They reach their rooms. Vanyel rings for a servant and asks for lunch to be brought.

"I don't know what makes sense to do next," he says, leaning on his doorframe. "I wish we could expect to hear back from Leareth and the others soon, but they're probably going to take ages." 

"I think it's probably worth talking with Valdemar about plans for the Worldwound in the case where Leareth's right and there'll be a simultaneous invasion of Cheliax and also the case where he's not and we're just joining the existing forces trying to do things about the Worldwound. It seems like maybe Velgarth magic would still let us do something about the situation."

"I think so. The Worldwound is the one where there's a lot of Abyssal-related damage to the land, right? It - occurs to me that we should maybe contact the Tayledras, since they have techniques for fixing magic-damaged land here." He rubs his chin, thoughtful. "I'm also still curious if your Abyss is the same as our Abyssal Plane. And if so, why we can access that from Velgarth but not any of the other afterlives." 

"There's a lot of damage to the land, yeah. And whether they're the same thing - and whether the other Outer Planes can be reached from here - seems worth looking into, though I don't know how you go about checking, exactly."

"Can you, er, tell by watching if someone is accessing your Abyss? We - have a technique for summoning Abyssal demons here in Velgarth. I am not technically trained on it but I could derive it from other Elemental summonings. Unfortunately then I would have an Abyssal demon on my hands and they're terrible, so." 

"Well if the Abyssal demon were not chaotic evil that would be decisive. If they were, I'm not sure how I could tell whether they were from our Abyss or a different one."

"Makes sense. I don't think that's a high priority for right now or anything, I'm just curious." 

"I am too! It would be nice to be able to - situate Velgarth in our model of the universe a little better, even though with planes that kind of thing is almost always very confusing. And if you are near enough to summon from the other Outer Planes once you know about them, Good outsiders're very useful and can often be paid in things like - a promise to dedicate a month to helping the poor, or the time and attention of an evil person who wants to repent or a detailed tactics-focused summary of a war."

"Huh! Why do they wanted detailed summaries of wars?" 

"Well, Heaven fights lots of wars, and there are tactician-archons who mostly want to learn how to get better at fighting wars, and would be interested in another world mostly for the details of how it fights wars. It would be sort of a disturbing thing to be obsessed with if Hell weren't, well, what it is."

"Makes sense, though. Is evil people repenting a thing that happens much?" 

"Does it not happen in your world? Lots of people do evil things but regret them, in ours."

"We might have less infrastructure for 'repenting about it' to be a very productive thing to do. And I guess I've always...personally defined what 'evil' means, as doing bad things and not regretting it." He looks down. "I've done a lot of things that harmed people. I think most of the Heralds have things we regret, after the war." 

"Hmmm. I've done things that hurt people because I didn't see a better option. I would like to have had better options but, well, I didn't. I've done things that hurt people and had a better option I was too young or inexperienced or overwhelmed to think of, and I regret that. That doesn't usually make you evil, assuming it's more like 'we were attacked by bandits and killed them even though in hindsight we could've taken then alive with more experience fighting' than 'we murdered some people in a botched robbery.' But, like, lots of people murdered some people in a botched robbery, and they kind of wish they hadn't done it, or they try not to think about it, and they're still going to be Evil until they actually spend a long time - changing as a person, and making the world better, and trying to make it up to the people affected. And it's mostly that group of people you're trying to convince to repent instead of doubling down and deciding they're fine with it."

"Mmm. That makes sense." 

Food arrives. Vanyel takes his with a smile for the page bringing it. The young man looks kind of scared of him. When his back is turned, Vanyel grimaces slightly about it. 

"Anyway. I think I should Gate to k'Treva and ask them that. And - if I'm doing that anyway, I might as well find out what they know about the history before the Cataclysm." 

"Sounds good." He casts Delay Pain for him.

"...At some point I guess I should test if Nefreti is right and Gates don't hurt unless I'm expecting them to. The problem is that if I try without Delay Pain I will be expecting them to even if that's circular..." He makes a face. "And I'd better eat, and ask Savil if there's anything she wants me to pass on to them."

"We could do it where I secretly flip three coins and cast Delay Pain unless they all come up heads, in which case I cast something else that doesn't do anything? I'm not sure that's the right approach, though." He takes his lunch.

"Maybe? I'd have to not watch with mage-sight or else I could tell it wasn't that." 

Vanyel takes his own food and goes to eat quietly in his room. After a while he Mindspeaks Savil. She agrees that the Tayledras definitely deserve to know everything and that's a much better use of his afternoon than sitting around in meetings, especially since Fazil is the one who knows the answers to any questions the Senior Circle is likely to have.

He has Yfandes pass this on and then Gates to k'Treva. 

Savil does, in fact, turn up to collect Fazil a candlemark later. 

He is happy to head over with her. Well, 'happy to' in the polite sense not the emotional sense.

King Randale seems genuinely happy to see him! (Shavri still kind of looks like she wants to pin him down and study him all day.)

They can occupy the afternoon asking a lot of questions about his world, mostly more background detail on its different kinds of magic and its gods and its geopolitics, in both the material plane and the various afterlife planes. 

His world has lots and lots and lots of kinds of magic users, it's quick enough to explain the things that ninety percent of them are doing and hopeless to get to all of the other ones.

There are five continents, but travelling between them is hard even with teleportation (you need a seventh-circle Greater Teleport and to know where you're headed), so people know only vague things about the distant ones, called Arcadia and Tian Xia. Some of the same gods are worshipped there, and some different ones.  He knows Gerund, where Osirion is, quite well; it has various neighboring countries and the Mwangi Expanse of dense jungle and the Mana Wastes, scarred by a war between powerful wizards four thousand years ago. North of Gerund is Avistan, dominated by Cheliax, its colonies, and its former provinces which have broken loose at varyingly terrible costs. North of that there's the Worldwound.

East of Gerund is Casmaron, dominated by the Kelesh Empire of which Osirion was a tributary until Khemet the 1st took it back in a nearly bloodless coup three years after Aroden's death. 

Their world has a lot of gods; he mostly only knows the ones who are worshipped in the Inner Sea region. Asmodeus rules Hell. Axis has lots of different cities, some of them claimed by gods and some not, each of them with a well-defined legal code but not all with the same ones. Abadar's is the biggest, and the face of Axis to the rest of the multiverse because he's made it safe to travel to. The many districts of Axis are connected with portals, so even though it's a massive sprawling city of unfathomable size no two parts are actually far away once you learn your way around, which reportedly takes centuries. 

Heaven is the Lawful Good afterlife, and dedicated to the study of magic and tactics so Evil can be defeated and moral philosophy so that people can figure out parts of the pursuit of the Good that are more complicated than whether Hell needs to be fought. Nirvana is neutral good, and a significant portion of it is dedicated to healing and recovery, and to the redemption of evildoers - Nirvana attends every trial for every soul, and argues that they belong in Nirvana, and sometimes they win and get lots of people who are not neutral good by any conventional definition. Elysium (chaotic good) is an infinite wilderness, dotted with magical cities and settlements and academies and so on. Both Elysium and Nirvana intervene in the Material World as much as they can, not in armies like Heaven but individually as advisors or assistants or rescuers or teachers. 

The neutral afterlife is called the Boneyard. It is mostly full of babies, because lots of people die as babies and in lots of countries it's legal to kill them, especially before they're born. There are also people who lived a long life but didn't acquire an alignment at any point during it, but those are rare; Pharasma prefers to send someone on even if they're only loosely a fit for one of the afterlives. The chaotic neutral afterlife is called the Maelstrom, and its reality is so fluid it's hard to describe it as having any particular traits. Over time the dead there mutate into things called chaos beasts, which are terrifying and confusing but not intrinsically unpleasant to become, necessarily. 

Hell is lawful evil, organized into nine layers, ruled by Asmodeus. Mortals are mostly enslaved to advance the aims of Hell. Abaddon is neutral evil. They just hunt and eat all the petitioners sent there. The Abyss is - it might be the Abyssal Plane, they're not sure, but it's at least similar enough that they're not sure.

The Heralds listen attentively, and take notes, and look thoughtful about Nirvana, and seem deeply incredibly horrified about all of the evil afterlives. They're fascinated by the concept of afterlives that actually intervene in systematic ways in the mortal world (and the appropriate amount of disturbed about Asmodeus' interventions in particular.) 

Vanyel is gone all afternoon. When he Gates back, after dark, it's with Starwind and Moondance k'Treva both in tow.