"Does anyone have any other questions for me, as long as you're still awake and have the language?"

Chris looks at the book-thing. "So many. 'Will the water disappear gradually or suddenly?' 'What are elves and gnomes like?' 'What are the gods you're familiar with like and how did you figure that out?' 'Do you want to play volleybag?' – I said that we should give you some time to acclimate before you do any sports. 'Can we get photos of everything in your bag?' 'Have you seen auroras before, should someone tell you when there's next an aurora?' 'What's your understanding of what happens to dead people?' Lots of requests for your spells – specific foods, endure elements, et cetera. Someone wants you to bless a machine that's acting up. …ooh, someone's suggested putting your water into a humidifier, that's smart, it'd be a nice luxury and it wouldn't have the disappearing-in-the-pipes problem. Someone else has suggested we write a phrasebook. And this wasn't posted, but I'd expect medical would like to run some blood tests, they just didn't push on it earlier because it's kind of hard to explain without a shared language."

"The usual presentation is that it all dries up over the course of about a minute. Elves are roughly human-sized, strange eyes, pointy ears, I have never actually met a full blooded elf and have not spent much time with part-elves, I think sometimes they live in forests. Gnomes are yea high, strangely colored hair, die if they get bored but otherwise have no maximum lifespan, supposedly build a lot of things out of clockwork but again I don't have much exposure to them. I know more about orcs, if anyone's curious about those, I've commanded half-orcs and spoken to lots of people with experience fighting full orcs.

"I'm not sure what it means to ask how I figured out the - do they mean how did my civilization figure that out, the gods can grant visions and send messengers and so on, they just don't do it as a matter of course now that most of their doctrine is settled and they can do more of their communication by way of empowering well-aligned clerics and answering mortal-chosen Commune questions. I don't know what volleybag is. Or photos. I have seen auroras but would bestir myself to see one again. I prepared one Endure Elements today and can give it to whoever has the most call for it. I didn't prepare Mending, and it has a size limit, if they can identify a small part of the machine that is broken I can perhaps fix it tomorrow. Food requests should probably all be collated in one place for me to consult before the next casting. I don't know what a humidifier is. A phrasebook is a good idea. What is a blood test?"

Chris pokes the not-book a lot.

"I would guess the questioner also wants to know about orcs and half-orcs. I would guess the other questioner also wants a list of gods. Volleybag is an indoor activity where people form two teams and run around and hit a bag through the air, for fun and to stay fit. Photos are a way of using a machine to very quickly make very accurate pictures of things. I'll let the Endure Elements requester know. There is probably not an obvious specific broken part of the machine and I think the person was picturing you improving their luck with it or something. Someone can collate food requests. A humidifier is a machine that makes the air mistier, you may have noticed that it's very dry in here. We should probably work on a phrasebook before I ask you more of the entire base's questions. In a blood test, a physician sticks a thin hollow needle into a vein to remove a few spoonfuls' worth of blood, removes the needle and bandages the site, and then does various analyses on the blood – one thing they might do is look at the blood with a lot of magnification from lenses to see if there's anything unexpected in there."

"Orcs are shades of green or blue, have tusks and protruding lower jaws, are substantially stronger than humans, tend Chaotic Evil, the ones bordering my country did some pastoralism and some raiding to survive, but when hybridized and the offspring raised by human cultures yield basically normal people insofar as I can tell. They can see in the dark at a range of sixty feet - I knew a half-orc who had it up to ninety but I think that was just her.

"I can improve people's luck with nearly arbitrary things an unlimited number of times a day, touch range, that's the one I'm casting on myself all the time. There's also a second circle repair spell which might be worth it if the machine is important, but I'm not positive that your machines aren't too complicated or anything for the spell; it should at least probably not hurt, I wouldn't think. I don't mind if you have pictures of my things. I - don't necessarily want to list all of the gods I know about, because some of them are Evil - I can list at least a few of them unless it will be worse than nothing to have a partial list. What would the use of the information be if there were or were not anything unexpected in my blood?"

"…they have green skin and they're interfertile with humans? I do not think the machine issue is very important, it still works most of the time. I don't see how it would be worse than nothing to have a partial list. One of the things we're worried about is that there might be a thing that could cause diseases in us that you've learned to live with without issue but we haven't, and if that were the case we'd … probably want everyone who's been near you to stay in their rooms as much as possible and for you to remove diseases from yourself and us even if you feel fine. And great, thank you, if you could lay everything out on a table that would be great and I can take those photos now."

"They do and are, yes. Except for the ones who have blue skin instead and are still also interfertile with humans. Elves are too, but halflings and gnomes and dwarves are not, with humans, each other, or elves or orcs, as far as I know. I have never heard of an elf an orc reproducing directly but I don't know if this is because it wouldn't work or because it's never been assayed." He starts laying stuff out on the table. Books, bundle of letters, salt, table knife, mug, the belt those two hang from, his coat and armor and normal clothes are elsewhere. Holy symbol stays on. "My goddess is Iomedae, Lawful Good, victory over evil and triage. Also Lawful Good is Erastil, god of farming and hunting and - farm villages? Marriage and possibly families in general? I remember His wife's name is Jaidi but not if She has a separate portfolio from him in any way. Also most statements about personal relationships between gods should be taken as plausibly metaphor of some kind. Abadar is Lawful Neutral, god of trade, His people run all the trustworthy banks and neutral treaty arbitration and insurance and everything like that. Sarenrae is the Neutral Good goddess of the sun and redemption. Shelyn is the Neutral Good goddess of art and love and - possibly also redemption. Desna is the Chaotic Good goddess of the stars and travel."

"There are apes who have blue skin which makes it easier for me to imagine some group interfertile with humans that has it. I haven't heard of any mammals with green skin."

Chris points his pocket device at all of these items, including Blai with a focus on the symbol.

"Want to see the photos?"

"Sure. - I have heard that the kind of elf that lives underground is purple but have never seen one."

Chris shows Blai the photos. They're a lot like the images he showed Blai on the book-thing earlier, though perhaps not as pretty.

He has... no idea what one does to confirm that photos exist and sure look like pictures of things. He nods?

Chris does not appear to expect any particular reaction. He puts the device back away.

"Phrasebook?" Blai says. "I'm not sure what should be in there besides - yes, no, maybe, some of my spells someone might want to ask me to cast or prepare..."

"'Help', 'I'm fine', 'stop', 'go ahead', 'where is' and stuff like 'bed' and 'toilet' and 'exit', 'do you want', 'now', 'I can cast', 'in this many hours', some numbers…"

Chris is already writing. "And I assume you'll want this transliterated, only you might also want the English words and letters for looking at our signs…"

"Three columns, then, I suppose."

Chris can fit in a third column. "Do you want our letters and letter-pairs and approximations of what they sound like somewhere in here, or no?"

"Comprehend Languages will speed me up considerably at learning to genuinely understand your language, but a reference like that wouldn't hurt."

Write write write.

"I think we got distracted and you never actually answered my question about the blood draws."

"I'm not very likely to have a disease. I'm not outright immune like a paladin but powerful people don't often get normal diseases and an abnormal one would have been noticeable in someone I might have caught it from. There are not very many good reasons to want someone's blood on my planet."

Chris nods.

"I won't push. …also there's questions on Iomedae's thoughts on political controversies, I don't know if you want to give those."

"I don't know them; I'm not particularly well catechized and would in any event not have heard about your politics. I could guess, but I would be guessing. I suppose unless you're managing to have a controversy about something very much settled on Golarion. Which in light of the question I think I dropped earlier about what happens to dead people might easily be the case, actually - dead people are judged by Pharasma the Creator and divided among the afterlife planes, corresponding to alignment. Children are generally true Neutral but it is understood that Pharasma does not want them piling up in Her realm and will send them along as soon as they develop any meaningful inclination. - also there is at least one irregular afterlife destination for the followers of a particular Evil god and might be others like that."

"…huh. But you don't worship Pharasma? Anyway, controversies – is abortion evil, is contraception evil, is premarital sex evil, is it okay for two men or two women to marry, is it okay for people to 'transition' – that means a man taking hormones and surgery and changing their name and wearing different clothes to be like a woman, or vice versa, how do you feel about schools teaching that humans developed from unintelligent lifeforms instead of being created by a god, is it okay to sentence people to death for serious crimes?"

"Most people pray to Pharasma for the dead, or when expecting children, or about undead-related problems, but these things have not come up particularly often in my personal life so I am not in the habit. - abortion is evil, yes. I would think it would depend on how you went about contracepting. Premarital sex is certainly on very dubious ground being as it endangers children but I'm not actually sure there is any non-children related reason to object so perhaps if your contraception is fine that is too. It is fine for two men or two women to be involved with one another should they care to but I am not sure what it would mean exactly to claim that they were married at any point in this process. I have... no grounds on which to either approve or disapprove of the transition you describe particularly; it doesn't seem likely to be a matter of great moral import unless it is combined with someone's ignorance in such a way as to endanger a child. Whether that is a good thing to teach depends principally on whether it is true, and it does not sound true to me, but I think Iomedae tends lighter on the anti-heresy laws so She might allow its teaching anyway, I'm unsure. It is okay to sentence people to death for serious crimes."

"The popular forms of contraception in America are a device that covers the penis during sex so as to prevent sperm from entering the woman, and pills a woman takes that makes her temporarily infertile, though there are other technologies. Some people argue that some of the technologies actually count as an abortion for reasons which might be a bit technical. Some people also get surgeries that make them infertile. Does Iomedae think there should be any anti-heresy laws? In America anyone is allowed to say or write almost anything they want to, do you think you can live with that?"

"I do not have the technical expertise to evaluate the technologies you describe. The important thing would be whether at any point there is a soul conceived. I don't have a spell for that and don't know if Pharasmins get one or anything. The pills and device sound fine so long as they work and if they do not always work they have problems that I would imagine would already be obvious. I have never traveled to Iomedae's theocracy. The Worldwound fort it operates prohibits proselytizing for Evil powers - it does not prohibit worshiping them or accepting power from them, as some signatories to the Worldwound treaty do this and the treaty is the priority, but those persons may be subject to differential security as spells intended to catch demons and demon cultists will identify them. It also forbids assertions that Iomedae endorses any violation of the treaty or that she gives or permits any illegal order. The home front may be stricter about heresies but I do not know. It might also be more lenient in some ways - there are enchantments that are commonly available to some kinds of demons, and the surer you are that something is out of the question, the less likely an enchantment is to be able to convince you that you are divinely commanded to stab an ally in the back or let a demon into the barracks or what have you, and this would come up less often in a normal village. But I only have their military handbook, not their domestic legal code. My impression - but not my well-informed impression - from having read the Acts is that Iomedae prefers that heresy laws, like most things, have a clear strategic benefit toward which they are narrowly applied."