She can easily take form in this office; it's not like it's in another god's domain.

"It's a lovely city," she says. "Darker than I'm used to, but that's the local charm, I gather."

He isn't a priest of any existing deity anymore, and can't defend himself against this powerful stranger. On the other hand, she's presenting herself as a civilized powerful stranger.

If she's going to kill him, he hopes she has the good taste to make his death painful. He wonders if he's still headed for Xovaikain, should it come to that.

"It was lovelier a week ago," says Arrats. "Who do I have the pleasure of receiving?"

"The Suwa Daimyjōin. Takeminakata-no-mikoto. Yasakatome. Yasaka Kanako. The trouble with being a god is the names and epithets one accumulates over the centuries, you know."

"I'm afraid I planned my visit here rather rapidly, or I'd have adapted to local customs beforehand."

So, some kind of opportunistic scammer angling to be a new "god" in Nidal.

That's hardly civilized at all.

"Am I to kneel and worship you? You're... a sixth circle wizard, are you?" he guesses. Calmly and politely, of course, the same way he would have were he still any circle of priest of any god.

"Oh, you're already proving useful. So this is that kind of world. I confess, I'm used to being recognized as a god on sight. Tell me, were a local god to appear before you, what would you expect? And I know they're not fantastic conversationalists, I met one or two in passing."

"I received a vision from the Midnight Lord once," he says. "Unmistakable, exquisite pain, directly to my mind. To my soul, I assume. I was insensible for weeks."

It was more than once, but let's play our cards close.

"Is this more to your liking?" she carves into his mind. She hopes it's painful enough... this is meant to be a conversation, and "insensible for weeks" is not consistent with her timetable.

"Where I'm from, this would be considered boorish. And it hardly allows you the affordance to reply."

She gives him a powerful migraine and dissociates him slightly. This is not her medium at all, and she probably wants to undo it shortly.

...maybe she has the rudiments of civilization after all. Though there's plenty of non-gods who could do this as well.

Arrats smiles. "At the least, you're a more interesting being than I gave you credit for. Please forgive me, lady..."

"Lady Kanako will do nicely, if it's how you'd address a foreign god. I'm not here to stand on ceremony if it's troublesome for you, but the proper forms do make a conversation more civilized."

She's playing this by ear, having only a cursory understanding of Nidalese culture. Shadowy torturers at the surface level, but there's an underlying drive to be urbane, sophisticated monsters she thinks she sees here. Artists of torture, not brutes. She honestly won't be able to keep up at all if it comes down to showing off skill at torture; she has none. Still, the opportunity here is immense.

"We've not had occasion in millennia to address foreign gods," says Arrats. "It's unheard of for nearly anyone to address gods face-to-face, in fact."

"Your local gods are poor conversationalists, yes. But you know, I don't hold with the idea of being an unseen, impersonal deity. That's a crutch for gods too weak to appear in all their power and majesty. Think of it; your shrines, your idols, they're not monuments to your glory, they're not reflections of your divinity. They're the bare minimum for any commoner, anyone but the most rarefied philosopher, to have an idea of you to direct their worship towards at all. In fact, careless, absentee gods may find their idols accumulating the worship for themselves!"

The best sales pitches have some sincerity. A lot of sincerity, in fact.

"I've never heard of a case like that, my lady. The Midnight Lord received the worship of all Nidal perfectly well, as far as I know. He certainly granted my spells without difficulty."

"Of course, our metaphysical truths may vary. My condolences on the loss of your god, incidentally. I truly hate to see the faithful bereft, and I apologize on behalf of my compatriots."

It's not false, even if their god was apparently very creepy.

"Your compatriots? Are you insinuating that you know how our god died?"

"He was the first casualty of an expedition from another world. The world I come from. I'm not aligned with the expedition, but I know the people involved. Zon-Kuthon was transformed back into Dou-Bral, is what I've heard, though I confess I only know a little about the former and nothing about the latter."

"He lives, then... but He abandoned us?"

Can she subtly cure his migraine now, or would that be offensive under their torture religion? She won't. He doesn't seem too impaired.

"My understanding is that the values of His... two selves... are inimical. So it stands to reason that He would abandon his faithful on changing from one to the other, if you were pleasing to Him as he was."

"Nidal will endure somehow. We've been abandoned by the gods before."

"And I'm sure it's no surprise for a foreign god to have showed up now, after all," she says.

(Actually, it seemed more "completely outside the realm of possibility" to him than "surprising", but probably the owner of the fanciest office in Pangolais isn't chosen for imagination. Maybe torture-related imagination.)

"A country like this won't go godless for long. I'm probably not the first."

(She's definitely the first. Well, unless the local gods can get very sneaky with whatever their metaphysics are.)

"We survived Earthfall thanks to the Midnight Lord."

"And how many lands can boast they survived Earthfall?"

She hopes it's few, or none. It probably is, this is a reliable sort of cold read.

"Even the survivors of lost Azlant begged us for shelter in those days."

(Is that really true, he wonders. It's a matter of historical record that Nidal weathered Earthfall quite well, anyway.)

"Indeed. In many ways, this country is a relic from antiquity. The most advanced civilization on the planet, one could argue."

"A good fit for a deity like me. I took that charming little personality test your world has as well; I'm Lawful Evil, just like your former god, though my partner came up Neutral Evil."

If he has Nidal's next patron god in his office, which, he reminds himself, he probably doesn't, it's a good opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

"So that's what you're here to propose? But I'm not important, merely wealthy, why visit me?"

Nice try, kid, but this is clearly a torture theocracy, and if she's lucky this guy is on its second-highest rung.

"I had my pick of the Umbral Court, of course. Why you? I like your decor."

It's ostentatiously gruesome, but at least it's ostentatious.