Ara'Vine panics, having suddenly come from the blistering heat of the desert.  Shelter first... he rushes towards the shed, intent on opening the door as quickly as possible.  

It's not locked. It takes a little effort to wedge it open, and it's not any warmer inside, but at least the wind is gone. Very little light is filtering through the window, but the shed seems crowded with metal equipment, indistinct in the dark.

He has a few adaptations to the desert that really need to go.  He curls up and begins changing himself.  Thick fur sprouts, limbs get shorter and thicker.

As his eyes adjust most of the equipment remains unrecognizable, but over there is a stove and a small bit of coal and a lantern with a bottle of kerosene, plus a lighter.

He lights the lantern.

With better light, the stove is hooked into some kind of engine which is hooked into a large console-desk thing that seems... Electronic. There is a cot in the corner, no blanket, and a note on the desk that says 'no contact for 3 weeks. Locking down equipment and proceeding to base camp location. -Steven R.'

He has no idea what those are, and can't read the note.  

He stops and takes inventory of what he had on him when he was eaten by the mirror snake thing:

- About 500 pounds of organic body to shapeshift with, now only 6 feet tall instead of over 7, much of it muscle and now thickly-furred. 
- An outfit of light flowing cloth meant to be worn in hot climates, plus sandals. 
- His orich-copper Charger, a spool of weight-wire, and an orich-electrum earpiece for understanding languages.
- A handful of charge-stones containing stored up magic for emergencies or trade.  
- He had been fully-charged with magic before being eaten/teleported, but he used his week's allotment to adapt to the cold.

With the contents of the shed being apparently useless, he blows out the lantern to conserve fuel and steps outside to look around.  

The strange shed and tower are atop a ridge, perhaps chosen for being the highest spot on the broken terrain of the nearby area.

Aside from ice, snow, and the tower - which groans ominously as the wind shifts -There's nothing of note in the immediate environs. The sun is low.

...There's a faint light peaking over one of the ragged hills, barely visible for a moment every fifteen or so seconds before going off again.

He considers his options, then makes his way down and towards the light.  Kicking off the useless sandals, he lopes through the snow at a steady pace.  

The light quickly goes out of view, obscured as he attempts to navigate the ridges and cliffs. He'd better have a good sense of direction.

The snow is no worse than being in the middle of the desert during a sandstorm.  Being able to sense the planet's magnetic field like a bird helps.

Then after several hours of broken hills and sharp ice-walled canyons (and no sign of anything alive except the very faint smell of some kind of large predator, at one point), he can come to the end of the ragged terrain and onto a wide ice sheet. The light in the distance is visible again, and more clearly than before. It's a rotating beam, like a lighthouse.

Might as well keep going.

It's the middle of the day soon, snow-glare drowning out the light, but his way is still clear enough - a thin stream of smoke or steam is rising from somewhere nearby the light.

There's a shape in the sky. It looks like some kind of flying vessel, terribly small and alone in the vast sky. It's not heading towards him, unfortunately.

Wow, he's never seen something like that in person.

He can keep going until evening.

It's late in the afternoon when notices a small group of people with dog-sleds, wearing thick clothing and survival gear, watching him from a careful distance.

He brushes the accumulated snow off of his desert robe so he looks more like a person and waves towards them.  

Have they found a Yeti?

Well. He/she/it has clothes. Maybe the fur and... Size... Is some kind of overly large coat.

They approach to shouting distance and shout, "Hello! Who or what are you?"

He can understand them but the earpiece only goes one way.  

In his own language he shouts back, "Hello!  I don't know where I am." 

Hopefully that will at least register as speech and an attempt to communicate until he can get closer.  

They don't recognize the language, but that might be the fault of the driving wind, making it hard to hear. But they're feeling uneasy about this. They'll start backing away if he tries to approach them. It becomes evident that at least one of them has a rifle; He's loading it.

"Wave twice if you can understand English! Wave twice if you can understand French! Wave twice if you can understand Swedish!"

He waves twice each time, then gestures to his ear.  "I can understand you, I can't be understood."  He's wearing an elaborate electrum ear cuff, and tries to gesture that they'll need to trade it off to communicate.  

The ear jewelry is involved in his understanding somehow? A translation device seems absurd; Flying machines and automatons seemed absurd two decades ago, though.

They argue for a moment. They shout, "Please wait a few minutes!" They bring out a spotlight hooked up to a big battery and point it at the 'lighthouse', and start exchanging some kind of on-and-off flashing code with it. It's a slow process, apparently.

He waits as instructed, sitting down.

Attempt to converse - Remain cautious - Reveal information & render aid at your discretion - Report back 1 hr or before returning to city w/stranger.

Alright, then. "Hello again! You can understand us with that... Earring?"

He nods.

"And it'll work for one of us? Are you..." He looks at his friends with a brief exchange. "...A Yeti - not human? An Eskimo, that is, a native? One of the lost scouts? Or someone else?"

He listens to the questions, nods, then takes the cuff off and holds it out.  

The leader approaches - the other four stay put, nervous. He's completely baseline, bearded, and holds his hand out for a handshake. "I'm Charles Cooper. Leader of this scouting team."

He has to put the cuff up against his ear to catch that, and shakes Charles' hand gently.

"Ara'Vine" he says, pointing to himself. 

Once again he offers the cuff.  It's composed of elaborate filigree and is designed to clip on rather than needing a pierced ear.  Electrum, but with an odd red-violet cast when it catches the light just right.

It looks like jewelry. Maybe all the filigree is incredibly elaborate electrical wiring? Or something?

At any rate, after a muttered, "Pleased to meet you," Cooper holds the thing up to his own ear curiously.

Ara'Vine speaks.  The ear with the cuff near it hears the language Charles thinks in, while the other ear hears an unfamiliar language.

"I am a human, and a mage.  My mage-Power is a variety of shape-shifting.  I used it to grow fur after I was teleported to this place by some kind of unknown creature, so I could survive the cold.

"Before being teleported I was originally in the Soth Desert, on the continent of South Cardinal.  Specifically near the Olivine Monastery.  I don't know where I am now.

"That's an orich-electrum artifact.  As you've already figured out, it can be used to understand spoken languages.  We'll have to keep trading off to communicate until I have the chance to put together a phrase-book.  Or if you find someone who can speak Forrikari, Mesa-Sothan, or River-Sothan.  I also know a bit of Korstrade."

Plus a few dead languages and merfolk-songs.  No point listing those, though.

He doesn't ask for the earpiece back immediately, but his posture indicates that he's finished speaking.

...He hands the jewelry back.

"Several things about what you just said make no sense to me. That would be - mage and mage power, growing fur, orich-electrum and how that works, and I'm pretty sure South Cardinal's not a continent we've got Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Antarctica. Never heard of any of those languages but that's less surprising then missing a continent."

And then presents his hand to take the artifact again if Ara'Vine gives it over.

Earpiece swap.

He thinks for a moment before answering.  

"Even if the continent names weren't translating for some reason, every map of the planet I've seen only has five of them.

"Mages are a type of magic person.  We're sometimes also called crystal-mage or crystal-hearts.  Each of us gets a mage-power, usually something useless like 'the power to magically extinguish nearby candles' but sometimes good powers occur.  Mine lets me change my shape.  Things like, uh - growing fur, gills, or better eyes, or healing injuries faster.

"Orich-electrum is an alloy of orichalcum, gold, and silver.  ...Orichalcum being the magical metal that does different things depending on what its alloyed with."

"Magic is, as far as we knew it, not a thing. Whatever you think is magic might be, I don't know, the sun's rays causing weird chemistry to happen or something. All we've got is steam and steel and coal and hard work and engineering."

"Magic is rare, but it definitely exists.  I've grown working wings before, and it doesn't matter if I'm in the sun or not.  We've had it for far longer than we've had steam power or electricity - those have only been invented in the past few decades, as far as I've heard."

He is really hoping that some god hasn't decided to send their followers on another anti-magic crusade.  Those always manage to destroy libraries and get his god annoyed at them, then he gets sent out to retalliate.  Though that would explain the snake.

"Well. I don't suppose your 'magic' can do things like make food from nothing, heal frostbite, or make people immune to temperatures in excess of forty below zero?"

"Mine can heal frostbite.  I can fill 6 units of charge-stones per week, which is... about 24 frostbitten hands, or other things of that size.  Charge-stones being diamonds that a mage has put their power into, and others can use.  I have a few on me."

He reaches into his pocket and takes out one of his charge-stone coins.  One side has a tiny diamond embedded into it, ringed with unknown text.  The other side is an image: it looks like a garlic bulb with a dragon's head on the end of its stem.  

"You will be able to sense the power in it when you touch it.  Don't activate it, just sense."

He holds the coin out when its time to swap the earpiece.  

Cooper doesn't touch the coin.

"I think perhaps that should wait. I'd like to hear about where you're from. I can try to explain us, too - the great frost drove everyone out of where they were before and now we are trying to build a new city that'll keep us all alive until the great winter ends."

He puts the coin away.  As long as he's being taken seriously about magic there's no need to verify it.  

"I'm not sure what's different enough to mention.  Magic, I suppose?  It's rare because there isn't much of it to go around, so it usually winds up taken and passed among the rich, or given directly by the gods to their priests or demigod children.  I'm part of the priesthood of the god Diamondeye, being her Champion.  She's the god of preservation, conservation, museums and libraries.  As Champion I'm expected to do her will.  My main project these past few decades has been the preservation of lives - figuring out how to use my powers to develop new vaccines and medicines so the little magic I can do each week will have more of an effect.  

"Mages and orich-alloys are two types of magic.  There are also potions, vampires, wizards... A few others.  Those five are the ones of any real significance in the regions I know.  Technology is usually more useful at most things, especially these days with the recent advancements.  

"Soth - and South Cardinal in general - isn't as technologically advanced as North Cardinal.  North Cardinal invented a number of things somewhat recently.  Steam power, airships, electricity, combustion engines, horseless carriages... I've seen a few pictures and read reports but haven't gone up in person.

"Uh, species... Almost all humans.  Some solon - amphbious tentacle people - in the tropical swamplands of western South Cardinal.  Merfolk in the oceans.

"We haven't had any unusual weather, and I haven't heard of any before I got here."

"Well, if you're going to have a sacrilegious pantheon, museums and libraries aren't bad things to be a god about. Anyway. Most of this sounds like utter nonsense to me, I'll have to admit. The western world having the most advanced technology fits, though. The industrial revolution started in Britain, and only the States and Germany really matched us. And the unusual weather is rather baffling. Also, apocalyptic. Most of us brought our families with, but... Most of Britain wouldn't have made it out. Let alone the rest of the world."

"Can you tell me more about the weather?  Does anyone have an idea of what caused it?"

"None of us do. None of us even knew it was coming except the Boss, bless his soul, and he overheard one of the old nobles talking about it. They knew about it for almost a year in advance. Made plans to save themselves, told nobody."

"Ugh, Nobles.  That's no different here, then.  Who's the Boss?"

"Theodore Bolard. Engineer and savior. He used to be a union boss, you know. Was drafted into working on the arctic cities for the Lords, figured out what was wrong - much as from what they were making him make as overhearing rumors, the way I heard it - then went about stocking boats and preparing for a journey north. The Lords were going to abandon us to the cold, but we beat 'em to the punch thanks to Boss."

"How do the cities keep people alive?"

"These great big converted steam-trains - the Generators. They built them right on top of coal seams, and they burn huge amounts of it to keep a city full of people warm enough to live and work. We'll have greenhouses, lumber and steel mills, infirmaries, even schools before long. There were supposed to be hundreds - we only know of the one, though. Rather busy not freezing to death."

He considers his options.  He could survive in a normal frozen wasteland by hunting, but the sudden shift means the wildlife probably isn't going to be reliable.

"Any room in the city for a healer?  I'm mostly known for creating charge-stones or using my power to research medicines, and I'm also capable of doing mundane surgery once I've been caught up on the local system."

"I think we ought to have you talk to the Boss before deciding anything permanently, mind - you're. Quite strange. Unsettling, really. Being honest."

"That sounds reasonable."

"You don't need anything straight off, do you? Food, medical attention?"

He shakes his head for both questions rather than bothering with an earpiece swap for yes or no answers.  

"Alright then. We'll have to walk, I don't know if the pups can carry you."

They flash-message at the hot air balloon with a lighthouse light attached some more, then motion him to follow them. They stay fairly spread out, seeming a little bit nervous about him.

He follows quietly.

And after a few more hours of walking they come over the lip of a rise in the snow to see... A small city, more of a town really, nestled into a semi-sheltered area surrounded by a huge metal construction that dwarfs even the four-story workshop buildings off to one side. There are a lot of tents. There's at least one sawmill. People are bustling about, working.

"That's our new home. I think Boss is going to come out here to talk with you, but do you mind if two of us go deliver what we scavenged to the kitchens? We found an old cannery yesterday, and some of the cans are probably still edible!"

Ara'Vine nods, then settles down to watch the town from a distance and wait for the Boss.  

They shuffle him into a hut at the rim of the crater, to at least be out of the wind. The Boss comes out presently, hauled up to the place by some kind of elevator.

"Hello. You are... Very unexpected. And have demonstrated at least one unprecedented capability and claim more. I don't know what to make of it."

He shrugs, offers the earpiece and motions that it should be worn.  Presumably he would have been told about how it functions.  

"I didn't expect to be here either.  I had meant to leave the desert soon, but I expected to leave by foot or wing, not teleported by a giant snake.

"Magic is rare across all of Tle, but most places have at least heard of it.  Then again, if what your scout said about the number of continents is true, it's possible that the thing that sent me here sent me to another planet."

"I'm sure the astronomers, sociologists, and anthropologists will be fascinated as soon as we're not all barely managing to not starve or freeze to death. And linguists. We don't really know enough about how the rest of the world is doing. I find it hard to believe that we're the only survivors, but we don't have contact with anyone else at the moment..."

"I haven't been out there long.  I appeared a little over a day ago near a spindly metal tower on a ridge.  It was abandoned, just some unfamiliar machines left, and a note I couldn't read.

"I originally followed your light because I wanted to know where I was.  Judging by what I've heard about the weather, I think it would be best for both of us if I joined your city.  I can normally survive out in the wilderness, but I do need to eat as much as any other human and am not confident in long-term hunting if the weather stays like this. 

"As for what I bring - I have six hours of shapeshifting magic every seven days.  It keeps the same mass and the same atoms, but can re-arrange them - graphite to diamond but not lead to gold.  This magic can be put into charge-stones to be used by others for healing, but anything more complicated takes a lot of practice.  Since there is time pressure, the most maximally efficient thing is probably to have me create organs which can generate useful chemicals - vaccines, antibiotics, silk, anything else that can be grown from a living thing - that can then be harvested repeatedly.  That will let about 3 hours of magic create a constant supply of a medicine for years rather than needing to heal infected wounds manually each time.  I was in the process of learning how to create seperate functioning systems so they could be taken out and survive seperated from me, like a houseplant on a windowsill, but the extra life support for the organs would take more magic and matter to create.   

"I'm also trained in mundane medicine, though I expect I'll need to check with your doctors before they determine I'm up to the local standards.

"Uh, and possibly remove this fur or mess with the edges so it looks more like a coat."

"Interesting! That's a clever use of the power, strange as it is. The use and the power. Everyone's vaccinated against the common things except a few of the smaller children. We could use antibiotics, off the top of my head, but it's not really medicine we're short of otherwise. I think. I'll have you speak to Dr. Vauners. A few questions - this tower, did it have anything at the top? And the equipment, was there a steam core hooked up to it? A sort of round generator with arms and gears coming off, about twice as big as you? It sounds like a radio tower, very new technology, which is either a lot of useful parts or, more optimistically, a means to try and contact others."

Thoughtful pause. "...Can you make viable seeds? We lost our entire strain of kidney beans while we were trying to set up the greenhouses. And making it look a bit more like a coat would be a good idea, yes. I'm sure we can soothe most of the alarm you would cause at my word - though it might be best if we tried to run steam out a ways and gave you your own dwelling instead of trying to fit you into the bunkhouses or a tent. People would be alarmed. They've lost a lot, you know, it's hard to be calm in these conditions."

"It tapered to a point at the top.  I'm not sure how much of what I saw was a machine meant to do something and how much was just the saffolding, but there wasn't anything large like on a water tower.  Inside..." he describes the intereor of the little shed at the tower's base as well as he can remember it, with the stove, the engine, and the console.

"I'm not sure about the seeds.  I can't make them from scratch, but if you have any of the damaged beans or dead plant material still around I might be able to rebuild them.  I mostly just used my power for what the monks suggested, and they had me focused on human medicine.  Theoretically I should be able to do more with plants than I have, but it might take years of practice to get anything better than what selective breeding can do.

"It'll take me about 15 minutes of focus to kill off the hair folicles around my face and arms, and switch some along the edges to be a different color like a hem.  Later on I can duplicate my skin and shed the outer layers to make into a real coat, but that'll take about two hours and I don't have that much magic built up right now.  As a Champion, normally I'd stay at a temple, but I don't know your local gods or how they operate.  I'll just follow your lead on what I should be doing until I have a better idea of what's going on."

"That sounds like a radio tower, yes. I appreciate how you're being conciliatory and adaptable. We don't have a lot of room for luxury in the face of survival, but perhaps we'll have a little extra security with more options. I don't have a good sense of your, er, magic's budget and limitations, and it's your ability in the end. If there's nothing very urgent, that could be worth it. My scouts are too professional to admit it, but they were terrified of you at first. Doesn't seem ideal. Gods? We only believe in the one, and it doesn't really seem like His hand is at work, here."

He glances around for some kind of trash bin that he can shed the face and hand fur into.

"Adaptibility is my thing.  Gills for water, fur for cold, being reasonable for when dealing with people is important.  I like to be whatever makes sense, though usually on the large side because having more spare mass to shapeshift is handy.  

"There's 249 gods on Tle.  My god, Diamondeye, is the god of preservation and anything closer to that than to another god's domain - conservation, jam-making, museums...  She mostly leaves me to my own devices but nudges me along sometimes.  Throwing me somewhere to help keep a civilization alive is something she'd do."

There are empty crates and such.

"I will reserve judgment of, uh, Diamondeye."

And belief.

"I should send scouts to find that radio tower. We haven't found other survivors but if we can perhaps we can get help, or help them if they're in even worse shape... Can you shed that in such a way as to make it usable to patch a coat? Now is not really the time to be squeamish about anything of use, I'm afraid."

He nods.  It's good that people here are thinking ahead and not being squeamish.  There's always a fine line between giving people enough information and having them refuse to deal with it, and it's been a while since he didn't have the monks to run interference.  

"I can get started on it right away.  Probably better to do that now, before I have to walk around near other people.  Is there anything else?  I'll need to focus on the shapeshifting."