He's in a featureless desert.

A flying rectangle descends from the sky and resolves into a flying carpet with a purple woman on it. "You have Word of Recall or another teleport?"

He feels things! Somewhat surprising.
Does he still have all his limbs? Yes, uninjured even.
Does he still have his notebook? Obviously.
Does he still have his staff? Ok, yes, everything fine, he can now pay attention to other things around him.

"Sorry, what?!" he asks in Ankilian, his...native-with-an-asterisk language of the last 30 years.

Desert. He knows deserts! Deserts are not the best place to be in, usually. But not the worst, either.

On a deeper level...that’s somewhat unusual. This is the next worlf, he feels it. But instead of being ingrained in the world, becoming mostly a part of it, having a normal life and only vaguely having memories of being a multiversal traveler or a reincarnation of one, he just appeared. Popped out of the air. Being perfectly aware of the transference. With the same (relatively speaking. It’s different on an ontological level, of course) body and clothes.
The staff is here, but is it the same? It’s the same, as far as he can tell. He can sense the magic inside. So it’s a magical world, good.

...she shakes her head. "Taldane? Osiriani?" she asks. She could do a Tongues but she'd rather not waste a slot if he's doing fine and about to pop back to wherever he was aiming at in the first place.

"I am sorry, I don't speak your language". He says. Which is obviously a pointless thing to say, as she doesn't understand the language. It was a long time since he last needed to interact with people without a shared language, he's out of habit.

He tried to gesture. It mostly looks like flailing his arms around.

She's gonna... slowly and clearly cast Comprehend Languages, in case he recognizes it and can explain whether he needs a ride or not without her using up a Tongues.

She's not far better at gestures than he is! Or he is just bad at interpreting them.
Unless...well how statically probable it is that the same approaches to spellcasting...he was never good at statistics. But checking shouldn't be a problem.
He concentrates. Nothing happens.
He carefully presses on his eyes with one hand, tightly gripping the staff with the other. Tries again.
His magic-sight activates.
"Oh, thank the energies, it works!".
He looks at the woman. Yes, she did in fact cast a spell, he was right. Now it affects her...somehow. Different kind of magic, hard to say for sure what it does.

...

"Detect Magic."

Magic is flowing through his eyes.
His staff is magical, but doesn't seem to do anything.
There is some magical object under his shirt, likeways doesn't do anything.

"Doesn't really help in the current situation, though. At least I was correct that it was a spell, and now I know it wasn't cast on me. If it was it might have been a problem. My intuition tells me to say things now even if they are not understood, which is not hard to do. And I tend to often speak thoughts out loud anyway. Which is not uncorrelated with the fact my intuition tells me to, it very rarely tells me to do things I wouldn't usually do..." he trails off, visibly loosing his train of thought. He keeps flailing his hands around. That's just how he talks.

Suppose she gestures with raised eyebrows at the flying carpet.

"Ok, I'll go with the obvious though not certain interpretation. You are asking me a question, and the question is about the...blanket, which seems to fly, if I understood correctly what was happening around me. And if, further, the question is about whether I want to fly on it somewhere, I guess the answer is yes, if the alternative is staying in the desert." Though his subconsciousness screams there are many other different conclusions he could make. He is not, for example, very good at reading expressions, especially of weird purple people, to be sure that the exact form of raised eyebrows indicates a question. But it's not a very big gamble. Probably.

He doesn't remember if he saw purple-skinned people in any of his last lives. He likes purple. One thing good about this world already (if he is correct about it being a different world).
This an obviously-unserious thought, he doesn't decide which things are good by whether he personally likes them.

This suffices! She nods and hops back onto the carpet and waves him on. "Sothis," she says, pointing.

He sits on the carpet.

"Wait, so you do understand what I am saying? Nod your head" he slowly nods and points at his head "if you understand me. That's at least some useful channel of communication."

Nod nod. The carpet arises and heads for Sothis.

"And I would guess – without certainty – that the spell you cast is the reason you understand me. Which makes sense, I was just not thinking of it as something magic can do. Though of course if it's a different world the laws of magic could be different  – with a greater chance than the laws of basic nature  – and so different things are possible to do with magic. Or maybe it's just reading my mind. That I know is possible."

She shakes her head firmly at 'reading my mind'.

Raz would like to talk more, figure out a more efficient way for it in the situation. But the one-sidedness does make it harder, and he also pattern-matches to "previous cases in his life where people were annoyed by his behavior", which isn't certain but better to avoid. And his intuition tells him there is no hurry and a better communication option could appear later.

So instead he takes out a small but extremely magical book out of his clothes, and starts writing something in it with a weird pen.

She leans over interestedly, though she will wait to actually read the contents till he shows her.

"Ah? It's my notebook, write interesting things in it that I might otherwise forget. Which is most things, probably. Fortunately I am good at the noting!"
The handwriting is terrible, and the contents are nearly incomprehensible even with Comprehend Languages, full of random word combinations like "cocktail there demon", "Robert's weird", "mana of 1.5 Illamars", "children asking", "general reversed Shaving Principle" and "many fuzzy pies".

She giggles at "many fuzzy pies".

"I think it was Robert?" he mumbles half to himself, but clearly enough to hear "Most really weird things in my life were either Buss or Robert. Never met anyone else with such talent in magic combined with such lack of sense or ability to constructively do things that result in something better, instead of...random bullshit. Well, not counting the time he grew a brain-forest. That was weird, but certainly useful."

"Ew!"

"Illithids eat brains, but the one we met was a pacifist. Didn't want to harm anybody, but had to live somehow, right? How to solve the conundrum? Well, a passing insane sorcerer created a self-sustaining system of artificial brains for him! If something organic that grows can be called "artificial". Wish all my problems – all problems, really – could be solved like that.
It's mostly a question of...having the right tool for the job, in the right place in the right time. And the tool itself being in the condition to do the necessary thing, not just have the potential. Robert was a terrible tool, despite the huge potential, because he was basically allergic to logic or the concept of usefulness. I am not good at fulfilling the potential of usefulness either, but that's because finding the right place and time is hard."

"Ohhh," she says, when he explains about what the brain forest was for.

He gets distracted from the book, looks at the carpet, activates magic-sight, starts studying the magical structure. Then drawing it (badly) into the book. Not for long though, his reserve of shipru is as limited as usual, and can't sustain magic-sight for more than several minutes.

She has a notebook on hand too and when she sees what he's trying to do she will draw the carpet's enchantment for him; she can sustain Detect Magic for a while.

"Oh, thank you so much!"

"Mm-hm!"

After a moderate amount of flying, there's a river ahead, and she turns left to fly downstream, squinting at the ground below.

She casts another spell.

"Sorry, I didn't want to do that before in case I needed the flexibility for something else. Comprehend Languages I can do basically as much as I want, Tongues I didn't have prepped."

"Oh. Well, can't fault people for acting efficiently with the limited resources they have under a state of uncertainty! What is... no, wait, actually. What's your name? I am Raz!" Politeness. He knows what politeness is. Not counting cultural differences, but here it seems most of his assumptions work well.

"I'm Belmarniss! I figure most people who mistarget a teleport into the desert can get the rest of the way home but as long as I saw you I thought I'd check, in case you didn't have enough Endure Elements and Phantom Steeds or whatever to get the rest of the way. Is Sothis a good dropoff point for you, that's where I'm going."

"I am here by complete accident! And making obvious-though-possibly-wrong assumptions, would have died in the desert without you, so thank you very much for that, hope that situation appears as it is and taking me wasn't harder for you in some way than flying alone, or the magical blanket's reserves where running off faster because of two passengers, or something. Not that it seems to have reserves. But anyway.
I have no idea where Sothis is and whether it's good. As said previously, I think I appeared here from a different world! It's not a completely new occurrence to me, but...what's the state of knowledge on existence of other worlds, and cosmology generally? 'State of knowledge' here Includes 'I don't know but have a reasonable guess who does know', and 'I know but may be wrong about'. Also how exactly does the magic translate the words? Different languages have different connotations of meaning...no nevermind that question, it's pure curiosity, the previous question is actually important."

"For complicated theorizing about translation magic you can't do better than the papers in the Sothis Journal of Linguistics, the pharaoh's father's a scholar of the topic and he and his linguistics friends natter about it all the time in there. Sothis is the capital of Osirion, which is in northeastern Garund, on the Inner Sea, on Golarion. I don't know if you mean you're from a different plane or a different planet but both are known to exist."

"Golarion...I think I heard once about Golarion. Not anything specific. Let's see...there's magic...how many sapient races there are?...are there gods, who provably do things? Systems of government...I know it's an important question to ask but I wouldn't get anything useful out of the answer anyway...
Planets are physical distance from each other, planes are separate and have different physical laws between them, do I understand the implication right?"

"Yeah, that's all right. I don't have a census of the sapients for you. Gods are a yes, you're mostly looking at various monarchies, here in particular it's a theocratic monarchy. It's a perfectly nice one as they go, though, Abadar's the relevant god and his thing is trade."

“By ‘I don’t have a census’ I assume the actual number is big, above 10. Which is useful information.
And…a theocratic monarchy is unfortunately the kind of government that is relevant to my life and might cause problems, because of fundamental disagreements about the nature of morality with the theocracy. I do agree that trade is a good thing, of course, certainly above things like “honor” or “tradition” in the hypothetical ladder of all things that are considered virtues. But all good things can be taken too far. And churches are the kind of thing that often takes them too far.
Based on my experience, that is. It may be different here. But churches tend to be similar regardless of the kind of gods they worship or even whether they exist. There could I suppose be other fundamental differences in psychology that gives rise to specific culture. But then those would be differences of everything, not just churches. And, uh -” he shuts up, noticing he trailed away from the topic.

"Definitely above ten, would not guarantee you it was below fifty but couldn't name that many. Uh, you don't have to be an Abadaran to hang out in the country or anything, though you are not allowed to proselytize for evil or chaotic deities and people will be really offended if you disrespect the pharaoh. I'm not sure what problems you envision stemming from being in an Abadaran theocracy though."

“I am not certain there will be problems, but there could be. ‘Theocratic monarchy’, especially in a world where gods are actively present, implies that religion has a central role in deciding the laws, and the way people live, and generally, the way things ‘should’ be. Not sure if that applies to government roles lower than the ruler – pharaoh – and this is the ‘me not being good at politics or organizational structures’ part, but there is a chance that interactions between me and people, if I will stay long, and try to do something important/interesting/good, the country representatives will tell me “no, you shouldn’t do it, it’s against our religion”. Which could have happened even if it wasn’t a theocracy, but the chance is higher.
And just generally, I personally dislike, on a philosophical level, the tendency people have to see values as hypervalues, and see values as inherent or coming from authority, ‘this is good because the culture/ruler/god says it is good’, which is philosophically wrong. And of course it inevitably happens anyway, but the chance is higher in a theocracy. Technically speaking I also have philosophical objections to ‘they will be offended about disrespect’, but that is even more true about all societies not built exactly to my sensibilities”.

He takes a breath and tries to remember the other part of Belmarniss’ words.
“I don’t directly worship deities, usually, but don’t know whether my philosophy can be interpreted as evil, or ‘chaotic’, by the people here, especially, again, in a theocracy...
Wait, you mean chaotic and lawful on an axis, and then good and evil on axis, resulting in 9 options? I heard about this system, though not in detail. If it is what I’m thinking about”.

"The Abadarans are pretty hands-off - they're not perfect about it, nobody is, but the things they get unusually intense about are, like, theft and fraud, not things that other places think are fine. Since they're, yes, Lawful, mostly going for Lawful Neutral on the grid. You sound maybe temperamentally chaotic but it's not illegal to be chaotic, just to promulgate the churches of deities who are."

"Theft and fraud are indeed bad, usually. Well, let’s hope you are right and my worries are baseless.

I don’t really like 'chaos', my main association with chaos is disorganization in a normal context, war in a global context, and incomprehensible monsters eating cities in uppercase Chaos context. But words have a tendency to mean different things than one assumes, especially when translated across languages. No idea how the local system would categorize me. Judging by previous examples of metaphysical categorization, I didn’t end up belonging to any of the Songs of the World Ash, and while learning the principles of True and Dark Communion just developed a philosophical framework that combines both."

"The incomprehensible monsters that eat cities are Chaotic Evil, lots of chaotics are perfectly nice, like yours truly. I have no idea what the Songs of the World Ash or True and Dark Communion are."

"The World Ash is a world (or a collection of worlds, depending on definition) that I lived in (or at least have the memories of living in. It's complicated). It had Songs, which are on the simple level political factions holding different values, and on a different level supposedly the manifestation of divine will, pushing the world in a direction. Most relevant people 'followed' the Songs they believed were correct. I found all of them somewhat correct and somewhat terrible (as is true about basically all ideologies or philosophies I ever encountered). So I never followed any specific Song, though helped some people of different Songs with various things.
Communion...very similar thing, really. Philosophy of a certain way to live, supposedly guided by a divine will. Both had correct elements, which can be combined together without too much effort (especially as I already have an unchanging and pretty wide philosophy about such things), and nothing says both divine wills can't guide you at the same time if you do things both of them want.
Of course I was declared a heretic by both, but that's expected. And hopefully my legacy lives on. Or doesn't, I don't know".

"Huh. Well, I don't advise trying to tell people what you reckon Abadar wants if he hasn't actually told you one way or another but they're very, all rational agents can trade with each other and both come out ahead, here, so it's kind of pluralistic that way."

"I will avoid that, unless I am very convinced that he did tell me, even more convinced than I'd be just having the experience of him telling me.
And rational agents can indeed trade with each other and both come out ahead, compared to inaction and especially to opposition! I do agree fully with this tenet of the faith."

Second to backtrack the conversation...
"You are Chaotic? Where on...not Evil, based on the juxtaposition...Neutral or Good? There are probably better people to ask about how it works generally, but you certainly have an experience of being Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral, which would be informative regardless of any external theory.
Though also I just currently talk my normal way about all topics, asking everything I think about and responding to every answer, I don't actually know how good you are as a source of information compared to any other people, or what topics I should ask you about and which things better to ask someone else about because they know the specific thing better". His Intuition does tell him that Belmarniss has a high Weight, one normal people don't have. But the Intuition is not a source of information to fully rely on, and also the Weight doesn't necessarily mean she is a good source of information for the questions he wants to ask, or that he will not quickly find other people with Weight as high. At least he is certain he doesn't need to withhold information from her. More than he does by default.

"Chaotic Good last I checked. Aiming but not very hard for Neutral Good, it has the better afterlife to my mind."

"First point of confusion – what do you mean by 'aiming', aren't you...believing in the set of values you believe in?
Second point of confusion – 'afterlife'. Tell me more."

"I don't particularly believe in Chaos per se, I just grew up in a really Chaotic Evil environment. I think Neutral Good would be about right for me in a vacuum, and many possible societies, and I just haven't settled into one that shakes out that way - I think Osirian would like to be that for people in principle but in practice they're too sexist and racist - do you not know about afterlives where you're from at all?"

"Unendorsed habits of mind. Yes, I understand, I have those too, and restructuring your mind to be what it should be instead of just what it is used to being because of suboptimal circumstances is hard and long work, if essential.
Points from Osirion though, for being racist and sexist, just when I started believing they are in fact a cool efficient society I would get along with.

'Where I am from' is a deeply philosophical question. I am in a sense not from anywhere specific, just passing through many other places. Which requires recalibration on how things work every time.
The word you said was translated to Ankilian as 'a thing that is after a life', and Neutral Good 'has it'. Maybe a problem with Ankilian, language is ambiguous and being familiar with many of them I really wish I encountered one in which all words were perfectly unambiguous and communicated exactly what you want.
It could mean as many as several things, including some concepts I am familiar with that are true or wrong or uncertain. So I asked for a clarification".

"The savvy religious urbanites aren't so sexist and racist but you as a human male won't catch too much of either apart from general suspicion of foreigners... So, afterlives are the thing that happens to people after they die. They are sorted by Pharasma, the Neutral creator god of birth and death and judgment, into one of the nine afterlives, which are then each arranged roughly according to the philosophies represented in each. The afterlife for Neutral Good people is called Nirvana and sounds nice."

"Huh. Ok, that makes sense. How does that physically works with death? Are their bodies reanimated, are they copied, or the same mind remanifested in new bodies? Can they die again? And how much communication there are with those after-living people?"

"Maybe I used 'get along with' incorrectly. But a society is judged (by me, at least) based on the total amount of positive vs negative experiences of the people who are part of that society, not by how much the society is convenient personally to me."
Technically he didn't even know there are any humans like him in Golarion, and all the locals were the same species/race as Belmarniss, or something even weirder. Not that he cares, sapience is the only important factor and he did actually see weirder.

"Same soul new body, the soul travels to the appropriate planes after death. They can die again, though they can last forever if nothing kills them and they have fewer physical needs. There is some communication, it's expensive and low-bandwidth but pretty routine for all that."

"So i'll have to conceptualize it as several related worlds. Ok.
That sounds like...a good system. Well, better than others.
Most people, judging by my experience, don't want to die. So having a second life is good.
Still can be bad for other reasons.
But everything can be. Sapient creatures with values will always have some values unsatisfied unless they can actively modify their own values..."

"It's a bad system, the Evil afterlives are horrific."

"Ah, well, proves right my belief that Existence is always terrible.
Horrific emergently, because that's where all the Evil people are, or by some external circumstances?"

"It's not emergent purely from evil dead mortals who sort Evil going there. There are also evil gods and outsiders. Also the planes themselves have supernatural characteristics that relate to their alignments but I'm not sure if the gods are enforcing what that means or if Pharasma set it up that way."

"Well, don't think I can do anything about that.
Speaking of things I can do – asking for confirmation explicitly: you cast magic. Does that mean you are a good source of information on magical practice here in Golarion?
Because I do realize that by itself an...no, sorry, that tangent's irrelevant."

"I am a reasonably good source on arcane magic practice and a much worse one on divine magic practice."

"I think that translated correctly.
So, the last magical practice I encountered and studied – some call it 'magic system' but that's wrong, magic is often the same between worlds, it's the way people use magic that's different...anyway. The main practice is by people born with internal magic. Specifically, people are born with channels in their bodies/souls, through which flows shipru, or magical energy. In some people's cases the shipru is bright and concentrated enough that it can be directed out of the body, to achieve outside effects. Like this" he opens his hand and a small flame starts burning in it. It doesn't look like a spell, there is no structure, energy just comes out and becomes fire.
"Some people are born with highers reserves of shipru. And there are techniques for various things you could do throughout your life to increase them, but not by a lot. The more reserves you have, the stronger magic you can create.

Most magic, especially combat magic, is focused on maximal energy. But there are also approaches that try to achieve things by more accurate, rather than powerful, applications of magic, precise Weavings of energy.
Which is the thing I practice. As I have an extremely small reserve of shipru, barely a mage at all. But i have extreme – rare but not unheard off – precision and control over the magical energy.
Which I used in the field off gathering external energy, from the environment, and from specific magic-heavy materials, and building complicated magical structures that do something later on command.
That's the project I was working on for...well, officially His Majesty The Water Sovereign, but he was fine with me calling him Biran. We worked together before he was crowned...Anyway the project, yes. It was not groundbreaking, but certainly innovative. Allowed for conserving great amounts of energy and building over time Weavings that are usually too complicated for a single mage. Like teleportation. It even worked! Mostly."
He takes a breath.
"Ok, now you. What's the local practice(s), how it compares to what I described."

"So, the thing you just did looked like magic but it didn't have any - structure to it, it wasn't even a cantrip, our spells are more complicated than that. Divine casters like clerics receive their spells already built when they prepare them every day; wizards build our own and more powerful wizards can fit more and more complicated spells on our scaffolds; sorcerer spells are mostly like wizard ones but done instinctively rather than academically."

"What about...let's see..." he closes his eyes. Holds his staff. Very thin strands of magic, tangled together, move through his arm, into his staff, become slightly less thin and even more tangled, and then wrap around his head and ears.

"Enhanced hearing! A complicated weaving, an average mage couldn't do it. But I barely have the energy for it. Will wear out in a minute or two.

'Wizards', and 'sorcerers' who are like them, when do they get the energy for spells?"

"That looks more like a spell than the first thing but it is the weirdest fucking spell I've ever seen! If I'd ever seen a psion presumably you wouldn't look a thing like them either but they're supposed to be about that weird, if they're real at all. Uh, the energy comes from - ourselves, sort of, though wizards need spellbooks, which aren't non-magical... I'm both a wizard and a sorcerer, which is unusual."

"And how big average spells are in scale? If 'average' is a term that makes sense here. A spell that isn't very big and isn't very small."

"I mean, there's a progression, but I'm not actually sure how to identify a point along it as 'average'. The overwhelming majority of people who make their living off wizard spells do it with cantrips and one or two first-circle spells. Getting past that takes a lot of luck and cunning. But the circles go up to nine."

"Totally, that's useful. Fourth..no, let's say third circle spells, then. How big they are in scale? How much can they do?
I am trying to understand how much energy they contain. But it's not something that can be asked directly, you probably don't have the same measurement for amounts of shipru I am familiar with. And even the one I am familiar with is only accurate to an order of magnitude."

"Third's a pretty good circle, lets you fly and do fireballs - that's a classic combat spell - and breathe underwater and dispel magic - that one doesn't always work, of course, depends on how strong the magic is you're countering."

"I am not fully sure yet, but this may mean the local practice of magic is higher on both energy and complexity than what I am familiar with. So I am...well, not technically 'excited' as most people would use the word. But It's very cool and important!"

There are important logistics to consider, unfortunately.
"How long will the translation spell last?"

"About an hour. I can maybe dig up a Share Language spell trade and that lasts all day, I speak enough languages it hasn't made sense before. I'll still be able to understand you, that one is lower circle and I can cast it a bunch of times."

"Yeah, I thinking about the general situation. I'll have to live here and interact with people, which is made harder by not knowing any local languages. Made easier by spells; great general inefficiency, that would be so hard without any spells! And in...ok that's stupid. I forgot how the kingdom was named. After living in it for 15 years! Anyway, we don't have any spells that can translate, and if any other kingdoms had it was highly prototypical and experimental...
But the spells aren't a miraculous solution either, they have limitation that still pose logistical difficulty. So I try to figure out what it is.

Not sure if I understood you correctly: 'dig up a spell trade', is 'spell trade' some specific term for an object or ability, or do you just mean 'find someone who can cast the spell and trade with them'?"

"Second thing. I could also buy it but it's much cheaper to find someone who wants to copy out of my book."

"I am still confused about the logistics of the process. Assume 'you will find someone who will cast the spell for you casting another spell', but that may be wrong. Also, what Circle is it, and how much does it cost? If castings of spells can be bought for money. Which I assume they can, but again, may be wrong."

"Wizards have spellbooks. If I let someone look at mine to copy a spell they don't have, they will let me look at theirs to copy a spell I don't have. I just have to find someone who has Share Language and wants something I've got. Share Langauge is second circle, and, yes, you can buy spell castings for money. Probably the cheapest way to get Share Language in particular would be to show up shortly before dawn at a temple and ask if anybody has one left from the day before - if they don't use it it's wasted and clerics get their spells at dawn specifically. The Abadarans will still charge you because charity is against their religion but if you go to, like, Sarenrites, they probably wouldn't."

"Ok, that's a useful long term plan. If it really is successful that you don't need to bother with a new spell and...uh, waste the resource of having spells that are not copied, and could be copied in exchange for something else.

I was just worried about the basic cost of living being very high, requiring spells most people don't need to have cast all the time (I assume), and being unable to compensate for it with the value I can currently provide.
I do have some materials on me I can try to sell, that would maybe even sell well. But I may need for...projects, if the same projects make sense to do here. Despite the difference in factors that decide whether a thing is efficient to do or not."

"What I would recommend about that is inviting the pharaoh's dad to learn your language from you and then show him the weird foreign magic tricks. He'll pay you for it and then if you're willing to live like a commoner you're set for life. If you are not willing to live like a commoner you are only set for a shorter period of time, though, I don't know what standard of living you're accustomed to - plausibly still long enough to learn a local language, Osiriani if you want to stay in this country and Taldane if you want to go across the Inner Sea."

"I don't consider my standards of living high, but that is not an accurate measure, even living in the same world.

I would not be very eager to interact with royal families in a theocracy, especially when lacking information about new a world, to avoid offending anyone.
But if, indeed, there is a way to invite him, and he has a lot of money, and sees learning a language and seeing the magic as worth this money to him, which would grant me the resources to start adapting before I can start producing value, presumably by developing something magical, as that's the main thing I am good at...well, that would be, not just 'very good', it would be...Deeply Efficient as a way for the world to be configured so that most potential value is produced!
Applying to me, that is, not sure if it is that optimal for everyone in the world. But nothing is."

"I taught him Drow and he paid me market rate for my time, which is pretty high since I'm a third circle wizard. He'd probably pay you at least that much - you don't have as many other ways to sell your time, but there also aren't millions of you underground who could provide the same service. He isn't touchy or anything, he just really likes languages. I can send him a note about it for you."

"That is very great, thank you so much!"
Very fortunate coincidence. Maybe even implausible, but he can't judge plausibility not having information on the world, and having a long stay in the previous one. Still things...wrong, unsettling, metaphysically, to his Intuition. Not very wrong, though, only slightly.

"Don't remember if I have any other important topics to ask about. But could answer questions. Or just keep talking about anything, I usually do it by myself even if nobody is listening."

"You should ask questions till Tongues runs out and then you can ramble when I can't talk to you intelligibly any more."

"Oh, that's right. I am stupid about things sometimes.
What makes Wizards more 'academic' than Sorcerers? How does that work? And what circumstances make you unusually a sorcerer and a wizard?"

"Sorcerers know only a few spells. Don't prepare them, just cast them spontaneously, much harder to learn new ones on purpose. Sorcery ability is inborn - some people don't discover it till later in life, but usually it's obvious in childhood, I was. So I did sorcery for a while, but I'm actually over a century old - drow are a kind of elf and elves have long childhoods and long lives. So I had plenty of time to also pick up wizardry, which anyone smart enough can, and I was second circle in both before I came to the surface. My mother was supportive of all this educational investment for reasons of her own, not everyone is so lucky."

"Wait! If I can't understand you you can't ask questions either! Took me several seconds to realize.

'Anyone smart enough can pick up wizardry' is very interesting, and may mean important things about either the magical nature of people here, or the source of energy."

"If you can't understand me I can still write down questions for later. I guess I can also do that with your questions, but still."

"That's fair. Do you know anything about...best way to say this...background energy, places that are more magical, level to which magic is or isn't present?"

"There are ley lines. Worth knowing how to use if you're going to be right on top of one for long enough, but I never have been."

"Intensity of background magic was one of the main things I studied. It...I don't have the tools to really check, my senses are not that reliable, but it feels like the background here is slightly higher than in the previous world. Around 1.3 Illamars, maybe. Though that probably doesn't tell you anything."

"Huh. There are also dead magic zones - there are demiplanes made to be that way, and places where it happened for other reasons like the Mana Wastes. I guess it's possible you're from a world that's mostly dead-magic."

"Oh, no, we have some of those, if I understood the meaning correctly.
Dead magic is 0 Illamars.
But not everything is like that. The average is about 0.9. As I said, slightly higher."

"Huh. We don't have any measurements as precise as that such that I've heard of them, but I haven't heard of everything."