Asmodia is staring up at the rounds and the suns in the sky. But she shakes off whatever is on her mind and follows Carissa, doing her best to look reasonably blank, holding hands.

Carissa takes her back to her hotel room. 

"Guess I'll - work on notes for a wizard."

"I hope that works," says Asmodia. And then she re-pools their money and collects some of the food accumulated in the room to eat and goes back to prayer.

She can do sketches, now. The wizard should look approximately unremarkable for the region they're in. He should be in his late teens, so he has as much time as possible. He should have a really excellent working memory and a mind for visualizations and the steadiness for quick spell preparation. He should fall asleep easily and fall back asleep easily if woken and not need very much sleep to be well-rested. He should be really really smart, as smart as it's possible to push it. He should have all of the training Carissa herself got, and know the spell Scry thoroughly enough to write it in a spellbook even if he can't cast it, though ideally he'd also be able to cast it. Same for Clairvoyance, and Locate Object, and Summon Devil. He should know the region well, not just Ivory but surrounding areas, so he'll be able to identify a good place for them to set up magic research somewhere where they can benefit from the local economy to supply them but without a lot of local law enforcement. He knows how to make wondrous items. 

He should be Asmodean, but if the gods of Golarion cannot reach or benefit from this place he should be motivated to figure out what the gods here are up to and whether any of them preserve their dead rather than dissolving them, and maybe motivated to look into ascension.

She stops for a second when she writes that. But it - makes sense, right? It's that or die forever. And obviously they are trying everything they can to get Asmodeus's attention, but - if it doesn't work - 

- maybe humans cannot comprehend and will not independently work towards the important things about the world that only gods can understand. But humans can comprehend and work towards becoming gods. They've done it. There's no Starstone here but Irori supposedly did it without that, just by being perfect, and - 

- you could build on it over time, right. Make someone who knows Fox's Cunning. (She adds it to the hopeful list of spells-known). It seems overwhelmingly likely that smarter people can make smarter people, because they can hold more in their heads. Get a really good headband, make someone who's that smart without the headband...

She wants to say something to Asmodia. But - Asmodia is Asmodean, right, not the way Carissa is but in a deeper truer way that might let Asmodeus use her, if He notices her. This plan gets Carissa most of what she wants from contact with home, but it probably doesn't get Asmodia what she wants. And it's - maybe kind of seditious? 

As a backup plan, though. 

She does odd jobs and tells the bookstore owner and a nun at the church that Asmodia seems a bit more alert sometimes. 

"That's wonderful!" says the bookstore owner. "Are you sure that isn't normally how it's done, maybe they all start out like that and need a little care till they snap out of it enough? Maybe that's why not everyone's made that way where you're from."

"Maybe so! I'll have to ask her, once she can talk, assuming she gets that far along, make sure it wasn't unpleasant or anything."

"You know, the sails can get letters as far as Centerround and I think Centerround can get them most other places, if you wanted to try sending a letter where you're from."

"I should do that!"

She actually considers doing it, because it mostly couldn't hurt, but it also can't help, and even though this world has no way to read Taldane now they'll figure it out eventually. 

She works on spell research, trying to figure out Summon Devil and idly working on Fly when she's stuck on more valuable projects even though it has no immediate uses. She works on details of her wizard. 

She suggests to Asmodia that she go to the police station and ask if she can have her notes back now that the case is settled and Asmodia has woken up; she can claim Asmodia wanted to see them.

Asmodia agrees and follows her to the station. The officer they talk to greets them in Taldane.

Presumably they didn't make somebody just to read her notes? Maybe they make them anyway and figured they might as well add it. 

"Hello, officer. I came in here a couple of weeks ago to file a report about Asmodia, because she didn't wake up right? But they figured at the temple she could swallow, so they said there wasn't a case, and she got more alert after a couple of days and is all right now. She asked me about the notes and I was wondering if she could have them back to look at."

"Yeah, about that," says the officer, "who's Asmodeus?"

"Our god." 

"I'd like to see how I was made," says Asmodia.

"You can have it," says the police officer, unlocking a file cabinet. "Just - are you trying to establish a temple, here, some kind of missionary thing - some of it was pretty creepy even without knowing the part where you were catatonic for a while -"

"I can't tell you anything about how to interpret what she wrote down until I know what she wrote down, officer," says Asmodia.

Carissa watches quietly; she doesn't know how Asmodia wants to present it and Asmodia might be better at guessing how it is presented best.

The officer takes out the notes but doesn't hand them over right away. "How do you figure free will is a problem?"

"I think perhaps that doesn't translate well into Soskat, not just linguistically but conceptually," Asmodia says. "Colloquially in Taldane, it just means a certain style of person who is particularly receptive to the will of our god and good at coordinating with the rest of their community towards larger projects."

"Your favorite chore is creating water?"

"People where Carissa is from can cast spells. I was supposed to be able to do that one, but it seems possible some sorts of magic have to be learned after the fact. Of course Carissa would rather have made me with more of the benefit of her home civilization's knowledge but it's much too far."

"I've been travelling for four years and for the last two I haven't met anyone who even heard of Cheliax."

"Why were you traveling so far from home?"

"My maker died unexpectedly, in an accident enchanting magic items, so I got worried I could make the same kind of mistake and decided not to do the kind of magic research he'd been doing any more. I figured I'd take some time away, see more of the world, learn how people lived in other places. And then I left and I found lots of places that hadn't learned any spellcasting at all, didn't even know you could make people who could learn magic, so I thought it'd be - a bit of a service, to go show people simple spells and tell them about my homeland. I've just told them how to do spells, not items, in case my items knowledge is deficient, though he was sixty before he made a mistake so it's probably not horribly deficient."

"What's Asmodeus's - theology like?"

"Asmodeus teaches that people used to be - better suited to cooperate with one another and with the gods, more strategic, more careful, made long term plans and were law-abiding and worked for the good of their community and not just for their own selfish benefit, and then a lot of people drifted, and made people who drifted more, and eventually were making people who were in service just to them, which matters because Asmodeus takes the souls of his followers when we die, and we live eternally in Hell with Him, and suddenly there were lots of people who - it was hard, in Hell, to build Asmodeus's glorious eternal vision with people made so small. He doesn't turn any of them away but it's hard. And it's better to make people who love Asmodeus and want to be part of the project. Or who've never heard of it and would prefer to just dissolve when they die, I guess, but I wouldn't like to just dissolve when I die and I wouldn't really want to make someone with that preference anymore than I'd make someone who wants to be eaten."

"Hrm," says the police officer, but she hands Asmodia her notes.

And they can head out?

Looks like it.

They do that. 

At some point they should make actual missionaries who are good at explaining Asmodeanism. If Asmodeus can even reach them, here.

Asmodia goes back to praying when they're back at the hotel but doesn't look very hopeful about it.