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carissa, somewhere else
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Altarrin listens intently, his eyes fixed on her. He's impressively fast at taking notes, clearly doing it in some kind of shorthand. 

From his expression, he is not at all assuming that she's insane. 

"I need a moment to think," he says when she's finished, and goes silent for a while. 

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- and then fixes his eyes on her, even more sharply. 

"So Keltham is from a world that is far more technologically advanced than yours?" he says finally. "You did not specify this, but I will venture a guess that his world does not have gods." 

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"He didn't think they had any, my lord. They knew none of the history of their world, they had vacated their old cities and destroyed all their histories, and one obvious guess is that they did have gods, and wanted to stamp out worship of them."

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Altarrin had been about to ask about Keltham's theory that dying means you should expect to suddenly appear somewhere else - it's clear from her thoughts, still being relayed by Ellitrea, that this is somehow based on a school of reasoning that Keltham had learned in his world, one she expects most people of her world to find insane. But now he has more urgent confusions.

"They destroyed all records of their history? And - in that context I would imagine they left their old cities in order to avoid information leakage from things like the design of old buildings. Your theory is that they did this to stamp out worship of gods, but - my first question would be, why did the gods allow that to happen? It would not seem to be in Their interest. ...Also, I am curious what Keltham's guesses were for why. It is certainly an extreme measure - even for a more advanced and thus wealthier civilization, the cost would be huge, and it would close off many future options - unless they retained a class of elites who were allowed to know their past..." 

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"They did retain that, yes. The Keepers ruled both before and after the transition; the Keepers are those who learn special techniques and secrets, possibly including magic which Keltham didn't know about.

I don't know why their gods would've permitted it, if They did, but maybe it served some god fine, to have most people ignorant of Them. Or maybe their gods all died, or they never had any, I'm not sure. The Keepers were hiding something, and I think it was related to gods."

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"The Keepers. Interesting."

Altarrin wants to press her further, keep digging into the question of what Keltham's homeworld went to such lengths to hide and why - and if it was gods, his question becomes how. Because if he could destroy all knowledge of Velgarth's history, in exchange for a future free of the meddling of gods, where advanced technology can develop unhindered - 

- well, it's not true he would do it in a heartbeat, because that's the scale of decision you want to spend fifty years thinking through if at all possible, but he would be motivated to try very hard to find a way of doing it at an acceptable cost. 

It's probably not the highest priority right now, though, especially since Carissa's knowledge of it is all secondhand - or thirdhand, even, it sounds like maybe Keltham had only guesses at the motives of his world's 'Keepers'...

"So you had just settled on a new plan," he says instead. "Which it seems involved erasing your memory. How much do you still recall of what your plan entailed, and in particular, which other gods' interests it might have served?" 

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"...all of them? I was trying to prevent Keltham destroying the world."

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Her unspoken thoughts, relayed by Ellitrea, might have hinted at that, but Altarrin is pretty sure he didn't get all of her reasoning. 

"I think you need to explain in more depth why you believe Keltham would feel that destroying the world is a reasonable solution to any of your world's problems." 

His voice is still level, mostly, but in the last bit, it's kind of obvious from his voice that he cares strongly about this. 

(She thinks it's impossible for her to contact Keltham now. Which it might be; Altarrin knows far too little to hazard a guess at whether he could find his way back to her world with something as mundane as a Gate, or even in principle.) 

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(...She thinks that the world she's in now is worse than the one she left behind, where a god of tyranny ruled her country - where her entire mind is clearly shaped around knowing that she needs to obey, and believe the right orthodoxy even in her thoughts, or else be destroyed...) 

 

He wishes he could say she was wrong

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" - dath ilan believes - that you should, clean up, unusually bad corners, of the multiverse, places where powers opposed to humans dominate, places where people suffer - people do suffer in Hell, pointlessly, but you shouldn't destroy the world about it, not when you could just fix it, not even if you couldn't, it's just - so important that people exist -"

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Well. That's certainly - a very upsetting state for the world to be in, if it's true, if the woman's inferences about a world she never saw directly are right.

If she's right, then the last thing Altarrin should do is try to find Keltham's homeworld, no matter how much their technology could help. Because it's not exactly a stretch to guess that Velgarth, too, would be one of the corners of the multiverse they would want to erase. 

"Is this related to Keltham's belief that - people cannot be truly destroyed because they will wake up elsewhere?" he says, and his voice is flat and utterly empty of emotion. "Does he believe that the outcome here would be– would be squeezing everyone toward those worlds that he considers acceptable...?" 

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"Yes. But - but I think that there's still - almost everything that matters lost when someone stops existing, even if, in some place far away, there's something that remembers being them - I was going to repay Keltham all he did for me, and then try to convince him. He's very young, and what we did to him was awful, I'm not mad at him, I just wanted to change his mind."

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Altarrin wants to tell her that he understands, that he respects and admires that goal, that he'll offer her whatever he can to help her save her world. That he agrees - or, well, he's not sure if he agrees in all cases even in principle, there are hypothetical worlds where he might, reluctantly and with horror, make the call that they were impossible to fix and given that their existence was worse than nonexistence, but - in general, he doesn't expect to draw that conclusion for a world where the people living in it desperately want to keep existing. He supposes he only has hard data on one of the people of Golarion, right now, but - that's still enough to set an overall prior. 

And he's known places here that were worse than the Eastern Empire, probably worse than Cheliax, in terms of day to day grinding suffering. The people scraping through their tenuous lives one day at a time in the aftermath of the Cataclysm, who saw their children starve and their villages burn at the hands of roaming bandits, still preferred to exist – and proved it, in their desperate moment-by-moment struggle to build a life even as their foundations crumbled under them. 

(Her world has an afterlife, she mentioned it, and that changes things, but he's not sure it changes the relevant things for that.) 

 

 

If he tries to say any of that, right now, she isn't going to believe him. She's from a place where trust wasn't rewarded; he needs to give her strong, convincing signs of goodwill, to earn her trust, and so far all he's given her is the opposite. 

He takes a deep breath, and - lets some of the bleakness he's feeling slip through. 

"I wish I could give you my word that I will help you save your world. I do not expect you to believe me, so giving my word would be meaningless, and it may not be possible even in principle - I know too little to judge. I wish I could at least commit to offering you safety here, but -" a bitter twitch of his lips, "- but I am certain this is one of the corners of the multiverse that Keltham would think better destroyed, and while I am powerful here and will offer you what protection I can, I am not sure it will be enough. We are operating under the constraint that, as far as I can tell, all of the gods local to this world are opposed to the interests of humanity and technological progress, which is why I was so badly alarmed by your thoughts of attracting a god's attention in order to improve your own situation. It seems likely now that that worry does not apply." 

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Ellitrea is VERY SURPRISED by how much Altarrin is saying, and doesn't entirely manage to hide it, but she does keep her Thoughtsensing open and fixed on the woman's mind. 

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"I ...appreciate that, my lord, but on Keltham's theory of what happened there's no reason to think I'm not still in my world, doing my plan, which I was pretty confident would work, though I was smarter when I came up with it and can't reproduce it all right now. I'm probably still there, rather than having been removed from there, and we probably can't go back, because there's no reason to think my being here would happen at at all the same time as my being there...or I could be completely wrong about all of this, I'm not Keltham and Keltham wasn't a Keeper and the Keepers might've been lying. 

 

I guess we should at least check. I don't have a tuning fork for the Material and I'm not sure that'd get you to Golarion anyway....I also don't have a tuning fork for Axis but I know how to get to Golarion from there?"

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The thought of a form of magic - if it's even that - that creates copies of people, is even weirder than one that supposedly shunts a person's memories and experience to another world, if they're permanently destroyed in one. 

Altarrin sighs, slightly. "This theory of different worlds actually makes more sense of a number of confusing observations. One of which is that our magic appears to operate rather differently. I am not sure if we can replicate your intelligence-enhancing artifact or your language translation spell at all, using Velgarth mage-techniques; I am more hopeful that it would be possible to travel between worlds using our magic, since we know it is possible to travel instantly between distant places, and also one could theoretically open a Gate to any of the other planes although it would not be a wise idea. However, I do not recognize what you mean by a 'tuning fork', and I am also not sure what - or where - Axis is? Is that one of the additional planes of your world?"  

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"It's the Lawful Neutral afterlife. It's the safest one to aim for, if we're trying to travel to a Golarion world. Hell will want to know if you're aligned with Hell and Heaven if you're aligned with Heaven but Axis doesn't really care as long as you aren't breaking their rules.....I probably have inaccurate information about the afterlives, most gods and their churches were forbidden in Cheliax."

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Altarrin nods. "Actually, can you explain your world's afterlives in general? I do not think we have them, here - certainly nothing so systematic. Were they built by the gods, or are they naturally-occurring other planes that were repurposed? Are the gods involved in causing people to end up there when they die? Why are there so many of them?" 

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"Pharasma, who created the universe, made the nine Outer Planes, which vary from Good to Evil, and from Law to Chaos. There are gods of each of the nine planes. Mortals, when they die, are judged and go to the plane that matches their actions in life. I'm Lawful Evil. Most people are, in Cheliax. Most people would be, in most places, except they're scared of Hell so they try to do enough Good to stay out of it. Law is - uh, most people you ask in Golarion would say it's obeying rules and respecting authority. I think dath ilan would say it's coordination and being the kind of entity that can make, and that does keep, promises. This is a Lawful Evil country, I am pretty sure. 

Hell is Asmodeus's. It's the Lawful Evil afterlife and it's not as bad as people say but there is a lot more torture than I think is actually useful, because it wouldn't be a tyranny if there were any restrictions on how you could treat those under you. 

Axis is a collection of lots of cities. They have different rules but you can go to whichever you want, which is - sort of how Lawful Neutral is, I think, voluntary coordination, people acting in their own interests in a way that doesn't step on anyone else. Keltham was Lawful Neutral before he decided to destroy the world. 

Heaven is Lawful Good. Everything I know about them is definitely propaganda. 

Abaddon is Neutral Evil and eats the souls that go there and I hate it." And am planning to invade it once I rule Hell.

"The Boneyard is Neutral and it's mostly full of kids, Pharasma doesn't want people to be Neutral, She tries to send them somewhere else."

"Nirvana's Neutral Good and I don't know much about them either."

"The Abyss is full of demons and it's horrible because it's full of demons."

"The Maelstrom is pure Chaos and eventually if you turn into a chaos beast there you become impossible to interact with and can't have effects on the world."

"And Elysium is Chaotic Good. I dunno much about them either. They were intervening a lot in the Keltham situation, for some reason, I think trying to help me convince Keltham not to destroy the world."

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And Ellitrea can confirm that all of this is, at the very least, something the woman honestly believes. And add a few details that she didn't speak out loud. 

Altarrin is still confused. 

He's confused about her world and its gods. That's such a specific system - so much infrastructure, apparently maintained by the gods - and such an oddly tidy method of categorization, which he doesn't entirely follow because the woman mostly isn't explaining it and Ellitrea can only pick up a little extra from her thoughts. But if his inferences and guesses are right – and if the woman's knowledge is true, rather than propaganda or even just human misunderstandings of entities far too alien to classify with words – then some of the gods are...friendly to human interests. 

He's confused about dath ilan, and Keltham. There's a picture starting to form, but the pieces don't yet fit together. A world with an advanced civilization, that publicly acknowledges no gods and perhaps never had them at all. A world that destroyed all of the records of its own past. That thinks it best to destroy entire worlds if they're not above a certain bar for human flourishing - and it feels like that could be related to the previous point, that somehow there's a coherent worldview and decision process that produces both of those, but he doesn't see it yet. It's a world that believes in, or at least speaks positively of to its young people, coordination and people acting in their own interests as long as it doesn't harm anyone else - systems that emerge from this and build beautiful things, though that's more half-glimpsed from her relayed thoughts than explicit in her worlds -

Dath ilan believes being the kind of entity that can make and keep promises... For that, if it's true, Altarrin can admire them. He doesn't see yet how it fits with the rest. 

 

 

....And maybe most fundamentally, he's confused about the woman sitting in front of him right now. Speaking clearly, not letting her fear control her, even though he knows that she's afraid. A woman who immediately responded to being a helpless prisoner by promising obedience - until Keltham arrived I had no history of being heretical or difficult to control, and I am no longer under those unusual circumstances and will not be rebellious or difficult again, she said - 

- and in her thoughts, never quite spoken out loud but definitely hinted at, she had planned to defeat a god. The god who she used to worship and serve. Because she thinks that Asmodeus is running his afterlife badly. 

 

 

Most people aren't like that. Most people could never be like that even given the best circumstances, and it's clear that this woman was given among the worst circumstances for it. So much of her is still - boxed in, visibly-to-Thoughtsensing constrained by the invisible walls of a society caught up in tyranny and lies.

(Altarrin knows what that looks like. He understands it. Lately he sometimes finds himself wishing he didn't, even though of course it's better to see the world as it is.) 

He doesn't feel like she can possibly be real. 

(If she isn't, if she's instead a lovingly shaped, carefully-planted spy pointed at garnering his sympathy and admiration so that he lets down his guard– ....probably not worth chasing down that line of thought, he doesn't see how it could work and if it's somehow the case anyway then he's not sure what he could do about it.) 

He's so tired. This is clearly an urgent problem, and it's also the most interesting thing that's happened in the last 500 years, but he's already taken more time away from his usual duties than he can really afford. And he still doesn't know what to do

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Focus. 

"Thank you," he says calmly. "Your system sounds - better than the one in our world, in many ways, and certainly far more legible and organized."

He lets himself sigh visibly, again. 

"- I am not ready to declare that your world cannot be reached, though - I expect if it is possible, it will be very difficult, and this is not a good time for an intensive research project. So, on the premise that you are permanently out of contact, and the world you left behind - with the version of you still present there - will have to sink or swim on its own. If you are going to be here for the rest of your existence, what would your plans be? Or, what questions do you need answered, before you could figure that out?" 

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What is he playing at. 

"I would ask who I serve, my lord, and what he'd have of me."

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....That's fair. 

"This world is called Velgarth. You are currently in the region that calls itself the Eastern Empire. In the Emperor's Palace, in fact. I am Archmage General Altarrin; I report directly to the Emperor. It was in my office that you suddenly appeared." 

He frowns slightly. "The Empire has a strong rule of law, and I think that once you know more about the local conditions and expectations, you will probably find it a straightforward enough place. We do generally manage to avoid torture when it is not useful. You - will definitely need to know more about our world before we could trust you with anything important, but I am confident you can pick that up quickly, and that when you have that context, you will not desire outcomes that would damage the Empire any more than I do." 

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In the Emperor's palace. She is not actually coming up with an anthropic explanation for that.

 

It's not where she'd have chosen to go, if she'd landed literally anywhere else. Ask around for which nobles have a reputation for an even temper, for not destroying their subordinates too readily, pick someone quiet well away from the Emperor who'd keep their advantage to themself. She is not, in fact, competent to keep herself alive in an emperor's palace. She'd have been shredded in Egorian if Abrogail hadn't wanted her intact, and 'Emperor' in fact implies more power, a larger pool of people drawn from for dangerous games, higher stakes for them to play for, more levels of governance -

 


She's not sure what he's trying to say, exactly, by 'you will not desire outcomes that would damage the Empire any more than I do.' Just that there'll be loyalty tests he expects her to pass? Something about her loyalty being to him not the Emperor, or the other way around?
 

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"You said that magic items of the kind I know how to make would be difficult to make with your magic. If it is your will, my lord, I would make those, for you in your service of the Emperor," and thereby be worth protecting from whoever else might be interested. 

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