with 'they' if the alternative bothers or worries you, though. I haven't heard of anyone worshiping Recognizants as a whole, but it's true that the most prolific religions of this age happen to pivot on central figures who are at least widely believed to have been powerful Recognizants. The Mother-Maker is one, as is the Wind-Waker, and there two others as well,the Road-Builder and the Storm-Slayer. The four of them are sometimes taken together as a sort of set, and among quadrivists it's not uncommon to associate each with one of the winds as well, which I suppose might be as close as one gets to wind-worship in the mainstream."

"Could you elaborate on the people who venerate the echoic wind? Also, it's not particularly a problem for me if the echoic wind is impersonal – deities in my world very rarely give visions, and many of them are also inhuman – that is to say, they were never human, and so have some trouble relating to he human experience.

It's not important to me that you refer to Lord Echo respectfully, unless They bid me to ask you to. Which They haven't. 

Could you describe the other powerful Recognizants? What did they do that gave them their titles?"

He sinks deeper into his chair. Maybe he was more tired than he thought.

"There are all sorts of them, oddly enough they don't tend to congregate into larger groups most of the time. They also don't tend to be very fond of echoic anemonomasticists like us-- like those of us who work here at the Swarthwalls facility. Trying to interview them about the echoic is a bit like trying to interview a wakerist about the Wind-Waker. Very low signal to noise ratio, if you're familiar with the metaphor. I know of a small group in town, I could introduce you to them tomorrow or some time next week if you like. I'm sure they'd be ecstatic to meet you."

Dr. Bishop picks up a pen and notebook and begins to scratch down some notes as she flips between the various pages she's collected. "The Road-Builder and Storm-Slayer are best attested to, with clear historical records of most of their deeds. The Road-Builder, well, built the network of metabolic roads that still serve as the primary arteries of land travel for the entire continent, You might have encountered one of them on your way here from wherever the echoic first placed you. The Storm-Slayer exterminated, or more likely lead and organized the extermination of, the dragons."

She considers that for a moment. "I don't know if you have dragons in your world, you haven't mentioned them. They're a sort of living weather-system formed by anemonic activity. Incredibly powerful, incredibly destructive things, like if a hurricane could hate you personally, or so the legends say. A part of me wishes I could have studied them, but mostly I'm glad they are gone. Regardless, that's the Storm-Slayer. The Mother-Maker and the Wind-Waker are both much older and much more mythical figures, with countless different stories associated with them across many cultures. The Mother-Maker is commonly associated with the invention of agriculture and writing and the other trappings of civilization, while the Wind-Waker is usually thought to have 'awoken' the winds, or founded the relationship humanity has with the winds in one way or another."

Noticing more of Conrad's tiredness, Dr. Bishop asks. "Can I get you anything? Some food, or maybe a coffee?"

"Why aren't they fond of you? I don't know the metaphor, but I think I get what you mean – it's difficult to get useful information from them. Regardless, I think meeting them would be good. Tomorrow is a good time, unless there's something else that's more urgent.

Yes, I traveled along a metabolic road to get here. It was very pleasant. I've never felt anything like it before. I assume the Road-Builder was a Recognizant of the metabolic wind; what about the Storm-Slayer and the Mother-Maker? And the Wind-Waker. Or is it that you can be a Recognizant of multiple winds at once? In our world, you can only be a cleric of one god at any one time.

We have dragons, in the sense that we have entities called 'dragons', but they are nothing like what you describe: they have nothing to do with the weather. They are very large reptiles, vaguely like lizards, who have powerful breath abilities: the ability to breathe fire or spit acid."

He yawns.

"Food would be good, yes. I don't usually drink coffee. Is it possible for me to stay here?

Also, what is an 'invocation'? The guard I met at the front talked to me about it. Apparently it's important, or something, and determines a Recognizant's status."

"I'm not a psychologist, and I'm not entirely fond of them either so I may be biased, but I figure they don't like us taking an empirical, evidence-based approach things, rather than trusting the echoic 'at its word', so to speak. And, yes, people can be Recognized by more than one wind, though it's quite rare since the winds are attracted to broadly different sorts of people. The Road-Builder is confirmed to have been Recognized by the metabolic and there's reason to believe he was recognized by the poetic as well, though it's not certain. There's no solid confirmation of which winds Recognized the Storm-Slayer, but there's fairly strong evidence of at least one of the chorismic and the echoic, or possibly the metabolic. Claims for the Mother-Maker and Wind-Waker cover the entire gamut, and wakerists in particular are fond of claiming that the Wind-Waker was Recognized by all four. The most common quadrivist associations for the four are poetic to the Mother-Maker, metabolic to the Road-Builder, chorismic to the Storm-Slayer, and echoic to the Wind-Waker, but that's as much based on aesthetic sensibility and philosophical pondering as it is on historicity."

Dr. Bishop stands from her desk, putting down her pen and notebook and tidying up the papers on her desk a bit. "Yes, you can stay for the night at least, and invocations are a bit difficult to explain, so I'll give you more details when I'm back with the food, but they basic idea is that they are a consequence of the special relationship a Recognizant has with their wind. The winds react fairly predictably to certain sounds, movements, and shapes, which forms the basis of anemonic ritual and inscription, but Recognizants are able to change the way the winds behave, which is generally though not always characterized by a personal phrase or sign they make by meditating on and interfacing with their wind, that they can speak or form to produce anemonic phenomena of much greater complexity and magnitude than a ritual or inscription with a similar amount of investment would be able to, and maybe more importantly, alters and expands the sort of, landscape of potential rituals and inscriptions around it."

She turns toward the door. "Anyway, do you have any food allergies or dietary restrictions I should be aware of? With my privacy indicator on no one should knock, but in case someone is rude and does anyway, you can just say that I'm out of the office and will be back in a few minutes."

"No allergies or dietary restrictions."

He's going to wait for Bishop to return before asking his questions. It does seem as though the winds are also a system of magic, as well as a pantheon, in that specific negotiations with the winds let you effect magic. What sign or phrase does he have that evokes Echo? He thinks on his previous interactions with Echo. Is his specific invocation dying and getting resurrected? 

Once Bishop comes back, he plans to ask the following:

"What sorts of people is each wind attracted to? What are the differences between the four winds?

About how many people in a hundred are Recognizants? Are there statistics on that?

Are there differences in strength between Recognizants, or are they on the same footing?

What are rituals and inscriptions?"

He doesn't have any other questions about the winds for now.

Dr. Bishop is indeed only gone for a few minutes, and thankfully no one knocks during her absence. It does start gently raining outside, gently pattering against the windowpane.

When she returns, she's carrying two paper-wrapped baguette sandwiches, warm to the touch when she hands one to Conrad. "I hope it's to your liking, The canteen has limited selection during night hours."

She sits back down at the desk chair, opening up her sandwich. She's either taking a break from the note-taking and computing she was doing on paper or is satisfied with her work, as her attention is entirely on Conrad as he asks his questions.

"Informally, the echoic tends to be attracted to people in the midst of transition or change, the poetic to those with creativity and ambition, the metabolic to those who are isolated or who don't conform to the people around them, and the chorismic to those who are contemplative and intellectual. That's the common sense anyway, all of that's rather hard to define with any rigor, let alone test. We don't know exactly how many Recognizants there are, but estimates put them at about two million worldwide, or about one in every five hundred, though more than half of that estimate is a theoretical projection of the prevalence of invocationless, unidentified Recognizants. Actually confirmed cases of Recognition are more like one in every twelve or thirteen hundred. Between the winds, among recognized cases, about 33% are Recognized by the echoic, 29% by the metabolic, 21% by the poetic, and 17% by the chorismic, and significantly less than a percent are recognized by two."

"The exact natures of the winds are pretty nebulous, though naturally we're working hard to clarify it, here and in all the other anemonomastic facilities around the world. Traditionally, though, the poetic wind is thought of as being the power of creation, or bringing new things into the world, the metabolic as the power of changing what already exists, the chorismic as the power of destruction and rejection, and the echoic as the power of connection and communication."

"It's difficult to get any exact measure of 'strength', it's a very slippery concept, but there's certainly a lot of variation in the scale of what different Recognizant's invocations can seemingly do. One of my colleagues is working on measuring the degree of 'alignment' between a Recognizant and their wind, which he believes serves as at least an upper limit on the amount of anemonic force their invocation can draw on. The common sense on this is that Recognizants tend to get stronger over their life, with all sorts of potential explanations, though this isn't supported by the statistics and I think it's more shaped by people's interpretation of various celebrity Recognizant's lives rather than the average Recognizant's trajectory."

"Rituals are prescribed scripts of words and motions that when performed correctly generate a predictable anemonic phenomenon, and inscriptions are similar but are instead specific shapes that continuously produce a consistent phenomenon. My privacy indicator and lamp are examples of inscribed devices." She gestures to the stone cylinder and lamp on her desk. "Both rituals and inscriptions are limited by their 'investment', though what exactly that means is somewhat different for rituals than inscriptions. The investment of a ritual depends on its length, the complexity of the its script, the minimum number of simultaneous ritualists needed for it, whether it requires any special circumstances or ritual settings, whether it requires ritual props and whether those props need to be anemonically active, and countless other factors of a similar sort. Investment for inscriptions meanwhile is almost solely determined by the length of the inscription, though there's some ongoing research into the potential for the material composition of the inscribed object to influence the investment of the inscription as well."

The fact that the sandwich is a.) warm and b.) not Worldwound rations makes him immediately love it. He consumes the entire thing at a frighteningly quick pace. He nods at appropriate times as Bishop explains.

He could see himself fitting with all four winds, except the chorismic. Wizards are usually contemplative and intellectual, and certainly, he's capable of that, but it isn't natural for him. He has to consciously make himself adopt that posture (which is surprisingly often, it seems). He shouldn't count on being recognized by more than one wind, though, given the numbers.

Ah, that's the more confusing part. This time, he can relate to all of the winds save the echoic. He's never been good at talking. And he specializes in transmutation magic, which seems centrally metabolic. Not that he's going to reveal he's a wizard to Bishop. It's not good to reveal your capabilities like that, in general, it is unwise. Also, it's highly likely, given the sort of person Bishop seems to be, that she'll get distracted and become the one asking questions. Better not to broach the topic.

Alignment! So it is similar to clerichood, just that it's more freeform rather than with discrete circles...time to learn how to connect and communicate. Mmmmm. This is going to be difficult. In a different shape of difficult than what he's used to expect. But he'll get over it. He gets over everything.

"Could you talk more about this concept of alignment? There is a parallel to our world, where the clerics of gods choose to align their interests and manners of thought closer to their god's, which makes them more likely to bestow more abilities to them."

Ah, so rituals are like spells, and inscriptions are like magic items. Although rituals can be cast by multiple people, it seems – no, that's a requirement most times, it seems.

"Let me see if I have an accurate understanding of the winds. I would guess that your privacy indicator light is echoic, or perhaps metabolic, whereas your lamp is metabolic, or perhaps poetic.

I'm deeply interested in learning whether I could learn to cast rituals or make inscriptions." Especially since he used to make wondrous items. Not that he specialized in it, but he's competent.

Dr. Bishop, who is eating her sandwich much less ravenously, sighs with long-suffering weariness. "Slawmoth is one of the worst when it comes to being excessively secretive with his work, so I don't have more than guesses and office gossip regarding his methodology or framework. If you're willing we might be able to trade your cooperation with some of his tests for a proper explanation, I'm sure he's as desperate for Recognizant data as everyone else in this building. We should figure out how to break the news about you to the rest of the facility, if you don't plan on making yourself scarce tomorrow."

"Those are both just about correct. The privacy indicator is actually a mixture of both echoic and metabolic, which I suppose might not have been obviously possible. Most inscriptions that have some kind of control mechanism are at least a little bit metabolic, even if their primary effect is entirely the product of another wind. My desk lamp in particular is primarily poetic, again with a minor metabolic component to let me extinguish and relight it, but the ceiling lamps in the halls are purely metabolic."

"As for learning to cast rituals and make inscriptions, I'm certain you'll have plenty of opportunities to do both. Most people here in the facility aren't exactly ritual specialists, but you don't end up in anemonomastics without learning at least some, and the same applies to inscriptions. None of us are master builders, but making and especially designing inscriptions is an unavoidable part of the research process. Of course, you'll find a reasonable number of professional ritualists and inscribers in town, mostly in the medical and repair sectors. Even beyond that, Recognizants are demonstrably better able to develop ritual and inscription skills than the unrecognized, so you could probably just buy some books-- Oh. You don't have any money, do you? Hm. That could be a problem."

She taps a finger on a section of her desk in an odd way, winces slightly, and then opens what was apparently a secret compartment, retrieving a handful of paper slips before standing up and offering them to Conrad. "This is 200 ducats, which should cover modest room and board for long enough to get steady on your feet, in case you don't stay here and work with us. It wouldn't do to force you to choose between working with us and having to rough it for who knows how long."

Hm? The lamp is mostly poetic with a little metabolic, but the ceiling lamps are entirely metabolic? How does that work? Maybe the lamp can run on its own, but the ceiling lights have to rely on some other source of energy or power, since the metabolic wind can only transform, not create.

He thinks about questions to ask, but the last part derails all the trains of thought running through his mind. He lacks neither the Splendor nor the Bluff to prevent the expression of shock and mild horror from coming to his face. He keeps his hands close to his sides, as though the currency was somehow cursed, and touching them would bring certain death.

"Really? You're just – you're just – just going to give this to me? No strings attached? You're not even going to ask me to do anything for you? There isn't a compact tied to the money?" The words tumble out of his mouth before he has a chance to think about what he's saying. "How does this benefit you?"

He looks more scared now at this moment than at any other point since Bishop met him.

There's the same sadness as before in her eyes as she sees Conrad's reaction. "I'm sorry, I didn't consider how your particular...background could weigh on your interpretation of my offer. Given what I understand of your homeland, I don't know if we have the common philosophical ground for me to properly explain, but I will try."

She pauses for a moment, bringing the hand holding the money back to her side as she considers her words. "I, and many people here, in the facility, in this town, perhaps even in this world as a whole, are encouraged through out their lives to care deeply for others. For some this caring extends primarily to family or close friends, but for others it extends to much larger groups such as their coworkers, ideological allies, or countrymen, though perhaps to a lesser and unequal degree. For some, it even applies to total strangers. We, who study the wind of connection and communication, are some of the most likely to fall into that latter category, or close to it at least. It is easy for me to feel the suffering of others as my own, and the desire to ameliorate it comes almost as easily. Helping you benefits me by assuaging the pain I would share with you in this way."

She raises the money back up to Conrad. "So, yes, this is a gift offered without expectations of recompense. Consider, you were charged to be free, and instructed to find me here. If you cannot yet trust me, then trust your Echo."

Surely he cannot have been clericed by a Good deity! He's not even Neutral. Wait, he should discard his Golarian preconceptions and think from scratch. This is outside Pharasma's Creation – there is no reason why a god wind has to decide who to Recognize based on alignment.

With great reluctance, he accepts the money, and puts it into his pocket. He's surprised that they use paper as currency here, and not coins, whose value is in the metal they're made of. He has heard of bank checks, though, so the currency might operate on a similar principle, where you take the slips to a bank in case you want to exchange it for gold. 

Right, he should be appreciative. "Thank you," he says, still sounding bewildered.

"It would be good for me to sleep now. Where should I go? As for tomorrow, I think that it would be good to talk to the people who venerate the echoic wind – do they have a name? – as well as do divination rituals on me. I may or may not accept Slawmoth studying me depending on the terms he provides, since I want copies of the results of the scans to be given to me."

Dr. Bishop gives Conrad a fragile but genuine smile. "You're welcome." She makes an expression of embarrassed surprise. "Sorry, I just realized I never asked your name. I understand if you don't want to share it, though. I'm just surprised I didn't think of it sooner."

"Anyway, the chair you're in now can be leaned back and have leg rests folded out, if you'd prefer to stay here with my privacy indicator on. The beds in the office dormitory might be more comfortable but you'd certainly be noticed. I wouldn't let anyone wake you but you'd probably be waking up to a lot of questions...and I can imagine one or two of my colleagues might follow you into town to try and persuade you to participate in their research. As for the echoic venerators, I think the local group calls themselves the Mesh, or maybe the Net? It's been a long time since I've talked with them and they don't make a point of being very loud about their activity, even if they aren't exactly secret about it either."

She very briefly seems confused, with maybe a hint of insulted, but it disappears just as quickly. "Yes, we can have some scans done, and the results will be shared with you. It's illegal, in this country at least, to perform these sorts of experiments and not make the results available to the experiment's subjects, and this is fairly well-enforced law so long as you're able to self-start about it. The trick will be getting Slawmoth to give us the framework to interpret meaning from the results. Though, even if we can't get everything, I might be able to piece together something from whatever snippets he is willing to share with his prior published papers."

"Conrad Ferrer. I was named after my grandfather."

Why did he say that. It's true. But why did he say that.

"I'd prefer to stay here. I was fortunate enough to be able to come here with my blade and my gauntlet, which are very precious to me. The former is a family heirloom. I do not want it to be stolen." Normally, he'd say 'Touch it and die', but he doesn't actually know whether he can credibly back that up? And besides, it seems like that isn't a wise thing to say to the person who just...gave you money...for free...

The sheathed dagger is on his belt. If Bishop examines it, she'll see the dagger and sheath are very well made, even if she has no expertise in appraisal: the wooden sheath has a rich oxblood varnish, and on the very top edge, just where the sheath meets the hilt, Conrad's name seems to be engraved in very faintly glowing red letters. On the pommel and on one side of the sheath, there's an inset of ruby, and the handle is wrapped in leather dyed dark red.

The locking gauntlet will look like a very strange gauntlet, if Bishop isn't familiar with plate armor. There's a hook and eye mechanism on the side where the back of the hand would be, and it's shaped for the right hand.

"I am content so long as I get the data. I might be able to interpret the results myself, if I apply myself to anemonomastics." He says it matter of factly, with neither boasting nor insecurity.

"It's good to meet you, Mr. Ferrer." She gives the the dagger an appreciative look, much the same she'd give to a colleague showing off a watch or necklace, polite but not terribly interested. The gauntlet holds her curiosity for a moment, before she grasps its approximate function.

She steps back around her desk, replacing most of the books and papers on it onto the shelves except for a few which she holds under her arm. "I've more or less confirmed my suspicion, and I think I'll be able to convince the others of the truth of your testimony, at least up to the point of you being from beyond this world. I'm going to sort out some things to get ready for tomorrow, then head back to my apartment in town to get some sleep myself. I'll let the staff know I've brought in a guest, and if you need me for anything you can head to the front desk and ask them to send me a message."

She almost leaves, then remembers to mention one more thing, "You extinguish the lamp by tapping this spot here," she indicates a little bump on the foot of the lamp, "and tap it again to relight it." She nods, perhaps more to herself than to him. "Good night, Mr. Ferrer."

Then, unless he makes a sign or word to keep her, she's away and Conrad is alone in the office but for the sound of cold winter rain and the distant, intangible presence of Echo.

"Good night, Dr Bishop," he says back, before the door closes.

He arranges the chair just like she told him he could – wow this isn't even wind-based technology how does Golarion not have this – and makes an audible sigh of relief. He rises up to extinguish the lamp, then turns it back on just to check that his mere touch hadn't ruined the lamp for some reason, and then extinguishes it again.

He hasn't heard the sound of liquid water rain in some time. It doesn't really rain liquid water at the Worldwound. Only hail or snow, or more exotic liquids like acid if it's feeling particularly cranky. It's very soothing.

He would normally pray to Asmodeus before going to sleep, but Echo is most likely more understanding. Given how They're not really a god. They're still going to send a short message before he proceeds inexorably into sleep.

"Thank You, Lord Echo."

"You're welcome, Conrad." Comes a physical, though quiet. voice. It's not a perfect reflection of his own the way Echo's mental voice is, but something about it is nonetheless obviously Them.

He startles slightly at the voice, since he's used to Echo speaking to him mentally, but he then relaxes.

He feels...vaguely sad? Not about Echo, but about how he like, literally died, and also lost his spellbook. And basically abandoned everything he stood for and knew.

The good thing about being really tired is that it makes you fall asleep very quickly, and it also makes your mind shut up. He sleeps without dreaming for a long while – more than nine hours.

Conrad's sleep is indeed deep, restful, and undisturbed. He might have a little bit of discomfort in his back from sleeping in a reclined chair, but he might not, his Constitution is quite high and it's a well-made chair. It's still dark through the window, but also still raining, so it may not be immediately clear whether it's very late at night or very early in the morning. If Conrad needs to use the restroom or get some breakfast he still knows his way around the facility.

He feels great. He's not sure how long he slept, but it was definitely long enough that he could prepare spells – there's a very subtle sense that tells you if you've rested enough that wizards learn to pay attention to. He's not sure what the time is, but given that no one has disturbed him thus far, he's not going to stress too much about that.

His routine is to prepare spells – he can prepare his full complement of spells in a quarter hour rather than a full hour – and then exercise in the remaining time. Right now, he has nothing to prepare, save the one spell that all wizards are taught how to prepare without a spellbook, for the sole purpose of letting you create a new spellbook: Read Magic. But that spell is also useless, because they don't have Golarion arcane magic here.

He's still going to do it anyway, because the habit of preparing spells is just too ingrained in him and he feels like something will break if he stops now. He forms his hands into the correct shapes and hangs Read Magic into a first-circle spell slot rather than a cantrip slot. Done.

Normally, he sleeps naked, and also prepares his spells and exercises naked so he doesn't get his uniform dirty, putting it on only after he's Prestidigitated himself clean. He's going to strip and do his usual calisthenics. Also, it's easier to Prestidigitate clothes clean if you're not wearing them. The whole process including the spell preparation will take a little over three quarters of an hour.

Echo doesn't make any linguistic remarks, physically or mentally, unless Conrad reaches out, but the feeling of their presence is strong while he's preparing Read Magic, and to a lesser degree during his calisthenics, ideas and information emanating from Them.

Conrad has an invocation now! It's quite basic, but by saying "Thank you, Lord Echo" he can allow Echo to speak physically. There are numerous potential avenues for this invocation to be augmented or evolved. The exact phrasing of the invocation can be changed, nuance can be added to the pronunciation of the invocation to allow for fine-grained control of the effect. The length, volume, language, point of origin, and direction of Echo's resultant speech can all be change, along with countless other variables.

The flow of the invocation could be reversed, such that instead of producing speech Echo will instead bring sounds to Conrad's ear, which could then be altered into something usable for eavesdropping and perhaps even long-range reconnaissance eventually.

These are only a small fraction of the total possibilities, though through the interface of Echo the breadth of the possibility space is not so daunting.

Echo's interest seems to linger especially on the mental object of Conrad's prepared Read Magic, before a new idea emerges.

It would require a greater amount of time and effort to reach from his current invocation, but with rearrangement it could be that, as long as Read Magic is prepared, Conrad could speak his invocation to be able to 'read' inscriptions, deciphering their function at a glance, and could expend a spell slot containing Read Magic to copy an observed inscription into the same mental space, allowing him to study it freely without need of the physical form.

This invocation's potential for future development is rich, including such possibilities as developing a broader eidetic memory, the ability to recreate copied inscriptions exactly, or perhaps even to 'translate' copied transcriptions into spells of arcane magic.

Aside from Echo's wordless proposals, Conrad's morning routine will go uninterrupted.

Invocation time!

That is...a very amusing invocation. He would have expected his invocation to be a pleading, not a thanking. It seems premature to thank someone before they actually do the thing you ask them to do. Though, well, with gods, the fact that they even heard your prayer is reason enough for thanks, so in that sense it's not actually that weird.

It's very similar to the spell Message, which he's very sad that he doesn't have. It's a transmutation spell that likewise transmits sounds over short distances. Although it seems like this invocation is also capable of creating figments a la Ghost Sound, which is an illusion spell.

...oop.

He's going to go back to spell preparation and fill up all his spell slots with Read Magic. Divination isn't his specialty, so he has four first-circle, three second-circle, and two third-circle slots with which to fill up with Read Magic. This takes fifteen minutes.

He'll think about how he might use the invocation to read the inscriptions of the privacy indicator and the desklamp, but he'll first go about it with the tried and true Detect Magic. He does not expect to have any insight into their spell manifolds, if they even have such a thing, but he's curious: will the items have auras corresponding to the Golarion magic schools, even imperfectly, or are they school-less?

There are auras! Three in this room, corresponding to the lamp, privacy indicator, and secret compartment. The auras do have some of the qualia Conrad would expect of the schools of magic, but it's utterly garbled, at least if he tries to interpret it in the normal way. If he ignores what he knows and just tries to take the inscribed items as they are, he can see a hint of similarity between the three of them, perhaps the common element of metabolic, which is then mixed in varying proportions with three distinct other shades, presumably poetic for the lamp and echoic for the privacy indicator, and by process of elimination...chorismic for the secret compartment?

...he didn't intend for the secret compartment to be included in the spell, but Detect Magic has a cone-shaped emanation. It's embarrassing that he forgot this basic fact you learn in your first year at Ostenso Wizarding Academy.

He'll have to use Detect Magic before he figures out the correct way to word the invocation to let him 'absorb' the content of inscriptions. At the very least, he can use his observations now to determine which winds are involved in other items.

He's going to try to do the 'make Echo speak' invocation. He'll recite "Thank You, Lord Echo," in the same way he would utter a verbal component for a spell: a touch louder than conversational volume, with an affect like reading off a book for an exam, in that there's deliberate effort to enunciate each phoneme fully rather than permitting the sounds and syllables from blending into each other.

"Good morning, Conrad." Comes the voice, with the same identifiable character as last night, though now at a more conversational volume.

...didn't Bishop say that the strength of a ritual or inscription depends on its complexity? What if he tries a really long invocation? Will that work? Will it leave a smoldering crater like an unsafe Wish wording?

Actually, this whole process of figuring out invocations sounds too much like Wish wordings, and the Wise thing to do would be to hold off and tell Bishop about this so that she can supervise actually what he wants to do is try a really long invocation.

He speaks now like a preacher at one of the Asmodean temple sermons, filled with conviction, a large part of it not feigned. His voice is louder now. Not shouting, but definitely louder. He's plagiarizing a bunch of Asmodean ritual prayers right now.

"Thank You, Lord Echo, who breathed life into me, who saw a use for me, who bid me come to Pleroma to be Your servant, to enact Your will on this world, who deigned to furnish me with knowledge, who led me to safety when I was lost; forsooth, forever and ever shall I be in awe of You, mightiest of all the winds, the wind that bridges the gaps, the wind that brings together, the wind whose name resounds across the valleys."

"Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Conrad, you have learned to speak, and your heart sings so full with borrowed words which yet ring with truth, calling me in, and in each of your words I follow, and to each syllable I return a syllable!"

There is a pause, which if Conrad is paying close attention happens at the same metric position as the end of Echo's epithets in his prayer-invocation. "With this calling, I give to you the words which are shaken free by your utterance, but it is yet only this calling, for the call of the words is not the calling of the winds, but only its skin."

'The call of the words is not the calling of the winds, but only its skin.'

That's probably referencing the fact that he hasn't quite figured out how to modify the invocation and is instead just faffing about with it. He's kind of confused at why Echo hasn't just given him the alternate invocation forms, but presumably doing so is against the winds' nature, or maybe Echo is the type of deific entity that wants to test their followers. Or, applying Golarian theology, Echo doing that would upset the other three winds, and they've compacted not to do that.

He'll try to see if he can direct a message to Bishop specifically, like the spell Sending. Hm, if he's going to think of it like a Sending spell, then it should be twenty five words or fewer. Or, given that Echo cares about syllables, perhaps twenty five syllables or fewer. He speaks in the same way as the first invocation. Do his thoughts matter when invoking, or is it just a matter of recitation? In the case it's the former, he's going to visualize Bishop in her mind, and visualize talking to her as if through the spell Message – he doesn't actually know what Sending would feel like, because he hasn't cast it before.

"Thank You, Lord Echo, for bringing Doctor Melissa Bishop here, just like how You brought me to her."

There's a wordless sense of satisfied agreement from Echo's mental presence. "Without the windless magic, the reach of this calling is short, its power weak, as if I were at your side."

There's an additional sense that, while rituals and inscriptions are simply strengthened by the investment placed in them, invocations are different.

Echo's presence briefly flares, stronger than it has ever been up to this point, though only briefly, as more information resolves itself to Conrad. Experimenting with his invocation, and any other activity in which he is engaging with Echo and with his Recognition by Echo will feed and grow the power available to his invocation. Aside from interfacing with and integrating his spellslots, this is the only way for the power of his invocation to increase.

He's surprised at how Echo was able to transmit to him virtually instantly a full layout of the facility, with details concerning personnel movements – invaluable for a squad commander, if he was one – but sending a message is difficult. Does it have to do with his magic? Echo did reference Conrad's magic with 'windless magic'. Message is transmutation, but Sending is evocation, which is an opposition school of his. Divination is neither.

Alternatively, it could be inherent to the echoic wind itself, and entirely unrelated to him.

It could also be the fact that he was in a stressful situation yesterday, whereas he's more relaxed today. Does he need to be in a dangerous situation for Echo to decide to step in?

He'll call for Dr Bishop the mundane way. He'll tap into his earlier memory of Echo's vision, to see where Bishop would most likely be located, and go there, unless someone interrupts him along the way.

As Conrad gets ready to go, Echo's presence fades into the distance again, though They do leave him with one last impression, almost tactile, of holding and molding soft clay in his hands, then of crushing hard ceramic between them.

Dr. Bishop is probably in or around her apartment! He doesn't have a precise map of it or the town like he does of the facility, but he has a reasonable sense of how to get there. She did also say that he could ask someone at the front desk to send her a message if he needs her, though, which might be reasonable to do even if he plans on heading into town regardless.

The vision is mildly unnerving since it parallels the Asmodean parables about being broken and reshaped in Hell. He shudders despite himself. Yes, Echo isn't overtly malicious like Asmodeus – he would guess that it's referencing becoming stronger instead.

His mental map along with the ranger's directions tell him it's around sixty to seventy miles from the facility to the town if he takes the metabolic road. Very far away. But he's confident he'll make it in just a few hours if he runs there. Exercise can only do so much for the average commoner, but for people who have developed channeling capacity, it's possible to extend what training can get you – this is how fighters are able to match casters in adventuring parties despite the fact that they don't channel any type of magic or energy. Wizards barely use this potential, except maybe training Dexterity, but he's not your usual wizard.

He goes to the front desk. 

"I want to speak with Dr. Melissa Bishop, is she in town? Could you send a message for her?" He's unsure if this message is referring to them passing it along when she comes back, or whether they have some mechanism to relay messages across long distances. The latter sounds possible, even likely, given that the communication is a big part of the echoic wind's portfolio, and this is an echoic research facility.

Unlike last night, there is actually someone there at the front desk. A very short woman, almost Small, and round with fat, with long blonde hair tied into a pony-tail and spectacles resting on her nose. "Oh, you're her guest? Sure thing." She picks up a palm-sized metal plate and holds half way between her ear and the corner of her mouth. "What's your message?"

"Can this accept a reply, or can it only send a single one-way message? That isn't my message – that's just my question."

The woman waves her free hand with dismissive understanding, "Yes, yes, it can accept a reply, though going from how tired she looked when she left she might not be up yet."

"Here's my message: 'Dr. Bishop, I am planning to visit you at your place. Please expect me in the afternoon. Ferrer.'"

Afterward, he's going to see whether he can eat something at the cafeteria. He doesn't have a ring of sustenance, and he'll definitely faint if he tries running seventy miles without food.

He has money now, so he can buy things. Hooray! And the food is an order of magnitude better than Worldwound rations. He'll walk over there and see what they have in the early morning. He's particularly looking for dishes with meat – meat is scarce at the Worldwound – as well as fresh vegetables, especially leafy vegetables. Oh, and fruits, though he'll be reluctant to eat fruits he doesn't recognize.

The woman nods and presses her thumb into the metal plate. "Comms office." She state with particularly stressed enunciation. "Message for Melissa Bishop." She pauses briefly, seemingly waiting for something. "Dr. Bishop, I am planning to visit you at your place. Please expect me in the afternoon Ferrer."

Then she removes her thumb from the plate, places it back in the slot on the desk she retrieved it from, and gives Conrad a smile. "Need anything else, Mr. Ferrer?"

In the canteen, there's bacon, spiced pork sausages, scrambled eggs, toast, and pancakes, all served hot buffet style, as well as coffee, tea, milk, and water tanks and various condiments such as jam, salt, 'ketchup', granulated sugar, butter, and so on. There's also a bowl of various citrus fruits, which may be familiar as a broad category even if Conrad can't identify any of the specific varietals.

"Nothing else, thank you." It feels...weird, to be thanking people, because you don't really do that in Cheliax, but adaptation is a virtue.

Sugar! He cannot believe that you can just have sugar like that – does sugarcane grow here? Isn't sugarcane frost-tender? It might be warm enough here for it to grow, though. In that case, they might not need to import sugar, which would mean it costs less. Cheliax grows crops cheaply because of slave labor, but sugar has to be imported from Garund and Casmaron.

He hides the curiosity from his face. If there's a person attending to the food, he'll ask, "How much does the sugar cost?"

There is a (somewhat hapless) food-minder, who happens to just be returning with a restock of a different kind of jam from presumably the larder. "Uh, the pricing isn't for individual condiments, u-unless you have faculty or staff account. For non-affiliates it's two pounds a plate." He (a tall, tan, and rail-thin young man with black hair pressed flat against his scalp) gestures to the plates, stored in a cabinet with a glass door. "B-but please don't just take all of any of the dishes!"

Is slavery legal in Pleroma? Or in this country specifically, which he's actually not sure what the name of is? Okay, that's not relevant. 

Two pounds a plate...are pounds currency? He has heard of some places that weigh silver or gold by the pound as a measure of value. Or do they weigh the food you get? He's going to lean on the latter theory because Bishop gave him ducats. Wait, this place isn't Asmodean. He can just...ask for information...without them reading into it.

"How many ducats is a plate?"

The boy gets a bit of a grip on himself as he answers. "One twelfth, sir. I can make change if you need it?"

Wow. Only one-twelfth of a ducat to get this much food.

Two hundred ducats is a lot of money.

He looks at the paper slips he's been given and tries to find one that is of the lowest denomination to give to the minder.

Hm, ducats. Is this region a duchy? Duchy of who? He might get clues if he looks at the paper slips more closely.

He's going to take a bunch of everything, with lots of butter, jam, and sugar to go with the toast and the pancakes, and take just water to drink. He doesn't take any fruits, because he doesn't really like citrus fruits. He wonders how they're able to manage this much food and this much variety for people who are, presumably, commoners, even though they might be trained specialists. He hopes he doesn't go over the weight limit: he eats a lot. If he doesn't go over, he'll definitely approach it.

Is being an echoic researcher very prestigious and valuable? Or perhaps the winds have specific magic that make it easy to grow crops: like weather control. He remembers Melissa talk about how there were 'dragons' which were...hostile sentient weather? So presumably the winds have weather in their portfolio, and it also seems that the winds are more cooperative and powerful than druids who can cast Control Weather for you.

The smallest denomination he has are one-ducat bills! He has quite a few of them, alongside a fewer number of five- and ten-ducat bills, and a single fifty-ducat bill. Each denomination has a portrait of different unfamiliar person on the front, and a different landscape on the back, three different sorts of monuments and one that seems to be an aerial view of a densely urban port city (that one is on the fifty-ducat).

The food-minder will take one of the one-ducats and pop four coins of various sizes out of a neat little device on his belt, one large one, one whose diameter is maybe four fifths that of first, and two that are each maybe a third the size as the first, which he hands back to Conrad along with a plate taken from the cabinet. He'll watch (attempting and failing to be surreptitious) Conrad fill his plate, and will look just a hint worried when Conrad takes a bunch of butter, but he doesn't raise a fuss about it and Conrad is free to eat his breakfast.

He places the coins in his coin purse along with the other full-ducat bills, which he has carefully arranged inside the soft purse to avoid crumpling. The device is very interesting and he's tempted to interrogate the person about how it works and run Detect Magic on it, but he can't get too distracted.

The food is great and it is very difficult to be unhappy about dying, losing everything you know, and losing your spellbook when you're full.

He'll place the cutlery in the designated receptacle if there is one, and leave it on the table otherwise.

He'll then walk outside and see what the grounds outside the building look like. Is the guard from yesterday still there?

The food-minder brought a wooden box with him when he returned to the canteen a moment ago, which he will gesture to when it seems like Conrad's looking for a place to put his used cutlery.

The grounds outside are fairly sparse. There's a large, flat, clear-cut area that seems like a potential staging ground of one sort or another, as well as an area on the other side of the building that seems to have been scoured of grass by hoofmarks and wheeltracks, plus some suspiciously large sliding doors, perhaps leading to an indoor stable, though Conrad hasn't smelled anything like that up to this point.

There is a guard in the gatehouse, but it's not the one from last night. This one is a severe, rough-looking man with a shaved head, perhaps middle aged, well-fitnessed and also not very talkative at all.

Interesting. He's going to walk over to the slide doors and – not open them, it might be a prohibited area – but he'll run Detect Magic through it. So long as the doors aren't made of more than three feet of wood or one inch of metal, the spell should be able to penetrate the doors and see whether there are any magic items in there.

The doors do not block Detect Magic, which depending on how he angles it might pick up anywhere from one to four large and powerful auras, all of which share a common ratio of primarily metabolic with a hint of echoic.

Those auras are the sort of auras emitted by powerful magic items: the sort that require high-circle and skilled wizards to craft. It does seem like basically every item has at least some metabolic in them, although it seems that in this case, the metabolic component is the main one. 

He'll go to the guardhouse and ask, "What's in that room?" and point in the direction of the non-horsey stable.

"Automobiles," he answers simply.

"What are automobiles?" he asks. Very strong metabolic component, and minor echoic component. Something that manages sound, like an illusion? Hm, wait, no. He pulls on newly given language and automobile breaks into two words. Something that moves of its own accord. Like a construct?

The guard sighs wearily. "They're like a carriage that doesn't need a horse."

"I see." Very useful, if you don't have Mount or Phantom Steed, since those require no maintenance. And having a horseless carriage will speed up his journey to the town by like, a lot. But mostly he's very curious to see how it works.

"Can I ride one?"

The guard grumbles irritably. "Talk to the front desk."

Back inside, the woman at the front desk smiles at Conrad. "No word back from Dr. Bishop yet Mr. Ferrer. She's probably still asleep."

After he asks about riding an automobile. "Sure! You can rent one of the facility's for ten pounds a day. I can put Dr. Bishop down as the signer since you're her guest. But, if you don't mind waiting..." she checks a clock on her desk, "a little over half an hour, you can catch a ride on the shuttle bus for just eleven ounces instead."

This is so confusing. Okay, so, the man at the counter said that a plate was 'two pounds'. He assumed that meant weight, but now the woman at the desk is definitely using it to mean currency. So since two pounds is one-twelfth of a ducat, there are twenty four pounds to a ducat. But then, what's an ounce? Presumably it would be a fraction of a pound, but he's not sure how many.

"How much is that in ducats?" Now that he's here, what's the time now? He has confirmed that they tell time the same way here as in Golarion, which is interesting on its own.

The woman does some figuring before answering. "Twelve ounces to a pound, twenty four pounds to a ducat, so that's eleven two-hundred-eighty-eighths of a ducat."

Leaning a little to check the desk clock, it's apparently just a few minutes until 6:30.

He's going to need to get used to that, but it'll be fine. He survived Chelish public school math class.

He thanks her, still feeling awkward about it, then wonders whether there are any sitting areas or lounges where he can while the time until the shuttle comes. He would be content with walking, except that walking will take a while, so he's willing to spend eleven two-hundred-eighty-eighths of a ducat on doing Not That. Even though that means he's skipping on doing cardio. Which you should not do.

From what she said, it the shuttle is scheduled to arrive at 0700.

"Do the shuttles come on a schedule?"

"Yup! There's the morning bus that comes at 7, the lunch bus that comes at 1 after noon, and the evening bus that comes at 7 after noon. They're usually quite punctual, too, since there generally isn't much traffic on this stretch of road."

There are modest chairs in the front room, which  aside from the woman at the desk is unoccupied at the moment. He could also sit back down at the canteen, and there's also a break room with fewer but more luxurious seats similar to the one that he slept on in Bishop's office, though his knowledge of the facility's usage indicates that there probably are people there at the moment, especially since he didn't encounter any faculty at the canteen.

He would be content with just sitting at the front room, but he's also kind of unreasonably excited by the prospect of comfy shapeshifting chairs? Cheliax does not put any effort toward comfort in anything, unless it's meant for someone important or rich. He'll go to the break room. Presumably there'll be a clock there, but if not, he has a good sense of time if he keeps the time in the back of his mind – timing spell durations is important, and pocket watches are expensive. Usually only the sergeants and higher have them.

He'll sit on an unoccupied chair and see if it can also do the leaning-back-and-turning-into-an-ersatz-bed thing.

It absolutely can! It's a little bit more well-worn than the one in the office, probably on account of being used more often, but it's definitely still very comfortable.

There is also a nice clock-face hanging on the wall of the breakroom. There's no visible machinery under or around it, a bit like if someone took a pocket watch and just quadrupled its diameter.

There are four other people in the break room, all older men with grey or salt-and-pepper hair, of varying height but all of distinctly academic build. One of them is snoring in a reclined chair, another is sitting at a table eating a canteen breakfast and sipping coffee, and two are chatting while playing a card game. The latter two take notice of Conrad's arrival, and one waves amicably, but the sleeper and eater are not distracted from their respective activities (or lack there of).

He waves back at the man, but otherwise doesn't initiate conversation.

Yep, they look like just what he expected from wizards researchers. Absolutely contemptible. Asmodeus will reshape them in Hell no he doesn't want that anymore, actually.

Echo's presence pulses, just a bit, accompanied by a subtle sense of reassurance.

Even if Conrad doesn't initiate anything, after a few minutes the man who waved to him will stand up and head over to him. "Hey! Haven't seen you around here before. You turn up for the Recognizant, or just got lucky?"

Thank You, Lord Echo.

He turns to the man and says, matter of factly, "I am the Recognizant." His face seems calm and composed, almost serene.

Should he have said that? Right, he keeps forgetting not everyone he meets is an Asmodean. That's going to near the top of the list of Things Conrad Must Get Used To Now. Which is very long.

The man laughs, notices that Conrad doesn't look like he's joking, takes a moment to scrutinize him, then laughs again a little louder and with a big grin. "Well damn! Nice to meet you!" He offers Conrad his hand for a handshake. "I'm Stanmoor."

"Well met. I am Conrad." 

...why is the person sticking out their hand? He keeps his hand at his sides.

"I'm currently waiting for the shuttle to take me into town."

Normally, that'd be all he says, but he feels like it's safe to ask for information. From this person, at least.

"Have you worked with other Recognizants before? If so, what were they like?"

Dr. Stanmoor quickly retracts his hands when it’s clear Conrad isn’t going to shake it. “I was around for the last one to come by, yeah, a guy named Adon Oumbark, I believe.”

He looks up as he recalls. “A real Lanzendaling-type, if you know what I mean, big and tall and rugged, though I don’t know if he was actually Lanzendish or from some other trackless steppe. He was very polite but pretty quiet, though that might have just been a language issue. He was echoic of course, and his invocation was an interesting forecasting-type, sort of a danger-sense, a very broad and subtle thing that he could call up and sharpen with the phrase. Almost chorismic, honestly, but we confirmed he wasn’t a twice-Recognizant. I forget what the actual words were unfortunately, they were in some other language, or maybe were nonsense.”

He refocuses on Conrad. “I’ll hold myself back from questioning you too deeply, we’re all on break after all, but out of personal curiosity can I ask, what was it like? Being Recognized?”

"I don't know what Lanzendal is. I'm...from someplace very far away. The manner of my Recognition is tied into me traveling here. Lord Echo was very friendly and understanding when They Recognized me, although at the time I didn't understand what was happening and flailed pathetically. It all went well in the end. I would say the sensation is like...being with someone who understands you very deeply, and sitting near them without talking to them, but knowing that they are there. I think Lord Echo, during my Recognition, specifically tried to make me calmer, but I foolishly resisted."

Tall and rugged. He would describe himself as tall and rugged. Perhaps the echoic wind has the same taste in men as him.

"Lord Echo granted me an effect similar to that during the day I was Recognized – giving me the lay of the land, and information about pathways and buildings – but I don't think I can call on that anymore."

He seems briefly rapt by Conrad's description, and visibly has to stop himself from probing further. "You have a perfect accent, wherever you're from, and Lanzend is a country, sort of. Really it's more of a city-state that claims to control a vast, and in practice largely lawless, territory, northeast of here."

He pauses, thinking for a moment. "That's maybe a bit impolitic of me. They're an up-and-coming player on the international stage, I suppose. And that fits. It's not exactly science yet, but it's well-supported by Recognizant testimony that Recognition often comes with various one-off mut-- blessings, let's say. The metabolic most strongly, of course, but all of the winds to one degree or another."

He looks back at the man he was playing a card game with and shares a quick glance, before turning back to Conrad. "If you've got the time, care to join me and Godsor for a game of Castle & Quarry? We can teach it, if they don't have it where you're from."

He smiles slightly when Stanmoor says they have a perfect accent. Thank You, Lord Echo.

"Interesting. I'm not sure about the geopolitical situation around here. Not that I'm planning to be a player on the world stage: my invocation is indirect and mostly sensory. It seems that Lord Echo gives out those types of invocations, in contrast to the other winds, which seem to prefer directness and forcefulness in their effects. Quite frankly, I'm surprised Lord Echo Recognized me and gave me such an invocation, because indirection is contrary to my character.

It's not self-evident to me why the metabolic wind would give out the most one-off blessings. 

And no, we don't have that game where I'm from. I'd be inclined to learn it, if one game is shorter than thirty minutes."

What does Castle and Quarry look like?

"Well, you know what they say about who the ec--who Echo chooses. People going through things, people who are growing and evolving." He shrugs. "And if it doesn't work out, you can always change it, right?"

He winces slightly and makes a sound of mock-pain. "Ooh, no, it usually takes more like an hour or two, especially if we're teaching along the way. You're headed into town then? Maybe we can catch you the next time you're here at the facility?"

The cards are pretty unfamiliar to Conrad. They're still rectangles, and a reasonable size for playing cards, but each one is divided into two sides by a black line down the middle. On each side of the line there's a design in one color, either red, green, blue, or black. The cards currently on the table form an odd sort of tree-structure, with cards laid half on top of each other in long straight lines, except for occasional branch-points where a card is laid down turned ninety degrees.

"Change what?" he asks offhandedly, before getting distracted by the cards.

"Yes. I haven't been there yet. And yes, I'm likely to come here for a while."

This world really likes its groups of four. It makes sense given that there are four winds, though. He initially thinks it looks like solitaire, with the long lines of arranged cards, with some sort of rule that lets the two halves be joined together, but he has no idea how to interpret the branching parts. He feels...stress...initially, because it's vaguely evoking the anxiety of being tested and not knowing the answer, but he forces himself to relax.

Echo will offer a still-distant pulse of reassruance to help with that!

"Your invocation. Honestly it's one of the most fascinating things about Recognition. I'm looking forward to delving into it." Dr. Stanmoor rubs his hands together greedily. "If you're up for it, of course! If you like your invocation no need to change it just for me."

He stops everything he's doing and looks at Stanmoor for a moment, before letting out an "Oh." 

"I didn't know you could do that. I plan on seeing the full capabilities of my invocation before replacing it, though, since it doesn't seem like you can just switch them up on a whim.

I'm planning on working with Dr Bishop – Lord Echo specifically directed me to work with her, and I wouldn't dare disobey Their direct order."

Stanmoor brings the palm of his hand to his forehead in embarrassment. "Right! You just got Recognized yesterday and are from Waker-only-knows where. Sorry, didn't mean to assume. There's plenty of literature on how changing invocations goes, even if most of it's idiosyncratic mysticism written by non-scientist Recognizants in their autobiographies, I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out once you feel the need. And, Bishop does good work, always been one to care for strays, so it makes sense she'd be the one to, uh, get the job I suppose. I'll see if I can talk to her about some experiment ideas I'm having, later today."

With that, unless Conrad keeps him, Dr. Stanmoor will sit back down at the table with Godsor and starts to set up a new game of presumably Castle & Quarry.

Conrad will Observe the game taking place, until the clock strikes 0655, at which point he'll return to the front room to await the shuttle, which ought to be there very soon.

What does the shuttle look like? Conrad has seen carriages, and can imagine a carriage without a horse, but he has no idea what an automobile is supposed to look like. Presumably there would be wheels and seats, and perhaps a driver.

The beginning of the game involves gathering all the cards up and shuffling them thoroughly, as most card games do. Each player is dealt a hand of five cards. then the remainder are dealt out into an odd sort of pile which has a pyramid-like construction, with a layer of cards on the bottom, then a smaller layer of cards laid on top of them that are rotated ninety degrees, then a smaller set on top of that again rotated, going like that until the very top is a single card.

Godsor says "High," and then Stanmoor flips over the top card, revealing a blue design and a green design, prompting Godsor to swear under his breath and for Stanmoor to chuckle as he takes the blue/green card, flips over the two cards that it laid on, then put one of his cards down onto a separate space next to the card-pyramid. The game progresses in alternating turns, Stanmoor and Godsor taking face-up cards form the pyramid, occasionally flipping new cards face up as they're uncovered, and putting cards onto the other space, always placing cards half on top of other cards such that one of the new card's designs matches the 'free' design of the card already on the table.

At 6:54, the man eating breakfast (who finished while Conrad was watching Stanmoor and Godsor play) pulls out a pocket watch, stands, and heads out of the break room. When Conrad goes out to the front room, he'll find the same man waiting there along with a handful of other varied facility staff and faculty.

A few minutes later, a horn honks, a loud sound, and the small crowd begins to file out. As Conrad exits with them, he sees the bus and may be rather amused by it's construction, which is a bit like if someone had taken a covered wagon, enclosed the driver's bench in a box, and stretched out the back to three or four times the length, then affixed a pair of big, rumbling cylinders to the back. With all the people evidently getting on, it might be a tad crowded, but not badly. The driver, speaking clearly and loudly from inside the driver-box either with incredible lung-capacity or magical aid, informs soon-to-be-passengers that change will not be given for overpay, before the door to the passenger section opens and people begin to board, passing coins through a slot by the door, entering only after a bell rings, evidently induced by having paid a sufficient amount.

Wow, yeah, this is definitely going to take an hour to learn. He can tell that there's domino-style halves matching going on, but he can't divine the rules from watching them play for that short amount of time – not without taking out a pencil and paper and writing down observations, which is entirely too much effort just to learn a card game.

The bus is fascinating and he wants to take it apart to see how it works. Magic item crafting is a lesser passion of his, but it's a passion all the same. 

No change? He hurriedly checks his coin purse, deliberately letting other people go on before him so he has time and doesn't make people wait. He paid two pounds for food, which means he should have gotten twenty two pounds as change. Checking his coins...given the 'multiples and divisors of twelve' theme, he'll guess that he got a twelve-pound coin, a six-pound coin, and two two-pound coins. Since there are twelve ounces to a pound, he'll be overpaying by a lot if he pays with a two-pound coin.

He calls out, "Does anyone have change for a two-pound coin?" He'll suffer embarrassment if it means saving precious money which he's not sure he can get more of – until he gets his first paycheck from the facility, his brain will refuse to accept that the test subject job is real.

At least five people's hands go to their coin-purses (more might be reaching for coins in their pockets, or might reaching for their pockets for unrelated reasons), though the nearest one to Conrad is also the fastest. When they go to offer the coins to Conrad, they're actually the same size and design as the two smaller ones he already has.

"Ah, I always mix up ones and twos, too. Don't know why they don't put the numbers on the coins," says the woman who offered the coins.

...did the food man just cheat him!? That seems very unlikely: the coins came out of a machine, and he wouldn't dare try that with everyone in the facility. He probably has one eight-pound coin and two one-pound coins, then. Eight isn't a multiple of twelve, so it kind of breaks the scheme he had in his mind.

Mostly to the woman, but also loud enough that other people could hear, he asks, "Does anyone have change for a one-pound coin?" If not, then he'll just eat the one pound difference – he doesn't think one ounce is valuable enough to spend eight or more hours running towards the town.

The woman quickly searches through her purse again, and manages to find a half-pound and six one-ounce coins before her turn to board comes, offering them in exchange for one of Conrad's one-pounds. When she boards, just pays with a single one-pound coin.

...

...

why and how are people in this country so Good???????

how do you live like this????

He's going to stand there dumbfounded before thanking the woman and getting on board, paying the exact amount of money.

How quickly does the bus travel? He'll sit, if there are any window seats available, otherwise stand, if possible. He wants to be able to look out and see what the scenery is like on the way to town.

There are indeed plenty of window seats, probably about half the seats are situated by windows, and while there are a good number of people on-board a handful are choosing to stand, so there's room for Conrad to have his preferred seat.

The bus goes at a fairly sedate pace as pulls away from the facility and travels down the hard-pack path out to the highway. Once it's on the highway, it begins to accelerate, the cylinders at the back of the bus producing a gentle whine. It's going at least as fast as a good horse, and is still accelerating. It's going as fast as the fastest Phantom Steed that Conrad has ever seen, and is still accelerating. The trees of the valley forest are a total blur by the time the bus stops accelerating. If Conrad has ever been on a sailing ship with a strong tailwind, that might be a similar speed, though the bus has reached it seemingly on its own and with much less time.

He loves buses now. He loves automobiles, and he wants one of his own. They're probably really expensive, but he'll use his Recognizant powers to earn money and splurge on a great one. He can't believe how fast it's going. No wonder the ones in the garage had such a powerful aura. He isn't sure how you would make this with Golarion magic. It would probably take an absurd amount of spellsilver, or take like, an eighth-circle crafter to make.

He doesn't even prepare Phantom Steed most of the time – instead, he casts Communal Mount for his squad.

He has been on a ship, but only a few times, and they were small fishing boats his friends had: Laekastel is a port city.

He feels...a little strange sitting on the very fast moving bus. A little dizzy, maybe, but it's minor.

He times how quickly the trees near the road are passing by and bets that it would take less than an hour for the bus to reach the town. Unbelievably fast. His face shows his obvious child-like delight.

If he looks, Conrad can maybe see a couple of his fellow passengers react to his enjoyment of the bus-ride. One seemed to be happy to see someone having their first bus ride, the other maybe a little annoyed, though they also look quite tired so they might also just be cranky from a lack of sleep. These people are coming home from a night-shift at the facility, after all. Regardless, neither pays Conrad much mind over the rest of the ride, and if anyone says anything it's almost impossible to hear over the whipping of the wind.

With the speed, Conrad might have some trouble picking out the exact transitions, but over the course of the trip he can see the trees become more regularly spaced, and then suddenly stop, replaced with great terraced fields of farmland extending across the valley floor. A river is visible in the distance, as is another road through the farmland on the river's far side. Ahead, the town, or more like city, grows from the horizon. There's no castle or wall, at least not ones that stand above the numerous and relatively tall civilian constructions. Towards the end of the trip, the rain slows to a drizzle and then stops, the clouds parting just in time for the breaking dawn to be visible.

As the bus enters the city proper, it slows down. The sprawling farmland is replaced with rows of buildings, other smaller automobiles joining alongside the bus as the road underneath widens by a lane on each side, pedestrians walking to either side of the road or occasionally across a road-bridge that passes over the traffic. Eventually, the bus turns off the highway, travels briefly along a lesser road, then pulls into a covered station. "We have arrived at the Swarthwalls township shuttle station. Everyone please deboard. If this is not your final destination, please be ready to reboard in 15 minutes." The driver's voice instructs via the same magical amplification (and perhaps transmission) as before.

Conrad knows how to get from here to Dr. Bishop's apartment, but it's still only the morning and she'll be expecting him by the afternoon. If he wants, he has plenty of time to explore the city.

No castle or wall? Perhaps the weapons of this world are such that castles and walls are useless, because their weapons are strong enough so as to be able to wreck them easily, or that this society is so peaceful that there is no need for such fortifications. The only reason why he's putting a nonzero probability on the latter hypothesis is because of how Good everyone has been acting. Although he's still rather incredulous at the prospect – surely not every country in this world is this Good? What about Lanzend? 

The civilian structures are tall, but not unheard-of-tall. Probably they have more wind shenanigans that make building things easier. Or maybe they have slave labor? Surely not – he has trouble squaring the Goodness of everyone around him thus far and them having slave labor. Or is it that people can actually detect easily whether one is a Recognizant, and are according him respect and deference as befits his status? Maybe. The people at the facility talked about needing tests, but perhaps those tests are only necessary to detect the specific abilities of the Recognizant, whereas detecting whether someone is one is much easier and is trivial.

He's initially confused why the driver would tell everyone to get off and then get on again if this isn't where they were planning to go, but then he realizes that the fee-collecting-door-opening machine is probably coded to only accept only one single fee, and that fee is per-station, given that he didn't pre-buy a ticket at some booth. He gets off.

Given that this is a station, are there pamphlets or city maps that he can collect or buy? He'd like to get oriented before wandering around. He can defend himself from thieves or muggers just fine, but he'd rather not deal with that. He doesn't want to inadvertently walk into a part of the city he shouldn't have.

A general layout of the city would be good, as well as knowing where he might get the following things.

• Shop or tailor selling clothes for men. He's pragmatic enough to be fine wearing his Chelish military uniform, but it feels...wrong to wear it. Somehow. Well, that shouldn't be surprising, given that he defected. He's not looking for anything fashionable, just plain and practical.
• Hotel or inn for stays for around a week or so. He's content to just sleep in Bishop's office or in the lounge room, but the researchers might not like that.
• Stationery and book shop. Do they have empty spellbooks and magic ink they most certainly do not have spellbooks and magic ink. Still, he wants to get a really sturdy notebook and pen he can use as a diary and maybe also a grimoire for his invocations. It will be his echoic recognizant spellbook. Totally legit.
• Place selling magic items, if there is a specific shop for that like in Golarion, although perhaps shops here are more specialized. It does seem like magic items are more common here and used for more civilian applications, though. Most magic items in Golarion have military uses. Peasants and commoners don't get magic items, and many of them don't even get to touch one their whole lives.
• Bookstore. Just bookstore. But he's unlikely to buy anything there, because it's likely the researchers will be more than happy to talk to him about anything he asks about, because they're That Kind Of Person. Oh, and not Asmodean, so they're not going to hold information over him as an advantage to be jealously guarded. Alternatively, a library.
• Do they have arms and armor shops here? He'd love love love to see wind-based weapons and armor. And yes, he has to learn how to wear armor now, because he lost his spellbook and has to fight like a noncaster fighter who can't cast Mage Armor and Shield. Will one hundred and ninety eight ducats cover a set of plate armor and perhaps an aketon? If not, he'll settle for a breastplate.

Back in the break room, Stanmoor seemed surprised to hear that Conrad was the Recognizant that everyone was in a hubbub over, but it's possible that he just happens to lack whatever sense is involved, comparable to being blind or deaf, or is particularly disused of it for some other reason. Still, it's a bit of evidence against the 'everyone is treating him better because they can tell he's Recognizant' theory.

As Conrad looks for pamphlets or maps, he might notice that some workmen enter the bus where it's parked, bringing various tools with them, opening up various parts of the bus and exposing underlying machinery and inscriptions.

There isn't anything really informative in the shuttle station proper, aside from a table of times for when the shuttle bus heads to and from the research facility. However, if he wanders a just a little bit farther, he'll find a larger bus station immediately adjacent to the shuttle station that appears to house intercity routes, which does have an information kiosk selling maps and tourism pamphlets for just an ounce each (and they have change). There's also a kiosk worker there who looks a little tired but says she can answer any (reasonable) question that Conrad might have about the city.

From this, Conrad can develop a comprehensive understanding of the city's high-level layout, as well as numerous more granular facts:

 - The exact location of Dr. Bishop's apartment building,
 - Where various districts are and what functions they serve, including implicit information about the class-structure of society in the city (notably: nobility apparently existed but doesn't anymore, at least not here? There's history here but the kiosk worker isn't going to explain it unless he asks.)
 - The names of the three nearest-by-travel-time cities (Pellton, Wallermoth, Cockersee)
 - The name of country he's in right now (Dalenmercia, often shortened Dalmerc),
 - The locations of several clothes shops that serve men covering various price ranges and at varying distances from the bus station (the closest is a bit pricey, since it's dealing with a lot of tourists, but not as much as the ones down by the river which is also a tourism hot-spot and the hub of intercity trade),
 - The locations of several nearby hotels (they cluster around the bus station and river dock, as one might expect),
 - The locations of several good paper-shops, including one the kiosk worker can personally recommend, showing off a notebook she has with her right now that is quite well-made, durable but not bulky or cumbersome. They're hand-made, not factory-made, though, so they are a bit expensive.
 - The fact that there aren't any places labeled anything that reads like 'magic item shop' or similar, and the kiosk worker can't think of any place that sells all sorts of inscribed items. There are some professional inscribers of various stripes that Conrad could hypothetically commission one-off projects from, but otherwise shops are mostly delineated by the purpose or function of their inventory, so any high-class store is going to have fancy inscribed versions of its normal products for people looking to spend a lot of money on the best of the best.
 - The locations two libraries, one public and one club-owned, a well as several bookstores including one that the kiosk worker used to work at and says is middling in quality but run by very nice people who paid her well.
 - There are a small number of shops labeled as selling 'sports-dueling equipment & apparel' or the like, located close to the river, which the kiosk worker says will be the closest Conrad's going to find in the city. Swarthwalls isn't exactly a hub of the dueling circuit but there's a sizable club that has regular small-scale tournaments that helps support the local industry. The kiosk worker actually has a friend who made top four at one of the tournament this past summer and won a bit of prize money for it, if Conrad's looking for someone to introduce him to the local scene she could put him in touch.

Magic items! Sadly, he can't stand there and gawk for too long, because he actually has places to be.

He pays the kiosk worker an ounce for a map, and another ounce to tip her in exchange for the information he has.

He's...not sure that he can be Good, as this society seems to be. But he thinks he can be Neutral. The secondary worship of Abadar is permitted in Cheliax, but he knows that any Abadaran theology is Cheliax is heavily censored, even more heavily than theology usually is (which is already a lot). At the Worldwound, they were permitted to go to the nearby Abadaran fort and get positive channeled energy healing there, although they were forbidden from talking to them. Still, with the amount of healing he has to get or help others get, given that he's a combat wizard, it's inevitable that he'd hear snippets from conversations from the Abadaran clerics. He pushed all those thoughts out of his mind, though – he was a very obedient and devout Asmodean – but he can only push the thoughts away, not erase them. Now that there's no looming threat of whipping, immolation, or execution looming over him, all those repressed thoughts come rushing back.

The nature of Abadar is trade – trade which leaves both parties better off, rather than Asmodeus, who always wants to fuck over the other person in some way. The kiosk worker didn't demand money in exchange for information – she just gave it – which would leave him free and clear to just leave under Asmodean codes of conduct. But he knows that if the kiosk worker did ask for money, that he'd pay an ounce, perhaps even several ounces, to be given all that information conveniently. The kiosk worker isn't entitled to get his money, but she does deserve it, what with how she helped him in a way that was actually helpful. So, he'll give her the tip. Besides, he still kind of thinks Good is weak and pathetic and deserving of contempt, so he's only willing to go as far as Neutral. He will conveniently ignore the fact that the only reason he's here at this time is because of a very Good person handing him a bunch of cash for free. A part of his brain is still thinking that was an elaborate hallucination that wasn't real.

Cool notebook. He'll see whether the local stationery shops have similar good-quality notebooks like it.

...no nobility? Right, most likely Good society. 

He's very happy to have received this geopolitical knowledge, and finally know where he actually ended up. 

Hm. He thinks of which place to go first. He thinks the clothing shops would be the most logical choice: likely the stores, or stores nearby, would also sell bags, which he can use to put all the things he's going to buy. He's very strong, he can carry lots of stuff even without Ant Haul, but he only has two hands.

Mm, that was what he expected given that civilians can afford magic items too – rather than a centralized place for magic items, all shops would carry a mix of mundane and magical items that are all grouped according to a purpose or theme. He wonders whether there are inscribed clothes he could buy, which would function like armor but leave his movements free enough that it wouldn't incur arcane spell failure. No use in pondering that, because he's going to the clothing shops anyway.

Public library! He'll add that to his itinerary.

Dueling circuit and tournaments. They're not as Good as they sound, it seems, if they have gladiator duels. Do they have slaves which they let fight in the arenas? Cheliax runs the Dies Irae tournaments every solstice and equinox which let slaves fight to the death, with the winner being freed and receiving the wealth and title of para-baronet. He's no fighter, but he's a strange wizard that likes to fight melee, and his grandfather taught him how to fight with a greatsword. Oh, and he's very durable. More durable than the vast majority of third-circle wizards, rivaling even fighters at his Worldwound fort. He can take a lot of punishment.

"Yes, I'd appreciate it if you could put me in touch. My name's Conrad Ferrer," he tells the woman.

The kiosk worker thanks him three times for his tip, and picks up a similar metal plate to the one he saw the front desk woman use to leave a message for Dr. Bishop. The kiosk worker speaks with the same careful enunciation. "Postal. Address of Hounder Hocklerson." She pauses for a moment. "Dear Pup. There's a guy who is exactly your type from out of town, name of Conrad Ferrer, who is looking to get into the local dueling scene."

She holds the plate away from her mouth for a moment as she asks Conrad, "How should he contact you? Or should I tell him to expect you at the training hall I know he likes?"

He feels...weird...about being thanked like that. He's not sure how to interpret that.

He's very interested in this magic item of at-will Sending, and he really wants to get one. After he gets an automobile.

"I work at the echoic research facility about an hour's ride away from here." A lie, but which will become truth soon, if his plans don't change. "He can leave a message for me there, although in case I'm in town, it will be good for me to know which training hall he goes to so I can drop by."

On an unrelated note, once she deactivates the metal plate, he'll ask whether there are any places that sell pocket watches or similar portable timekeeping instruments.

She moves the plate back towards her mouth. "He works at the research facility up the valley, if you want to reach him. Also telling him where to find Hockler's Hall, so you might see him around. Love, Moony"

Then she stows the plate and points out Hockler's Hall (Hounder's father is the owner and founder) on Conrad's map, as well as the one consumer clockworks shop in town (situated right in the middle of the uppest-class section of the riverside district). "Safe travels! Maybe I'll see you around; Hounder, I and some of our other friends usually get drinks at a pub near the training hall on weekends."

Now, off to the men's clothes store!

It's only a short walk from the bus station to the nearest store. which is one of the bigger buildings in the area. It's very clean, tastefully decorated, and well-advertised from the street-level. The inside is pleasantly warm and dry in a way that may remind him of the highway and seems indicative of a similar metabolic effect, perhaps laid into the floor. Barely even a round after he's entered, a modestly but very clean and crisply dressed store clerk will approach him with a smile and asks, "Good morning sir! How can the Prosperous Clothier help you today?"

"Thank you for your help. See you," he says, and walks to the clothing store.

The metabolic effect is still surprising, but not surprising enough that he startles. It's very pleasant. He's surprised at how much metabolic effects are used. Is it that the metabolic wind is easiest to inscribe? Or is it that it's simply the most versatile and useful of the four winds? 

Very heretical. Lord Echo is the greatest of the winds.

Hm. He actually has no idea what fashions are like here. But also, he doesn't want to give off the impression that he's a tourist (even though he probably has), because he's afraid they might upcharge him. Not good. This does seem like a fancy place, even ignoring Chelish commoner standards. Should he be here? Well, it's fine. It's not like anything will happen if he just walks away without buying anything.

"I'm looking for simple workwear, the sort you might find in an office. And also something more outdoorsy, like I'm going hiking, as well as warm clothes and furs, if you have them. Oh, and bags. Do you have those?"

"We certainly do!" The clerk takes him on a bit of tour of the store, just to the places relevant to Conrad's requests. Even for the office casual and hiking clothes there's a considerable selection, including indeed variously inscribed hiking clothes to help regulate body heat, conserve body moisture, protect from inclement weather, protect from stinging and biting pests, protect from falls, scrapes, and other injuries, or even provide some outright physical augmentations like enhanced strength, endurance, and agility, though as the inscriptions increase the price quickly balloons to multiple ducats for single pieces of clothing. There are also some specialized cold-weather clothes and furs, though the variety is lesser here.

The variety for the bags is simply bewildering, though. Bags of all shapes, sizes, and fabrics, different ways of being carried, different internal divisions with pockets and sub-pockets and sub-sub-pockets, different ways of being opened and closed, bags with inscribed security measures, bags with load-lifting inscriptions that bear some (or even almost all) of the weight, bags with inscribed sorting systems so that you always know what's inside and where, and that's really just scratching the surface. Whatever else Conrad knows, he now also knows that the people of this land, or at least this city, care a great deal about bags. The highly inscribed bags are just as expensive as comparably magical clothing, but some of the lesser inscriptions are surprisingly affordable.

Wow. He loves clothes now. A shirt of Bull's Strength...okay, he should not indulge his intense hunger for enhancement items and instead buy stuff that looks fine and professional and will cover his body. 

Wizards have good Will saves, and Conrad has a relatively high Wisdom for a Wizard...but the Will save DC of this check is very high. He doesn't make it, but it's close. There may be some motivated thinking that will occur. Or rationalizations.

Can he try on the clothes? He's interested in the body heat regulation clothes and the pest protection clothes – he hates mosquitoes. One of the few good things about being at the Worldwound is that there aren't any. He's also interested in a coat to wear if it's especially chilly outside. And also the shirt that boosts strength. Of course. Although he's very unlikely to buy that, because money. He'll ask how much they cost, as well as how much the non-inscribed clothing costs.

Oh, and what about shoes? His combat boots are fine, but maybe he should get dress shoes.

Wow, but more wow. They don't have Bags of Holding here, but the bags here might even be better than those. He's thinking of getting a large backpack, perhaps even approaching duffel bag sized. Is there one which could, if it contains little, shrink? And then expand when you put more into it? He'd love that. He scoffs (to himself) at the load-bearing bag. He can carry things just fine because he's not weak, thank you. How much is that? 

He's also interested in getting a bag with the security measures. Either with the duffel bag, or perhaps in a messenger bag type configuration. He doesn't anticipate actually going around lugging that much stuff with him all the time.

He's looking to buy a whole second outfit, perhaps a third (but not including shoes). He has Mending and Prestidigitation, so these clothes will last a long, long time, but even though he doesn't care about fashion, he does prefer to like, not go around wearing exactly the same thing every day. 

He thinks about budgeting. He has at least some idea of how much things cost now.

He was given two hundred ducats. He'll set aside one hundred and fifty ducats for housing and food for one month, since those seem like the largest expense categories. He could eat less, but he really doesn't like that. Hunger is not conducive to thinking, and thinking is like, half his job. Or used to be his job, anyway, before he quit.

Ten ducats will go to transport and miscellany, like the tip and the bus ride. He's already spent some of this money.

Ten ducats for clothes.

Ten ducats for his """""spellbook""""" and writing materials, although that's a really generous budget amount. He'd be surprised if they had a notebook so valuable that it would go for that much money, unless it's some sort of status symbol. 

Ten ducats for a portable timekeeping device.

Ten ducats for a bag.

He isn't sure whether these are reasonable prices, but they seem good enough. He wonders how much they'll pay him at the research facility.

Well, he knows that Dr. Bishop had (and thus, could afford to have) at least 200 ducats squirreled away in a secret compartment in her office desk. She's probably some kind of senior researcher, but Conrad's a Recognizant, so who knows?

There are definitely shoes! There's actually almost as many options for shoes as there are for bags. Fewer inscriptions though, mostly just for basic stuff like improved durability and what not, which given Conrad's upkeep abilities he can probably skimp on for now.

Here's a neat little echoic trinket that will let Conrad realistically experience wearing the clothes without having to actually change! Including letting him see how he looks in one of the many mirrors strategically placed around the store. Naturally there aren't any stinging or biting pests in the store to notice the absence of, though. All of the inscribed items come with a warranty guaranteeing repair, replacement, or refund if the inscription fails to satisfy the label within the guaranteed product lifetime (which varies between products, but is usually two years for cloth items and eighteen months for shoes).

Individual pieces of uninscribed clothes of the sort he's looking for generally top out at around one and a half ducats for individual articles, though shoes sometimes go up to two and a half. There are also a few different outfit discounts that will let him pick up a complete set of clothes all from the same manufacturer for just 2 or 3 ducats. Spending carefully, Conrad can get an office casual outfit, a hiking outfit, cold-weather layers that go with the hiking outfit, and augment the hiking outfit with heat-regulating and anti-pest inscriptions all for 8 ducats 10 pounds. He'd have to break the outfit discount to get the strength-enhancing shirt, requiring him to drop both the other inscriptions and raising his total clothing pricetag to 9 ducats 8 pounds.

There are indeed inscriptions that fold and reweave the pack to compact down when empty or only partially filled! They're actually quite cheap, too. He can even get one that's quite big and has a detachable sling-bag as a sub-division, which he could have the security inscription included in. That'd only cost him 5 ducats 6 pounds. If he uses the extra for clothes, that would give him enough to buy the non-outfit strength-enhancing shirt without having to sacrifice anything from his hiking outfit, or to pick up another full uninscribed outfit to let him vary up his colors and designs.

The echoic item is definitely very neat. See, this is why Lord Echo is the best.

The warranty sounds good, although he expects Mending to make them last much longer than the warranty time. He's very glad that he just so happened to have Mending prepared, although he does usually prepare it most days. It's a transmutation spell.

Provided that the office casual outfit has shoes, he'll happily take advantage of the full outfit discount. He's surprised that the bag costs that little, given the amount of features he has, and will transfer the money in the Bag Budget to the Frivolous Clothes Budget, so that he can get his whole two outfits plus the strength-boosting shirt, and the inscriptions on the hiking outfit. Does the security inscription for the bag cost extra? If it isn't too much, can he get it along with the fancy shirt? He doesn't care to have another uninscribed outfit.

The casual outfit, hiking outfit, and cold weather layers cost eight ducats ten pounds. The bag costs five ducats six pounds. How much does the strength-enhancing shirt cost, and how much would it cost to add the security inscription to the bag? 

And, a close second in importance, what do the clothes and bags look like? What are they made of? How are they cut? Do they actually fit him, or will he have to additionally pay for a tailor to fit them to him? He has seen ready-made clothing in Laekastel, but it's very rare. Probably more popular in Egorian or big cities like that. He had his body measured for his Worldwound uniforms, of which he got two sets.

He takes a closer look at the echoic reflection of himself in the mirror.

The office outfit has a button-down plain white shirt – that's too tight in the chest but too loose at the waist – and dark gray slacks that are too tight at the thighs but too loose at the calves. He's kind of used to that being the case though, although that means he'll have to get the clothes tailored. It looks good, though. He feels the fabric through his hands. It's very fine linen, and a good thickness. The shoes are brown leather dress shoes – no ornamentation save for the shoe box being shined. He likes that.

The hiking outfit is a loose pullover dark green long-sleeved shirt in thick cotton. He could do with this one not being tailored, although it would be good to have if the tailoring isn't expensive. It comes with khaki corduroy pants. Also on the thicker side. He won't be wearing this one in summer, he thinks. Although summer is two seasons away: by that point, if he doesn't have the money to buy summer clothes, something has gone horribly wrong. 

The strength-enhancing shirt is another button down, but it's bright red in color. Really quite bright – he wonders briefly whether there was magic involved in the dyeing of the shirt. He's not sure what to feel about it being so flashy. It feels good on the skin. The fabric is soft, and it's shiny too, like satin. Is this silk? He's heard of silk, but never actually seen any silk clothes before – it's a Tian Xia import, so it's extremely expensive.

The cold weather layer is a black double breasted pea coat with metal buttons, made of wool, or at least a wool-like material. It's not what he would wear at the Worldwound, but this place definitely does not get as cold as the Worldwound. He likes the way it looks and hugs his body.

The bag is a rectangular-ish duffel bag looking thing made of brown leather, with big straps. He likes that. It means it won't dig into your shoulders if you put in a lot of stuff. He can see how it shrinks down when he puts it on, given that there's nothing on it, and then, when he takes it off and opens the clasp, it suddenly 'inflates' into its full size. The top compartment has its own strap that comes out when you unclasp it from the main compartment, which is the sling bag bit. It's two bags in one. Great deal!

The security inscription actually comes with and is pre-factored into the cost of that particular bag! The sling-bag sub-item is specifically for that sort of sensitive-carry situation.

The strength-enhancing shirt on its own costs 4 ducats, 6 pounds, so adding it to the two outfits brings the clothing total up to 12 ducats, 16 pounds. He could actually afford another one of the cheaper uninscribed outfits as well.

Noticing Conrad looking at his outfits in the mirror, the clerk also mentions that the Prosperous Clothier is one of the very few stores where a fitting with the auto-tailor is included with every purchase, for even greater value!

That's good. He was afraid it was going to raise the price some more.

Granted, he doesn't have a job yet, so he may have just spent the equivalent of half a year's income on this. But he wants the strength shirt and he wants it now. He's definitely going to run them all through Detect Magic later. Hm, he's not sure he wants to buy an uninscribed outfit. He knows of rich nobles that always go around in enchanted clothes, and he kind of wants to be that kind of noble. Very Prideful thought.

...auto-tailor? What does this auto-tailor look like? He's very tempted to run Detect Magic on it too, but Detect Magic has both a verbal and somatic component, and he's not sure if the clerk will take him chanting and waving for half a round well. In any case, what does it look like?

The clerk takes him to a fitting booth! It's a little room that has a platform with an adjustable rack for holding various clothes, a sort of mechanical arm that stretches up from the platform, and a slot that looks like it could hold the clothes-testing item. "By attuning the clothes-tester to the clothes, placing them on the labeled section of the auto-tailor's rack, and inserting the attuned clothes-tester, the auto-tailor will detect the fit, calculate the required alterations, select the needed metabolic tools, and perform the alterations automatically. All in just a couple minutes. It's quite something to see, the first time especially."

Oh yeah. Let's do this. He puts the office clothes on the racks first, then puts the echoic clothes-tester into the slot. Lord Echo for the win. Best wind. Truly.

He's excited to see what it'll look like. 

The clerk goes and presses a button to activate the machine. There's a bit of start up time, the rack adjusts slightly to give the clothes just the right amount of tension, and then the arm flies into motion, whirling around the rack, retrieving little inscribed devices from under the platform, stroking them along the clothes at various points, stowing one device and then grabbing another, the processing proceeding with a quickness that will naturally remind Conrad of the great speed the bus was able to reach while driving down the highway, though the auto-tailor's movements are much more contained, limited as it is to its stationary platform.

For the first minute and a couple rounds after, it was honestly kind of hard to tell what specific alterations the auto-tailor was doing, and Conrad may have even been a little worried that something had gone wrong or that the machine was simply not living up to the clerk's hype. Then, over the course of maybe five rounds, the outfit rapidly transforms from looking almost mangled to being back in perfectly wearable shape. When the clerk retrieves the clothes-tester from the auto-tailor's slot and tests the now-altered outfit, it will fit perfectly.

He knows that enchanted clothes can resize themselves like that, but he hasn't actually worn any. It's great that magic items are so affordable in this world. He doesn't even need to become an adventurer to be able to afford that. Just...become a cleric Recognized. He is aching to Detect Magic the thing, but he doesn't want to cause a scene.

He wants to put on the clothes now, but then realizes that people might get upset if he just takes off his clothes in the shop, so he doesn't do that. He'll let the clerk alter the other sets of clothes he has, and will put on his stuff at home, after he's laundered them with Prestidigitation. And after he's procured a home.

Should he pay now? It takes a moment for him to figure out which ducat notes to give to the clerk.

After the alterations have been made, the clerk will lead him to a pay counter and leave him the care of the cashier, who will ring up his purchases (17 ducats 22 pounds, for the outfits and bag) and will provide change if Conrad needs it (which he does). Then the clothes are folded up neatly and packed into Conrad's new bag by a store worker whose jobs appears to be specifically and only packing customer's purchases into bags, which if they aren't some kind of slave might seem like an utterly profligate decision by the Prosperous Clothier's management. They do care a lot about bags here though so maybe it makes some kind of sense. Certainly they packed the bag very quickly and efficiently, while still treating the items delicately and with respect.

With that, Conrad has acquired clothes! Where to next?

They got rid of their nobility, which seems like the sort of thing that would correlate with also forbidding slavery – that's what Andoran did – but it doesn't logically necessitate it. He'll still thank the maybe-slave and leave the shop. Great service. At least, from his perspective. He actually hasn't been to any other shop.

He thinks he wants to settle the hotel/inn thing last, perhaps even after he meets with Bishop. The earlier plan of meeting the Lord Echo worshippers will probably have to be delayed until tomorrow, unless they're fine with meeting at night.

He wants to go to the stationery shop now. He'll probably buy one notebook, though he might buy two, in the case he wants to sustain the hope of actually figuring out how to rederive spellbook diagrams here, and use the other one as a diary. He'll have to see how expensive paper is first. Will the shop have Cool and Fancy inscribed devices as before? 

...actually, wouldn't inscribed paper literally just be a Golarion magic scroll? Well, no, scrolls are made of parchment, not paper, but close enough, right? Could he read an echoic invocation scroll? He's an echoic recognizant, so it should be on his spell list.

Assuming Conrad goes to the one that 'Moony' recommended, it'll be a bit of a walk, and will involve crossing a road-bridge over the highway, which has become somewhat busier than earlier this morning, producing a strange sort of sound from the rumbling of numerous automobiles. At a distance it almost sounds like the crashing of waves on the shore.

The paper-shop, Jewel's Handmade Books & Things, is much, much smaller than the Prosperous Clothier, and with a much narrower range of prices, with most of the proper notebooks being in the two to four pound range depending on size and page count, with the most expensive ones being 14 pounds and including inscriptions for increased durability, particularly resistance to water damage. There's also various sorts of packs of loose paper, folders, binders, paper-clips, writing utensils, and other paper-adjacent products, mostly in the 4 to 8 ounce range, though there are also metabolic pens that don't need ink that cost 2 pounds 6 ounces a piece. He can easily splurge for two quite good notebooks and a metabolic pen for each and have ducats to spare.

Conrad will go to the one Moony recommended.

Hm, he's looking for a big (in the sense of having many pages) notebook. Very sturdy. It's fine if it's somewhat bulky and heavy, but it has to be sturdy. If there are notebooks bound in metal, he'll get those, but he doesn't think he'll find any. Leather or wood bound will be fine, if they have the inscription. He likes that they have Permanent Book Ward – although in this case it's weaker than Book Ward, since it doesn't say it protects against fire or acid damage, only water. Do they have anything like that?

He doesn't care about the visual aesthetics of the notebooks and pens, but he demands that they have good tactile sensations, that they feel good to the hand and fingers when he holds them. He cares very deeply about that sort of thing. If worst comes to worst, he'll use what he can, but given that he has choice, he wants to get something really good.

He'll probably buy two fancy warded notebooks and two fancy metabolic pens. What's the warding inscription? He'll guess it's a chorismic effect, since the secret compartment was chorismic too.

Hm, he's curious about why the pens are metabolic, and not poetic. Metabolic effects can only change, not create, no? If it can make ink indefinitely, shouldn't that be a poetic effect? Although it could be that the metabolic pen is directly changing the color of the surface it's writing on. What do the pens look like?

He'll also want to get a pack of plain paper, something like fifty sheets, plus some sort of folder or case to keep papers in to keep them from getting crumpled.

The clerk currently running the shop (Maple, a close friend and business partner of Jewel, who apparently suffers from social anxiety and prefers to not meet customers without an appointment) thinks that if Conrad wants maximum durability he might be better off getting a tablet rather than a notebook. They're outside of Jewel's specialty, since they're made of metal rather than paper, but Maple can recommend a good tabulary to him. They are quite a bit more expensive than a notebook, though. He might be able to commission a custom from Jewel for increased durability, but that would be quite expensive as well and Maple would need to check Jewel's backlog to know how long it'd take before it got made.

Fortunately, Jewel evidently has a similar appreciation for the tactile experience to Conrad. He will struggle to find anything in the shop that doesn't feel at least good, if not great to the touch.

The durability inscription is primarily chorismic, yes, with a bit of metabolic as well.

Conrad has intuited the mechanism of the metabolic pens! Maple explains that poetic effects are subject to more regulations than metabolic ones because poetic effects permanently add 'stuff' to the world, which can have lots of different negative effects if it's not balanced out with an equal amount of 'stuff' being removed by a chorismic effect. It's wasteful to just destroy stuff for no reason, though, so it's better to be conservative with poetic effects instead. The pens themselves are a rolled metal tube with the inscription on the inside, ending in a nib similar to an ink pen's, with an optional enamel shell that comes with lots of different colors or patterns and can swapped out with other shells.

A half-pack of paper (which is 72 pages, technically, but close enough) and a folder will go for 6 ounces, which brings Conrad's total up to 1 ducat, 9 pounds, 6 ounces.

Conrad will continue to wonder how their society is so prosperous that you can buy these delightful magic items for cheap. His new hypothesis is that there's an Underdark here, like in Golarion, where they have legions of slaves toiling away making magic items and other things and keeping everything running, while all the free people live aboveground. It wouldn't be the Chelish way to do it – people want to show off how many slaves they own – but he thinks that they might see slaves as 'untouchable' and so prefer not to see them or be in the vicinity of them.

"What does a tablet look like? Do you have one I can look at?" he asks. In that case, he thinks that he'll get one fancy notebook as a spellbook (although he won't say that he's going to use it as a spellbook). He'll appreciate it if she gives him the tabulary's address. He at first thinks of stone tablets you carve runes into, but given the way Maple says it, he guesses it's more magical and engineered than that.

She definitely does. He finds a beautiful dark red boiled leather notebook with two straps to hold the book closed. The leather feels luxurious yet strong. Again, how do they get such good things!?

He asks offhandedly, "In that case, what about echoic effects? What's the regulation for them?" The thought of Lord Echo's power being limited and restricted by petty mortals is definitely heretical and any government that does it is worthy of being smote. Or, well, smiting with energy seems like a poetic effect, so what about...causing a great earth-shattering sonic boom that wrecks every building in a hundred-mile radius. Yes. He'll go with that.

The metal tube isn't the best thing to hold. He's used to using dip pens to write, occasionally quills. Dip pens are more common and convenient nowadays, but Scrivener's Chant only works with quills because it is a very old spell. What enamel shells are available, and how much are they? He might get two for his pens. Again, he cares less about patterns and colors, and more about the weight and texture of the shells.

What folders do they have for sale? What materials are they made of? What color is the paper, actually? Is it brownish, or white? If they sell white paper for cheap, the "how do they have such nice things" feeling will intensify even more, because he knows bleaching paper white takes expensive chemicals.

Cross-referencing his map, Conrad will find the tabulary is in the riverside district, so it's probably pretty up-scale. Maple will also open up a drawer in her desk and retrieve a large metal plate, similar looking but longer and wider than the ones he's seen Moony and the front desk woman speak into. She presses a finger into a little circle nestled in the corner of the plate, and suddenly the plate's front face appears like paper. Maple draws a finger across the surface and it leaves a trail of black behind it as if it were a pen, then presses a different section of the surface, which causes a list to appear with various utensils listed. She touches 'inkbrush', which causes the text to disappear, and then draws a finger across the surface again, leaving another much more fluid-looking trail of black. "Pretty neat, right?"

Maple shrugs. "I'm not a lawyer or anything. It's not as much of an issue I know, though of course there's laws against stuff like using it to trick or hurt people."

The shells cost six ounces a piece, and they come in various sizes, shapes, and materials. It will not be hard to find one that has good grip and feels comfortable in Conrad's hand.

There are card and leather folders of various sizes and designs. The one Maple priced earlier is a simple card one but a leather one of the same make is just two ounces more.

The paper is, in fact, stark white, like pure snow.

Conrad will again fail to contain his expressions of wonder at the tablet. "Very neat. Does it only have one page, or is there some sort of...hidden storage mechanism that lets it store and retrieve pages you've already written or drawn on?"

He's glad that Lord Echo's domain has the least restrictions, as befits Them.

He'll get two different ones: one is jet black with a matte finish, whereas the other one is egg-white with a waffle-like pattern on the part near the nib for better grip.

...okay. The hidden underground slaves is looking very likely now. Maybe they have dwarf slaves. They need to eat less, like halflings, which Cheliax uses, which would make them more economical to keep, and they're great and crafting. That would successfully explain what he's seeing.

He'll get the leather case for an extra two ounces. Adding that as well as the the two enamel cases will bring up his total to...one ducat twenty three pounds nine ounces, yes? 

"Oh yeah, this can store loads and loads of stuff." Maple taps one it some more, navigating menus to bring up a couple different sketches, some hand-written notes, and an impossibly detailed and full-color picture of what looks like a family of four playing on a beach. "Some of the cheaper models don't have as much memory or all the functions but even so I think the cheapest ones still have at least a few hundred pages of storage."

1 ducat, 10 pounds, 8 ounces by Maple's count. Two fancy notebooks, two inkless pens, two pen shells, half-pack of plain paper, and a leather folder, right? And Maple can make change.

He's marveling at how complex the operation of the tablet is. It's not a powerful effect, but he can't imagine how nightmarish the spellform of it must be like, if he tried to recreate it using a Golarion illusion item. For the tablet to know what to display, and also to respond accurately to touches by the fingertip...truly wonderful.

He thanks Maple and pays, carefully stowing all the items in his new bag. What time is it now? Would it be polite to eat before going to Bishop's apartment? He might decide to have lunch before going there, in that case. Otherwise, he'll go to...hm. He considers going to the library again, but Bishop is likely to have better recommendations, or even have her own books he could borrow. And, unusually for a wizard, he doesn't love reading. He's fine with reading, but he very rarely reads for fun on his own. He prefers more tactile and intuitive forms of learning.

Hm. He realizes he still has his ring of protection +1 on his left ring finger. Are there jewelry stores here? He wonders whether there's inscribed jewelry he can buy that has the same effect as Golarion rings. If there's still time in the day, he might go there.

It's actually still quite early! There's a wall-clock in Jewel's that says it's just about 9:30, so Conrad has plenty of time before the afternoon. Honestly if he went to get hot food right now the kitchens would probably still be making morning food rather than lunch.

There are jewelry stores in the riverside district! It's a ways, but certainly not too far to walk and he's got time. Maybe he can stop at the consumer clockworks shop that's in the area as well?

Oh yeah, he forgot he also wants to buy a pocket watch or something similar. Um. Well, he has a notebook now, doesn't he? He won't write on the notebook, since it's meant to be his "spellbook", but he'll take out a piece of unbelievably-white-super-expensive-but-actually-cheap paper pile to write on with his new Metabolic Pen of Infinite Writing. The pen feels exactly like what a fountain pen would feel. Delightful.

0930-1130: walk to riverside district, see clockwork, tabulary, jewelry

1130-1300: bookstore, or library

1300-1400: eat lunch (maybe)

1400-1500~: are there places that sell automobiles, and the items of Sending – find some

~1500+: go to Dr Bishop's place, ask for advice regarding lodging, figure out long terms plans (employment, meeting the 'Net' people, magic research, do I need papers?, advice about me being from another world)

Off to the riverside district! There continue to be more people out and about as the day goes on. The buildings are also a bit taller on average in the richer areas of town, though they shorten back down right up against the water, probably for stability reasons.

Walking into the riverside district from the northwest (the relative direction of Jewel's from downtown), he'll encounter a jewelry store first. It doesn't have the metabolic atmosphere that the Prosperous Clothier did, and is much smaller, similar in size to Jewel's, but aside from those factors its decor would seem to put it alongside the clothes store in terms of its class. There's a wide-selection of form factors, including rings, bracelets, arm bands, earrings, necklaces and chains, all with a great assortment of designs and gemstones, and even some metals with strange colors and optical properties that aren't familiar to Conrad. Unfortunately, at this store at least, none of the merchandise is labeled as inscribed.

It's all very pretty, but are any of the things inscribed? He'll ask the shopkeeper whether it is. If not, he'll leave immediately. His own ring of protection +1 is a simple affair: a plain iron ring with an engraving of a square. It doesn't look magical or special, save for the fact that it's free of any corrosion or tarnish.

The shopkeeper will honestly be just a little confused at first. "No, none of our products are inscribed. Where did you did get the idea they would be?"

"Where I'm from, we put effects on jewelry like rings, necklaces, and earrings." Not a lie, because he said 'effects'. Not inscriptions.

The shopkeeper scoffs. "And I'm sure you write poetry on grains of sand, too."

No one will stop him as he leaves. Bit of a bust, that!

Hmph. He wants to figure out how to write an echoic inscription on a ring just to spite the person. 

Yes, it was indeed a bust! He'll go to the clock shop now. Hopefully there'll be something better there.

Conveniently, the consumer clockworks is not far from that jewelry store. It's also fairly small, maybe a bit smaller that Jewel's even in terms of square footage. It's a bit of a weird shape, too, a single long and relatively narrow room with the pay counter at the back. There's two long tables along either side of the room, both of which are completely covered in various ticking clocks and clockwork devices. The walls are likewise totally bedecked in machines.

A short old man with snow-white hair sits at the pay counter and yells in greeting, "Welcome, welcome to Gildergard's Clockwork Emporium!"

It's honestly a bit hard to hear him over all the clocks, at least from the very front of the store.

He walks closer so he doesn't have to strain himself in trying to hear the man. 

"Do you happen to sell pocket watches, or any sort of portable timekeeping devices? It has to be precise to within an action. Er, that's half a round. Wait." He thinks over his words from the language Lord Echo gave him. "It has to be precise to within three seconds. Do you have anything like that?"

Any pocket watch a caster has has to be precise to at least that, or it will be entirely useless for trying to figure out spell durations.

"Certainly!" The old man replies much more audibly, lowering himself slightly to retrieve a long, wide, thin box from under the pay counter, which he will then place on top and open, revealing several pocket watches, varying slightly in size and design, ticking away. "These are my most popular ones, but I have lots in the back. They're all good to at least the second. Any other features you're looking to help narrow it down?"

"To the second is good for me. I want the watch to be durable and robust. After precision, that's the most important desideratum. I'm willing to pay extra if you have inscribed watches. Less important desiderata are that the watch doesn't gain or lose too many seconds in a day, and that you don't need to wind it so much. If there's some effect that lets it run indefinitely, I'll also pay extra for that. I'm not so concerned about aesthetics – a simple unadorned one will be fine."

The man nods continuously as Conrad gives his criteria, waving his hand over the pocket watches before settling on a simple one, a smooth brass case with a white faceplate that, if Conrad looks very carefully, is covered in tiny script, exactly the same color as the faceplate and only visible due to being slightly indented. "As tough as they come, gains less than a second a year, self-winding, echoic set, and," he gently presses the pocket watch's glass, causing the faceplate to become illuminated, then squeezes the watch's case, causing the illumination to amplify significantly, projecting a visible beam of light through the not-very-dim storefront, before squeezing it again to extinguish the light, "back-lit with flashlight mode. This to your liking?"

He has the good sense not to let his face change when the shopkeeper is directly showing him this item he's interested in. It's bad practice. He might not have followed that same principle with the other shops, but he's going to have the presence of mind to do that now, because this seems really fancy. Even fancier than the previous fancy things he's already bought.

He surprises himself by maintaining that even expression when the flashlight mode comes on. That was really neat. He doesn't prepare Light even when he had his spellbook, because that's evocation, which is his opposition school.

"What do you mean by 'echoic set'? Does it come with a chain? How much is it?"

"It's set with an echoic inscription rather than a knob." He demonstrates, placing his thumb on lightly indented section of the case, the watch's hands swinging to one time, then another, then another, before coming back to 10:13, presumably the current time. "Just think what time you want it to be."

He chuckles. "That one was pretty tricky to figure out. As for a chain, it doesn't come with but I have a selection. This one on its own will be 6 ducats 20 pounds, and depending on length and material the chain could be from 6 to 12 pounds."

He looks closer and finally notices the fine indentations.

"I see. An echoically inscribed watch. As an aside, do you use other inscriptions in your watches?

I want the chain to be long enough that I could wear it around my neck and still hold it up that I can see it without having to crane my neck back. Brass to match the watch is fine – how much will that be?"

See. Lord Echo is the best: telepathically controlled watch! Your servant praises You, Lord Echo, greatest of the winds.

Is it heretical to use non-echoically inscribed items presumably not, because Lord Echo hasn't complained about that. If They complain about it, he'll burn them all in a pyre.

"The lighting is inscribed, on the faceplate, and the durability and self-winding are both partially from inscriptions on the inside of the case. Length..." The man raises a splayed hand up holds close to but not within Conrad's personal space, apparently taking some informal measurement, "28 inches. For brass that'd be 8 pounds. All together 7 ducats 4 pounds. Anything else you're looking for?"

"Mm, I assume the lighting is poetic and the durability is metabolic, then? And no, I'm not looking for anything else, this is good."

If nothing else happens, he'll hand over the money. The moment the watch enters his hands, he'll dispel his Neutral Face and make a face of glee over having the echoic set watch. 

"Lighting's poetic yes, durability's metabolic and chorismic. I take quite a bit of pride in being a competent inscriber with all four." The man (perhaps Gildergard, from the store's name?) takes the offered bills and coinage.

When Conrad reveals his true expression, maybe-Gildergard smiles and chuckles. "You've got a good game-face! Wouldn't want to play you at stickler. You have a nice day, and if you ever need anything clockwork, remember the name Gildergard!"

Right, it seems that the chorismic also does abjuration-like effects. Hm. He'd like to learn how to be able to inscribe all four winds. Is that heretical he should really stop reflexively asking himself whether things are heretical. Given that Lord Echo can read his mind seemingly cheaply, he's sure They will inform him if he ought not to consider certain things. He doesn't think so, in any case, given that They have already not intervened with him using and wearing non-echoic items. Is inscribing similar to scribing scrolls? He hasn't taken the scroll scribing course, so he wouldn't know. Damn it.

He laughs. "Thank you, and I will. You have a nice day too."

He'll place the watch into his shirt pocket and go to the tabulary Maple recommended. Hm. Before that, he'll take stock of his finances. He takes out another piece of paper.

+ 200d  0p  0o: Dr Bishop's gift
-   0d  2p  0o: breakfast
-   0d  0p 11o: bus ride
-   0d  0p  2o: map and tip
-  12d 16p  0o: clothes
-   1d 10p  8o: notebook, pens, paper
-   7d  4p  0o: watch
----------------------------------------
Result: 178d 14p 11o (51443o)

That means he has thirty eight ducats fourteen pounds eleven ounces to spend, still.

The tabulary is a bit more of a walk, and is only a couple streets away from the riverfront. The sign out front names it 'Swarthwalls Premier Tablets' and it's again a bit oddly shaped, narrow and long like Gildergard's, though it appears to occupy two stories of the building it's in, and unlike Gildergard's the pay counter is at the front, right next to the entrance. A shopkeeper is sitting there, looking a bit bored.

There are various tablets, some active and some not, on display through out the shop, and there's another customer checking some out close to the back, near the staircase leading to the second floor. It also sounds like there's someone walking around upstairs.

What metals are the tablets made out of? Are there any tablets made of say, wood or stone, or are they all metal? Hm, he wonders what the price range for the tablets are. Like with everything else he has, durability is the most important desideratum, even though he has Mending. Mending can fix a damaged magic item, but only if it isn't a very strong one. And it can't restore the magic of a destroyed magic item. Of course, if he becomes a very strong wizard here, somehow, then he can repair more things. He'll need Make Whole to restore a destroyed magic item's magic, and he doesn't have that – not even in his spellbook.

The second most important thing is storage. He wants the tablet to be able to store many pages. He's not really a drawer or an artist, and if he's going to draw something it's more likely to be a diagram than anything artistic, so it's fine if the tablet doesn't have support for color – he intuits that figuring out the inscription for a black-and-white only tablet would be simpler than including color too – and if the tablet doesn't support complex brushes and line widths and whatnot. He'll take it if it isn't a large increase in price, but otherwise he'll go without. 

The tablets are, to a one, made of metal, and of the same metal. It looks like silver, but it's too light and to rigid for it to be that, and still too rigid to be tin, and part of Conrad rebels at the thought that this society is so wealthy that they can use mithril like this, so Conrad isn't really sure what metal it is.

The various tablets that are active are all displaying text describing the features that model of tablet has. There's lots of features available, including something that sounds like it could produce that absurdly detailed picture Maple showed him automatically, but there isn't actually much variation in durability. Fortunately that's because tablets are all made to be nigh indestructible, since they're all still quite valuable.

As for memory, the highest memory he can find is a lot. 'over a million pages' though it doesn't list a specific number and also disclaims that images may occupy more pages of memory than they do visually. That tablet has loads of unnecessary features and costs nearly forty ducats. He can find a very minimal 'writing tablet' tablet with nearly four hundred thousand pages of memory, though, which is also much, much cheaper at only 12 ducats 12 pounds.

Notably, the speaking devices he's seen used a few times are, apparently, a type of tablet as well, and access to the communication network is a feature that many tablets have. You can use the network to transmit images or text as well as sounds, as long as the recipient is equipped to receive them. Tablets that only have voice features are generally the cheapest, and often have very little memory, basically just being a way to access the network.

Conrad cannot figure out what metal it is. It's not steel or iron, either. And not spellsilver – it would have tarnished by now. It could have spellsilver inside it, but he doesn't know what sort of enchantment would be necessary for the metal to behave like that. And besides, adding even a little spellsilver into something like this would cause it to become way more expensive.

He's no artist, so he has no need for it to be able to display and store extreme detail. Perhaps, in future, he'll get one in the case he manages to figure out Golarion wizardry again and has to make a textbook with manifold diagrams. But not now. 

He's glad that they're all made to take punishment. It wouldn't do if he accidentally dropped it and he lost all the pages stored within.

He's most interested in the 'writing tablet'. Can it still let you draw diagrams? And can it connect to the communication network? Hm, he's not sure whether the communication network is something that's free (absolutely ridiculous but this society seems ridiculously prosperous, so, and really it's not free if the government has a thousand underground dwarven slaves managing the communication network), or whether you have to pay for each message sent or received. And if so, how would you pay? Or perhaps it's some sort of monthly or weekly service, where you pay to get a token that works for that much time, where you can send and receive as many messages as you want.

He wants the tablet to be able to transmit images and text too. Monochrome is fine.

The 400 kilopage writing tablet does indeed come with handwriting (which seems to be present in every tablet other than the voice-only ones), with thin black, thin red, and broad translucent yellow pen-options, and can indeed access the network including both voice and visual messages though yes messages are monochrome only (the red and yellow pens will get converted to a darker and lighter shade of grey respectively).

Network access usually costs money, generally on a monthly basis though it's not uncommon to have pre-paid plans than extend for as much as a year or two. However, it's subsidized in Swarthwalls specifically, thanks to the research facility's part in helping invent the network in the first place, so as long as Conrad's accessing it in the city (or the research center, of course) it'll be free.

Hm, can he test the writing tablet? He'll try drawing his Arcane Mark: a cursive 'Conrad' with flourishes on the borders. It took a while for him to develop that, and he basically has his Mark on everything he owns. Well, until now. He doesn't have it prepared. Tragic. He supposes he can carve the mark into the objects themselves, but that probably isn't good for their longevity.

This just keeps getting and better. No wonder Lord Echo directed him to that facility – they're already very aligned with Them, it seems. Thank You, Lord Echo, for your gift of Sending, which you generously bestow upon the people of Swarthwalls.

Absolutely, he can test the functions of the very same tablet that he's reading the product information off of! It's maybe a little weird to writing directly with his finger rather than a writing utensil, but the illusion of the tablet's surface is tactile as well as visual, it feels just like the paper he bought back at Jewel's, crisp and clean.

As he signs his Arcane Mark, he'll brush against a bit of the linguistic information he received from Echo, and knows how to write his first name in the local script (the local language having a direct parallel to his name, conveniently enough), as well as an approximation of his last name.

As he's testing the tablet, a distinctly eye-catching character walks down the stairs at the back of the store. An enormous man, easily over 7 feet tall and built like a brick house, bare-chested and pale-skinned except that every inch of skin is covered with lines of fine blue script, with a shaved scalp and long, bushy mustache, he walks up to the pay counter, the clerk there quickly coming to attention and putting on a fake smile as he places a very large tablet and two small ones (that only seem smaller when held in his hands) on the counter. "I am purchasing these." He says, voice as deep as one would expect and with a thick accent.

"Th-that will be 122 ducats, sir," the clerk replies with half-hidden anxiety.

The man retrieves a billfold from his pants pocket, pays, and picks his tablets back up, all with odd slowness and sense of gravitas. "Thank you. Good day."

Hm, do they sell styluses or similar that you can use for the tablet, or are you obligated to use your fingers? That's not a dealbreaker – he'll still buy it even if there aren't any, because it is vastly superior to paper – but he doesn't imagine the skin on his finger having a good time if he has to write a lot.

Thank You, Lord Echo. He doesn't have his surname on his Arcane Mark, but it's good to know that this language has phonetic support for his name. The cursive looks fine – Chelish Taldane writing drills work – but he doesn't get the flourishes quite right. The spacing is wonky. The tablet doesn't support having increased line width on downstrokes like how it would be with a calligrapher's dip pen, but he didn't expect it to.

He's in the middle of asking his questions when the man walks in. His eyes are most certainly caught.

Oh, what an absolutely gorgeous man. He wants to feel the runes on his skin. He wants to – 

Still looking at him, he'll put down the tablet gingerly and approach. It's good that wizards have good Will saves. He walks headlong into fear. He looks up at him.

"Good morning. What use could you have for three tablets?" His tone is curious, not accusatory. 

There are styli! They're a separate accessory, there's a few different varieties, some of them have extra features of their own but here's one that just works as contact-point for tablets. Conveniently it's built so that Conrad can slot one of his pen-shells on it as well, so it's really just like using ordinary pen-and-paper.

The man turns to Conrad and gives him a wide smile. "Large one is for my friend back home, she is artist-- painter, specifically. Small ones are for my, err..." he searches for the word, "my ward and I, so that we can keep in touch even when she is out. Please pardon my dalmercian, I am new to country, not much of traveler."

Conrad is going to absentmindedly pick up a stylus too, not really checking what's the price on it. He'll take care of that later – so long as it's one without fancy features, it shouldn't be too expensive, he thinks.

He smiles too, and nods. "Oh, I see – you have a child. And that's fine, I haven't really traveled either." Kind of a lie – he traveled between planes – but he hasn't traveled much on this plane specifically. 

"Are you a Recognizant? Let me guess...metabolic? Or maybe chorismic: it looks like you could wreck things with those arms of yours." He successfully makes his Will save against fondling the man's arms. 

"I'm Conrad Ferrer – I'm an echoic Recognizant, but I've only been one for a short while."

"Yes, child, but not child." He huffs, quietly cursing in an unfamiliar tongue. "My job is to nurture and protect her. I am not her father. Her father hired me."

He chuckles. "I am not Recognized. I was chosen by priesthood as child to bear Waker's marks." He gestures to his numerous tattoos.

When Conrad mentions that he is a Recognizant, the man immediately tenses, then falls to one knee. "I am sorry konokhttagesh Conrad Ferrer. I meant no disrespect to you, and beg your forgiveness."

The clerk and the other customer are both looking at Conrad and this man, the clerk with great weariness and the other customer with bemused curiosity.

Oh, so it's a nanny type of situation. Or, no, given his look, he's probably more of a bodyguard. Must be someone important or rich.

Right, the Wind-Waker, like the Mother-Maker, has a church. New life goal: get arcane tattoos that enhance Strength and Constitution. Wait, the guy said that he got them as a child. Damn it! It's probably the sort of thing where you have to grow up with it.

His smile fades when the man genuflects, but he keeps a neutral expression. No one genuflects in Cheliax – everyone, including military personnel, kneels – but he does understand what it means. He's confused now: people, even those who knew he was a Recognizant, acted toward him normally, even flippantly, and yet this powerful man is kneeling before him and begging for his forgiveness. Probably a cultural thing, then. He feels mildly weirded out, but, well, it is not for him to stop someone from showing obeisance to one of Lord Echo's chosen, who of course must be treated in a manner that befits their status.

He disregards his initial theory of people being able to recognize Recognizants by sight, since he bets the person would have knelt immediately if he knew he was a Recognizant – he only did that when he told him he was one.

"Arise. You did no disrespect to me, so there is nothing to forgive." When he presumably arises, he'll ask, "Where are you from, then? People in Dalmercia don't do that. I didn't understand one of the words you used – was that a title?" Certainly, no one kneels to third-circle wizards except slaves. Usually Conrad is the one doing the kneeling.

The man quickly rises when Conrad gives the word. "Thank you for your allowance, konokhttagesh. I am from Mimkhu'ish, to southeast of Dalenmercia, which is much more--" He seems to remember that he is in a room with two probable dalmercans, "Gishut hold place of great respect and reverence there, as they once did in Dalenmercia stozottat-- before Great War. Yes, and no, konokhttagesh is word for 'echoic Recognizant' in mimkhuun language, but, also it is title for them."

"You are welcome. I assume 'gishut' is the general word for any Recognizant, then?" He's quite good at languages – he was in the upper quartile of his Infernal class, but he kind of stopped bothering with language learning ever since he learned Comprehend Languages. He's kind of dreading the process of learning a language the mundane way. Perhaps there's an echoic way to get another? He'll have to look into it. In any case, he's already more than grateful to Lord Echo for giving him Dalmercian.

"I see. Admittedly, I'm not from Dalenmercia either – even though I speak the language. How is the culture around Recognizants different there?"  

He looks at the other people in the shop and decides to bring his stylus and tablet to the counter. "How much will this be?"

Then, to the man, "Where are you headed? We can talk more while walking."

"Yes, gish, or gishut for more than one, and gishut only stand below mhiinurlut, royalty such as my ward, and alongside ozelleklot, nobility." He seems to be taking some joy in using the mimkhuun words, even though he clearly knows their dalmercian translations.

The clerk coughs, and the man pauses his explanation so that they can speak to Conrad. "That will be t-twelve ducats, thirteen pounds, Mr. Ferrer."

"Next, I go back to hotel, to give her tablet to my ward. She is probably very bored of waiting. After that depends on what she plans. If you come, she will be pleased to meet you, I am sure."

Cool! So he has the status of a noble...in another country. Hah. Damian was a baron's son, and he was much richer than Conrad. He'll see if he can make as much money, now that he's technically one too.

He pays the clerk absentmindedly, but does stop to check he receives the correct change before thanking them and leaving. He'll stow the tablet into his sling bag.

He's not sure if he wants to meet a royal child, though. At least in Cheliax, coming into the attention of a Thrune usually means very very bad things to you. But – this isn't Cheliax, he has to stop thinking in terms of Cheliax – he'll be open to the possibility of it.

"That sounds good, although I have to meet someone in the afternoon. I might not have time to talk with her."

Afterward, when they're out of the store, he'll ask, "I have never seen anyone with inscriptions on their skin. What wind does it invoke? I guessed metabolic and chorismic; is that correct?"

It is very easy for the clerk to give him the correct change, given that his purchase is a whole number of pounds, but with how distracted they are by this hulking man's presence double checking isn't a bad idea. No mistake, though, so he's free to go.

The man nods. "Meeting will be good even if it is only brief, and, shtossa, half correct. They are mix of stiizittu, chorismic wind, and stabetta, poetic wind. Together they ensure there is everything I must have and nothing I must not have. Example; I do not need to eat or drink or breathe, mostly."

He's struggling between the impulses of 'maybe don't reveal that you're from another world to a royal's bodyguard' and 'you definitely need to impress this beautiful beautiful man'. It's very stressful.

"I have never seen anyone in Dalenmercia with tattooed inscriptions. You said you got them as a child? Is it necessary for the inscription to be placed on someone young? 

It seems that people in Dalenmercia are less, hm, religious. When I came here, I asked someone where I could find a shrine to Lord Echo, and they scoffed at me." 

Time to learn about theology and the corresponding heresies that he must then learn to keep track of. He'll let the man lead, being a little behind him so he can tell where he's going.

"Oh, and I forgot to ask you your name."

"They are controlled by priesthood, cannot be made without them nor without mhiinurlut. I do not know how secret is kept, but I know other peoples covet it yet do not have it. Yes, I was given marks as child, baby even. I have had them for as long as I can remember, and this is always true. I have never seen marks given to grown or child old enough to walk, but priests say that it causes painful illness and often death."

He nods. "Dalenmercia was once very right and proper, respectful of gishut and taat and ozelleklot. Laskazelleklot, nobility of Dalenmercia became cruel to common people, so after Great War, when armies were depleted, common people rebelled and overthrew. Jowoka--" He takes a moment to find the right translation for this one, "Faith was esteemed by nobility, so when common people overthrew nobility, also they overthrew faith. Such is what I have read."

He pauses for another moment, his face inscrutably neutral. "It is...faithful, for gish to call his taa as such, though I am not used to this. Back home, priesthood and taashrejat are sometimes good allies, sometimes bad enemies, but always suspicious, never friendly.  Thus I do not have the opportunity to hear it often."

His joviality returns at Conrad's last question. "I am meknot Bavel Uuin, though you may call me what you like, konokhttagesh."

Oh, precious Bavel, you do not know how much Conrad covets it. And covet other things beside.

Hm, Echo implied that he could develop his invocation to decode and store inscriptions at a distance. 

It would do well for him to take a vacation to Mimkhu'ish some time from now. The priests say that it causes painful illness and death...but that might just be propaganda. And he could capture someone to test on, someone who won't be missed. The eternal dilemma of a man who likes men: do I want to be with you, or do I want to be you? Conrad would prefer to take both at once, but somehow he knows Bavel is going to react badly at him doing inscription espionage.

He nods and makes thinking noises at appropriate moments. So Dalenmercia underwent Andoranization, as he suspected.

He guesses 'taa' is 'wind', and 'taat' is 'winds'. 

"What is 'taashrejat'? It has something to do with the winds? And is it that the priests are never Recognizants?

What title is meknot? It is a pleasure to meet you, Bavel Uuin." He pronounces the name carefully, and a little too slowly.

"Oh, yes. Taashrejat are worshippers of wind, generally konokhtta. They often travel, and worship in secret, learning many things and sharing their knowledge to one another but not to outsiders. Gishut..." He pauses again, thinking, "gishinguzut and jela'engazot are separate priesthoods. Gishinguzut are superior, naturally, but they hold distinct duties from us and only rarely we work together."

Bavel doesn't seem to notice, or at least mind, Conrad's pronunciation, but he seems pliable to Conrad's positive reinforcement, smiling as he answers the last question. "Meknooj are those who bear marks, such as myself. We are strong hands of priesthood, and also it is a pleasure to meet you, konokhttagesh Conrad Ferrer."

"It's quite peculiar, that the worshippers and the clergy are...suspicious of one another. Why is that? And it is also interesting how the Recognized and non-Recognized have separate priesthoods – you are part of the latter? Which duties does each one have, since they are distinct?"

He's going to wonder idly about whether the inscription needs to be exposed to work. Right, 'wind' isn't 'literally the wind', but perhaps exposing the inscription to the elements lets it absorb anemonomastic energy? Regardless of the etiology, he will be happy that it makes Bavel go shirtless. It could just be a cultural thing, now that he thinks about it. Are Bavel's clothes different from the Dalenmercians?

"Priesthood carries legacy of Taajonpja, the Waker. Taashrejat go their own way. Often this creates disagreement between taashrej and priest, and sometimes disagreement between taashrej and gaznellog, religious law. I am jela'engaz, in a technical sense, though among them we meknooj hold duties most like those of gishinguzut. Mostly jela'engazot provide guidance and aid to their communities, record history, study scripture, and pursue art. Gishinguzut are keepers and enforcers of religious law, administrators and advisors to mhiinlizuj, king or queen, and warriors in defense of Mimkhu'ish."

He flexes his muscles for moment. "Body of meknot is much like weapon, even if it is also art, so we are often given to command of gishinguz or, in my case, mhiinlizuj himself, and through him to his daughter."

Bavel is currently wearing only pants, held up by a simple drawstring. They're quite nice pants, though. They're a clean and very dark black with two inconspicuous pockets, and made of a shiny and flowing fabric, perhaps the same as the strength-enhancing shirt in Conrad's pack.

"Mm. Near here, there's a shrine to the Mother-Maker. Do you worship the other three popular Recognizants – the Mother-Maker, but also the Road-Builder and the Storm-Slayer? 

What is religious law like?" Heresy time!

Ah, that sounds more like the clerics he knows.

"Oh yes. Very artistic." Hah. That might have been a little too much.

"Are there differences in the way the Recognizants of different winds are treated there? In Dalenmercia, poetic and chorismic inscriptions are regulated much more strictly than metabolic and echoic ones, because the former two involve permanent addition and subtraction of matter from the world."

"No no no, we do not worship humans. Even Taajonpya is only our teacher, first priest and first king. He is example, goal for rulership and for good life in general, but not to worship. Mhijunbuzri, the Mother-Maker as said in dalmercian, was his wife, and also example and goal for women especially. Teededaja and Sottabeleg, the Road-Builder and the Storm-Slayer were great gishut and important historical figures, particularly Sottabeleg bringing great honor to Mimkhulut by what he did, but only those things."

Like any good priest, at least according to Bavel, he has the entire codex of law memorized, both secular and religious, as well as many scrolls of case law, so he can go into great detail about any particular area of the law that Conrad cares to ask about.

He will also give Conrad another flex in a different pose, if it looks like it would please him. "I find art of body is often underappreciated, at least back home."

Bavel nods to that. "Gishinguznilukh is divided into four branches, one for each wind, each one maintains separate quarter of religious law, generally relating to use and study of wind, duties and privileges of gazot and gishut, sundry matters which touch upon livelihood of gazot and gishut, and irregular further matters enshrined in case law."

He can expand on any of the four branches of religious law at length, though an overview will reveal that, while not supported by any high-level principle or explicit demand for additional regulation, the case law for poetic and chorismic anemonomastics does seem much more voluminous and to include more restrictions, though this time it's chorismics that are subject to the most restriction while poetics are somewhere between that and the other two.

"...'but only those things'? What do you mean by that? Did they end up doing something dishonorable?"

Very impressive. He doubts he could do such a thing, even being Intelligent enough to be a wizard. Not without several years, unless their law code is somehow really short. Which he doubts.

Conrad is very pleased, and he smiles really wide. He looks simultaneously abashed and shameless.

"The same is true for myself. I'm...what you would call an artisan or a researcher, but also a soldier. Hm...perhaps military engineer would be a better translation. I take care of my body, which is rare for people in my position.

I don't think you've used the term 'gazot' before. Let me guess...hm, does that mean non-Recognized? 

Does the reason why there seem to be more restrictions on chorismics have to do with the Storm-Slayer? 

I'm particularly interested in case law for echoics. What sort of echoic effects does Mimkhuun law probihit?"

"Only that they are not more than human. Excellent humans, powerful gishut, but not more than that. Yet, they allowed themselves to be idolized! They allowed paamemkhoon to place them alongside Taajonpja and Mhijunbuzri, or even above them."

To be fair, Bavel has been raised from infancy to be a priest, and the meknot inscription apparently makes remembering things easier, even if it's still not trivial.

Bavel is also glad to hear Conrad does so, and even proposes that, if they are able to coordinate a time for it, that they might enjoy a spar.

"Ah, I am sorry. Gazot are priests of both kinds, jela'ot and gishut. You are comfortable to speak with and I slack in my dalmercian."

"The Storm-Slayer is source of much case law, yes, though not only one. Wirklu, Bloodstained One, was vile gish, who slaughtered many jela'ot with his stiizitunjulz, chorismic invocation, finding new ways to use gaznellog as shield each time. In some sense we are fortunate for his existence, since laws born of his malice helped guide future generations of gishut and ozelleklot to avoid the fate which befell nobles of Dalenmercia."

Mimkhuun law is fairly lax on echoics, with laws primarily limiting its use to propagate falsehoods, obstruct the enforcement of laws or the transmission of state or priestly announcements, lead others into danger, and similar sorts of things.

"What is paamemkhoon? It has something to do with your country, but I don't know what the first part stands for."

A spar sounds lovely, though now would not be the appropriate time.

"I see. I don't think my invocation is suitable for translation, although it seems like the sort of thing that an echoic effect would be able to do. And besides, I was only Recognized recently. I could try, though. My invocation does simple speaking and listening."

He wonders (not aloud!) whether Mimkhuun law prohibits derivation of secret inscriptions using echoic effects. That is neither falsehood propagating, law enforcement obstructing, official transmission obstructing, nor danger leading. 

"Lord Echo implied to me that my invocation is very flexible, but I currently can only do a basic speaking effect. I'm meeting with an echoic researcher later to help me with it. Listen: Thank You, Lord Echo."

"Dweer, Bavel Uuin." Comes Echo's unique voice, evidently speaking mimkhuun, emanating from next to Conrad but significantly higher in the air, above even Bavel's head.

"Ah, 'paa-' means 'not'. Paamemkhoon are people not of mimkhuun, or technically anything that is not of mimkhuun but in practice it usually is people unless otherwise specified."

No, now is not good. They're actually pretty close to the hotel where Bavel's ward, mhijundwir Hilgrunzrikki Mhiinurlujn is waiting.

"Please, do not strain yourself for my sake. It will cause me no trouble to be more strict in my language. I need to try harder to integrate it regardless."

Bavel stops in his tracks when he hears Echo's voice, turning directly to where it emanated from with lightning speed. "That was not your voice, and, I have not said 'dweer' to you. That was not a recording?"

"Got it." He's really learning.

"That is Lord Echo's voice, although They may choose to adopt any voice that They choose. I bet 'dweer' means 'hello', since that was what They said to me when I used that invocation. Somehow, I had developed the assumption that They would only be able to speak in the languages I spoke, since I am the one speaking the invocation, but it seems that's not true. And no, it's not a recording. 

Could this invocation be used for translation? It could be quite valuable if so, although less so if the translation only goes one way. Let me try that again: Thank You, Lord Echo, for telling Bavel Uuin that he is a good teacher."

"Bavel Uuin ond juukh pottsheja, and you are welcome my Conrad Ferrer." Comes the voice, different this time, more feminine and with a difference in cadence, but still uniquely Echo, and still from the same relatively high height.

Echo's presence spiked from the low level it has settled into since Conrad first came to the city both times They were invoked, though it quickly fades again.

"Jedoowa..." Bavel seems fascinated by Conrad's invocation for a moment, before regaining control of himself. "Sorry. You have been too kind for me to believe you are liar, and if you are not, I don't believe I have ever heard of invocation which does what your invocation appears to do."

He sighs, and looks just a little disappointed. "Were I here on ordinary sort of priestly business, this would surely rise to my highest priority. Unfortunately, my time is not my own. I am bound by duty to serve my mhijundwir until relieved by her father. Come, let us continue our walk."

That thinking seems so strange. Kindness is orthogonal to propensity to lying...that might be an Asmodean thing. Probably, in this world, the sort of people who are nice (i.e. Good), are also the ones less likely to lie.

"Huh, interesting. It does seem like the echoic wind has the most varied and indirect effects out of all the winds. Frankly, I'm surprised Lord Echo chose me. It is not in my nature to be indirect and empathetic – which seems like the thing Lord Echo is selecting for – so I suppose I have a lot of growing to do to become closer to Them. Lord Echo also implied that I could reverse the invocation – how, I have no idea – which implies that I could translate what you say in Mimkhuun and have Them say it to me in Dalmercian. Hah, I didn't expect to be testing my invocation here, before I had even met the specialist. She'll be very interested in this, I'm sure.

Yes, let's continue. How old is your ward? I think I might have gotten a bit confused: she is a child in the sense of being a daughter, but not a child in the sense of being not fully grown?"

Bavel nods as they walk. "I have spoken to many konokhttageshengazot in court of mhiinlizuj. most often where they serve their duties. Of those who have spoken of their past to me, none have said they expected to be gishinut, Recognized, or at least not by konokhtaa. In that sense you are ordinary."

"As for my mhijundwir, she is mostly grown, having seventeen years, and to be receiving her eighteenth shortly before spring."

"I see. Is unexpectedness common to all Recognizants, in your experience, or is it specific to the echoic wind? That is to say, do Recognizants of the other winds know whether they are likely or unlikely to be Recognized, or receive a premonition that they might be?

On a different note, I wonder if you have heard any anemonomastic effects – echoic or not – about people being raised from the dead, or being conjured or summoned from other worlds?" This is a simple enough statement that he has the Bluff necessary to make it sound casual and offhand.

"Of course, your church might have secrecy laws, so if you are forbidden to speak on such topics, I understand.

I see. So you are to take care of her until she is fully grown – which is eighteen years old, I assume? Were you with her since she was a baby? I can't tell how old you are – your inscriptions make it hard to tell. As for myself, I am twenty five."

"For other taat, often there is sense of..." he considers his words for a moment, "sense of readiness, or culmination? Sometimes long time before gishuw, Recognition, sometimes only days or hours. It is rare for this sense to be absent, though not unheard of. Conversely many report this sense but are never gishinut, though I suspect most of such are either lying or deluded."

"There are myths of rituals to return dead to life, in various states of...repair, but these are only myths. Medicine can heal some maladies which appears as death to laity, but no more than that. As for conjuring from other worlds, there is talk among academics that this is what stabetta does, and perhaps that stiizitta returns its subjects to this otherworldly void, but in my knowledge there is no strong evidence for either."

"Ah! I have same age as you, to year at least. I have been my mhijundujrn guardian only for two years, though I have served in court of mhiinlizuj for nine years. And, I will nurture and protect my mhijundwir for as long as mhiinlizuj wills it, though in future practice I will do more protecting and less nurturing."

"Have you heard of anyone who has...'relinquished' their Recognition?" He's having trouble phrasing that in a way that wouldn't betray his absolute ignorance of anemonomastics. Certainly, in Golarion, clerics may choose to renounce their deities at any time, but they do so rarely, since obviously their deity wouldn't have picked them if they thought they were likely to do that.

Hm. So no prior precedent for his situation, unless those people were hidden or killed early on, and the records of the situation destroyed.

He smiles when Bavel says he's the same age as him.

"Do you train to become a meknot? I assume so, but what does this training consist of? In my life before I was Recognized, I was something of a soldier and an...artisan. Someone who makes things similar to inscribed objects. Although I was more soldier than artisan." Oops. Probably shouldn't have said that. The unwise part of his mind who wanted to relate to and impress Bavel took over for a moment. He needs a Wisdom headband, stat. He's really quite unusual for a wizard, for wanting more Wisdom than Intelligence.

Bavel nods. "There is ritual, very difficult and requiring many konokhttageshot, which strips away voice of subject, including their invocation. Traditionally it is most severe punishment for gishut before execution, but there are records of gishut who desired to abandon duties of gishut and so willingly underwent jelatamos, this ritual."

"Yes. Most of my memories are of training, of one kind or another. Memorizing codex, studying the Waker's marks, conditioning my body, learning to fight, practicing rituals, many kinds of training. It is good to hear about you! I feel as though I have dominated conversation."

At this moment, they turn a corner, revealing a block of the city one side of which is occupied by a single enormous building. "Ah! This is place where she waits."

"What a powerful ritual it must be, to permanently do that. Are non-Recognizants able to help with rituals, or it is strictly a Recognizant thing?" 

"Don't feel bad. My past is...troubled, so I don't usually talk about it, unless it's directly relevant to the conversation."

Ah. The hotel – he assumes it's a hotel – is very big. What time is it now? If it's before 1300, he'll be fine with talking to Bavel's ward, skipping the library visit. Otherwise, he'll have lunch before going to see Bishop.

"Yes, it is actually somewhat unusual for a ritual to require any gishut, though when present always they contribute much."

Bavel bows his head apologetically. "Sorry. I will not pry."

It turns out his new tablet has a clock function! It doesn't have seconds, though, so the pocket watch was still a good pick. It's 11:06 at this moment.

Following Bavel inside, there's a large crowd occupying the hotel lobby. A moment later, she becomes visible.

The first thing that Conrad notices about her is her hair. It is not just blue, though it is a stunning and bright blue, like a clear summer day. It is also the star-spangled black of a cloudless night, and the roiling grey shades of a storm. It is like every sky Conrad has ever seen, all at once, all in this young woman's hair, flowing down from her head in long, curling locks.

Managing to look past her hair, she is as pale as Bavel, if not paler, and dressed in rich furs, and seems to be enjoying the attention the crowd is paying her, having no trouble entertaining them.

"Jint eetek?! Jimisk odde wolkna?" Bavel asks, not speaking loudly but his presence causing the crowd to go quiet. He gently moves towards the woman, presumably his ward, and the crowd parts around him.

"Lendoowa mjun zripjilni! Woon jookh. Everyone? This is my bodyguard, Bavel! And he seems to have a brought a friend." Her dalmercian is much less accented than Bavel's.

Suddenly, at least a dozen people are now looking at the two of them.

Conrad isn't interested in women, but neither is he blind. The woman is truly stunning. He's dazzled. He stares for half a round before collecting himself. He has never seen any hair like that – not on half-elves, not on tieflings, not on any demon, and not with any hair dye or Prestidigitation trick.

He turns to look at Bavel when he speaks and walks toward the woman. 

All the people looking at him makes him tense, but he has the Wisdom and Splendor to keep himself composed. Just barely. Should he kneel? Bavel isn't kneeling. The crowd also isn't. He'll also refrain from kneeling, despite his Chelish instincts screaming at him for it.

This is a good time to use his invocation, he thinks.

"Lord Echo, thank You for permitting your servant to hear the Minkhuun words in the tongue You gave him. Thank You, Lord Echo, for conveying my sincere and respectful greetings to the princess." He compromises with his instincts and bows in the same manner Bavel did to him earlier, rather than kneeling.

Belatedly, he realizes that the invocation might not work, and that he might have just humiliated himself in front of the princess. 

Internal screaming. Lord Echo, your humble servant begs You hearken to his words! 

Echo's presence rushes back when he says, exactly, 'Thank You, Lord Echo'. Two things occur simultaneously. Within his mind, he hears Bavel and the princess's voice.

<What are you doing?! Why are you outside?> says Bavel's voice.

<Relax my little jailer! I'm fine,> says the princess's.

In the physical world, Echo's voice speaks from the same high height. "Theenrane dweerkhete shuw wilvittumshiju wizrigujjiiv, mhiinurlujn mhijundwir."

<My servant greets you sincerely and respectfully, princess of the skyhaired people.> Echo translates mentally.

The princess looks to Bavel with a sparkle of wicked joy in her eyes. "Oh Bavel, have you found one our Recognizant priests, here in this foreign country? Or have you simply spent so much time with him already that he has learned our language? And I thought you said you'd be back as soon as possible." She puts on an expression of mock betrayal, eyes quickly scanning the crowd.

Bavel quickly kneels, fully, stopping only when he has brought his head below the princess's neck. "Adeeski mjun mhijundujn, I only encountered him moments ago, while acquiring these tablets." He offers one of the small ones to her. "I promise I was not delayed for more than minute."

"Nuuski mjun zripjilni, you know I don't care for that trite deference. Does it look like I am making anyone here kneel?"

Bavel stands quickly with a chastised look on his face.

The princess takes the offered tablet and pockets it, then turns to Conrad, beckoning him closer. "So, who are you? And how can I get you to continue distracting my dear overbearing guardian?"

He wonders whether Bavel gets punished. Mimkhuun culture is not like Dalmercian culture – it seems more...hierarchical. The thought of Bavel being punished makes him sad. Very...unusual. He wouldn't have felt like that back at the Worldwound, or in Cheliax.

He wonders also whether Echo will mentally translate the extra words, or if his new spell, Lord Echo's Comprehension, has a duration of 'instantaneous' rather than say, minutes. Or is it like Golarion magic in that the duration scales with how strong his invocation is? How aligned he is with his wind? 

"I am Conrad Ferrer, Your Highness. Echoic Recognizant. I do not think it would be wise for me to distract your guardian – not that I would be able to. He is very dedicated to his work." He has half a mind to smile, but he keeps his expression solidly neutral and impenetrable. As much as he can, anyway.

Echo's presence fades quickly, and seemingly takes the translation with it.

"Well met Conrad Ferrer, and indeed he is! Dedicated to a fault I'd say. Now then, I need to set up this tablet so I can get this gorilla," she gestures to Bavel, "off my back." She turns to face the crowd. "I'll return to you all soon! Don't fret. In the mean time, discuss the options for our lunch and afternoon entertainment."

With that, she turns and heads off, entering one a row of sliding doors on the other side of the lobby from the entrance, Bavel in tow. "This will only take few minutes. We soon will be back," he offers to Conrad.

The crowd breaks ups into numerous smaller circles of two, three, and four as people talk about good places to eat, local theaters, local sports clubs, and so on. Conrad can hear even Hockler's Hall being mentioned, though it's quickly rejected by the conversation partner of whoever mentioned it due to being unaccommodating to spectators.

Hm. That will be a little problematic with regard to ergonomics, but the fact that it works is already valuable. He'll definitely record this spell invocation in his spellbook formulary.

A gorilla? You have no appreciation for beauty. Not that he'll let that show on his face.

He feels like laughing. Very nurturing indeed, Bavel is.

Are any of the people in the princess's 'entourage' Dalenmercian – at least in appearance – or are they all Mimkhuun? And are they speaking in Dalenmercian, or will he have to do the translation spell again? If he can understand them, can he eavesdrop? Subtly, of course. He's well below average in Perception compared to fighters, but a little above average compared to wizards.

He should come up with a good name for his invocations. Given that he's not in Golarion, he should use a less...boring and utilitarian naming schema. It would not befit Lord Echo. He can't think of good names for now, but he ought to. Lord Echo's Resounding Missive, By which the Barrier of Language is Pierced, Message from the Skies...okay, now is not the time to think of names. 

Do the people look rich or important? Do they seem like the type of people who would normally be with the Princess, or do they look more like hangers-on? 

Only a cluster of three have the pale complexion he might associate with the mimkhuun people, and if he listens in they're the only ones speaking what sounds like the mimkhuun tongue as well. The way they carry themselves is vaguely familiar to Conrad, a mixture of noble and military bearing. Plausibly they are other members of the princess's party.

Two other groups, what looks like a couple and maybe a set of siblings or just three friends of similar age, are each speaking other languages that sound like neither mimkhuun nor dalmercian.

Everyone here definitely dresses richly, plenty have tablets out as they chat. Aside from the mimkhuun people they do all seem pretty much just like hangers-on, perhaps wealthy tourists enticed by the idea of spending an afternoon with royalty.

Hm, he doesn't really know any of these people, and he's not sure if he wants to butt in into any of their conversations. Instead, he'll go to a quiet corner (or the closest equivalent thereof) and try to see if he can get his invocations to last longer.

Given what Echo has said back to him so far, it seems that the length of Echo's responses mirror the length of his own? It would go along with what Bishop said about 'investment'. What if he continually repeats a phrase in his invocation?

He speaks softer this time. Not quite a whisper, but close. "Lord Echo, thank You for permitting the speech of others to be heard by your servant in the tongue You bestowed upon him, always grateful shall he be, always grateful, always grateful..." and he'll continue saying that for ten rounds.

Echo's presence steadily builds as Conrad's repeats the phrase, rather than all in a rush. Once it's reached a familiar level, as if Echo were there next to him, he receives some new understanding. He now knows that the evolution of an invocation is, inherently, a gradual thing. What he is doing now, inviting in and holding the presence of Echo, hastens that process, but does not make it instant, even for fairly small changes, and that he needs to do more than simply request what he wishes his invocation would do, but rather needs to meditate on how the 'shape' of his desired invocation and his current invocation differ, and the changes to that 'shape' that are needed to make the latter into the former. This process may have similarity with analyzing spell manifolds.

Echo is limited in their ability to simply grant the knowledge of exactly how this works, in comparison to the critical period immediately following Conrad's recreation, as various metaphysical attributes of Conrad's existence have solidified. Thus, Conrad must research and experiment with forms of invocation, a process which Echo may aid in but not greatly abridge without causing grievous harm to Conrad, the world around him, or both.

Also, the words of his invocation at the moment is still specifically the syllables 'Thank You, Lord Echo' in that order, though the same sort of mental awareness through which Conrad senses Echo's presence and receives their messages can also feel something more, as though he is at the edge of something, and Echo will provide confirmation that he is close to altering the shape of his invocation such that its words will be 'Lord Echo, thank You' (but this will not change its effect).

Hm, 'shape'. Very similar to the language used in wizarding classes, but...either there isn't a tactile sixth sense with invoking as there is in wizardry, or he hasn't developed it yet. There is a sense used to feel your own magical energy when preparing spells – sight is the most common metaphor, followed by touch. But with that, you manipulate the energies directly with your hands.  He can feel the sense of Echo's presence, but he's not sure whether that's distinct from the sensation of the invocation itself – or whether they are one and the same. He remembers the meditation exercises he had to do as a novice, but that probably only has partial applicability to this situation.

He really needs to talk to Bishop. She'll appreciate all this data. He takes out his tablet. Oh, right, you need to set it up. He's not sure he has the time for that, so he'll just write down the immediate revelations Echo gave him on the loose paper with his schedule on it so he doesn't forget.

...how does he signal that he can take more damage than a commoner? He can jump off a six story building and still be well enough to fight – though obviously he'll be hurt. But he's not going to gainsay his wind, who is also obviously much Wiser and more Intelligent than him.

He's not sure whether he wants to change the words (but not effect) of his invocation, although certainly putting the vocative phrase at the beginning is more convenient grammatically. 

He really needs to talk to Bishop.

Now that he's here, he might as well write down things he wants to ask her later, or do with his conversation with her:

- great war? dalmercia lost nobility in war
    - status of recognizants legally and culturally in dalmercia?
    - ask about dalmercian wind religion

- how to develop invocation
    - talk about current invocation effects and examples and lord echo revelations (not secret invocation divination yet)
    - how do you request a new invocation

- arrange meeting with 'net' people who worship lord echo

- learning inscriptions
    - ask for more examples of echoic inscribed objects
    - what is the process of inscription actually like

- learning rituals
    - learning echoic rituals
    - how is ritual casting like
    - ask about mimkhuun echoic ritual to remove voice

- mimkhu'ish – also ask about geopolitical situation post great war
    - does bishop have non-echoic research contacts (must figure out whether to tell her about secret invocation divination)
    - bavel's inscription is poetic and chorismic

- tell bishop about golarion wizardry? think on question further

- ask for job at research facility
    - how much will i be paid

- can you tell the wind to be more generous with revelations – i can handle god vision headaches

- ask where to stay at (can i stay at the research facility? very inconvenient to have to take the shuttle every day – more training needed if i want to go running to town and there regularly)

Just as promised, a few minutes later (11:14 if Conrad checks any clocks) Bavel and the princess return through a different sliding doorway than they disappeared into, though an adjacent one. There's a bit of hubbub as the princess's entourage quickly attempts to come to a consensus on where to go for lunch, but the princess quickly cuts through it with her own suggestion of the Dark Street Smokehouse, which Conrad can remember being one of the options floated by one of the dalmercian-speaking groups as a good example of high-end local cuisine.

With that, the princess is on the move, Bavel and the rest of her entourage alongside her. It's a bit earlier than Conrad had planned for lunch, if he wants to join them, but it has been about five hours since he had breakfast and he's done a good bit of walking today.

Oh. Literally a few minutes. He thought he was just saying that as like...a saying.

Mm. Brisket. Or maybe ribs. He hasn't had those in literal years. He'll definitely tag along. He's not hungry and he's not tired, but he's also not not hungry and not not tired. 

Wait. Does Pleroma even have the same animals as Golarion? The buffet looked normal enough, but there was only bacon and sausages. He hasn't actually seen the whole animal parts. He supposes he'll get to find out soon enough. And the food then didn't disagree with him, so even if the animals are different, it should be fine.

It's another bit of a walk to the smokehouse. With the sky relatively clear and the sun close to its winter zenith, it's actually not too cold in the city. It was already a lot warmer than the frozen hellscape of the Worldwound but it's now actually somewhat pleasant, if maybe still a bit damp from last night's rain.

On the walk over, one of the mimkhuuns, a burly (though not nearly as large as Bavel) and hirsute man wearing a pair of spectacles, breaks away from their contingent to speak with Conrad. "The priest tells us that you are Recognizant, not simply possessed of some echoic trinket. Would you like to walk with us?" His dalmercian is better than Bavel's, but still significantly more accented than the princess's.

The fact that it's a humid rather than dry cold makes it more pleasant, since it means he doesn't get sniffly. The fact that the biome here isn't actively hostile to human life is really reigniting his love for the outdoors. 

If most Mimkhuun men are like this, he should plan his visit earlier. But sadly, that most likely is not the case.

"Yes, I would be honored to." Conrad will follow the man to his group. "And you are?" he asks. 

The man bows his head in greeting as he leads Conrad. "I am zogel Gejanst Shoron Hikluzun, or just Shoron."

He gestures to a tall, freckled woman with long red hair tied into a braid who is occupying the princess's attention with conversation in mimkhuun. "She is poetic Recognizant Gajnnaav Jiurin, though she usually goes by Naveen."

He gestures to last member of their group, another man, though shorter and much more wiry than Shoron or Bavel, clean shaven and with darker brown hair, almost black, compared to Shoron's. "He is sir Ipiziillu Mhaalton of the kingsmen, who goes by Ipiziillu, or Ipi if he is about to do great violence."

Ipiziillu gives Conrad a wave and cheeky smile. "Dweer!"

He bows in the same manner. "Conrad Ferrer, echoic Recognizant. I am pleased to meet you, Shoron, and you as well, Ipizillu." He waves back.

"May I know what the purpose of your visit here is? I came here because I met the princess's bodyguard, Bavel, by coincidence. Oh, and zogel Shoron, what title is zogel? My mimkhuun is not very good."

'Ipi' if he is about to go great violence? He wonders whether he can see if any of them are visibly bearing arms. He has his own heirloom dagger and gauntlet strapped to his belt.

"Yes, you made quite an impression on the priest already. We're here to accompany princess Hilgrunzrikki on her...vacation, I believe would be the word. She recently completed her schooling and her father has given her allowance to travel abroad as a reward. Oh, a zogel is like a prince, but for a duke rather than a king. There is no good dalmercian word for it, to my knowledge. My elder brother is the duke Gejanst."

Naveen appears to be unarmed, while Shoron has a short sword in a scabard at his hip and a long, relatively thin metal tube ending in a wooden stock strapped to his back, a bit like an arquebus but slimmer. Ipiziillu has another similar pseudo-arquebus on his back, and two much smaller ones in holsters on his hips.

A duke's son, he gets it. Also, hooray: he finally knows what the princess's name is.

Hm. He's unsure what to make of the tube like thing on Shoron's back. It looks vaguely like the firearms people use in Alkenstar, but he knows little about those, because they're so secretive about it. It could also be some sort of casting focus? Looking at Ipizillu, he thinks it's more likely they're firearms. They don't seem to have the...aesthetic of casting foci. At least, Golarion casting foci like wands, staves, and rods. It could simply be Mimkhuun weapon inscription design being different from Dalenmercian civilian inscription design. 

He kind of can't believe how many new people he's meeting right now. He's not the sort to network. That's Damian's thing. But Lord Echo's domain is connection and communication – he can hardly shirk his responsibility to connect and communicate in this opportune moment. It would be very heretical.

What are good questions to ask? All the questions he wants to ask are all the ones that could be...fraught: questions about the Great War, Dalenmercia's nobility, their weapons...ah. It's not always that you can substitute Intelligence for Splendor, but here he can carefully reframe a question so it doesn't set off alarms.

"The priest, Bavel, knelt to me when I told him I was an echoic Recognizant – I asked him whether he was one when I met him at the store, because I had never seen anyone like him before. He said that Recognizants were held in high esteem, although in Dalenmercia people don't treat Recognizants differently, at least socially. What is special about Mimkhu'ish and Recognizants? I am not well-traveled, and so I am largely ignorant of Mimkhuun culture – my sincere apologies."

"It is seen as somewhat uncouth to physically stand above your social superiors, amongst the mimkhuun people. Usually this is just a matter of bowing to them in greeting or sitting if your superior is sitting, but the priest is very assiduous in his adherence to this principle, due to his great size." Shoron shrugs. "He is also a remarkably gentle person, and I think he does not like to impose on people he likes or respects."

"As for where the principle comes from, hm...I wouldn't say that Mimkhu'ish is special, exactly. I mean, it is very special in the sense of being the first kingdom and homeland of the mhiinurlut, but not in granting respect to the Recognizant. You and Naveen and all the others inherently possess the same greater stature that we nobles do. It was recognized in you by the winds, rather than inherited by blood, but it is still the same. As I understand it that's where the dalmercian word Recognizant comes from."

He pauses for a moment, recollecting. "The nobles of Dalenmercia, before they were overthrown, had begun to disenfranchise their Recognizants, or attempted to. I couldn't tell you why, but I believe it played a great part of how they were overthrown, and evidently the local Recognizants and commonfolk have found some brotherhood through this struggle."

Aww. That's...kind of cute actually.

He's going to guess, though he won't say it out loud, that the nobility-like status granted to Recognizants isn't inheritable. Otherwise the number of the noble classes would inflate, unless there was some way for the number of nobles to be reduced. That seems like it would be a touchy topic, which is why he's just going to think that. Is withholding things from others heretical? Lord Echo wants connection and communication. Probably not, though. He's been doing a lot of concealing already.

That's very stupid. You obviously need to pay the military, and pay the military first. Recognizants aren't soldiers per se, but they do have magic, and that has lots of power.

He should probably come up with a better backstory for himself. And pre-empt it, so that he can control the narrative. Hm, what to say...

"I was, er, am, a scholar, or something of the sort, and I think part of the reason Lord Echo brought me here has to do with the strong influence He has on the area – Swarthwalls, I mean. I visited the echoic research facility here earlier and am looking to help there. Do you know of places in Mimku'ish that are similar, in expressing strong spontaneous echoic phenomena? Actually, what's the state of anemonomastic research in your country?"

"Ah, there are many, though fewer if you exclude the more common ones such as kashwalamet and lavelolat. There's Mhijunnuus of course, the royal palace. There's Shishintuin, which is where Ipiziillu's people are from. There's Poordwazalo I suppose, though I haven't checked whether it's just echoic or metabolic. Maa'olokart might also count, though I think I've heard priests say recently that it appears to actually be man-made, somehow. I suppose through some kind of enormous stone-shaping metabolic ritual."

"The priesthoods are the primary institution of anemonomastic research, and rather premier as I understand it, on the international stage. Mimkhu'ish has always been at the forefront of it, naturally given that it is where humanity's connection to the winds was founded."

"Sincere apologies, I'm unfamiliar with kashwalamet and lavelolat. The words, I mean," he adds after a pause. Hopefully that conceals his ignorance better. 

"I am keen to know more about the phenomena in Shishintuin and Maa'olokart, if you would indulge me."

Mmm. Sounds like propaganda. He doesn't know enough about this world to know for sure, though. Given that they have Bavels and Dalenmercia doesn't, it's not implausible. He'll change the topic slightly.

"Speaking of the priesthood, does Mimkhu'ish have a state religion? Or is the church a separate entity from the state – are there other countries with the same church?"

Shoron raises a hand in placation."Translating literally, they are something like 'looking ponds' and 'song caves' in dalmercian, I believe. I don't know what the vernacular term for them is, though. They are a particular kind of still pond whose surface reflects a different location, and a kind of cave which tends to 'speak' or 'sing' in reply to human voices near it. They're both common in and around Mimkhu'ish, so it's not uncommon for other lands to call them by our names."

"The specifics of Shishintuin's nature are a secret, unfortunately, protected by a royal charter. I'm given to understand that it lends itself to secrecy, though. Maa'olokart's phenomenon is fairly complicated, but I suppose you could call it a sort of repository of memories? If you wander between the blocks supposedly you can stumble into the memories of previous visitors. There's a bit of a hobbyist society for it, and the priesthood recently established a committee to look more into whether it can be exploited."

Shoron waves his hand uncertainly. "Mhiinlizuj is the highest priest as well as the king, formally at least, but the fact that I am a noble does not mean that I'm a priest. Some nobles do become priests, but one's priestly duties come before one's familial duties, in the eyes of the law at least, so it is rare. There are some priests who follow Mhiinlizuj's leadership in foreign lands, especially among the petty kingdoms further north, whose people are cousin to us, but aside from that it's rare. Other nations are not fond of their people having any divided loyalties, especially in the wake of the Great War, of course."

The kashwalamet "looking ponds" sound very similar to scrying! He doesn't say that, but his face reflects his heightened interest for a moment before returning to polite curiosity. It doesn't seem like you can control which location the pool looks at, though. The lavelolat "song caves" don't have any Golarion analog. He supposes it's similar to Ghost Sound? But he doesn't – didn't – specialize in illusion magic.

Thinking about those a little more, he does actually know the Dalenmercian words for these: 'scrying pools' and 'ortmunths' – he wasn't able to make the connection because they were in Mimkhu'ish. 

He's honestly kind of very averse to interacting with any sort of weird mental reading or writing effects, what with...Cheliax...but... "Is there any sort of restriction as to who can enter Maa'alokart? I would like to be able to commune more deeply with Lord Echo, and making pilgrimage there and walking between the blocks might permit Him to give me insight as to what exactly he wants me to do."

"I see. Of course," he says. He would really like to learn more about the Great War and how that changes things politically, but like, not knowing about a war that encompassed the entire world would out him as a very strange and very foreign person. He will nod and give the impression that this is obvious to him.

"They're fairly open. People with secret knowledge need to make sure that it's protected from the effect, but other than that I expect you'd be free to give it a try. Tashkveen, the city where Maa'olokart is located, is something of a tourism destination, so it's not hard to travel to. Though, hm..." Shoron looks to Bavel for a moment, then back to Conrad. "Echo-cultists have given the priesthood some trouble there in recent times, especially among the block-exploring community, so it might be beneficial to keep the specific motivation for your visit to yourself."

Echo-cultists? Okay, he's definitely not going to mention his plans to meet some of them soon, then.

"How does one protect secret knowledge from the effect? And I'm glad to hear that. I may visit once I've helped the Swarthwall researchers and gotten paid for it. 

Echo-cultists? Some people at the facility here mentioned things about them, but not any specifics. Would they give me any trouble? Or cause trouble in general? What do they want?"

Shoron shrugs. "An echoic inscription, or maybe a ritual? It's not something I've ever needed to know the specifics of. Ipiziillu might know more, the Mhaaltons' secrets are much more...volatile?"

"Embokh laskankeela." Ipiziillu replies with a somewhat flippant tone.

Shoron sighs. "I don't think I'm up for translating on foot. Maybe after we've sat down and had some refreshments. As for whether the echo-cultists in Tashkveen would give you trouble, I don't know? I haven't ever actually been there or dealt with them personally, and the only things I've read in my bulletin was that they've grown much louder in their rejection of doctrine and that enforcement was being increased. As long you don't talk about why you're there and avoid getting into any arguments over theology I imagine you will be fine."

"Thank you regardless. 

I'm actually unfamiliar with your religious doctrine – could you elaborate on which specific parts they reject? And are cultists of other winds too, or is it specific to the echoic? Here in Dalenmercia it seems that the people treat the winds as though they were the mundane winds of weather, without will or desire. I'm capable of defending myself in the case of altercations but of course I would prefer that there not be any in the first place, it might cause a scandal." Oh god, dealing with scandals. He almost wants to go back to the Worldwound where his job consisted of smashing demons with spell and sword. Except he kind of failed and that and died because of it so...maybe it's time for a change in career. He needs to embody Lord Echo's principles better.

Shoron shrugs. "Like I said, I've never dealt with these particular ones before. Other echo-cults I've met with have mostly been on better terms with the priesthood and limit their disagreements to matters not covered by the law. Stereotypically I'd guess they have disagreement about some obscure case law that relates to whatever they're doing to fund their group, and being a little more imaginative...maybe one of them came back from the blocks with a memory they think contradicts some particular portion of the codex and are screaming about it from every street corner. Oh! Another classic stereotype would be that they're trying to tell people that walking through the blocks is the only 'true way' to find happiness or love or success or whatever else and that doing your job and following the priests is a trap."

"As for other winds, not really? Fictional stories sometimes have chorismic cultists as villains, but I've never heard a credible rumor that someone actually is a chorismic cultist, or a poetic or metabolic for that matter, let alone met one."

Sigh. That doesn't really answer his question, but he supposes that question was better directed at Bavel anyway, the person whose job it is to memorize scripture. 

"Thank you for the advice, I'll keep that in mind. Why do you think only Lord Echo has cultists?"

"It's the only one that talks. That's what I figure, anyway."

Such disrespectful language! – okay don't react.

"Ah, I see."

He wants to talk...weapons...or military applications of anemonomastics...but like, that's kind of a fraught topic, right.

Damian would know how to handle this – not now!

Shuffling through concepts...

"I've never seen that model before," gesturing at Ipizillu's arquebus like thing. He doesn't actually know what it's called. "Do you know it?" he asks Shoron.

"Tajnvewaranta..." Ipiziillu says with long-suffering friendship, observing the grin spreading across Shoron's face.

"Ipiziillu's longarm is a Wandelopajan Askteejat model shesha-nonna-37, though the Mhaaltons have modified their stock significantly..."

Unless Conrad stops him, Shoron will promptly launch in a long-winded explanation of the particularities of the shesha-nonna-37, including common modifications and peripherals, how it compares to other common models of rifle (which are like arquebuses but better in pretty much every way, lighter to carry, more accurate, longer ranged, easier to reload, more powerful, etc.), and from there wander from topic to topic, such as the history of Wandelopajan Askteejat (an arms manufacturer of some repute, and headquarted in Mimkhu'ish), how various different arms and vehicle manufacturers made out of the Great War, how various different developments in military technology imapcted the outcome of the war, and similar topics. Shoron, quite evidently, appears to be something of a military science and history aficionado.

If Conrad wants, he could let Shoron go at this all the way to the restaurant, since it is a pretty good opportunity to inconspicuously extract a good deal of information about recent history. Once the group actually enters the restaurant (which has distinctly rustic appearance, having a more triangular and less boxy construction in contrast to all the other buildings in the city, and with a facade of raw bark instead of lacquered planks, as if it's trying to give off the appearance of a log cabin), though, Hilgrunzrikki will grow tired of his prattling and tell him to give it a rest.

Conrad will not stop him at all! In fact, he's going to start taking notes partway through the lecture with his New and Precious Tablet.

Conrad is likewise something of a military science and history aficionado: it's just that, you know, that knowledge is from Golarion. So he's not going to talk about that. He will express genuine interest in what Shoron says, and act like a bright and eager student who just enrolled into Ostenso. But without all the trepidation. He'll let Shoron talk freely, asking questions along the way that he hopes won't betray his extreme ignorance.

What winds are involved in firearms? He's going to guess...metabolic? Not out loud, though, but he'll try to infer it from Shoron's explanations, or look out for when or whether or not he mentions the winds. 

Conrad will however talk a little about his military training, and about how he inherited his dagger (really, his greatsword, which has a Shrinking enchanment) and locking gauntlet from his family. It will seem dated compared to the unbelievable innovations that Shoron talks about – he couldn't imagine Cheliax having weapons and military technology like that. He will take the opportunity to inconspicuously extract a good deal of information about recent history.

It's kind of interesting that the place tries to appear more rustic than it is – he would have expected people to do the opposite: make it look fancier despite being cheap. 

Honestly, he could let Shoron go on, but he isn't going to countermand the princess about it.