She's doing magic research at the same time with an Unseen Servant to write for her; it's the default, these days, because he mostly looks at his display and it's very boring. She leaves a note of where she left off and stops.

Mhalir stares at the display for a long moment, waiting for the numbers to settle and resolve. 

"The spell says highly probable," he says finally. "I think this one is worth checking."

They've checked two other worlds, both of which turned out to be boring false positives - or so it looked when jumped to look, anyway - but on their last trip back he refined the search-aspect further with Aroden, and the confidence is a lot higher on this one. "Jump coordinates..." He reads them off. 

If he's a you or Aroden he might be dangerous to drop on unexpectedly.

<That is why I gave coordinates to land quite far away from the planet itself. Even if we startle him, he ought not be able to react instantly, and so both of us would have time to think.> 

The pilot enters the coordinates; the ship jumps.

The sun they're approaching is brighter than the surrounding stars, but only moderately so; they're in the far outer reaches of the system, with a long approach ahead to the planet or planets in the habitable zone. 

Mhalir watches the sensor data closely. Huh. No sign of satellites, or any orbital infrastructure, or any visible reaction to their arrival. 

"Transmit the standard recorded message," he says to the comms officer. Not that he's particularly expecting it to be received, or answered, but it's still worth trying. 

(The standard message doesn't say anything about their search for alternate-world version of himself and Aroden, just that they're interstellar visitors, arriving peacefully.) 

They transmit the message.

"No visible ships or stations," his lieutenant reports a moment later. "Readout on the planets coming...now..."

There are five planets and a handful of smaller icy planetoids in wide eccentric orbits. Two gas giants, one cold rocky planet, one planet close to and tidally locked with the sun - and one planet roughly in the habitable zone, showing the blue-and-green pattern of continents and oceans. One large continent, a handful of smaller ones. 

No sign of lights visible from space on the dark side. 

The requisite time passes, and no answer to their message arrives. 

Mhalir is confused. 

He doesn't really know what they're looking for, he reminds himself, and even the civilization on Golarion wouldn't have replied to a radio message. 

The large continent is turning into night, and - maybe those are flickers of artificial lighting? It's not that clearly, nowhere near the level of the industrial civilization seen on Earth or other worlds, but there's something there. 

A you before Seerow arrived wouldn't've been able to reply at all, either. But both worlds would be, in different ways, dangerous to land on blindly...

"Do you want us to go in closer?" says the pilot.

"I want us to enter orbit, cloaked; I want sensor data on the main continent."

His eyes are fixed on the display; Still no sign of any orbital infrastructure, but there's definitely something down there. Significantly more than would have been visible of the Yeerk civilization from space, before Seerow's arrival... 

It takes a while to reach the planet from here, if you're not jumping. It grows in the viewscreens as they glide in and enter an orbit.

There are cities down there. Small to medium-sized, by Earth standards, dimmer than modern cities and the pattern of lighting is off - more concentrated in small local clusters - but still far more visible from space than preindustrial cities ought to be. 

- also there are areas that are less visible than they should be, somehow? As though particular areas are blurred out and muted. 

"Magic sensors, please," Mhalir says quietly. Those ones aren't on by default, because they burn a lot of energy, but it seems especially relevant now. 

It takes a minute.

" - yep. The lights are magic, some magic - shielding, I think, it's got to be..."

Mhalir stares hard at the screen displaying the shipboard version of Detect Magic. It...doesn't really match how Golarion cities look to these sensors, but it's obviously magic of some sort. So - more like Golarion than like Earth, or like the Yeerk homeworld, but not exactly analogous to any of those... 

Still no sign of anything else in orbit, or that the civilization below has remarked on their presence at all. 

"We will stay in orbit overnight and observe," he says. "If there are no major updates, we will select a place to land tomorrow." 

<Carissa, you can have your body now.> And he relinquishes control. 

She pulls out her item-enchanting work, but distractedly. I wanna learn their magic.

<I am very curious to learn what kind of magic they have! It looks different to you too, no?> 

I can't see anything from here with my spells. It looks weird on the sensor reading but I don't remember what exactly Golarion looked like. Even if they have the same underlying physics of magic they'll have very different techniques, though, ancient Golarion civilizations did...

<True.> Mhalir is wishing, right now, that this could be purely a trip about learning magic from other worlds. It's not not about that, but - well, all the complicated political messiness of Cheliax is waiting for them back on Golarion, and he doubts that any version of his or Aroden's story would have avoided that sort of complication on their own end. 

He retreats into his own thoughts, letting Carissa work on her magic item enchanting. 

She's nervous. Meeting Mhalir was terrifying and involved getting kidnapped and meeting Aroden was terrifying and involved getting kidnapped and - she's not totally sure what they have in common aside from the being terrifying and kidnapping people. And hating Hell.

And she's curious, because some other way to do magic, not that it is likely to work out like that. Things never do.

Mhalir is also nervous, though his anxiety is less pinned down on any specific bad outcome. He doesn't know what to expect, except...well, if it's true that different versions of him and his story repeat in different worlds, and there's an alternate version of him here, then there's probably also an alternate version of the war. It's been a major facet of both his and Aroden's lives that they face powerful enemies. 

It's not productive to chew on that just yet, though, when they have so little data to build on; all he can do is ask his staff to watch especially for signs of warfare on the planet, though he doesn't know what a war here would even look like, their tech level doesn't seem that analogous either to the Yeerk and Andalite civilizations or to Golarion. 

Rather than ruminating pointlessly, he tries to distract himself by observing Carissa's magic work, and eventually it's time for them to sleep. 

The planet below is quiescent, even as the main continent turns toward daylight. They can get a little more detail on the surface infrastructure; there are some roads, and some cities located along rivers, hinting that water is a means of transport. It's hard to tell from here where separate countries, if they exist, begin and end; it's not like there are lines drawn on the planet itself. If there are wartime activities, they're not at a scale visible from space, except for what might be defensive shielding.

...The largest structure on the entire planet, it turns out, is in the centre of the most thoroughly magical area, and also one of the spots under some sort of magical shield. The shielding doesn't entirely hide it from view, the way Yeerk ship cloaking works; it has some kind of blurring effect, making it impossible to locate from any specific angle, but sensor coverage from multiple angles can be combined, processing with the ship computers, and formed into an estimate of what's on the other side. Some sort of enormous multi-spired tower, rivalling the height of Earth's tallest buildings. 

"Still no response to our comms", his officer says. "Which isn't surprising, it doesn't look like they have electricity at all."

They could try other communication methods from space, but at this point Mhalir is inclined to skip straight to taking a shuttle down and getting a closer look, and then making an informed decision on when and where, and with who, to initiate contact. 

He wishes vaguely that Aroden's spell had any more accuracy than just 'which world'. There are millions of people down there - he's not even sure of what species, yet - and he has no way of telling which of them is his alt. Though they're...more likely than most people to be in some sort of leadership position, he thinks, which narrows the search space. 

<Carissa, what do you think?> 

I bet it won't work to scry or do a Sending off 'the person who is like Mhalir' but we could at least try. 

<...Oh, yes, that is worth trying. I - cannot think of an introduction we could Send that would not be utterly baffling, but I suppose any way we try to introduce ourselves will sound implausible to them.> 

You could just explain the interplanetary visitor part and not mention the ...stories part? If they're at war they'll probably tell us about it themselves.

<That makes sense. We can attempt to scry them first, in any case, if that works it will give us more information to use in drafting a message.> 

Sure. 

And she can head over to a mirror and start a scry.

This does not work. 

Sigh. <I suppose I am not surprised.>

Me neither. Probably we want to...land far from the shielded area, ask around about what's going on? She has permanent Tongues and she loves it very much.

Golarion magic is so absurd sometimes; you can do translation with computer technology, but it's a hard problem and it won't work instantly on a new planet with a new set of languages. 

<That sounds right. Hmm - I wonder if we learn a name for someone who could be the other version of me, if it would work to address a Sending to them if and only if we are right about that part...>

Mhalir looks at the sensor map they've put together of the continent. It's large enough that landing as far as possible from the shielded area will leave them thousands of miles away, which in a preindustrial world with limited transport is likely to make it hard to learn anything about said shielding. Maybe better to be conservative at first, though, try to get a sense of these people's capabilities, gauge whether the shuttle is likely to be detected on a closer approach. Mhalir picks out a spot about fifteen hundred miles southeast of the shielding, near the southern coast, where the think they've spotted ship movements on the sensors. There's a city build near the mouth of a large river delta. They can land further out initially, in a remote area, and then approach the city if it seems safe. 

I think a Sending to a name fails if you failed to pick out a specific person, so - maybe it'd fail if you were thinking of them as possessing a important characteristic that doesn't go with that name? 

They start towards the fields outside the river delta city.

It's a hot, wet tropical climate. There are some grain or legume crops, but mostly the region seems to grow a lot of date palm and banana-like fruit, and other harder to recognize fruits, as well as some cotton-like fibre production. The local houses are built mostly of bamboo, often raised on struts, maybe as a precaution against flooding. 

The locals, where visible, look like Earth or Golarion humans, accounting for ethnic variation; the local population tends significantly darker-skinned than Carissa, with straight to wavy black hair. 

The visible level of technology, at least out here away from the city, is...not very high. In the rural area, the sensors for magic detect almost nothing, just a faint background wash of formless magical energy, with some variation in density, and occasional random spikes that are hard to associate with anything in particular. In terms of non-magical tech, there are a handful of waterwheels powering what appear to be mills, and iron or steel plows hitched to draft animals, and signs of what might or might not be a small-scale open-pit mining operation. That's about it. 

<We can fly closer to the city, I think> Mhalir says, after a while of observing very boring fields, and no sign that they've been noticed. 

They fly closer to the city. 

Is this what Golarion looked like at first, too?

<I imagine so, if you go far enough back. Civilization on Golarion is very old, though.> 

The city, when they reach it, is more interesting, though nowhere near what can be found on Golarion currently. There's a lot of riverboat traffic. Coming from upriver, it's mostly flat barges pushed along with poles or pulled by draft animals from the shore with ropes; the river is at this point very shallow. There's a port on an island further down the mouth of the delta, with water deep enough for larger oceangoing vessels to dock, where goods are transferred directly to barges and hauled to the city itself. 

The city is teeming with people, with a much wider range of ethnicities in evidence; clothing is varied as well, though it tends brightly-coloured. The houses are mostly wood or bamboo, still, but built up to three or four stories in the densest parts. There's an open-air market, stall-keepers waving away flies from their heaps of colourful produce and fresh-caught fish. 

More magic is visible to the sensors; it still looks very very weird, sort of - less discrete than Golarion spells? Many of the nicer buildings have magic sort of baked into their structure in a diffuse way. Every once in a while, a noticeable burst of magical discharge can be correlated with a human floating cargo on and off a barge, or lighting a fire to smoke fish. There are also quite a number of smaller point sources; magic items, it looks like, often worn on necklaces or bracelets. Some are recognizably similar to permanent Mage Armour and other kinds of shielding; others are much harder to interpret. 

The locals don't seem to notice the cloaked, hovering shuttle at all. 

She watches the magic intently. Maybe they're - all sorcerers? Or lots of them, anyway? And if you mostly had sorcerers then that's change how you thought about magic, too...

Any divine magic at all?

Nope. 

That seems good, on the whole.

Probably we don't want to start by explaining about Yeerks? They sound scary and it - points at what your incentives are -

<...I think not. I am not sure how much we want to explain the broader situation to people in this city, even, versus just obtain more information about this world's magic and other customs, and then re-evaluate our next steps. They are quite far away, but it might be worth asking if they know of a major war happening elsewhere, just in case they do have enough long-distance trade.> Though he's not vastly hopeful about that. 

In Golarion long ago some people were teleporters. I think. I don't know much ancient history.

<Also that. I would expect it to be more apparent in their trade logistics if they had significant numbers of teleporters, but if it is rare then it might not be. Anyway, since you will be able to speak the language, possibly we could just go in and say we are foreigners from very far away? ...And see what we can learn from Detect Thoughts as well as conversation, of course.> He looks down at what they're wearing. <I am not sure how much our clothing would stand out to them as is, if we go in without visible weapons or other technology.> 

Disguise Self can cover that once we see how the locals dress.

<Oh, that works fine. We can hover lower in the shuttle, or I suppose we can just disembark a little outside the city and find somewhere out of sight to observe.> Or they could cast Invisibility, but it seems probably not worth using as their first choice when there are other options.  

Once they get a good image off the ship cameras she can disguise herself as a local, outfit and all.

The other advantage of this is that they can take a Dracon beam, which shouldn't be detectable even if they locals have their own version of Detect Magic. Probably their magic items would be but he's not about to suggest they remove them. They can wear a concealed microphone to communicate back and forth with the shuttle. 

On the northern side, the city trails off quite sharply into a swampy tangle of very tall rushes, which present a good spot for a concealed landing as long as they're willing to get slightly wet feet. 

Wet feet are fine.

(This is fun, to the extent it is not scary, but it's mostly scary.)

Mhalir isn't very scared. They're taking a lot of precautions and taking care not to draw attention to themselves and there's no reason to think this city is especially dangerous. There are still unknown unknowns, so he's tense, but there's not really anything else to be done, here.

They have a map of the city as recorded from above on a small portable tablet, which can be hidden once they're interacting with people. He examines it. 

<I think we should approach cautiously and stay out of sight, and read some minds to determine that there is not some kind of invisible danger that all the locals know to watch out for, and then we can talk to people.> 

If we're not going to be explaining Yeerks we probably shouldn't alternate piloting that much - do you want to do it because you are more paranoid or do you want me to do it because I walk like a normal person.

<You can do it - I think you also talk more like a normal human and are better at lying. And I can be more attentive to signs of danger if I am not also making conversation.> 

Okay. And she crouches under cover and listens to peoples' thoughts and comes up with a story for if anyone sees her and is suspicious. She's looking for a coin she dropped.

Mhalir watches everything. 

Most of the thoughts they pick up on are very mundane ones. This woman is worrying about their daughter's illness and listing in her head the groceries they need from the market. This young man is wondering if his sweetheart will like the scarf he bought for her. This woman is worrying that her husband's ship is late to port, and trying to reassure herself that it's probably fine, lots of delays this time of year. This boy is hungry and hoping there's dockwork to be had today so he can eat tonight. This older man is fretting that he was cheated by the mage who sold him the amulet, which supposedly protects against catching fevers, but his sister-in-law thinks it's more likely a fraud. This elderly woman is upset at the raucous youngsters who've moved into the apartment under hers, no respect or decorum at all, what's the world coming to. 

Some people are worrying about pickpockets, and the ones riding donkeys or camels are definitely thinking to keep a close eye on their animals at the market, but no one seems very worried about violence and certainly they don't have war on their minds. 

Seems promising.

<All right, we should go talk to people. You can say that you arrived on a ship, from - very far to the east.>

Based on the thought-snippets, the ships sail in along the coast both from east to west, but the west seems to mostly belong to some major empire which has a lot of trade back and forth, so it might be suspicious for Carissa to be arriving not knowing anything. The east is less known.

<Possibly you could say you are looking for work as a wizard - or mage, they seem to call it, though that might be specifically sorcerers, I cannot tell. It would draw more attention but it would also give you a pretext to ask about the local magic.> 

She picks someone who looks not particularly likely to know anything but also not particularly likely to think much of any mistakes she makes, she can do that for a first practice run.

"Hello. Is there a guild for mages in this city?"

The woman blinks at her. "- What're you looking for, miss? A teacher, or a job? Dunno about teaching, but old Firo at the docks is looking for mage-guards, I heard, if you can stomach that sort of work."

She is vaguely aware of the concept of guilds, her brother-in-law is in the blacksmiths' guild, but the question isn't parsing clearly for her when it comes to mages specifically. 

"Thank you, I'll talk to him."

"You're welcome." The woman scurries off, not paying her any further attention; she's thinking about how she's running late to get to the market and back in time to have all the chores done and supper cooked by sundown and they can't afford more lamp-oil. 

<...Did you want to go to the docks, or ask other people?>

Ask other people, I think, we're presumably not actually looking for mage-work? I guess it's a way to earn money we can counterfeit.

<It could be worth considering later. We could perhaps ask other people if they know any mages, say that we may want to hire them for a job, that could be another avenue.> 

Sure! She'll ask the next person if they know where someone goes to hire a mage around here, she's hiring for a job.

It's an older woman carrying a basket of textiles to the market. "Oh! Hmm. If I were you I'd try Jiav's tavern, uh, sorry, think it's called the Nail and Anchor these days. That's where the mages tend to go, so if you don't have friends here already I think it'd be the place to start." 

"Thank you."

I guess we could go do that? Hang around and listen and learn what they can do?

<That seems reasonable. Even if we do not actively start conversations, there will probably be informative conversations and thoughts to listen in on. ...We should consider changing our appearance again for it.> 

Yep. She picks a different but equally nondescript local face and heads off in what she hopes is the right direction, though she's going to get hopelessly lost probably.

They have the city map on their tablet, which Mhalir prompts her to glance at when they're out of sight of anyone else, and they can head in the direction of the docks. 

There's a sort of main boulevard winding along near the edge of the river. Much of the shops and establishments appear to have signage on the assumption that their patrons are illiterate; the signs consist instead of symbols or literal objects hung from the lintels. If they walk for a while, the Nail and Anchor will be obvious enough. 

Cheliax is the only place she's ever heard of where most people can read.

She goes into the Nail and Anchor, with Detect Thoughts up again.

It's crowded and loud and smoky. The main floor has a dozen tables, each dimly-lit by a lantern; some have a bit of extra lighting, which seems to be magical. 

The barkeep at the counter is gossiping with a regular patron about how the price of bananas is up this year and this is dumb, and thinking about rent being due next week and whether they should tell security to keep an extra eye on that group in the corner, there's nothing specific they just look sort of suspect. The barmaid serving drinks to tables is wishing she were a mage herself and could tell whether other mages were any good just by looking, because mages are hot but sometimes they just tell you they're Adepts when they're in their cups and actually they're only Journeymen.

The man at this table is a Master mage and looking for work that is anywhere except a ship, please gods can he never be on water again, 'seasick' used to be just words but it's all too real now. The woman sitting across from him is mulling on what question she could ask to determine he's not like the last mage they hired on, who was fine at defensive wards but turned out to be scared of fire, who ever heard of a mage scared of fire, seriously. 

This is really overwhelming and Mhalir hopes Carissa has a better idea of how to approach it than he does. 

It's a tavern! Adventurers are the same worlds over, probably. She orders a drink and sits down and makes herself a crumpled paper map to look at and waits for people to come around and make conversation.

Shortly later the young Master mage talking to the woman hiring determines that no the mercenary company she wants a guard for is going upriver for their next contract and barges are TOO CLOSE to ships, and he politely extracts himself, mills around a bit and orders another drink, and then looks around and sees Carissa. He can't tell at a glance if she's hiring or looking for work herself, but either way she's hot, so he heads over. Smiles. "Hey." 

"Hey. I'm new here, who's hiring?"

"New, huh?" He sits across from her, raises an eyebrow. "Where're you from?" 

"Cheliax." Despairing gesture. "It's way east of here and no one's heard of it. I originally meant to go north of here, but apparently they're having some kind of trouble?" It's a guess; maybe they have that much defensive shielding for no reason at all.

Shrug. "I wouldn't know, I just got back from out west, you know, other side of all those mountains. You could ask Maude?" He points vaguely with his chin at the woman he was just speaking to. "She's taking her company upriver. Wants to hire for mages first, if that's your line of work– you an Adept?" He's thinking that most people aren't and he certainly doesn't know how to read Gift-potential at a glance, but she gives off an undefinable aura of competence. "If you've the stomach for mercenary work, the signing bonus she's offering for Adepts is pretty damned sweet." 

"I can take care of myself but we have different names for mage levels, where I'm from, I don't know which of yours I'd be. What's the mission, did she say?"

"I, uh, didn't get that many specifics." Because he bailed as soon as 'river barge' was mentioned, but he's embarrassed to say that now. "She mentioned hazard pay, though. So - could be risky, but you'll get your gold for it."

"Is she reliable?"

"Uh, haven't worked with her before, but Jiav–" gesture at the bartender, "recommended her, said she's all right. She's pretty new as a mercenary captain but she pays her people on time." 

"Mmmm. Have you ever been upriver? What country even is that..."

"I've been up a ways, but never out of Acar Province. She's going a lot further north than that, said the job's in–" his brow furrows, "Rubhani Province, I think, it's still part of the Ceej but it's over five hundred miles. Got some sort of trouble on their border." 

"Maybe I'll talk to her." That doesn't necessarily suggest teleportation isn't widespread, if you're moving adventurers and their support staff to a location none of them have been before it might make sense to go by boat rather than pay someone at seventh circle with Greater Teleport to shuttle them. But it's a little bit of information, at least.

"Well, good luck." He shakes his head, then smiles at her. "What's it like where you're from, anyway?" 

"Cheliax?" A sudden twinge of pain which doesn't make it onto her face at all. "It's all right. We say we've got the best schools for mages in the world, though I haven't seen enough world to know if it's true, yet."

"Wow!" He's a bit intimidated now, she sounds so smart. "You went to school for it, then, not just an apprenticeship?" 

"Yes. In Cheliax we think apprenticeships are inefficient, you only learn one approach and you take the same amount of time even if you're very promising and it's hard to compare people objectively across teachers. I think you need a high density of mages to make schools work, though, otherwise they're not that different from apprenticeships and without even the part where you picked someone off a recommendation." She's had this conversation, before, at the Worldwound, though there everyone was looking at her with what in retrospect she can identify as pity.

He isn't looking at her with pity at all; he's impressed, and wondering why he's never heard of this place before, and he's now thinking less about how she's hot and more about how maybe the clever thing here would be to get tips from her. "What sorts of, er, approaches did you learn?" 

Unless there's some really good reason not to I'm going to show him some spells and see how impressed he is or isn't, she tells Mhalir.

<It seems worth it for the information it will give us. If it draws a lot of attention we should find an excuse to leave, probably, but we will change our appearance afterward anyway.> 

Yeah. 

She doesn't have the slightest idea what'll be impressive here. Possibly even third-circle spells they haven't invented won't be that impressive, because they'll be able to see how you'd do it - but that's information all by itself -

She casts Hostile Levitation on him, because it will also be informative about the local mages's Will saves. 

The mage does not make his Will save; it's unclear if he's trying to, or knows that's a thing. He seems a little startled but mostly curious and delighted, as he floats a few inches in the air - and then more impressed, and a bit nervous, when he can't seem to push against it at all with his own magic. 

The display also has a few heads whipping around; an old grizzled man hunched over a drink at the bar, and a young man, his head shaved and shiny, both spin around and stare, in an unfocused way that suggests they're not quite looking with their ordinary eyes. 

Presumably they're using Detect Magic or something like it. This mage should be able to dispel her levitation fine but maybe he's not that powerful, or not used to this style - she has her own Detect Magic up to watch him try -

The complex structure of her spell is visible, trapping him in the air in a way that would be nearly impossible to fight without magic. His own counter-attempts are much less structured; at first he just seems to be trying to shove her magic away, with a burst of energy shaped just enough to manifest as physical force.

He stops quickly when this proves ineffective, looks up and grins at her - an expression simultaneously impressed and very slightly scared - and then moves on to trying to snip at the cords of magic making up the spell-structure. It doesn't look like Dispel Magic. Or like he's casting a prepared spell at all, really. It takes him a while to find the right leverage point, but eventually he does manage to destabilize something. Her spell comes apart in a burst of energy, dropping him back into his seat and eliciting startled gasps from the people using Detect Magic or something like it. 

"Huh! That's not how we'd counter it, either." They're not prepared casters at all, which fits with what she saw earlier, but she doesn't think any Golarion sorcerers have that much finesse - though she's only seen a couple, and not at close range.

"That - sure is a very different approach," the man says, blinking at her. "It's so - precise - almost looks like wards, the way you do it, except twenty times more powerful..." 

    The old man from the bar is sidling over to them. He thumps his drink down on the table and smiles crookedly at her, showing a mouthful of missing teeth; it's otherwise a friendly enough smile. "Hey there, young lady. Listen, I'll buy you a drink if you tell me how you did that - I've been halfway around the world by now and I never saw anything like that." 

"Then perhaps I should be charging more than a drink!" But she beckons him over. "I'm from Cheliax, where we learn a technique called spell stabilization - you do most of the work in advance, and then have the spell sitting there ready to go if you need it. It's mostly useful in combat, no one'll be entertained if you spend ten minutes weaving before you do anything, but learning it is supposed to help with artifact-making, too, which is my main specialty."

"Fascinating! I never learned much artifact work myself, wasn't my strength, but - hmm, so it's as though everything you cast in combat is a trap-spell you prepped earlier? You must need something to stabilize it to - your focus-stone...?" He's peering at her. "You got any more of those on you?" 

Oh, so they stabilize spells sometimes for specific purposes, that makes sense as a thing for sorcerers to come up with even if they never came up with all of wizardry.

"I don't." And she has a bonded amulet but some wizards don't. "But yes, you've got the idea. This also means that most of the magic expenditure is earlier, I can only stabilize so much at once and that's tiring but I won't be tired from casting it."

"Goodness, you must be quite something in a fight, if you can throw that kind of power around and not even be tired! ...Is Cheliax anywhere near Tantara, by chance? Sounds like the sort of thing the Mage of Silence might've gotten his inspiration from."

Maude, the mercenary captain, has now also shifted a table closer and is listening in on their conversation while trying not to be obvious about it. 

"I've heard of Tantara but haven't been there, Cheliax is quite far from everything and truth be told I couldn't even point Tantara out on a map. Maybe someday I'll have the chance to ask him, I left so I could get exposure to other styles of magic..."

"Oh, if that's what you're after, miss, then you absolutely should. They say he's the best mage-teacher in the world." 

     The mercenary captain slides her chair closer. "Maybe not this year," she says darkly. "Given the war and all. If you're looking for work, though, I'm taking my company up near there, the governor's worried about the war spilling over into the Ceej. Hells, I've heard whispers the Emperor is worried, given it looks like Predain's building their own little empire up there. If he wins, though - and really, best mage in the world, by rights he ought to - you'd be right nearby." 

"Huh. You'd have to be pretty foolish to pick a fight with the best mage in the world. What's the pay like?"

"Five gold a week plus all travel expense covered. Ten gold hazard pay if we see action - keep in mind, only counts if we end up engaging a larger force than our company, a dozen bandits on the road doesn't do it. Twenty gold signing bonus for Adepts." A narrow-eyed look. "Though I might consider going higher, if you sell me on it, sounds like you're no ordinary Adept." 

"And no one else'll be expecting what I can do. This is by the leave of the local governor? Action, if we see it, will be - Tantara's forces? Predain's forces? Some other involved group?"

"Local governor's the one paying us, yes. Think he's mostly worried about Predain's forces deciding it'd be to their advantage to bite off some of his province and then march on Tantara from that side. Tantara signed a treaty with us years back and he doesn't reckon they'd break the terms even in wartime." Shrug. "I don't think it's that likely, probably our job will be to show up and look threatening, and prevent any fleeing refugees from causing trouble." 

"Mmmhmm. Who's in charge in Predain these days?"

"Uh, can't recall the King's name. Think he took the throne, hmm, fifteen years back? He's a real reformer, though I've heard it said that some advisor of his is behind most of it." 

"And the Mage of Silence is running things in Tantara?"

"Last I heard he'd landed in charge, yes. Something happened to the king and most of the nobility." Shiver. "We only heard rumours, ones that don't even match up at that, but - nasty stuff, sounds like. Whoever's in command of Predain's army has a real twisted mind." 

"How long has the war been going on?"

"Little under a year - nine, ten months, maybe? Tantara was gaining ground until Predain took their capital a couple months ago, since then it's been a real mess." 

"Who started it?"

"- Tantara, officially, the King gave us a notice since we share a border. But Predain was gobbling up territory left and right, it was only a matter of time before they went for Tantara too, I'd say they were just choosing the timing themselves." 

She nods. "All right. I might be in - when do you leave? I want to take some time to think on it."

"Three days from now, with the next barge." 

"Then I'll make up my mind by then."

And she heads out.

The grizzled older man and the young man both watch her curiously. 

<Well, that was informative. I think we know where to pursue the trail next. I doubt we want to wait around for three days and then travel at river-barge speed.> 

 Definitely not. It doesn't really ....sound like the same story?

<...Not really, no, but - we should assume her information is incomplete and perhaps garbled, since she admitted to learning much of it by rumour. And, well, Aroden's story also does not sound much like mine unless one goes back a very very long way in his past.> 

Yes, but relatedly Aroden wasn't involved in any of the wars you might've heard about landing on Golarion. I think we should check it out, but I'd really like more to go off.

<- Definitely. I want much more information than this before approaching anyone. That being said, it could be informative even if it is not the case that the local version of me is involved in either side of the war. I would definitely seek out the best mage-school in the world if I lived here - and even if my alt did not find their way there, such a school will likely attract students and teachers who have travelled from distant places and could tell us more of this world in general.> 

That makes sense. It'll be hard to be there inconspicuously, though - especially in wartime - if their magic can detect that there's two of us that'll be pretty suspicious or at least confusing...

<We should find out more - whether they even have a version of Detect Thoughts, and if so whether it can be blocked. At worst I suppose you could go alone while I borrowed one of the others' hosts and stayed in touch from the shuttle.> 

Last time she did that Aroden kidnapped her and she's anxious about tempting fate but probably that's not part of the 'story', it'd be really bizarre if the grand arc of history specifically featured Mhalir-versions kidnapping her in particular.

It would be really bizarre! 

Anyway, Mhalir thinks their next stop should be to obtain a map so they actually know where Predain and Tantara are, geographically speaking, and then fly the shuttle over and get some closer surveillance. 

Sure. She'll change faces and go see about buying a map somewhere.

The main road by the river that has all the taverns also has a shop selling travel supplies and equipment, clearly aimed at the mercenary companies that seem to pass through here a lot. Mostly the shop sells tents and saddles and other outdoor gear, but the proprietor will sell her a map. He wants ten silver for a map that shows all the countries to the north including Tantara and Predain. 

...she doesn't actually have local money, will he take Chelish silver?

If it's good silver, sure, he gets all sorts of foreign coinage here. He peers at her coins, calls an assistant over to cast a mage-light so he can see better, and eventually mutters that goodness she must be from far away, he's never seen this currency, but he'll take it. 

She is from far away. She leaves and consults her map.

The Ceej Empire, with dotted lines dividing it into states and provinces, takes up nearly the entire right lower quadrant of the map; it has roads and rivers and cities and towns clearly marked in. To the far left is a sketched-in mountain range and then a coastline, labelled 'Haighlei' and with some cities marked but much less detail. 

Tantara is a few hundred miles north of their current location, snuggled between Ceej's northern provinces to the east and mountains to the west. Predain is another six or seven hundred miles further north, directly north of Tantara, and on the original map, extends a little further east. The shop proprietor, before selling her the map, muttered that it was out of date and sketched a much larger protrusion to the east and north, nearly doubling the total land area of the country. 

Well. 

She is actually tentatively inclined to go check out newly conquered Predain; they can't have great security over the whole territory and it'll be informative, what kind of conquerors they are.

Mhalir is still itching with curiosity to learn more about this 'Mage of Silence' and his school, but Carissa makes a good point. They can scout out Predain's new territory next. 

She's curious about the Mage of Silence too but that sounds way more dangerous, and it looks like Tantara includes the most heavily-shielded parts of this map, which she suspects they can't infiltrate unnoticed. (How would you do that...)

Mhalir has no idea! Presumably Predain's military has been trying to get past it, though, so maybe they can learn something about it in Predain. 

They slip back out of the city and he transmits a message to the shuttle asking for a cloaked pickup, which can be arranged shortly later. 

She didn't burn that many spells in the Ceej Empire; they could probably hit up Predain today, if they wanted.

Sure, it's only early afternoon and the flight over can be accomplished in half an hour. 

What does newly-part-of-Predain look like from the air?

Mixed! Mostly it looks...fine. It's a much colder climate than the port city they visited before, clearly worse for farming, and it's less densely populated. There are signs of recently-built infrastructure - canals, aqueducts, a few paved roads, a river dam driving some sort of waterwheel. All of it stands out as much newer and more advanced than the ramshackle wooden buildings surrounding it. The more remote regions look if anything lower-tech than the southern rural areas. 

There's more magic here than there was down south, but it's mostly concentrated in a few cities, which have shields and magic lights and other magical infrastructure of unclear purpose. 

One of the cities, the furthest north and most heavily shielded, seems to be hosting a military garrison or maybe a training-ground. There are barracks that look very newly built, and humans on the ground, and - some sort of large flying creatures? Which ping the magic sensors directly, as though they're themselves inherently magical. 

Presumably Golarion's magical beings would too, though she doesn't actually remember what-all Aroden had it tested on. 

They should stay away from military installations, but probably a village in the middle of nowhere won't know much.

Mhalir agrees that this makes sense. They'll probably learn more from a village that's nearish some of the new installations, though. Here's one lying nearish to an impressively long canal, with several sets of locks, that stretches from a major river that passes fifty miles northeast of Predain's old border, all the way to a lake within the old borders. There's quite a bit of visible boat traffic on the canal, but the village in particular doesn't seem to be a major stopping point. 

Sure. 

She picks a male face, this time. It's safer in places that might have conquering soldiers around.

Mhalir orders the pilot to descend and get some video footage up close, so they can match their appearance to the locals. The inhabitants of this particular village have roughly Carissa's skin tone, their hair and eye colour brown or black. They're mostly wearing simple tunics and leggings, made of leather or homespun cloth. There's no sign of occupying soldiers; in fact, the village has a very empty feel. 

Once they've seen enough for a disguise, they land the shuttle outside the village; it's surrounded by dense boreal forest so it's not difficult to do so unnoticed. It seems to be early spring, the last of the snow lingering in patches in the shadows.

Mhalir lets Carissa take over their body again before they talk to anyone. 

Carissa is, this time, going to claim she's a mage from one of the more rural parts of the country. She heard there was a war, and wants to know more about it.

She finds a cluster of half a dozen women between ages eighteen and fifty, arguing over whether a collapsed barn roof is fixable. They're delighted to abandon this topic and instead invite her inside for tea; the central building on their main street is a cross between a town hall, inn, indoor market, and tavern. It seems to be run by the oldest woman, and is currently pretty much deserted save for a white-haired, frail old man with a limp, currently looking at what seems to be a book of accounts in the corner. 

The women, especially the youngest two, seem very delighted to offer Carissa-in-male-guise tea and biscuits. How did she manage not to hear about the war? There were messengers sent to every town with a population over a hundred per the last census, is she from somewhere even smaller than that? 

Her family doesn't live in a town, they - (probably they can't farm, on this soil) - travel. And she can read minds and see what they infer from that. Last time they passed through a town she heard about the war but her brother was sick, so it wasn't a good time to leave. What's the war all about?

It's all kind of baffling to them and their explanation is correspondingly vague. The King of Tantara didn't like that the King of Predain was adding territories, and attacked. Klipar Territory, which is where they are, is nowhere near the war of course, but last autumn all the territories were informed that in order to keep getting aid from Predain, and use of the canal without paying a hefty foreigners' tariff, they needed to send a quota of men for the army. Nearly every territory accepted the offer; no one wants to go back to the times when if the crops failed then half your village would starve. Especially since they're in range to get awful storms from all the magic being thrown around in the border region.

The older woman is thinking how it's a damned tragedy how much business she's lost to this stupid war. Many the village women are getting their husbands' pay from the army, but what are they supposed to do with it, none of the trade barges are stopping here lately and hardly anyone passes through town.

One of the other women is grumbling internally about how they'll damned well need the grain that Predain will send them, with just about all the able-bodied men in the village and nearby farms gone to fight in the war. 

The youngest of the women is trying to keep her expression level, while full of conflicted feelings about her husband's death in combat. They hadn't even been married two months before he was conscripted - still long enough to notice that while he was a good prospect in theory, as the blacksmith's apprentice, he was hardly a good student, lazy and sloppy and too fond of his drink. He can't have been much better at soldiering. She got his pay anyway, including the death stipend for dependents. So maybe she's come out of this better off, really. This visiting mage is certainly intriguing. Handsome, too. 

None of them seem to know much at all about the country that recently conquered them, or added them as a province or something; they don't seem to be thinking of themselves as conquered people, though. Predain is a distant abstraction in their minds. 

Well, it's a very light touch, even if you assume the territories 'accepted the offer' under duress and that the salaries will stop being paid if the war goes at all poorly, which she is absolutely assuming. Where does one go to sign up? Will she be in trouble for not having done so already?

They confer among themselves. Probably the nearest town big enough to have an officer stationed there is Niall, it's about twenty miles further down the canal, though there aren't many barges taking passengers these days so she might have to take the trail through the woods instead, which is pretty winding and generally a two-day ride or a week on foot. They don't think one ought to be in trouble just for not getting the message sooner, though it depends if the officer stationed there is reasonable or corrupt, doesn't it.

One of the women pipes up that there shouldn't be corrupt army officers, she heard they're all supposed to accept compulsions not to abuse their power in order to make officer status. 

What, with magic? They must have a lot of magic, if they can do that with every officer.

They've heard Predain has lots and lots of mages, nowadays, and they're very good at identifying Gifts and getting their mages training from a young age.

One of the women, with the air of someone sharing the juiciest gossip, leans in and says that she heard the new King was giving mage-gifted people money to have children - and men weren't even required to marry the mother, or pay for their keep, the government would do that! Scandalous. This would've been starting years and years ago, so maybe some of those children are old enough now to have Gifts awakening, even. 

Well, that confirms the bit about sorcerers. She makes a hmmmph sound. "Maybe I'll get in on that."

Does she want to stay the night? There's a bed in the loft and they'll give her accommodations and throw in supper and breakfast too if she can do some magic for them, help out around town. It's so hard to stay on top of things when all your men are gone. 

Sure. It'll give her the chance to see which things she does are particularly remarkable and noteworthy compared to what the locals can do. She'll want to get riding right at dawn, though, if she has to make it to Niall.

They're so delighted! The young widowed woman is thinking that it's too bad she only has the one night to make a good impression on the mage, and if she's honest with herself it's unlikely she can make him fall in love with her enough to come back here after the war. She's going to enjoy flirting anyway, though. 

The older woman takes charge. Can Carissa fix the collapsed barn roof? Can she do anything about someone else's roof leaking? Can she make them any new glass jars or iron pots, they've heard mages can do glasswork and metalwork, and they've got good fine sand and one of the villagers went to Niall to learn glassblowing from a teacher Predain sent, and for a little while they had lovely glass vases and jars, but then he left for the war. 

- wow, she's jealous, none of those things are very easy to do with Golarion magic. She can mend small things, but she'd have to burn a diamond and a fourth-circle spell slot to make an iron pot that wasn't going to dissolve by afternoon. Before they get unimpressed with her as a mage she can fly up to the leaking roof and see if it's amenable to mending, and she can repair metal tools if they have any of those.

Oh, they have loads of things that need repairing! Can she repair leather or broken pottery too? They didn't know that was something mages could do, it's not something any of the mages who used to travel through here sometimes would offer, but they'd be delighted. They're also AMAZED that she can fly, they never heard of a human mage doing that. 

Carissa wants to take a local mage apart and learn all their secrets. She'll probably have to settle for Mhalir getting to infest one. 

She mends leather and pottery and broken tools and tries to think of a spell that'd let her do anything about the collapsed roof, maybe if there were a 'wood shape' spell like 'stone shape' but the reason they're not is that wood can't meld the way stone can....

Mhalir stares at the engineering challenge. 

<How much weight can you carry when you cast Fly?> he asks her eventually. <It looks like this would be perfectly repairable by mundane means, that main supporting beam need to be replaced and the rest is easy, but I think their problem is that without the men here they are not able to get a beam up there.> 

As much as I can carry but I don't think I can carry the beam. Even with Bull's Strength I don't think I'd be able to. Once we prepare spells I could, uh, Fly, cast Bull's Strength, turn into a bear, and then do it, but I get the sense that'd be very conspicuous. 

<We could tell them you need privacy for some reason, but - it is probably not actually worth burning that many spells for this, maybe you can just say that the style of magic you figured out on your own is not as good for heavy lifting. They seem very happy already with all the mending.> The women are continuing to line up a row of various slightly-broken household implements for repairs. 

Carissa can keep doing the mending and making conversation and reading minds. She is tempted to hook up with the young widowed lady but she really should not.

Mhalir agrees that she really should not! On top of all the other reasons it's a terrible idea, it's unclear if these people have any form of birth control– can she father children when using Alter Self to be male? How does that even work? 

She has no idea! And it'd be very unfair to try to find out, especially when the woman would probably be hoping for a sorcerer child and Carissa doesn't have any sorcerer hair to use as a focus for Alter Self. She tones down the flirting over dinner and tries to ask more questions about the local geography instead.

None of these people are very well-travelled and so they mostly have stories to go off, and don't know much that isn't already visible from the shuttle. She does learn that the canal is five years old and was dug almost entirely by magic. The woman who had the juicy gossip last time has more of it - she heard from a mage who stayed here that they used blood-magic for it, via executing criminals. 

What is blood-magic. She probably shouldn't ask that. She says instead that she didn't know you could dig canals that way, how many criminals would you need.

Oh, the woman says with a vague handwave, probably hundreds to do the whole canal, she's heard it's the longest canal on the whole continent. (She in fact has only a hazy idea of how blood-magic works and this is a wild guess.) 

There is a technique, in Golarion, to derive great power from the destruction of souls. It is not commonly done, and obviously it's very evil. She doesn't know if that's what blood-magic is but she doesn't like it. She asks if they do that in other places, too, or just Predain.

They think blood-magic is illegal in some other countries. Probably it's illegal in Tantara, from what they've heard Tantara sounds like that sort of place.

The older woman thinks that this is a substantial improvement over the state of affairs when she was a young girl and they were still just under Lord Alrond, who was decent as far as landholders go, but definitely couldn't keep bandits out of his forests, and some of those bandits were mages and it's not like anyone would bring the law down on their heads if they hauled off and murdered some farmers. It didn't happen all that often but there were stories, you know, it seemed like everyone knew a second cousin's husband or such who'd been caught that way and never seen again, or worse, found in pieces in the woods a year later. Now at least the King's men come down hard on banditry. Three years ago they all went down to Niall to see a public execution after some nasty group of them was finally caught and put to trial. Niall got a new barn roof raised and a well dug out of it too. And if you're a decent upstanding citizen and keep your head down, you don't need to worry that you'll be in the next batch of convicts with a death sentence. 

A lawful evil state is a lot better than a chaotic one. It's why after a decade of civil war Cheliax embraced even the peace House Thrune could offer. You keep your head down, and it's not you. And if it is, then rather by definition you deserved it.

Does it sound like you? she asks Mhalir vaguely in the back of her head while she asks how the war is affecting the weather.

<It...could be. Using mind-control magic to enforce loyalty in the army is - something I might consider. And trying to increase the number of sorcerers by breeding them is clever. Someone in charge here is thinking long-term... I need to know more about what blood-magic is, though. And what exactly led to the war.> 

Carissa is kind of terrified to stay in the country where if you break the law they might destroy your soul to dig a canal.

<...If that is in fact how blood-magic works here, then - I do not think it could possibly be me in charge. You remember how horrified I was about Abaddon. So...hopefully we can find a mage to interrogate, and determine if that is the case, and if it is then we will leave right away.> 

That makes sense. And they'd have some time, even if they were arrested, it's clearly done Lawfully - probably -

She doesn't sleep well but she doesn't need much sleep, and in the morning they can get a shuttle ride to ...somewhere else. The nearby town might be a fine place for it honestly.

Niall has much less of a ghost-town feel; it's still the case that there are far fewer young to middle-aged men around than there ought to be, but the open-air market is getting quite a lot of traffic. The shuttle's sensors can detect some amount of magic; the town hall has some basic shielding on it, and the main square has a single big magic light on a lamppost. 

The town hall has canvas posters pinned up on the side, with what's presumably announcements in the local language and script painted on them. 

She casts Comprehend Languages and reads them.

They appear to be announcements about the recruiting for the army; there's some boilerplate propaganda about how the kingdom needs YOU in this dire time, and then details on pay and death benefits for dependents, clarification that all equipment is provided, and instructions on where and how to find recruiting officers, which are painted in a different colour and hand, maybe filled in later for each place. For Niall the instructions are 'right here in this building, upstairs.' 

Maybe if she goes as a woman mage they'll be less likely to kill her if she gets attention, since they also have the breeding program. She picks yet another face, and goes on up the stairs.

The recruiting officer, it turns out, is also a woman. She's thin, in her late forties or early fifties; she's wearing a rust-red uniform, a little worn but mended well. She's also missing a hand, which might explain why she's out here instead of on the front. She's at a desk, doing paperwork one-handed. 

She gives Carissa a surprised look. "You're not a man between sixteen and forty-five. You volunteering?" 

"Wanted to talk about it, at least. I'm from - way north, not even a town. We've only heard a little bit about the war. But I'm a mage, so."

"Oh, you are?" That gets her a tired smile. "Thank you for coming all the way out here. We don't get many volunteers from the new provinces, understandably. Have a seat - can I offer you tea...?" 

"I'm all right, thank you." She takes a seat.

"So - first of all, any other Gifts or just mage-gift? We're hurting for Mindspeakers too, and if you are one, you can get a much safer position." 

What. "I can do short communications with mage-Gift, but it's a complicated spell. I don't think that's what you mean?"

"- Oh, really, fascinating. No, it's not what I mean, Mindspeech is a separate Gift, usually comes with Thoughtsensing, it's rare here in the north but Healers sometimes have it too. I'm also aware that mages can imitate it with spells, but like you said, complicated - did you figure it out on your own or did someone out there teach you?" 

"Someone taught me. Years ago, he's dead now."

"Ah, too bad, I was about to ask." She sits back in her chair. "So you've had some teaching, then - was it a fairly wide range? Can you throw fireballs around too?" 

"Yes."

Nod. "I'm not a mage so I won't bother quizzing you more on your training. Tell me what you've heard about the war to date, and I'll fill in the rest?" 

"I know it's with Tantara. And I know Tantara has - the Mage of Silence, right, who's very powerful.  And I heard Tantara started it but they thought we were going to start it if they didn't. And - I heard we use blood-magic. For lots of things." The person she is pretending to be looks very innocently discomfited about this and also she casts a silent Detect Thoughts.

The recruiting officer is thinking that she doesn't like it much either, gives her the collywobbles, but for all their claims to greater national virtue or whatever, Tantara did start the war, and they've killed far more of Predain's soldiers - and a lot more civilians - than vice versa. 

"Sometimes," she says carefully. "You most likely wouldn't be approved for it even if you wanted to, until you'd been in the forces six months and they thought you were promising enough to go through the training program. And - we don't kill enemy soldiers for it. We follow Tantaran standards for treatment of prisoners of war, even though they don't follow their own damned standards half the time. If blood-magic is ever authorized in combat, it's convicts who're sentenced to death anyway, or - the commander asks for volunteers."

It sure makes her uneasy. Convicts is one thing, but upstanding soldiers, men of honour.... She gets it, soldiers who expect to die anyway in a suicidal charge on the enemy's Adepts will figure they might as well instead give their side's mages the power for a cleaner attack, it makes a lot of sense to have both strategies available, just - well, it's never for certain the first way, right, and there's something awful about lying down and dying by your own commander's blade. 

Shiver. "Isn't it - worse, for your soul - than dying normally?"

The woman's surprised to hear this as an objection; it's not the first time she's encountered that argument against blood-power, but it's not a common one, especially not recently, and she's never heard someone in the north bring it up before.

Her brow furrows. "That's a fair question, but - hmm. Do you mean because it's suicide, or the claim that blood-magic is fundamentally corrupting even for the victim, or something else...?" 

"I heard it's destroying their soul, and that's where all the power comes from."

"What? Goodness!" The woman brings a hand to her mouth. "I didn't think there was any temple that claimed that!" She blinks. "I'm...fairly sure it doesn't do that. I mean, it's hardly as though we know much of what happens to us after we die, as far as I know none of the temples' claims about it are substantiated. And I'm not a mage, like I said, so I can't give you a technical explanation of it. The explanation I got is that our spirits are bound very strongly to our bodies, and snapping that binding releases a great deal of energy - it's been measured in cases of natural death, too, usually it all ends up in the Nether Plane but theoretically a mage could be waiting around nearby and snap it up." 

"Huh." Probably if none of the local gods say it works like that then it doesn't. She relaxes, slightly. "I also heard that they make lots of things capital crimes, so they have enough prisoners for all the works projects. Not that it's anyone who doesn't deserve it but they deserve it for dodging the draft or for disrespecting the King, not for - murder."

The woman scrunches her nose. "That's a reasonable worry to have - you're a smart young lady, I can tell that. As far as I'm aware, the list of capital crimes is exactly what it was before King Arrak ever took the throne. Murder, attempted murder and rape on the third convicted offence, owning or selling slaves, and large-scale arson - they defined that as causing more than ten thousand gold worth of damage to public infrastructure, as assessed by a neutral party. I don't think high treason is on there, let alone disrespecting the King or dodging the draft. My law book said that the thing with political prisoners is sometimes you want to question them five years down the road and it's no good if they're dead." 

It seems like it would be deeply inconvenient to hold them all for five years but - right, these people have enough mages to blanket their army in mind-control. "I see."

You? she thinks at Mhalir vaguely

And aloud, "is the war, uh, winnable?"

It could be? He's getting some flickers of familiarity or recognition or something in that space. But also going to war with the most skilled mage in the entire world, who also has the best mage-school in the entire world and can presumably call on the loyalty of all his current and former students, sounds incredibly stupid. He doesn't think he would be that stupid? 

"I should think so! Looked bad at first, but taking out the capital was a stroke of genius. Their leadership structure is in disarray, and rumour is that Urtho himself is in charge of Tantara's army." She shakes her head. "Say what you want about the man's genius, he's no master of tactics." 

"Why're we fighting, what're our objectives?"

The recruiter is thinking that this young woman doesn't sound at all like she's from somewhere in the north that isn't even a town. She sounds smart as a whip and - like she's had foreign education, maybe. The recruiter is getting pretty suspicious of her story, but for now it seems best to keep talking. 

"We don't want any of Tantara's land, we didn't start this. Since they're apparently uninterested in opening any kind of talks, our objectives are to get them in a position where we can dictate terms. Unfortunately, it seems taking the capital wasn't enough, and Urtho's Tower is a tough nut to crack. Right now we're trying to capture as many termini on Urtho's permanent Gate-network as we can; we can't use them, but he can move troops and supplies that way, we need to even the playing field some more." She says it in a slightly rote tone, like she's repeated it a dozen times before. 

If it's like the Yeerk-Andalite war the Tantaran version will be completely different. And the Mhalir won't be the King, but an important general. "How'd we take the capital?"

"Some mage-artifact that Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar made - you heard of him? They say he's the King's top advisor, nowadays, that he hardly listens to anyone else. Anyway, he made an artifact that - cast some kind of very powerful spell to cause fear, set it to trigger overnight so it's ramp up slowly while people were asleep and by the time they woke up they'd be in a panic. Just about everyone inside the inner walls ran away screaming, and then in the morning they shut it off from a distance and sent in our troops and mages to take the palace with almost no bloodshed. We assume the King survived, the troops didn't find either him or his body on site, but apparently not in any shape to keep leading the war effort." 

<........That sounds like something I might come up with.> 

Yes, it does, she thinks back, it feels simultaneously very funny and not funny at all. 

"I think that's - everything I was confused about. Thank you." 

What do you want to do next - probably before we go to Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar we should get the Tantaran side of it -

<I think we should leave, tell her we will come back tonight and then not come back. She is suspicious of you. And - yes, I think we ought hear Tantara's version of things before we plan any other moves.> 

Obviously she's suspicious, she'd have to be an idiot not to be. Carissa smiles at her anyway, as she stands up. "Thank you for your time. I want to think about it and return this evening."

"Yes, of course." The recruiter smiles brightly. She's thinking about getting a sketch of this woman's face - probably she gave a false name - there's no Mindspeaker in town but she can be in Tartta by tonight and get a message out advising people to keep an eye out for a mage of her appearance giving an unusual story for her background. 

No one obstructs them when they slip out of town, though. 

And she also gave a false face, which melts off her about ten minutes later. 

Tantara tomorrow, I think. Espionage is very stressful.

<It is! You did brilliantly, though. ...We are also going to be doing espionage in Tantara.> 

Yes, I know, that's why I want twelve hours off. If they die here apparently what happens after that is completely unknown to the locals. She's trying not to think too much about that. Probably she should go in without Mhalir but that feels obscurely more dangerous, somehow, maybe just because it went wrong last time.

<The situation seems very unlikely to be time-sensitive enough that twelve hours - or twenty-four - will make a difference in the outcome. I also would like twelve hours to consider things.> 

He calls for a shuttle pickup, which arrives shortly later. 

So. Ma'ar. You think it's you?

<I am not going to be sure until I am able to speak with him, but - I would place greater than fifty percent odds that, if Aroden's spell is correct that there is a me here at all, it is Ma'ar.> 

What does that imply about the war. That it's stupid and can just - stop? That...

<...That it will look stupid and pointless from the outside yet be almost impossible for any of the actors engaged in it to stop it on their own? There was - momentum, with the Yeerk-Andalite war, there was too much anger and hatred built up on both sides to be easily dissolved. It took a considerable push from the outside to change that equilibrium.> 

Yeah. If you'd known - everything you know now - could you have stopped it?

<I - hope so. I think probably. I am not sure.> 

Aroden's war ended with Earthfall. Yours - the thing on the Hork-Bajir planet -

<Maybe - though the war was far from over; there were millions of innocent casualties, but Earthfall destroyed both Aroden's home civilization and that of his enemies. Awful as it was, far less was lost on the Hork-Bajir world.> Shiver. <It - is possible that I was simply earlier in my - our - story, when it was interrupted.> 

We - can't offer them alliances with gods. And I don't think I know enough of our magic to win it decisively for them- I guess we could call Aroden in, maybe he can Gate here once he has specific instructions -

<Or we could go back for him with the ship, if absolutely necessary, the travel time is not that long once we know where we are going.> Mental sigh. <I will think about it. There...is some chance it would be enough just to provide a neutral channel of communications, but that would mean making ourselves known to both sides, which is - fraught.> 

Carissa is scared and sad and has no idea what she wants except obviously not another Earthfall. She suddenly wants the topic of conversation to be something different, except they've rather exhausted most topics of conversation, on the ship.

...They could get drunk? Not too drunk because they need to do things tomorrow, but if they go back to the ship in orbit, there's basically no chance anything will happen overnight. He's very sure at this point that no one on the planet has spacefaring capabilities, large numbers of sorcerers or not. 

....sure. Just a little bit drunk.

The shuttle flies back up to the ship in orbit and Mhalir wants half an hour to update his notes and brief his staff on what they've learned, and then they can have a couple of drinks and try to relax and find some non-war topic of conversation. 

How about they watch Earth spy movies. It'll be good for her soul.

Sure! They have a large database of Earth movies saved and can have a look. Does she want a comedy spy movie, an action spy movie, or a drama spy movie? 

She's only heard of movies secondhand or from hearing other people watching them on the ship while she was working on magic, so she has no idea what the genres of movie are.

He'll have a poke around. 

...They could watch Aces Go Places (comedy), a film set in Paris, where King Kong (Sam Hui) is kidnapped by a British secret agent whose mission is to retrieve one of the Crown Jewels which has been stolen and is located in a Hong Kong Police Headquarters vault.

Or they could watch Black Eagle (action), where a martial artist and special operative for the American government codenamed "Black Eagle", is summoned by his superiors after an F-111 carrying an experimental black ops laser tracking device was shot down over Malta by Russian forces. 

Or they could watch Eye of the Needle (thriller), about a German spy in the United Kingdom during World War II who discovers vital information about the upcoming D-Day invasion and his attempt to return to Germany while he is stranded with a family on a remote island off the coast of Scotland.

None of those nouns mean anything to Carissa but Black Eagle sounds the most fun. 

The movie seems to assume a level of familiarity with Earth and particular American culture that neither Carissa nor Mhalir possess, so a lot of its references are confusing. It's also implausible in multiple ways, and occasionally makes him want to scream at the characters for questionable planning and tactics until he remembers that they're fictional. At least Mhalir finds the martial arts fight scenes fun and satisfying to watch, plausible or not. The setting is very scenic, with aesthetic medieval-Earth ruins in the background. At one point the main character, "Black Eagle", goes deep-sea diving without a scuba tank, which the narrative implies should be impressive. 

It's amazing! It is the best work of storytelling she has ever encountered, it's all compressed so neatly and told with full use of the visual field, there's no reason you couldn't do it with illusions, but no one has, probably no one has thought of it - 

She doesn't care about plausibility, it's a story, they're not supposed to make sense.

Going deep-sea diving without a scuba tank seems like it'd be really hard if you didn't have magic! He's obviously a high-level adventurer, which explains why he can do it and also why he's mostly uninjured by things that'd kill a normal person.

Mhalir wouldn't previously have thought to experience awe and delight about Earth movies, which he's...probably seen at least one of, or snippets anyway... (He doesn't think Earth humans have the kind of high-level adventurers who end up physically tougher, they don't have magical healing at all, but he'll concede Carissa's point that this isn't what stories are for.)

Earth has so many movies and he's excited for them to watch more so he can watch Carissa being excited and thinking about how to imitate the entire genre with illusions. They don't need a lot of sleep so there might be enough time for as much as several more movies. 

After one more movie Carissa will have her fill of whatever it was she wanted when she wanted to watch a movie, it's not that she's not enjoying them still but her mind is starting to wander to Predain and Tantara and the war. She feels like she understands exactly how the Andalite/Yeerk situation got locked in on its stupid trajectory and she doesn't feel like she understands that at all here. But probably they don't need that; they need confirmation that Ma'ar is ....Mhalir's story, repeated....whatever that even means which is still deeply confusing...and then -

"Oh, you know what I should do," she says five minutes into the third movie, "is try scrying someone who we'd expect to be shielded but not exceptionally dangerous if they do notice the scry - so not Urtho or the Mage of Silence if they're not the same person, and not Ma'ar, and not the King of Predain - but we should find someone who meets that description and see if we can scry them. Because their magic might defend against their kind not our kind."

<Oh! Yes, that is an excellent idea. We know the location of many shielded buildings, now, all we would have to do is do surveillance to determine who their staff are and when they will be inside the shields.> 

Yeah. And then another thing I want to look into is, no one we spoke to could tell that I wasn't a mage but that one barmaid was thinking it was possible to tell with magic. I want to know how I show up to that. Maybe you want to send some people to the opposite end of the planet and try to recruit a voluntary mage? 

<Oh. Yes, that is worth trying. I could have them look around in the Haighlei Empire, there are regions of it which I think have very little contact with the Predain-Tantara area, since the mountains are close to impassible at their tech level.> 

And we can also check that way if their telepathy makes it obvious that there are two people in my head, or whether the wig helps, or whether the Nondetection helps, and they might also know what would help if those don't. I think probably I want to just continue being suspicious in outlying provinces where word will be garbled by the time it makes it up the chain of command and their descriptions of us will be wrong. I suspect I could avoid being suspicious but that'll make it much slower to learn anything. 

Also I want to start working on permanent Detect Thoughts...permanent, Persistent Detect Thoughts. In an artifact.

<Oh, that would be excellent to have. Especially since it sounds as though they have an entirely separate - bloodline of sorcerers? - with innate telepathy-magic. And, yes, I think it makes sense to use strategies that will get us information even if we stand out, as long as we have an escape route ready - also we should make sure to vary our cover story, maybe vary the claims you make about your magic abilities, so they have less to connect the dots on...> 

I bet Tantara's not talking with Predain, but yes. Maybe next time I will be a very weak mage who can only make sparks -  it's a cantrip - and worried I will be conscripted. 

<That makes sense. I do worry that even if Predain and Tantara have no official lines of communication, if Ma'ar is a me, he will have tried very hard and been very clever in his attempts to have spies there - and at least from here it appears to be a considerably easier task than it was with us and the Andalites.> 

It does look that. Let's do an outlying province, again, ideally one far from the front lines of the war...

<Yes, that makes sense - we can go for the southwestern region of Tantara, I think that is less directly affected by the war.> 

And I want to figure out some experiments to determine whether blood magic is a local phenomenon or just something that only their kind of sorcerer can exploit - I've heard of necromancers who can do similar things I guess but it's very rare and I don't think it lets you do anything that valuable...

<I desperately want to understand what they are doing with this blood-magic! What is the necromancer ability...I assume it is a different thing from the destruction of souls...?>

Yeah, not that, just - you can drain life-energy from people for temporary strength. I think. I only took a couple classes of necromancy because I had a friend there and they had to kill children for final exams and it seemed like it'd be a very demoralizing environment. But - I can't even fathom how much magic a canal like that would need, and you couldn't get it out of killing. I don't know how to test it without killing something intelligent. We could go even farther around the world, find other places that allow it and see if we can watch? We might not have time, though...

Mhalir is mostly not shocked by any of Carissa's thoughts anymore but once in a while it still happens, and then he has to take a moment to absorb the pain and fully appreciate it and then set it aside to process later, when they're not in the middle of a conversation about important strategy topics.

<.......I am glad you did not pursue those classes further, I think it would have - hurt you... Anyway. It does sound, to the extent we are willing to trust their descriptions, more analogous to draining life-energy to the point of death than to the destruction of souls. It sounds like lawless bandits are more willing to use it wantonly? Perhaps there are currently-Chaotic regions further north or east that Predain has not yet conquered, where such practices are still in effect?>

Oh, maybe.

It might make sense for us to split up tomorrow. Until we know about whether the telepath-bloodline sorcerers can detect you. But if I die you must promise to figure out how to resurrect me if the local afterlives are bad. This is a joke, in the sense that she does not remotely believe he could do this or particularly that she'd be entitled to expect him to try, but it is serious about the worry and she is hoping he will at least say he's pleased with her for trying. (None of that is especially conscious.)

<Of course. I would be very upset to lose you, after everything we have been through.> He thinks it earnestly back.

Mhalir is not at all sure that he could solve this problem, of course,, but he puts greater than nine of ten odds that Aroden could, and he would absolutely ask that favour, because that's the level of important that Carissa is, and - well, he doesn't exactly understand how important he is to Aroden, but he has granite-firm confidence that the worst outcome is having the request denied, because Aroden is him, and he wouldn't punish an ally for asking something that he couldn't provide. 

He doesn't share any of these thoughts. It doesn't seem productive, right now.

So should I go alone? I'm nervous about it but - there's a lot to do, the faster we do it the less the chance anyone can put the pieces together, and I'm much less suspicious on my own.

...He doesn't want her to, and some of that feeling leaks across, but he doesn't have a solid reason against it. 

<I think it makes sense for you to go alone. You should take a concealed weapon and a microphone and I will be nearby in the shuttle> 

All right. And after they've run through the plans one more time she sleeps. Dreams about Hell, which is what she usually dreams about.

Prepares half her spells so she can do the rest over a lunch break or while hiding in a forest or whatever.

If you stay within half a mile I can Dimension Door up if there's any trouble.

<I can do that.> 

Then she'll go get the Tantaran side of the war. She goes for a teenage boy, this time, thin and a bit twitchy. Wanders into the town they selected and looks around for a store or something.

The town feels less like a half-abandoned ghost town. The main street contains an inn with a front patio (it's warm enough in southern Tantara to be comfortable to sit outdoors), with a couple of tables occupied, both by clusters of older women gossiping with each other. There's also a tailor's shop, a produce market, a smithery, and an apothecary.

A young woman is sitting out front of the apothecary, smoking a pipe of some herb and swinging her legs; she sees Carissa, gets up, and waves, smiling. 

She waves back. Nervously. 

The young woman stands up, flips her hair out of her eyes. "Hey. You new to town?" 

" - yeah. Nice to meet you." Twitchy smile. "I was - wondering if I could work for breakfast."

"Oh, what sort of work?" He's cute, she thinking, in a pale scrawny way but she's always preferred boys who look younger than her, less threatening. "You a Healer or something?"

"No." She ducks her head, lowers her voice. "I'm a mage. But I'm not a very powerful one. And - I heard some people saying we'd be conscripted - so I'm trying - not to advertise it, you know -"

Awwww, he looks so sad and scared and it's so hot. The young woman stands up, gives him her best reassuring smile. "Oh, no, Urtho's not a monster– er, and I wouldn't say anything to no one even if it were the rules, I promise -" She takes a step closer. 

"Everyone says Urtho's very nice," she says, and steps towards her, warily. 

The young woman steps closer as well. "I can't say I've met the man, but you hear things, you know." Handwave. She reaches out a hand, lowers her voice conspiratorially. "I'm Liora. I– I'm afraid I can't just offer you breakfast for nothing, but - what sorta things can you do, as a mage, you know...?" 

"I'm really not a good one. I can light fires, and I can clean fabrics, and I can do lights. That's pretty much it. I can move stuff if it's not very heavy but honestly I can't move more with magic than I can just by lifting it."

She holds out her hand. "Hey, I get it. Hmm, I'm trying to think what you could do for us that Master Baar would agree was worth breakfast... Hmm, if you come stand with me in the workshop and make a light and bring me supplies from the shelves when I ask for them - they're not heavy - I think we could probably get enough done that he'd sign off." 

"Okay. Thank you."

The young woman takes her inside, to a back room with herbs strung from the ceiling to dry and more boxes and jars on floor-to-ceiling shelves, and a complicated glass setup that looks like it's for distilling grain alcohol. There's also a vat of ordinary beer in the process of being brewed. 

She asks Carissa to make a light and get an urn of something down, but isn't very focused on her work; she's too busy being curious about the newcomer, it's been a while since anyone interesting showed up in town and she's still thinking that he's cute.

"So, where're you from?" 

She makes a light and an unseen servant to fetch things. 

"I'm from Tiran. It's way down on the border with the Ceej."

"Oh, wow! I haven't heard of it. You must've - sorry can you grab me that box, yellow label - you must've travelled a long way! By yourself?" 

Unseen Servant gets the box. "I, uh, ran away from home. I've mostly been walking. It's been a month or so."

"Oh. I– that sounds rough. Why did you run away, er, if you don't mind me asking." 

"My dad wanted me to enlist, and I heard people saying there'd be a draft soon anyway, at least for mages, and - I'd heard all kinds of things about the war. Most of them probably not true, but still."

Shiver. "It's scary. The rumour's that whoever is in charge over there is using all sorts of dark magic. And, I mean, we've got the Mage of Silence, probably it'll be all right in the end..." 

"Yeah, probably. But that doesn't help if I'm dead! I heard they use blood-magic."

"They do! It's not even a secret or anything, I heard that even before the war they had public executions for it." She shudders. 

"It sounds like a horrible way to die."

"It does!" She puts down her mortar and pestle and leans closer. "I heard even creepier things - they mind control their soldiers, right, and - I heard when they take prisoners they put compulsions on them too, to make them obedient, so they can't run away..." 

"I heard that too! And that they attacked the palace with some kind of fear magic..."

"I heard the King went mad from it and that's why he died, of madness. And some of the other nobles were never seen again - makes you wonder if they got out in the first place, or got snatched up." 

"I wish we'd never started the war."

Shrug. "I mean, me too, but I can't reckon we could've let them keep rampaging across the rest of the continent and murdering people for blood-magic and all that." 

"Were they murdering lots of people for blood magic outside their fancy public executions?"

"If they were it was secret, obviously, but I bet they were." She flips her hair out of her eyes again. "They said at school that blood-magic is addictive and mages who use it get corrupted by it and just want to use more and more and more." 

Shiver. "What do you think will happen if they win the war?"

"Ugh, I don't want to think about it." She grimaces. "I mean, probably they'd make Tantara part of their empire - I bet they'd put compulsions on all the important people to make them go along with it and pretend it was their idea in the first place, seems they like being able to pretty up their conquests that way - and they'd nab all the mages and teach them blood magic and - did you know, I heard they breed mages? Like - pigs, or cattle..." 

"They make them have children?"

"Yes, exactly, they want more mages - reckon it'd be worse for girls, I heard for boys they mostly just - stud you out - it's gross but you wouldn't need to be pregnant at least..." 

"I don't know any history, have they always been like this or is it recent..."

Shrug. "I think they've always been kind of corrupt, but all this mind control and breeding and stuff is, uh, maybe the last ten or fifteen years? The new King and his creepy advisor are behind it." 

"Adept Kiyamsomething?"

"Kiyamvir Ma'ar, that's right. You know, they say he studied in Urtho's Tower! Can you imagine that - being betrayed that way by your own student..." 

- she can't talk to Mhalir through the earpiece while there's someone right here but she assumes he caught that. "Awful. Urtho - mentored him, taught him advanced magic - and then he went to Predain and did things that made Urtho nervous and - Tantara invaded Predain?"

"Something like that. Isn't it horrible? Figure that's part of why Urtho pushed for attacking them first - he must've felt so awful, watching someone use the things he taught them to conquer all those places." 

"Yeah. Well, Urtho's an incredibly powerful mage, right, it should work out..."

"I really hope so. Understandable that you want to stay out of it, though." She sighs a little and goes back to grinding herbs; she's trying to think of a change of topic, it's tempting to just end up gossiping about war war war with everyone she talks to but it's so grim. 

Carissa is pretty sure she knows what she needs, now, and is half-expecting Mhalir to tell her any minute to get out of here for a pickup, but she can cooperate with a subject change. "You're an apprentice here? What're you learning to do?"

Mhalir is still absorbing what he's just heard. He thinks it's enough to go on but he's taking a moment to mull on whether he has other questions to convey to Carissa. 

"Mix medicines, brew ale, we also sell herbs and spices for cooking so I help with that too. Master Baar's all right." She finishes grinding and dumps the powdered herb into a jar of grain alcohol, and then retrieves her pipe and re-lights it. "Wanna try a puff? It's some herb from way down south, makes you feel extra alert and cheerful, it's great." 

"Oooh, sure!"

(Mhalir is not at all sure that in Carissa's place he would go along with smoking random herbs handed to him by a random apothecary apprentice, but it doesn't seem worth actually interrupting about.) 

The smoke is pungent, leaving an almost sweet taste behind in her mouth, and thirty seconds later everything does in fact seem a little bit brighter and sharper. 

The girl takes her pipe back and has a long pull from it. 

It seems like most of the fun of being a boy is that you can take random drugs from people you just met and expect they're actually what is advertised. She giggles. "Oooh, I like that."

"Best perk of this job. You can have another if you like." She holds out the pipe again. "Oh, and maybe that breakfast you wanted." 

"Ready to pick you up whenever it is a good moment to step away," Mhalir says in Carissa's earpiece. He's borrowed one of the other hosts, an Earth-human woman; she's fine, mostly she daydreams while he does things with her body. 

"Thank you. Is there an outhouse?"

The girl bobs her head. "It's out back, we share it with the tailor's shop." 

So she heads out back. "Okay, ready for a pickup," she says softly when she's out of earshot.

The shuttle descends, cloaked, just outside the village, providing instructions to her. 

She goes invisible and jogs on over.

Mhalir, with relief, exits his borrowed host's ear. The woman offers him to Carissa. 

Carissa is slightly intoxicated with the pleasantly sharp thing and very pleased with herself. I guess objectively we still shouldn't be sure, but - it fits, right - Ma'ar studying under Urtho, who then betrayed him because he was scared that he was conquering places and doing something that's very taboo in Tantara...

<Yes. I was thinking exactly the same thing. But - Urtho is still alive, here - in our war, Seerow died in the first engagement...> 

He's feeling a surprisingly strong pang of - is that envy? 

If someone had shown up during your war claiming to be you how would you have reacted.

<...I would have been very suspicious, I think. Probably I would want to go in their head and see for myself, if I could arrange to do that safely.> 

And he won't have that option. Though he has the magic mind control.

<And some people here have permanent Detect Thoughts, though I am not sure if he is one of them. ...Anyway, it seems unwise to startle him, given that he is under threat and is probably feeling very paranoid.> 

I definitely have enough to go off for a Sending. I - guess we should think through what happens if - we contact this Ma'ar and we're - wrong and he's not a you, or he's very like you but not in a way that'd make him safe to work with - I don't know if that's possible or if it'd be too unlike you -

<I am tempted to say that would be too unlike me, but - it would not be implausible for a me to react with hostility if he believed we were much more powerful than him and he was unsure of our intentions. And - he will badly want to be in control of the situation, which he might attempt to get by kidnapping us. I would prefer to avoid that.> 

Yeah. 

So what are our options. We could just - surrender to the Predain forces somewhere, explain, hope they take us to him, hope he's not hostile then because he's in control but - if we were wrong about anything we're pretty screwed, at that point, because of the mind-control...

We could do a Sending and go hang out very far away where he can't do anything other than respond. 

We could gather more information - are your people getting anywhere on infesting a mage voluntarily, if we know how the mind control works I'd be less nervous about doing the first plan...

<...I think the first plan should be a last resort, if it seems that the situation is worsening or escalating further. I would prefer to wait until we know more, but it seems my people are having a difficult time in the Haighlei Empire; they have extremely strict controls on their mages, all of them are taken away from their families in early childhood and raised as part of an elite priesthood of some kind, this makes it hard to determine who they can try recruiting without leaking the secret to the entire rest of the priesthood.> 

Huh. We could try some other place? Back in Seej, or, I don't know, are there civilizations on the other side of the planet?

<I was thinking of sending them to try the opposite coast, on the east side, it is very far away and it does not appear that Teleport is widely available here, so probably there is not much communication between that region and Tantara or Predain.> 

That sounds good. Do we have good enough information on both sides to guess if the war's about to escalate and we need to intervene more - I bet they can't detect electronics, we can't...

<I have the ship monitoring the planet closely for any change on the magic sensors, which might give us some warning; I can have the ship fly in a lower orbit at regular intervals to get closer sensor coverage on Predain and Tantara specifically. And, no, I do not think they can detect electronics. I am thinking about where we can place some concealing recording devices; we probably want it to be at a military location, but a less important one, so it is not as risky to infiltrate.> 

Nod. I could Dimension Door invisibly in from the ship, drop something, and Dimension Door right back out, but we'd want to check first that they don't have trap-spells that'd stop me leaving...I could go in as a bird, I think the locals can't do that so their defenses probably aren't meant for it...

<I would definitely be concerned about trap-spells. Going in as a bird seems safer, and we could try to arrange it so that you would not need to land - maybe you could drop it, disguised as a pebble or some other innocuous object. Or we could send a drone, but I am not sure we can convincingly disguise one as a local bird.> 

I'm willing to drop pebbles as a bird. Not over the city Ma'ar is in because I've been kidnapped by yous enough, and not over the city Urtho's in because he sounds very scary, but - outlying installations, sure. If we've observed other birds to fly in and out of them and not die of it.

<All right. We will obtain sensor coverage of some facilities and their local wildlife, and if birds can come and go safely then we will go ahead with that plan. Though I would be more comfortable if we were first able to test whether your protective items or the wig block the local Detect Thoughts - actually, how do those interact with being a bird -?>

You can Polymorph with your clothes but they won't protect you from mindreading. Nondetection should still work to the extent it's working against these people in the first place. 

<Unfortunately I am not sure we can afford to delay getting the recording devices in place while we wait for my people to try recruiting on the eastern coast. I suppose you can stay out of Detect Thoughts range and descend only very briefly.> 

If we had a better wizard here we could have a Contingent Teleport back to the ship that functions even if I'm unconscious. Frustrated sigh. I guess maybe if I do enough espionage I'll level eventually.

<Maybe. All we can do until then is be careful.> 

It's still only noon, so they can get some more shuttle footage of outlying military barracks in both countries and pick a candidate spot in each to drop some sneaky recording devices disguised as pebbles. 

She prepares Beast Shape so she can turn into a bird. Better to not be an invisible bird, right, in case that trips sensors...

<I think so, yes.> And he reluctantly concedes that Carissa should go alone; it would be worse if they both went and then got caught, even if it's more upsetting somehow to imagine Carissa being captured alone. 

Plus she's not actually sure what would happen if she Polymorphed herself with him in her head. You can abort a pregnancy that way which doesn't suggest good things for Yeerks. 

Once they've seen some birds pass through unmolested, she turns into a goose of a kind she's seen in the area, takes a pebble in her beak, and exits the shuttle in the middle of the air. She has eight minutes.

They're hitting Tantara first; it's a supply warehouse of some kind, south of the shielded Tower and the region around the capital currently under Predain's control. The building itself has magical shielding but there isn't any additional shield over the whole area. There aren't very many people around and none of them seem to be interested in birdwatching. 

- There is, however, some sort of large stone-and-crystal freestanding archway, and a few uniformed staff are hauling and stacking crates up in front of it, for unclear reasons. 

That's fascinating and probably the ship cameras are on it. She tries to not-think, it's not much of a defense against Detect Thoughts which will make it instantly apparent she's of human intelligence but it's not nothing. Flyflyflyfly pebble drop flyflyflyfly back around to the shielded ship.

The ship is waiting for her and Mhalir is relieved and glad to be back in her head. They're hovering for a bit to see if they can get good coverage on what that archway is for - 

- it turns out that it's for some sort of instantaneous-transport portal! In fact, it's obvious where the other end is to, a little north of the Tower, because both ends are lighting up clearly to the magic sensors, and with the video footage maximally zoomed in, they can make out boxes being loaded in the one and and appearing on the other side, seventy miles away. It stays open for about ten minutes. 

"I want it," she says, watching.

Mhalir is awed. <It would be so incredibly useful! What is that - it seems to serve the same function as Gate but magically it - oh - it also shows up to our ordinary sensors, a little! It looks like...>  

"Like a hyperspace jump," the ship's engineer finishes for him. 

" - that's incredible."

<It is! This must be - I think I remember hearing mentions of Urtho's Gate network... Amazing. No wonder they say he is the best mage in the world.> 

The show seems to be over, the spike on the magic sensors subsiding, so they move on to the planned stop over Predain. This time it's a training ground, one of the less busy ones, but still with enough traffic that the recording device will have something to pick up. 

She hands Mhalir off, turns into a bird, and flies out to drop her pebble. 

No one at the site reacts visibly to her presence or does anything to impede her departure, and Carissa is retrieved without further complication. 

Flop.

Okay. So we have a little bit of ability to hear what's going on. What's - the path from here to talking with Adept Kiyamvir -

<Hmm. First, I am torn between giving him as little information as possible, to keep him from guessing our full capabilities and make it less likely he could capture us if he wished to, versus telling him more information because it will start us off on a less hostile footing. What do you think?>

You could tell him - everything about you and nothing about Golarion. Or vice versa. Since both of those are - complete, and account for us having strange capabilities - I guess they don't account for you thinking you know this story, but that part is probably the hardest to explain...

<Yes. I am not sure that I could explain it believably at all, and certainly not within the word limit of a Sending. I suppose I could use a Sending to tell him where to pick up further explanations - can you use Comprehend Language to write them in the local language?>

No, only to read. Actually the highest bandwidth way to pass a message would probably be to kidnap one of his people, not a mage, and explain to them whatever it is we're explaining, and then drop them off safely. With a comms device.

<...That sounds extremely dangerous, at least if we are going to try for someone he considers trustworthy; it would be less risky to kidnap a randomly chosen farmer, but I am not sure if he would take a message from them as seriously.> 

Random soldier, if he's Dominating them all he doesn't need to trust them. The Sending thing is definitely safer at the point of contact, it just seems harder to make sure he doesn't overreact or something from there. 

<That makes sense. Hmm - I think we can pull off kidnapping a random soldier, but it will take some planning. We can try for a sentry at a minor facility that is unlikely to have mages on site, maybe a guard station on one of their non-Tantara borders, and - probably it makes the most sense to stun them and get them out on the shuttle very fast...>

I could shoot them and Dimension Door with them.

<Oh, that would probably work. And you could cast Invisibility to sneak up on them, if we drop you further out and then hover in the shuttle?>

Yes, though firing the Dracon beam's going to make the illusion snap, and I can't do Greater Invisibility until tomorrow.

<Hmm. I...think it is worth going ahead tonight, if we can find a guard facility with a small number of personnel where none of the sentries are in range of each other. I will have my staff review the sensor coverage for our options.> 

Carissa still has the nagging sense that something terrible is definitely going to happen to her and it's probably going to be Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar's fault but fifth level is very tantalizing and she's the one who can teleport and Polymorph and Adept Kiyamvir Ma'ar doesn't seem like a wasteful person. And she's not even any use for his breeding program. 

All right. Let's do it.

They hang out on the ship for an hour while their annotated aerial footage map of Predain is pored over. The best location they can find is closer to the border with Tantara than Mhalir would have preferred, only about fifty miles north of it, but their estimate is that it doesn't have more than a couple dozen soldiers staffing it, and there's no record of magic readings except for the basic shielding on the main barracks. The region is forested, which should make it easier for Carissa to sneak up on a sentry who isn't in view of anyone else. 

It's late afternoon at this point; they have a couple more hours of daylight to work with. 

<Are you ready for this?> Mhalir asks her. <If you prefer to have Greater Invisibility for it, we could do it in the morning...>