The Gords happily smile back! Smiling is much more universal than hugging. They've seen even Hellknights smile on occasion, and some demons. (After killing someone, in both cases.)

"Humanoid translates as - a technical term. Babaus are approximately human shaped, just - they're literally skin and bones. Like someone who slowly starved to death. Their skin is red and they sweat acid that burns to the touch. And they have little horns. If you can get the image out of my head, go ahead."

"You can't dress up as a babau, they - don't have a belly, just a wedge of skin and bone connecting their pelvis to their ribs. Simple shapeshifting like my alter self can't do it either."

"The easiest demon for playing dress-up is an incubus. They basically look like men, but with goat-horns and bat-wings and sometimes legs like a goat. They can shapechange, so even a normal human could be an incubus in disguise, and if some of you look human and some demonic and some shapeshift that should sell it." 

"What did you mean by 'running around causing trouble'? Real incubi would cause trouble using swords. You're not even trained to wave a sword around menacingly." This is a higher skill than sticking it into people. "The crusaders will try to kill demons - at least ones that are more annoying than threatening - and if you don't hold the door and stay safe inside, I expect they'll succeed."

"There is a very annoying kind of demon that's hard to get rid of, called quasits. They're like little children with horns and bat wings. They can go invisible at will - it still breaks if they hit something, but they reapply it right away - so they fly around causing havoc and are very hard to catch but they don't do much damage. You wouldn't avoid going into a house because of quasits." Well, civilians probably would. "But I expect you can't shapeshift into a quasit, they only weigh eight pounds."

"I don't know for certain what the three crusaders chasing me are capable of." Gord was expecting to likely have to run after making a stand. "Two of them are the officers of the conscripted war-slaves I freed, probably nothing special. The third one is whoever they went to get before coming after me, someone they thought could take on a warrior-cleric and a couple of demons. They could be a paladin or inquisitor or a cleric themselves." Not a wizard, all three were wearing armor. "All of those can detect evil - the weakest inquisitors can't, and the clerics only if they prepared it - paladins and inquisitors can do it at will, which is why it matters, they wouldn't waste a spell confirming someone who looks like a demon really is one. It has a range of sixty feet."

"Very strong mages and demons can fake alignment auras, but not someone like me and not babaus. Clerics can hide alignment auras, my remaining nondetection spell will do it and so will a simpler second circle spell I didn't prepare, but not fake an evil or chaotic alignment. It's more useful for hiding from magic detection than for passing off as Neutral."

She grabs an image from his visual cortex and cleans it up a bit.

"Hmm. So my shapeshifting is also limited, but it's limited in different ways. The primary constraint is that we don't know how to let a human brain control a body with a very different body plan. Like, I could not successfully become an octopus, because controlling eight tentacles and a bunch of internal muscles like that is not something my brain is equipped for. So a head, two arms, and two legs is the easiest thing to work with. We can do additional limbs, but usually by offloading control of the extra limbs to a bit of software -- you know, I have no idea how that word will translate? -- that handles moving them for you, and it's not always perfect. We call doing so 'puppetry'."

"The trickier constraint is that if we want to do this before letting any fixity fields into Golarion, the bodies need to be able to hold themselves together and move on their own. They don't need to be able to contain a full person, because I can set up non-fixity-crystal ways of letting someone back here puppet a body out there, as long as the door is open. But designing a new biological form from scratch is pretty difficult. It would be easier to use machines, but I don't know how obviously fake those would be."

She summons a robotic babau, and closes her eyes to try puppeting it. She moves it through a few poses, getting a feeling for where the limits of the design are. It makes faint whining noises as it moves, electric motors hidden in the chest cavity whirring as they pull on cables to move the parts that don't have good leverage.

"I can make machines like this bleed if necessary, but if anyone tried cutting them apart they would be very obviously not real," she has the babau say. She demonstrates by opening the chest cavity to show the motors.

She opens her eyes and returns to herself.

"So if something like that won't be sufficiently convincing, incubi are probably a safe bet. How many incubi would you expect to be able to hold the door for a few hours? What if they had backup from another kind of demon? What are they like, and how difficult would it be to coach some people on how they behave?"

The audibly-clockwork demon is not convincing at all! It is definitely concerning, because anything new and unknown is a threat, but that's not what they're going for, here.

"You remember what I said before about generalizations. But as for what the crusaders would expect - they're always direct. They know what they want and they immediately take it by force. They're smarter than the average mortal, but they don't use trickery or complex stratagems if they don't think they have to. They advance if they expect to win, retreat if they expect to lose, don't do stupid suicidal charges or go into a mad rage like some demons in battle."

"If they want to harm mortals they just torture or rape them, not - mind-control them into loving a demon, or trick them into breaking a vow and losing their god's favor, or leave them alive to wander the earth bemoaning their woe for a hundred years. They have mind control magic, but they don't use it for kicks, unlike most other demons. Oh, and they have tongues at will, meaning they can speak and understand all languages, which would explain why we can. Assuming the Miliways effect works on things we hear through the door, that's worth checking."

"So if some incubi wanted to hold this house, and they were confident they could withstand an attack, they probably wouldn't bother talking to the crusaders at all, except to show them how strong they are and how pointless an assault will be. And I'll be there and can help sell it. The crusaders will probably assume the escaped slaves are in here with us, too."

"Two or three incubi, with me helping, could easily hold this place all night against three average crusaders, or even indefinitely, because demons don't need to sleep. Unless their mystery third person is a strong paladin or cleric, in which case all bets are off. If they try forcing their way in, you can swarm them with clockwork demons, but if they have good offensive magic at range, we'd have to use the guns. Can you disguise them to look like really powerful crossbows?"

"By the way, besides alignment detection, a cleric is likely to have detect magic, which lets you see magical auras and even identify spells and magic items if you're really good with it. It's an orison, so they'll use it if they have it prepared. And an incubus would have a magic aura, on account of the at-will tongues, but I can't show you what to mimic because I don't have tongues myself."

    "We forgot to describe the demons' magic! This was very stupid of us. Not all demons can do everything, same as mortals, so you can just pretend not to have any of those abilities, but you should at least hear about them."

    "Some incubi can read minds, usual range of sixty feet. It doesn't always work, people can throw it off, and it only reveals fleeting surface thoughts, but it's useful for detecting invisible or hiding people. Some can also talk to their allies telepathically. They can enchant people into being friendlier to them or doing something they suggest, but only reasonable-sound things, not betraying your allies or anything like that. Unless you're the kind of person who thinks switching sides in the middle of a fight is reasonable. But the main thing is that they can change shape at will, looking like any humanoid species and even imitating specific people they've seen."

"Alright, say we hold this place. What will the crusaders do? If they don't attack us, they'll send at least one of them back for reinforcements. They won't all leave - unless we terrify them - because they'll want to keep tabs on us, and help evacuate the locals. Their reinforcements are four or five hours away, if they ride straight back from the city. Two or three hours, even if they find a fresh horse and gallop to Kenabres and then the reinforcements conjure magic horses, or I guess if Terendelev comes out in person or someone decides to spend a scroll of teleport because they think they need to rescue several hundred people in a village captured by demons."

"We should lame or kill the crusaders' horses, and any other horses we find. They'd have to abandon their armor to really run for it and they'd still be slower than horses. That should give us another couple of hours."

"Another problem is that we're sitting right on the main road between Kenabres and Nerosyan, and a random patrol or company could come by at any moment. The locals will probably send some people up and down the road for help, if they think the danger's here and not there. So that's another reason we'll probably only have a few hours undisturbed. Unless we can subdue everyone and force them into some of the other houses and make sure nobody escapes."

"Forcing people into the houses shouldn't be too hard -- if we target the crusaders and anyone else who might be able to get a message off by magic first, we can then have as many people as we need playing lower-level minion demons to round people up. And if we take out the horses first ..."

The discussion goes back and forth for a while, fleshing out more details of the plan. They ultimately agree that with so much uncertainty, a simple, robust plan is probably best. Weeping Cherry takes more diagrammed notes. Eventually, she summarizes the plan thusly:

"Okay. So, first we do any prep-work we can with the door closed, such as making sure Gord and Gordy can use guns, preparing ones disguised as crossbows, getting volunteers rounded up and organized, costuming, distributing armor, making sure everyone is fed and well rested, etc."

"Once we open the door, the first person out is Gordy, while Gord holds the door invisibly. Gordy shouts a distraction to cover the away teams riding out invisibly. They make for Kenabres and Nerosyan. They take radios to stay in constant contact, and can warn us about any parties coming down the road in either direction."

"Once they're clear of the door, we get the volunteers and forks of me who are most closely aligned with Desna, Milani, and Seranrae into Golarion to try praying directly. They hide invisibly near the door and start praying, darting back in when they need invisibility refreshed. Immediately behind them are the people who volunteered to play incubi. One of them charges the crusaders with Gordy, while the other guards the door."

"We try to take down the crusaders first. Gordy and the incubus can be equipped with knockout gas to help with that. Once we have the crusaders down, we cripple the horses and start looking through the town. Some other volunteers can come out to help with the sweep -- some mix of invisible and looking like the incubi or Gordy, in order to keep people from panicking over there being too many demons. We make sure that anybody else capable of magic is knocked out as well, and then round up the villagers and make them stay in their houses so they can't send for reinforcements."

"We coordinate from in here using the radios. If anything that looks like a miracle starts occurring, the away teams successfully contact the good gods, we lose contact with them, or twelve hours pass without success, we immediately deploy a fixity field across Golarion."

"If anyone else does come up the road, Gord and the two incubi deal with them too. We don't anticipate problems holding the door with that amount of force, but we can deploy some weaker-looking demons to help if necessary. If it looks like we can't hold the door without escalating to levels of force that would draw more than local attention -- because a high level adventurer or Terendelev decide to show up -- we deploy the fixity field."

She steps back from the diagram.

"Does that seem like a fair summary? Anything I missed, or any last-minute questions before we start preparations?"

It's a good plan! A third Gord is cloned so they can cover both away teams and the door.

And various teams attend to the preparation. Some of Weeping Cherry's self-tree tracks down volunteers for the away teams and the local operation, and brings them up to speed.

"So you can see why I thought of you. Do you think you would be interested?"

"Interested!? Of course! This is way more important than my campaign. Let me get my sword ..."

"Yes, I think I am. I will want to hear a few more details ..."

Other parts of her self tree work on designing armor, the very best that they can make while still looking like only very fine armor of ordinary make.

The costumers help some people get shifted up as incubi, and have fun designing 'backup' demon costumes for various contingencies.

Other people work on getting equipment together -- bags of holding full of gems, crossbows with hidden gun barrels, knockout gas grenades, flashbangs.

One person talks to a bunch of horse breeders, to find good, well-trained horses that they can clone.

Weeping Cherry makes sure everyone is appraised of the planned time, and encourages everyone to get some sleep, and makes sure the plan is clearly disseminated.

"You can rent a room from Bar, or from a hotel, or you're welcome to sleep at my house," she tells the Gords.

She takes the Gords to a range, and shows them how to use all of the new futuristic equipment.

Her self-tree decides which forks are going on the away teams -- Pine to Nerosyan and Mangrove to Kenabres.

They all get a good nights sleep, a few tricks pulled to sync up everyone's sleep cycles. They have a large breakfast, and then go over all the preparations one last time and get kitted out.

In a corner of Milliways, just in case it works, she kneels, and meditates on what she has learned about Golarion's gods.

When she has prepared herself, she prays.

Seranrae -- I want to do a great Good. People on Golarion are hurting, and I can stop it. Everyone is hurting each other, and I know that with resources and time to grow they can be better. Please, shield me from the Evil gods long enough to get everyone out and away from their influence.

Desna -- People deserve to travel freely, because free travel lifts everyone up. I want to free the people of Golarion. I know I can do it, if the Evil gods don't interfere. Please, shield me from their influence long enough to give everyone the choice of where to go.

Milani -- The way Golarion is right now isn't right. I want to make the systems that force people into conflict unnecessary. I want to free everyone, let them forge their own future unbound by their current chains. Please, shield me from the Evil gods long enough to shatter the status quo beyond recognition.

And everyone lines up before the door, in order by their place in the plan. The festive garlands hung above their heads clash incongruously with the anticipatory mood. A line of chalk on the floor marks the extent of the fixity fields, the crystals pulled back to give a few inches clearance from the door.

Weeping Cherry stands to the side, her headset linked to everyone's radios. She counts them down.

"3"

Everyone tenses.

"2"

In the outer solar system, one of the backup servers accelerates out of range at close to the speed of light, just in case.

"1"

Specialized manufacturing chambers spin together spells of invisibility, wrapping them around the away teams and the horses.

"GO!"

Irabeth happens to be near the gate when the solders rush in. Demon attack on the camp outside, they enchanted the sentries to fight on their side and murdered the captain in his sleep and got away. There was a cultist cleric with the demons. They need help to pursue them and rescue their men.

The city guard might not make it in time. Irabeth volunteers. She'll take a few unempowered inquisitors from gate guard duty, and of course Anevia.

(They were not, officially, on duty. Going for a leisurely walk around the city always ends the same as a patrol anyway. They never leave home unarmed or unarmored.)

Babau tracks are easy to follow, clawed outlines that smell of acid. They lead down the road to Nerosyan. Irabeth keeps them to a trot; they're at least half an hour behind the demons, some of them in heavy armor. If they tire out the horses before catching them, the chase will be over, and they have to move at the speed of their weakest mount.

The two soldiers share what little intelligence they have. They're a newly-raised company, on their way to the northern border. They stopped for a night outside the city. (The army prefers not to pay for lodgings when the men have tents already; the city authorities prefer not to host rowdy soldiers overnight.) They, uh, went in for a drink - only a couple of hours, out of the city by sundown, quite legal - met a cleric in the tavern, said he was Gorum's, bought them a couple of rounds. Naturally the men started talking with him, heard some war stories - the officers, being good Iomedaeans, virtuously kept to themselves - when it came time to leave, the men were drunk enough to talk back, refusing to leave and trying to disobey orders. 

They disciplined them, of course, knocked them sober and put them on morning watch as punishment. Woke up to shouting, the captain dead, the company treasure looted, and that bloody cleric and two babaus and the sentries making a fighting retreat. They had wounded to tend to and not enough men left for pursuit.

An hour later the babau tracks turn off the main road and double back. Anevia swears the boot-tracks they were mingled with keep on going straight towards the capital. 

The inquisitors' duty is to guard the city. They're going to follow the demons, not the tracks leading away. Demons are easier to catch anyway.

The soldiers beg her to follow the boot tracks. They think their enchanted comrades might be there.

She sends Anevia with the inquisitors, to track down the demons and to ward off any ambush, and rides on herself with the soldiers. Even if they can't catch up to the cultist cleric, there will be other people and villages on the road and they need to be warned.

Irabeth is no tracker but she is slowly becoming convinced they're following the trail of just one man. Where did the kidnapped soldiers go? She'd rather not dwell on it and it's too late to turn back.

One of the soldiers with her haltingly asks how the Inquisition deals with enchantments. Could someone be so enchanted the Inquisition couldn't detect it, or remove it? They uh, know the penalty for deserting, and they can only imagine what working with demons and murdering your own captain gets you on top of that, and - the lads were greenhorns, deluded, they don't deserve to die horribly, so surely if they were enchanted by demons and the Inquisition couldn't prove otherwise... they'd be let go?

She tells them the truth. Enchantments can be detected and also broken. The soldiers will be tried in a court of law. Being enchanted is a valid legal defense. She doesn't give voice to what they're all thinking, that the inquisitors will kill the deserters if they judge they can't capture them safely. The mood is sour enough already. She deliberates spending most of her lay on hands on defatiguing the horses, decides against it. 

She finally glimpses the fugitive in the distance, just as he turns off the road toward a small village. She curses and speeds up to a gallop; can't let him take any hostages. They're three hundred yards behind him when he runs into a building -

Opens and shuts the door again, several times in quick succession -

Then the door slams open - he's standing inside, grinning - there are sounds all around her, like a crowd of men and horses running, must be an illusion - divine favor, divine bond - the horse can't run straight into the building, she prepares to slow down at the last moment, get in cover of the walls - 

- there are moderate Evil auras on both sides of her -

"Ambush", she shouts, and tries to turn her horse away from the presumed invisible babau who'll have set their spears against her charge -

There are loud bangs and their horses scream and collide - she rolls away in time, lay on hands, get up get up find a target to smite - sees the soldiers trapped beneath their horses - there are two more copies of the man, and incubi, they've got shapeshifters - the incubi don't detect Evil, the copies of the man do, more illusions - no time to channel - she charges the nearest man, smites him, she can take at least one of them with her -

- he takes the hit and grins and she hears more bangs, seeming-incubi with crossbows fading out of invisibility all around her, she feels their bolts penetrate her back, there are bangs all around her and she falls -

Anevia, forgive me -

Irabeth wakes up disarmed and weak as a kitten, lying in a dark room. There's a woman bending down over her.

It takes her a moment to realize her wounds are gone. She feels - healthy, as far as she can tell, besides being terribly weak. She can barely sit up in her armor. She has some lay on hands remaining, no weapons or spells, and her mind.

Inheritor, she prays, but her heart's not really in it. A divine intervention isn't worth it, to save a village of a hundred people and one paladin. She prays for her death to be swift and merciful, if she is to die here, and waits.

"Hey, I'm really sorry about this," Weeping Cherry says, sitting down by the restrained crusader. "My name is Weeping Cherry."

She reaches over and taps on an orb, which starts glowing gently, slowly getting brighter to let Irabeth's eyes adjust.

"I have had an extremely weird day, and I think that's going to be the case for you too, if it isn't already. Since you're my prisoner, I should probably start by clarifying your rights. You have the right to remain silent -- I will not coerce you to speak, except by offering to fairly trade you things. You have the right to food, water, healing, and privacy. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing situation which I will clarify for you in a moment, I cannot leave you completely unmonitored. But your right to privacy means that I will not read your mind without your consent. You may also request a different guard if you don't want to deal with me specifically."

She looks at Irabeth to see how she's taking this, but continues speaking.

"I will hold you for a maximum of twelve hours. After those twelve hours, you will be free to leave unharmed, or to take a complementary teleport to any allied jurisdiction which permits them. Your strength has been cursed as part of the measures taken to restrain you. I expect to be able to lift these curses on your release in twelve hours. I have taken out a large insurance possibility against the eventuality that the curses cannot be lifted in a timely fashion for some reason, with yourself listed as the beneficiary. You also have a right to representation. If you feel that personally negotiating with me is not in your best interests, you may appoint someone else to negotiate deals on your behalf, or refuse to negotiate. Due to the ongoing situation, the person you appoint must either be one of your companions, a resident in this village, a member of an allied jurisdiction, or wait until twelve hours from now to be contacted."

"As of approximately five minutes ago, you are receiving a universal basic income, paid continuously in Stars and held in an off-planet account. You have various less urgently important rights concerning this money, which you can ask about at any time. You may use it to purchase items that will not assist in an escape, and I will see that they are delivered here safely and sent with you when you are released."

"Lastly, you have the right to immediately leave for any allied jurisdiction permitting teleportation if you swear to cooperate with safe transport arrangements and certain minor restrictions on your behavior lasting not longer than twelve hours."

She smiles at her.

"I understand you must have many questions. Do you understand these rights as I have represented them to you? Do you have concerns or clarifying questions that I should address first? If not, I have some additional information about the situation to share, and some questions for you in your role as a paladin."

She softens her voice to add "Also, you don't have a formal right to a hug, but I will give you one if you want. This whole situation seems like it might be fairly overwhelming."

She sounds like a Lawful outsider, possibly a Lawful Good one. Until she claims to be paying her in stars on another planet; at that point she just sounds crazy.

This is almost certainly some kind of nonsensical demonic plot, but Irabeth has little left to lose, so she'll play along, as long as she doesn't have to reveal anything the demons could use, up to and including her name. She certainly won't negotiate or swear to anything while she's anywhere this confused.

"I understand most of what you said but I do not understand how some of it could be true or what it would mean if it were, and I would like you to keep explaining the situation."

"Cool! That is entirely reasonable. Please feel free to interrupt with questions at any point. If you let me know what specifically was confusing, I can elaborate about that first, but it's very valid to not want to give your captors any indication about what you found surprising."

She collects herself.

"So the explanation should probably start with the fact that I am from another plane, I had never heard of Golarion until yesterday, and I am relying on an only mostly-functional translation ability to speak this language. So I hope you will bear with me if there are any communication difficulties."

"There is, apparently, a magic pocket dimension that calls itself 'Milliways' that occasionally opens portals to different worlds. When that man you were chasing ran through that door, he ended up in Milliways. Shortly thereafter -- Milliways does weird things to time; I don't understand the mechanism -- it opened another portal to my world."

"My world is very unlike Golarion. As far as we're aware, we have no souls or magic. The man you were chasing thought that we might be outsiders, because he claimed that outsiders don't have a separate soul that lives on after death. What we do have instead of Golarion-style magic, is a kind of very advanced technology that allows unlimited teleportation, creating and altering items, healing, and a variety of other minor effects. We have used this technology to solve most of our problems as a society. As soon as we heard that people on Golarion still had problems with disease, injury, food scarcity, etc., we started making plans to help."

"I can't share the exact details of our plan, or why it requires imprisoning you for twelve hours, unless you swear to me to not use the information against our interests. Likewise, the questions I have for you in your role as a paladin are related to figuring out whether we can trust Iomedae with information about the plan. The man who spoke with me about Golarion did not have good things to say about Iomedae, but also admitted that he could not provide a list of public commitments she has made which we could use to determine whether going to her for help would be a good idea."

"We expect our plan to bring aid to Golarion to either be complete or to fail within twelve hours, which is why that's the maximum length of time we plan to hold you. Getting information from you about Iomedae could potentially speed the plan up by a lot, depending on the exact details. I'm currently expecting that you providing this information will save approximately 5,000 lives in expectation. My primary intention is to keep giving you what information I can about my world, myself, and our capabilities until you feel able to trust us with answers to our questions about Iomedae. If there are monetary inducements, demonstrations, or guarantees that could help convince you faster, I am working with a large budget for this purpose."

"With that clarification, do you feel comfortable asking specific questions, or should I default to providing more background details about what my world is like, and what we expect Golarion to be like once we're able to distribute aid?"

She pours herself a cup of tea from a kettle sitting by her on the floor.

"Also, do you want a cup of tea, or anything else to make you more comfortable while we talk?"

"You are being very reasonable and - correct, upholding Law and Good, towards your prisoner. So I hope you are not offended by me saying this, if you are being truthful. But it seems much more likely to me that you are lying, or perhaps deluded." She doesn't detect Evil but that only means this woman cultist is too weak to detect.

"I was pursuing demons and a cultist cleric. I saw him and what may have been other demons" - without an Evil aura - "in the fight where I assume I was captured. I do not know who healed me, or why, but it still seems much more likely to be a demonic plot than an accidental contact with a new plane whose inhabitants are somehow more powerful than all our magic despite having none of your own." Unless their gods grant them 'technology', but not magic? Irabeth doesn't understand what it could mean, to have non-magical teleportation or healing or conjuration; these are simply some of the kinds of magic that exist.

"Show me proof. Something that could not be faked by illusion or shapeshifting. You should find it easy, with the abilities you describe. Do this and I will do everything I can to help you contact Iomedae and to answer any questions that would help you decide to talk to Her, as long as I do not need to reveal any classified information about myself and my posting."

She doesn't believe her, not really. Maybe she's seizing on any sliver of false hope instead of facing her impending death. But still she prays - Inheritor, look this way, for there is something here that You may want to see. And if there is not - I do not need your rescue, others need it more - I am your willing servant, and I trust You, and I will see You in Heaven.

Meanwhile, just after the door opens:

Right behind the away teams, several members of Weeping Cherry's self-tree rush through the door and kneel out of the way on either side of it. There are three of them, for parallelism. Each one holds a holy symbol of Seranrae, Desna, or Milani. They start by repeating their previous prayers several times, and then continue by explaining more details of the plan, explaining when they will move without divine intervention, and what would make them move right away.

Sarenrae does not understand most of the prayer, not in detail. Mortal minds are hard, and this one is unusual, and She hasn't really gotten over prophecy breaking yet. But She can clearly hear the intent behind the words:

I am Good. I am going to do Good. I need your help, but only to stop the Evil that would stop me. Guard me against Evil, as I go about doing Good.

It is not Her way, to intervene against future Evil without yet knowing the shape that it may take. And the mortal is not praying to be granted power. She will watch closely, and learn, and think, and stand ready.

It is rare and refreshing to hear a prayer addressing Her domain of travel in its Good aspect, rather than the Chaotic! A gratifying tribute to the shared cause of Good that, despite the myriad takes on what Good even is, a Lawful Good mortal will pray to Her or Kofusachi about travel, and not to Abadar.

The contents of the prayer are also unusual. The mortal promises she will cause great traveling to occur, but not to help people travel to, not for the sake of travel itself, as Desna conceives of it. She wants to let people travel from, to let them escape - whatever they may want to escape, if there is a better place for them to be.

This is not quite as Good as Desna would have it, nor as Chaotic, but it is still very Chaotic and very Good and She is of course in favor, at least until she has to pay an enormous bill. 

Who is this mortal, and where did she come from? This is the sort of question that's easily answered on every other world using past-watching, and requires either ridiculous gymnastics or exhorbitant power expenditure on Golarion (or watching everything all the time, if you want to end up depressed like Nethys).

(She isn't sorry past-watching broke. The other gods were using a bastardized reverse form and calling it prophecy, and Desna always hated pretending the future was set in stone. But it makes Her life a lot harder sometimes.)

...another one of the mortal just appeared! Out of a bit of folded space that Desna was reasonably certain didn't lead anywhere, until she saw it appear mortals (praying mortals! pretty shiny Good mortals!) out of, as it were, nowhere. She was watching carefully and there was very definitely no conjuration involved.

Mortals don't just appear from thin air. Therefore the mortal came from somewhere. Therefore Desna can go where the mortal came from. (She is the goddess of travel. She can go anywhere.)

If She sends a little bit of Her awareness all the way into the folded bit of space -

"Welcome to Milliways," the space says.

The folded space isn't a god, but it isn't not a god either. It has a domain, and an avatar, and it answers prayers from mortals that are directed the right way. But it isn't built in the same way as Golarion gods -- it is something different, a stranger from outside creation.

What it is, first and foremost, is a bar.

It's a place where people come to make friends and meet new people. It's a place where people talk honestly. It's a place where people celebrate, and do things they ordinarily wouldn't, and stumble home drunk lightened of their burdens.

It's a place where strangers lives touch, where stories begin. It's a place where universes meet, like two young lovers stealing kisses in the night.

It's a place where everyone -- everyone -- gets a first drink free.

"What can I get you?"