"Yes. If you'd rather he can stay here and we can do the return Gate at a planned time and location."

"I have no objection to him coming along if he wants to see a very limited slice of our planet, unless he's going to have trouble not alerting the gods." Under normal circumstances that would be reason enough for Alfirin to go alone, out of an excess of caution, but Iomedae wants her to like Ma'ar, and so she should not do things that might look like taking any possible excuse to avoid him.

"I - am not sure what I need to be careful of to avoid alerting the gods? Aside from praying to them, I can definitely avoid doing that." 

"Predain doesn't really go in for religion."  :- you know what would probably be safest, actually, would be a compulsion to not think directly about the plan, if you know how to do that safely.:

"Iomedae was concerned about thinking too carefully about our plans - which might be noticeable to gods who have similar interests - I think it will be harder for the gods to see our plans through prophecy if we don't make any significant decisions where their prophecy functions."

:...I can do that. It will have some weird side effects if I need to do any - novel strategic reasoning - but I think I can just put that off until we return. I need a couple of minutes.: 

"I can avoid that," he says. "All else equal, I would like to see more of your world." 

"Ready when you are. The same location as last time should be fine."

He's ready a couple of minutes later, a tidy compulsion in place. (That won't be incredibly obvious to Golarion Enchantment Sight, compulsions are very low powered.) 

The Gate goes up. With eight Adepts in a meld with him, Ma'ar isn't even tired. He steps across and takes it down. 

She had a plan and will execute on it. First, the local scriptoria; she doesn't know Tien, she only Comprehends it, and has not yet had the chance to visit the continent much, and so does not have very many tien works on the outer planes at all. She would be pleased to purchase one of every tome, leaflet, or scroll they have on the planes or planar magic. No, she will not commission any additional works. No, she does not wish to provide ongoing patronage. No, she does not wish to speak with the senior monk at this time, perhaps another. Now, please. She has a bag, yes.

She's sorry she can't show Ma'ar the sights here; even if they weren't trying to minimize time spent this is her first time in this city if you don't count the two minutes yesterday. She's going to teleport them elsewhere now. He will need to take her hand.

Ma'ar is enjoying looking at absolutely everything that can be looked at with mage-sight, and thinking of nothing but that and how interesting the city is. 

He'll take Alfirin's hand for the transport. He's very curious to see Teleport cast. 

To mage-sight, it bears very little superficial similarity to a gate, though this is more due to the basic forms of Golarion magic being different than those in Velgarth. As the spell completes, it unfolds across Alfirin and down her hand and across him and there's the briefest tiny moment where he might catch the spell searching for its destination before it's gone and they are standing in Indapatta. Alfirin follows approximately the same routine here, then they teleport again to Oppara where she can, in fact, show him the most interesting parts of the city and tell him things about its inhabitants.

Oppara is the seat of Taldor, the empire which controls the inner sea region. Taldor funds Iomedae's crusade, and her most powerful magic items are on loan from the Empire. It has an effective bureaucracy, if not the most efficient one. The Emperor lives here, and most of the nobility, because if the nobility lived elsewhere they might amass independent power bases and start civil wars. It's not entirely clear whether this strategy actually works to prevent civil wars, there are still occasional civil wars, it's just that they get started by ambitious appointed generals. The city has a lot of artisans, and merchants, and wizards, and unskilled laborers, all rather more numerous and less industrious than the city really needs because the Empire provides a grain dole to the residents of its capital. And an extra stipend for wizards who live in the city.

Alfirin pretty clearly does not approve of Taldor.

It's not as good as Tantara. It's...arguably better than Predain, even now, which absolutely couldn't afford to hand out free grain. Urtho feeds the students of his Tower for free, but he's the top Archmage in the world, and however big his Tower, it's not the population of a city. Tantara's King couldn't have afforded that in the capital. 

...He's going to comment on that, actually, because it's mildly confusing that Taldor is apparently so wealthy despite being suboptimally run. 

There is a lot of Taldor; the capital is a relatively small proportion of the empire's population, and the emperor can levy taxes elsewhere to prop up the imperial core. There are other prosperous cities, but Oppara is the one with the best-off residents, because the Emperor takes gold from them to buy grain from the other provinces to keep the people of his capital happy.

Oh. 

"I - can see the incentives that would produce that. It is not how I would - choose to run an Empire if I wanted to run it well - but I can see how it would happen. Even if many people want the Empire to be run well."

Sigh. It's a beautiful city. He appreciates the tour. 

"A fact about empires that last much longer than a single human lifetime is that there is almost never one person who gets to choose how they are run."

Next up is Absalom, which is despite Oppara's best efforts a larger city, and by some metrics a richer one, if much less beautiful. Absalom is an independent city-state, despite literally everyone else's best efforts over the last 3700 years. The tour here is much briefer and seems to avoid large swathes of the city.

(It seems prudent, at the moment, to avoid too much discussion of the gods, do you know how hard it is to give a comprehensive tour of Absalom while avoiding anything too closely related to Aroden, Norgorber, or Cayden Cailean? It's quite hard. Comprehensiveness is a casualty.)

Ma'ar follows her around from bookstore to bookstore and looks at the sights - Absalom is incredible to mage-sight - and, thanks to the compulsion he placed on himself, does not think about Aroden at all even though, otherwise, quite a lot of things might prompt him to think about Aroden. 

It does make the conversation more stilted. He can comment on particularly interesting permanent spells or artifacts he notices? 

She can describe them! That magical door there leads to an extradimensional house, you don't see a ton of those anywhere but more in Absalom than anywhere else, because lots of people want to live here and lots of powerful wizards don't want to deal with neighbors on the same plane as them. That's a ring of regeneration, if you're wearing it and a body part gets cut off it will grow back, unless it's the hand or finger you were wearing the ring on in which case you're out of luck. That's a necklace of netted stars, a wizard can use it to recover some of their used minor spells or it can catch an incoming spell and let the wearer reuse that energy for a larger spell.

The last stop is Alfirin's own tower (much smaller than Urtho's). Alfirin leads him in (disabling traps and wards as needed) and tells a fox to pack all her books on the planes.

"He'll be just a few minutes doing that and then we can gate back. Can I get you anything while we wait? Tea? Food?"

"Tea would be lovely." He's staring at the fox. It certainly looks intelligent. "I - did you create a new species -?" 

"No, there's only one of him and he is I believe still interfertile with normal foxes."

"No idea, myself, I like a vixen with, you know, a personality."

...She'll translate that, sure.

Blink. "...All right, then I am at a loss here. You did specify he is not a normal fox, how does that work?" 

"He's a familiar, an animal magically bonded to me; the bond grants him intelligence, among other things. It's fairly common for wizards to have one."

Ma'ar is fascinated and not even sure what questions to ask in what order! How does that even work, magically speaking? You can increase animals' intelligence, in Velgarth, but usually only over multiple generations and starting with the embryos still in the womb or egg, and it usually requires both mage-gift and Healing, and a lot of skill, and it doesn't always breed true. Urtho's gryphons are an unusually high-effort attempt, as are the hertasi. Ma'ar has also done it but - not as well - he was rushed. 

(He's not going to let his curiosity delay the departure, if they end up ready to depart.) 

She can start an explanation, but not finish it before the books are all packed. It seems as though Golarion magic can enhance mental capabilities much more easily than Velgarth magic, and familiars are just one example of this phenomenon. Back to Velgarth now?