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wherein Merrin is dropped on Cheliax
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"Asmodia of Cheliax."

"Pilar Pineda of Cheliax."

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Vicent points to Merrin, taps his ears, nods his head.  He points to his mouth, shakes his head.  Then he points to Sala, Pineda, and Asmodia in turn, taps his ears, and shakes his head.

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Merrin thinks she understands what he's saying. 

 

(She...had not previously considered to what extent she would hate and be miserable in a situation where she could say things but not understand anything that other people said to her. It turns out that this is very frustrating.)

 

"- Right. My - current best guess - is that none of you speak Baseline because you're from another planet. But you have - some kind of magic, I guess - where you can understand me anyway? Only it doesn't also let you say things. - Can you all nod if that's true -"

Pause.

"....Um, actually, sorry, pause. I've been assuming that a nod," she demonstrates, "means yes here? And that a headshake," demonstration, "means no? ....Just as a test - I'll be happy to use the head signals later if it turns out we mutually understand them - but just as a test, can someone, um, knock over a chair if the answer is no? And - put one of the chairs up on one of the desks, if the answer is yes?" 

The convenient thing about this test is that if neither of those things happen, it will convey to her that they don't actually understand her at all, and the previous responses were a mix of wild guesses and reading body language. 

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Vicent will have his Unseen Servant put a chair up on a desk.

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Oh. Excellent. 

....Probably?

Merrin takes a deep breath. "Okay, if you can understand me but not answer me, because - magic - then I think we should probably try to figure out some kind of visual or mathematical system on my side, so that I can communicate? I...can draw a map of my world?"

Ugh she doesn't really expect that to work, though.

"....Sorry, I'm going to keep trying to think of things, but I'm - not having a great day. Which is distracting, it turns out. I - sorry - my math and spatial skills are worse than my verbal skills but if you think you can draw things or whatever more easily then you can figure out the language problem then I'll try my best." 

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He's still got his Silent Image running, though at present it's not producing an illusion of anything but air.

Illusion:  Vicent, Merrin, three students not depicted in as much detail, meet a sixth person.  They vanish, then reappear inside a vaguely depicted formal hall.  A formally dressed figure steps forward, taps his lips, nods.

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....If Merrin is following that correctly then they have instantaneous point to point transportation. What. Seriously? 

- should that be such a major update? She was clearly instantaneously transported here, and she doesn't yet have an explanation for that but she knows it happened to the extent that she knows anything, anymore ....unhelpful thought, maybe also wrong but definitely not productive. 

The fantasy-magic-instructor was visibly confused about her? Which is evidence that even if they locally have instantaneous point-to-point transport magic, he doesn't recognize whatever made her appear here?

....Merrin isn't sure what that means. Probably it means something? If she were higher-g she might get it at a first glance, and - also it would be more likely that someone would have taught her the underlying truths she needed to know. But that is not her current situation. (She would appreciate if there were a clear explanation document and a trained instructor available for all her questions, but it's not like this is the first time in her life that she's gone without that.)

Anyway. She isn't yet, exactly, suspicious about whether the fantasy magic teacher in the fantasy magic academy setting is being honest with her. But she's considering that he might not be. Merrin's real life experience hasn't involved any truly adversarial actions, but her Exception Handling training as an EMT has, and she didn't like it but she tried her best to acquire the relevant skills anyway. 

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Oh right she should say words. 

 

"...So if I'm understanding you correctly: you can take me somewhere else quickly using magic, with some of the other students, and there'll be another person there who can use magic to answer my questions? You can nod if that's right, and - if that's what you think makes sense to do next, I think I don't have a better alternative to following your judgement there." 

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Merrin is mostly not showing it on her face, but she's still feeling very unhappy.

She doesn't like being thrown outside her area of expertise, and being confused is painful for her, whether or not she's having to at the same time handle a medical emergency. (There doesn't appear to be one and she is unendorsedly resentful about this.) 

- and she's still sad about missing her date. She could really go for someone hurting her a whole lot right now Merrin has no idea that her mind is currently being read, but she's in the habit of noticing that thought and quickly tucking it away for LATER. (It's an infohazard, after all, and the easiest way to avoid accidentally talking about her secret infohazardous personality trait with her friends is to minimize how much it's on her mind, and it's not like there's any actually good reason for it to be relevant now. Whoever the fantasy magic people are, they don't need to know that she's still stupidly upset about missing her date, let alone why.)

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Vicent nods when Merrin asks for a nod.

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As Detect Thoughts is something less of an overpowered spell in the hands of distracted second-circle wizard students, Ione is able to notice that Merrin hid a thought about her date but not what the thought was, or why she's hiding it.

...why would anybody from a nonmagical world need to hide their thoughts at all??  If Ione lived in a world where Detect Thoughts wasn't a thing, she would -

- nonetheless think only good thoughts that were loyal to Cheliax, of course.

She duly Messages Vicent about it anyways.

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A rather more portly and older man huffs ungraciously into the classroom, scowls at the five people present for Teleportation (that's going to take a bit of metamagic from a rod with limited daily uses), and, after a few incomprehensible Taldane words exchanged with Vicent, extends out his arm.

Vicent lays a hand on it, as do Ione, Pilar, Asmodia.

"Merrin," Vicent says encouragingly.

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Oh, clearly she's supposed to do - something?

(...That man's breathing sounds kind of concerning? Which Merrin figures is any evidence toward 'this is a training scenario that Governance/her instructors have somehow managed to pull off, and wanted to subject her to for reasons she doesn't know'. Though that's not a very satisfying explanation, given all of the impossibilities she has recently observed. Merrin...will keep an eye on the potential medical emergency, which she would do anyway, but otherwise go on assuming that she died and then ended up on another planet where magic exists -) 

- probably the something she is supposed to do involves imitating the other magic-academy-students? Merrin nods to Vicent and reaches out to place her hand next to Asmodia's. 

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Sudden sensory discontinuity!  Merrin is now in what passes for a formal reception platform in Golarion, a marble dais with an inlaid fancy gold pentagram (not one usable for summoning purposes, as is obvious to anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with that), surrounded by magical floating crimson ribbons like guardrails.  There's some surprise at their arrival, as two tall men dressed in identical-looking uniforms bark out a Taldane question which Vicent answers swiftly and in commanding terms of his own.

The portly man vanishes, not taking anybody with him this time, and the others all file off the platform and head out of the nearest door.

There isn't really a lot of time to look, but one will quickly start to pick up a general doompunk ambiance around here - the walls are done up in decor that looks like subtly stylized flames, for example, that fade into shadow as they approach a darker ceiling.  The rounded corners of the reception platform room appear as pillars holding up the ceiling with claws.  Unfortunately this is not sufficiently close to dath ilani doompunk to convey anything like a reassuring familiarity.

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Oh NO!  The anomaly has MOVED.  Why are these mortals teleporting the anomaly AROUND?  It could cause more DAMAGE that way!

Well.  She is at least not allowing that to happen AGAIN.  Otolmens puts up an antimagical shell around the anomaly that will prevent external magical effects from affecting it.

(It does not block divination.  Otolmens can think of several past anomalies that She would not particularly have wanted to make magically invisible.  It doesn't block anything internal in case that further perturbs the anomaly.)

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That sure is an aesthetic! Merrin notices that it's not exactly the doompunk she's familiar with, although honestly it would be weird if it was. ...Okay, it's weird anyway. She tries to get a better look at the pillars, in case the architecture here tells her something about the non-magical tech level, but she doesn't have a lot of time to look and she's not an engineer and also who knows if they're keeping the ceiling up half with magic levitation. She really needs to figure out how expensive magical effects are, here. She's pretty sure that's something that varies between settings, not that she's had time to read all that much fantasy since she was a kid. 

...It looks like their arrival maybe wasn't communicated ahead? Which could mean that long-distance magical communication isn't a thing, or that it's costly, or it could just mean that someone involved is slightly disorganized and they don't have a checklist to follow for 'unexpected visitor from another world.' Either way it looks like no harm was done? 

The initial room did look very - fancy? Moreso than the classroom. If things like inlaid gold are scarce here - she thinks gold was scarce in some of the fiction she read? - then significant wealth was put into this room's decor. Which says...something...about how important they're treating her as? Though Merrin feels like really she is trying to draw inferences from a very small number of observations, so anything she does infer will still mostly amount to a wild guess. She might be better off just waiting until they reach the person who can speak her language. 

She follows the instructor and the other students. (She doesn't notice the antimagic shell around her.) 

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Shortly beyond the doompunk teleportation platform is a fancy doompunk diplomatic reception area that's so expensive it looks only slightly poverty-stricken by dath ilani standards!  Why, most teenaged kids don't have a room in their house that looks this nice!  Unless they're working at an unusually high-paying job!

In the reception area can be found another couple of people in uniforms identical to the two stationed on the teleportation platform, and one person behind a desk wearing in total solemn seriousness a doompunk LARP outfit from a planet with almost no textiles technology.  Somehow it still manages to convey, even across the vast cultural gap, that this person might possibly work for Governance.

There's some more words exchanged in Taldane, level ones with nobody looking visibly surprised at any point.  Then the person behind the desk rises up and goes through one of two doors behind him.

Now there's a wait, apparently?

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Merrin pays a lot of attention to her surroundings. She has extensive training on doing that and noticing as many details as possible.

...Well, most of her training is specific either to noticing people in need of medical care, or environmental hazards that might cause less-careful people to end up in need of medical care. And so she is substantially less skilled at noticing-and-efficiently-chunking any non-medical-emergency and non-hazardous observations in her environment. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately, really, for everyone involved, just not for Merrin's ability to use her skills), nobody nearby is having a medical emergency. (She would judge the competence of their local Governance at least a little if one of the greeters sent for her did have a medical emergency and she was the first responder).

Also the local architecture seems pretty non-hazardous, which is unsurprising in general, except for the increasingly-unlikely possibility where this is some bizarre troll-y training scenario aimed at her specifically, which - at this point she has substantial evidence against?? Probably? 

 

 

She will wait. Trying to do any lowkey social interactions with the fellow students (who are closer to her age than the teacher) is mostly a lost cause, given the language problem, but she tries to smile at all of them.

- oh, wow, one of them has interesting hair! Merrin finds herself smiling at Pilar in particular. 

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Does it serve Asmodeus for Pilar to smile back?  Yes?  Then Pilar will smile back.

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Somebody new comes back out from the door behind the desk.  He's wearing a higher-quality version of the last person's probably-an-official doompunk LARP uniform.

"On behalf of local Governance, welcome to Cheliax, Merrin out of dath ilan," he says in Baseline.  "I am Antonio Agramunt, fourth-degree_of_complexity learned_economicmagic-user and empowered-representative of Chelish Governance.  My, what a fascinating language this is, I've never spoken anything like it."

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Someone is talking in a language she understands! For a second or two, that is the only part that Merrin can really process, and she is beaming about it, with relief and exhaustion and - 

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- and right, she is representing Civilization in a diplomatic negotiation with aliens? Maybe? Apparently? 

Right. She can do this. 

(Merrin is pretty sure that she is really not the best person for this? But it seems like whatever process caused her to be here, and did not instead cause a different person to be here, either doesn't care or disagrees, and - it's not clear that she has any way of finding out which one. So. She - might as well act on the assumption that she is at least a reasonable person to be selected to make contact with an alien world?) 

 

 

 

"Thank you," she says. "I'm very glad to meet you. ...I - sorry - my first question was going to be, can you ask the teacher and students who saw me arrive what they saw? But I'm also suddenly really curious what's different between this language and the others you know?" 

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"To say in Taldane that I was suddenly really curious, I would say, 'I'm suddenly really curious'."  It's ten syllables instead of Baseline's three.  "It's clearly a language that makes very different messages simple or complicated to say.  And you don't have any simple words for economicmagics of different degrees of complexity, which backs up Vicent's early speculations about your world lacking economicmagic entirely."

"I'll ask your question of the others; give me a moment there."

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Okay but WHY would anyone come up with a language that took that many syllables to convey such a basic and surely-frequently-expressed sentiment? 

Merrin waits for him to ask the others and then give her the summary. In the meantime, she'll examine his higher-quality probably-a-diplomat doompunk uniform more closely. And also make eye contact with the other economicmagic students again, because why not, they're the closest to her age here and it makes her feel less lonely. 

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Antonio Agramunt's uniform is made out of threads coarse enough to be visible, in a 2-axis weave that's so uneven it doesn't look up close like a neat grid at all.  No zippers, nothing that looks magnet-augmented, no sign of a buried hood he could pull over his head if it starts raining.  The doompunk aesthetics are conveyed entirely by coloration and some decorations of shiny colored metal, managing to do a surprising job at conveying anything through that language.


Pilar Pineda is most cheerful about returning eye contact; from Ione Sala and Asmodia it seems more measured, restrained, careful.  Not visibly nervous at all.  Nobody flinches to meet her gaze.


After some exchanges in Taldane between Antonio and the others, Antonio reports to Merrin that all four witnesses agree that she was not there in one moment, and there in the Ostenso wizard academy classroom the next.  Vicent in particular has a reasonably high-grade ability to perceive economicmagic and didn't see any associated economagical phenomena upon her arrival.

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