As the blood strikes the rune, a young woman appears mid-stride in the circle, stumbles, and catches herself, drawing in a sharp breath as she reaches for her dagger. She looks vaguely Chelish, in the way that could mean she is or could mean she’s from half the countries on the Inner Sea. She doesn’t look particularly wealthy; the style is more typical of rural Cheliax than urban, but regardless the coarse fabric of her clothing and the walnut and goldenrod dyes both look fairly cheap.

The most unusual thing about her appearance is the carved wooden symbol dangling from a leather cord around her neck. The center is a slightly-unbalanced circular disk, with three pointed spikes emerging from it and abstract designs painted in yellow, red and orange: the holy symbol of Calistria.

Wat.

That's a human girl, probably a bit younger than her (kinda cute) and...

Is that a Calistrian holy symbol? How did her circle end up grabbing a Calistrian?

Oh. Yeah, ok, maybe that's why.

"Hello there, do you speak Taldane?"

Her first thought, when she found herself in a room she’s never seen before rather than the streets of Westcrown, was that she’d somehow been magically kidnapped by one of the Evil nobles at the convention. (Can Teleport do that? It still feels sort of incredible that there are other delegates who can Teleport, but she sure seems to be somewhere else.) She’s reaching reflexively for her dagger when the woman speaks, but—

—if this is some kind of Asmodean noble magic kidnapping, that question doesn’t make sense. Anyone at the convention would know she speaks Chelish Taldane, and they wouldn’t need to pretend not to, they could just kill her or ensorcell her or whatever else they were planning. She still doesn’t relax her grip, but she doesn’t try to go after the stranger either.

“I speak the Chelish kind, yeah,” she says. Her accent mostly sounds like she’s from somewhere rural in the Heartlands, but there’s something a little funny about it. “…I, uh, didn’t mean to break into your flat, or wherever this is, I just wound up here somehow.”

"Well, you didn't intend to but you're certainly here in my power right now." She takes a step toward the newcomer, with an intense, calculating look in her eyes.

"Nah, just messing with you." She briefly ulls out her Lady's unholy symbol. "Still no clue how you ended up here, but with regards to the how-" she points at the circle at their feet "- it's probably my creativity with the ritual."

—Even if that first part was a joke, she’s definitely not going to let her guard down after that! Especially since she’s admitting to magical kidnapping — maybe by accident, it sounds like it was some kind of accident, but still.

She looks at the necklace for a moment, since the woman clearly intends for it to be meaningful somehow. It looks like… some kind of crown, maybe, or an overgrown field? No one at the convention was wearing anything like it, as far as she saw, and it doesn’t really seem familiar.

“…Well, I’m supposed to be in Westcrown for the Constitutional Convention right now, so it’d be great if you could send me back there.”

"I have no clue what you're talking about, to be honest. I don't have any magic that could trasport you there, even if I wanted to. And to be honest I don't think I'd suggest going to Westcrown if I were you."

She grabs a chair, moves it about halfway between them, then takes a few steps back and sits on an ottoman next to the wall.

"Why not?"

"You're a Calistrian. Do you not know what they do to clerics of Chaotic gods?"

"There's plenty of us at the Convention, I'm on a committee with a Caydenite. —I’m not stupid, I did know the whole thing might be a trap, I just thought it was worth the risk anyway. But so far it hasn’t even been a trap, I’ve sure got some issues with the new government but they’re not torturing people to death for being Calistrian priestesses.”

"The new government? Did something happen to the queen?"

“…uh, that depends, nothing’s happened to the new queen that I know of but Abrogail Thrune got overthrown by some adventurers, like, more than a year ago.”

"Really? I find it hard to believe. As far as I know the Crown appointed Paraduke is still very much in charge of the town. Or well, he tries to be. We're not particularly keen on being governed by fucking diabolists."

“Yeah, the new Queen didn’t actually bother to get rid of all the Evil Asmodean nobles. Or even kill all the Asmodean priests.” She’s a Queen, it’s not like it matters to her how many innocent people they killed or tortured in the name of Asmodeus as long as they’re not causing her problems. “But so far as I know, she’s not an Asmodean, and she did get rid of a bunch of the Evil laws.”

Probability that this is a trap. Well, if it is she has already shown her hand by displaying Her symbol, even tho the girl didn't seem to recognize it. That was a mistake, in hindsight. Disguising yourself as a (cute) young girl wouldn't even be a particularly complicated ploy.

"I still find it hard to believe you but I don't see a reason you'd lie to me. Are you hungry?"

She nods. "I was on my way to eat supper when I wound up here."

"If you're not an Evil outsider the circle won't actually bind you, feel free to follow me."

She leads the way to the kitchen.

“I’m Chaotic Good. And not an outsider.” She steps out of the circle.

Well, that excludes some of the worst alternatives.

"Sofia?"

"Yes miss?"

"We have a guest, set the table for three."

Ooooh, a human guest, they haven't had one in a while.

She discreetly puts the toys away, then continues cleaning the nettles.

Oh, she has servants, or at least one servant. In hindsight it was stupid to be thinking of her as basically just a regular person like Victòria when she’s clearly some kind of powerful wizard or sorcerer or something. And for some reason she’s having her servant cook nettles, which — well, her lord certainly wouldn’t have eaten them, but maybe in the city people don’t think of them as the kind of food people eat so they don’t starve. (Or she could be the sort of person who thinks it’s funny to have her servants do painful things, except if that’s what she’s going for there are definitely more painful options.)

“How long have you been working here?” she asks Sofia. It’s not the question she actually wants to know the answer to, but it’s not like she’s going to get an honest answer to ‘so, how do you feel about your boss?’

"A couple years now. Been doing it full time since the day it became apparent our parents weren't coming back."