"Lot of coincidences in the same direction, though." She doesn't look tremendously upset. "I get my spells from - an entity external to me, who I pray to, and who has spoken to me in visions in my memories of before I came to this world. Are you claiming that this entity exists but just empowered me yesterday, exists but is not vetted in any way, does not exist and in fact I grant all my own spells - I did try to cheat and give myself some things paladins can't have, it didn't work -"

"The last is most likely."

She pauses. "Do your translation power work on text?"

"Tongues doesn't. There's another spell I could ask for that does. In Golarion, Pharasma judges if people are Good or Evil; paladins can just see it. What do you claim is happening when some people I see are Evil and some are not?"

"I don't know. Internal details of powers are usually unique to the power, incomprehensible to anyone outside of that."

"Your world has two axes of moral classification, am I correct? Not just Good, Neutral, and Evil, but Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic? And spells are prepared or granted by your god, and are ranked from zeroth to ninth level. Or cast spontaneously by the spells they know, for - if this translates right - sorcerers?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know this by knowing people from your world. In our world we tell stories, about worlds where morality is simpler and can be determined with a simple spell, and magical abilities can be learned even without the right bloodlines, and there are champions who want to help the weak and innocent out of their own love of justice and gods who will stretch out a hand to help them."

She opens one of the books on the table - with a beautiful illustrated cover - to where it shows a chart. "This book describes the rules for - cooperatively playing a game of telling one of these stories. This section describes the rules for paladin characters, who must be Lawful Good and keep to an honorable code, and at what level of power they gain which abilities."

Yeah okay she'll ask Aroden for Comprehend Languages even though she didn't this morning. Cast it. 

Take a look.

"...this is wrong. I acknowledge it is very uncanny you have a book about this at all but - I don't know what 'turn undead' means, I can't remove disease...you can take a celestial spirit bond that enhances your weapon instead of a mount but a lot of people don't know that...and I have four smites but I don't have fourth-circle spells. And also I get more spells a day than this and paladins get more spells from splendour, not from wisdom."

"That's very surprising, yes. Also I have no idea how your asking your god for more advice works; my vassals with an interest say that's not something we've found rules for. I do think you're an idealist, but wherever you're from doesn't quite match up to these books."

Iomedae's face feels numb. "I see why you think that," she says, neutrally. "I assume people who started existing yesterday always feel like they had a very detailed life no person could possibly have made up up to that point?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"I mean, I still think you're probably wrong. Or - not wrong about how I got here, I don't know about that, but about whether my world exists at all. There are lots and lots of worlds - here, too, you have stars in your sky - and it's easier to imagine ways to get people from far away than ways to elaborately invent them, and their magic items, and the spells I had on initially from Arazni casting them which expired after an hour and which I can't get back, and the god that grants them spells. But - I'm glad you told me, because it's important, and it's especially important if I can't expect Aroden to warn me if I'm making a mistake. I try not to use Evil as more than a moderate amount of information about whether someone's an enemy anyway but I should do that less if it might be something I'm hallucinating. 

You predict - that we can't get more paladins of Aroden, even if I teach them everything, that I probably can't get visions or specific clarifications from Him, that I can't get home or talk to anyone from there? Do you have a prediction about whether I'll get more powerful over time? About whether I'll lose my powers if I ever do an evil thing? About whether spells that summon angels work, if I figure out some way to cast one?"

"There are many, many worlds, but none of them within a hundred years' travel of Earth are inhabited, except for two colonies we have left; we've searched with very powerful telescopes and very fast ships. But it's also possible you were summoned from another world, it would just be - unprecedented."

"I predict you cannot train more paladins or clerics, cannot get visions from Aroden, cannot get home. I predict you can grow stronger but may have trouble finding challenges that seem hard enough to your powers, will lose your powers if you do evil, non-confidently predict you will be able to summon angels."

"One thing I should tell you, since you are my ally - there is, in this world, someone else from a world that is similar to yours. She's an elf sorceress who lives in another country, hundreds of miles away, but there are those who know of her and they say she has never spoken of alignment, or splendor, and we only know this because her spells match the descriptions in this book closer than yours do."

" - none of them are inhabited? Every world has life on it, in my memories.

I asked Aroden once, if the stars we could count from our world were all that there were and if the count of people that implied was right. Because - it mattered, to many of my plans -

- how many people do you think there are in the universe, and where do you think they go when they die?"

"Between six and seven billion, and I don't know." 

"You don't know at all? No one has a power that lets you scry them in the next world?"

"No."

If you could clear this up by appearing to me in a vision or sending me some sign this would be of unusual value, she tells Aroden, lets her paths unfold before him so he can pick one. What are her paths. Well, if Aroden is real and here, then she'll win this war and start His church and fix this world and take its weapons home to fix her own, that's easy. If she cannot confirm that Aroden is real, and here...

Aroden is the only person she knows of who tried to answer the question 'what needs to get done'. But the answer stands with or without him. 

"Is there a known way to become a god one's self, here?"

"There is not, nor any clear definition of what a god would be. Most powers are of strength fixed when obtained, and do not change with the wielder."

"Gods are the people who can empower paladins and clerics. There's an - easy way - but there's also a hard way, that anyone can do if they get strong enough....actually, you know what, this is a conversation for if we survive the war. Thank you for telling me what you think is going on. I don't think I agree but I will look out for occasions to check, and ask Aroden if He's willing to clarify."

She nods. "I understand."

And then if Iomedae isn't going to collapse (she doesn't look like it, but people don't always) they can go over to discuss their strategy for exactly how they can do this with some of Ilderia's strategic advisors. (Those not currently fighting.)

Iomedae looks sadder than usual but not particularly inclined towards collapse. She'd already decided to ask Aroden for everything they could tomorrow; if He doesn't exist, that's all the more reason to do that, really.

Six people who need to die, to end a war. It will be very dangerous and they may well die instead but it's a better situation than the one she left. Maybe left. Remembers leaving.

And Ilderia is in the strategy room, 

And a Century,

And that evil woman with the ice powers Iomedae saw earlier, though half-out of her costume,

And various people Iomedae won't recognize.