He takes a deep breath. It would be really nice, honestly, if he could have someone do the paladin fearlessness effect for this. Frustrating how even in a dream, it's nervewracking. 

"What I am about to say will sound implausible. I cannot prove it here, but I can at least - offer suggestions for what you can check later."

A pause.

"I am immortal. It is - somewhat complicated - this body is not immortal, and over the centuries I have had many names. But I am about seven hundred years old. I was born before the Cataclysm, and - my first name, the one I was given at birth, was Ma'ar." 

He makes himself meet Bastran's eyes, even though it really isn't making this easier to speak about. 

"A century after that, I went by Arvad. I - it was my fault, as much as anyone's, that civilization as we knew it before the Cataclysm was destroyed. I was the only survivor who - remembered the magic from before. It was very important to me, to rebuild something, and - that is what I have been trying ever since." 

Bastran's mind is still bouncing away from it. It's too big, too much, it doesn't fit in his conception of how anything works. 

"If you were really Ma'ar, and then you were Arvad and wrote half our histories on that period, surely you could've painted yourself in a better light," he says dubiously, because that's the first thing his mind manages to actually grab onto. 

Altarrin's eyelids flicker downward. "It would hardly have accomplished any of my goals at that point," he says quietly. "It was - too late to matter how people remembered him." 

...And he didn't want to push for it - it's obvious, a flash of insight, of recognition - he didn't want to shape that story, because he couldn't look back on that first life with pride - because he regretted everything, because whatever his intentions, Ma'ar's life was one he thought no one ought to emulate. It's...the frame Bastran can see himself having on it, if he were in that position, and it's - strange, and uncomfortable, recognizing that pattern in Altarrin - his mentor, the man who has always known everything and been in control and wow that really does make a lot more sense, now, knowing that he's centuries old - 

- Altarrin is supposed to be stronger than him, Altarrin isn't supposed to be - sad and lonely and tired and bitter, or weighed down by his own regrets and failures, it feels incorrect to see him like this... 

I'm sorry, he wants to say, but what good would that do. 

Altarrin can recognize that look in Bastran's eyes. It...does, actually, mean something to him. 

"Anyway. That is my history. And - I cannot regret that I tried, I will never regret having tried, but the Empire is not what I had wanted to build. We have wealth, and Gates, and books and schools and mage-artifact factories, but - at what cost - its people, our people, are not free, and we cause so much suffering every year - I know how you would have felt about Oris -" 

Actually the way he feels about Oris is 'can they please not talk about that right now.' 

Focus. Altarrin just said a lot of things and Bastran heard all the words and yet somehow feels like he...missed the point, or something - why is Altarrin bringing this up, where is he going with it...? 

"You said you could - give me evidence this is true?" he says, because that at least he can latch onto. 

He can. Not hard proof - anything Bastran can verify via an independent source is something that Altarrin could theoretically have learned himself from the same source, in order to fake this - but, at least, things that would be more likely observations in a world where Altarrin is really immortal, than in a world where he's faking it or insane. It shouldn't be that hard to give enough points of evidence against the insanity hypothesis, insane people are not known for their coherence or excellent memories of obscure books and events. 

He can even give a few examples of things that no one in the Empire should have a way to know even from books, because he wrote them down only in his personal records and happens to have retained them from his rereading. He doesn't normally prioritize relearning random trivia, but he can mention a basement library that was under a building which collapsed while the Imperial army was putting down a rebellion in an obscure city in Lastun two hundred years ago, and a handful of other things like that. The dream doesn't seem to let them do real magic, or else he would consider teaching Bastran some spells that no one but him knows. 

Those are indeed a lot of pieces that, while individually explicable, in aggregate definitely start to seem a lot more likely given the premise that Altarrin is a true immortal. 

...Bastran is not actually starting from a position of maximum skepticism, here. He knows Altarrin as well as anyone does - Altarrin is...hard to know - but of course Altarrin would make himself immortal, if he could. A human lifetime isn't long enough to accomplish everything that matters to him, and unlike Bastran, who is a coward he isn't the sort of person who would ever willingly declare that his part of the work was done and it was time for the next generation to take up that mantle. He's someone who would carry on the fight alone, for centuries if he had to, never giving up and never walking away... 

He'll ask a few clarifying questions, but he's noticeably kind of distracted, this time by an entirely new flavor of waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is just the background Altarrin wanted to give him, before trying to explain what the bigger and worse thing is. Whatever the actual thing is, he's pretty sure that he isn't going to like it. 

Yeah. That's not unreasonable. Bastran isn't going to like it. 

Altarrin doesn't like it either. He's trying not to let himself get away with stalling - he's watching the clock, they're on a time limit here - but. It keeps feeling like surely there must be some possible world where this would be a joyous conversation. Where Aroden's existence would be uncomplicatedly good news to both of them, an unexpected ally, resources they had never expected to have, a whole other world of people they can help save...

They've used half their time, now, which was the hard cutoff point he gave himself. He...still feels a bit like he's been talking around the important part, though, it's - he's not even sure why his mind wants to flinch away. 

- because he doesn't want to talk about Urtho's Tower, or Predain, because even now it still hurts. 

"There is - one further piece I should say, first, about my own history," he says quietly. "Before I turn to recent events. I– before I was a student at Urtho's Tower, I had grown up in a country that was very poor, in a region that was poorer and less civilized than most. It was - the first time I had ever even encountered the concept of Civilization - I think I had always known that things should be better than endlessly fighting your neighbors over your next meal, but it was the first time I had seen what that might look like. I remember– I remember very little, honestly, I lose memories between bodies. But this one has always stayed with me. I remember standing on a high floor of his Tower, looking at the stars, and - at all the other lights, the ones on the ground - and thinking, everywhere should be like this - and I made a promise. To myself, to the stars. That I would never give up, not until everything was fixed and everyone could - have that.

"...That is a significant part of why I took the immortality precautions I did, including the one that survived the Cataclysm, which - is awful in many ways. I mean, I also very much did not want to die, ever, but - I would have evaluated it differently, if it had looked as though anyone else would - actually do that work, to fix everything." 

Bastran doesn't know what to say. It's clearly a very heartfelt speech, about something deeply important to Altarrin, and - he's also perceptive enough to notice that whatever he said about how okay he is now, Altarrin is - in some kind of emotional distress, as he says it. 

He is still mostly filled with a deep sense of doom about whatever Altarrin is about to say next. 

He nods along. 

Altarrin is still deeply wishing this could be a different conversation. It's not just the starting points, the fact that Bastran is absolutely not going to hear any of this as good news, it's - 

- the fact that they're on a deadline, and that after this he's going to have to warn Bastran that he's helping Alfirin kidnap their best hope of gaining an equal footing with Iomedae by learning how to travel between worlds. And then he's going to leave, with Alfirin, taking Aritha with them, and Bastran will still be here, trapped by duty and loyalty that Altarrin trained into him because he thought it was necessary to accomplish his goals, and also literal compulsions, that won't let him change his mind about whether those goals are ones he shares, or whether the Empire is accomplishing them at all. That's the part that hurts. Though thinking about Urtho again, and mistakes that can never be taken back no matter how many new allies or new resources he finds in Iomedae's world, isn't exactly delightful either. 

"Did you read Aroden's holy books?" he hears himself say. "Or my notes on them?" 

Oh no. It's the part he's going to hate, isn't it. Even moreso now that it's occurred to him that he's going to have to recount this to Kastil once he wakes up. And Kastil will probably have among his hypotheses that Bastran is cracking under the strain. 

"Some of the notes were summarized for me," he says, his voice very controlled. 

Which means 'rewritten by the Office of Inquiry', probably, and who knows what they might have distorted, accidentally or deliberately. ...Also Altarrin's notes were not actually his best work, not by far, he could barely think at the time. 

"Well. Nearly everything I have learned about the teachings of Aroden's church has - sounded like it might have been written to convince me in particular," he says. "Much of it is - what I might have written, were I far older and wiser and a better writer." 

If Altarrin isn't wise enough or a good enough writer to keep up with Aroden's church then what does that make Bastran It probably makes him pathetic to be worrying about how a foreign god's church would see him, and Bastran's brain can shut up actually. 

"Go on?" 

He'll give a summary. 

He's not especially trying to hide that he has emotions about this. Especially at, there are many, many things that will never be all right, but eventually the ashes drift back to the ground, and the sun rises, and we build anew.

Altarrin is visibly emotional and this is kind of disturbing! Bastran might also have feelings. He's not sure. If he let himself have them, then they would both be having emotions, and probably Altarrin would notice and have emotions about Bastran's emotions, which would be humiliating, and then who would be driving this metaphorical carriage. 

"- And?" he says, because Altarrin was pretty clearly trying to hurry them along, earlier, but he's also pretty clearly distracted now. 

"...I mean. It is - pointing at what I had been trying to do all along. What I had wanted to build, and not known how. I was obviously suspicious, it seemed too convenient to be true, but - if it were true then it would be one of the most important things imaginable, right, and - in Iomedae's world, when they reacted to my Gating there, I did not see anything obviously in conflict with it–" 

- he lifts a hand. "Stop. Er, what - are you claiming actually happened, when you Gated there? You didn't really say, in your letter." 

Shrug.

"I immediately collapsed, the Gate-technique is exhausting and I had already pushed myself with multiple attempts at scrying, after I had Gated to - one of my secret locations where I keep records of past lives. I think she must have ordered someone onsite to hit me over the head, I remember - pain and then nothing - and then waking not in control of my body.

"They had cut my loyalty compulsions. Iomedae was there, with Alfirin, who had placed some very obvious mind-control of her own that forced me to - cooperate. I think their initial assumption was that Tar-Baphon had learned of the Empire and we were either at war with him or already conquered by him, the first questions were just about that. After a time Alfirin relaxed the compulsion effect and we - had more of a normal conversation." 

And then they offered him the emotion-calming spell, because it was obvious he wasn't coping, and it - helped, sort of, and - he doesn't want to talk about that, actually. 

"- I also had diamonds to give them. If you heard from the paladin delegates about how Iomedae captured the enemy city in her world with multiple miracles and incredibly low casualties, that is how. They need large diamonds in order to call for miracles from their gods, for some reason." 

It's probably obvious from his expression what he's thinking. Bastran doesn't really try to hide it. It's not like Altarrin couldn't guess, unless, you know, he's literally mind-controlled not to be able to think about it, in which case he presumably won't update on the facial expressions either. 

"I did hear about that," he says, very neutrally. 

Altarrin can read Bastran perfectly well. He's not surprised.

He had on some level vaguely hoped it wouldn't come up, maybe, but - he wasn't going to lie, or even steer away from it, he's– maybe this isn't and can't go the way he wishes this conversation could have gone, under better circumstances than these, but even so, it won't help to step even further away from the conversation he wishes they could be having instead of this one. 

...He really should be honest that Alfirin still has the mind control up on him, even though this is inevitably going to give Bastran the wrong idea of what's happening here, because the reasons why he's comfortable with this and genuinely doesn't expect it to be abused are ones that might be literally impossible to convey accurately. He - settles on not bringing that up, Bastran is going to make the assumption anyway. And they really are on a deadline, here. 

"Anyway. At some later point, in Iomedae's world, I read one of the other holy books of Aroden's church. The one that tells the history of his life, as a human wizard." 

And he can give the summary of it, as he remembers reading it:

Aroden, as his histories tell it, was born before Earthfall in Azlant which only Axis, in these days, has perhaps surpassed, and He had become notable even before the Cataclysm as an extraordinary mage, brilliant and powerful, and then the alghollthu grew afraid of the human civilization on the surface, grew jealous, and they went to war, and they were, to their astonishment, losing. And they called in a great power from beyond the world, to destroy the humans, but they miscalculated, and very nearly destroyed the world.

 

Aroden survived, Aroden rebuilt civilization - not on Azlant's continent, which is just gone, a few isolated islands poking up above the sea, but on the alternate continent, devastated only by the indirect effects of the catastrophe (still sufficient to nearly extinguish humanity).

Aroden founded Taldor and worked to prevent the magical knowledge of ancient Azlantl from being forgotten forever, and he led an army into the Abyss and fought a demon lord, and he became a master of magic unparalleled in his world. And He travelled other worlds, looking for something, though He never told anyone what, and had spectacular adventures there, some recounted and some totally unknown.

And then, after hundreds of years of work, he dragged the Starstone out of the sea. It was a remnant of the moon that hit Golarion during Earthfall. It's said that it contained the essence of two gods, the ones killed when Earthfall happened.

 

Aroden set a series of elaborate precautions around it, and then ascended, and became a god. It is said He will return to usher in the Age of Glory.

....Bastran feels like there's some kind of obvious inference that Altarrin is sitting there expecting him to have made already, and he - hasn't, apparently. Probably because he's distracted, for multiple reasons, including but not limited to 'Altarrin is mind-controlled by Iomedae's ally-if-not-subordinate and so nothing he says here means anything' and also...the corollary, that Altarrin presumably expected this as a plausible outcome, and so whether or not he was mind-controlled directly by Iomedae before he Gated out...

"- Hmm?" he manages.