-A muddy yard with chickens scattering away from her in alarm, a chicken shed of ramshackle construction, corrugated tin and mismatched pieces of wood. The stench and noise of a city all around. Rotting fish and other scraps that must be the chickens' food, unwashed humanity, stress and misery and resignation that only every other day is blessed by soap, plus far too much coal-smoke and the acrid tang of smelting. The ocean, lying under everything, the stench of all the things that grow along the shore. A faint hint of ozone. There are industrial noises in the distance, rhythmic clanging and thumping of metal on metal and engines reciprocating. One either side, a flat brick wall. On another, the back of a run-down house that might have been nice once. On the third, a wooden fence and a street with more houses across the way, brick and wood intermixed. It's too warm for snow, if only a bit.

A poster across the way declares:

For God, Queen, and Country. Sign up for work with the I.E.C. today and prepare for the coming frost!

Memory items: situation is comprehensible, no danger, no opportunity, she's trespassing but not causing any other trouble. She walks out to the street, briefly dropping to all-fours to slink under the fence.

Checklist: the street seems safe for now. No mental distortions. This seems to be a random location, so she's not required to advertise her presence. She strolls down the street towards the industrial sounds. (She doesn't like the smell, but that's irrelevant. She takes a moment to admire her ability to not let unpleasant sensations bother her - so useful, thank you Marra.)

It's not her place to speculate on Marra's intentions in sending her here. In fact, that's usually forbidden. Her duty is simply to advance Marra's interests in general, as she best perceives the situation. If the recruitment poster means there's a war coming, she might, say, train soldiers and eventually rule a duchy in the conquered land. If 'coming frost' is meant literally, well she's used to helping petitioners adapt to the cold. (Living mortals won't become outsiders, but she can still help them psychologically.) If there's social unrest, she can build an oasis of Lawfulness.

(Hm, the recruitment poster referred to a single god. Possibly an enemy of Marra's?)

There are only humans here, and relatively few at this hour. Her appearance gets many double-takes as she walks down the cobbled street. People cross the street or duck into doorsteps and shops, nervously, to avoid her. Though they also peer out of second-story windows and mutter to each other.

A slight turn in the street marks a point where steel rails are laid into the stone, like an Axis tramway. In the distance, a huge brick building - some eighty feet tall - belches black smoke out of five tall smoke-stacks.

She passes an alley where a scarred man boggles, ducks deeper in, then steps out and starts following her, walking like he has a concealed weapon.

"'Ello there."

They must not see a lot of five-and-a-half-foot-tall blue-and-purple anthropomorphic canines with long fluffy tails and visible claws and fangs around here. Of course, marrenai are new and still very rare, but judging by these people's extreme reactions, do they have no kitsune? No catfolk? No gnolls?

...is this a planet with only humans? Actually it makes sense for planets to have one of: totally aliens, about the mix of breeds she's used to, or only one breed of humanoid that colonized a planet without telling anyone else. It might be coincidence that it's the same breed that she was when she was a mortal, two lives ago, but maybe that will be relevant somehow. Queue this topic at low priority.

Have they never seen a summoned vulpinal or procyal or leonal agathion? Maybe the god that dominates this city/country/planet is opposed to Neutral Good. On one hand, she doesn't like Nirvana herself. On the other hand, there's a particular god, Marra's greatest enemy (for now), famous for His theocratic rule of a country that suppresses knowledge of Neutral Good.

"Hello! I'm a new arrival. Can you tell me about the laws that are followed here?" (The laws that are followed, not all the laws.)

"...Nice phrasing. No killin', no stealin', no torture or malingering or harassment or what not, you know, basic stuff. I do know that walking around like that is going to get a lot of very important people very excited, and coming up with two dozen contradictory explanations. Could get messy."

Perhaps just mentioning Law dissuaded him from trying to rob her? Nice.

"What exactly is 'malingering'? What's exciting about me?"

"I think it means pretending to be sick to get out of work. I just think it sounds funny, personally. And you're either in a damned good costume or some sort of fey thing, that's exciting!"

She can appreciate that it is a funny word. Her face is not much good at expressions, but she nods and crinkles her eyes.

"I'm not a fey. I'm an outsider, which is what most people become when they die. There's lots of types of outsiders, depending on the plane where we're made and the god who shapes us. What is your god like?"

"Oooooh, that's gonna be spicy. The Lord God Almighty, you see, is the only one, and only heathens and anarchists say otherwise. Keep your faith in the Lord, repent of your sins, an ye shall be given mercy and know paradise. Else, ye shall suffer the fires of Hell. Glory, glory, glory, hallelujah." He rolls his eyes dramatically. "Bit hard to believe when things so readily go to shit down here, in my opinion."

Not Asmodeus, then. Probably. He might be doing something tricky.

Not Chaotic, if He is opposed by anarchists...? Depends what they mean by anarchists, really. You could call Abadar an anarchist if you looked at Him the right way.

"What are the most common sins? What other gods do heathens and anarchists talk about? Why do poor conditions here make it hard to believe - has He broken promises to you?"

"Why don't I invite you to tea if we're going to be chatting for a while. Pay me back with being the first to hear the word, no funny business. Thief's honor."

"So my obligation is to listen to you and confirm, if anyone asks, what you told me? And... that I didn't hear it from anyone else first?

And by 'no funny business', you mean, for example, I will actually pay attention, you won't talk continuously for a year to keep me trapped, you won't talk at a volume that hurts me, if I accidentally learn something compromising about you I won't use that information against you, you won't poison me, etc?"

"Right on for my promise of no funny business, miss barrister, but I meant that I want to hear what your story and business is earlier than most and," he affects an accent, "Thereby accrue first mover advantage."

"Ah. Am I to be forbidden from telling others for some period of time, then? That's not acceptable to me.

What is Thief's Honor? What happens if we disagree on whether something was funny business or not? Is there an authority you would trust to judge that?"

"Not even if it's just a bloody hour? Look, who even attacks over tea? Tea is practically sacred. Nobody wants the knives to come out." He spreads his arms and grins. "But the jack boots are high strung enough that I bet you won't get a word in if you go to them first."

"The constraint I'm under is that if my god sent me to this particular location in order to fight someone or ally with someone, I'm not supposed to hide my nature or business. Delaying an hour might be hiding, if in that hour someone departs, or dies, or learns of me and considers me to be hiding. Is there some other payment you would accept? Mind-reading, violence, sex, exploring dark areas?

Alternatively, I already suspect my destination on this planet was random. Not enough to be sure, but maybe you have additional evidence for that?

As a made-up example of a conflict, suppose some of my fur collects on your floor, and you later discover this and decide to use some ability I currently don't know about to hurt me through the connection. Or you're upset with me for getting your floor dirty. Is that funny business? I'm not sure. How would you handle it? Normally, my superiors would decide, potentially escalating as far as my god, who would talk to the other gods. Here, I don't have any superiors other than my god, who is unlikely to intervene. That's why I'm so interested in what rules you would follow. I will probably follow similar rules, although I might interpret them myself rather than submitting to an authority I don't trust. It sounds like the authority here, the 'jack boots', are not trustworthy?"

His eyebrows shoot up high at 'mindreading', and higher at 'sex'.

"Free tip, careful calling yourself a whore. Not exactly respectable a profession in the eyes of most. What a fascinating worldview. I'd certainly claim so- Just look at the promises they made to evacuate all of Bristol, and who actually gets on the evacuation transports, eh? Rich folks, and folks with connections. You know what, I'm tempted to tag along and watch the chaos unfold."

"I'm not a mortal woman and don't need the support of a man who must be assured of the paternity of my children. Why would they judge me? For setting a bad example?"

That seems like a thing Good would do... In her opinion, if stupid people make stupid choices, that's not her problem, even if they were inspired by her. Unless they belong to her, in which case she would simply force them to make better choices.

"So is tea cancelled? I would still like to hear about your religion. What's Thief's Honor, or is there a reason you evaded that question? You want me to contact the Jack Boots? Do you expect that to go well for me?"

"They'd judge you because it's just a fact that it's bad, in their heads. Most people aren't great at taking new information into account, yanno? And you're kind of asking three at once, I'm forgetting 'em. It means I might steal from you, but I've got standards. Thief, not highwayman, not murderer. The smart people know things are gonna get real bad, and are preparing. I like to flatter myself on the subject of intelligence, and be a showman at times."

"A disappointing sort of shallow obedience, but understandable. Is forbidding prostitution a preference of your god? Where I'm from, the creator of our universe decided that cannibalism is Evil, for instance. She doesn't even call Herself Good, She just decided to define Good and Evil that way for everyone else.

You flatter yourself correctly.

We're in Bristol now? Where is the evacuation to? Why?"

"Answer me this and I'll answer you those, what's that mind reading like?"

"I can read people's conscious thoughts if I touch them. I can also get a look at people's deeper desires and fears, which oddly enough does not require touching them, but it's more expensive for me and I can only do that a few times a day. I have not read your mind by any of those methods."

"Huh."

Yeah, he's not trusting that she really hasn't. If she's not lying and keeps to her own rules religiously, how can he tell the difference...

"In order then, it's a bit complicated, but the opinions are about how it's bad for both men and women to be led to desperation and faithlessness. Though old Yahweh himself hasn't said things, his prophets and disciples and angels do, and them centuries and more ago. Yeah, this is Bristol. Shipbuilding and steel industry, isn't the seaside air just lovely? The evacuations are to new fortified city sites on geothermal areas up north- Generators, to outlast the bitter winter that awaits us all. They're saying it's the last autumn. All over the world, it's getting colder than it should, and faster, and is going to keep going. Nobody knows why, just that it's happening. And lucky us, the British Empire is in a position to try to save itself. Crops already started failing. Famine leads to war. Last estimate I heard was sixty-five days till the sea freezes over. Best to leave to one of those lovely Generators well before then."

"...I suspect your god is dead, or has abandoned this area, if He hasn't chosen any 'prophets' and 'disciples' in centuries. What were His 'angels' like? I'm very interested in any other gods you've heard of!

Lovely sea air, yes, reminds me of the fragrant wind blowing in from Hell.

How do Generators work?"

"The mysteries of the machines are for engineers. I've got to scoot, see there?"

He points to where a pair of blue uniformed men are walking quickly down the street towards them.

"My invitation to a secret place stands, otherwise good luck avoiding a public indecency charge! Ask around for Green Gulliman if you want to chat again later!"

He sketches a bow and turns and starts walking away.