Great. They can all cluster in room 4, if it has not been elsewhere assigned.

"So, I don't know if it has occurred to any of you to wonder why I am so confident the Worldwound can be closed."

"That seemed perfectly explicable when considering the high prevalence of adventurers who are overconfident in their abilities and likelihood of success."

".......am I going around saying other things that seem overconfident in that way?"

"I do not recall."

"I see. Well, in this particular case I am confident it is possible the Wound can be closed because I am from an alternate timeline in which it was done."

"You're what?"

"So, does that mean we can just copy what happened in your timeline, or is it some sort of complicated 'to close it you need a ninth-circle cleric of Iomedae to do a Miracle in the center of the Wound' kind of deal?"

"Don't be ridiculous, thief boy. There is no reason such a miracle could only be performed by an Iomedaean, and if the actions of a ninth-circle cleric were sufficient to undo Lady Vorlesh's handiwork Sarenrae's could easily serve. More importantly, exactly duplicating the method of closure used in the other timeline would be of limited value to planar scholarship; it would be much more valuable to try a variation on the method used in order to gain information about which factors were important in closing the Worldwound and which were simple coincidence." She takes a breath. "Regardless, I hope you will allow me to interview you about your timeline and arrival! I know of no documented cases of time travel extending more than a few moments outside of legend, and until now it was widely been believed impossible."

"I do not know exactly how it was done. I know, by rumor, some things about the composition of the archmage party who accomplished it. It is a stroke of enormous luck to have found Ember, because they had someone with powers like hers and I don't even know what that's called, and it is for this reason that I will be prioritizing her growth and survival particularly highly if tradeoffs in that department come up. They also had a wizard - reportedly, his local counterpart is in a Final Blade - and a swordswoman who I presume to have been incidental, and a weird sorcerer - one of the kinds that lags circles, with an exceptionally powerful familiar, again I don't know more about what the variety is called - and an Abadaran inquisitor, and if that last was operative I don't know if it's more important that he was Abadaran, an Inquisitor, or both together."

Thall looks a little nervous about the prospect of picking up an Inquisitor for the party.

"I suppose an Abadaran inquisitor could hardly be worse than our dear Prelate."

Tail-twitch. "Sure they could."

"I've found Inquisitor Hawkblade very personable but have also already written to the fortress insurance adjuster, Fiducia Boian, and hope to have him participate in some capacity. He, uh, knows... me. After a fashion."

"What's an insurance adjuster?"

"Abadaran who comes through every so often to complain about all the ways the city isn't living up to their standards and tells them they need to pay him more money. Seems like a pretty sweet gig if you can get it."

"Does this mean we're going to have a second you?" On the one hand that would be pretty convenient but on the other hand it also seems really confusing. 

"We are not likely to have a second me because he would need to be assigned by Cheliax from his present post of commanding fort #11 and I'd need to be confident I was getting copies of his orders to make sure he wasn't about to impersonate me. If you ever come to be unsure anyway and I don't have an orison that requires a holy symbol prepared you can ask after the angel sword."

That would probably make more sense if he knew more about surfacer countries!

"Is he — if just casting an orison isn't enough to prove you're you he'd have to be—"

"Apart from background facts like what archmages exist in the world doing archmage things, we were I expect nigh-identical up until the point at which the archmage things included conquering Cheliax, up to and including the fact that I was for twenty years a cleric of Asmodeus."

Huh, if Select Artigas used to be a cleric of Asmodeus maybe Asmodeus is less bad than people made him sound earlier?

"I'm sorry that happened to you."

"Why were you a cleric of Asmodeus. For twenty years. ...You know Asmodeus is bad, right?"

Yeah they might as well have this conversation now. "I know."

"...so then why were you his cleric for twenty years??"