"It is not–" 

And he has to stop to actually consider it, for a moment. 

"It is - plausibly the best place in the short to medium-term, given its existing infrastructure, and - yes, I am powerful there, and familiar with its systems," having built most of them himself, "and having your help will - shift the balance of power. That being said, it is not a good place to work without being observed - and that will mean being observed by our local gods, sooner or later, even if I have cut off most of their avenues of influence.

"I suppose it depends somewhat on how certain you are that your industry-building processes will work immediately and be scalable, which - well, that depends on whether your kind of magic can be learned by our mages. Or our un-Gifted scholars, which would be even better. If you think we can build up this industrial capacity in less than - thirty to fifty years - and if we agree that is the right thing to focus on next, then I suspect it makes sense to work from the Empire." 

"....I think I can do it in thirty to fifty years easily. Keltham would have said 'how about I do it in one year.' And he didn't teach me everything he knew, but - if people here can become wizards, and if you can refine spellsilver using your own magic, then I can get the magic-item-assembly-line set up and try to figure out the industrial process for fertilizer, that was on our to-do list and it's the kind of thing alchemy's very good for."

He has possibly - definitely - not conveyed to her all of their actual constraints. Maybe because half of them are ones he put together yesterday, and still hasn't integrated into his own models of the world. 

"....I am concerned that will not work here the way it would have in Golarion. I - the Empire is mostly outside the reach of our world's gods, by design, but only mostly. I think They will see it, if we - begin the process that Keltham taught you - and I am not certain that They will object, it is different magic than the kind that nearly destroyed our world and it sounds like much of it is not magical at all - but I still expect we will run into interference." 

Sigh. "The Eastern Empire is definitely the only place with any kind of existing, functional infrastructure, where I expect we could do this at all. But it might still be better to...go somewhere very far away, maybe even the other continent on our world - where the local gods may be less inclined to halt any kind of progress, magical or otherwise." 

"I don't know much about operating somewhere with prophecy or whether any clever ways to muddle it actually work. A god noninterference zone is definitely what you want if you can get it."

"...I am not sure if that is something we can get. I am– I put together a number of pieces when you cast Owl's Wisdom for me yesterday, including - that the gods are going to be our greatest obstacle here. Somehow I had not - fully noticed that, before."

Maybe because it's terrifying.

"I am still not sure how many of those insights are true, I have not had much opportunity to check. But - I should try to explain it to you, if we are going to work together on this." 

Altarrin isn't sure what he said that's causing her to make that particular expression, and without Thoughtsensing he has no way of finding out. It probably doesn't matter. Maybe she will react badly, maybe - though it seems unlikely, given everything he knows about her - she'll be angry. But he does need her help, especially if he wants to find a way to not have to take the path that he saw, yesterday, while enhanced. (He hopes he remembers it clearly enough to explain coherently; it's going to be embarrassing if the parts of it he can convey don't actually make sense to Carissa.) 

Also, he apparently very badly doesn't want to talk about it, but that's even less of a reason to put this off. 

"The Empire is never going to be what I wanted to build, even if we get it to dath ilan's level of industry combined with their predictability and social control - I do not, actually, want to build dath ilan, not as you described it. If we try, the gods will either prevent us entirely, or twist it so that it serves Their goals as well, and I do not much like their goals. And, of course, we have the problem of lacking an afterlife, and we have your world's demonstration that it is possible, but I doubt our gods are motivated to imitate that." 

Altarrin takes a deep breath. Lets it out. 

"- So we need a god. On our side. The reason why I - saw so quickly what dath ilan might be doing - is because I was already planning to do it myself, here. It will take a very long time, because it is very important to get it right. We probably will need the industrial capacity we can build with dath ilan's knowledge, because - it will take power, as well as - having the structure right - and the only way I can think of to power it is with lives. I did the math. Five million lives for blood-magic at the lowest. It might be five hundred million, and I am not sure there are that many people alive on this planet, yet. ...I think there is a good chance we could get them back, or at least send them to a pleasant afterlife, once we had a cooperative god. But not for certain. I...am not very happy about this plan and would prefer something better." 

"Why - why would it cost that much - people ascend, in Golarion, and it's not - it does require eating an existing god, can you just do that?"

So his guess was right. Hearing it confirmed brings a flicker of hope - if Carissa's wizardry works here, maybe so do other options - but for some reason, most of all what he feels is very, very tired. He would feel a lot more hopeful if he put higher odds that they could ever find Golarion again. 

Also: eating an existing god??? He isn't even sure what that would mean, magically speaking. 

Altarrin sighs. "I am not sure how it works with your magic, but I doubt our gods are the sort of entity one can meaningfully eat. Maybe - I hope - there is a way I am not seeing, and that seems more likely with your magic. It might have taken me decades of study to derive this way, if not for your intelligence-enhancing magic. But I would like to hear everything you know - to start, is it only existing people who can ascend, and how much of themselves do they keep intact? I need to research this further, but it might be safer not to start with a human, since...well, at least the non-dath ilanis among us are not known for our internal coherence and stability over long time periods."  

...It would be fascinating if that exact reason is part of why dath ilan tries so hard to teach the things it does. Not that Altarrin expects he'll ever be able to confirm it for himself. 

"If you figured it out starting from a human you'd get to be a god, though." And she explains everything she knows about ascension. There are probably multiple ways of doing it; you probably keep at least some of your human attributes, though obviously you don't keep everything and though most stories of ascension might be expected to overstate how much the humans who became gods were, as humans, exemplars of the traits they ended up being gods of. "Also Cheliax censors all this, so I don't have wildly reliable information." 

Gods can be killed; gods, when killed, leave some kind of magical residue; people have ascended through contact with it, and a rat once ascended through literally eating it; some people think that's why the Starstone causes ascension, the gods who died trying to prevent it from destroying the world.

It does seem like having human-descended gods is useful in that they can use more of humans than the not-human-descended gods can.

Altarrin takes detailed notes. He has a number of questions on technical details, but Carissa may not actually have those answers, and besides this isn’t an emergency. It can wait until he has a Cunning enhancement of his own (which seems more relevant to this in particular than Wisdom.)

He has additional questions about the rat god! What does a rat god do? Was it that easy for a rat to accidentally end up eating god-residue, because presumably it wasn’t on purpose…

”- I would also like to hear more about the once-human gods. How they compare to the rest - and what traits they are described as having in their mortal lives, even if the records may not be perfectly accurate.”

"- Cheliax tried quite hard, I think, to make sure we didn't know too much about gods other than Asmodeus. I know Irori picked me, for some reason, and bargained with Asmodeus for me to not sell my soul. I think Iomedae's people are very into fighting Evil, and that Norgorber lives in Axis because it's nicer even though He's Neutral Evil - Neutral Evil is the worst. I was planning to deal with them too. But what they were like when they were alive - people do know that, it's in their holy books. I just don't know it."

Which makes sense, of course. Altarrin doesn't like it, but there's no point being frustrated. (He is for a moment anyway.) 

"I am not surprised." And he looks deeply unhappy for an instant. "I have tried to conceal all information about the gods from the Empire's people as well. For...different reasons, but..." He trails off, unsure what accusation he's trying to defend himself against, or why. 

"Anyway. I...am surprised a god is the kind of entity that - can choose to dislike the afterlife of their alignment and still be that alignment. What is so terrible about Neutral Evil?" 

(He remembers Carissa noting that they "eat souls", but is not entirely clear on what that means.) 

" - they raise people to kill them and eat their souls!!"

.....And now he's confused again. 

"- They raise living mortals there, in the afterlife plane? And kill them, still there, and have access to their souls to consume? ....I am not sure this is important, but I am confused about how your planar mechanics work such that this is feasible at all." 

"When people die, their souls generally go through the river of souls to judgment, but in Abaddon they stop them from getting that far, as I understand it. There aren't living mortals in most of the afterlives, but they're not - impossible to make habitable or anything, adventurers go there sometimes."

Altarrin nods. He isn't entirely un-confused, but - it's probably not the top priority to figure out next. 

"...Anyway. The constraints on carrying out any large-scale plan within the Eastern Empire are that it is - well, corrupt in some ways, though I am not sure that is a useful label here. It certainly has momentum, in a direction that is not one I would have chosen if I had full control, and - I suspect the degree to which its most talented people end up dedicating their life's work to navigating political intrigues is, perhaps, an equilibrium that our world's gods nudged toward. It is - an unstable system that nonetheless, on a higher level, will be more predictable in the long run?"

That thought made sense while on Owl's Wisdom. Altarrin isn't sure it came out nearly as coherent in words as it feels in his head. 

"I think we may not wish to carry out all of our plans there. But - in the short run, it has infrastructure and resources. I know how to navigate its politics," however much he dislikes it, "and you seem sufficiently prepared to learn. I predict that in the longer run, we may need more independence from the gods and from systems that They shaped, but I suppose we can wait and see." 

He waits for Carissa's response. 

"Fine with me. I don't know how to navigate its politics, and am not protected from your world's mindreading; do I stay in your rooms?"

"- Even un-Gifted people can learn to shield against Thoughtsensing," he says, almost immediately. "I am told that you actually have some degree of native shielding, albeit one that a strong and trained Thoughtsenser can work around. I think you should learn to shield, and I can explain how, though unfortunately I cannot test you on it since I lack the Gift myself. In the meantime, if you did need to leave my rooms, there are mage-talismans to block Thoughtsensing, and I suspect I can devise a story for why I have given you one." 

"Right. If it can be learned I bet I can learn it quickly, and - well, I actually don't know anything about places other than Cheliax but in Cheliax no one would think it was strange if I were confined to your rooms."

"It would not in general be considered strange here, either." Altarrin is faintly unhappy about this (and does not especially try to hide this.) "To the extent that anyone will be curious, it is because I personally have not made a habit of that with the people I have historically brought to my bedchamber." 

He sighs, slightly. 

"I am not going to be able to cover all of it now, but I think I ought at least try to explain the political dynamics and answer your questions? Exactly how this affects you is going to depend what my ostensible allies, and my enemies, have inferred about you, which I will know more about soon. But. I am curious what observations you have made so far, and what are you still confused or uncertain about?"

"Were the books real? They - mostly cohered, they mostly described a place that seemed like it could exist. I couldn't follow why there was a taboo around 'blood magic', does it involve something secretly horrible?"

"...What sort of not-real are you imagining? They - are not going to be perfectly accurate, and often their inaccuracies will be motivated, but -"

Oh, right, she's probably thinking of whatever Cheliax did to Keltham that caused him to stop believing in things being true as a concept. Altarrin manages to keep his wince purely internal. 

"- but they are not a strategic, comprehensive attempt by a specific political faction to present the version of history most advantageous to their goals. ...For what it is worth, I probably wrote some of them, though you would have to remind me which titles you were given." 

Pause. 

"There are a number of reasons why blood-magic is considered taboo. It involves killing people, and as I have noted, we do not - yet - have afterlives like your world's. It damages the flows of magic in the environment, particularly when wielded by unskilled mages. It also - shifts the incentives in a situation? In war, if using enemy soldiers for blood-magic is legal, it incentivizes killing them rather than taking prisoners. Personally, I recognize all of these costs, and still think it worthwhile to use blood-magic in controlled situations where they do not apply, but - it makes sense to me that many societies choose differently. Does that help?" 

"I guess it's - really unfortunate if there are powerful incentives for people to kill prisoners instead of taking slaves. 

- more important for me to understand, probably, is who your rivals are, what they want, what will draw the attention of the gods, what'll make the Emperor conclude you're overthrowing him -"

"...I am not really working from a usual position in this system, given how I am - overall less worried about taking risks that might get me killed, since I come back. I do have rivals, in the sense of actors or factions opposed to my current policy decisions; that is mostly going to be complicated and high-context to explain, and also my new goals are going to be very different. I think it makes more sense to - take a step back, and try to describe the overall political system. ...I will guess at what will draw the gods' attention afterward." 

Pause. 

"- I assume this was covered in the history books we gave you, but it is perhaps even more true in recent decades. The Empire runs very heavily on the fact that everybody in important positions is under multiple mage-compulsions. Under the current regime, the universal top-level compulsion that supercedes the others - at least at high enough levels in the chain of command for personally-loyal mages to be checking - is for loyalty to the Empire as a civilization, not the Emperor as a person. Inconveniently, the interpersonal-level incentives there seem to mean that whenever I am not around for long enough, it reverses, which is much worse for civil wars and such. 

"The major power bases here are the army, the nobility, the administration, and, well, the favorites of the Emperor. - There is also a mage-research department, which is currently going very well and allows some space for brilliant researchers with no talent for politics, but I do need to exert ongoing effort to maintain that, and - part of that effort is making sure that they do not try to directly carry out political goals? In terms of the nobility, there is a fairly recent institution that binds them more directly to the Emperor; all noble children are required to attend the Hall of Learning in the capital, which of course leaves many opportunities for both compulsions and - careful education. 

"Many of the political challenges happen outside the capital. Military generals need autonomy to work effectively - and the Empire does require that of them, since we are at this point in a pattern of expansion - and generals or nobles very far from the capital are at some risk of figuring out how to break their compulsions, or having loyal subordinates break them for them. And, of course, being a house-mage for a general or a noble in a remote province is safer than being in the capital, for anyone who is not ambitious in seeking power. ...If you do wish to seek power, being sent away from the capital is very dangerous, since it massively reduces your influence there and means that your enemies can scheme against you uninterrupted.

"...There is an overall dynamic here that I would expect recurs in most countries. Anyone seeking political power will be aiming to expand their power base, including by placing their loyal allies in important positions. They will often wish to display evidence that their political enemies are incompetent and treacherous and should be stripped of their positions – and they will, of course, arrange to protect themselves from their rivals doing this to them. Given our current structure as an empire, proving one's loyalty to the Emperor and earning the Emperor's trust is paramount, here." 

(Altarrin is, at this point, looking and sounding deeply irritated about everything he's saying.) 

"- There is, unsurprisingly, a massive ongoing competition to claim those mages who are visibly both powerful and skilled at fine control, and who can thus modify the compulsions on anyone working for their enemies. At higher levels in the chain of command, the Emperor has mages personally loyal to him who can verify compulsions, but I am at this point quite sure that, in most of the local duchies and baronies, vast quantities of effort are going into stealthily modifying compulsions and placing backdoors. Not even for any immediate goal! Just because it might be useful later on.

"And, of course, anyone in an important position is - incentivized to find ways to increase their own power without violating their own compulsions, even when this requires a concerning degree of skill in deliberately not-thinking about the ramifications of an order." 

Sigh. 

Does Carissa seem to have questions?