They order the jump. There's the brief moment of disorientation -

- and then the stars are unfamiliar.

They race to the windows to look, even though the computers will be far faster than they will at mapping them and determining if they reached the intended destination. 

Mhalir doesn't recognize the sky from any angle, but it's not like he memorized the stars for where they were trying to go. He looks out curiously, though, checking whether they're at least close-ish to a star system, and whether the computers have located any planets yet. 

A cheerful middle-aged yellow star. 

A bunch of planets - seven so far, now eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven and they're pretty sure that's all of them. 

"Not confident this is the intended destination," the pilot says, reading off the computers. "...promising nonetheless, though? There's life on at least two of those..."

<Interesting.> Watching with one of his stalks, Visser Three is also dubious that this is where they meant to go. There aren't that many known star systems with life on multiple planets. <Any indication of a technological civilization on either?>

"....life on at least four of these. Which has got to mean a technological civilization, that doesn't happen by accident - okay, we've got cities on the surface of three." He puts a picture on the screen; from here, of course, it's very very blurry.

He paces closer. <Fascinating. Do we know of anywhere on record with four inhabited planets?>

"Sure, if they developed terraforming a lot sooner than z-space jumping, but - then there should be satellites, and we're not detecting any." Lights flash on the console. "Okay, we have initial scans, from the sun outwards: one is hot and barren, some artificial structures on the surface. Two has tons of plant life and an atmosphere we can't scan through very well. Three has oceans, plants, and surface cities. Four has cities too, though it's colder at its hottest than Three is at its coldest, and has a tenth of the atmosphere, and they haven't terraformed either - Five is tidally locked, Six is lifeless and radioactive, Seven is dead, Eight and Nine are gas giants but Nine has six inhabited moons, Ten and Eleven are dead. 

And no visible spacecraft or stations anywhere. They've got to be shielding -"

<How odd.> He paces for a minute, thinking. <I want to go in closer, I think, but - very carefully. If they have the capacity to so easily shield all of their space infrastructure, they might be able to penetrate our shielding.> 

They direct the ship in. The pictures are replaced by higher-resolution pictures. The artificial structures on #1 are hard to interpret. #2 remains shrouded in cloud cover. #3 has cities in the places you'd expect them, on rivers and on the oceans, and fields of crops, and ice caps and deserts and so on. No electric lighting; the cities are dark at night. #4 has limited surface structures that are obviously the infrastructure for a more complex underground civilization. Nine's moons have fascinatingly varied plant life.

This is very odd. 

<Are we picking up anything at all in space, now that we are closer?> 

"No, Visser."

Picture of the non-plant life on #2, very blurry: enormous reptiles and oversized arthropods.

Picture of the non-plant life on #3, equally blurry: humanlike

Picture of the non-plant life on #4: taller than a hork-bajir, many-armed and tough-skinned

Picture of the non-plant life on #9's moons: octopus-things? floaty things with gas-bladders?

This is baffling. 

<...I think we should take a cloaked shuttle in on the third planet, the one with the humanoids. It has the least confusing signs of civilization.> He looks around. <I think only a handful of people should go down with it. Possibly I can explore the surface alone, since I am best placed to stay concealed.> 

"I can get a shuttle ready. And route further updates on Three to the shuttle."

(Alloran hopes very sincerely that these people do have cloaked ships, and shoot them down at once.)

Further updates on Three:

Population estimated at about a billion.

Four major continents, all of them populated with preindustrial humanoids. 

They recommend a landing point in the north, which is sparsely inhabited, and....also has a bizarre spatial anomaly the sensors can't make sense of, which he should stay away from.

Huh. Mhalir will stay away from it, although he's also curious to look at the sensor data on it later. 

He watches as the shuttle descends, tugging at the various bits and pieces of his confusion. 

Atmosphere: breathable in his base form and the following of his morphs. Climate: cold, here. There's a village about ten miles west of where they're on track to land. The spatial anomaly might be - a tear to another plane? They realize that sounds kind of nutty but it matches the readings and also their visual on the place, which is that creatures keep crawling up out of it and the locals have a forcefield of some kind up to stop them.

That is bizarre. He'll try to learn more about it, if possible. 

Alloran's base form is going to be incredibly conspicuous, here. Instead, once the shuttle is down, Mhalir leaves the pilot to guard it on the surface, cloaked, and he chooses a flying morph that shouldn't stand out too much from a distance. He'll attempt to acquire some of the local wildlife before actually venturing into a village; he doubts he can pass undercover as one of the humanoid locals, at least not yet.

He flies in the direction of the village. 

A group of locals are out hunting an enormous mammal of some kind. A pack of dogs is with them. Otherwise the snowy landscape doesn't have a lot of animals; there are other birds, but mostly they stick to the coastline. 

At the village the locals are mostly indoors, huddled around fires in long wooden houses. Occasionally one of them leaves to use an outhouse.

This place looks incredibly low tech level! He's not clear on whether the village is the most informative place to spy, but he'll start out here, see what he can learn. 

He watches for any sign of technology more advanced than wooden house and fires in use, and looks around for a place where he might be able to demorph unseen and use his Leeran morph to read the thoughts of anyone passing by. 

The hunters have spears. No technology more advanced than that is in evidence.

He could hide behind one of the houses; he'd be visible to anyone approaching from that direction, but there's no one for miles.

He'll risk it. The Leeran morph is small enough that he won't be conspicuous once he's in that form, and he won't be in Andalite form for long. (He also won't be able to stay in Leeran morph for all that long, it's cold, but he can maybe get some thoughts through the wooden wall.) 

The Leeran morph is so so so cold. These people are praying for the successful return of the hunters and worrying about whether their boyfriend likes them and being annoyed with the baby for groping them and complaining that the dog smells like shit and spinning thread.

This is really not that helpful. 

He demorphs and morphs the not-bird again, hopefully without being seen, and flies back to the shuttle. 

He is not interrupted. The shuttle has maps of the planet, by now, with cities marked and a couple other confusing-to-the-sensors points marked. 

He wants to demorph and rest, first, morphing a lot in quick succession is exhausting.

<I want to land closer to one of the cities> he tells the pilot eventually, after recounting his rather meagre observations. <I still know very little, except that the tech level in this region does not appear especially high.> 

"Understood." Which of these cities does he want to check out. There are what look like permanent war-camps near the portal, there are cities farther south...

Further south, he'll pick out a medium sized city on the map. He wants to stay well away from the weird portal. 

There are lots of medium-sized cities scattered along the rivers and coasts of this continent. Sensors detect nothing horribly unusual in their vicinity. They can head towards one chosen at random.

He has them land a few miles out, again, so he can stun and acquire a local bird. Then, in morph, he flies over the city, scouting for a place to perch and observe what the locals are doing.

The locals seem to be going about their mostly low-tech lives. There are humans, and people who look kind of like small humans but are fully grown and in some cases bearded, and people around human-height whose features are all wrong for humans, whose eyes sit in much bigger sockets and whose ears are big and pointy and batlike. Most of the people around are humans, though. They ride horses and buy things at open-air outdoor markets and call guards when someone steals bread from the open-air outdoor market. There are taverns where they drink. There are beggars on the streets, though the guards shove them along.

Occasionally, once it gets dark, there's a person who carries a glowing orb of light with no obvious source, instead of a torch. No one seems to think much of this.

Odd. This place is so odd.

<I think if we find one of them alone and stun them, they do not have weapons or defenses that can counter ours. Tomorrow though, we can rest tonight.>

This place has all of them ill at ease, but they agree to that readily enough. A billion hosts, people mutter to each other as they head up into orbit for the night. And no defenses, maybe even no long distance communications, so you could take them one city at a time. 

Mhalir is not at all ready to conclude that the planet lacks defenses. He’s very confused, something incredibly strange is going on here. But promising, so it still seems worth the risk of exploring further.

They reach orbit. He paces, thinks, eventually sleeps.

A list of sensor anomalies has been compiled by the time he wakes. There's the maybe-planar-tear with the forcefield around it. There are several places with bright non-electric lights, visible from space. There is one place with spaceships, six of them, on the ground, no corresponding technical infrastructure whatsoever. There's another potential planar tear somewhere else. There's a permanent hurricane spanning more than a hundred miles in width. There's a flying island with antigravity they don't recognize, it's not how Yeerks do it. (How Andalites do it, Alloran thinks loudly.) There are a bunch of areas that are radioactive. There are a couple other anomalies they've flagged and don't even have that much of a guess about what's going on. 

<I would like to keep some distance from the anomalies, and snatch someone away from a large population area, but ideally someone who will be more informed on local conditions than I expect the villagers were. Do we have anything on travel routes between major cities, and whether some parts of them are fairly remote?>

Most of the major cities on these two continents are on the ocean, and interact with each other by sea. Some of them are on a river, instead. There are plenty of towns that are fairly remote, but those also seem less likely to have someone informed on local conditions; the biggest cities are the most centrally located and also have the most mysterious anomalies. There are some land routes between major cities, but the locals seem to travel in reasonably well-guarded groups, probably because the local wildlife looks astonishingly dangerous.

<What about the ships traveling by sea? Are any of them smaller and less well-guarded?> 

There are lots of ships travelling by sea, and many of them don't appear defended.

<I would like to approach one of the undefended ships, then. If the shuttle stays cloaked in the air, I can fly down in morph and identify a target. Ideally we will be able to stun and grab someone without any of their shipmates observing it, but we ought to have the resources to capture the entire ship if that does not work.> 

They can pick out a ship that's a long ways from shore, so if they do have to capture it they won't be observed and should have a long time before its loss at sea is noticed.

Mhalir stuns and captures a local bird from the coast to acquire the morph, and with the shuttle hovering and cloaked, he morphs and flies down nearish the ship. The bird has excellent eyesight. He watches what the crew on the ship are doing, paying particular attention to whether they have any of the odd possible-advanced-technology, and whether any of them are alone on a section of deck out of sight of others. 

The crew is doing entirely normal things for a late-eighteenth century ship, not that he'd necessarily recognize them; plenty of them are on the deck alone at one point or another, standing lookout or carrying a message or adjusting the sails.

He's in thoughtspeech range of the shuttle, and can direct them close enough - while still cloaked - to stun one of the deckhands standing lookout and haul them up to the shuttle, while Mhalir in bird form watches from the mast to provide a warning if any of the other humans notice. 

One of the other humans notices! He looks - less shocked than you'd expect, really, but he still boggles for a second before he calls an alarm. 

<They've noticed us. We need to stun everyone on the ship as fast as possible in case they do have some way of passing rapid messages to other ships, I am not ruling that out.> 

He looks for a secluded corner to demorph; an Andalite body is going to be more useful for a full-on assault on the ship than staying as a bird. 

There's plenty of areas without people, though that's quickly changing as an alarm is shouted and a bell rings and people emerge from the decks.

He doesn't want to be caught off guard halfway through demorphing. Mhalir will wait, watching from the mast in bird form, until the pilot and other crewmember on the shuttle have made it down and one of them can cover him and stun anyone who comes into sight. 

Some of the people, stunned, go down immediately. 

Some of them don't! They shrug it off and charge, with swords! Elsewhere someone takes off into the air and coats the air around the ship with - glitter, it looks like, trying to figure out where it is even though it's shielded.

Mhalir isn't very surprised but he is mildly irritated. 

<Try to stun them again and if they still do not go down then turn up the Dracon beam setting> Mhalir orders, fluttering down to land behind the pilot so he can start demorphing and have the ability to fire a Dracon beam himself, as well as a tail-blade. <Can we send a message up to the ship specifying that we have run into complications> he adds. 

The shuttle is notifying the ship of this! Most of the people who can't be stunned still seem to die of getting a hole burned through them; the flying one dodges and then goes invisible and then suddenly their surroundings on the ship are all burning up in an intense sudden fire (Alloran is delighted) -

<Can any of the shuttle's sensors see through their cloaking> Mhalir demands, finishing the demorph and holding out his hand for the spare Dracon beam that the pilot should have brought for him. He remembers where the flying one was and what momentum he had, Andalite brains are very good for spatial awareness of their environments, and he tries shooting at the possible paths the human could be following, Andalite reflexes are good for that too. 

The shuttle is trying to find the person but can't, but also he may have successfully shot them, there haven't been additional attacks. The ship is still on fire. 

Well, there's a lot of water right there. Does the shuttle have any other means of putting out fires? ...Also he's suspicious that the flying invisible person is not shot and is just either hanging back or en route to another ship as fast as possible.

They should maybe just get all the stunned but still-alive crew onto the shuttle and leave the ship burning? It'll make it harder for any hypothetical rescuers to figure out what happened. 

They can start hauling people onto the shuttle, sure. The ship burns around them. There are about a dozen stunned survivors and in a couple of minutes they're piled up on the shuttle. All of them are human men, variously burned. 

He joins them on the shuttle. They should head for orbit right away, get medical treatment for the humans on the main ship, and Yeerk them once they're stabilized. 

Sure. 

What the fuck was that. 

Who are these people.

<...I am assuming this was the advanced technology that we have been expecting to find. We will know more as soon as we have Yeerks for the captives.> 

If any of the humans aren't too badly injured and can take a Yeerk, Mhalir can morph Yeerk right now in Alloran's body and Yeerk them to get the information sooner. 

Some of the humans are medically stable and basically uninjured, and information sooner sounds really useful! They'll also be at the ship in only a few minutes, but it might be good to know whether any of the advanced technology would enable, say, tracking them.

He morphs Yeerk, waits to be brought to an ear. 

They lift him up to an ear. 

This is a sailor named Ioannes; he's from Oppara, which is the city of the Grand Prince in the empire of Taldor. He's twenty-six and has been sailing since he ran away from home at fourteen and he knows, hazily, how the world works. There is magic. Wizards learn it from other wizards, as apprentices, you have to be clever to pick it up, and they can throw fire and turn invisible and powerful ones can teleport and become gods and stuff, he doesn't know much detail about that. Other people are born with it, it's called sorcery when it comes to you like that, and still others bargain for it with powerful beings from other planes, which isn't the sort of thing you should do at home, you're as likely as not to find you signed away your soul. Their ship had a ship's wizard, like most do, in case of pirates. He shouldn't have been able to fly far enough to reach another ship, most spells don't last that long, but he might've had Sending, which conveys a message, and maybe he could teleport though most ship's wizards can't. Their ship also had a priest, for clean water and good fortune. Priests get their magic from the gods. There are lots of gods but in oppara it's Abadar, of cities and trade, Calistria, of whores and vengeance, Cayden Cailean, of luck and drunks, Shelyn of love, Norgorber of crime, the Dawnflower who runs orphanages and soup kitchens and so forth... Gods determine where you go when you die, and they meddle in the world for their own purposes. 

This ship brings spices and tea to Oppara from Vudra, on this route. In Vudra people are brown and have their own thousand gods. Along the route there's Qadira, perpetually at war with Taldor along some border or other, and other satrapies of the distant Kelesh Empire, about which he knows barely anything. He is equally hazy on Taldor's own history, and on its other neighbors; there's Galt which is always having a revolution and Andoran which more sensibly had one and stopped and Cheliax which is ruled by Hell and Osirion which is mostly desert. 

He doesn't know the slightest thing about how magic works, but rich people pay for magic laundry and lighting and protection and powerful artifacts, and even poor people scrape together the money for magic healing, when they're injured or when a woman has just given birth and is bleeding out.

Conveniently, in morph Mhalir can still use thoughtspeech even when a Yeerk, and pass all of this on that way, it's faster than making the human body speak. 

Mhalir isn't sure he has ever been this confused before. In some ways it fits, their 'magic' - presumably some form of tech, maybe one kept secret from everyone who isn't a 'wizard' or 'cleric' - could explain the various features of the star system they had attributed to the presence of an advanced civilization. But what about the gods, they could be entities from some co-existing more powerful civilization but that doesn't quite hold together yet. 

They should be at the ship soon and can Yeerk the other prisoners and see if any of them can fill in the gaps here. And then think very carefully about their next approach to the planet, because it's both incredibly promising and terrifying. 

They get to the ship and move the captured sailors on stretchers. Most of them are medically stable; the burns don't look like fun but they won't be deadly. 

"I have the ...priest?" someone says a couple of minutes later. "I - what the hell - I have no idea how you'd do this technologically - they pray, for magic spells, and they get the magic spells - I haven't tried to operate it and I'm not sure I should because I don't think we want the god's attention -"

<No, please do not, if we do not already have the god's attention I do not want to change that.> Mhalir directs that to the Yeerk and not the host, and then asks someone to restrain the prisoner he Yeerked so he can emerge and demorph and hand them off to someone else.

He paces. Collects information, trying to piece it together into a coherent picture. Wonders if there's anything they could even do about a god coming after them. Or whether the ship's sensors would see it coming.  

"The gods are... powerful entities who primarily reside in other planes. They act in this one mostly through appointing priests and giving them powers. Occasionally they also send their servants or their heralds; very rarely they intervene directly. They used to have precognition but now they don't because it's - broken? This one follows Sarenrae, who has an unusually evangelical church that pursues ...generic nice things, as far as I can tell. They run orphanages, lobby for the rights of widows, try to convert people. People believe that which afterlife you get depends on which god you follow, and he believes that Sarenrae's afterlife is a place of eternal healing and compassion and that other gods torture their followers in pits of flame but I'm not sure he has much reason to reach that conclusion."

"That fits, actually," someone else says. "Mine left a country where they worship the Evil god Asmodeus and he in fact is pretty sure all Asmodeus's followers get tortured, in maybe literal pits of flame? They go along with this because they believe it's inevitable and improving and part of some grand divine plan, and it's somewhat pathetic to get all worked up about it, and anyway you get executed for wrongthink -"

<Why do they even have evil gods. Do the others also believe in those - mine did not think specifically about it.> Pace pace pace. His tail swishes unhappily. 

Alloran thinks that it'd be really entertaining if Visser Three decided to suddenly pretend he was against torture.

They get a tally. Most of the hosts believe in evil gods! Known evil gods include Norgorber, god of crime, and Asmodeus, the prince of Hell, and Zon-Kuthon, god of torture (Asmodeus tortures people but he is not specifically a god of it, it's just useful), and there's a goddess of disease someone once heard of, and there's Rovagug who eats planets and who all Golarion's gods worked together to imprison in the center of the earth (maybe metaphorically).

Do they know what being a god of crime or disease even means - do the gods in question meddle to increase the amount of those things in the world? 

Do any of the captives have any idea where gods come from in the first place - were they made, born, did they grow or ascend from other less powerful entities...? 

Some of them are ascended humans; there's a thing called the Starstone, in nearby Absalom, surrounded by trials and tests of worthiness, and if you touch it you become a god. Norgorber and Cayden Cailien both ascended that way; so did Iomedae, lawful good goddess of righteous war and the destruction of Evil (Alloran immediately decides he likes Her, and starts shouting for Her in case that works), and Aroden, god of humans, who is now presumed dead in the same incident that broke precognition. The priest of Sarenrae thinks She ascended from being an outsider of some kind (outsiders are both the thing people become after they die and other things native to other planes), and some gods are promoted or empowered by other gods, and the origins of some gods are unknown at least to this random group of sailors. 

Mhalir doubts Iomedae would get along with Alloran at all, but this is the least helpful thing to say even if he were still in the habit of interacting with Alloran, which he hasn't been for years, so he keeps it to himself. He's both alarmed by and curious about her; this is also his main feeling about Norgorber and Cayden Cailien. 

- Gods can be killed? Do any of the prisoners know more about the Aroden incident that led to precognition breaking? 

It happened about a hundred years ago, there were disasters all over the world, it's when the Worldwound opened, Aroden's clerics stopped receiving spells from him and also a huge share of the global population starved and Cheliax fell to Hell. People mostly don't know details because it was a hundred years ago and none of them are literate.

Well that's disturbing. 

Mhalir gives the problem of what to do about this world some thought. They can't just leave, even if some part of him kind of wants to. 

<I think we should try to capture a wizard> he says eventually, half-grudgingly. <It will be dangerous, but if we plan it very carefully I thought it ought to be possible. They can resist stun beams, it seems, but probably not sedative gas - we should stage something far away, where no one is likely to have heard about the ship.>

Though the ship's destruction might not even be that notable to the locals, it sounds like a dangerous world where bizarre things are happening constantly. 

<We know wizards come in different power levels. Can we make any guesses about where we might find weaker wizards - strong enough to have interesting magic, but not enough to defeat all of our forces in a fight.> 

They discuss. 

Some wizards are adventurers - mercenaries who travel in small groups and deal with monsters and bandits and dragons and such. Those are likely to be overprepared for everything, maybe including sedative gas. Militaries have wizards, too, who tend less wildly overprepared but could present the same problem.

Some wizards teach at the great wizard schools in Absalom and Quantium and Korvosa. Those are probably too powerful to mess with. Ships like these tend to have wizards, with narrow ships-wizard training but maybe that's still enough, and they mostly won't be powerful enough to defeat his entire force at once?

If they want someone with more comprehensive training but not a lot of combat preparedness they might want wizards who make magic items; it requires lots of knowledge of magic, someone vaguely believes, but it doesn't give you combat reflexes and they're not as likely to have invisibility and flight prepared. 

But wizards who run magic shops tend to have lots of security, because stealing from magic shops is astonishingly valuable if you can pull it off. 

You might want a recent graduate of a magic school, with all that up-to-date magic training but not a lot of experience or power yet, likelier than average to be still living cheaply alone and keeping a low profile. 

Or a retired ship's-wizard type who quit once they got old and couldn't take the long journeys anymore.

The last two options sound good. It'll require a lot of setup and surveillance to pick a target. 

Do they know the locations of any major magic schools, now? They have local(ish) human hosts, now, which they can use for some of the information-gathering; Mhalir can also scout in morph again, if they know what cities to start looking at more closely. 

None of these people know very much about wizarding schools; Taldor doesn't have them. Cheliax does? Two Chelish cities are Corentyn and Ostenso, which the sailors know of because they're major port cities, but they don't know if those have excellent wizarding schools in particular.

They should be careful while information-gathering. Mindreading is not common but it's possible and it'd notice the two minds and then they'll be in trouble. It similarly might notice Mhalir in morph, though none of these people know how exactly magic would notice that.

Alloran shouts for Iomedae louder, just in case that is why She isn't answering.

...That's a very good note. Until they know more about how the mindreading works, they should be very cautious. 

- probably this world has bookstores or libraries, though the illiterate sailor who Mhalir briefly Yeerked didn't know much about that. Maybe would it be easier to steal books from one of those, and get more background context? The language will be an issue but probably their computers can make some progress on that, if they get a decent-sized sample of books, and they can also kidnap and Yeerk a local farmer to get the spoken language in the relevant region, that'll help with figuring out the writing even if the farmer they grab isn't literate. 

They speak Taldane in Cheliax, same as these sailors speak (the dialect differences are substantial, but they're mutually intelligible especially along the coasts.) There are libraries and bookstores in major cities, often affiliated with one church or another.

He would like them to scout the Chelish cities that they think might have wizarding schools, then, from the shuttle to start with and then he'll fly over in morph, one of the faster flying morphs he's acquired just in case flying wizards show up. Hopefully people won't often be directing their mindreading upward at the sky. If those both go all right, and they can get a sense of which neighbourhoods are the wizard ones likely to have mindreading in order to avoid them, he'll consider sending some of the Yeerked humans in at that point. 

They get started on this. 

Ostenso is the home port of the Chelish navy, with grand spacious docks that must have been extraordinarily costly and that stretch on for nearly a mile. The Chelish navy is doing fleet exercises. There's an army base there too, guarding against nearby Andoran. The rest of the city is mostly two-story wood buildings. 

Corentyn looks as busy, but much less orderly; it started as a fortress city and has since sprawled outwards in three directions. The seawall is tall and grey and covers the whole coastline; the city itself has narrow streets and stone buildings.  It's on the northern end of a massive bridge, what should have been an impossible public works project at their tech level, that spans the fifteen-mile gap between this continent and the southern continent at their narrowest point. 

Corentyn is about twice as large, with a population of perhaps a hundred thousand. 

Mhalir is inclined to go with Corentyn, which doesn't have as obvious a military presence. 

He morphs one of the local birds with very good eyesight, and flies over the streets, scanning the various neighbourhoods, looking for signs of wizardry being done in public, or buildings that match the Yeerked humans' sense of what temples ought to look like. 

There are big public centrally-located temples to Asmodeus! One of them is currently hosting a public execution in which someone is skewered on a pike for treason. There are no visible temples to other gods. 

In the upscale part of the city, there are magic streetlights and the roads are neatly paved with flat, wide paving-stones. There are magic shops. People don't tend to do magic casually as they walk but they often have a magic-bonded creature on their shoulder or at their side, a raven or a raptor or a cat or a small dragon.

There is a school of wizardry, labelled as such (the sailor couldn't read but Alloran's translation software is starting to get the swing of things).

Mhalir flies back to the shuttle to mark the relevant places on a map. Learning the address of a recently graduated wizard is going to take a lot more surveillance than this, but for a start he's tried to mark out less fancy-looking bookshops, in the less upscale parts of town, where there will hopefully be less in the way of magic defences.

He thinks about what approach makes the most sense here. <I can try to get in in morph, but I cannot bring books with me that way, if I use a small morph. ...I suppose we could just send one of the human hosts with local currency, if any of our prisoners had some with them or if we can get a good enough sense of it to imitate it, that might be simpler. We can drop them off nearby so they do not need to travel through too much of the city and potentially encounter mindreading wizards.> 

None of them had Chelish currency, but probably Cheliax takes gold and silver same as everywhere else, and it won't be that remarkable to have Taldane money in a port city. 

Mhalir plans to be nearby in bird morph again, so he can watch the surroundings, and warn them if trouble seems imminent, although if the shop does have a wizard who happens to be mindreading all their customers at that particular moment, they're going to have a serious problem. 

If the human hosts speak the same language as the locals here, then this should be quite straightforward; they can ask for books on history and on the gods. Mhalir has a sense that books to learn magic aren't going to be sold at a ordinary bookshop, but there might be books more generally about magic. 

It's the same language; their accents will identify them as from Taldor but it should be possible for them to make themselves understood.

The bookstore turns out to have books on history and on the gods and on the grand Chelish revolution in the teaching of magic.

Excellent! Hopefully they have enough Taldane money to buy a book on each topic, and once the book-purchasing scouts have been retrieved, Mhalir directs them to upload pictures of all the book pages to the shuttle computers, while he makes a start of reading them directly using Alloran's translation software. He starts with the Chelish revolution in teaching magic, since this seems very relevant to how magic schools work. 

Historically, claims this book, magic has been taught by wizards to apprentices, often people they encounted through their travels or who impressed them with their cleverness. But it serves Asmodeus for many of his people to be wizards, and in His service House Thrune has funded great academies of magic, which train all of the most promising students in all of Cheliax in magic. Students are evaluated at the age of 12, and again at 16, with a spell that can sense the potential of their minds, and those suited to wizardry will get six years of training in it. It is the duty of every loyal parent to ensure their child is tested, so that no potential is missed and every worthy wizard gets a suitable education.  

Other schools of wizardry only teach students basic magic, but students who graduate from the top Chelish schools of magic can often, by the end of their tour of mandatory national service, cast third-circle spells; this means that Cheliax has more wizards than any other country for national defense and for inventing new heights of magic. Cheliax has also contributed to the standardization of measures of the skill of a wizard; while some parts of the world spoke of 'circles' and some of 'levels' and some of 'masters' and some simply sorted wizards by the most powerful spell they could cast, Cheliax has studied the true underlying nature of magical progression and sorts its students accordingly, so as to ensure they progress as quickly as possible.

(The true underlying nature of magic is not included in this book.)

Various loyal impressive wizard prodigies are profiled; they now serve the crown directly in Egorian, the book informs him, or are in the army.

He's unsure if they want to aim for someone from a better school, who's likely to know more about magic, or a less talented wizard who will still know something but will be easier to abduct and less likely to be missed.

In any case they need to do a lot more scouting. It would be very useful if they had the mindreading themselves, for this; it sounds like it's significantly longer range than what his Leeran morph can do. 

Possibly the best, or at least the least risky way to learn what they need to know is just to get a lot of shuttle surveillance on the city, from close enough to see individual people, and try to spot people doing magic, and then track them back to where they live and single out a few who live in poorer areas of the city. 

This is going to take a while. 

Alloran yells to Iomedae, and Sarenrae, and all of the other good gods anyone has mentioned. This doesn't do anything.

The host who is a priest of Sarenrae gets a vision. His goddess appears to him with the rising sun and whispers that there is a place in Nirvana for everyone, and that to truly believe this is to already be there. He finds this comforting; it suggests that there is a divine plan, even if its details are unclear as divine plans tend to be. 

Mhalir has so little idea what to make of this. The unspecific nature of it is somewhat reassuring, in that it's not obvious Sarenrae knows exactly what they're doing or can interfere precisely. They'll continue the operation here, after a trip back to orbit so the Yeerks can all visit the pool. 

Since they're going to be spending a while watching video footage of the city looking for wizards, he might as well send some of the Yeerks with local human hosts to carefully selected outskirts of the city, places without much visible magic, to visit markets and listen to conversations. He tells them to give the temples to Asmodeus a wide berth, even though it's not obvious what sort of power the gods have within their temples. 

Mhalir himself flies around as various sorts of bird, sometimes staying high above the crowds, sometimes finding a roof to perch and watch street traffic.

Do they have any idea whether wizards in Cheliax have particular uniforms or styles of dress, that would make them recognizable even if they're not doing magic at the moment? 

They don't seem to, except the ones in the military and on-duty; looking at the people who frequent magic shops and the private libraries near the school is more promising.  The people there are an even mix of men and women, well-dressed but not uniformly so. The more powerful ones all have headbands, and those seem to be understood locally to mean something like that someone is a wizard of note.

In conversation, people complain about the weather and the upkeep on the roads out of town, and worry about delayed ships and talk about their families and share very distant gossip about the King of Cheliax and his plans for the country. (Maybe they'll take back Andoran. Maybe they'll conquer south across the sea. Maybe they'll use magic to have the best harvest in history.)

A group of soldier-wizards returns by ship from some distant war, and these ones are neatly coded by power level; using the book on Chelish instruction of magic, he can parse it. Most of the younger wizards are first-circle or second-circle. The older ones are mostly third-circle or fourth-circle, though there are a few exceptions: some middle-aged men who are still second-circle, one girl who can't possibly be older than 23 or 24 and has the third-circle uniform already.

They make another trip back to the ship in orbit for a Yeerk pool visit before they're ready to move. 

<I would like to get one of the returned soldiers if we can> Mhalir tells his people, <but they are powerful enough that I am very unsure about capturing any of them by force. I would be tempted to approach one of them and ask about an alliance, but - I do not think we can afford any misjudgements here, and so I am reluctant to take the risk at this point. I think perhaps we should try for one of the less powerful local wizards, for their local context, and then use that to judge whether we can take on one of the soldiers.> 

This seems pretty reasonable. They've identified a few of the local wizards-in-training who live alone and could probably be taken at least temporarily without being missed.

<I think we should try this at night, with sedative gas. If it goes smoothly, and if they know more about extrapolating power level and we think we can take on one of the soldiers, I think we should be prepared to do that immediately, before anyone would be missed.> 

"In that case we should pick out some soldier targets at each power level, presumably - so if it still seems wise we know who we have in mind -"

<Yes, we should do that.> They can go down the list of all of them who they saw arrive, figure out where they're staying in the city. <I think it makes sense to go for the younger people at a given level, since they will have less overall experience.>

This is fairly straightforward with the lower level wizards. If they think they can actually take someone at third level, it might make sense to try for the very young woman, although Mhalir is also concerned that if she's unusually prodigious it might actually be harder. 

There are some other third-circle casters who are probably thirty or so, if that seems like a better bet.

Maybe they can compare what sort of accommodations they have, use that as another indicator; they want the highest level wizard they can manage, but ideally one who doesn't have a well-guarded house. 

It seems like most third-circle or higher wizards have nice houses or stay in nice inns, many of them shielded (presumably with some kind of magic) against sensors. The young one doesn't; she seems to be staying in her mother's house down by the docks, along with the mother, a sister, and a cook and housekeeper, who are a different species and probably slaves.

This does not exactly meet the criteria for 'lives alone', but it's definitely an easier target than the magically-shielded dwellings. Really the important thing to find out from their first target is whether wizards at various levels can block the effects of sedative gas even if they're not deliberately casting a spell for it right then. If not, it seems like it should be feasible to snatch the younger wizard quietly, without waking any of the others in the house, and if any of them are woken they can be quickly stunned.

- Unless they have whatever weird property makes it so that humans on this planet are sometimes immune to the stun setting on Dracon beams. Do any of the hosts know what's up with that. 

Well, powerful people are hard to stun because they're powerful. (These sailors don't know much about it but it's generally understood that all powerful magic-users and warriors are at all times much harder to kill than a normal person, from any cause - they can jump off cliffs.)

You still can stun them, it just requires five times as much power or so, and it's a bit harder to take them down in a definitely nonlethal fashion.

Probably the young woman's mother and sister and servants/slaves are not powerful warriors. (Also it's fascinating that it works that way and he very much wants to learn more.) 

Do they have other candidate soldier-wizards at first and second level, in unshielded accommodations? 

They do! Ones near the first one they take, so they can move quickly if they need to.

Then once it's night, they can get started on the plan. Mhalir has in the meantime acquired a local bird called an owl, which has pretty good vision even in dim light, and can perch on a nearby rooftop and watch the first stage of the operation, with the local, lower-level wizard. 

The wizard doesn't react to the sedative gas; once he wakes up it's over. "There's a low-level spell called Alarm they use to be warned of anyone approaching or entering the house; as long as we don't do that they shouldn't notice us unless they have far more powerful spells, this one doesn't know them but he thinks they'd be fourth, fifth circle," the Yeerk reports. "They are not automatically protected from a sedative gas, though elves might be, this guy thinks they're immune to sleep magic and maybe it's the same thing. He also thinks sufficiently powerful wizards could just teleport out from having a Yeerk in their heads, but that'd be fifth circle, maybe fourth for a specialist. They have to prepare their spells every day and at night they probably have very few of them, because they've used them and don't get new ones until the morning. I can check whether we'll be able to use their spells, if we want to check that now -"

<Yes, it would be good to check that now. And if the stronger defences are fourth or fifth level, I think we should prepare to take the young third-level wizard.> 

His people move on that. This wizard tries to Detect Magic, with a gesture and an incomprehensible word. "That worked," he says. "It might be more complicated for spells where commands are given telepathically, I think they might think of the host as the person who can give those commands - we can test that later - everyone second-circle or higher is going to have Detect Thoughts, though they're mostly supposed to use it for the King some of them use it casually - I think it's risky being here -"

<It is definitely risky to stay and we should return to the ship once we have the other wizard - or try and fail to capture her, I suppose, if it goes unexpectedly badly I think we should just abort.> 

He nods and stuffs his host's magic-related possessions into a bag and heads out to join them. "It'd be better to get a smarter one if you can, this one barely picked up the easiest class of spells and isn't expected to get much farther. Smart ones can do interplanetary point-to-point travel, they can control people from a distance, they can shapechange -- not as flexibly as morph --"

<That makes sense. I think the soldier we are trying for next is probably quite smart. What wizard level is Detect Thoughts?>

"Second."

<Then maybe we will have access to it soon. Are there factors other than intelligence that determine progress as a wizard - diligence of practice, I would assume...> 

"And to get past third you need combat experience. They think it's something about a physiological response to using magic in real high-stakes situations. It increases your peak channeling capacity, and then you can prepare more powerful spells. And then wizards benefit from being around other wizards, sharing spell notes, things like that, a wizard who knows a lot more spells is a lot more powerful - there are other kinds of magic-user who can do more damage, the main thing wizards have going for them is versatility."

<That makes sense. Sorcerers are born with magic powers, right - what other kinds are there?> 

"There's probably dozens of kinds. Alchemists do magic chemistry, bards sing, witches make deals with extraplanar patrons and shamans make deals with minor local spirits, summoners have a specific extraplanar linked spirit, there are various variants of wizards using different approaches to arcane magic..."

<This world is so bizarre and complicated.>

Still in morph, Mhalir flies over to join the shuttle near the other wizard's house, well, mother's house. They should if possible arrange to gas the house before any of their people approach, so the alarm-magic won't go off until it's too late. 

They can gas the house without getting too close, if they don't mind using more gas than necessary. 

It'll be fastest to drag her out on the spot; the other one took about fifteen minutes to wake up, and it's better not to stay this long.

Using more gas than necessary seems fine, and he agrees on hauling her out right away. 

It goes smoothly. Once they're confident she has to be under they hurry in, and drag her out thirty seconds after that. No one else wakes. The shuttle takes off for orbit. "The farther we are the less likely they'll successfully mount a rescue," the Yeerk with a wizard host says. "My host doesn't expect them to try anyway but if they did they'd scry the targets and Teleport off the scried image. There are ways to block a scry but he doesn't know them. The Teleport with more than eight hundred miles range is very rare and they wouldn't bother."

<We can return to the ship and regroup there. It may at this point make sense to return to Yeerk space and report our finding here, now that we have more extensive information and - proof of their special capabilities.>

Is the young woman going to be awake soon? Mhalir is wondering if this is one he wants to see for himself.

(Also he wishes he could afford to let her wake up and have a conversation first, he doesn't like all of this taking involuntary hosts, but letting her wake up un-Yeerked seems very very ill-advised.) 

They're monitoring her. Five more minutes, probably. They could... wake her with a Yeerk but not have the Yeerk seize control unless she tries to light everything on fire?

...Sure, that at least seems a bit less hostile than not doing that. 

He's very curious what she's going to think. Wizards here, especially wizards who've fought in far-off wars, probably have a lot more exposure to bizarre happenings than Earth humans. Maybe she'll take the appearance of a strange furry blue alien in stride.

In that case, one of the Yeerks brought for this purpose can Yeerk her, and Mhalir, as the one in command on their expedition, will try to talk to her, unless she immediately tries to set everything on fire. Upside of trying to persuade the more powerful wizard to cooperate: securing a wizard while their Yeerk is in the pool might be an even harder problem than Alloran. He supposes they can use up all of her spells right before... 

Worry about that later. He paces, waits for her to wake up. 

- she wakes up with a headache somewhere unfamiliar and there's a blue - centaur? horse? - probably it's very offensive to get wrong but she has no idea. Where is she. 

<My name is Mhalir> the blue centaur-horse-thing says to her. Telepathically. <You are on my spaceship. What is your name?>

- spaceship? Is that like a flying island? Or like the things in Numeria - how'd she get to Numeria - 

- he's probably not going to kill her outright on the first instance of being rude, this would be a lot of effort to go to for that. And probably a fey wouldn't have given his name. They could trivially have truth magic up, though -  "Sevar," she says, just in case, she thinks family names count for less. "Did you kidnap me."

<Yes.> He briefly considers apologizing but she's unlikely to appreciate an apology and it's not like he can claim he regrets it, exactly. <We are from another world - not another planet around your sun, a world very far away. We were testing experimental transport between stars, and instead of reaching our intended destination, we ended up here and have been studying your world's magic.> 

How plausible is that.

There are other worlds. There are worlds around other stars, though they know of only a few of them. Some of them could want to study Golarion's magic without attracting attention. On the other hand it's very - neat? She can't verify anything about it. She is specifically a person who couldn't verify any of it, a cleric would have truth magic - of course, if you're interested in alien magic you'd be interested in their frameworks for arcane magic, probably. The gods mostly don't operate on other worlds, as far as she knows. 

She is scared. She is not going to act scared because sometimes people take their cues about whether they're dealing with an equal or with a slave from whether you are scared. "I see. Do you have my spellbook."

<Did you see it?> he asks the people who actually went into the house. They were aware of the importance of spellbooks, from the first wizard, but weren't going to stick around long to look for it. 

They shake their heads. It wasn't on her desk or in an obvious locked box or anything.

It is in an extradimensional space from which she can recall it if she wishes but that wasn't technically a lie. 

"I would probably greatly enjoy participating in an exchange of magical knowledge between our peoples. But most of the capabilities of wizards require our spellbooks. May I return home and get it?" 

...Well, they can just send her with a Yeerk in her head, without informing her of that fact unless she tries to tell anyone about them or avoid coming back. Still, he would rather not take extra risks, here, and also it might be suspicious if they do agree to let her go without any restrictions. 

<Do you need to return home personally?> he asks her. <Perhaps we can retrieve it for you.> 

He's impressed by her calm manner, and the fact that she's evidently planning. He wishes he could ask her Yeerk what she was thinking, but unfortunately, while he can thoughtspeak with them if he wants, they can't answer. 

"I don't know what sorts of things your people can do. I would retrieve it by returning to my desk and then recalling it by magic from the corresponding location in the Ethereal Plane." And telling her mother to go to the church and get help.

<Do you need to be at your desk or can you do it from elsewhere.>

She is almost definitely planning something, probably something clever, and he doesn't know what and can't find out without revealing that she has a Yeerk in her head. It's very frustrating. 

The question is likelier if he does have truth magic up but isn't just mindreading her. "I could cast Etherealness and then traverse the Ethereal plane for it but that's riskier than going home and also I can't cast spells without my spellbook. If you have Etherealness or a scroll of it that'd do." 

<But you could do it from your desk without needing a scroll?>

"Yes. At my desk I don't have to search for it, I can just grab it right back."

<We have already left the planet. I want to retrieve your spellbook for you, so we can collaborate fruitfully. I will consider the simplest way to do this, either obtaining you a scroll or bringing you back to retrieve it.> 

"Thank you. Are you in a hurry to get somewhere in particular?"

If he's going to be asking her for her voluntary help then he does, in fact, need to tell her what they want help with. 

<We are fighting a war. The inhabitants of another world are trying to destroy our people. I will explain more once we have retrieved your spellbook.> 

That is such fucking bullshit and Alloran is furious with him, for lying like that. 

"My country of Cheliax might be in a position to help you with that, and our god certainly could, but I do not think I alone could do very much. I am a very new wizard, and it is a craft where one improves with time and study."

<That makes sense. I will take it into consideration. Actually, I would like to hear more from you about your god. I have only heard outsiders' perspectives on him.> 

She can probably read something into that but she's not sure what. It'd be nice to have more context before she has to explain anything, but - "Asmodeus is the ruler of Hell, the largest and most powerful of the lawful afterlives, and the only one that takes people regardless of alignment. He is a Lawful Evil god. He is one of the oldest of Golarion's god, and the most powerful. His church in Cheliax is headed by the Grand High Priestess Aspexia Rugatonn. He offered the people of Cheliax his protection after a terrible civil war and I expect he would offer it to you also."

<How do the afterlives work? I am not quite sure that I understand the concept of alignment you are speaking of, it is unclear to me if our world has it and as far as I am aware we do not have afterlives at all.> 

(Thus the couple of contingency-plans, prepared in secret, unknown even to the others on the ship.) 

"I'm so sorry," she says sincerely. "When we die, our souls are distributed among the gods. The exact arrangement has varied over time and Asmodeus will change it at some point in the future, but right now souls are judged in the courts of Pharasma, the goddess of the dead. They are judged according to their Law and Chaos, and Good and Evil. Those are - concepts the gods use, they might be translating to nearby concepts that your people use or they might not. Law as it is relevant to humans is mostly the tendency towards order and participation in ordered society, the willingness to obey the law and obey just authorities. Evil as it is relevant to humans is, well, the tendency to have goals and accomplish things, unless you're willing to be very terribly narrow about it and only associate with similarly narrow people. The gods of Law and the gods of Chaos generally oppose each others' interests, and the gods of Good and of Evil often do as well, though it's not universal. The Lawful Good and Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil gods work together at the Worldwound to stop demons from spilling out across the world and destroying everything.

I think that Asmodeus could claim your souls, if you allied with him, so that you would get an afterlife when you died. He would be happy to do this; He considers it wasteful, for souls to be - whatever must happen, if they don't go anywhere. To devils souls are valuable, even the weakest ones."

<I see.> He is going to want such a detailed report from the Yeerk in her head, later, but he doesn't want to reveal his hand just yet. <I will have more questions on that later, I think. Do you know of any magic shops where we could obtain the scroll you need, but where no one present would have Detect Thoughts?> 

She may well just lie to him, and it's infuriatingly hard to find out when he can't talk to her Yeerk. He's very much wishing he had just done it himself, except that this conversation is also promising... Frustrating and stressful, but still promising. 

Why would it be a problem if someone had Detect Thoughts, do they have no shield against it? She suddenly desperately wants to detect their thoughts. "I don't know of a shop that carries Etherealness regularly, it's a bit of a niche spell." It's ninth circle and there probably isn't a scroll of it anywhere in the world. "If anyone in Corentyn would have it Tómas would, at Second and Academy, and I'm sure some of the people there know how to Detect Thoughts but I'd be very surprised if they were doing it to random passersby," though they may well do it to someone who shows up wanting a scroll of Etherealness. 

If this doesn't work she's probably in very grave danger and she should maybe have weighed the pros and cons more clearly before deciding to try to work around a truth spell but -

- but her initial analysis might still hold, they might not want to kill her, and - and if they do kill her she has valuable information for Hell, maybe -

It still sounds very risky, and also she's not giving any signs of lying but he would bet that she is, at least about some aspect of it. 

<It might be simpler just to return you to your home before dawn, so that you can retrieve it there.> He turns all four eyes on her. <If you swear that you will go directly in, retrieve it, and come out without talking to anyone. We have the capacity to watch you while you are there.>

And the Yeerk in her head can stop her from taking any inconvenient actions - and probably directly compel her to retrieve the spellbook but he's not utterly sure of that. 

"I assume you have some very good reasons for secrecy. And I have family, at home, they're not in the army like I am, I wouldn't want to drag them into all of this. I promise I'll go to my room and fetch it and then I'll walk right back out and you can scry me the whole time, if you'd like." And the stomping on the stairs will wake her mother, a light sleeper, and then she'll message 'help' and then - well, she might very well end up personally dead but the situation will be appropriately escalated.

- she's not committed, yet, she can reevaluate this and do what she claimed she'd do if she'd rather. She can think on the way back.

<All right.> Mhalir directs the pilot to head back toward the planet. It seems unlikely a rescue mission will be mounted for either of their new captives, at least not before morning when their disappearances are noted. 

And he privately thoughtspeaks to 'Sevar's' Yeerk. <Do not let her raise an alarm, but wait to see what she does first. I am curious.> 

On the flight back he asks her more questions about Hell, and Cheliax's government, and exactly what resources they have to offer. 

Hell is unpleasant for mortals at first, there's no point in trying to soften that. It might be more true of mortals from Golarion, who have a special flaw in the will introduced by a god who was an enemy of Asmodeus and is now dead (it is not wise to be an enemy of Asmodeus). But anyway the first time in Hell is a process of correction, and you can get started on it in life but most people don't get very far on it in life, and it is unpleasant, but the thing about eternal life is that you should not really be very distracted by something that'll happen for a few years or even a few centuries of it. Humans have a hard time with that, and many of them fear Hell, which is mostly all right except insofar as it makes them incompetent in life, desperately hoping that if they do nothing of note they'll make Lawful Neutral.

Cheliax has a King, named Infrexus; she knows little about him but Cheliax has prospered in his reign, and he's Lawful obviously which means he'll keep agreements if he makes them, and he will obviously make an agreement that delivers an entire new people to Asmodeus. 

Cheliax has the world's most powerful armies but he'll forgive her for not sharing details with friends met so recently. What sort of resources were his people hoping for?

Mhalir is very dubious about a lot of that, but he listens attentively anyway. She will surely forgive him for not sharing any sensitive strategic information, for the same reasons, but - well, wizards mainly, neither his world nor their enemies' world nor any of the other civilizations they know of have their kind of magic, and it could be a game-changing advantage. 

For once, Mhalir is paying attention to Alloran's reactions and thoughts and feelings. He wants an outside perspective. Alloran's perspectives are always very, well, Andalite-flavoured, as well as personal-hatred-of-Mhalir-flavoured, which is understandable on his part. But still, this time he's curious. 

Alloran, in between chanting the names of the Good gods he has heard of, wholeheartedly opposes any alliance of this kind, obviously. Mostly he's scared that it'll make it easier for the Yeerks to enslave the galaxy, which the evil god probably doesn't care about or actively thinks is great. He can't figure out why the girl seems in favor of an alliance between the Yeerks and Asmodeus. Obviously she doesn't know that Yeerks are evil, but also Asmodeus seems horrible and Hell seems horrible and he's confused why she's trying to sell it instead of the alliance with one of the Good gods that would be natural if the situation were really as Mhalir had dishonestly described it - 

- Andalites will be quiet, sometimes, when their society has a consensus that seems to be missing something important they haven't figured out how to insert, but you couldn't get them all all right with being tortured when they died - and they wouldn't defend it to a stranger, just say it's not a topic they're an expert in - 

- Iomedae Iomedae Iomedae help -

Mhalir is in agreement that Asmodeus sounds horrible! (He also so, so badly wants to see the inside of Sevar's head for himself.) He's...not sure that Hell is worse that ceasing to exist. Probably a lot of other people would think it was worse, though, including most Yeerks, which makes it not really an upside for a potential alliance. Probably what he wants to do is use Sevar's intel to kidnap some more powerful wizards, along with their spellbooks, and then get out of here. Possibly come back to explore other countries with less horrible gods. He might consider a more limited trade of resources with Cheliax, but he's far from any conclusions there. 

They reach the planet and descend, still cloaked.

<Remember our agreement> he says to Sevar, before they let her down a couple of city blocks away from her house. 

Betray them or no? The argument for not betraying them is that they might be possible to talk around anyway and if her effort to summon a secret rescue mission is discovered it might make that less likely. The argument for betraying them is obviously that right now she has no leverage at all and also no way to make sure that word of this situation reaches anyone who could do anything with it, and if there's someone then that's much better.

They might be reading her mind. 

She doesn't think so. Mhalir would have to be a very good actor. But he's another species, it's hard to sense peoples' motives even if they're only an Elf or something and the thing he is is stranger than that -

- why give her the opportunity, if he suspected her -

- if they catch her, things will go much much worse than they're going right now. They might dispose of her entirely and kidnap someone more cooperative. They might have already done that, taken hundreds of prisoners, they might be checking who is the easiest to work with -

- when you're uncertain about lots of things, don't break the rules -

- she wants to, but that's not an argument, you can't let the desire to be clever and get away with something make decisions about entire worlds - 

It's not like it's safe to be cooperative. But they clearly get something out of having her cooperative, or they could have done this with threats from the beginning. It seems likely that if she keeps things superficially cooperative, they will too. And that means there'll be better opportunities to escape later.

She doesn't try anything. She walks quietly to her desk and gets her spellbook and walks quietly out.

Mhalir is there when the shuttle collects her. He thanks her for sticking to the agreement. Suggests she get some sleep, it's still the middle of the night.

Yes, wizards need to sleep well in order to prepare spells, otherwise the used spells from the last day are sticky in your mind and you can't prepare new ones. They should consider sending people letters instead of kidnapping them in the dead of night.

She does not fall asleep on the way back, but she pretends to. It's a shame there's nothing to eavesdrop on because they're a race of psions.

Mhalir also does not sleep. He paces. Worries about gods watching them. 

They reach the ship, at which point he can offer Sevar an actual bed, there, and try to get some sleep himself, in a place that feels more secure. He still hasn't had an opportunity to debrief with the Yeerk in her head, but he doesn't want to tip his hand yet. 

She sleeps, eventually. She feels very far from safe, but - she can read their minds, in the morning, if she sleeps well and can think of a way to pull it off.

Her Yeerk leaves once she's asleep and hopes someone is there to catch her.

They're watching the room with cameras, and can send someone in to very quietly retrieve the Yeerk and swap her back into her usual host. Mhalir asked to be woken in this contingency, and he's there within under a minute. 

<So?>

She is shaking, a little bit. "That was a very difficult assignment. I don't want to do it again - I guess I might need to - she was lying almost the entire time, and had a plan to call for help, but didn't end up trying to do it so I didn't have to stop her, she ended up concluding she'd have a better opportunity to escape later probably, and if she kept things friendly we would too. She's very smart. I guess they have to be. She - can I watch a video or something so I can tell you what she was thinking as she said it -"

<I will consider whether you need to do it again. I think I want to see her mind myself, but obviously I cannot stay longer than the morph limit.> 

They get her a video of the conversation. 

Then she can explain. "They have truth magic. It would make it either impossible to say an outright lie or apparent when she was doing so. So, see, none of these statements are lies of the kind truth magic would flag. But - she could have gotten her spellbook from here. She implied she couldn't, but she easily could have. She absolutely can't cast Etherealness and doesn't think any store in the world sells scrolls of it. Thus the phrasing - 'If anyone in Corentyn would have it Tómas would, at Second and Academy', vacuously true, no chance any of them have it. 'and I'm sure some of the people there know how to Detect Thoughts but I'd be very surprised if they were doing it to random passersby,' but they'd definitely do it if someone showed up asking for such a bizarre thing."

And she walks through the rest of it. "She was - sincere about thinking people shouldn't die and Asmodeus would take our souls instead if we asked him. She wasn't otherwise evaluating any of our claims about the war, except as - claims about what we wanted her to believe. I don't think she's a very trusting person."

<I do not think anyone raised in Cheliax with any intelligence would come out as a trusting person. Did you get anything else from her on> how to even put it, <- on how concerning Cheliax is as a country? I have gotten the impression it is competently run in many ways, and also horrible in many other ways.> 

"One of her main jobs is mindreading everyone in her unit and reporting them for disloyal thoughts or plans. Then they get tortured to death, I guess. I think Good and Evil mean, you know, Good and Evil, whether you help people or hurt them, but she was sincere about thinking that it's Evil to try to do stuff, because - I don't think anyone in Cheliax tries to help people, uh, selflessly. She'll be very very scared, if you're straight with her about what you're doing, and I don't think she'll agree to be a voluntary host, but - but it wouldn't occur to her to think that it's unfair, because obviously people will hurt other people as much as advantages them, because if you don't like that you should stop being weak, or stop having preferences, pick one..."

His tail lashes. <I do not think I want to ally with Cheliax or with Asmodeus. I do want to talk to her more. But I also in fact need some sleep.>

He looks to one of the other crew. <Now that she is asleep, is it possible to keep her lightly sedated so she will stay that way a while? I imagine she is very anxious and would otherwise wake up. Which is probably fine, she did not choose to act against us before despite being unaware of the Yeerk, but we should be cautious. Especially since she is probably resistant to stun beams.> 

"The leading theory is that routine exposure to powerful magic and maybe specifically to magic healing is what does it," her Yeerk confirms. "She'd be unusually hard to stop - I really don't want us to accidentally kill her," though she's too shy to point her pleading look at Visser Three in particular. "I think she could come around to helping us, maybe, if we do it right. And even if not - she can do the magic artifacts. We could maybe win the war just with that, given enough time. Invisibility and teleportation and mindreading for everybody."

"We can keep her under," another crew member confirms.

<I do not want to kill her either. I will talk to her in the morning.>

And he heads off to get some not-very-restful sleep.

Carissa sleeps, lightly sedated. She has upsetting weird dreams that would normally wake her and don't.

Visser Three sleeps and wakes and goes to talk to the Yeerk who was previously in Carissa's head. 

<I want to see her head for myself. But - I think it would burn fewer bridges, in terms of obtaining her cooperation, if I ask her about this first. I would like you in her head again, before she wakes, in case she panics and tries to do something unfortunate while I explain some things to her. I am thinking that I will tell her she can prepare Detect Thoughts and read my mind, for confirmation that I do not intend to kill or harm her. My sense of her is - she is more likely to cooperate if she feels she has some amount of leverage? Which she does. She is clever and a wizard, and we need both of those.> 

Unfortunately this will also let her read Alloran's mind, but it's not exactly a good idea to try concealing the ugly parts of their current war from a powerful mindreader whose help he wants to recruit. Might as well explain why, first, and then let her see it. 

(And if she doesn't want to cooperate, he can still force her to make magic items, but he would prefer not that. He would prefer she help him figure out if other wizards on her planet might also willingly help the Yeerks.) 

"That makes sense. Is there some way I can signal you that she's lying other than - seizing her entirely if I need to stop her from doing something -"

He thinks. <Possibly she will not notice if you, say, tap the toes on her left foot? Overall though, I think I do not mind if she is lying about something inconsequential. Though I will tell her that I will know if she is lying, which is true; in fact, I will need to tell her before she agrees that you are in her head, since you will need to leave so I can enter. Anyway, as long as the spell she prepares is Detect Thoughts rather than a different one, and she does not try to murder me, I think that is sufficient cooperation for my purposes.> 

So the Yeerk takes the sleeping human and then they can let go of the sedatives, so she does not stay asleep.

She wakes up somewhere unfamiliar, feeling awful, and -

- she looks desperately around for her spellbook, it's right where she left it -

- kidnapped. By people who claim to come from another world. The spellbook was part of an attempt to get word to her family, which she ended up deciding against - if she stays cooperative hopefully at some point she'll be watched less closely - 

- right now, for example, there's no one in the room, though they might be invisible and they might have a sensor of some kind. She pulls out the spellbook and starts preparing spells. The one to put the spellbook in the Ethereal Plane first, presumably she'd eventually pull it back under torture but it's at least a little additional incentive for them to keep being friendly...

Before she can finish that one, the blue alien-centaur-horse-creature is back. <Sevar. I wish to speak with you. I should explain some more context about our war, and then I have an offer to make you.> 

"Good morning. I'd love to learn more about your war, but I want to finish preparing spells first. I can be ready in about fifteen minutes." She can't prepare most of them in that little time but she can get Detect Thoughts and hide her spellbook.

Probably she's lying about some aspect of that, but it might be fine? He gives her a piercing look, all four eyes on her. <All right. Be aware that we have a way of sensing whether you are telling the truth or intend us harm, and will react accordingly. However, I do not wish to hurt you, because your help is of far greater value to us. In fact, part of the offer I wish to make is to allow you to read my thoughts, so that you can verify this for yourself.> 

He made it sound, last night, like he couldn't stop people from reading his mind and his peoples' minds, and this was a major barrier to going shopping. "I see. I'd be happy to help you, at least with getting introduced to people who are much more experienced and powerful than me, and I don't mean you any harm." Because if they're really on a spaceship, and even if they're just in a secret base somewhere, she's not getting out of here alive if she makes them mad, and also, she doesn't even have Fireball, what's she going to do, punch them? "I'll let you know when I'm ready."

<Thank you.> 

Mhalir stays in the room to wait, but is politely quiet, not distracting her. He's very curious about the process of preparing spells but doubts he'll be able to see much by watching with his usual eyes. (He does thoughtspeak the ship's engineer to check if their internal sensors are picking up on anything.) 

There's some light outside the visible spectrum being emitted but not much of it and not reliably even when she seems to be doing things.

She builds the scaffold for spell-stabilizing - she feels weird about being watched, which is stupid, she's done this for observers before - and prepares two of the spell that hides her spellbook and two of Detect Thoughts including one in a third-level slot because she only has Tongues and Dispel Magic there neither of which are going to do her any great favors here. She takes it all down and pushes the spellbook off to the Ethereal Plane. "All set," she says cheerfully.

<Thank you.> Mhalir stands a respectful distance away, resisting the urge to swish his tail, it's probably alarming to her. <All right. Some context on the war. Unsurprisingly, there is a great deal of ground to cover here, and I expect much of it will be confusing to you. First: the body you are looking at is not, actually, mine. Our species is called Yeerks, and we look like this.>

Using Alloran's brain chip, he indicates to the shuttle computer to project an image of Yeerks in a pool onto the wall, with an indication of scale. Yeerks are very small, compared to humans. 

<On our home planet, we had a symbiotic relationship with another species, the Gedds> image of a Gedd, <where we would enter their heads, and interface with their brains. Without us, they were not very intelligent, and so they returned to our pools repeatedly to obtain our help; they gave us their senses, and in turn we gave them the ability to reason and achieve more complicated plans and goals.> 

<My current host body is an Andalite. This part is even more complicated. Some decades ago, Seerow, an Andalite scientist, came to our world to study us, and realized we were a fellow intelligent species. He shared his people's high technology with us, including starships, and he figured out how we could replicate kandrona, the nutrient that we previously needed to obtain in the pools, from our homeworld's sun. He gave us the stars.> 

<We wanted to explore the universe. To share the technology he had shared with us, and to find others, like the Gedds, who might benefit from our help in the same way. Some of the Yeerk factions were - less concerned than others about the consent of the hosts, and while I do not think that faction would otherwise have won out, Seerow became alarmed. With very little warning, he escalated and attacked us. That is how the war began.> 

Mhalir watches her closely, trying to gauge her reaction, though presumably the Yeerk in her head will have a much more detailed debrief for him later. 

She doesn't know much of anything about biology. The creatures on other worlds are strange, so that fits, maybe, that ones from farther away would be even stranger. - you could Baleful Polymorph people into Yeerks, maybe, that's not important right now but it's interesting because there weren't previously any intelligent creatures that qualified -

'to find others, like the Gedds, who might benefit from our help in the same way' is definitely a euphemism but she's not clear, yet, on for what. 

'less concerned than others about the consent of the hosts' is also definitely a euphemism but seems even less clear.

Well. Asking questions isn't exactly safe but it's probably a good idea. "Why ...did the Andalites give the Yeerks starships?"

<...I am not sure why starships in particular, but - we were a fellow sapient species, and he wanted us to achieve our potential? And perhaps he thought that if we had high technology, we would become a prosperous fellow civilization that the Andalites could have mutually beneficial trade with. I am not sure of his exact motives; none of us were ever in his head.> 

"And your going theory was that he just - thought you ought to get to do more stuff?"

<Yes, I suppose so. Anyway. Seerow was killed in the ensuing battle, and he had already been the Andalite most concerned with our welfare, perhaps the only one concerned with us at all - most Andalites thought our race inherently disgusting, because we are slugs that control the bodies of others...> 

Mhalir recounts the next few steps of the war. The alliance with the Taxxon world, Taxxons offering themselves as voluntary hosts in exchange for help controlling their hunger, and how he felt vindicated in his belief that other species would want the Yeerks' help. The Hork-Bajir conquest, much less voluntary, and his attempts at the time to open communications with the Andalites, trying to de-escalate and come to some sort of truce agreement. How everything he tried was used against them, and how the Yeerk leadership was concerned he was too 'pro-Andalite'. 

He describes Alloran's capture, too late to stop him from triggering the bioweapon that killed all of the Hork-Bajir still on their homeworld - killed them forever, he reminds her, dissolved and vanished from the universe, not in the hands of some god (evil or not.) This is perhaps a tiny bit manipulative, since he predicts she'll find it much more horrifying than the Yeerk enslavement of involuntary hosts, but it's not false. 

<I was in command in that engagement> he explains, <and so I took Alloran as a host. The Andalites, I am sure, consider this a far worse war crime than his decision to murder a planet of innocents. I disagree. I - would nonetheless have considered some sort of prisoner exchange instead, except that I no longer trust the Andalite people to hold to any kind of agreement, and also my position among my own people was precarious, and so taking him as a host was a strategically helpful move, in terms of proving I had learned from my mistakes there.> 

"...why are the Andalites at war with you? Just because they're mad about Seerow being dead? What's their goal, what are they fighting until..."

<I am not entirely sure, since they are unwilling to talk to us about their goals here, but - I think they fear we are planning to enslave all other species in the universe. Which, to be clear, is not what we are planning to do; I still believe that many species other than Andalites would willingly work with us, we can be very helpful if the relationship is collaborative rather than adversarial, and my goal here is only that we have enough leverage to open negotiations with the Andalites, from a position where they cannot just win by force. I think that many of the Andalites want all of us dead, and others think it would be sufficient to take away our technology and confine us to our homeworld, guarded by Andalite ships, with only the Gedds as hosts. I am not sure which Andalite political faction would win, there, if we lost the war.> 

"Could you enslave all of the other species in the universe if you wanted to? What is the - balance of power in the universe - such that this is a going concern? Are the Andalites, what, holding most of the rest of the galaxy as protectorates?"

<I am not sure about the universe, but it seems most species in our galaxy are less advanced than either Yeerks or Andalites. I...do not think the Andalites had considered this much before Seerow found us. They did not do much exploration, they were mostly content to live on their homeworld and have their technology benefit only their own people. They...are probably afraid we will try to enslave all of them, if we win? I will not deny that some Yeerk factions think they would deserve this, but having involuntary hosts is unpleasant and my goal is to cease that practice once we are in a sufficiently advantaged position that we can afford to do so. I believe I, and others in my faction, have enough political influence with the Yeerk leadership to ensure that this is what happens.> 

Mhalir is definitely expecting some Alloran yelling right about now. 

Alloran hates Mhalir so so so much but also if the girl is going to read Mhalir's mind she should get his too and then he can explain the real situation, and she seems quite skeptical of Mhalir's account of it already, and then she'll know the truth. 

...and be enslaved forever. But it'll be satisfying to see her understand the truth anyway.

"You could Charm them," she says. "There is magic for making people like you and cooperate with you even if they wouldn't normally. People mostly don't bother with slaves but people mostly don't have to live in their slaves' heads - they remain conscious? Do you...fight over who can control the body?

What is the specific Andalite tech advantage over everybody else in the galaxy, it's the starships?"

This makes it so ridiculous that Seerow supposedly gave them out as an act of charity; her best guess right now is that there was some kind of internal factional dispute within the Andalite government or governments and he thought he could get Yeerk loyalists to help his side come out on top of it, only they turned on him.

<Our hosts remain conscious, and can fight for control of the body but generally cannot win unless we are being very inattentive. Though in many cases with voluntary hosts, they trade off being in control; Yeerks do not inherently value being in control all of the time, it is just that without a host we have minimal senses or ability to interact with the world. In terms of the Andalite tech advantage, they also have something called morph, which they did not share with us - though Alloran, my host, has it...> 

Mhalir describes how morph works. 

"Huh. Druids can do that. Powerful wizards can do it very briefly. And some people are born shapechangers. I would love to learn how their technology works," it's clearly just some other application of magic but he keeps using that word, "and maybe we can productively collaborate. ...this means there is an Andalite there with you? Can I talk with him about what he thinks the war is about?"

<If you cast Detect Thoughts you will be able to read both of us, but - I suppose I can give him access to speech alone, and you can have a conversation. I am not sure how long Detect Thoughts would last.> 

Alloran is probably going to do so much shouting if Mhalir lets him have thoughtspeech access, but - probably that's fine, he doesn't actually expect Sevar to be more sympathetic to his account than Mhalir's, and besides, Mhalir is the one with all the power here and this is clearly very relevant to the young woman's decisions. 

"It only lasts a couple of minutes. I can use it afterwards to verify you weren't impersonating him but I think it ...might take more than a couple of minutes of conversation for me to understand what's going on here."

Alloran is - actually trying to pull himself together to not shout, he needs the girl to understand and - it's unfair that being tortured for fifteen years makes you less able to explain why torture is bad, but the universe is very unfair, this might be the only chance he'll have to talk to a person and he has to be able to hold himself together for it -

<All right. You can talk to him.> 

Mhalir keeps firm control of Alloran's body, but releases his hold on their thoughtspeech, so Alloran can talk. 

<The Andalites are at war with the Yeerks because they are destroying every civilization they come across in order to turn it into a factory for producing more slaves they can use for more conquest> he says immediately.

"And you're - worried that eventually they'll get to you?"

<- I mean, yes, that is a worry, but even if we have developed some kind of magic that renders it completely impossible the Yeerks could ever threaten our homeworld, we couldn't stand by and let every other people in the galaxy be destroyed and enslaved.>

"...why not?"

<...I think that your civilization, as part of preparing everybody to serve Asmodeus, does not have some important concepts about the world which Andalites care about. Like that slavery is bad.>

"Lots of people on Golarion think that slavery is bad. Do you mostly mean bad for the slaves or bad for the slaveowners, I have seen both."

<...bad for the slaves. I guess it is also probably bad for the Yeerks to do evil things but I don't really think anyone else is obliged to care about how much they hurt themselves when torturing people.>

"So you are at war with the Yeerks because you expect this to produce a galaxy where less people are enslaved and their - civilizations destroyed - what does that entail -"

Alloran is finding this ridiculously challenging but it's the most important task in the world and he's going to try - <Yeerks do value their slaves not screaming and begging constantly, it is distracting for them. But they obviously do not want their hosts to have any genuine power to lead an interesting or valuable non-Yeerk-controlled life. They don't want existing political systems to continue. They don't want people to have a choice over whether to have children, because they want a large next generation of slaves. If you have mind-control magic they will substitute that for the existing proposed systems of indoctrination that they expect to make people acquiesce to slavery. They will permit some quality of life improvements, but never ones that would make people no longer want to be hosts -- Taxxons agreed to Yeerk slavery because they were desperately hungry all the time and kept losing their struggle not to devour one another. Yeerks will never invent something that makes Taxxons not hungry, because then they wouldn't want to be hosts anymore. The Yeerks will destroy everything that is not relevant to getting their slaves to shut up and breed more slaves.>

"That makes sense. Why do you...care about that."

<...wouldn't you think that it was bad if everyone in Cheliax were enslaved and all your works repurposed to entertain your slavers?>

"It would be bad for me personally but I wouldn't expect you to care about it! And it might not actually be a worse state of the world, I'm - not sure? Not wanting to be enslaved is related to the flaw that Ihys introduced in mortals, that makes us worse servants of the gods. It seems entirely possible that Asmodeus will think that everyone being controlled by Yeerks is much closer to the universe being the way it is supposed to be."

Right, of course, these people worship torture and slavery anyway, of course they're natural allies to the greatest evil in the galaxy -

<Do you think that Asmodeus is right about that?>

"I think that it wouldn't even mean anything for Asmodeus to be wrong about that! If he wants everyone in Cheliax to be enslaved then that will happen. If he doesn't then it won't. Maybe how they feel about it is an input into his decision but probably not."

<We are in space now. I think we are very far from where your god has any influence. There is no one here to decide what is good for you or bad for you except you. Do you want to be enslaved and tortured.>

"I think you're wrong about Asmodeus's reach. But entertaining the hypothetical, no, I don't."

<Then I do not want you to be enslaved and tortured! I want things to happen to you that you chose freely because you wanted to! You can think of that as a bizarre Andalite preference, if you would like.>

"Presumably there are some interests I could pursue that would make you feel differently, right - like, if I decide that I want to work with Mhalir -"

<I hope you do not decide that because it will increase the amount of people being enslaved and tortured but I don't want you to be enslaved and tortured since otherwise you might make bad decisions!>

"...sorry, it's hard to tell which lines of conversation are unimportant tangents and which are getting at real, important alien values differences or something, but - if you could enslave and torture me to prevent a thousand other people being enslaved and tortured, would you?"

<I don't know. For a million of them yes. For a thousand - it is very harmful to set a precedent of willingness to do such a thing. No Andalite has ever done such a thing and that is an advantage that we have, in interacting with the world, people can be sure that if they fall into our custody they will not be enslaved and tortured. It is impossible to negotiate with Yeerks since they do enslave and torture prisoners - observably - so nothing can be done that runs the slightest risk of capture by them.>

She tries to smile, because that sounded like - actual reasoning about this alien's priorities, instead of just yelling phrases with affect attached. "Thank you. I think that makes sense. Among Andalites, there are norms about how to treat other peoples and what treatment of other peoples to permit, and if a violation is egregious enough you will intervene, in order to preserve a galaxy with - the kinds of civilizations that you like, which are mostly not ones that are Yeerk-controlled and pointed at producing lots of cooperative hosts?"

A tremendous wash of relief. <Yes.>

"Why did you kill all of the Hork-Bajir."

<Hork-Bajir are a peaceful people with bladed limbs they use to strip bark from trees, but Yeerks use them for violence, as extraordinarily powerful and dangerous troops who can terrorize their slaves on other planets. Permitting the Yeerks to have millions of them would have made it much harder to win the war and save the galaxy. We tried everything else we could think of, first. Mhalir complains that we did not participate in negotiations in good faith but we were desperately trying to turn the tide of the war so we would not need to kill the Hork-Bajir, and we were willing to betray everything else, first, if it might give us a chance to not have to resort to that. But everything else failed. It was a gravely evil thing to do it and it would have been just to see me put to death for it but - we saw no other way to save anyone, let alone the Hork-Bajir. And most people prefer death to being a Yeerk slave. Certainly all Andalites do.>

"Really? That's - why - it seems possible that you are just not good at math and are not understanding what an eternity is -"

<I have thought a great deal about what an eternity as a Yeerk slave is and I would rather be dead.>

"What - makes it awful - is it painful in its own right -"

<I am not sure if it would be inherently painful even if I were sometimes allowed to control my body and speak to others and if the Yeerk were not pursuing the destruction and torture of everything I care about, but it would still be - a deep and awful violation, having something inside you that you have no power over that sees every thought and every memory and can decide exactly how to use them all against you ->

Nod. "What would get the Andalites to end the war. If the Yeerks could be constrained to enslaving, like, some planets but not the entire galaxy would that be acceptable."

<The more power they have the more power they can get. Even if they agreed to terms that gave them ten planets or something they would be secretly infiltrating and seizing another hundred, and it would be hard to stop them.>

"So what's the - most conciliatory terms Andalites would agree to - the ones that sound nicest to the Yeerks -"

It's a promising question for her to be asking. It is not one he has ever thought about, and he spends a couple of minutes thinking. <If all of the Yeerks were blockaded in one corner of space with only voluntary hosts and no way to sneak out and take more slaves elsewhere that would be acceptable. I don't think there is a maximum number of planets they could hold except at some point the logistics of administering it would be immense.>

"What if they had, like, a reasonable number of slaves. Lots of places have slaves, Cheliax has slaves, you're not invading us about it."

He hasn't thought about this much either. <War causes a great deal of harm and is not usually worth it to correct the injustices that arise within a species on its journey of moral development. Injustices between species are stickier and less likely to resolve themselves and also Yeerks are uniquely evil, and Yeerk slavery is less self-limiting than the ordinary sort because ordinarily societies that have too many slaves have slave revolts, whereas Yeerks are stronger the more people they enslave.

Also under any conditions where we are in a position to dictate terms it would be silly to demand they give up ten billion slaves but let them keep ten thousand.>

"I mean, I assume under most conditions where you are in a position to dictate terms you are harsher than this, we were discussing the nicest-for-Yeerks deal that Andalites could accept."

<I do not know what the Electorate would decide if the Yeerks for some reason credibly offered to surrender and we were sure we could enforce this and they wanted to keep specifically a thousand slaves and we couldn't get them to budge about the thousand slaves. It is a very unlikely hypothetical.>

"Electorate? How does the Andalite government work?"

<Every six point eight Golarion years every Andalite adult in good health and of sound mind lists the ten people they would most prefer be part of the Andalite governing body, and the top five overall vote-getters join it, with special decision privileges for the top vote-getter. They can serve up to three consecutive terms of twenty point four Golarion years and then cannot run again for twenty point four Golarion years after that.>

"That's helpful but I think not very helpful for what I wanted, which is figuring out - how Andalites decide who wields power - what makes someone likely to get elected -"

<Most members of the council became widely known to the Andalite public for scientific and technical innovations, or by writing a book, or by running a popular news station, or through military victories. In these times the council is mostly great generals and scientists.>

"Science is -"

<The study of the natural world so as to develop new technologies that improve peoples' lives or our understanding of the universe.>

"The people who invented morph and such?"

<Yes.>

"Are you allowed to get a lot of votes by telling lots of people that if they don't vote for you you'll kill them."

<Definitely not!>

"What would happen if someone tried it?"

<They would be arrested by the police for threatening people, which is a crime, and no one would vote for them because we value our democracy and it is undermined by people doing crimes to try to subvert it.>

"Has that ever happened?"

<Not that dramatically but people have illegally doctored evidence of their opponents doing unpopular things, or dueled their opponents, things like that. They were prosecuted and did not hold power.>

"What if the person who tried it was a very powerful scientist, more powerful than the police?"

<...that is not how science works.>

"If someone had morph, and they were the only person who had morph, and also they could throw a lot of fireballs, what could the police do about them?"

<...call in the army? Our tech differential is not such that - no one working alone could amass a substantial combat-relevant advantage against their fellow citizens. And our existing military is much more powerful than you might be imagining.>

"Okay. So the easiest way for the Yeerks to get the Andalites to stop fighting them is probably to mind-control the Electorate?"

Alloran had thought he was maybe getting somewhere on getting this person to consider that slavery was bad and he is crushed. He tries not to show it. <I think that would be very hard. Letting Yeerks conquer the galaxy is very unpopular. If a politician proposed it they wouldn't win elections. If a politician changed their mind about it people would be confused and suspicious. If all the politicians changed their minds about it people would be overwhelmingly suspicious. 

Also I think you ought to end the war by making Yeerks stop enslaving people, not by making people stop objecting.>

Well she very much cannot fucking do that, can she, the threat has not actually been spoken aloud but she's not an idiot. "It doesn't seem like Yeerks have a lot of reason to stop enslaving everyone in the galaxy."

<If the people of Golarion joined the war against the Yeerks over it then they'd have such a reason.>

"The people of Golarion mostly do things according to the will of the gods of Golarion. Probably some of the Good gods will object to anyone enslaving the universe but I don't think Asmodeus will, and the Good gods would've stopped Asmodeus in Cheliax if they had any power to stop him at all."

<Do you personally yourself want Yeerks to enslave the galaxy?>

"If that's what's going to happen I want to be able to function in the world where it happens!" And she's choked up, how utterly humiliating - breathe, breathe normally - "I can't help you even if I want to so I am trying to figure out which of the things I can do actually make any sense!"

<Sometimes it is better to try to do the right thing even if you don't see any opportunity for it to work than to try to be complicit in the evil works of whatever evil maniac has you in his power this week because at least they'll smile at you while they enslave you if you keep playing nice.>

"Asmodeus," she says in Infernal, "greatest of the gods, may your servant -" And then she stops being able to talk, somehow -

and then her mouth says " - sorry - she didn't particularly expect it to work -"

-and then she realizes that, of course, she was and is an idiot -

Not interrupting and overriding during the entire length of that conversation is one of the hardest things Mhalir has ever done. He's - surprised, somehow, it's been a very very long time since any of Alloran's thoughts or feelings surprised him but they are now. He feels - admiration, respect? 

Sometimes it is better to try to do the right thing...

And it hurts, because the time when cooperation between Yeerks and Andalites was possible, the time when there was any path ahead other than total war, is so, so long past. 

- and it hurts even more that this young wizard seems to feel so helpless to do anything other than serve her horrible god - it's an understandable way for a human to feel, in a world occupied by far greater powers, but he hates it with every fibre of his being, and hates every indication she's given of what kind of world Asmodeus wants to build...

<I apologize> he says to her. <I am sure you understand why I was being cautious, but I do, genuinely, prefer cooperation over enslaving you. And I appreciate why you wished to speak to Alloran. Out of curiosity, what were you trying to do, just then?> 

<Let her speak> he adds privately to her Yeerk, <as long as she is not speaking in order to - summon her god, or cast a spell, or whatever that was...> 

Carissa is not particularly tracking things that people are saying to her because she is processing the realization that she is an idiot. She is usually pretty successfully at managing her expectations enough that disappointment is not debilitating but - but somehow, because she is an idiot, she had totally believed that there might be some way to get something that mattered. 

She does not try to say anything. 

She seems very upset. Understandably. Mhalir waits for a while, giving her space to calm down. 

<If you are willing> he says, finally, once he thinks that she's maybe capable of processing it, <I want you to cast Detect Thoughts and read me. The Yeerk in your head will allow this. You can also read them, and of course Alloran, to verify I was not impersonating him in your conversation.> 

He asks her Yeerk to repeat that to her as well, in case that gets through better. 

Why. What does he want. 

...well, reading his mind is a better way to figure that out that most. Unless Yeerks can fake sensory input - she doesn't actually have any evidence on that point -

- she doesn't know anything about anything but you still get tortured less if you're acting cooperative than if you're acting difficult, that seems like a universal. She raises her hands and casts Detect Thoughts. "You have to let me read you," she says. "I don't know what that feels like to someone with no experience with magic. With human children we tell them to imagine someone is reaching out magical arms for them, and they want to climb into the magical arms."

It's a very weird thing to imagine, and it's - honestly quite hard, because the young wizard is scary, she's probably even more scared of him than he is of her, but he is nonetheless pretty scared.

Mhalir imagines it, though, and imagines holding himself open and letting her see his insides, in case that helps too. 

Alloran tries too.

It works; there they are, shaped oddly for minds but not much more oddly than, say, a familiar or a devil. As soon as she does it it occurs to her that maybe the justification for this is that the Yeerk needs to see her cast magic in order to use her magic itself but that doesn't make a ton of sense - nothing makes sense -

She focuses on Mhalir. (She wants to focus on her Yeerk but probably it will stop her.)

Mhalir is so scared. 

He's keeping it pretty under control, it's not getting in the way of his ability to think, but the fear is still there. Mostly he's terrified of losing the war with the Andalites, who from the very beginning have thought Yeerks were inherently disgusting and evil just because of their physical nature, which they can't exactly change. All of them except Seerow (a sliver of pain, grief, he trusted Seerow, he misses him, and it feels like so much more than a brilliant scientist was lost, when he caught them by surprise with an attack and then died in the ensuing firefight.) 

He's scared of Golarion. Mostly of its gods. Powerful entities with bizarre goals that sentient beings can't quite understand is terrifying to him. The supposedly-Good gods aren't much less scary, because he doesn't trust that their definition of 'Good', or come to think of it their definition of Law and Chaos, match his own sense of those concepts at all. 

But Asmodeus in particular sounds pretty awful! Maybe not so awful that Mhalir, personally, wouldn't choose an afterlife in Hell over ceasing to exist, because ceasing to exist is the most terrifying thought he's capable of having and his entire mind runs from it screaming - (some other thought he manages not to complete) - but he can still imagine most Yeerks wouldn't choose Hell over true death, and so he thinks they can't afford an alliance with Asmodeus even though it could plausibly help them win the war, because he's bigger and stronger and smarter and even if they can trust him to keep agreements, Mhalir suspects a god could probably just outsmart him. 

He does think that they're currently outside Asmodeus' reach, on a ship far away from the planet where they collected Carissa and the other weaker wizard, but he's not sure and that's also terrifying. 

Focus. 

He's still feeling admiration for Alloran's try at persuasion, and confusion - Alloran has spent most of the last fifteen years yelling vitriol in his head, shouting that he hopes all the Yeerks get dissolved in acid or whatever, and hearing him talk about how doing the right thing is important even when it's hard and probably won't work is...jarring, it's left him off-balance and dizzy. 

He doesn't expect Alloran to have gotten through to Sevar, much, but the reasons why are also making him sad. He hasn't seen the inside of her head, of course. (He badly wants to, because he's confused about her and understanding her feels essential to this venture and all of this is so critically important.)

- he's sad because she seems to genuinely believe that Asmodeus is the most powerful being in her world, and also that Asmodeus doesn't want humans or other sentient beings to - have goals and ambitions and dreams? Apparently their religious philosophy considers the entire concept to be a flaw in human nature, which is honestly the opposite of everything Mhalir believes. 

What does he want.

Thinking about his own goals and values is unlikely to be persuasive to her either, because she seems to just not believe in caring about other people as a concept, but it feels important to be honest, if he's to have any hope of getting her actual cooperation. Which he does want. He can extract valuable work from her regardless, but that feels so tragic, pointless. A continuation of the strategy that the Andalites pushed them into, everywhere else, but right now he's out of the Andalites' reach, in a world they don't know exists, and - it would be stupid, to let the horrors of the war up to this point force him to approach the Golarion locals just as adversarially.

He'll do it, of course, if it's the only way. 

What does a Mhalir want... 

He wants the Yeerks to be free and prosperous, able to invent and discover and explore. And he wants the Andalites to have the same, ideally, and for all the other species that have experiences and feelings to have the chance for those experiences to be ones of flourishing. He wants that future desperately, and he's not sure it's possible, anymore - so many possibilities were closed forever when Seerow fired on his people - but he hasn't stopped trying. He isn't going to let the Andalites massacre his people, never ever ever, but obviously he doesn't want to enslave everyone in the universe. What kind of victory would that be.

He's kind of ticked off with Alloran for slandering his genuine efforts to engineer a better solution to the Taxxons' hunger. He thinks plenty of Taxxons would still want to keep their Yeerks, just because they know each other, now, and because having a friend right there in your head to help you be your best self is nice. There are some early case studies on Earth humans having that viewpoint too, though he's very frustrated with Visser One's handling of the situation, even the 'voluntary' hosts are voluntary by a pretty stretched definition, her constraints are understandable but still. 

He's suddenly sad and tired and he's not even sure why. 

He wishes they could just - trade their resources, technology for magic. Build routes between the stars. There's a flicker in his memory, a shining city, the image is vague and feels at this point like a hopeless unreachable dream but he's never going to stop wanting and trying and having goals. 

He doesn't want to harm Sevar and certainly he has no intention of killing her. He'll put a Yeerk in her head, of course, if he can't get her cooperation, and she might consider that torture, like Alloran does, and he feels a pang of regret for that possibility but it won't stop him.

...He wishes, vaguely, that she could have met Seerow, maybe Seerow could have better explained why he was doing any of it. 

...

Having his thoughts read is making Mhalir self-conscious and as a result his thoughts are kind of going everywhere. 

Alloran feels - really weird, it's been so long since there has been any reason to act in a goal-directed way and of course it didn't work, but it felt - fairly extraordinary, to be allowed to talk, to someone who hadn't decided before they ever met that destroying the Andalites was just the most convenient way to operate unopposed on his campaign of galaxy-wide slavery. And - the best possible outcome was always that she'd refuse to cooperate and then Mhalir would enslave her. That is how Mhalir it is, he is too profoundly evil to ever consider anything else. It is tragic, and he can grieve it, but also he sincerely believes it is much much better than cooperating with Yeerks out of some mistaken sense that slavery is fine. And maybe she did figure it out? Certainly it came close enough that Mhalir will probably not want to try this tactic with the next slave, which he feels obscurely sad about because it was really wonderful getting to talk to someone.

It still seems very possible that Mhalir will make a mistake in handling Golarion, or that the Good gods will turn out to actually be good and will intervene. It's what he's holding out hope for. And he's sorry, that there isn't anything better for Sevar to hold out hope for either, but he meant it, about it being better to try to do the right thing no matter how hopeless, and he tries to sit with what that means, in case it can help her see it -

She's so incredibly tired and she's a prisoner and there's someone reading her mind and she still doesn't understand what Mhalir wants, what outcome here he is considering distinct from the outcome where he enslaves her. 

Well, a nice thing about things not being possible to get any worse is that you don't have to worry you'll make them worse through carelessness. 

"Is there," she says, "anything I can say or do where you will decide I do not have to have a Yeerk in my head and can act freely."

He's also so tired, and only a little of that is because he (well, Alloran's brain) slept terribly last night due to being stressed about the powerful wizard being Yeerk-less in his ship, albeit sedated until they put her Yeerk back. And he's reacting to Alloran's thoughts with pain and grief and something that isn't quite regret but is apology flavoured. He will enslave people, if it helps them win. He'll free the involuntary slaves later, when the war is won.

(Alloran, of course, has never ever believed Mhalir's claims that he intends to do that, but he does, he's fully aware that he's torturing Alloran and he doesn't actually prefer to torture people and besides having a miserable involuntary host is much worse than having a host who actually likes having you around and has conversations with you instead of alternating thinking at you about how they want your entire species to die and trying to slip past your guard to kill themselves.) 

<Yes> he says, tiredly. <If you let me in your head once, without resisting, and you say - and mean - that you will not attempt to contact Asmodeus, or murder me or any of my people, I will consider that sufficient to leave you un-Yeerked. I expect you to be more capable of having thoughts in that state, and - I do not even require you to agree to cooperatively help us, yet. It is entirely reasonable on your part to want to think about it, and to see more evidence of my claims.> 

She's very smart and impressive and bizarrely good at lying, and he's terrified of those traits being pointed against him, but - well, he can always grab other wizards, and the upside of getting her mind actually aligned with his project is a significant one. Even if all he can do from her starting worldview is convince her that he's going to win (which he thinks he is, he's not certain but they're in good shape, especially with the invasion on Earth) and that therefore it's in her interests to switch sides and play nice with him rather than Asmodeus. 

And - there's value in it as a test case, right, whether he can start with an arbitrary human, in conditions that are admittedly pretty hostile, and convince her that the Andalites in the wrong. Alloran is convinced he can't. Even if he's right, Mhalir doesn't actually consider that proof that all the Yeerks should die or be confined forever to pools on their homeworld. But it'll be interesting, to see which one of them is right. 

...she wasn't aware she had the option of resisting letting them in her head. It makes sense that it'd be like spells, which she is pretty good at throwing off because she is a wizard and good at what she does, but which people who are asleep cannot resist.

"I don't mean to murder you or any of your people. If it is a condition of my remaining here and free that I do not try to contact Asmodeus I will not do so. I don't think it'd work to get His attention anyway. I was praying because people do that - to remind yourself of what you care about, to calm and focus your mind. I won't resist, if you want to come look at me." If he's had people in her head anyway then he's noticed everything she has considered doing.

<If she is telling the truth, and in fact did not prepare spells that will enable her to murder me instantly from a distance, then you can leave her head now> Mhalir tells her Yeerk.

And to a couple of the other crew, privately: <I am going to morph Yeerk. I want you to guard me while I do so and then bring me to her. Please be ready to restrain her physically if she tries to harm me, and if she is able to resist multiple people doing that, attempt to stun her at the higher power level we think a wizard needs, hopefully with immediate medical attention this would not harm her. And I want someone outside this room ready to pump sedative gas in here.> 

He waits for acknowledgement of these preparations before starting the morph. 

Her Yeerk leaves her head. She holds very still. Mhalir might be lying or might not have the authority to promise this but - there's nothing she can do about that right now. Detect Thoughts expires. She has another one but she doesn't bother casting it right now. Maybe in a little bit. She watches the morph. It's - way more gruesome than Polymorph, and she tries to think about the implications for their magic system. Their 'science' system. Maybe it circumvents channeling capacity limits by doing most spells as a chain of little spells - that'd be clever -she thinks lots of spells are bottlenecked in a way where it wouldn't work but perhaps there's some way of designing them so that 'bottlenecked' doesn't even make sense. 

Why morph, instead of just crawl from Alloran's ear to hers - right, because Alloran would kill them if he had control of his body for half a second, considers the inconvenience this imposes to be worth never being able to move again -

Mhalir's guards are watching her and look very twitchy but she doesn't move a muscle until the morph is complete and they bring Mhalir to her. 

Mhalir is so so so scared from the moment he loses his Andalite senses and tail, but he trusts his people, and they should have enough precautions even if Sevar's Yeerk was wrong and she intends to betray him. 

When brought to her ear, he slips in and spreads out and reaches for the deepest parts of her - who and what is Sevar, what drives her, what has she always wanted. Yeerks are good at mindreading, probably a lot better than her spell, and Mhalir is exceptionally well-practiced at this even among Yeerks. 

Carissa isn't stupid. 

Lots of people are stupid. She has read their minds and she has witnessed their public confessions and she has watched them die. Attendance at Cheliax's post-church-services public executions is mandatory. She reads minds every day, it's most of her job duties even though ostensibly she was at the Worldwound to look at powerful enchanted arms and armor and learn how to do it herself. The most fundamental fact about the world is that defiance is stupid and idealism is stupid and expecting anyone else in the world to prefer you alive to dead is stupid unless they have a very specific reason.

Carissa isn't stupid. She isn't defiant and she isn't idealistic and she has never ever expected anyone in the world to care about her and she thought that would be enough that she could live her life, which is, if you think about it, its own kind of being stupid. 

Carissa cares about things, in the dimensions where it's not stupid to care about things because there's no way for anyone to use it against you. She likes doing magic research. She likes learning new things. She likes being able to do things that matter. Inventing things, discovering things, making the soldiers at the Worldwound safer. She likes her family about as much as it's not stupid to like one's family, which is not very much. She might have children - there's talk of an incentives program for wizards, because intelligence runs in the blood - and she expects to like them slightly more than it's not stupid to, which is part of why she's waiting on the incentives program, which would make it stupid not to and thus counterbalance it. 

Her opinion about the Yeerks is that obviously they'll enslave as many people as they can and Mhalir is deluding himself if he thinks that they'll stop later, though it seems plausible enough they'll stop specifically the things that make people scream in your head all the time. Charms and reeducation programs, not seizing people out of their beds. This seems worse than a world where it doesn't happen, which she doesn't expect to matter at all.  Her opinion about Andalites is that they seem fundamentally too naive to win a war or else (and more likely) to have lots of complicated intrigue which seems very important to be on top of and which the Yeerks have failed to notice because - Mhalir seems kind of determined to regard working with the Andalites as a hypothetical tragically lost forever when his friend died? That seems like maybe something she could do something about, though she has no idea if she wants to. It's - a pretty hostile move, in the Chelish conception of these things, to ask people what they want. If someone wants anything at all then you have power over them. Asking what they want is asking them to admit that, and to hand you a finer instrument for wielding it. She can't keep secrets, here, but she can avoid thinking things through, she's very good at it. So she doesn't know what she wants. 

Well, she certainly has an outside perspective. 

That's the first thought Mhalir forms fully, and for a surprisingly long time the only thought, as he explores her conception of reality, not yet assessing it either for plausibility or for horrifyingness. 

She's not stupid. He agrees with that. He expects she's smarter than she gives herself credit for, even, because the society she lives in has given her such intensely strong incentives to stay small. 

She thinks he might be making a mistake. 

Very unsurprisingly, she's reacting to her current captivity by, again, staying small. Not using most of herself. He can't force her to stop that, and he can't even really ask her nicely, it's such an understandable, arguably-just-correct reaction. 

<I did not conclude the Andalites could not be cooperated with when Seerow died> he clarifies. <I still tried, for a long time, to open peace talks. I - only gave up on that after the massacre of the Hork-Bajir homeworld, when my attempts at communications were used against me, and when I was close to losing the Council's trust and good regard as a result. ...Perhaps more importantly, that is when I captured Alloran, and learned more directly what he, and in his mind most Andalites, think of Yeerks.>

He pauses for a moment.

<Still, if you think I am making an error of judgement here, I am curious to hear more. Though of course you are under no obligation to help me in this way.> 

What does that even mean. Of course she is under no obligation to do anything. Doing things just has consequences, so does not doing things. 

She's still undecided on whether she wants to help them but it's hard not to think about things.

The view Mhalir has of Andalites feels - immature? It's the way characters in a stage-play behave, it's the way history books tell stories that you're not supposed to believe and in fact where half of what you're demonstrating by memorizing them is that you're loyal to the regime even when it's not bothering to be believable. Andalites hate Yeerks because they are small and kind of oozelike? Are all of the other sapients in the galaxy not oozes or something even more incomprehensible? There was one Andalite who unlike all the other Andalites wanted to give Yeerks all of the advanced technology that had let Andalites reign over the galaxy unchallenged, and the other Andalites let him do it, and then he abruptly decided to turn on his chosen people, and attacked them and immediately died of it, and then all the other Andalites decided to join the war against the Yeerks, and now they're all very uniform in wanting to massacre Yeerks? (Have there even been massacres of Yeerks, outside the context of the war? Maybe that's not a useful question, if all of the Yeerks are involved in the war.) It's confusing, it's not how people are, and it seemed possible at first that maybe Andalites were just very very alien, like the fey, not possible to comprehend in terms of goals and priorities and tradeoffs among their different priorities, which is why she talked to Alloran, who seemed - not human, certainly, but not harder to negotiate with than a dragon or a devil or a genie -

- her best guess is that there is a ton going on behind the scenes to make the Andalites like this? They pick their leaders by an outright, straight-up popularity contest, there's probably all kinds of things ongoing to discredit one's enemies and make one's allies more popular and distribute resources in a way where you get the credit for it and in this context Seerow's ploy makes perfect sense, she'd initially flagged it as a third-son-of-a-minor-aristocrat sort of plan but they don't have the specific concept but - someone who wanted to be notable and wasn't yet and thought that a grand project like this, if it succeeded, would be an enormous source of leverage and notability and easy-to-time good news, and he'd obviously have needed a lot of allies to pull it off but they must've been sort of uncertain whether it'd work, reluctant to put their names to it in case it didn't, and then - something happened, an internal coup on the Andalite side maybe? Seerow's backers got nervous? Seerow himself learned something Mhalir doesn't know about? Someone stood to benefit from a war with the Yeerks, in any event.

She doesn't know any of this and most of it is almost definitely wrong in the specifics but it's the kind of way history tends to actually work when you zoom in.

Huh. 

Mhalir has also spent endless hours being confused about the Andalites' actions. Demonstrably they do seem to hate Yeerks - except Alloran just gave a far more reasonable defence of his and the others Andalites ' choices than he ever has to Mhalir, Mhalir is kind of irritated he didn't do that sooner, he's been spending all these years thinking of Alloran as a very limited black-and-white sort of thinker and maybe that's not true? 

He feels almost dizzy with it, too much to absorb at once, too much to even know what to orient too. Which means it's not the time to orient, yet, he thinks. Just to look, without trying to make sense of anything, because all his avenues toward sense-making involve ignoring some piece of this bewildering new picture and he can't afford to be stupid like that. 

It's...not ridiculous, her interpretation on what could have happened with Seerow, it might even fit together better with Mhalir's own guess, which was that Seerow was substantially more alarmed than he had been expressing and also under a lot of pressure from the Andalite government not to take risks. From his view, Andalite society seems very - conservative? Slow to change either their actions or even just the collective consensus. Humans, at least on Earth, don't even seem to have a collective consensus the way Andalites do, and they make more sense to him. 

<What would you have done, in my position?> he asks her. 

Well, if he's pretty sure he can win the war he's not necessarily making any wrong moves? Wars are costly but they're also a good way to consolidate power and suppress internal dissidents and get people to go along with lots of strict restrictive laws and quietly get rid of internal enemies. If he is confident he can eventually defeat the Andalites then she has no particular reason to believe it would've served him better to negotiate with them. But if she was trying to avoid a war she would've been obsessive about learning who was in power or vying for it, among the Andalites, and when Seerow attacked she'd - reach out to them demanding they denounce Seerow's unprovoked assault on their people or demanding they investigate who undermined Seerow into this or demanding they find the Andalites responsible for coaxing Seerow into a suicidal assault on his own people, depending on their specific angle. Even if you don't know anything in particular about the internal Andalite factions you can do things that probably empower or disempower the ones you prefer, right, like, parading Alloran around is a favor to the Andalite factions that believe Yeerks will enslave all Andalites whereas holding a trial for him over the Hork-Bajir thing and executing him would be a favor to Andalites who are against that kind of nonsense, and she isn't sure what other species there are who Andalites have any kind of trade relations with but presumably you want to get those to issue statements condemning Andalite atrocities or whatever, if you want to strengthen the Andalite factions that are against those. Have a bunch of free Hork-Bajir go to the Andalite home planet to demand justice in a very noisy and conspicuous fashion.

But like, maybe none of this serves Mhalir's interests, it sounds like Yeerks are successfully enslaving lots of planets and have plans to transition to a setup with less host-yelling and your enemies being uniformly chaotic evil is definitely also really politically useful! Just, more to claim than to actually believe, it's good to keep those separate.

Aaaaaaaaaaaa he's so confused, it feels like the world keeps turning inside out and backward around him, or maybe like he's fallen through a cracked mirror into some other world, and again he's not even assessing her viewpoint for plausibility or truth-trackingness, yet, he's too disoriented and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information. But it's coherent, he thinks, it holds together as a worldview. 

<I was very young when the attack happened, and thus I was inexperienced and naive> he confesses. <I knew little about Andalite politics. It had not seemed as important as doing scientific research together. I - tried to catch up, afterward. And I did push for our leaders to send a diplomatic messenger to the Andalite homeworld - we have its coordinates - rather than going fully on the offensive. I did not want there to be a war, even once that had happened. I...do not think I had a plausible enough story for why that would work and be better than pursuing the war, though, and I did not yet have as much political influence as I do now.> That, too, had seemed far less important when Seerow was alive.

<...Would you guess that Alloran is chaotic evil or something else?> he asks her. <The way you talk about it - do you have a way to tell what someone is, in the alignment system?>  

There's a spell to check and it's third-circle so she can learn it but she doesn't have it, and it only works to detect people who are powerful, though Mhalir and Alloran might both count. (She was saving for a Ring of Sustenance and a headband for intelligence and not buying spells in the meantime, spells are not very expensive if they're low-level but they add up.)

Alloran's not Lawful, he was basically saying as much, that he'd betrayed talks on the Hork Bajir planet in a desperate last-ditch effort to come up with an alternative to murdering everybody, a reasonable tradeoff but Law is the sort of nature where you wouldn't do that.  - Carissa isn't sure herself if she'd do that if it came up but it hasn't and Pharasma mostly doesn't judge you on hypotheticals. Alloran will be Evil because of the killing a million people, that's Evil, Sarenrae got away with it but the gods aren't quite as subject to Pharasma as humans are. Mhalir is probably also Evil, mostly if you try to do important things you end up Evil. Carissa is herself Lawful Evil, third-circle is powerful enough to know and she got it checked, just out of idle curiosity. She might guess neutral evil for both Mhalir and Alloran, they don't seem chaotic exactly, but she hasn't met a lot of chaotic people so she doesn't know for sure.

...The fact that her system judges him as probably the same alignment as Alloran is so uncomfortable. It sounds like it's not quite the same thing as ethics, even conventional morality rather than his own view on it; it's whatever this one god, Pharasma, thinks is Good or Evil or Lawful or Chaotic. 

<I have not betrayed any agreements> he says. <I do not think I would. It seems - deeply harmful, like it destroys something. Mostly the Andalites have not given me an opportunity to make any agreements. Perhaps I should have, before Seerow attacked us, but...well, there are many things I should have done then, and did not know to do.> 

He hesitates. <What did Sarenrae do?> Mhalir is more curious about Sarenrae than the other gods, since they happen to have one of her clerics, who received that very confusing vision. 

Carissa's education on the other gods is all from the perspective of the church of Asmodeus, but Sarenrae is one of the Good gods, and cooperated with Asmodeus in getting Rovagug locked up, and then there was a city of her followers built atop the crack in the world where Rovagug was sealed away, and Rovagug's power leaked out and made them all Evil, and Sarenrae sent her herald to warn them to stop but they murdered the herald, at which point she smote the whole city. They mostly went to Hell. This is generally told in Asmodean theological education in order to make the point that the good gods do lots of things that everyone else gets judged Evil for, and also that Asmodeus is the only god who'll take all souls, even those that defy him and try to oppose him.

Mostly it's very horrifying! Also it seems like a somewhat understandable decision on Sarenrae's part, murdering a messenger is a pretty hostile act, and he doesn't know what other options she had for containing them, it's still horrifying but, well, he's done monstrous things himself. And, in this world, it's not like the people all stopped existing. 

Mhalir wonders if it's true that they mostly went to Hell. It doesn't seem like it was really their fault, what happened. 

Focus. 

<I think I have seen enough and can leave your head soon> Mhalir tells Carissa. <We are coming from very different worldviews and backgrounds, but I suspect we can work together - in a way less unpleasant for you than being in Hell with Asmodeus would be, even. I would like someone who can do magic research, I think, and later we can talk about your helping us recruit other wizards. I am willing to buy spells for you - in places that are not Cheliax, you can tell us where else you speak the language. And we do of course have the ability to watch you closely, and will do so, but if you agree to help now, I do not see any need to keep a Yeerk in your head.> 

It is not like doing this gets her out of being in Hell with Asmodeus. But - but if he wants her to do magic research for his war to enslave the universe then she is not right now in a position to stop him or even make herself much less useful to him, and it seems doomed to try to sabotage him. She will probably run, if she gets the chance. But if she doesn't - maybe she is in fact trading all her ability to do things for the chance to have her slavers smile at her but if so she's not doing it when there were lots of other things she could do. 

Is Alloran there, too? Sorry, she thinks at him, vaguely. It makes sense that his people are fighting the Yeerks and she would help them, too, if they'd captured her.

They wouldn't have kidnapped a random innocent person out of her bed, Alloran thinks angrily, because they are against slavery. If his people had found this place they'd be figuring out how to fight Hell. 

Mhalir is, in fact, thinking about how to fight Hell. It seems like a very hard problem. Convincing Carissa that Asmodeus is actually horrible and helping the Yeerks is morally better and also that she should pick actions according to ethics at all, rather than according to what will get her tortured, seems like almost as hard a problem. 

...There is one thing he's noting, which is that in many senses Carissa has an outside perspective he lacks, but there's at least one area where the opposite is true. She...seems to take for granted that Asmodeus' philosophy is true? Or not even be assessing its truth value, maybe, it's unclear, but she at least seems to think she's doomed to go to Hell, and this is also not obviously true. 

And one thing he knows, from Earth and from various other civilizations, is that philosophies vary a lot, even within a single species. 

There are other countries in this world. Other gods, and presumably their churches have their own philosophies. Unfortunately Mhalir finds all of them terrifying. ...Or, well, at least the Good gods sound terrifying too, and the Chaotic ones are pretty alarming. Maybe there are Neutral - Lawful Neutral? - gods that just wouldn't be interested in interfering with the Yeerks, because they're pursuing their own sideways interests.

<I want you not to lie to me on factual questions> he tells her. <Your motives are your own, and you need not pretend you are cooperating out of anything other than self-interest, or that you do not intend to flee at the first opportunity, and I have no expectation that you will tell me of your plans if I ask. But if, for example, I ask you about Golarion's geography, I want you to tell me honestly what you know. Can you agree to that?> 

And he watches her thoughts carefully. 

Huh, do they not have truth magic science after all? She absolutely expects to be caught lying, which is why she didn't do it yesterday just told a lot of very partial truths, and honestly she's still considering it pretty likely she'll be punished for that? She's trying to think under what circumstances she'd decide that was worth it, on the assumption that he would if he caught her at it probably torture her for a while and then put a Yeerk in for good. Maybe if she was pretty sure she could successfully escape that way. 

<I am not going to punish you for telling partial truths yesterday. I will be doing a lot of cross-checking, and if I suspect you are lying I will not hesitate to temporarily go into your head again. If you expect you can successfully escape by lying I would expect you to lie, and I am taking that into account. I feel it is really quite reasonable for prisoners to try to run away, and if I want this to not happen it is on me to avoid giving you the opportunity. Anyway, there are more questions about Golarion that I would like to ask you, but no particular reason to do it from inside your head. So I will leave now.> 

And once again he directs the crew to watch her incredibly closely and be ready to intervene if she tries to do anything while he slips out and one of his people catches him and carries him out of the room to demorph elsewhere. 

She holds very still, again. She feels sick and dizzy and terrified and - confused, about things it doesn't seem safe to try to resolve her confusion about, but - she flexes her hands just slightly once they take Mhalir away. She still has some options, somehow. 

Most of them probably involve taking options away from other people, but there's no good reason for her to feel sad about that if it's a reasonable way to get what she wants.

Mhalir comes back once he has Alloran's body in Andalite form again and has updated his people's instructions for watching her very very closely. He's nervous, leaving her un-Yeerked is pretty scary, but he thinks he has her grudging cooperation, and - it seems very promising to try to obtain more of it. She's so good at lying, even to herself; if she were Yeerked, she would also be very good at not-thinking answers. 

He calls up a display of the map they've been making from the orbital and shuttle imagery. <We have some information on Golarion's geography, but much less on its geopolitics, and the books we obtained in Cheliax included little on other countries. I would appreciate if you could tell us about the other countries you know of, what they are like, and which gods are worshipped where.> 

"Sure." It's a really remarkable map, incredibly detailed; science scrying must be amazing. "Uh, north of Cheliax -" she gestures - "that's Nidal, they worship Zon-Kuthon, god of pain. That's Molthune, it used to be Chelish but broke off during the civil war, and north of it is Nirmathas, which broke off from Molthune after that. That's Lastwall. It's the headquarters of a bunch of paladin orders - mostly of Iomedae, and Sarenrae - paladins are lawful good warriors with divine magic and because lawful good people basically can't tolerate the conduct of any other people they have to only hang out with each other. Iomedae is the ascended Lawful Good god of fighting Evil, Sarenrae's the Neutral Good god of, I don't know much detail, Good stuff. Iomedae was a Chelish woman, when she was alive.

The paladins fight the undead in Ustalav, and they fight at the Worldwound, which is up there. Next to that is the Hold of Belkzen, it's full of orcs, orc societies are mostly chaotic and hard to have treaties with and I don't know their gods. On the coast there is Varisia, which also used to be Chelish, and still has lots of our people. Numeria is where a spaceship crash-landed ages ago, is it one of yours? Razmiran is run by a loon who pretends he's a god. Andoran used to be Chelish and now they've gone full Good and hate slavery and everything else people do, I don't think you'll get along with them. Galt used to be Chelish and then repeatedly executed its entire government and now it's run by some megalomaniac who has conquered up to there - and down to there - and out to there. Places that used to be Chelish mostly worship Iomedae and Erastil - god of family and farming -  Abadar - god of commerce - and sometimes Irori - another ascended god, I don't know much about him, I think his main teaching is that you can control what happens to you if you just do things that achieve your goals and don't do dumb things that don't - Andoran will add the other major Good gods into that and Galt might add some Chaotic gods but I don't know which ones...

That down there is Taldor, it's the only other thing in the region that's a global power but they didn't rival Cheliax at its height and I don't think they really do even now. On the other continent that's Osirion, which is Abadar's, and Thuvia which is just some desert city-states and Rahadoum, which bans all the gods. Garund has more of a presence for the churches of Nethys - god of magic - and Pharasma - god of the dead - and Sarenrae. I think Osirion officially tolerates all non-Evil non-Chaotic gods but they go hard for Lawful Neutral. Lawful Neutral's not hard to get the majority of your population to be if you just make sure they aren't ambitious or have any meaningful goals or anything. Qadira I think also follows Nethys and Abadar and Pharasma and Sarenrae but I don't know much about them. Women mostly don't have rights in Garund or Casmaron so I wasn't super planning to visit."

Mhalir listens closely, recording it all on Alloran's brain chip as well. 

<Is my guess that a Lawful Neutral god, who tolerates many other gods in his country, would be less likely to interfere in my operations there as long as I do not break any local laws? It seems promising to obtain books on magic there, and even recruit mages as long as I do not kidnap them, which one assumes Abadar would have objections to. The other alternative would be Rahadoum, which has no gods to worry about.> 

"Probably? They allow slavery there so I don't think they'd be upset about your hosts. I don't know all the local laws, though."

<What do you mean about women not having rights in Garund or Casmaron? Would that be all right in Osirion, if I sent you to buy spells there? I would probably wish to accompany you, in morph, but you are the one who knows what you are talking about.> 

"Uh, humans come in two kinds, men and women, and men can get women pregnant which means we grow a baby, I will be pretty frustrated if you have anyone do it to me and it wouldn't even have a payoff for decades. Anyway babies are a lot of work and there are three things you can do about this, one is have your government pay for people to take care of all the babies, which is what Cheliax does, and two is have a lot of babies starve because their mother was a dumbass who had a baby when she couldn't feed one, which is what lots of places do, and three is force all of your women as soon as they're old enough to become the property of a male stranger in exchange for him promising to feed all the children he has by her, which is what Garund and Casmaron do. I don't know whether I can buy things as myself at a magic shop in Osirion, they might want my husband's permission for me to spend money, but I have Alter Self and I can go as a male wizard and then it won't be any problem. Or you can go as my husband, I guess, if you want to use the way the locals work in order to make it harder for me to run away."

<- Oh, Andalites also have genders and pregnancy for the females, although they have sufficiently advanced technology that they mostly do not do natural pregnancies anymore, it is apparently quite unpleasant for the women, and they are also post-scarcity so the cost of childrearing is less of a problem. Yeerks do something different. Anyway, it seems inefficient to force you to have a baby and I am not planning to do that. I will consider whether it makes more sense to send you as a male wizard or for me to accompany you into the store; I am somewhat worried about magic shop owners casting Detect Thoughts on people who actually enter, and I could still watch you from outside the store, if I use a morph that has good eyesight and hearing.> 

"They might do that, yeah, especially if you're neutral evil."

<Do magic store owners regularly read alignment? And would they find Lawful Evil less problematic?> 

"Some of them might, for strangers spending a lot of money. And Lawful Evil probably isn't gonna rob your magic shop, Neutral Evil might."

<That makes sense. I think the reasonable plan is for me to stay outside, then. I will obviously have some kind of guard force around the area, in case you try to run away, because I do not wish to give you the incentive to do so. It seems preferable if, instead, the incentive I offer is that I will give you huge quantities of money to buy all the spells and magic items you want. I think we ought to just be able to mine for gold, either in the asteroid belt or in some remote region on the planet, and make coins that imitate the local currency, this seems less fraught than attempting to steal it.> 

She nods. "I would like that." People might wonder where she's getting it but if that does happen it seems likely to create opportunities for escape, so. 

<Then we can arrange it. In a few days, because I have some other work to finish. You can consider the itinerary and which spells and items you want in the meantime.> 

Mhalir needs to send a message back to the the Yeerk Council. It's irresponsible to continue keeping this find to himself, at this point, especially if he's going to be taking more risks to get Carissa spells or recruit additional wizards. He wants to send the other less powerful wizard back, maybe along with some of the captured sailors, and he'll draft a detailed message. 

He's not, at this point, ready to go back himself. He'll do the hyperspace jump back - they need to make sure they can get back, anyway, they're in a very different situation if the routing here doesn't work in reverse - and rendezvous with the nearby courier ship, transfer the new hosts and the message, and then go back for further exploration. Waiting for Carissa's response, he's already thoughtspeaking his other staff, requesting that the ship's hyperspace engineers work out the jump back. 

"Can I have something to write with -"

<Yes, of course.> The Yeerks do not have any prohibition on sharing technology. They get her a basic computer tablet and show her how to use it to write up notes for herself. They can also get her paper if she prefers that for some reason, some of the Yeerks who have human hosts from Earth do, but the tablet can store all of her notes in one place. 

She will use the science notepad and start listing spells she needs. "Can you also get me the metals for magic weapons and armor - we call it spellsilver, it's silvery-looking but very soft -"

Huh. He asks her to describe it in a lot of detail, while looking up a table of different metal elements, and then shows her pictures on the computer of different elements they know can be mined from asteroids. Does any element they know of match, or is this some special magic-world metal? 

She can pick out four elements off the table that look right though she'd have to hold them and run a spell through them to know for sure. ...also, what a cool table. She mostly tries not to be expressive about this because giving people a guide to what you enjoy is very dangerous but what a cool table. 

Mhalir notices anyway, less because of anything her face and body is doing, more because he's been in her head, he knows how she thinks, and it's not hard to predict that someone who enjoys learning and intellectual discovery would be delighted by an alien civilization's science.

She can have a copy of it on her tablet! Maybe the less-sophisticated translation software that the shuttle computers have is even going to be up for translating it into Taldane for her, by now.

He asks one of the researchers he brought along with the crew to look into what sorts of asteroids might have the elements she needs. The ship is small but pretty well-equipped, given its exploratory mission and the fact that they weren't sure they would be able to get back again without further research. 

Are they, in fact, ready to attempt the hyperspace jump back to their departure point? 

They are. 

(Alloran roots for it to fail, quietly but with more fervor than he usually manages these days.)

They have the coordinates for their accidental destination, now, and will be able to make their way back to it eventually even if the jump fails in a way that strands them somewhere random again. 

Mhalir gives the go-ahead for them to jump. 

It works fine.

Mhalir transmits a message to the waiting courier ship, says that they've returned safely from a star system that wasn't their intended destination but was actually a lot more valuable. He has a more detailed encrypted report on it for the Yeerk Council and wants them to convey it back along with some hosts taken from the planet they visited, which he'll send over on a shuttle. 

They send confirmation and congratulations and announce that they're ready to accept the hosts.

He's going to send the wizard and another sailor. Not the cleric. Partly because he's worried that doing so will anger Sarenrae even more, if she can tell, and...partly because it's possible the message Sarenrae was trying to send wasn't even hostile. He still has no idea how to interpret it. He does, however, want to maintain avenues of communication. It might give him warning if she's working against him, and...it's not impossible that it could be valuable for something else. Clerics can convey messages back to their god, he thinks. He doesn't want to do that right now, but his head is still full of niggling confusion and some part of him just wants to keep as many options open as possible. 

- for some reason it was tempting not to send a report back at all. It would be irresponsible and stupid to keep risking himself without sending a message back, though. 

It was also tempting not to share the coordinates for Golarion. Mhalir doesn't fully understand why - because he wants to keep his juicy find all to himself? He does include them, because it would be very conspicuous not to. 

He doesn't, however, specify anything at all on the ship's experimental design or extraplanar routing, which is less notable to exclude, but is nonetheless necessary to actually reach said coordinates. Probably there's someone among the Yeerks who can reverse engineer the ship and the route, if he fails to return. But...he's not sure what, exactly. It feels like it buys him some breathing space, and he doesn't know why he wants that.

As soon as the encrypted message is transmitted and the hosts have been transferred, he orders the jump back. 

Alloran is upset and consoling himself by being smug about how when Mhalir encountered a world where he couldn't possibly blame the Andalites for his bad reception and where he could've offered to help the starving babies or something in exchange for hosts he immediately enslaved a bunch of people anyway.

Carissa, on a video feed, is cheerfully listing every spell she has ever heard of on her tablet. It's a long list.

...He honestly kind of wants to help the starving babies. And maybe that's part of why he didn't give the Yeerk Council an easy way to actually find him, why he wanted breathing space in the first place. This way, if he miscalculates and gets himself stupidly murdered by a god, and his morph-tether immortality method doesn't work, then someone somewhere else in the universe will have a way of knowing what happened - but he'll have time here, to figure out the situation, which is what he said in his message he intended to do. And maybe there is just a way to openly offer their technology and aid in exchange for hosts, because there's no way the Andalites know this place exists, and so operating openly wouldn't be revealing his hand too much. 

Still, it goes against all his intuitions to do that without scoping out the land first. So that's what he's going to do next. 

Once they're back, he instructs the ship's engineer to look for some mineable asteroids, to try to get them some gold and silver to imitate local money, and also the four candidate elements for what Carissa needs. 

Then he goes to find the Yeerk who has the cleric of Sarenrae as a host. 

He's pacing off the jump-disorientation. "Visser."

<I wished to find out how your host is doing. And perhaps to speak with him, if he is willing to do that. You can let him speak now if he wants.>

There's a minute of quiet. Then "Well, what do you want?"

Angrily.

<I am still trying to figure that out. My people are at war - I am not sure if your Yeerk has spoken to you of it - and we fear for our survival as a species. I want to ensure our victory in any way I can, and I will not hesitate to do anything if it might help our cause. But...separate from our war needs, I would prefer not to harm you or your people. And, right now, what I want is to hear more about your god and her goals.> 

"I follow the Dawnflower, goddess of healing and the Sun. Where they write things down they call Her Sarenrae.

Lots of people go to war. Lots of people are scared. It's not an excuse to do evil."

Mhalir just watches him, impassive, though the Andalite face and body language are probably illegible to him anyway. 

<Can you tell me> he says finally, <what you mean by Evil, and Good, and by Law and Chaos? I am curious how much of the philosophy taught in Cheliax is also believed elsewhere. And - the story of your goddess murdering her own followers, in the city that turned to worshipping Rovagug - how do the people who worship her rather than Asmodeus describe it?> 

"Evil is hurting people. Enslaving them. Beating them. Cheating them. Letting them go hungry, if you have anything to spare. Calling the law on them, if the law is unjust. Standing by and watching other people hurt them, if you could step in, or if you could've learned the things you'd need to know to step in. Good is healing people. Teaching them, and protecting them, and sheltering them, and arming them, when necessary. You know what good and evil are. Not everyone learns how to listen to their heart about it, and some people get very good at thinking around it, but everyone knows what good and evil are. 

Law is - rules. You need them. They keep society running. You can't have bread if no one pays a baker. You can't have big things, cathedrals and hospitals and aquaducts, unless everyone pitches in for them. You can't have safety in the streets if you don't have a watch and you don't enforce the laws. 

But law isn't - flexible. It can't be. Rules that only count sometimes end up only counting when they don't matter. You need - something other than law - to actually decide what's right for people. Sometimes that comes from imagining yourself in their place, and thinking what you'd need. Sometimes it comes from - letting people do what they want, even when it's a bad idea, because maybe they're not the one missing something, maybe you're the one missing something. Sometimes it comes from just blindly trying to stop hurting people without the slightest idea where it'll lead. The chaotic gods mostly believe that it's the most important thing in the world, people being free to figure that out however they come to it. Sarenrae is a neutral god. You need both. You need the law, and you need to break it where it breaks, and see what you can fill in the cracks with. 

In Cheliax Hell has them, and Asmodeus tells terrible lies."

<I have been getting that sense> he says, very quietly. <Thank you. That...was helpful.> 

Mhalir isn't sure if that's true. The odd metaphorical dizziness is back, he's if anything more confused, but - all of that made sense, none of it was horrifying in the topsy-turvy mind-warping way of Carissa's Asmodean philosophy. 

Outside perspective, he reminds himself. 

<I would understand if you have no desire to offer it> he says finally, <but - could I ask your advice? On what you - or your god - would advocate doing, in the situation I am in?> 

"Sure."

<My species is called Yeerks. You have one in your head right now. We are fighting a war with the Andalites, but at the beginning, it was one of their scientists who gave us the technology to reach the stars...> 

He recounts the story again, basically the same way he explained it to Carissa. Maybe with a bit more nuance filled in - that he isn't sure what the Andalites as a polity believe, they won't talk to him and his people couldn't get spies there and they only ever took the one prisoner. He explains how he kept trying to open talks, long after most of the Yeerk Council thought it was insane of him to do so, and only stopped after Alloran used the bioweapon on the Hork-Bajir homeworld, slaughtering millions of innocents without, as far as Mhalir can tell, ever questioning whether they would agree with him that living with Yeerks was worse than death. 

He says that he wants to figure out a way for Yeerks to live peacefully with other species, but the Andalites are clearly never going to believe this, or stop fighting, until the Yeerks have the upper hand enough to force negotiations. Or at least that's what he's believed for the last fifteen years. 

He hesitates for a long time. 

<...You can talk to him, if you want> he says finally. <My host. If you want to hear his side of things too, before you offer your advice.> Mhalir isn't even sure why he's saying this. Something something outside perspective, something something worth knowing either way, and it's not like it really closes any options. It means that if the cleric ever escapes, he'll have a lot more intelligence to bring his god, but Mhalir doesn't see how he could escape, he's not very powerful for a cleric, and freeing him was already a risk he couldn't afford. 

"I would like to talk to him."

<All right.> 

And he lets Alloran, who's presumably been paying attention, use thoughtspeech again. The cleric won't be able to verify it with mindreading, of course. Mhalir can't remember if he has truth magic. He can ask afterward. 

"What is your name?"

          <Alloran-Semitur-Corrass.>

"You are an Andalite?"

          <Yes.>

"What are Andalites like?"

        Again Alloran finds himself struggling, a little bit, for words. <...we are a peaceful people. We had not warred in a very long time when the Yeerks started enslaving everyone in the galaxy. We live with our herds on grasslands. We built cities, but we mostly do not like them.> Long pause. <There are - mistakes, that many advanced civilizations make, conquering others or - building dangerous weapons, or drugs that are more fun than continuing to live, and we are careful and reflective, and made none of those mistakes. We - made a different one, I suppose. We unleashed Yeerks on the galaxy.>

"Do you have families?"

       <Yes.>

       <Is it - do we need to talk about that ->

"No.

I have a wife. Her name is Nika. We grew up as neighbors. I decided that I wanted to marry her when I was sixteen but she did not want to marry me until I became a priest. We have five children. The oldest one is nearly grown and the youngest one is six. And also named Nika. I proposed we name every girl that because I think it is the most beautiful name in the world but my wife already had three girls' names picked out."

       <I have two children.>

       <Andalites always had not more than two, before the war, so our population would eventually stabilize.>

       <My wife is named Jahar.>

       <We met in college, in a graph theory class I had no business being in but the class that was more at my level met too early in the morning.>

       <She offered to tutor me but I was very embarrassed to be so bad at the class so I arranged another tutor to meet with me right before so that by the time she tutored me I'd already have some idea what was going on.>

        <When she found out, she was jealous, because she'd offered so we could spend time together.>

        <It's been fifteen years. The children are - nearly adults, now.>

"I will pray for you, and for them."

         <What does that - do.>

"Sometimes, Sarenrae can do something. More often, she cannot, but in - remembering why we do things - we find the strength to do it ourselves."

         <We cannot do anything. We will never be able to do anything again. They will use us to enslave everyone they can.>

"Lots of important things are done in the heart, not in the world."

          <That doesn't make any sense.>

"I think it does. A person is - a very big thing. A person contains so many wants and dreams and stories and goals and loves and mistakes - there is a saying, that if you have saved one person it is like you have saved the whole world, and I think that it is an important saying because it is easy to forget how much a person is."

           <The Yeerks will enslave one individual person and then they will do that again and again and again and again across the whole galaxy a trillion times, which is a thousand billion which is a thousand million which is a thousand thousand, you cannot count high enough.>

"And certainly if you have a chance to save a trillion people you should take that! But what I see is that you have the chance to save one, and you say it is like nothing, and it isn't like nothing."

         <I may never die, and if I do I won't get your afterlives. I can't - Carissa thought I counted as Evil, probably, which is right and just, but it doesn't even matter because we don't go anywhere when we die.>

"What do you mean, when you say that it is right and just, that you be counted as Evil."

        < - the Yeerk mentioned it. The Hork-Bajir planet. It's his favorite thing to talk about lately. Because he's pretending we're as bad as they are.>

"You killed many innocent people."

        <Yes.>

"That is a terrible thing. We have a story - your Visser asked about it, but I do not know if he is the person who needed to hear it. It happened long ago in a place called Gormuz, where Rovagug was sealed beneath the ground by the combined effort of all the gods. He managed, somehow, to exert some influence from within his prison, and he began to corrupt the people above the ground, and turn them towards evil, though they believed they were at a holy site of Sarenrae and believed they served her. And when she discovered this she was very frightened, and tried to learn what was wrong, and eventually she sent her herald Kohal, to the city, to warn them, but they had been turned against her, and murdered the herald. And she was filled with grief and terror and confusion, because much had been sacrificed to pin Rovagug away and she feared it all lost, and she turned on the city and destroyed it.

It was the wrong thing to do, I think. It was a difficult situation, but situations are always difficult. She was doing her best, but people usually are. She couldn't think of a better option, but people usually can't. People are more forgiving, in some ways, of the gods. They trust the gods to have been doing their best, in situations where they would not trust a mortal. But that is a mistake; surely, if anything, the standards for the gods should be higher. I think that she was wrong. She thinks that she was wrong. She regrets it. She tries to fix it, where this can be done. And she is still a Good god, because if Good were only for people who haven't made any mistakes then there would not be a single person or god in it, not in this world."

       <I don't think I made a mistake.>

"I do not know enough to even guess at whether you made a mistake. But - Sarenrae sent a vision, when these people took us prisoner. She said that Nirvana - the neutral good afterlife - that it is for everybody. And that to truly understand that is to be halfway, already, to building it. That was the thing she thought it was most important for us to understand, that Nirvana is for us. What do you think it would mean, for her to consider it important to tell you that Nirvana was for you."

      <I don't know anything about Nirvana.>

"It is the neutral good afterlife. It is a place where people heal from the harms of this world, and then make things better."

      <We don't know that Sarenrae was talking to me. It seems unlikely.>

"I think that Sarenrae is talking to everybody, all the time, and it does not seem unlikely at all that that would include a warrior for good who did a terrible thing and has spent a long time paying for it."

      <Then I guess maybe she means someday I'll get to die.>

"Maybe. And when people die here, they get a trial, where any afterlives can argue that they deserve a particular afterlife. The neutral good afterlife - the churches of Sarenrae and Shelyn, mostly - send a representative to every trial. To your friend who is a devoted Asmodean, if she died. They argue that every person deserves Nirvana."

       <- I am not sure what it means to deserve things, in that case.>

"I am curious what your first guess would be."

       <...that it does not mean anything.>

"Some people believe that. The teachings of the gods are not always very obvious."

       <What do you think.>

"I think it means that if people had enough time, all of them would regret the evil that they had done, and do good instead. And in Nirvana they have time. And it is very terrible, that they only get that in Nirvana. But if you have time, you have a rare and precious gift."

        <I can't - think - with him in my head. Everything might be - something he uses to feel more justified in enslaving and torturing and slaughtering people.>

"Being afraid and in pain makes people worse. It's one of the things that's not fair."

         Alloran is in fact having a hard time forming words, through the writhing enormous unfairness of it. 

"Do you think, if you had gone home, after the thing that you did in the war, you would have regretted it, eventually."

        Well, obviously. He doesn't successfully translate that into words either, and by the time he has recovered words is less sure it's true. <Why - if your god understands - why doesn't she stop them ->

"I don't know. But when you can smite cities - have smited cities - maybe it is very important to you, to try other things first."

Mhalir is thinking that he doesn't understand ninety-five percent of that conversation and also it's one of the most agonizing things he's ever sat through, and again, it took a massive effort of will not to override Alloran. Although not for the same reasons; not exactly because he's afraid this was a strategic mistake. 

(Maybe it was. He still doesn't really understand why he proposed at all that the cleric could talk to Alloran.) 

He's tired of being confused, and he's trying to notice that feeling and then set it aside, because it's not helping him, because the confusing facts on the ground aren't going to stop being there just because he doesn't want to look at them. Even if he doesn't know how to make sense of anything, anymore, it's like staring into a kaleidoscope. 

<This is Mhalir again> he says, eventually, when it seems like neither Alloran nor the cleric have anything else to say. <I - still wish to ask. What would your god's philosophy advise me to do, in this situation.> 

"Ask for help. If your people are in danger the Good gods will help you willingly."

Despite himself, he flinches, curling into himself. 

<Why do you believe that is true. Why do you believe that your goddess would care about alien - slugs - from another world...? If there is help to be had then I want it but I do not understand why your goddess would offer it to us.> 

"Well, we have one word on the subject so far, and it is 'Nirvana is for everyone', which seems promising."

<That is not - I do not understand how that is a goal or motivation. Perhaps gods are too big and different, and I cannot understand their motives at all, but that does not make it any more reassuring to rely on them in my plans.> 

"...I don't think it's hard to understand at all!" He gestures at the two of them. "She saw this unholy wasteful tragic mess and she said 'hey, all of you ought to be safe forever and rest and have time to stop hurting each other!"

He stares at the man, off-balance, it feels weirdly like he's falling and he thinks Alloran is just as discomfited. It - still doesn't click, he's still baffled, it's all sliding away from him in every direction. 

<Thank you for your advice> he says, distantly. <I will consider it.> Maybe he even will. In a while. Right now he needs to do something normal and sanity-reinforcing, like going and asking the engineer if there are any updates yet on mining asteroids. 

He's paying more attention than usual to Alloran's train of thought, though. 

Alloran has curled up in sulky confusion and pain. He thinks that any actually Good god would probably stop a bunch of her people from getting enslaved and kidnapped to another part of the galaxy, even if this required smiting the whole ship. 

And he misses his family, which he doesn't usually think about, because Mhalir is doing his best to kill them and it hurts too much to contemplate.

Mhalir does think about the conversation, in the following hours and days, in bits and pieces, in between feeling uneasy and tired and sad. None of which are new emotions for him, exactly, he's felt that way for most of the damned war.

He wants it to be over. 

It would be - too neat, too easy, if he could have that just by asking a benevolent superintelligent being for help. He's not ready to believe that would work. 

In between checking in on his engineer's progress with mining, studying the map, and asking Carissa questions about Golarion so he can plan their next approach, he does nudge the Yeerk who has the cleric of Sarenrae to let his host talk to Carissa. Probably she should hear things about the religious philosophy as taught in other countries. He doesn't expect her to believe it - he doesn't have any idea what effect it'll have - but right now he's in a sea of fragments and finds himself just wanting to do things, in general, and see if some of them nudge other things into motion.

Eventually they locate some gold, it's not exactly dense in asteroid belts but they don't need industrial quantities of it right now, just enough for an initial trip to Osirion. He asks the engineer if they've made any progress on finding the metals Carissa thought might be the magic one. 

They can mine asteroids for those too, if they do turn out to be the right ones. 

Can they get some samples and show Carissa so she can test them using whatever method she was proposing before? They can probably provide her with whatever other equipment she needs, the ship's fabricator is pretty flexible. 

She tests them. They're right. She's delighted about this and does a little dance when no one is around even though she's sure they can scry her quarters at any time. 

She asks Mhalir what she's allowed to make. "I could probably make something dangerous to you with this. I won't, but it wouldn't be hard. So if you want me to retrain out of weapons or something, or only make ones that aren't sharp, I could do that."

<- I am not worried about you making sharp things. Not for my own safety, anyway.> He sweeps his tail around, letting the tail-blade stop in midair just in front of him, neat and precise. <Though if the weapons do not actually need to be sharp, in order to hold magic spells, then you might as well make them not sharp, so that my other personnel are less alarmed.> 

"They gotta be masterwork but I don't know what kinds of eccentric shapes that allows, if I have as much spellsilver as I want I can experiment."

<All right. You can experiment, then. And I think we are ready to move in closer to the planet and plan a trip to Osirion. We need a closer look at the local money in order to forge it, so I will go there first in morph. What city are you thinking you will want to visit, to buy spells?>

"Sothis, nowhere else is going to have much in the way of spells I haven't got."

<All right, we can go there.> 

Mhalir won't start with that, though. Leaving Carissa to her magic work on the ship in orbit, he takes the cloaked shuttle down to scope out Osirion at closer range and find a smaller town, with fewer signs of magic around, and then he flies in in morph to explore more closely. His plan is for them to stun a local, maybe a merchant or farmer on their way back from selling goods in the marketplace, and steal a sample of their money so they can copy it, they just need one of each coin type. It's actually a lot more irritating, forging money in a lower-tech culture; on Earth they could just do it by outwitting the human banking computers.

He watches for a suitable target. Someone moderately prosperous, so they're more likely to actually have gold on them, but not prosperous enough to have a guard, or protective magic items... 

Osirion is hot and sandy everywhere aside from the riverbank, where its population clusters at an impressive density. There's a church of Sarenrae in this city, and six of Abadar. There are merchants who leave with some money at the end of the day, but not with a guard; they generally tie the money carefully under their clothes and carry a knife, and are rarely bothered. 

Mhalir is worried that this indicates a very competent police and legal system, but it's not clear what they're supposed to do about an invisible attacker that takes a few coins and vanishes. He authorizes the shuttle to descend, cloaked, and for one of his crew to stun a traveling merchant; he can instruct them on exactly where to search for the money, so that the mugging takes only a few seconds. 

The shuttle reports back a minute later with the coins.

Excellent. Do they look straightforward to forge? Mhalir asks Carissa to check if they have magical properties to make forgery harder, just in case. 

She Detects Magic on them; they come up ordinary. "I don't think anywhere I've heard of has magic money."

<Well, that makes this easier, anyway.>

They turn all their gold and silver into forged Osirion coins, load Carissa up with a fat purse, and take her down in the shuttle to fly over the city. Mhalir, morphed as a crow, asks her where would be a good neighbourhood to drop her off; they obviously want to minimize how much time they spend wandering the city, since there might be random wizards around with Detect Thoughts. 

She can pick out from the shuttle where the magic shops are, and cast Tongues on herself, and go.

(Her plan is not to do anything suspicious, but she's not going to try to resist any spells anyone casts on her; if they are suspicious enough to read her mind, good for them). 

Mhalir flies above her, and finds a place to perch where he has a good view of the inside of the shop and can mostly hear the conversations inside through an open window, though occasionally gusts of dusty wind muffle the words. 

Hi, she would like scrolls of Protection from Evil and Air Bubble and Grease and Snowball and True Strike and Sleep and Floating Disk and Silent Image and Chill Touch and Ant Haul and Enlarge Person and Reduce Person and Arcane Lock and Book Ward and Summon Monster II and Spell Gauge and Daze Monster and Admonishing Ray and Scorching Ray and Continual Flame and Hypnotic Pattern and Invisibility and Cat's Grace and Bull's Strength and Bear's Endurance and Owl's Wisdom and Fox's Cunning and Eagle's Splendour and Knock and Rope Trick and Magic Circle Against Evil and Summon Monster III and Clairvoyance and Deep Slumber and Suggestion and Fireball and Tiny Hut and Fly and Shrink Item. 

(This is everything in the shop.)

(Carissa is really confused on many levels but also she's having the time of her life.)

The shopkeeper is confused and suspicious. She figures it's best not to answer questions. "You can check the money as much as you'd like."

Various other words of conversation are audible from Mhalir's perch. "Cheliax." "...not here." "Not married."

Mhalir waits, very nervously. He's more anxious about being somehow stomped on by a disapproving local god than about Carissa betraying him, right now, though he's not completely unconcerned. She knows where more gold and more shuttle rides to various cities would come from. 

<Is that all you need to put the magic in your spellbook?> he asks her once she's done. <Scrolls are not the same as spells in your book, right.> He knows a lot more about wizardry than he did before he was in a wizard's head, and he didn't even get to cast any spells; he's a bit disappointed about that, actually. 

"Not the same but I can work it out and then transcribe it from them." Bounce bounce bounce bounce.

She seems pleased, which Mhalir is happy about. He alerts the shuttle via thoughtspeech, asks for a pickup from a location where no one will see them vanishing into an invisible spaceship. 

Carissa looks intently at her new spells. She's going to push to get to go to Absalom, eventually. And she's going to get a headband - maybe just straight for the highest class of headband, why not - 

- and it honestly doesn't make sense to feel as conflicted as she does. This is fine. This is great.

They hang out in the cloaked shuttle above the city, watching the shop from above in case any suspicious legal authorities show up, and listening from a tiny concealed microphone that a crow could easily carry down. Mhalir doesn't see how they could know, but then again, he can't be sure no one read his mind while he was sitting there in crow form, it wouldn't have felt like anything.

If nothing happens in half an hour he'll take Carissa back to the ship in space, so she can work on her new spells. 

<Where would you go if you wanted to recruit wizards?> he asks her. <Also I could use your advice on a recruiting pitch. Your world has mercenary companies - are some of them very secretive, we could perhaps make that the cover story but I am not sure if it would sound plausible...> 

"Probably Absalom, lots is always happening in Absalom. Some are very secretive but usually those are dangerous to work for. I think I'd just - embrace that, say that it's very dangerous, you'll cover resurrection insurance. But I'm not - I wasn't an adventurer. You could maybe enslave an adventurer who isn't a wizard, just a powerful soldier or something, and get a sense from them of how it's supposed to work."

<The powerful soldiers are also difficult to capture, they are immune to stunning beams. I will think about it. What gods are found in Absalom, and is it full of people with Detect Thoughts?> 

"Yes, it is. Everywhere interesting is full of people with Detect Thoughts, it's a common spell. Maybe you should just invest in a lead helmet. Absalom mostly worships the ascended gods, I think. Since the Starstone is right there. 

Also obviously this is Good-need-not-apply but if you advertise it as Good-need-not-apply that's going to attract a specific crowd even among non-Good adventurers so maybe just turn the Good ones down quietly?"

<...Do lead helmets block it?> He gives her a thoughtful look. <Come to think of it, can you use your magic to cover me against it? I should test whether your magic is something I can learn, but blocking spells is not something I could do at first level anyway.> 

"Magic can do that but only really powerful magic can do it reliably. We can buy an item of it in Absalom, maybe, though not inconspicuously. Detect Thoughts is a divination. It's blocked by a foot of stone, an inch of metal, a fingernail's thickness of lead, or three feet of wood and dirt, like most divinations."

<I might want you to test whether it works for a hawk or pigeon to wear a tiny bird size lead helmet, and how conspicuous it looks, I will be going in bird morph most of the time. If you cannot block it with your own magic we can investigate getting an item in Absalom. You can disguise yourself as other people, right, so it might be suspicious but would not be traceable to our other operations there?>