"Let me get on the horn to the brigade for a bit."

He'll go into one of the vehicles and get an old style corded telephone handset out, connected to a radio, and talk into it for a few minutes. The work crew continues working around Gord, absent two who seem to have been designated as guards. Gossip is tense and quiet and mostly about what Kelly's Murderers have done before. This one heard they have a Hunchback 'mech. This one heard they successfully raided the Capellans. This one plans to shoot herself if capture seems likely.

Gord can't fight the golems but maybe he can help people hide from them, or help them leave the town to hide out somewhere else if that's normally unsafe but would be safe with his help, or fight off the pirates if they need to come out of their golems to capture people or just to rape them or something.

He can't say any of this because nobody here understands him, so he waits for Arnold to come back.

Which he eventually does.

"Brigade's sending a squad car out with a driver and an aide from the Colonel's staff. They want to ask a lot about the 'magic', they don't really believe me. I wouldn't if I was them, admittedly, suddenly knowing a new language is rather convincing. It'll be about half an hour."

"Are there other ways I could help besides fighting the battlemechs directly? I heard some people talking about being captured; would their pilots come out of their shells to do that, or for any other reason? Can I help hide or protect people, in the town or out of it? Does anyone here already need healing, or is that only a concern for the fighting? Is it even a good idea to capture, delay or destroy one of the battlemechs, if we can't get them all, would it make the others kill more people if they need to stay longer or in revenge?"

"They'll have infantry along, the infantry fight matters too... Pilots like staying in their mechs until it's safe, but pirates are maybe too undisciplined to sleep and eat in there... We probably don't have a lot of injuries yet unless someone has an accident. The thing the pirates are after are saleable stuff. That means machines, valuables from peoples' homes, and slaves probably. They fuck off if it's an obviously losing fight, but sometimes they just get mad and burn everything instead." He shakes his head. "But we're gonna fight anyway. Can't just lie down, that's a slow death by starvation in a couple decades. Capturing a mech would be a real big win, just delaying one isn't bad. And hiding people could help if there's nothing better to contribute with."

That's the right attitude! 

"Infantry I can maybe do something about. What can you tell me about them? Likely numbers, arms and armor, tactics, do they have commanders that they'll actually obey on the battlefield, are there leaders it would help to target, will they trade for their men that surrender or are captured... What's their role on the battlefield, what do they do that the battlemechs can't? Or are they mostly there because they don't all have battlemechs and they still want to fight? Will stopping the infantry change the outcome of the fight?"

"And do you have places for people to hide who won't be fighting? Somewhere the pirates won't find, or somewhere defensible enough that they won't burn them all inside if they can't capture them? How dangerous are the areas outside the town?" Of course they won't tell him where they're hiding, he just wants to know if the town will be full of civilians barricaded in their own homes or if it'll be approximately evacuated.

"Can't tell you much about the town's defense plans as a whole. My play out here would be obvious to the pirates if they're diligent, but the rest? Generalities. Likely numbers maybe two companies, so about 100. Not a lot compared to us but they'll have the mechs to blow up strong defensive positions for them. Rifles and vehicle support. I don't know how pirates organize themselves really, trades for captures... Maybe? Or maybe they'd just consider it one less share to pay out. Pirate Infantry can clear buildings without smashing them to the ground and ruining the loot, watch the flanks, and prevent our infantry from getting into ambush positions to hit the mechs from the side and back with rockets or cannons. And they loot more efficiently than mechs. Infantry are best on defense, really vulnerable if not supported by mechs and moving in the open."

Yeah, fair. "So what happens if you take out most of their infantry but can't stop their mechs?"

"Then we'd still lose. But winning the infantry fight puts us in a position to pressure the mechs, maybe make them rethink their risk profile. Infantry can hurt mechs, 'specially in terrain with lots of cover. Like the city. We have the field guns, we have some vehicles, SRM tubes. Could still go pretty bad though."

"If you still expect to lose even with my help and in the best-case scenario, I won't risk my life to fight with you." This 'major' is military, right, Gord can be blunt. "I don't mean that you shouldn't fight, it's a reasonable choice, but if I can't help you win then I'd rather try to protect civilians if I can."

"Not joining our fight if you don't want to, that's your prerogative. Though you said 'if we can't stop the mechs'. Maybe we can. I'm sure we'll be glad for whatever you decide, and you'll be able to figure out more in town. We'll know for sure the region they'll land in by some time tomorrow, and what they're armed with as soon as they sally out tomorrow evening. This is still prebattle prep time, right now. Most pirate raids last one to three days of actual fighting."

Arnold didn't make it sound like he expects to be able to stop their mechs but maybe that was a translation issue? Fighting to enable a small chance of victory, for strangers, still isn't something Gord will do easily.

The attack is supposed to be thirty hours out. Gord isn't sure he's ever heard such an accurate warning of an attack, at least not one that proved correct. On the other hand, the last time he fought with an organized army the enemy commanders were demons who probably didn't know themselves what they'd be doing thirty hours in advance, so spying and scrying were both pretty useless. His gut feeling, though, is telling him that if wants to avoid the fighting he shouldn't stay around too long. Well, he'll at least visit the town and talk to some more people and trade with them before he makes up his mind.

"Understood. I'll think it over. I hope we can help each other even if we don't end up fighting together." Arnold's commanders want to talk to him, which is understandable if they have no mages (how did they end up with no mages?); it might be dangerous, but he already decided to take the risk when he approached the locals. Maybe they'll have better ideas, or a more optimistic outlook. (He'll remember not to trust their optimistic outlook, the men on the ground are usually more grounded.)

"To cast Share Language again I'll need to meditate for fifteen minutes, I'll go get started on that." 

The Major does seem like a very straightforward and grounded guy. He tells the guards that Gord is gonna sit and think and to just leave him alone, and goes back to supervising the work. 

A jeep sort of vehicle comes trundling down the road about twenty minutes later, and the person who comes up to him after that is introduced by Major Arnold as "Technical Specialist Kira Loaves. She's the one Battalion sent to liaise with you." She holds her hand out for a handshake, a firmly neutral expression on her face.

She gets a Share Language with her handshake!

"I'm Gord, cleric of Gorum. Major Arnold said your command wanted to talk to me; we should talk on the way there, since you'll be translating for me. I also have a Comprehend Languages up, which means I can understand the local language but not speak it, but that will expire in less than hour."

A 'battalion' would be quite a large force back home, which is another reason one cleric isn't going to change the course of battle.

...She writes something down.

She tells the Major, "Yes, that certainly does seem to be sudden knowledge of a new language by touch. Okay, blood and dust..."

Deep breath.

"Yes. We have a lot of questions, like 'what is a Cleric'. And 'how does the language granting work, anyway'. I would have expected if anything, for it to be an object, perhaps worn on the head?"

"A cleric is a mortal given magic by a god. ...do you have different categories here? On Golarion we call people born with magic sorcerers, people who learn magic wizards, and people given magic clerics. There are probably headbands of language knowledge out there but I don't have one. - maybe not headbands, people wouldn't want to give up their circlet of wisdom or cunning for that."

She looks at him like he just said something incredibly stupid but she is trying to be professional.

"...I see. Well, let's get in the car and we can talk more on the way."

He'd heard there was a spell to conjure a carriage instead of a horse for every rider! He didn't realize it made a carriage without any horses, but really that makes sense since it all moves by magic anyway. This way they can't fight or evade enemies or even split up, which is probably why it isn't a more common spell, but other than that it's very comfy.

"I want to prevent people being killed or enslaved. I can cure wounds, and I may fight to defend or hide civilians. Major Arnold tried to convince me to fight with your main forces but from what he said you don't really expect to win, and a single cleric isn't going to turn the tide of battle if you have a whole battalion. How much is a battalion, by your standards?"

"Willy, back to Minnie Downs. South gate garrison."

"Yes'm."

The jeep does a 3-point turn and heads up the road again at maybe 40 miles an hour, engine growling. There aren't any seatbelts, not that Gord would expect them.

And a switch of languages.

"A battalion is around a thousand people. As to prospects of victory, we don't know what type of forces are on the two dropships descending towards the planet right now. They could be mostly combat vehicles and light 'mechs. Locusts, Commandos, Urbies. They could have a fucking Highlander or King Crab in there. If it's the former, we can definitely win. It would not be certain, but we can win. If the latter, snowball's chance in Hell. How do you cure wounds, and do these other things? You say you were given this capacity- Is it something implanted in your body? Where did you receive it?"

Because it sure sounds like he could be deluded about some weird old SLDF project that does medical nanites and neural language mapping or something. The SLDF got up to some crazy shit.

And that would be worth a fortune.

The conjured carriage's growling takes a few minutes to get used to. Is it meant to scare away monsters?

"I pray for spells, daily, and I get them. They're not in my body, they're - in my soul, I guess? It's probably the same way your wizards do spells but I'm not actually sure."

"Do your gods never give out spells? What do they do instead?"

"I don't know of any entity I would define as a god. And we don't have wizards. The closest thing would be conspiracy theories about hyperspace beings, fucking with the jumpships and stuff. Or the Christian God and whoever else who don't do anything these days if they even exist. You do? You clearly do have something extraordinary that we might as well accept is called 'magic'... D'you remember how you got here?"

"It - sounds like maybe you do know about some gods but there's a confusion about who to call that? Gods can be very different, almost the only thing they have in common is - well. Making clerics. And paladins, I guess. So if you're sure you don't have any clerics then maybe it's really not obvious who the gods are, maybe they're just especially powerful outsiders... I guess that makes sense. Not having any clerics is weird, but I always expected other worlds to be weird." Not having any paladins or inquisitors either, only sorcerers and wizards, will probably make this world very alien in ways he can't anticipate yet. "And yeah, I know some things about gods - or at least a lot of things that different gods' followers believe about their gods, and powerful clerics can ask their gods yes/no questions so I don't think it's all lies but who knows. I'm not that powerful myself yet."

"...clerics have somewhat different spells from other mages, I don't know why or whether it holds here. At home clerics are very good at healing people and wizards are bad at it, but maybe with no clerics around your wizards have learned to do it better." They're clearly more advanced than Golarion's wizards in at least some ways. "Wizards are - anyone who learns magic by study instead of being born with it? Arnold said your jumpships used arcane magic, is it all sorcerer work? Maybe you just group all your mages differently from how I do it and we should stick to 'clerics' and 'other mages'."

"I got here by - accidentally - falling through a planar rift. At least that's what I assume happened. They're known to happen in the area I was in - very rarely, I never saw one before... I don't know what it means that you have planar rifts, most places don't and it's maybe not a great sign." Gord is holding off on telling anyone it was an Abyssal rift, because that is legitimately terrifying if you didn't have one before but he isn't sure how actionable it is. Maybe if there's an archwizard the locals trust he should tell them? People can be bad enough with strangers who ping Chaotic Evil, he doesn't want them to suspect he might be a demon in disguise.

...wait. Waaaait. Alignment detection spells are cleric spells. Paladins and inquisitors have it even worse, they can't stop seeing the Evil in people. Is she telling him they don't have any of those? 

...

Gord's first thought is that it ought to make the world a bit more like Elysium. Sure, they still have slaver pirates, but they're fighting people for being slaver pirates and not for being a blemish in a paladin's sight!

He is suddenly very interested in seeing what kind of society people built for themselves without clerics. (And sure, he'll heal and rescue some people while he's here, why wouldn't he?)

"Gods don't make clerics around here, no. I suppose the Star League-era tech can look like magic, and it's true that hardly anyone can build it anymore, but I think it's a different thing than this word implies, 'magic'. Unless the implications this 'spell' has written into my head are misleading? It's more... Engineering writ large... I'm almost an engineer. Technical specialist. Big part of my job is to keep things working, and uh... They thought 'magic' was code for 'the Major doesn't understand what he's seeing', not. Actual magic. Er... So, right. You have magic, slanted towards healing injuries? And you are considering what to do about our pirate situation and leaning towards assisting with evacuation or defense of civilians? So... You fell through some kind of jump portal? A," loanword time, "'wormhole', a tear in space that bridges one location and another? Such places are rare and worrying? I don't know anything about why one would put you here. Where did you arrive, precisely? We can have someone look. Do I have that all correct?"

She's writing notes down again.

"Yes, that's right. I do have plenty of magic that can hurt people but unlike wizards I can also heal them, and cure diseases and poisons. Most spells don't necessarily hurt or heal anyone, it's up to you how you use them." Most cleric spells don't have to hurt people but no-one's found any other use for them yet, which is presumably how the gods want it and goes to show Gorum is right about life.

He does his best to describe where exactly he fell through the tear. It wasn't far from the military post, someone can probably follow his tracks backwards to figure it out.