"We don't know how to kill gods. Mostly when they die it's because they've killed each other." 

"We don't know how to kill gods either but we were already going to need to figure it out."

"I don't see how that follows. The gods we know on Golarion have very different capabilities and some of them are probably much easier to kill than others, and then there are all sorts of similarly powerful things that aren't gods at all.

– Actually, we should disambiguate 'god' before we do anything else. In Galtan, the word just means an entity which can empower clerics. Is it the same in Quenya?"

"The word isn't familiar; nor is the concept if I'm parsing it right. The gods are the entities created with the world's creation to act on the will of the Creator; they do not have a physical form unless they want one, but do tend to have a bounded geographic area in which they can exert control directly."

"It is generally believed that our reality was created by Pharasma. She probably also made the very oldest gods; I don't see how else they could have gotten there. Some gods participated in creating Golarion, and the species that live there, and other worlds like it. Other gods started out as weaker beings who rose to godhood over many millenia. A few are ascended mortals. They aren't bound to physical forms like mortals, but it wouldn't surprise me if many of them happen to be operating some number of physical forms at any given time. Many of them have domains in one of the other planes where they're especially powerful. A handful rule over nations of mortals, almost always through mortal proxies. Older gods are usually more powerful, having more worshippers usually makes them more powerful, they usually have broad thematic spheres of influence, like love or farming or magic or torture. All of them can endow a select number of their followers with magical abilities – that's the thing that makes them gods." 

"We call our creator Eru. It's said that He orchestrated the world as music, and the other gods participated in singing it into being, and all that occurs is according to His plan. We have...only the gods we started with, as far as anyone knows. There are ascended mortal gods? Can they kill other gods?"

"One day, we hope, but I don't know that it's ever happened. The mortal gods are very young and very weak, as gods go. "

"How does one become a god."

"One touches a particular magic rock in the city of Absalom, on Golarion. Hundreds of people have tried this and almost every time it just ends with their immortal soul being destroyed, but four times it hasn't. Nobody knows why it worked in those specific cases.

There are a handful of ascended gods who did it some other way, but their stories are murkier. One of them purportedly just meditated until he "achieved perfection," but that's obviously a fairy-tale his followers made up. Another simultaneously ascended and went mad in the same instant, having glimpsed all the knowledge in the universe. Of course, we don't know what that means, or how he did it, or if he was even mortal to begin with." 

"What...properties does the magic rock have? Who made it? Have you seen it?"

"It was made by Aroden, the god who died. Maybe he did it using the forgotten magics of ancient Azlant, maybe he made it from the corpse of the last moon god, who sacrificed himself to save Golarion from a meteor swarm many thousands of years ago, maybe he dug it up from the center of the planet, maybe he did it with the help of a race of alien fish with vast psychic powers. Nobody knows, and nobody except the other ascended gods has seen it and lived." 

" - well, I guess it's more to go off than we had before. Do you imagine it possible to get to your world from here, however you got here in the first place?"

Oooh, Élie's been thinking about this! 

"Oh, it's certainly possible.

...I mean, I can't do it, I'm just sure it can be done. There are spells for traveling across planes and even between planets. I don't know them, but I could probably reinvent them given enough time. That's not the problem. The problem is that I'm much too weak to cast them.

That said – I had this idea when I was listening to your men sing. The kind of magic I know is never additive like that, the power of the spell is always entirely dependent on the individual caster. If I could just find a way to reset the spellforms I know so that they can be performed by Quendi sorcerers, you could just throw together a choir and get them to work that way. Or not! They might not translate! Or your magic-users might not be powerful enough even in concert." (Or it might take decades and only get him home once everyone he loves has forgotten him, but the Quendi won't care about that). "Still, with your blessing, I'd like to try."

" - the King's decision, given the stakes, but certainly - something I'd recommend to him, if you're as you seem and it's really chance that sent you. What do you mean, when you say you're too weak to cast them? Is it a matter of experience? Health?"

"A little of both. Spells as we understand them stabilize one of nine degrees – circles – of increasing complexity. To cast higher-circle spells, a wizard needs to be able to shape the spellform – that's really just a matter of intelligence – and also have a enough personal power to channel through it. We become more powerful by using magic at times of great danger or very high stakes. It's not unusual for wizards who haven't had the right kind of experience to be able to form spells they can't cast." 

Élie's had plenty of experience, of course, but nobody here needs to know he's defective. 

"And how much power would you need, to return to your world where the route to godhood is?"

"I'm not sure how to articulate it in terms that would be meaningful to you. Depending on where we are in relation to Golarion, it might be a seventh or a ninth circle spell. – If it's the ninth circle spell I really shouldn't be confident I can recreate it at all, but arrogance is one of my great flaws, ask anyone. " 

Élie doesn't feel the need the warn him again that if he touches the Starstone he will almost certainly die. He's a prince of some sort, he's probably got a few hundred conscripts he'd chuck at the thing. 

"Can other people learn your magic?"

"I can't think of an obvious reason why they couldn't." 

" - how it it learned, in your home world?"

"I'm not sure how I'd describe it to someone who's never done it – no, that's not true, it's somewhere between mathematics and very complicated knitting. I was taught in a class with many other students, but apprenticeships are more common outside of Cheliax."

"Are you willing to teach it to us?"

"I hadn't assumed I would be given a choice." 

Raised eyebrow. "Have you found our hospitality disappointing?"

"Not at all, you've been very gracious. But I have to imagine that my government has more concern for the freedom and self-determination of human beings than yours, and if we found a visitor from another planet with strange magics which we believed could turn the tide of our war against a tyrant god, we wouldn't let him walk away either."