After a few more steps they arrive in a spacious though windowless sitting room.

Sophia is laying out a tea for three on a large table surrounded by heavy plush chairs. She curtseys to them as they come in.

Well, Ishaza wouldn't notice, Alethia's face isn't in her line of sight. But it's rude. Most people prefer Not That, and so she endeavours to be considerate.

Being considerate is. Um. Somewhat hard at the moment. But she perseveres! She will be Good!

Her eyes are very emphatically not pointed anywhere they shouldn't be for the rest of the trip up the stairs, and then they are up the stairs and soon there will be tea to distract her and this is good.

Also Ishaza can now see if her eyes are misbehaving and this should also help.

Ishaza continues to seem to have no clue. 

She goes and sits in one of the comfortable chairs. 

"Crin should be here soon," she says. "And if I know her she'll be bringing a few books from the library."

"Oh, books! I highly approve of books, and thus of Crin's life choices. Well, presuming she reads them rather than using them as paperweights. In that case I am confused by her life choices."

Also she was right it is easier not to be rude now.

"Do I hear someone talking about me?" 

Crin descends from the upper landing, two large, leather-bound books in her hands. "Well, you're entirely right," she says to Ishaza. "I have brought books." 

"Indeed we were! Truly terrible gossip. You must let us know whether you truly only use books as strange paperweights so we can be very confused that my mediocre joke ended up true and then promptly depart to attempt to use my apparent gift of prophecy to make a small fortune gambling."

"I have many perfectly good crystals Ishaza has provided me for paperweights, I don't need to abuse the books."

Crin steps over to the table and sets the books down. "An atlas and a relatively recent history for you."

"Oh! Thank you so much! I immensely appreciate it."

Books! Books for her to read! So she knows more things! A Crin of consideration! A Crin of goodness!

(She really does hope that they both are who they look like they are.)

Crin takes the second seat at the table. 

"So, I saw a distinct flash from outside my window a few minutes ago. Has Ishaza been demonstrating her magic?"

"She has! It was very thoroughly impressive. She also did a few shaping exercises afterwards. I was very intrigued by the differences between Shyish and Hysh. And I enjoyed watching the very impressive destruction, I will admit."

Crin smiles at Ishaza. "I see," she says. "Ishaza's been filling you in a little on our broader situation then?"

"A bit, yes. Some of the local state of things briefly touching on recent history, and I have been corrected in a confusion or two. We've been trading questions. I asked her some about the gods, as you recommended. I have a rather positive impression of Rhya, now."

"Sounds interesting. Are you liking your guest room so far?"

She- was actually sufficiently distracted talking to Ishaza that she didn't bother to, uh, take a thorough look at it at all. That said, the room was small enough that she got a good look around the room while she was talking with Ishaza anyway.

"I am! It really is quite luxurious. And- thank you for your hospitality, again. It's- worth quite a bit, a safe place to get ones bearings."

"It's nothing. I feel safer knowing where you are, to be blunt. Shall we settle in for tea and some light reading?"

Ishaza sips her own tea. "I certainly don't mind."

Alethia's vampire senses distinctly pick up the scent of chamomile. 

"Tea and light reading sounds lovely."

She will sip her own tea. Does chamomile taste any different, now that she's a vampire?

Thanks to having all the benefits of vampiric bloodlines and none of the downsides, she can taste each individual note in the tea quite clearly without any of it being overwhelming or unbalanced. It is still chamomile tea, but a very well done one. 

This flavor of downsideless vampirism is so cool.

If she travelled to a bunch of different universes with different forms of vampirism, how would they stack?

Okay, no, now is reading time, not pondering time. She can ponder later.

To the atlas! Does everything looks the way she remembers things looking? Landmasses in about the right places? Uh, accounting for the fact that this is an Imperial atlas and she doesn't know how good their cartography is.

The atlas only covers the Empire and its immediate surroundings, but the overall shape seems vaguely right for what she can see. The maps are definitely rougher than you'd get in the age of GPS, but seem reasonably comprehensive. 

Hmm. She's going to take a pretty thorough look at the maps, especially the portions covering her immediate surroundings. She wants to get a generally solid understanding of what the surroundings of her current location look like. After she's spent a few minutes on that she can go over recent history. Immediately, she wants a sense of precisely where she is in enough detail to reason clearly about what she should do next if she suddenly learns that working with Crin and Ishaza isn't an option.

There is plenty of detail to be had! She is in Western Sylvania, close to the Empire's borders. 

One of the maps near the Border Princes is marked up with "Exodar" recorded as a new city on the far side of the mountains amid the forest. 

And that's where they landed.

They don't seem to be running on the Warcraft model, where you don't need potential or some sort to wield the Light. But they do have something like that in O'ros being able to grant or intercede with the gods for them to grant Hysh potential. A blending of some sort, most likely.

Okay, time to read the recent history. Not incredibly thoroughly, at first. Just a skim to determine what the book covers, and thus gain some sense of what exactly the major events of recent history even are. 

Up to the Exodar's crash the history looks pretty familiar, a slow downward spiral of the old races losing their hold on the world. 

The Exodar changes that. Hysh magic grows more prominent in the world with another Hysh tradition. Crystal technology makes explosives more available and helps with sealing dark forces and destroying warpstone. The Ruinous powers are fought back a bit more. The empire is a little more tolerant than she expects, with worship of Rhya and other gods of Order being spread more widely. Marienburg is still part of it rather than independent, and there are more dwarves in the southern mountains and less greenskins and "beastmen." With solid trade routes to the north and the presence of the Exodar, the Border Princes are instead the equivalent of Marienburg. The arrival of the Draenei and their Naaru patron is not a solution to Chaos, but it seems to be giving the empire more breathing space than in the timeline she's familiar with.