"Very much. I can scribe you a scroll for comparison, and I would ask more on how Iomedae grants spells, but—the wizard spell."

"Prestidigitation." He's started branching out his use of it a bit, since there aren't laundry wizards. He's still very bad at using it to clean but he will slowly pick at a stray inkblot with it.

"Interesting." She watches with intense focus, seeming to count something on her fingers, as he deinks the blot. "This one I can understand more clearly. It is entirely unlike our practice of magic. It is also still not a spell, by the strict meaning. Or rather, it is a spell, but not a Spell."

She pronounces the second word in the same way "Skill" and "Level" are sometimes affected to disambiguate.

"Yes, the magical traditions don't seem to have contacted each other in thousands of years if ever."

Prestidigitation. No, she didn't do that bit right—Prestidigitation. Prestidigitation?

"There we go," she says, satisfied, turning a bit of her finger green. "Oh, this does a lot of things. It binds up a part of... there are not the words for it in this language." She forms a cube in her palm. It doesn't have the characteristics to stabilize, but she's going to try it later anyway.

"Congratulations, that took me weeks. Also I needed a spellbook but perhaps you're doing something more like a Golarion sorcerer..."

"A spellbook is ordinarily essential? What for? I shaped magic into the structure I observed you cast, though not the way it—unfolded from—we do not have the word for it either. And it is not anchored to me the way yours is; if I release it, it..." She lets the spell dissipate. "Yes, it's gone now."

"I don't know whether you'd be able to catch it with more practice. Sorcerers can and they don't need the spellbooks. The books are written with spellsilver, a magically active metal that I couldn't confidently identify even if you had a candidate specimen to show me, laced in the ink; the structure is drawn in place, usually annotated, and then sort of - peeled - renewably, from the drawing. The structure a prepared arcane spell hangs on is called a 'scaffold'."

"As if a reusable scroll, the casting of which you anchor to a 'scaffold'. Many methods of scroll creation use rare materials, some of which include metals, but nothing so standardized. I promised you a scroll to compare, did I? Would that be useful for comparison?"

"I expect I won't be able to cast it. I wouldn't even be able to cast an arcane scroll from Golarion, even if it was a spell clerics also get. But if you could bring it by tomorrow I can prepare some spells that might help me make any sense of it at all."

"Very well.

"Meanwhile, the spells you receive from Iomedae do not require a spellbook, or a scaffold? How does it work?"

"I ask Her for them every morning. I have a certain number of slots, as though I had a scaffold of that size, but without the part where I have to construct a scaffold and hang the spells on it."

Nod.

"But they're the same type of scaffold and spell your wizards have? Is Iomedae a wizard, or is the question a category error?"

"Iomedae used to be a human, and the god she got her spells from at that time was, when he was a human, a wizard. So it's not necessarily a category error, but she was a paladin - sort of like a cleric but with fewer spells and more combat prowess and stricter alignment requirements - not a wizard. And even if she was still sort of a paladin after ascending I don't think She can be one now because Her god died about a century ago. I don't think I have exactly the same type of scaffold as a wizard except for the tiny one I hang Prestidigitation on. There are - a lot of ways to be a caster on Golarion, but some spells are common to many of them, like Light, and others are idiosyncratic to a particular sort, whether that group is large or vanishingly small."

"Not unlike Skills," Xrn says. "Her god died? How did that happen?"

"He tried to move to Golarion to bring about the Age of Glory but something went terribly wrong."

"Golarion is your world, yes? What is the Age of Glory, and do you know what went wrong?"

"Yes, Golarion is the world - a planet, which I can also explain if you like. I don't know very much about this. I did not at the time I came here have a full education in Iomedae's teachings and the education I did have was biased and specifically misleading about history. Based on what I do know my understanding is that the Age of Glory was supposed to usher in paradise like that enjoyed in Axis, an afterlife and where Aroden, the dead god, made his home, but for all the living of Golarion. His death might have been either an effect or a cause of the contemporaneous breakage of prophecy; it used to be possible to usefully foresee the future on Golarion with various magic and it no longer is, even for gods. The same event coincided with the opening of the portal to the Abyss, the Worldwound, where I spent most of my career, and also a permanent storm that sank a corner of a continent."

Xrn has heard about the afterlives third-hand and is slightly skeptical about the whole concept, but it would be a distraction from the conversation. The planet thing is probably not all that important.

"And similarly it is unclear if the Worldwound and the permanent storm are related to the cause or effect of Aroden's death? I am curious if this is a usual occurrence on Golarion."

"I would imagine it unlikely that the storm killed Him. I suppose it's not impossible that the demons from the Worldwound could have. It is not usual at all; gods have died before but usually not of trying to move in and create paradise for the living."

"How do they usually die?"

"They usually don't, it's just not unheard of. One was murdered by another god; I think another couple died trying to protect Golarion from a falling stone that could have killed everyone and instead only killed most people and led to a thousand year winter. There may be gods dying in other ways that I don't know about."

"Why are they so difficult to kill? Just because they live on a different plane? The greatest beings there are concrete records of are the Dragons, but even they die ordinary deaths, and the most legendary ones were merely very good at avoiding it."

"I have never tried to kill one and know nothing about your dragons to attempt comparison."

Not even speculation. Evasive, or simply conservative? Xrn would like to know more about the god murdered by a different god, but she will not push her luck today.

"What we know is only legends mixed with history. I have not met a Dragon myself, much less fought one." In some senses of those words. "Returning to earlier discussion: you say you ask Iomedae for spells in the morning. Are you in active communication with her?"