Eh, close enough.

:Which god?: she asks. Really she would have expected him to say. Not that the name will necessarily be informative, even if it's a god known to Golarion at all. It feels kind of like a Sarenrae intervention except that being a paladin of Sarenrae isn't horse-mediated at home.

...You know what that's probably a very reasonable question for someone who isn't from around here to ask! Ketran is abruptly faintly embarrassed that he never thought about that. 

:Well, the first King Valdemar prayed to the names of all the gods he knew of for a miracle to protect the future of the kingdom, and - the Companions appeared? So, er, maybe one of them or maybe all of them: ...Does he remember from the story WHAT the names of all the gods were: nnnnooooooot exactly but he can kind of guess? :He would've prayed to Vkandis and the Star-Eyed and Anathei and probably Astera and Kernos, and maybe others...: 

:...I would never pray to all the gods whose names I knew, because, in fact, some of those are Evil. I assume you meant only the Good ones?: Maybe they just don't have the Evil gods here somehow? Good for them, although, if they're not aware of the distinction at all it seems more likely that, rather, they "don't" "have" "Evil" "gods".

:Anyway, I don't recognize any of those names. Do you know much about any of them? Some of them might be gods we know by different names, and even if not, it seems—relevant.: It's really uncharacteristic, by Golarion standards, and also not reassuring at all, for such a blatant and ongoing divine intervention to exist and no one involved to know what god did it.

('Good' and 'Evil', in Arazni's thoughts, come across as crisp, concrete concepts—objective features of the world rather than a matter of moral opinion.)

:.....We don't have evil gods here.: 

There's a slightly odd note of - dismissiveness, almost, definitely a lack of curiosity - in the Mindspeech overtones.

:Er. The Star-Eyed Goddess has people in the Pelagirs, called the Tayledras, and they have a sacred mission to cleanse the land that was warped by the Cataclysm. Astera is goddess of stars and - libraries, I guess, or at least the holy orders I know of are all libraries. Kernos is the god of righteous warriors. Anathei is also called 'of the Purifying Flame' and I heard a story about a priestess who could do miraculous Healing even though she wasn't Gifted? Vkandis is associated with the sun and fire - they call Him the Sunlord - and people worship Him in Karse and Iftel. ...If you want to know more things than that you should maybe talk to someone religious. I guess.: Ketran is faintly confused about why it's so relevant and it comes across in his Mindspeech.  

Uh huh.

(It's not that she trusts Pharasma's judgement absolutely. The only person in Golarion actually trying to save it reads Evil as a result. But she also knows that most people who read Evil aren't Aroden, and people who read Good might be useless but are at least reliable not to hurt you. Detectable alignment isn't perfect, but—in places that have it, which apparently don't include this one—it's still a major inconvenience to the evil gods that Someone, at least, wanted this outsider to be very sure don't exist.)

:None of those obviously sound like gods I know,: she says. :You didn't say, but—were you meant to Choose me to be a Herald?: She's not entirely disinterested, if the institution is actually what it claims to be and is less useless than the paladins of Sarenrae at home, it's just that she does kind of need to get home.

Oh no he can't tell if she's happy about it. What if she doesn't want to be Chosen?????? That isn't supposed to happen but - he's heard stories...

:- Yes, I - we get a Call, like Foresight but not a vision, just a feeling. I had a call to Choose you, but - you understand what it is, to decide...: He trails off. Shakes his head, again, in an almost humanlike way. :You must have so many questions.: 

It's possible the Herald-choosing mechanism operates according to fixed parameters and doesn't know she's from another planet. Even if it does, if a relatively larger part of a god's attention is watching this situation in Foresight and decided to Choose her anyway, she doesn't know anything about this world's gods. Nonetheless it's—information. A divine intervention suggests there's something to see, even if the goal of the intervention is completely unknown.

:I think I would be honored to be chosen, if I were from Valdemar,: she says. :As it is I'd—like to learn more. I really ought to get home, my world needs me more than this one, but—maybe I can't, and—:

She sends him a memory over the telepathic bond:

"And maybe," Aroden is saying, addressing a small crowd beneath an illusory dome of stars, "one day, some archmage on a far-off world will find the secret to traveling between the stars, and they'll find us. You can't pray to them, you cannot beg for their help; they are even farther away than the gods, and they cannot hear you. But what you can do is be the sort of person who would help them, if your places were reversed; and they, in turn, will be a little likelier to be the sort of person who would help you."

:What's your name, by the way?: she asks, realizing she doesn't know it. :I'm Arazni.:

:Ketran.: He's gone very still. :I - am honored to meet you, Arazni.

- who was that? In your memory?: Someone important to her, he can gather than much. Important to a lot more people than just her, he suspects. 

:I'm honored likewise.:

:That was Aroden, he's—one of the most powerful wizards in the world, he survived Earthfall: she suspects the truth is more complicated than that but people aren't supposed to know that :and he's one of the only people who remembers the magic and other things people knew in Azlant, before it was destroyed by Earthfall. I was—am—one of his students.:

(The mental connotations of 'Earthfall' suggest a disaster at least as great as Velgarth's Cataclysm, if of a somewhat different nature—implicit in her thoughts is the fact that the sky has been obscured by ash and dust for her entire life, and life on her planet is—accordingly difficult.)

Oh, gods. No wonder the poor girl is desperate to get back home. 

(It occurs to Ketran a moment later that many people would be relieved to be far away from somewhere where life was that difficult. It would be understandable, normal, he wouldn't judge someone for it - especially not a child - but he's also not at all surprised that Arazni doesn't see it that way. He was called to Choose her, and he knows what kind of person Heralds tend to be.) 

:- I'm so sorry: he sends. :That - sounds awful - and of course you should go back, if it's possible. I - would do my best to help.: Even though AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH and also he's feeling abruptly very possessive and protective about HIS CHOSEN going back to somewhere incredibly dangerous, despite the fact that Arazni is not strictly speaking his Chosen yet. 

:I don't know how: he admits. :Or if it's possible to do that with magic. But you got here somehow, so - if we get back to Haven, that's the capital, maybe Herald-Mage Savil will know a way?: 

:Yeah. Let's get out of this forest and go to Haven. Do you mind if I ride you?: He has a saddle but it seems polite not to assume. She's never ridden a horse who was a person before. It's a little bit awkward, actually.

:No, of course. That's why I wore a saddle. You know how to ride?: 

Personally Ketran has always felt like, really, riding a horse who isn't a person seems like it would be more awkward. He knows it's the more ordinary thing for most people, but - no conversation to keep each other company on the road? Having to tug them around with reins rather than just agree on where you're going? Not being able to just belt in and sleep because you might wake up in completely the wrong town? All sounds AWKWARD. 

:Sort of: she says. :I should be able to figure it out.: She's actually only ever ridden Phantom Steeds before—real horses are too expensive to feed—but it's probably not that different. She gets into the saddle without too much difficulty.

(Many of their ploughs and carts, now, are pulled by dead beasts of burden, reanimated with some horrible new necromancy that probably damns the caster even if you only ever use it on animals and condemned criminals who informedly chose it over Pharasma's judgement. (Aroden is very insistent that she never learn to cast it herself.) It works on clean skeletons, so it's less gross than it would be if it didn't, but it still gives her the creeps.)

Fortunately Companions are very easy to ride! Ketran politely kneels to make it easier for Arazni to mount, and then keeps to a very gentle trot. She shouldn't have any trouble staying in the saddle, even when Ketran has to do some amount of weaving between trees. 

:It's going to be three days back to Haven if we stick to a reasonable pace: he sends. :Maybe two days if we ride longer at a stretch than I really think we should. But we'll reach one of the Waystations by noon, we can rest there a little. You must be hungry.: She doesn't seem to have any food on her, or any belongings at all other than the incongruous jewelry.

:Oh, I actually have a magic item that means I don't need food: she says, mentally pointing out her Ring of Sustenance. :I mostly don't eat at all, at home, there's not enough to go around and most people can't afford what I have. I do need to sleep, though, or else I won't be able to prepare spells tomorrow.:

What. No, what? 

:You...have a talisman that lets you go without food? How in the world does that work? I've never heard of that being possible.: 

:Uh, it's just the cleric spell for conjuring food and water, adapted to directly conjure the things your body digests food into, directly into your bloodstream—possibly this is not the cause of your confusion: she realizes belatedly. :If none of your gods have taken credit for Companions then possibly you don't have clerics either.:

That was indeed not where Ketran was confused!!! 

:Your - priests - can create food and water from nothing? No, I've never heard of that here. What - else can they do -?: 

:A lot of stuff, but the biggest thing they can do that wizards have a much harder time with is healing. Also resurrecting the dead, though that's arguably a special case of healing.:

:—do you even have wizards?: she wonders. Impossible as it now seems, she knows there was a time before arcane magic was learnable by anyone; the spellbook wasn't invented that long ago, in the grand scheme of Golarion's history. It's reasonably likely this planet doesn't know about it yet.

:We have mages! I can't tell if that's the same thing.: The concept coming through in Mindspeech sounds similar, at least as far as "someone who can do magic in general", but Ketran isn't sure all the associations feel right. :Mages can - light fires, throw levinbolts, cast shields against physical or magical attacks or against other Gifts, cast wards that detect attacks or trespassers or certain kinds of magic, do Gates if they're very powerful. You have to be born with potential and then have it awaken to be a mage.: 

Her native language doesn't actually distinguish the kinds of arcane magic users very well. :Those sound like what we call 'sorcerers': she says, trying to mentally use the Azlanti word, which does distinguish. :Our sorcerers can do—more things than that, as a class: (do they just not have transmutation here?) :but most sorcerers, individually, can only do a few things. 'Wizards' don't need to have an innate potential, except being smart enough to prepare spells, which gets pretty complicated, and they can prepare any spell that 'stabilizes': a technical term she's not really bothering to try to communicate the exact meaning of, :which includes most things sorcerers can cast. 'Clerics' are people who are granted magic directly from a god—'paladins' also get spells from their god but spellcasting isn't really the main thing they do. There are a bunch of other kinds of magic user but those are the most common—it sounds like you only have the one?:

:We have a lot of different kinds of Gifts, but we don't have - magic that someone without Gifts can just learn– .....wait sorry did you say your priests can resurrect the dead? How? What does that even - mean -?: 

:Uh, you have to call back the soul from the afterlife, or from the River of Souls if it hasn't made it that far, which is why it requires a god's cooperation, and it's more difficult and expensive the longer it's been and the less intact their body is... Do you know about the afterlives?: Is she going to have to warn these people about Hell.

Ketran seems to need a while to think before answering. 

:We know that souls go somewhere when a person dies: he says finally. :People say that if you worship Vkandis, then He takes your soul when you die, but - I don't think we really know, or even know what that would mean.: 

:Souls are judged according to their 'alignment'*—Lawful or Chaotic, and Good or Evil, and you can also be Neutral on either axis—and sent to the plane matching their alignment. I don't specifically know that to be true here, but it's true everywhere we've checked, and we know that the afterlives draw from many different planets. Gods sometimes claim the souls of their clerics separately from this: and sometimes people sell their souls to Hell but she's not going into that right now :but I've never heard of one that does it for all their worshippers.: If just worshipping a particular god was enough to keep you out of the Evil afterlives then Their church would certainly have made it known.**

She hesitates before saying the next part. :It might actually be better, for you, if your souls don't go to the afterlives we know. The Good ones are paradises, and the Neutral ones are generally fine places for the sort of person who goes there, but the Evil ones are—very bad.:

(*A difficult-to-translate technical term conveying something like "the relationship to the world that one establishes through one's actions".)

(**There is, actually, one god who takes the souls of nearly all His followers, cleric or not, to a place outside the normal afterlife system. Unfortunately, He's Zon-Kuthon.)