Indeed it is. A slender old man in well-worn travel gear, or at least what looks like one, appears in midair and falls with a tremendous splash into the water.

A rather fishy looking fellow is distributing fish food into the lake. He is distinctly startled when there is a visitor from mid-air in the lake.

"Are you okay?" he calls out. "Uh, is there some kind of imminent thing happening?"

The man turns out to be a fair swimmer, if not an elegant one; once he's had a moment to orient himself it's pretty obvious that he'll be able to make it to the shore under his own power.

"I'm fine, I think." The man isn't speaking, he's busy swimming and his face is mostly in the water, and anyway the voice is actually a chorus of dozens, speaking dozens of languages, though it's still perfectly comprehensible. "If you're responsible for the giant snake with a mirror for a face, I didn't appreciate it. I don't think it'll get anyone else before I get it, though."

"Oh dear, did - Sung, that sounds like something Sung would do - do something to you?

Or maybe Lashonar, he's more into birds than snakes but the whole - voice thing - is very him.

Night magic, anyway, that sounds distinctly like night magic."

"Voice... thing? I'm a god, we all sound like this."

The fish guy's eyes manage to go even wider at this statement, which is a distinctly impressive feat given their previous expression of startlement.

"Uh. I'm pretty sure that's not a thing. Did you, uh, would you mind," the fish guy trails off and stares really intensely at him for a moment, drawing a hand through the air as if sketching some esoteric curve.

"Hm?" He continues swimming.

Whatever he's doing makes FishGuy recoil slightly and blink rapidly a few times.

"That's, um, yeah. I'm sure we have, like, a questor around somewhere, this sounds like a questor kind of thing... I can get you, like, a clean robe and a towel or something and - are you cold out here, there are some warmer places to sit while I go find someone..."

"I'm fine. I'll be muddy for a bit, but that's no trouble. Thank you, though."

"Okay, uh. There are - some benches for contemplating the lake just over there - how about you get out of the water, and go sit there, while I find someone remotely qualified to deal with this?"

"I don't know that anything needs dealing with, if the snake wasn't yours. But I won't go too far, sure." He makes his way out of the water and looks for a sunny grassy spot vaguely near the benches to stretch out on, leaving muddy footprints as he goes.

Grass is in pretty short supply up here; it's mostly packed earth or carved stone. The only significant patch of grass is a carefully tended paddock containing a pack of dodos.

He'll settle for packed earth, though it certainly doesn't help the mud situation.

Adolphus Cascade dashes through an archway into one of the main building areas; he asks the first person he comes across to "go get a Sentinel to keep an eye on the weird Herald that just dropped in the lake", heads down to a large communal food serving hall, doesn't find who he's looking for there, and heads on to one of many library areas, where he finds a more human figure reading a book.

"Sextus, we've got a Herald in the lake that's claiming to be a god," he babbles, "that sounds like your kind of thing?"

"I suppose so," replies Sextus Cascade, carefully placing a bookmark. "Well, lead on, then."

Meanwhile the first person has found a figure in some significant armour who was doing sword drills and persuaded her to come and guard everyone from the surprise Herald.

He's sitting up, by the time they get back, crosslegged in the muddy dirt; with his face clear of the water he gives a somewhat more - though still not entirely - convincing impression that his apparently-mortal form is doing the speaking. "I don't know what you think that's going to help," he says of the Sentinel's armor. "Do you not have gods here?"

"No such thing as gods," replies the Sentinel, stiffly. "I'm just here to reassure whoever's coming to speak with you, everyone is a little on edge since all the Day heralds of the Cold Sun started appearing and initiating hostilities."

Sextus (and, somewhat reluctantly, Adolphus) come back out of the main building; Adolphus tries to just point out Kiraavi, but Sextus insists that he join them, "you never know, you might learn something."

"That sounds reasonable enough. I'm not a Herald and I'm not hostile to mortals, generally, but I can be dangerous if I want to. Not in a way that armor will help with, but I don't expect it to come up."

"So, if you're not a Herald, what are you?

I'm afraid if you say 'god' again I'm going to have to ask you to define that; the only gods we are aware of are fictions or disguised Eternals."

"If you're hearing it as 'god' then that's the best word you have for me; that's how it works when I speak. Gods are sentient terrain, of various kinds - I'm roads, which is a little unusual, normally it's forests or plains or mountains or something. We can do various things, bless people and empower acolytes and make avatars - what you're looking at is an avatar - and make the land more or less fertile or rich in minerals if we're the right sort of land for that, which I'm not, and give advice and make suggestions and so on. I do a fair amount of advising people about bandits and bad weather and that sort of thing, or helping them figure out where they can go to best solve their problems, or doing diplomacy between the other gods or between gods and mortals."

"So you are claiming to be - something like a more intelligent Vallorn of roads? Or an Eternal of roads who can somehow walk on the material plane and treat it like their Realm."

"Vaguely like that, yes. And not all roads are me, I have to claim them first and there are limits to how much and where. If you need a road made I'm the god for it, though."

"The name is Kiraavi, by the way. Kiraavi of roads and travel."

"Sextus of the Celestial Cascade. We tend to be fairly light on proper roads around here on account of all the mountains. How are you at bridges?"