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?"

"They're a little costly, but entirely possible. I can work with mountains, too, generally - I do end up winding quite a bit but it's worth the trouble, if you need it."

"Just to be clear, I am not making any agreements, merely expressing curiosity regarding your nature and capabilites.

If you want to actually make agreements, we'll need to fetch the Arbiter for local matters and the Senator for wider scale operations."

"I don't generally operate on formal agreements with mortals, but if you'd be more comfortable with that, certainly. Not necessarily right now; whenever you'd like."

"What - do you 'generally operate' on, then?"

"Well, if there's another god in a place I want to go I'll work something out with them, of course, or not do it. If there's a settlement in unclaimed land that I want to go through rather than around I'll send a priest or avatar to see how I'll be received, but neither of us will be directly offering each other very much, generally, so there's nothing to make a treaty about, it's not like I'm going to want to have a temple in their main plaza or anything."

"Do you generally operate temples, then? I must warn you that the last few temples that people attempted to build within the Empire suffered a dreadful series of sledgehammer and fire related mishaps."

"Not temples, in the sense of a full staffed building, no - I have a few, but really not many and they're usually not worthwhile, for me. I do generally try to have an offering table available where people are likely to be beginning or ending journeys, and people tend to put up shrines in taverns and things along my roads, but nothing obtrusive."

"Okay. You seem like a reasonable individual, so I am going to give you some basic warnings.

It is a crime, in the Empire, to subsume human will and destiny to any inhuman entity or force. This explicitly includes worship, veneration or exaltation of any inhuman being or power.

As Imperial citizens we are generally quite keen on following the law, and the militia and the magistrates are quite keen on executing people who don't.

This certainly doesn't preclude trading with inhuman powers. We do that all the time. Sometimes that trade extends to things like putting up giant statues of them, although that is looked upon with a little bit of suspicion in some quarters.

But if you'd like to keep this on friendly terms - well, now you know."

"Huh."

"That doesn't sound like we're necessarily in conflict, albeit I'd want to be careful about having a priesthood or selecting any acolytes here - though even then they're more like employees than anything else, with me. But most travelers are just trying to get somewhere, and maybe want a little help with that, and that's fine with me, I don't expect anything more of them - as long as they know who to ask if they do want help that's usually entirely sufficient. ...I suppose I might want a little more from you than that in an emergency, usually I'd call on other gods for aid but I don't know how well that'll work across worlds."

"I expect - although I'm not an expert on this and I would defer to the Arbiter in the first instance - that you are likely to be treated as a particularly odd Herald of an unknown Eternal.

That means you start out with Neutrality; you are not protected by our laws, there are some magical protections that may not apply if you really are apart from the Realms.

There is a political body that makes decisions on which creatures of this classification to exclude and which to pursue further friendship with, known as the Conclave. I expect if you do anything significant, you will come to their attention.

What form does this 'help' to travellers take, and what do you ask in return?"

"Well, the most dramatic is that I can call down lightning, for example if someone is attacked by bandits, or cause earthquakes, though situations where I might even consider that are vanishingly rare - I've done it maybe twice in the last thousand years. Even calling lightning is much less common than anything else I do - for most people I'll give advice about routes or destinations or supplies or any other questions they might have, or give them supplies from the things that other people have given me as offerings, or send someone to travel with them if they'll have trouble doing it themselves, or give them a blessing if they ask, or if they seem like they have need of one - the blessings I have to offer are improved direction sense, improved weather sense, improved endurance, improved memory, poison resistance, and improved recognition of human body language. Occasionally someone will ask for something else, and if it'll help them in their journey and not hurt anyone else I'll do it if I can, but most gods have fairly similar ways of doing things, where I'm from, and people know how we work and mostly ask us for the same sorts of things.

For what I ask, most of the region I'm in has a tradition of giving gods offerings, with an explanation of how they make sense as offerings to that god in particular, and that works fine - it's not the only way to do it but I think you might find it the most agreeable, since it's discrete and individual. The important part is paying me a bit of attention, and some other places do that in other ways - holidays dedicated to gods are also fairly common, for example. In particular I like practical offerings, because it's easier to pass them along to travelers who need things than to make new things myself, so I encourage people to give me any traveling supplies that are still in good condition at the end of their journey, if they don't think they'll want them again, and I also like travel journals and travelogues."

"You may get a better reception if you call your blessings 'boons', which is the term we use for gifts from Eternals that are often along the same lines. If you can refer to yourself as an Eternal - and this avatar as a Herald - you can gain attention by people calling on you in ritual - either for rituals we already know which involve travelling, I expect once you're known it will work as well as anything else with the right concepts involved, or new ones that do whatever you're interested in doing for people.

Offerings is a little more difficult to incorporate, but 'the Eternal of Roads, Kiraavi, likes it when you leave your old kit and notes in these places and this makes him more inclined to continue to sponsor the minor rituals he's handed out, which cost no mana while he's happy with the Empire' is something that we could plausibly sell."

"Uh, should we get the Arbiter? I know you like solving problems but, uh, this seems like an Arbiter kind of thing."

Despite having insisted Adolphus come along, Sextus totally ignores him.

"I won't mind speaking to an Arbiter if you'd like to go get one," he says to Adolphus. "I do think I'd like to know more about how things work here before I make any plans as wide-ranging as that, but I don't see any obvious problems with any of it. What kinds of things do your existing rituals do?"

Adolphus scurries off to fetch the Arbiter.

"Directly relevant to roads, the largest we have codified is one that causes armies to find the best path to their destination and arrive much quicker than would otherwise be possible. There's also the Dance of Navarr and Thorn I suppose, that links up magical pathways to the Vallorn so that its strength is drained and people have an easier time travelling on them.

Our major roads are generally either those pathways or built of white granite, so they don't usually take direct enchantment very well. Most of the minor travel rituals are aimed at ships, rather than travellers by road."

"We don't have magic at home other than from gods, and I've described almost all of it - boons, being able to move my things around, I can see my whole domain and tell people what's happening in other places, changing the weather and terrain in my domain; there's also my personal power, the one I share with acolytes, but that's just an extension of my senses. I'd guess I'll be able to work with the magic here but I don't have much to go on, yet, about that. Rituals that are just intended to get my attention and ask me for something I can already do will work fine, though."

"Fortunately one of the styles of magic we use calls upon the names of Eternals - usually it's just a focus for the magic that is happening, but 'a boon that makes these particular rituals not cost mana' is not outside the course of things.

Do you have a geographic limitation on where you can be paying attention? Rituals usually work everywhere, if you've learned them correctly, although ones sponsored by Eternals can come with assurances that mean they stop working if used incorrectly.

I'd advise consulting with the Senator of an area before rearranging the weather and terrain - people tend to get quite excitable about that sort of thing, otherwise."

"Unfortunately I can only see and hear within a mile of my domain - the roads I've claimed - or if someone has a vial of my dirt or some other special object of mine I can see and hear within a mile of that, and speak through it. I am usually only carried like that by my priests, but it doesn't have any magical significance, it's just a bit of an intimacy.

Weather and terrain I can also only affect within my domain, and that's not very useful for weather - it takes a lot of concentration to stop a storm blowing in from just outside my borders, and I'm practically all borders. Terrain, you're right, might be more of an issue, I do sometimes re-grade things when I move into a new area... I'd usually send a priest to check a new area out before I expand there, and asking about terrain changes would be part of that, but I'm not sure I'll be able to have priests here. I'll think on it."

"If you can avoid calling them priests - it doesn't really sound like you want to subsume human will - there are folk wandering around calling themselves things like 'the Chosen of Janon', picking someone you like and giving them a fancy title and a nice enchantment is not too unusual as Eternal behaviour goes."

"I really don't, and it worries me that that's such a concern here. I suppose 'chosen' will work for priests, and I'll find something else if I end up choosing an acolyte here."

"People really like abdicating responsibility to whatever funny shaped bit of rock they can blame for their misfortunes instead. It's important for the improvement of the human spirit not to let them."

"I've known gods like that, I suppose. It tends to go badly on the road, though. - I might go with 'fellow-traveler', for priests, in that case, and save 'chosen' for acolytes."

Adolphus is up in one of the towers, having a sufficiently impassioned conversation with an unimpressed Sentinel outside the Arbiter's office that the Arbiter comes out of his office to see what all the fuss is about.

"The Synod and the Conclave are likely to scrutinise whatever you do for cult formation - we do know that some Eternals really like to play god and let humans serve them, rather than merely partnering with them.

What brings you here, in any case, and are you still planning to stay?"

"It was entirely unintentional, there's this unprecedented snake monster that tries to eat people and sends them to other worlds instead that appeared on one of my roads and ate my avatar; I have it trapped in a hole now. I do think I'll stick around at least long enough to have a look around, though."

"We did rather have our infrastructure comprehensively destroyed around here quite recently; it'd be nice to get some of the great bridges back, or at least open some of the collapsed passes."

Arbiter Gallius is already not having a good day, and it doesn't look like it's improving any time soon. He descends the stairs while Adolphus gabbles about the god that probably isn't a god because there aren't gods and Sextus seems to be being quite civil to it, which has fallen in his lake and therefore is somehow his problem.

"I can also make claims to clear passes and build bridges and then abandon them - that's very expensive, I would want a formal agreement for something like that, but it's not conceptually impossible. Is there anything I should know about Arbiter Gallius?"

"I should think he'd be overjoyed to hear anything that can help him with his supply problems, but it's not like he'll show it."

Here he is now. "Greetings, Kiraavi - have I got that right? I do apologise for the welcome - we do have towels and warm showers, if you would like to dry off and be clean instead of sitting out here being interrogated by our Questor."

He is attempting to sound Diplomatic but it certainly has an undertone of Why Am I Having To Waste My Precious Time On This.

"It's fine, towels won't help when I'm this sodden, but thank you. Kiraavi is correct, of roads and travel. I hear you're having an infrastructure problem with your roads?"

"Well, yes, the Druj rather happened to them. Autumn, I take it?"

"I haven't gotten much of an explanation of your magic here yet. I'm something like an Eternal, from another world where things work very differently. I am familiar with humans, at least."

Well, yes, the Realms do work rather differently, the Arbiter does not say because he has at least a little practice at this kind of thing.

"If you did want an explanation of magic, you have certainly come to the right place.

How would you like to proceed? I can't speak for the entire territory, much less the entire Empire, but everything hereabouts is under my jurisdiction.

Adolphus here claimed you had identified yourself as a 'god', but I would be delighted to hear that was simply a misunderstanding."

"I don't think learning about your magic is urgent, it can wait. Whether I'm a god is maybe a bit complicated - I don't think it's wrong to describe me as one, exactly, but from what I've heard of the local - sort, or the local ideas about them, I'm not entirely sure of the details - I certainly don't have the kind of attitude toward mortals that you'll expect given the term, and it seems best to avoid it for clarity's sake.

If you have the authority to let me clear passes and build bridges, we should probably start with that, it does sound a bit urgent for you."

As an Arbiter, Gallius has had a lot of practice at not looking affronted when someone suggests that the study of magic might not be the most important thing right now.

"I have the authority to commission bridges in the immediate area; for larger projects we'll need to involve the Senator.

What would we owe you in return?"

He worries a little that the question may be too blunt, but despite his circumlocutions this does appear to be an Autumnal kind of creature and they are rarely too offended by getting down to business, at least if they're going to be useful at all.

"Well, it depends on how you want it done. The type of being I am, we're made of terrain, first and foremost; I'm roads, conveniently enough, which does include bridges. And we can take on more terrain and make it into our sort of terrain, more or less wherever we want as long as we're not trying to overlap each other. So the most straightforward way to do it would be for me to become your roads and bridges, or the places you'd like roads and bridges to be, and continue being them and maintaining them, and do my usual thing of helping the people who travel there in exchange for the kind of consideration that lets me keep doing that - my kind of being subsists on attention, so I don't need to be worshiped but I do need people to be aware that I'm around and have me in mind as someone whose presence matters. It's also possible for me to claim terrain temporarily, in which case it'll keep being roads and bridges when I leave it, but I lose almost all of the energy it takes to make the claim and change the land when I give it up, so that's quite expensive for me. I'm not sure what exactly I'd want to do it that way, and it sounds like it'd be hard for me to make suggestions without alarming you, but attention is the coin of the realm, so to speak."

"What kind of form does this - attention - need to take?

I apologise for the complication, but the last time we let an architect build infrastructure with deity-related frescos, there was something of a mob with sledgehammers that occurred to it.

Nevertheless, since then we have built multiple statues of Summer eternals, so a nice acknowledgement plaque and a likeness of yourself - or whatever you normally prefer - in strategic locations may well be admissible, so long as it's very clear what you are after is gratitude for services rendered, rather than worship per se."

"It's fine, from what I hear frescoes aren't that effective anyway without the active presence of the individual they're dedicated to. An acknowledgement and likeness - or a few, in different places - might be sufficient if there's a way to get people to interact with it, that's generally the important part. At home it's traditional to give offerings, and the important part of that is that the person giving the offering has to think of how it's relevant to me and how to explain that; it doesn't matter if the offering is something humans find valuable at all. I do prefer to actually receive the offering, which I can't do if I'm not there, but the sentiment counts even without that."

"...can this, in fact, be a toll booth?

The idea that the bridge was constructed by an entity who wants to collect a toll on it, and the toll is somewhat conceptual because of the entity being magical in nature, is not particularly foreign here - we could certainly accept you setting up a toll booth on any large construction project.

If you are capable of staffing the toll booth rather than requiring us to provide staff, even better."

"Sure; that's not entirely accurate to how I normally do things, but it's mostly that how I normally do things is a bit friendlier - I don't require that people give offerings to travel on my roads at home, and hopefully it'll be fine not to require it here, either, once people have the idea."

"I can definitely staff the infrastructure if I keep the claims on the roads, and that has some other advantages for you as well; if I don't keep the claim it's harder, but I'll be able to help with some things if you don't mind me having a presence at the infrastructure in particular, or I might be able to hire some people to manage them entirely - what kinds of things are economically valuable here? Gems, spices, dyes?"

"Certainly it would be quite usual for a toll to be mandatory for an initial period, then become more customary - we do, here in Urizen, understand the power of gifts, and could easily couch it in those terms if that is preferable.

I'm not entirely clear on what this 'claim' entails - what effects would it have on those using the roads? We already have magically empowered routes in much of the Empire, the Spring-powered Trods, so your equivalent would probably not be entirely unfamiliar?

All of those things have some value here, although of course mana crystals and the magical materials - most of our best dyes are iridescent gloaming based - are more reliable, and generally command a higher return for a smaller volume."

"I'd be interested in seeing examples of those, to see if they're something I can make."

"Traveling on a road I've claimed doesn't have any magical effects, at least unless and until learning your magic allows me to do that. The claim just means that I'm there, and can see and hear what's happening and react to it - for example if someone gets lost, they might ask me for directions, or if they run out of supplies they might ask me for some that I can give them from the offerings I've received, or if there's some kind of danger on a particular road that I can't fix myself - bandits, or wild animals, or a problem at their destination that I've heard of from other travelers, or things like that - I can warn people away before they get to it, or before they set out in that direction at all. In general I want to be appreciated, so I want to do things for people that they'll appreciate, as much as I'm able."

Oh, right, it's a spying thing, like the friendly metallic spiders. That makes sense, Autumn Eternals do like information.

"I suspect the Senator might ask for some guarantees about not selling details of army movements to our enemies - or civilian movements to some of them, for that matter - but that aside, as long as it's clear you're watching, we are generally in favour of being Witnessed.

Adolphus, go bother the Architect for some material samples, will you?"

Adolphus is very glad to head off on a simple, comprehensible task. There's a fairly extensive workshop in one of the towers which is his destination.

"I'm not very good at keeping track of human politics - usually I have people I'd ask for advice about it, but I'm not sure that'll be wise here - but if you can explain clearly what you'd like me not to do I don't think I'll mind trying; I'm not generally in the habit of telling people each others' information in any case. For army movement in particular I'd want to use that information to prepare to help any refugees that come my way as a result of it; hopefully that won't be an issue?"

"What kind of preparations are we talking about, here?

In general we are very keen that refugees get to where they would like to go; Urizen doesn't have an official Proffered Hand establishment, but with the recent invasions we've all got used to housing our fellows from time to time. Sometimes there is some concern that refugees coming into the Empire from certain foreign nations - particularly the Grendel - might in fact be spies rather than genuine refugees, but those fleeing persecution and slavery are always welcome."

"If they have a place in mind to go, I'd certainly facilitate that, though it's usually a good idea to make sure their chosen destination doesn't get more refugees than it can handle, and in my experience it's a good idea to have a few places lined up to suggest to people who aren't sure of the best place for them. I also try to get supplies to them - I'm not sure how that will work here; at home I generally collaborate with others of my kind to get the supplies, but I'm not sure if the attention that gets them will count properly between worlds - and depending on the situation I sometimes arrange for temporary quarters for the refugees near their origin, so that they can find their loved ones before traveling on or things like that. And I can confirm at their destination that they're coming from a place where there's been a war or disaster, if that's helpful."

"Those all sound like useful services.

What are the extent of your bridge-building powers? For instance, there used to be a span between here and the Hall of the Risen Sun. That now lies in ruins, but one of the problems preventing its reconstruction is there's no good route in any longer. What would you need to repair that?"

"That's usually a pretty solvable sort of problem, especially if I'm free to make whatever claims I need - if there was a pillar holding up part of the span or if it used to connect with a path that's crumbled off the side of the mountain I can replace those; if it needs a tunnel dug I can dig one, things like that. I do have some trouble extending a claim over large bodies of water, is the main situation where I might not be able to help you with that - rivers are often fine but lakes usually aren't."

"I'm sure someone will be annoyed at not being able to bridge the Bay of Catazar, but these lakes here are probably the largest body of water in Urizen; there are rivers in the valleys and I suppose they might form lakes somewhere, but it's unlikely to be anywhere relevant.

It sounds like our first step is to let you install a local bridge between here and the ruins, let you charge would-be archeologists whatever you're inclined to, and then we'll have some evidence to take to the Senator?"

"Sure, that sounds like a good starting point."

Adolphus returns, having wheedled a handful of various ingots and little bottles out of the lady in the workshop. "Uh, where did you want the samples? I've got all the artisan materials, she wouldn't let the ring of ilium out of her sight but she's got one, she said we should go stare at some construction projects if we want the rest because she doesn't keep any that's not in use."

"Just there is fine." He focuses for a moment, and then he's holding a similar handful, and then he's not. "Thank you. - I can't do the weltsilver or the iridescent gloaming, they have something going on that I can't quite match. The rest should be enough for my purposes, though."

That's... an interesting set. Normally Autumn can't do any of the forest materials. Maybe it's a Day thing, both weltsilver and iridescent gloaming are pretty Night aligned...

"Did you want to come to the bridge site, Gallius? I can probably take it from here, you can come and inspect the finished project."

"If that's acceptable to our guest? Actually, do fetch Prudentia before you commit to anything, she'll probably have opinions on style and placement."

"You can come along, sure. And I can always change the aesthetics around later, that's not especially costly." He stands; he's still damp but noticeably less muddy. "I might change it to white granite later, too, once I've seen some."

Gallius considers correcting the entity that actually he wanted to head off and get some work done, like drafting a letter to the Senator that didn't sound completely insane, but then decides he'd actually like to come see the build and be sure he wasn't just being completely played before he put any effort into that.

"Adolphus," he starts, and Adolphus guesses what he's going to say, nods, and hurries off.

The Arbiter leads the small party over to the jagged, rocky edge where the previous bridge was destroyed. The span involved is not small - the bridge was a marvel of engineering strung between two adjacent mountains.

"I believe the last one used mithril in the suspension cables," he explains.

Adolphus is off to fetch Architect Prudentia, who isn't terribly fond of being interrupted but 'Gallius is getting a herald to rebuild the sky-bridge to the Hall of the Risen Sun' is enough to get her out of her workshop.

Kiraavi's avatar walks right up to the edge of the mountain; someone who'd be meaningfully injured by falling would generally be rather more cautious of such a situation, but it's not a concern of his. The ground under his feet changes, subtly, as he contemplates the area. "I see, yes. I can do something similar, if you'd like."

"I'm happy to defer to Prudentia in this matter, I think she's heading here from the workshop now."

Indeed, Prudentia arrives fairly swiftly thereafter, and quite fearlessly strides up to Kiraavi at the cliff edge.

"I hear you're replacing the bridge. Do you have a good idea of the specifications? The last one you could barely get a pack llama down, it would be lovely to have one that can take an ox cart."

"We haven't discussed them, but I bet I can get it wide enough for two wagons to pass."

Prudentia looks grudgingly impressed. "I think this is still the best place for it, you'll probably want to anchor it a ways back, we've mostly stabilised this cliff with a little white granite cement here and there, but I don't trust it to bear the load of a huge bridge." She turns and strides over to Gallius. "What are you paying - it? Where are the materials coming from?"

"Him," replies Gallius. "Also there will be a toll booth, and he hasn't requested any materials - other than the samples you handed Adolphus earlier - which he replicated perfectly, other than the weltsilver and iridescent gloaming."

"Huh. Well, let's see if he can do mithril."

It's so nice when he gets to show off.

He paces at the edge for another few moments, eyeing the far side of the chasm, and then the surface they're standing on converts itself to solid white granite. It's surprisingly quiet as the new bridge extends itself across, easily wide enough for two wagons and a bit of foot traffic alongside, with the far side converting to granite as well where it touches and for a considerable ways around. The pillars and cables - of a bright mithril-steel alloy similar to the sentinel's armor - come in next, followed by small house-sized structure just off the path made of a darker, blue-tinted stone that complements the aesthetics of the bridge and surrounding mountain, with a sign out front proclaiming it 'Tolls and Waystation' in... some kind of script; it's as inexplicably understandable as Kiraavi's voice.

Adolphus blinks a few times, as if he can't believe what he just saw.

Sextus narrows his eyes and peers at the construction suspiciously, as if he expects it to go away if he disbelieves in it hard enough.

Gallius does not look taken aback because he has a lot of practice in not looking taken aback. He does start mentally composing that letter to the Senator. Which should probably be short enough to go out by priority heliopticon...

Prudentia taps the ground with one foot, then crouches down to touch it, then gets out a small metal hammer from the folds of her robes and rings it against the ground.

"Kiraavi, wasn't it? I think we might need to... consider the economic implications..."

It's not actually possible to see if the Sentinel is impressed through the armour, but the Sentinel is impressed. And somewhat worried.

"I'd rather you not dig that up; it won't hurt me, exactly, but it will cost me something to replace it. If you just mean the economic implications of having good roads wherever you'd like, I'm in favor."

"No, I mean the economic implications of being able to create White Granite on demand!

If it does have a cost to replace then at least it is a little more explicable - presumably you are creating a localised portal and bringing this through from a stockpile?

I am absolutely not digging your bridge up, it's notoriously difficult to salvage once it's been used in a construction.

How cheap is it to just - manifest a cartload?"

"I'm best paid in attention, and it's hard to explain the nuances of it to humans, you don't have the concepts exactly. Right now, if you wanted a wagonload as a proof of concept I'd be willing to do it, and maybe two if there was some compelling reason for the second, but not five; in the long run I'll have to see how various things go to see if that would be a worthwhile use of my time, and I'd much rather do the construction myself with tollbooths, if you want it for roads."

"Mostly we want it for fortifications. Or I suppose some people like to enhance their businesses and congregations with it. Laying paths in forests is also very popular, and a lot of larger constructions need some of it.

Can you also do mithril? Weirwood? Ilium? I think mithril is normally the most expensive as you can make mana site mirrors and conduits - oh, and armies, I suppose."

"I'll need to either see a sample of pure mithril or spend some time teasing it out of its alloy, but I can do it - I do prefer not to explicitly help armies, though, letting them travel on the same roads everyone else can is one thing but providing them with arms and armor is something else. Raw wood is difficult, but if you'd take it in planks that's not too much harder than stone by the wagonload - in general the forms of things that you'd expect a trader to carry are easier for me than the raw form you'd find in nature. And I suspect I can't make anything that's outright magical."

"Probably not ilium, then, although I've a ring of it here if you'd like to give it a go." A 'ring' of ilium turns out to be a cube about an inch across; it's an incredibly magically charged metal that arrives in asteroids. "There's no shortage of demands for mana site improvements, or great works of mana production, any given wain of mithril is more likely to end up in one of those than an army, and we could easily make sure of it. There are some pure mithril traceries in our mana collectors..."

"I'll want to hear more about what mana is used for and how mana sites work, but that sounds agreeable enough. I really am more interested in facilitating travel than doing trading myself, but it's always useful to have a bit of money available so it's good that there's an obvious way for me to earn it."

"We're currently buying mithril at four thrones five crowns a wain, and white granite or weirwood at four thrones, Prosperity obliges me to tell you that you could absolutely get a better price than that at Anvil but you'd have to be at Anvil, and given Sextus is trying to glare a hole through your bridge I'm not convinced the Synod is going to be happy with you."

"I know this Spire has a reputation but we are absolutely not to start worshipping this entity just because it can produce immaculate bridges and wains of bourse materials out of thin air for the low, low price of your immortal soul."

"I mean, good, I wouldn't want you to."

"Nobody is worshipping Kiraavi, Sextus. We're just establishing context for trade.

Speaking of which, this definitely needs to be escalated to the Senator.

...who used to be Highborn, so I imagine this will be an interesting test case.

You're welcome to settle in and use the Spire facilities while we're awaiting a reply; I'll send a heliopticon summary, but he'll probably want to come here in person to actually ensure we're not hallucinating and so on.

And I expect your offering will end up being taken to Anvil - that's where the Senate meets, it is indeed in Highguard but I do take Sextus' point, once this gets out there will certainly be people doing whatever they think will make you prioritise them, with a power like this on offer."

"In that case I'd like these coins to be brought to Anvil and wherever else people will be discussing me," he says, manifesting a few small crates of ordinary blue jade discs. "I can begin a claim from one of them if it's placed on the ground, and the larger my territory is the more attention I have available to manage it, so I shouldn't need to worry about priority very much. I can also see and hear and speak through them, but not manifest anything larger than they are."

"...okay, that is probably too many coins.

You are going to have a lot more luck if you bring, like, half a dozen, and you auction them. Then you're an opportunity. Four crates full, and you're instead a threat."

"He is a threat! I know you love your new bridge, Prudentia, but this... 'claims' business is not... look, even if he is completely harmless, and that's certainly still a possibility. you are going to cause a civil war. The League will scoop up all the coins they can carry, the Highborn will try to get them interdicted and certainly whip up a mob in the Synod about it, and we don't need another civil war, one is already too many."

Oh dear.

"I could use more of an explanation of what exactly the problem is, if you could."

"As the one member of Synod in this Spire, it falls to me to pay attention to the religious and social implications of what's going on here.

You don't fit into any of our existing categories, which is dangerous to start with. Claiming to be a god certainly doesn't make that any better.

It's possible we could slot you into the 'Eternal' category and work with you on that basis - limited individual deals on a clear trade basis with nobody subsuming their will or destiny to anything.

However, as a society we are generally quite wary of the Eternals too, for excellent reasons - none of them have a particularly human compatible value system, often they appear to want something nice, like equitable trade, and it turns out that in fact this means they support the slave trade and are confused when we get upset about that.

If a perfectly ordinary Autumn herald walked out of our lake and said 'hey, we can provide you with effectively unlimited quantities of white granite and mithril for road building projects, but to do it you've got to take our token and let us claim that bit of land', that would also cause a gigantic argument between the people who think they would very much like improved infrastructure at a very low apparent price, and will just go and enable it if it's as easy as bringing a coin home, and the people who think that's a bad idea because it would let a herald of unknown priorities - or any of the known Autumn priorities - have a lot of information about our Empire, and control over vital infrastructure, that they could use for betrayal or trade to our enemies or what have you.

Add your anomalous state of being, and you also have a considerable number of people who will be concerned about the long term metaphysical implications of using your services - there are already quite a number of people in the Empire who believe that dealing with normal Eternals can damage your soul, never mind some other entity.

So: some people would gleefully accept and apply your gifts, some other people would show up and attempt to destroy anything that resulted from them. We do have a legal system, but it's often hard to discover who did criminal damage to an unattended road segment, and also I suspect the people who provide Virtue defences would be able to claim they had no other mechanism to oppose you. Or they manage to actually get your coins and their results declared illegal, at which point we have an even worse problem.

The side that is actually using your gifts might consider them too much trouble before this turns into a full on war, but I doubt your opponents will back down so easily, especially given the previous attempt to magically enhance the entire Empire has just recently resulted in armies of heralds who wish to destroy all life appearing throughout the Empire."

"I'm not sure I follow. What you're saying is that some people will either believe that I am what I seem to be or decide that the benefit of working with me is worth the risk that I'm not, and some people won't, and instead of the second group leaving the first group alone they're likely to start a war about it? With the first group? For no reason other than the disagreement, even if I haven't done anything more than what you've seen here?"

"Yes.

The Empire goes to war for two reasons - one is when someone insists on going to war with us, and the other is for the good of the souls of the people that inhabit wherever we're going to war with.

If a large faction think you are a threat to souls - and they would, if you turned up to Anvil and started handing out amazing prizes with seemingly no catch - they will not stop until that threat is eradicated, or they are."

What a ridiculous waste.

The crates disappear.

"I might - go and see for myself, I suppose."

"I really do think we can sort this out. We've just got to move a little slowly at first to not spook anyone." She glares at Sextus. "There are a lot of worse outcomes if he doesn't think he can do business with the Empire at all!"

"I would rather not just - " he gestures vaguely. "I'm new here but I'm not new, I know humans benefit from having me around."

"By 'benefit', though, I assume you mean 'improve their material conditions', rather than 'improve their capacity for Virtue and chances of becoming a Paragon'?" 

"Personally I'm all in favour of improving our material conditions," insists Prudentia, "and certainly you can get a lot more Wisdom and Prosperity done with better infrastructure."

"I mostly mean material conditions, but also, yes, people can generally do more of what's important to them when things are easier, there's one of my kind largely dedicated to that principle."

"It sounds like we have a reasonable way forwards? I will send a message to our Senator, who has extensive experience of the relevant political and religious implications and also is a great fan of infrastructure projects. In consultation with her, we will devise a suitable strategy for introducing Kiraavi to Anvil in a fashion that will not immediately turn into an atrocious bun fight."

"And if this does turn out to be a terrible threat to our immortal souls or the territorial integrity of the Empire?"

"Then we will absolutely not make the situation any better by scaring Kiraavi off and causing him to go and find some less scrupulous individuals to launch his project with, now, will we?"

"Also if it does, somehow - I don't see how it would but I'm clearly missing something about the situation - I am open to adjusting how I do things. I just don't see how anything I'm proposing I do is a problem."

"If you are telling the full truth about it - which you might not even know yourself, the full details of the soul's passage through the Labyrinth are known only to the Paragons - then what you propose to do isn't the problem, it's how people will react to it."

"Which there's much less I can do about." He sighs. "I suppose it might help for me to get an explanation of the Virtues? And anything else that might be different here; I know the magic isn't the most important but I am curious about it, and the Eternals you mentioned."

"This sounds like your job, Sextus." Arbiter Gallius heads off to get that message to the Senator composed and sent; he really would like some good political advice on hand, instead of their wild guessing and the prospect of a mob coming to knock down the shiny new bridge.

"The Virtues are - hmm, let me actually look up the wording of the Doctrine, there was an important update recently - " Sextus pulls a pile of papers out of a hidden pocket and sifts through them to find the right one. "Virtue lies in choice and action. Virtue's power to exalt transcends the boundaries of soul, spirit and species, guiding and inspiring both orcs and humans to their highest destiny. Through the practice of Virtue, orcs and humans develop the strength, knowledge and enlightenment which marks their highest potential as thinking beings," he reads out.

"Essentially, a Virtue is a spiritual force that helps guide the spirit through the Labyrinth of Ages - which is where we go when we die - or across the Howling Abyss, which is where orcs go when they die.

The seven that the Synod recognises are Ambition, Courage, Loyalty, Pride, Prosperity, Vigilance and Wisdom. I can go into more detail or we can do an overview of Magic and Eternals first, and come back.

Someone who sufficiently exemplifies one of these Virtues to be helpful to others would be termed an Exemplar - there's a whole process for the Synod recognising them - and one who does so enough to perform miracles, transcend the Labyrinth and leave the cycle of reincarnation, is known as a Paragon. The orcs instead have Ancestors, who successfully cross the Howling Abyss and then directly advise their descendants and anyone who establishes a sufficiently close relationship."

"I think the main question I have is how you can tell whether something is harmful to peoples' Virtue."

"That's the problem, you see. A wide variety of things are theorised to be harmful to people's Virtue. The only ones we have any clear evidence for are malign spiritual forces, such as Hatred; confusing people as to what actually constitutes Virtue; and things that promote inaction or the abdication of responsibility, hence the prohibition on gods. But it is widely considered, especially outside of Urizen, that any inhuman power - and I use inhuman judiciously, because a lot of these people are also prejudiced about orcs, although that is getting better - may have deleterious effects."

"I see." Ugh, xenophobia. "Might it help to point out that there's not much involved in having me around that wouldn't happen normally, if somewhat less often? Humans build roads and mine stone for each other to use, and I'd expect a human traveler who ran out of food to be able to get help from other humans, or a human who ran into trouble on the road to warn other humans about it. The tolls don't have a direct equivalent in the same way but they're not dramatically different from giving another human a gift and telling them a story."

"It might once they are acquainted with your services, which is why it's probably best to start small. The first association of most people with an unusual individual showing up with coins that will 'claim' an area is that they are going to do something nefarious with that area later; demonstrating you aren't on a limited set of areas is less likely to cause a problem than offering the service to everyone who'll accept it." Also if he starts small, there might be some way of containing the problem if it does turn out to be a problem, Sextus does not say.

"That makes sense but I am pretty worried about people causing problems trying to convince me that their choice of where I should expand next is the best one; that's not an issue I'm used to dealing with."

"I'm a lot more worried about people causing problems trying to persuade you to not expand at all and go away. The Empire is very used to limited opportunities from Eternals; some of the Eternals attempt to be deliberately provocative with them, attempting to get bodies of state to judge who is the 'best nation' or what have you, so people are quite used to not rising to that bait. If you show up with half a dozen tokens and auction them for money, or announce a poetry competition and pick whichever entrants write your favourite poems, or anything along those lines, that will be entirely unremarkable. Once those projects turn out well, future projects will be less controversial, although anything that hints that supply might not, in fact, be limited, will be suspicious."

"That's reassuring. How important is the auction part? If I wanted to distribute the coins evenly, is there a sensible way to do that, or would it cause problems?"

"You could offer them to specific nations, or really any criteria you come up with, as long as there's clearly a sufficiently limited supply that somebody is missing out.

People have learned very well that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and that any deal that looks unusually good will have a sting in the tail.

Given you just built us an essentially free bridge - I'm sure you'll collect something in that toll booth but nothing like the actual cost of something like this, especially created instantly like that - I'm inclined to believe you are, in fact, attempting to hand out free lunches because your value for things is just that different, but in general everyone is going to expect it is too good to be true, and start hunting for the catch."

"Making roads is really just not very costly for me; I expect the bridge to make back the resources I spent on it within twenty years, and more likely within ten, it'll help that it's a bit of a tourist attraction. But I understand what you're saying, the math of it is very different for humans and that's how people here will be thinking."

"One of my associates at home suggests that I could award coins for the best offerings, to help people understand what I'm looking for with those; does that sound like a reasonable approach?"

"Frame it as 'bring me something that pleases me', but yes, Eternals do that all the time. Or at least Sadogua does, and everyone lets him get away with it."

"The Highborn don't like Sadogua very much about it, but it hasn't stopped him commissioning songs about how great he is."

"That should work, then. Will it also be a problem if I'm free with boons?"

"Depends how major a boon, what kind of boons do you provide? Eternals do hand those out a bit more freely than major building projects, but it depends on how major they are, and it's still always either in return for something or in the expectation that it will make someone behave as the Eternal wants them to."

"I have six I can offer - direction sense, weather sense, improved endurance, improved memory, poison resistance, and an improved understanding of human body language. They're strong enough to be noticeable, but not too dramatic. In this case I'd like to give them out in exchange for offerings good enough to be useful but not impressive enough to earn a coin; I don't like the idea of taking offerings with that little chance of people getting any real benefit in return."

"As long as they're not all that dramatic, those all sound like good consolation prizes. How long do they last?"

"They don't seem all that Autumn themed, although I suppose if you've got a good explanation about how they're linked to travel and roads, that won't cause too much of a problem. We could really do with an Autumn Eternal who particularly likes roads, travel's meant to be an Autumn resonance but we don't have a specific one the Empire's in touch with."

"They'll last indefinitely, and they're all meant to be useful on journeys, yes - direction sense and endurance should be obvious; improved memory helps with getting lost and with retaining the experience of your travels, which I value; weather sense helps with day-to-day planning and also gives a bit of an intuition for the climate in an area, which is sometimes useful when exploring; poison resistance makes foraging less dangerous and helps with snakes and bugs when people are traveling in wild places; and the body language one helps with communicating with strangers, for both avoiding untrustworthy ones and avoiding miscommunications with well-meaning ones."

"...'indefinitely' is not usual for a minor boon, if they're not limited uses they're normally year long."

"Uh. Should we check the magical signature on - whatever comes out, on someone with one of the boons on? And, uh, do you have the liao for an insight, Sextus? He reads, like, pretty weird to detect magic..." 

"That's a good point. An odd magical reading on you probably isn't too much of a problem, Kiraavi, but leaving an odd reading on lots of people, especially if there's an odd spiritual reading, that is going to cause alarm.

You'll probably quite like being Insighted, it involves paying you very close attention."

"Boons do also fade if they aren't wanted, that doesn't come up very often at home but it does occasionally happen. It generally takes a few hours to a few weeks, depending on how unwelcome they are, and if it'd be sufficiently unwelcome I won't be able to grant one in the first place. I can't remove them myself, though, that's entirely up to the person with the boon. I would expect that they'll look like something - my kind of being can tell when humans have boons - but I couldn't guess what. I'd be willing to give one to Prudentia, if you'd like?"

"Sure, I'll take one, sounds like I can get rid of it if it turns out bad. I think Gallius would like me to understand body language better, although I'm tempted by better memory."

"Would you mind if I Insighted you, Kiraavi? Once you start doing slightly odd things someone is bound to, and I think we'd all rather know now if it's going to come out matching a malign spiritual force or something.

It'll just feel like I'm observing you closely, and I'll get some idea of what kind of being you are and anything that's interesting about your soul, should you have one."

"And it's not the sort of thing that might be dangerous to you, if I'm stranger than you're expecting? You all seem to be vaguely assuming I'm an Eternal, and I'm really not one."

"It could plausibly be dangerous to me, but part of being a Questor is taking that sort of risk.

If it is noticably dangerous we can then at least warn people, ensuring the consequences are on their own heads if they try it anyway."

"If you're sure you're all right with that. Give me a minute to finish some of what I'm doing, intuitively I suspect it'll be safer if I'm holding still as much as possible."

And, back to Prudentia: "Your choice of boon is up to you, and there's nothing stopping you from asking for the other one later if this goes well; I'm not stingy with them in general."

"Eh, give me the body language one then, it'll be more noticeable if it's something I'm not already good at."

"Sure. I'll be another minute, one of my other avatars was speaking to a child and she's not letting me end the conversation so easily. ...oh, there we go, her father got her. All right, I'm ready whenever you are."

Sextus pulls out a little vial of something violently purple from a hidden pocket, tips it into his mouth and swirls it around a bit before swallowing. His eyes take on a strange focus and he declares,

"Kala, sharpen my senses; remind me of your good judgement; let me see..."

Then he flinches, winces, and reflexively closes his eyes tightly, which seems to be quite alarming to his fellow Urizeni; the Sentinel moves to be ready to catch him in case he falls over, which is the closest physically any of them have come to each other.

"I'm fine, it's just - that is... I'm going to narrate aloud and expect one of you is less stupid than me..." he says with some effort.

Adolphus scrabbles to get his notebook and pencil ready to transcribe.

"Kiraavi does not match any of the forms of life previously witnessed, Eternal is closest but fundamentally incorrect. The rest of this is going to be unfortunately subjective. The radiance of his soul fills the entire claimed area and connects in a nonexistent direction - not as a regio portal, somehow further - to a great multitude of things impossibly distant. It is vast but has a shadow which could be cleared by a relevant anointing if anyone had a relevant anointing, the required spiritual force is incoherent to me, or... actions that reinforce its fundamental nature," he dictates a little breathlessly, but mostly with a clinical detachment.

Then his body calms a little, and he opens his eyes again.

"Also, I can't see. This is usually temporary but it is..." he sounds like he was building to express annoyance, but trails off, "it is what it is."

"Sorry about that." He manifests a small silver ear cuff with a fleck of blue jade embedded into it and hands it over. "If you wear this on your ear, I can guide you and describe what's going on around you. If you'd like, of course."

Sextus holds out his hand in the approximately correct direction and attaches the ear cuff. "Better than having to flail around," is what he says, although mostly this is something that he considers his responsibility as a Questor to try out, so other people don't have to be the first.

"Can we do the blessing now?" Sextus' plight does not seem to have discouraged Prudentia at all. "Uh, are you going to be able to Insight me with that? We could fetch Iulia..."

"I'm still up for it. I don't know if we should expect it to be dangerous to Insight someone with me nearby, though."

"I should probably step off the bridge while she does it, and have her pointed away from it - it does work mostly like sight, right, Sextus, that doesn't just turn out to be a metaphor the priests use to confuse everyone?"

"It does work mostly like sight, which is why it often has psychosomatic effects on sight," replies Sextus, a little wearily. "Adolphus, fetch Iulia for us, will you?"

Adolphus obediently scurries off to find Iulia, first heading to a specific library (the Spire has several) she might be hanging out in.

"Anyway, that Insight response is probably good overall, it's not very clearly associated with a malign spiritual presence, so people will be curious rather than immediately hostile."

Kiraavi nods, whispering in Sextus' ear that he's done so just like he reported that Adolphus had left. "Is that related to the fact that I'm friendly to humans, or something else?"

"Not especially; Irrah Harah is very friendly to some humans, Ossegrahn is very friendly to essentially all humans, but the former is associated with Anarchy and the latter with Apathy, although probably not actually on their souls, insofar as they even have them.

If you were showing up as strongly associated with one of the known malign spiritual presences - hatred, fear, despair, fate, apathy, anarchy, vengeance - people would immediately oppose you. As you're not, they'll likely investigate first."

"Huh. Those are fairly orthogonal to the types of things beings like me tend to be associated with - some of them wouldn't surprise me very much to see pop up, but usually we're less abstract than that, and more focused. It's convenient, at least."

"I suppose the Eternal equivalents would be much more like - Irrah Harah's main thing is protecting the underdog, it just comes with a heavy dose of persuading people to distrust all government. And Ossegrahn is really about healing and calm waters, it's just he really hates conflict.

So I'm afraid it's more likely that Prudentia has a relevant aura than that you do - yours is about normal for a powerful Eternal, apart from being entirely orthogonal to the Realms."

Adolphus comes back from the library with a blue-scaled lady in tow, having told her that Sextus wanted a second opinion on something weird.

"Hi!" she introduces herself. "I'm Iulia, where am I pointing? ...and why is there a bridge, I'm sure there didn't used to be a bridge. Well, there used to be one, but you know what I mean."

"Prudentia, but don't get our visitor or any of the bridge in view while you're doing it," replies Sextus.

"Oh, okay!"

"Uh, I don't think I've got the thing yet, unless it's very subtle?"

"You don't, no, it'll be fairly obvious I expect. To be on the safe side you shouldn't have Sextus in view, either, the ear cuff is also me - do you want the boon given ahead of time, I wasn't clear on that."

"I mean, I could try looking at it while it's..."

"No, that's how you also end up burnt out and we don't have any more Insight capable priests on site, unless you've got an apprentice you've been hiding from me."

"Yes, don't risk it, guiding people isn't exactly inexpensive for me. If you'd like to look at her before and after that should be safe, though."

"I'll keep an eye out for people Insighting in your direction," he whispers to Sextus, "and I can abandon the cuff if someone does; you'll need to get a new one from me if that happens."

That is... a reassuring amount of foresight, but not deeply reassuring about how confident he is that he can spot someone doing something that's relatively subtle until they have actually done it, and still pretty subtle to anyone who isn't the target, within ten seconds.

"How much liao have we got, Sextus? Unless Prudentia thinks she's got anything interesting going on..."

"I have a rank 1 testimony of Tenacious Architect and nothing else that I'm aware of."

"...it's probably not worth doing a 'before' unless you think she's already affected by - whatever is going on here."

"We can always insight the Arbiter if we need confirmation on that."

"Right. Good. If we're all quite ready. Can we do the thing now."

"All right, there you go," and it's suddenly fairly obvious from people's body language and tone of voice what they're feeling.

Prudentia suddenly looks a mix of confused and taken aback. She looks from person to person with growing incredulity. "Oh no," she says, faintly, "am I really this transparent, all the time?"

"Okay, let's have a look at that." Iulia waves impatiently at Prudentia, who takes a few steps back, and makes sure she's not standing on the bridge or looking at Sextus or the visitor before taking out a small purple incense block, lighting the end with some kind of cunning combined flint and steel device, and waving it under her nose dramatically.

"...so, that looks like a Dedication, or - an underpowered Anointing without an expiration date? But what on earth is it dedicating to? That's not even a malign spiritual force, it's just - not human."

"I haven't claimed to be, no," he chuckles. "It's inoffensive, I hope?"

"It is definitely not inoffensive! It's... I suppose it's not something I'd want to take straight to a magistrate, they would just look at me and tell me to come back with at least a statement of principle and ideally an Inquisition condemnation. It will absolutely get Prudentia Inquisited if anyone notices it. Which they wouldn't normally, people only go around Insighting people if they think there's something interesting there, but they absolutely will if you - is he going to Anvil? Within Urizen this will just be a curiosity people will try to work out for themselves..."

He sighs. "We're working that out. I really don't want to get anyone in trouble."

"Someone with one of these isn't going to get in trouble - unless they insist on keeping it when they're officially told to not do that, it looks like it'll just brush off with a touch of, well, anything else - but it's going to be suspicious and they're going to have an entire circus of priests and hangers-on trying to work out what it means and if it's dangerous. The Highborn will hate it and call it idolatry and it might even stick.

And if it's obviously you doing it, someone's going to try taking a potshot at you, assuming you're not actually a foreigner or otherwise protected by the law?"

"My understanding is that I'm not. I suspect you won't be able to hurt me, though, that usually takes some fairly specific circumstances."

"Oh Virtues, that's just going to make them try harder. Once you bounce a crossbow bolt you'll have whole ritual teams working on it, just to see if they can."

"I should learn more about your magic, then, if you don't mind; it's not impossible that it could do something that can harm me, if they're willing to blind enough people trying. But mundane weapons won't - they don't bounce, it's just that lodging a crossbow bolt here," he taps his chest, "isn't any worse for me than lodging one over there," he gestures at the ground by the bridge.

"Going blind also just encourages them, although I must admit it's much more convenient with commentary.

A magical boon usually doesn't look like anything to Insight, that you can 'tamper with souls' at all is going to not be a good look for the 'new Eternal' line."

He's about to give some more advice, but stops himself - he's still not sure if he actually wants to help Kiraavi nest like a cuckoo in places he can get away with it, never mind that the infrastructure will be useful and the Druj are still not gone, they could still come back.

"I guess it's time to get the Stargazers, then?"

"Any of us can do the basics. Where do we need to start, what's already obvious to you about magic?"

"Let's see - there are types, one of them has to do with the seasons and I think Realms, another has to do with calling on Eternals and maybe Heralds, the kind with the laio is probably a third one, there are rituals that do things and possibly all uses of magic involve rituals, there are other kinds of magical substances besides laio and I can't make them, mana is a thing and it's gathered with mithril which I can make, Virtues might be related but didn't seem to be." It sounds like he's reading from a set of notes, but he doesn't have one.

"Close. Realms are seasons plus Day and Night; Eternals are part of - or inhabitants of, or rulers of - the Realms, Heralds are their minions. You can cast rituals in a huge number of ways, it's just about finding a metaphor that works for you, and they're the most obvious way of casting magic. Archmages can ask Eternals to come talk about doing things directly, sometimes other people can too if they've got specific permission from the Eternal. Liao and alchemy aren't really 'magic' per se, they're just substances that do things, but sometimes we call the herbs that go into them magic to distinguish them from the herbs that go in your cooking. We also have spells, which are super refined bits of magic which do very specific things like heal someone or break their sword, you just have to do the right incantation with the right intent and channel mana through it.

Every magic thing costs mana - or at least every thing we can do directly, Eternals act like they're spending something to do magic but it isn't mana directly. Mana comes in personal - only useful for spells unless you juice yourself up with the right potions - and crystal - what it says on the tin, crystals that have caught some magic in them, you don't have to have mithril reflectors and condensers and so on to do it but it really helps.

Virtues are more related to liao than magic, they're the set of concepts that resonate with the human soul - probably the orc soul too, that's been doctrine for a little while but I think the committee for editing doctrine is looking at it skeptically - and that it can easily be aligned to, and that let it pass through the Labyrinth - or over the Abyss - quicker. Or not, in the case of malign spiritual forces, which are kind of like Virtues but bad.

I am currently assuming you can absorb information faster than I can throw it at you, but let me know if I should slow down or what I should clarify next. Oh, there's also artisanry, which is also not Realm magic but does involve putting materials we call 'magical materials' in things to make them do things they wouldn't otherwise do, like staves that make it easier to ritual, or bracers that let you use shields, or daggers that just spontaneously poison you."

He's not certain he should be giving Kiraavi a thorough magical education, but someone's blatantly going to do it if Kiraavi starts wandering around here, and it's kind of refreshing to just be able to dump all this on someone. Gives a new perspective on things, which is what being a Questor is all about, although right now he would kind of like to put some of those new perspectives back.

"I've got one of my chosen in the other world listening in, we'll have better questions if you go at a pace she can keep up with. Right now it sounds like I'd most want to hear about what rituals, spells, and maybe artisanry can do? I'll want to hear more about the rest later, of course."

"Right, sorry.

It's easier to talk about what they can't do, so - limits of magic.

You do have to have a resonance of the relevant Realm on your side to pull off any kind of magical effect - other than the few we've managed to refine down into spells, and those all started as rituals of one Realm or another.

There are an enormous list of resonances - and dissonances, specific Realms are also bad at specific things - but if you have the whole of magic to play with, you can generally find somewhere your effect will fit. Most magicians only learn one or two Realms because it's a time consuming study and it's harder to keep them all straight in your head if you pick up too many, although some people manage it.

There are also actual limits to all magic. The most obvious one is life - dead people are dead. You can talk to them in a very time limited way, but you can't bring them back once the body's too damaged to keep housing the soul.

Magic is also considerably better at offence than defence, at least on a personal level. You can enchant a castle, you can hide information, you can have contingent offense, but nothing magical will make you completely immune to someone hitting you with a stick - more resilient, sure, but not immune. It's also very hard to stop offensive magic - if someone pushes you back with magical force, that will take effect, whatever else you have going on.

Getting inside someone's mind requires consent. You can make people feel things, you can make bad things happen if they do certain things or don't do certain things, but you can't actively force someone to do something or not to do something; you can obtain some kinds of knowledge from people, the knowledge of how to make certain artisan items is a good example, but you can't see what they're thinking. Rituals that let you change someone's memory, or personality, require active consent and are fundamentally controlled by the target, rather than the caster.

You can't directly create things - you can combine things into other things, you can call in existing agreements with the Realms to supply things, but objects and Heralds are not directly created by magic.

Portals can only be opened between the world and pockets of the Realms, not different places within the world, by ritual magic directly - there's clearly a way to combine with artisanry and do it because the Sentinel Gate does that, but nobody has been able to make another one.

You can't make something totally invisible, and the offense over defence thing works for divination magic too - you can conceal the nature of things, but not that you've concealed something.

Uh, what else. There's the Law of Essence which is the really annoying one, basically the weirder and flashier the effect, the less likely it's going to work; usually it's easier to do something in a way that has plausible deniability? Oh, and magic basically doesn't work on the raw materials that get processed into white granite, mithril, weirwood and ilium - I'm fairly sure this is the universe just being inconvenient for the sake of it, I've heard lots of theories but I'm not deeply convinced by any of them.

There are loads of other weird little limits, like what exactly you can do to an army or a fortification, which kinds of skill you can share with magic, but those are the main ones.

Artisanry - I'm even less of an expert on, Prudentia?"

"We don't have as good a general theory of artisanry, we've only recently regained the ability to make novel items at all and it's a bit of a trial and error process. Wintermark knows a bit more, but they're helpfully oath-bound not to share. The recipes we've got basically either make you better at using the item for whatever you'd normally use it for, let you use the item for something vaguely related, bolster your ability to do things in general or your resilience, or make you better at magic in a variety of ways; but then there's all the weird ones like the pestle and mortar that lets you use the wrong herbs for a potion."

"Is it possible to use a Realm for its dissonances, or to reverse a resonance? Does your magic enable different kinds of offense, aside from just hitting something with physical force? What kinds of knowledge can you get from someone using magic, and is that dangerous to the user like Insighting is? Does artisanry only affect a thing's usefulness, or can it change other aspects of its nature?"

"Okay, perhaps we should get you a Stargazer. Adolphus?

Dissonances are, as far as I understand it, what the Realm is bad at and you'd be better off using another one, although if what you're trying to do is cause bad side effects you might be able to, the Empire-wide enchantments manifest dissonant effects as downsides.

Magic can do limited offense, but is mostly better at holding things still or otherwise getting in their way so you can hit them more easily? I suppose you can tear down a fortification with Spring magic, or manifest venom, or enchant a dagger to go through an enemy as if you were a skilled warrior using a greatsword with considerable effort. It's generally used somewhat obliquely to direct offense, though - you'd be better off usually fielding a squad of archers and a rank of polearms, and putting a few battle mages amongst them to make their job easier, backed up by ritual teams for healing and repair and strategic effects.

Part of that's that you can't wear much armour and still cast, though, which means you've got to have someone there to protect your mages - it's possible to toughen people up with magic but it's much more expensive than just throwing a bunch of metal on them.

You can get a wide range of knowledge using magic and it does sometimes have a backlash if the thing you're looking at is sufficiently powerful - it's just like aiming a magnifying glass at the sun. Mostly it's things like active magical effects, traces of magic, magical bonds, but you can also do things like get your name from a pile of your bones. It's all 'external' information to some extent though - you can't read someone's mind - you can acquire skills from someone, you can sometimes see flashes of past events, but you can't know what they feel about it - except in the usual way of observing them, of course.

Artisanry can do all kinds of exciting cosmetic effects, although at that point it's hotly debated where just craftsmanship ends and actual artisanry begins, but as well-defined recipes artisanry tends to do specific useful things."

Adolphus' role in life is clearly to go and fetch people, although he's getting kind of worn out with all this stair climbing in one day; Stargazers like to hang out at the top of towers with their pet telescopes.

"Hm. So there's - not exactly an incentive for me to fight back, exactly, but I do want to make sure mages can't just walk up to me and do whatever they'd like, if things turn hostile; I'll think about that. From the sound of it the knowledge magic isn't especially dangerous - my vulnerabilities are a secret even at home, if you can only get flashes I don't think you'll be able to figure it out even if you get a relevant one - I suppose if you get a few you might be able to notice a pattern, how easy is it to target those?"

"You might want to let Adolphus go about his day soon, by the way, it looks like this is getting to be a bit much for him."

"Most things that are more complicated than realm and magnitude need the target to be in the ritual for at least two minutes - at least in arm's reach of at least one caster, or clearly encircled by them. Rituals are quite hard to do subtly - you can disguise one as a different ritual, but if it's not clearly a ritual at all then it's likely to fail.

I'm sure Adolphus will let us know if he needs a break. And if he does not, that is a lesson in Courage for him."

"As you like. How safe is it to interrupt a ritual? I expect they'll figure out pretty quickly that I can't just move away."

"Varies. The magic grounds out through someone, most often the ritualists themselves. Sometimes it's harmless, sometimes everyone's bones are now full of bees." This appears to be an entirely serious statement of a thing which actually happened. "The earlier you do it, the less bad it is, as they haven't called up all the power yet."

Bones full of bees. "I see. Is there a standard best practice for stopping a ritual like that without too much risk to whoever's nearby? Is it possible to tell the difference without letting them get too far along?"

"Convincing them to stop it safely themselves is best; it's usually easy to dismantle your own ritual safely if necessary. It's possible to identify the magnitude and realm of a ritual with a simple incantation, if you learn any of our magic; that and a list of rituals in Imperial lore will generally give you a good idea of what they're doing. Spring and Summer rarely give useful information, if you're worried about information on weaknesses I suppose Winter might, Autumn gives information on connections, Day on factual information, Night does a broader range of less straightforward visions and so on.

The symbolism and powers invoked have to have at least something to do with the effect, although it can be subtle - you might want to learn the constellations, runes, eternals, dramaturgic personae, Silutarian modes, and Paragons, those are the major modes of casting that have subtle meanings. Oh, and maybe the animal and bird totems but those are generally pretty obvious."

"Do you have books on those that I can have copied? Or get copies of, if you have an easy way of making them."

"I expect our stargazer will be able to show you around the libraries. We do have a small printing press but it's only really good for pamphlets."

Right on cue here's another guy following Adolphus down to the bridge head.

"...is this permenant?" is his first question.

"It is," he grins, though with a bit less enthusiasm than he had half an hour ago. "I'm Kiraavi, I'm something not entirely unlike an Eternal from another world; we're trying to figure out whether and how I can operate here without causing too much fuss, particularly if people try to use magic on me."

"Aulus Cascade. You - shaped this like it was part of your Realm? Is that real white granite?"

"That is real white granite," confirms the architect.

"I use a bit of a different paradigm than that, but it's a little like a Realm, yes. My kind of being is primarily made up of terrain, in my case roads, and we can arrange ourselves however we like within the limitations of our type."

"...okay, so, not Realm magic at all, more a kind of magical creature thing?

Is it, uh, going to move? Is putting a cart across it going to hurt you? I guess that wouldn't make it a very good road so... uh, do the roads have to be contiguous?"

"I might spread out from here, but this part isn't going to move unless I have some reason to re-grade it, and there's no reason whatsoever to avoid pulling carts here. It's more comfortable to be contiguous, or failing that to have all my parts within a mile of some other part, but I'll be fine in any case, I have plenty of discontinuities at home."

"...there isn't really a lot within a mile of here, sorry. I'm - kind of assuming the others have done all the politics bits with you? Did someone detect magic?"

"Uh, yes, me," replies Adolphus. "It, uh, wasn't very conclusive? Insight seems to be a bad idea but detect magic was pretty safe, there is definitely a lot of magic but it isn't, uh, bitey?"

"If you don't mind?" he asks Kiraavi.

"Go right ahead. And don't worry about the discontinuity, if I was concerned about it I would have asked before I made the bridge."

"Ophis!" declaims the Stargazer, then blinks rapidly for a bit. "Yeah, that's... that's something all right. Almost like the entire thing is a giant magic item? I mean, sorry, that you're a giant magical item. Uh. I'd ask to try Bright Lantern but I'm not sure it's actually going to help, I think it'd just give me circular answers."

"I don't think I have questions about my nature, exactly - I'm new here but there are plenty of us in the world I'm from, and we know how we work fairly well. But I understand that people here are liable to take it as a challenge when they notice that physical damage doesn't bother me very much, and I'd like to know how worried I need to be about your magic in that regard."

"Oh! Well, it's not at all clear from your magic signature what's going to stick and what isn't.

Because you're kind of a person, a place and an object I suspect you can be targeted by all three of those... But you're not a whole region so place magic is going to be limited to divination.

We could try some things that are easy to remove - actually, you can probably be targeted by anointing and hallow and consecration if you define an area of yourself well enough or someone puts a tent up on you or something.

So we should probably try those and Freedom Of The Soul first, see if they have an effect, and... hmm, do you have access to personal mana? I've got a Circlet but that needs to be powered by mana, we'd need one of those swords or something if not - and that's a good question, can we even bind an item to you..."

"I don't know what any of those are, yet."

"Anointing, Hallow and Consecration are ways to attach a Virtue aura to a person, an object or a place; a Virtue aura is a set of - inclinations - that guide you towards Virtue. It can be taken off again by the same mechanism, or it naturally fades away at the solstices and equinoxes.

Freedom of the Soul is a very simple Night enchantment which heightens emotions and emotional responses. It can be removed by replacing it with an anointing, or by overwriting it with another enchantment - there are many with very minor effects, like the Day enchantment that lets you strike harder once with a bladed weapon - or it fades on its own within a day or two, often less if you have any major exertion or excitement."

"And we should really work out some safe way to try curses, but they're naturally detrimental and have a long duration and are hard to fix, so I'm not sure how to get that done safely... maybe the curses that rely on physical damage wouldn't be a problem? But they might turn out to be a real problem and then you're stuck like that for a year - or at least you'll have to sell a few white granite bridges and buy a large ritual team that can make the serpent's stone, I guess..."

"Would I be able to hire a team here, or is that going to be more complicated? But we should start with the less dangerous things in any case, I'd say, presumably the results will generalize at least a little."

"We don't have that much Night here, Auric Horizon might be able to put it together? But probably for something of that magnitude we'd be looking at going to Anvil. And you probably want to know what you were getting into before you go there, right?

I can do Freedom of the Soul right now - but you might want to line up what anointment you want with Sextus before you're affected by it, I guess? So that we can chuck it on you straight away if you hate it."

"Sextus is indisposed for doing ceremonies right now, so it'll have to be me! Uh, I'm devoted to Pride, so you can have," she gets out a little notebook with meticulous handwritten notes and scans over them to get her summary right, "a keen sense of self-worth, feeling especially proud of a specific thing you name when you get it, wanting to keep your culture and customs, feeling more committed to follow through on your promises? Just one of those, that is, not all of them at once!

I'm afraid I don't do consecrations or hallowings though, I haven't learnt to do those ones yet. It's pretty similar though, if anything the anointing is the more powerful one..."

"Does it matter if I name something I'm already proud of?"

"It actually usually works best that way, you'll feel an urge to - demonstrate, exemplify it?"

"That seems like the best way to do it, then. - or, hold on..."

"...my Chosen has a good point; can you replace the anointing with a different instance of the same one, if it's stronger than I'm expecting, or should I go with the safer option over the more useful one? We're concerned about it overwriting the conceptual aspect of my domain rather than supplementing it."

"Once you've got the anointing on I can just take it away if you don't like it, takes about ten seconds, same as putting it on."

"That should be fine, then. Give it a minute, I think, to let me see what it does, but do take it off, I don't want to worry my Chosen. Does all this cost you anything, besides the time?"

"Yes, a dose of liao each for the anointing and removal, and a mana crystal for the ritual - if he's got it mastered, otherwise it's two - but you did just build us an entire white granite bridge so I kind of assumed it was covered?"

The Architect waits for a response, but definitely gives the impression that she's never knowingly turned down the offer of recompense regardless of whether considerable resources had already been supplied.

"Oh, no, you don't owe me anything for the bridge, that's what the toll booth is for. We can figure something out with trade goods for this part, if that's agreeable, and I should probably have some idea of how much I'm spending before I do it."

"One liao generally goes for just under one measure of the artisan materials, a mana crystal for just under two - our major currency is rings, so around eighteen rings a liao, twenty rings an artisan measure, thirty-eight or so for mana, although it varies around those price points."

"That sounds fine. What's the exchange rate of rings to crowns to thrones, exactly?"

"Twenty rings to the crown, eight crowns to the throne."

He thinks for a moment, and nods. "That'll be fine. I'll plan on making you that wagonload of granite, or weirwood planks if you'd rather, and I'd like to save at least half the funds from it unless we come up with something particularly good to spend it on."

"White granite's good, we mostly build out of that up here, even Weirwood isn't as good against the winter storms and we don't exactly have much in the way of forests.

So two thrones would cover just over eight mana or twice that in liao - the plan so far uses two liao and one mana, so there's six mana left in the budget before we have to think about it too much. Aulus is going to need to fetch some other people to spend the rest of the budget because he's a rainbow wizard."

"I can get to Bright Lantern with Adolphus! But if that's our budget we'd better pick what we're doing from the location rituals and item rituals carefully, pick one of Clear Lens or Shadowed Glass, or one of Skein or Bright Lantern - and I kind of want to try Cast Off The Chains Of Memory, I figure that will tell us about most of the mental effects along with Freedom of the Soul, unless we go up to curses but all the good ones are really expensive.

I really don't want to try Unfettered Anarchy or Withering Touch of Frost, if you're a place then I expect Frost would get all of the places you are..."

"Yes, let's not, the travelers wouldn't appreciate that. We can also plan to do more later, I'd just like to be a little more oriented first."

"Okay! For the very first test I'll cast Freedom of the Soul, then you'll know if any magic affects you at all.

Then Iulia will hit you with the Pride anointing when you get fed up of that, and that'll tell us if spiritual effects land on you.

We should also probably just take you into the chapel, that's got a Wisdom consecration room and that'll tell us if area spiritual effects hit you - and I guess we can test which parts of you they hit, if that turns out to be a thing?

Then we can decide whether you want to see if you can be item targeted - that's probably the important one to be honest because that means someone could target you with Words of Ending and that could be, bad. Or area targeted, but that just gives some general information stuff so it's probably not so threatening?

Oh, uh, did you want us to try to find a... we probably don't have one of the swords but the sentinels might have some of the armour, that lets you resist, like, this kind of complicated effect on you, first? And see if we can bond you to it? If you're just borrowing it that's basically free."

"If Words of Ending does what it sounds like we should check that as soon as possible, I don't want to take risks that would hurt the people who depend on me at home if they go badly so that might make the rest of it moot. And I do have some secrets that I'd want to be prepared for if they got out, so I'll want to check the area targeting as well. Beyond that I'll defer to your expertise."

"Okay, so if you really mean as soon as possible, Adolphus and I should do Bright Lantern right now, three mana, see if you count as a magic item. It might not be possible to target all of you with Words of Ending, it's only items and you're also a place, I'm not sure how to test whether Rising Roots That Rend Stone would do anything but if you're confident about physical damage that is basically physical damage, just a load of it sped up?"

"The question I'd have about that one is whether it's localized, I'd hate for someone to lose an axle over it if it affects me in the other world. But if it's just here, or if we wait until everyone's made camp for the night, sure, I have no trouble repairing root damage. As to Words of Ending, it doesn't need to happen today, necessarily - I'll want to know before I make any more claims here but I have no specific plans to do that - but if it turns out badly there's not very much point in doing any other tests, since I'll need to abandon any claims as soon as someone seems to be casting in a potentially hostile way on them at all."

"Well, let's not borrow trouble then; let's do the test we first thought of and see if you're targetable as a person.

If you'll hold still for a couple of minutes, I just need to pop some candles down and bend some Night magic Janon-wards - I might call on you for responses a couple of times, the point is to say whatever you feel like, as long as you don't loudly revoke your consent or run out of the circle or something then it'll be fine."

"Sure. Just here?"

"Just here should do fine." He reaches into a large pocket hidden in his voluminous robes and pulls out some little stubby black candles, and starts setting them up in a circle around Kiraavi's obvious person shaped body. Ke whispers "Zorech", which appears to be some kind of magic technical term encompassing emotion and passion, to each of them as he lights them with a flick of the fingers. They burn with a slightly eerie greenish light.

Then he straightens up and faces Kiraavi, with quite intense eye contact (which previously he'd been kind of avoiding a bit), from within the circle. "How are you feeling?" he asks.

He watches the candle-lighting procedure with clear interest, but doesn't hesitate to make eye contact when it's called for. "Fine. Excited to be here, to put it mildly; a little worried about that other spell."