- falls into deep, impenetrable darkness. Even sounds around her are muffled. They also sound strange to the ear, as though she has found herself in a cave.

A running biped hits her side and falls to the (stone?) floor. Drops of water falling from above make it less likely that she is underground. A quarry, perhaps?

What the - is she in the shadow plane?

Aria carefully puts her front paws around the biped to prevent any unfortunate misunderstandings (it smells like a human but with many strange and unfamiliar scents on top of that) and asks, loudly and enunciating as clearly as she can, "Hello! I may have been teleported or plane shifted. Where am I?"

Mr. Jeffry Summers is a native Broctonite, born and raised. Which means that when he hears the distant, muffled voice, and feels the hot breath of a wild animal on his face, his first thought is:

Oh, what now.

His second thought is that this has got to be one of ... what was her name? Hellhound. Hellhound's dogs. And that, despite cooperating, this is going to be the end of him.

He lies deathly still, his breath coming in little panicked gasps, despite his best efforts.

His fear is easy to smell. "I'm not going to hurt you," she says -

And then Tora drops down on top of her, because the universe loves its little ironies.

It's not that much worse than their usual tussles, but a couple of dire tigers' worth of crushing weight might indeed be hurting the biped a little bit!

"Ow! Tora! Careful!" The slightly crushed biped probably isn't going to be helpful now. It's still breathing and she could heal it but she'd rather conserve her spells until she knows what's going on.

She can't see or hear well, and she didn't prepare echolocation. Can she at least smell something useful nearby? Or is she stuck healing and trying to talk to the local?

There are a lot of strong scents in the area!

She can smell: fear, not just from this man but from several people in the area; smoke of some kind, although not woodsmoke; lots of humans; several large animals, of a kind she has not previously encountered; the salty smell of the sea; petrichor, from the gently falling rain; rot and decay; lots of forged metal; tar; ozone, like after a lightning strike; and several more subtle scents that would take time to ferret out.

From the paths and distribution of the scents, she is in an open area that sees a lot of foot traffic.

Whether any of that is useful remains to be seen.

Oh good, there seem to be more people she can ask for help; she won't have to stumble around blindly for the rest of the day. And the smells aren't all unfamiliar and unnatural.

She walks towards what she hopes is the biggest group of people nearby.

... and clears the edge of the magical darkness to see an odd tableaux. She is clearly in a city — if an unusually bleak and foreign one. An array of adventurers in brightly colored costumes stand arrayed around the point of her arrival. Behind them, the light bends and warps like a soap bubble as ... something ... works to separate the area from the rest of the city.

The one in red is yelling at the frightened people who apparently proceeded her out of the darkness.

"... on the ground now!" he shouts, and the people comply.

She isn't flying at the moment and that's all he's going to get from her. 

"Hi! I may have been teleported by a trap. What's going on?" she asks brightly. Behind her, Tora pokes her head out of the darkness, gives a satisfied chuff, and walks out to stand protectively next to Aria. 

The adventurers will at this point notice that, unlike Aria, Tora is wearing quite a lot of magical jewelry.

"Aaah! Uh, I mean, stay there," the adventurer instructs.

"... can Hellhound control tigers? Talking tigers?" Vista quietly asks.

"Not to my knowledge. This might be a new cape — Clockblocker, see if you can stall ... her?" Aegis responds, his response concealed by Clockblocker's mask.

"Who are you?" Clockblocker calls. "Are you working with the Undersiders?"

"I'm Aria, and this is Tora. We're from the Verduran Forest, in Avistan, and the lands around it. I don't know who the Undersiders are. And I can assure you no hellhound can control my tiger, and if one tries I'll do more than control it."

"Your turn: where are we, what's going on, and why should we stay here?" In this horrible dystopian city, she doesn't add, because she does have some tact.

"Why, I'm Cl-, Aegis. Yes, Aegis! Leader of the Brockton Bay Wards," he exclaims, with a dramatic sweeping gesture. "We're here to stop the Undersiders from robbing that bank behind you. And — no offense — I'm sure you're a cat of your word, but you are a mysterious parahuman who showed up  unexpectedly on the battlefield, so we'd like you ..."

A woman mounted on a giant lizard-dog interrupts him by vaulting out of the darkness.

"Tigress, you take the left!" she barks, in the rote voice of someone who thinks this is a stupid idea.

Two more lizard-dogs follow her, running toward the adventurer's line.

Excuse me???

A giant lizard-dog! That's really cool, she's never heard of an animal like that! She still has no idea where she is, but maybe she should stay around for a little while before heading home?

She watches the lizard-dogs with avid interest, Cl-Aegis all but forgotten.

The man in white rushes to grapple with the nearest one, while some kind of spellcaster who can wear plate shoots glowing missiles to try and knock the woman off her dog.

Clockblocker moves to intercept Aria, but stops when he sees that she's not moving, and instead just circles to keep himself between the dogs and the small figure in green at the back of their party.

The dog-rider commands them with a series of whistles, ducking under the spells and having her mount tackle the man in white.

Aria likes helping people, but in a fight with adventurers it's impossible to tell who (if anyone) might be in the wrong. She'll... try to stop them if one side looks likely to kill more than one of their opponents, how about that. Or at least ask for more of an explanation.

Nobody here seems to be aiming to kill, although it can be hard to tell when that involves savaging people with dogs.

Her orders to "Angelica, maim!" seem suggestive.

The fight is surprisingly even for a bit, although the flying knight keeps veering and barely recovering, which doesn't do his aim any favors.

Just when it looks like the adventurers might be gaining some ground, magical darkness rolls across the battleground, cutting off her view of the fight.

What's that, an extra-extra-small flying carpet? Wizards always invent such silly things instead of actually, you know, flying.

Oh no, the magical darkness again! She wants to keep watching! She'll circle around and if everyone is inside the darkness she'll... track them by scent to catch any lizard-dogs who try to run away, she guesses, and try to talk to them?

Scents can get confusing in a fast-paced back-and-forth, but that approach will serve her well enough. The fighting continues. The lizard-dogs pen the man in white in, but the adventurers do something that knocks the woman off her mount.

"Aegis" ends up frozen to the ground somehow, and the other adventurers are defeated one-by-one. After a few minutes of this, the fighting has mostly stopped, although the area remains dark. The lizard-dogs are called into the building behind her, and emerge loaded down with bags of paper and four humans — a pair of boys and a pair of girls.

The lizard-dogs and their riders then lope off up the street.

Then Aria and Tora will catch up with them and ask the lizard-dogs (or, failing that, their riders) all about them! What do they look like up close? They seem to be less... symmetric than most animals, which might serve an important function.

The area around them stays dark, so getting a more detailed look at the dogs is difficult. Still, Aria is able to keep up with them just fine.

This seems to panic the riders a little, although the details are difficult to make out through the darkness. After a moment, the lizard-dogs slow and a billow of space opens in the darkness.

A woman in tight purple clothes makes eye contact with her, her face illuminated by a hand-held light spell of some kind.

After a moment of silence, she speaks. "Bug and I can get off here. We'll be okay, you two go on ahead."

The darkness flows over them again, smothering the light. One of the men hands her a bundle of cloth, and the two women slip off their dog, and walk over to the mouth of an alley. Their dog follows them, and they wait there, almost expectantly. The other two dogs and their riders start to continue on.

She trots up to the group that stopped. "If you want me to talk to you before the other two, you could have just said so," she remarks.

"I thought I was pretty obvious," Tattletale responds. "Could you speak up, though? Grue's darkness makes it hard to hear. You have ... questions?"

A tiger's roar can be heard miles away. "You should get better ears, then, or step out of the darkness," she suggests very loudly. 

The woman isn't really who she wanted to talk to. She can't tell by smell how smart the lizard-dog Angelica might be, but when she tries to speak to her, Tongues won't give her words. She hoped Angelica at least understood language.

"I want to learn everything about her and her race!" she tells the two human women. "Where are we and are they from here, what they eat, how they live... And to see them up close, eventually, are they light-sensitive or something? I'll also talk to her myself but I don't know yet if I should wait to do it out of the darkness, and the spell only lasts for minutes."

Tattletale thinks furiously.

"The dogs aren't light sensitive, no. They're also not a separate species — my teammate Bitch can empower dogs. She cares for them a lot, she has a special bond with them," Tattletale explains.

"They're polymorphed? I didn't even notice, well done! I'd like to meet this Bitch. What kind of a mage is she?" She could be a fellow ranger or druid (yay!) or a cleric or, always, a wizard (hopefully not). "Is the bond empathic or telepathic? Where can I meet some real animals of this race, and what are they called?"

"I'm Aria, by the way, and this is Tora, in case you didn't hear us earlier in the darkness. A druid from the Verduran forest. Where are we?" If they have unfamiliar (non demonic) beasts, she might not be in Avistan anymore, which is kind of exciting!

She only regrets that she failed to help the giant snake.

"I'm Tattletale," she responds. "This is my teammate Bug. And Bitch's power should wear off Angelica in a few minutes — around the same time as Grue's darkness."

She pauses for a moment.

"The thing is, we can't afford to get caught standing around in the open when it does — not since the heroes saw you. I know a place a little ways from here where we can get out of sight, and then we can answer the rest of your questions."

Suspicious! She could be leading them into an ambush or trap. And she didn't answer most of Aria's questions. On the other hand, Tattletale doesn't owe her anything and Aria isn't going to force her to do what she says, and Tattletale just admitted Aria could lead her enemies to her. Perhaps a compromise is in order?

(Of course Aria can hide or disguise Tora, and also of course she can't do it today. It is the prepared spellcaster's curse to be able to handle any situation except the one they are in.)

"They saw you too," she points out reasonably. Is Tattletale polymorphed too, and Tora the only one here wearing her own skin? "We can get out of sight now, but I'm not going to hide forever from your enemies. Who are these 'heroes' and how do they track people?"

Human societies vary a lot; she's not going to read anything into people being called 'heroes' and other people being their enemies until she hears something actionable, like 'they have cool dog polymorphs' or, conversely, 'they kick puppies'.

"You might not have gotten a good look, but we're wearing disguises," Tattletale responds. "We're going to swap them out for normal clothes before the darkness clears, and then rely on there being too many places that we could have run to for them to figure out who we are. They mostly track people visually, or by following clues or obvious trails."

"But it would be easy for them to assume that the people hanging out with two tigers are worth investigating, and then the game would be up. Anyway, I don't want to ask you to hide from our enemies if you don't want to — just don't lead them to us," she points out.

She doesn't smell like she's in disguise and a change of clothes will magically break her trail, but that probably just means it must be a good disguise! Perhaps more relevantly, if this rain goes on it will wash away their scent-trail; following them after an hour will be much harder than being a couple of minutes behind.

"I won't lead them to you but after we talk we'll still need to part without them noticing. If you have a solution to that, lead the way!" If she tracks them uninvited it will probably have much the same result anyway, as well as leading the heroes to their lair, unless she spends a day or two stalking them and checking for traps, and she'd rather save the time and effort. If Tattletale leads her into a trap, she'll just have to make her regret it.

"Alright," Tattletale says, sounding pleased. "Bug, let me know when we've gone two blocks. At that point, we'll want to make a left ..."

"Right," the other woman agrees, and they start making their way down the street, just slowly enough not to trip in the dark.

Tattletale directs them through a series of twists and turns.

"So to answer your other questions — this is Brockton Bay. On the east coast of America. I've never heard of Avistan before, or the Verduran forest. Do you know where they are on a global scale?" she asks.

"Avistan is the continent west of Casmaron, north of Garund, and south of the Crown. If the names don't translate" - she puzzles about this for a bit - "do you know all the continents? Tian Xia is the bigger standalone one, Arcadia is the smallish one, and the last and biggest bit of land is traditionally divided into several parts, of which Avistan is in the northwest. I can sketch them once we're out of the darkness. Or if you tell me about the creatures and plants around here I might recognize something that's not found anywhere else."

"Yeah, none of those names sound like places I'm familiar with. Going by your descriptions, we would be in Tian Xia, I think, but no language I've heard of calls America that," Tattletale responds.

She has them pause for a moment, and there's a shuffling of fabric. Tattletale and Bug's scents don't noticeably change.

Then she leads them to a door, and through into the dilapidated lower floor of a building. Grue's darkness spills like a liquid through the door and around their ankles until everyone's through and the door is closed again.

Tattletale and Bug are still wearing their masks, but have otherwise changed into different clothes. Angelica has shrunk down from the size of a horse to the size of a wolfhound, and started looking more dog-like and less lizard-like.

She observes the shift-down with interest! None of the spells she knows are so gradual.

"That makes sense. I haven't been to Tian Xia much, and the languages are very different. I arrived here through a teleport trap installed in a poor snake's mouth." (Upset vibes about the snake!!) "Now that I'm here I'll probably stay a little while. So what can you tell me about Bitch?"

Tattletale leans back against the wall.

"Bitch is ... good with dogs, to the point of not being so good with people," she explains. "She can't control dogs or anything, though, just empower them. So she spends a lot of time caring for and training them. If you end up talking to the heroes about her — they think she murdered someone when she first got her powers, but she didn't. She was trying to save a dog, but she couldn't control it, and it killed someone. She's been on the run ever since."

"I have a few questions about you as well," she remarks. "You said you didn't want to hide from our enemies — but around here, people with powers are either heroes or villains. And you don't seem too upset about us robbing that bank. So which are you?"

Beside her, Bug tenses, before deliberately relaxing.

Bitch is sounding more and more like a ranger or low-level druid! She really wants to meet her and get her perspective on things.

By heroes and villains, does Tattletale mean everyone powerful is either Good or Evil? Gods, what a depressing new perversion of nature, to rule out the Neutral middle instead of celebrating it as natural and easy. At least back home cities are backed by morally Neutral gods!

"I'm Neutral. And also a druid, which means I'm committed to some kinds of neutrality and balance, besides the morally Neutral alignment. I promote Nature and the well-being that comes to all creatures naturally absent coercion. So you're Evil?" She's worked with Neutral Evil druids before; they had enough shared interests to part amicably.

"Also, what kind of creature is a bank?"

Tattletale pinches the bridge of her nose and rubs it gently.

"We are not evil," she replies. "We just ... can't get along with the government for various reasons. They call everyone with powers who doesn't work for them either 'villains' or 'rogues'. Rogues are theoretically neutral, but in practice heavily restricted in terms of what they're permitted to use their powers for. Which is the system pretty much everywhere in the world except parts of Africa and south-east Asia."

"And a bank isn't a creature — it's a building where lots of people keep their money. It's better to steal money from there because they have insurance and there's a lot of it in one place, compared to getting money by stealing from people."

A Lawful country that regulates all use of magic, or maybe all adventurers? She wrinkles her nose. This can't possibly work. But maybe these so-called villains are more Chaotic than Evil, after all.

"The way things work where I'm from," she says, "is that no government is powerful enough to tell all mages what to do and have most of them obey. And no government is popular enough to have most of the mages work for it, or rich enough to pay them, or wise enough to tell them all what to do. Most powerful people do their own thing, alone or in small groups, and this is usually better for themselves as well." She also thinks human governments are kind of fake, but that's a longer argument and she's not invested in convincing Tattletale; she's still trying to learn about this new place.

"When you say it's better to steal from a bank, you mean it's more convenient for you," she remarks. "Why do you need money so much you'd fight these heroes over it, if you're not Evil?" Understanding people's constraints and needs is the first step in getting to know them.

Tattletale is looking increasingly pained as this conversation continues.

"Different members of our team have different reasons," she hedges, looking to see Aria's reaction. "For myself, I use that money to pay for housing, food, and continuing education. Bitch uses her share to take care of her dogs, and rescue more dogs from bad situations as she's able. Bug, Grue, and Regent have their own reasons, which they can share with you if they like."

"As for the government being powerful enough — it's not," she states. "The villains outnumber the heroes about 3 to 1. But the government is hardly going to admit that they're not in control of the situation. They just do their best to keep a lid on it and prevent the worst of the ... evil parahumans from terrorizing people. And do a lot of showboating to try and convince people that they are still credible."

Bug shifts uncomfortably at this description, but doesn't refute it. She crosses her arms and looks away.

Bitch continues to sound like the most reasonable person around here!! She can't wait to meet her.

"I don't really understand how you can afford one or more mages on your team, but not to pay for food and housing without fighting," she remarks. "Unless fighting is its own reward for you. But I don't mean to pry into your lives - I'm really interested in meeting Bitch. Anything else you can tell me about her would be welcome, and I'll ask Angelica too. What kinds of bad situations are dogs in here, and what does she need to do to rescue them? And who are these Evil... people with supernatural abilities, the word didn't translate exactly, let's call them 'supers'... who are terrorizing the locals, or did you mean that in general and not right here and now?"

"Oh! And you can ask me and Tora questions, if you want, or something else in return for you help. I can cast a spell to let Tora speak out loud, but only for a hundred minutes, so I'm saving it until she wants to." She looks a question at the other tiger in the room.

These people are boring. Let's go somewhere nicer! With sunshine and meadows and deer.

...but if we're here I don't mind answering questions.

Aria can read Tora's face well enough. Even without a mind link up, they share a closer bond than most humans will ever have.

"Sorry, dear, I've been neglecting you a bit, haven't I? The Suddenly City isn't fun. I promise we'll do something nice later today." She licks Tora's cheek affectionately.

"What do ..." she begins to say.

"If you don't mind questions, I would love to know more about what, ah, magic you're capable of," Tattletale interrupts. "I don't think we really have anyone like you here. You can speak to animals and ... assume their forms?"

"Those are the main things, yes! I can talk to them and help them and heal them and ask for their help in return, and I help people understand the animals they live and work with, or negotiate with them. And I can make plants grow, which farmers often appreciate a lot."

"Druids protect the natural order, and our powers reflect that. Cities are unnatural and most druids shun them and focus on protecting forests from being turned into more cities, so it's not your fault you don't know much about us. But we signed a deal with the human Emperor back home to protect our forest, so now I can afford to travel and help the people who are suffering in cities. - I don't spend all my time in cities, of course, my ambit is broader than that."

Cities are dens of evil and iniquity.

(Tora can't follow the conversation in English, this is just her general opinion on being reminded of the Suddenly City.)

"And Druids all share these same powers?" Tattletale questions, leaning forward intently. "Not just similar powers, but all the same?"

"Yes, but possibly not the way you're thinking? It's not like there's a magic ritual that makes someone a druid and grants them exactly these powers, or a spell that a wizard copies and casts just the same way as every other wizard. We can have different... affinities, and preferences, but almost all of us study and practice these core skills because they're what it means to be a a druid. Of course there are differences of strength and skill, but we're learning the same things from the same lore." That much, at least, is safe to share in public.

"I didn't think that was how powers worked," Bug remarks, frowning.

Tattletale grins.

"It isn't! Which is what makes our feline friend so interesting," she agrees. "So ... what does 'helping people suffering in cities' entail, exactly?"

"Well. Sometimes Evil people enslave or torture or wantonly murder people, and I stop them. Sometimes I meet people who are just really unhappy, because living in a city is bad for almost everyone, and I help them move out and teach them how to lead a more normal life and help them join or form a new community. Sometimes - a lot of the time - they're ruining the nature around them, cutting down forests or draining swamps or damming rivers or mining the hills, and this is bad for them too in the long term so I try to teach them better and not just stop them, although I do of course stop them. Often it's the animals, cows and horses and dogs and so on, who need my help because the're being hurt by the humans they live with, and it's not because the humans are all cruel but because they don't know any better, and I help them talk to each other and figure out how to live better together." And just as often the humans are cruel and she has to put them down.

"And sometimes people in cities have the same kinds of problems people everywhere might have, like disease or famine or monsters or bad weather, and I can help with those but I'm not that much better at it than a cleric of Erastil and there are a lot more of them, so I usually don't bother."

"I think your 'teleport trap' sent you a lot farther than you thought," Tattletale tells her. "People in the city mostly don't keep cows or horses — or any animals, really. Dogs and cats are the exception. Most of those are treated well, although Hookwolf — definitely an evil person, he's part of a nasty gang — runs dog-fighting rings. Our team tries to shut them down, of course."

"Isn't it mostly Bitch who takes out Hookwolf's stuff?" Bug questions.

Tattletale nods. "Well, yes, but I've helped her locate them, and Grue helps her as well," she claims.

It's a good thing Tora can't understand them right now. Not that Aria is any less angry, she's just much better at hiding it and biding her time.

"Tell me more," she says evenly, "about these dog-fighting rings that Bitch shuts down and rescues dogs from."

Tattletale's eyes widen a little at Aria's intensity.

"Ah, Hookwolf is one of the main lieutenants of a gang called the Empire Eighty-Eight," she begins. "He captures and breeds dogs, and then pits them against each other as a gambling thing, which is one of the ways the E88 funds itself. It's illegal as hell, but he rotates buildings and times so that the authorities have trouble tracking him down. I can usually figure out where he's going to be with a bit of effort, though, with my power."

She swallows.

"He's not just in it for the money, though. As far as he's concerned, that's just a nice bonus. He likes the fights."

It's a painfully familiar story. "You've stopped him before, but he always starts again. You should have solved the problem at the root. Since it's illegal, which is a word that means the faction that styles itself Lawful doesn't like it, I trust there will be no objection to my taking care of this Hookwolf and his empire."

"If you want to help, tell me where to find him. ...and I still need to talk to Bitch."

Tora has also picked up on Aria's mood. Later, she signs to her.

Tattletale winces. "Uh, you'd certainly think the Heroes wouldn't object, but they also care about how things are done and who does them. So they might still object, depending on what it is you plan to do. If you capture him alive and turn him over for sentencing instead of killing him, they'll probably take it a lot better."

"There's also the matter of the Unwritten Rules. There's a ... strong cultural norm against attacking parahumans outside the mask. If you go after Hookwolf in his civilian identity, instead of when he's acting as a cape, then the E88 will feel free to do the same to you, and they have a lot of fighters. If you attack him in costume, though, they'll probably leave you alone when you're not, uh, animal-shaped."

"Not everyone has secret identities, though," Bug points out. "If you haven't got any family here to protect, or anything like that, you could be like New Wave and fight without a mask."

"Right, true," Tattletale agrees. "As for where Hookwolf is — I haven't seen enough to be sure, but I think his next event is going to be on Saturday in an abandoned warehouse near the Hill. That's in two days, probably an hour or two after sunset, in the flat inland area before the big hill to the west. But I don't ... have it narrowed down to an address. I would need to spend the day trailing some low-level Empire people tomorrow to be sure."

Then she won't give this empire time to retaliate - but she shouldn't make plans before talking to Bitch.

"I can also trail them, or question them. In two days' time, I can find him. This event can't be secret, because people go to it." Which is very convenient for the purpose of getting all those people in one place, instead of hunting them down one by one.

"If I give Hookwolf to these 'heroes', will they execute him?" She's not very happy at this prospect, but she will leave this city sooner rather than later and if the local authorities can be encouraged to prevent others from following in Hookwolf's footsteps, she'll take it.

"Also, explain these secret identities and masks to me. I assumed your mask had some magical properties; it doesn't hide your face nearly enough to make it unrecognizable." Bug's outfit is much more sensible if it's meant to conceal her identity.

"The ... ah, the government might execute him," she hedges. "But he's more likely to be sentenced to life imprisonment in an unescapable prison. The government doesn't really like executing people with powers that might be useful for fighting off Endbringers — giant city-destroying monsters — later."

"As for my mask," she grins. "You might be surprised. It looks like it's not enough, but that just leads people into not looking hard enough, because they think they've seen all they need to. See, the whole secret identity thing started as a way to make sure capes didn't drag each other's families into things, to stop it from escalating. Because even the least dangerous cape could create plenty of collateral damage if they had a reason to fight without caring about the people around them. But we do all live here, and only the most deranged capes actually want society to collapse into mayhem, so most everyone is incentivized to go along with the masquerade."

None of that makes any sense, but city-dwellers and their culture are all insane one way or another and it's not as if she understands Oppara either. Her family is Tora and a mask wouldn't help anything. None of this matters because she's not going to let Hookwolf go if he takes off his mask, no matter what the locals think.

"The government would dominate... mind-control him to fight for them?" she clarifies. And keep him in an "unescapable" prison the rest of the time? That.... might an appropriate punishment, if she trusted the prison really was unescapable and the government's wars should be supported and nothing else was going on with the prisoners, but she has no time to verify any of that.

"Uh, not as such, no. The government has some people with mind-control powers, but they're usually either limited, situational, or not fully trusted. A lot of people are leery about mind-control, which means that people with that type of power often end up getting ostracized and becoming villains," she explains.

She can tell that she's not really selling any of this to Aria.

"... look, I think we're getting a bit far from the point. It sounds like our interests are, if not aligned, at least overlapping. It's always good to have some idea about new neighbors, as it were. Grue's darkness is going to evaporate soon, and it would be convenient to have separated by then so there's no chance of being seen together. I expect you probably want to go corroborate what I've told you and track down Hookwolf — how about we plan to meet up again early Saturday morning?"

She pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and scribbles an address. "I can be waiting at this address a few hours after dawn, and I'll see if I can convince Bitch and her dogs to come as well. We can talk more then, or help with any preparation you need before hitting Hookwolf that evening."

Is Tattletale trying to make her shift human to take the note so she can see her face, which is apparently important in the local culture? "My translation spell doesn't let me read your language. Tell me the address and I will remember it."

More importantly, "are you saying Bitch doesn't want to be approached by strangers and you need two days to maybe convince her to meet me?" Druids often live in seclusion from human society and operate through trusted minions; perhaps Tattletale and Bug are her city-rangers. 

"I need to learn more from Bitch to plan for Saturday, and don't wish to do it on the last day. Let's agree on a meeting place later today." Assumptions aside, Aria doesn't know anything about these two; they may have lied to her. Angelica is proof of something interesting; she doesn't want to leave Bitch to Tattletale for two days and then maybe meet her "if Tattletale can convince her" if she can avoid it.

"How long until we should leave here? I want to talk to Angelica for a few minutes; it might help as an introduction when I meet Bitch later."

Tattletale runs her hands across her face; she hates being this wrong-footed by a conversation.

"Right, okay," she acquiesces. She rattles off an address. "We can meet there an hour or two before sunset. But — yes, Bitch does have problems with strangers, and especially with trusting strangers with her dogs. I may or may not be able to get her to agree to come along."

She pulls a phone out of the backpack that now contains their costumes and checks the time.

"And we have ... maybe 5 minutes until Grue's darkness clears. I'd prefer to be back out on the street and putting some distance between us a minute or two beforehand. But if you want to spend that time talking to Angelica, by all means," she finishes, gesturing towards where Angelica is sitting patiently.

"Are we sure that's safe?" Bug whispers to Tattletale, although not quietly enough for Aria not to hear.

Tattletale responds at normal volume.

"It's fine," she states, waving a hand dismissively. "She really can just ... talk to animals, somehow. And I'm pretty sure it's not a Master effect. Also, she has really good hearing."

She does, not that Tattletale has any way of knowing that, but even ordinary hearing would have been enough! Is she judging a big cat by human standards? Has she ever met one before?

A street address isn't very useful for a clandestine meeting, since she'll have to ask strangers for directions and then it will be known she was looking for that address. No matter, she'll find a way; better to keep Tattletale in the dark about what exactly she can and cannot do, while discreetly testing what Tattletale (or Bitch) can catch her doing.

"I won't ask her to trust me with her dogs, certainly not as a stranger." It's a very sensible policy for Bitch to have; Aria certainly wouldn't trust a powerful stranger with Tora. "I want her to tell me about Hookwolf and make plans together. I'll ask about her powers and her dogs, out of professional curiosity, and about the city life more generally, but I do know how to take no for an answer." 

And she casts speak with animals. This is the first spell Tattletale will see her cast in animal form, and she watches her for any visible reactions. A mage trained in spellcraft could recognize the sounds she makes, the deliberate gestures of her paws, if only by analogy.

Tattletale shows no sign of recognition, but she does look fascinated.

Not a parahuman ability, her power tells her, finally giving her some certainty on the matter. A cascade of other facts bring themselves to mind, but she finds herself entranced by the smallest details of how Aria moves her paws.

She watches in silence.

Aria lies down comfortably, in the most relaxed and non-threatening pose she can adopt, and signals Tora to follow suit. Spends a couple of rounds licking her paws. Looks at Angelica but not into her eyes, and waves her tail gently.

Hello, Angelica. I am friendly. I want to be a friend. I want to meet your pack. I will meet your pack later. I will be friendly and not attack you or yours.

A cat cannot bark or whine as a dog does, but dogs don't communicate with those sounds alone anyway. She uses sounds and body language both, and magic fills in the rest; artificial smells and sounds that she cannot herself produce, subconscious cues that will help Angelica understand her as well as she might understand a moon dog who has the right body and also high Cunning and Wisdom.

Speak with Animals is a divination, not an enchantment. She can't affect Angelica directly, only her perceptions; but she can understand her response better than Angelica herself might.

I want to meet Bitch. Who is she to you? She hopes Angelica recognizes the name Bitch, which she has to say in English; otherwise she'll have to use circumlocutions like 'meet your pack-leader' or 'your master' or 'your best human friend' and any of those will be misleading because she wants Angelica to tell her - what is Bitch to her? What is their relationship? What role in this dog's life is played by a human who names herself a dog?

She cocks her head.

You are not a dog, she observes. I want to sniff you and find out what you are but I am staying with the angry one and the sad one until the darkness goes away, because I am a good dog.

She looks up at the humans and then back at Aria.

Bitch is the smart one, the pack leader. She knows how to say things. She knows how to make food happen. The angry one never makes food happen. It is good that you won't fight us. We are strong and clever.

Bug does smell and act somewhat sad, but Tattletale doesn't seem particularly angry; Angelica must mean it more generally. Or - maybe she hasn't been around humans enough to learn that smiles-with-teeth are not aggression? Most dogs do learn that eventually but not all.

She slowly and carefully extends a paw towards Angelica's nose, so she can sniff her without moving too much, if that's acceptable.

I have seen that you are strong! she agrees. I will meet you later with Bitch. Goodbye. She has what she wanted; Angelica trusts Bitch, and obeys her, in the way she might a fellow dog. She thinks of Bitch as one of 'them'; that she is human is incidental. This is the work of a druid, or a ranger who knows what they're doing, no matter what Tattletale might claim.

"She says you don't feed her and you smile too much, which she perceives as aggression," she remarks to Tattletale. "I'm done here. We'll meet tonight."

Tattletale stares into space for a moment, and then shakes her head to clear it.

"Alright. It was good meeting you. See you tonight."

Angelica delicately sniffs the outstretched paw, and then snorts and settles back down on her hindquarters.

Bug crosses her arms and nods to Aria, but doesn't say anything.

Then she and Tora will leave, and walk in a random direction (not the one they came from) until they're out of the magical darkness.

She makes a careful note of the sun's position in the sky; once she sees how it moves through a quarter-hour she'll be able to estimate the number of hours until sunset, and her latitude.

And now she has a choice to make. She can follow Tattletale, and probably not achieve anything else of use until their meeting tonight. Or she can investigate the city, but she'll need a surefire way of finding the location Tattletale named. Aria told her she can't read the local language, and asking strangers for directions might lead someone else to their meeting; she isn't sure if it was intended as a challenge but she's treating it like one. Find this place without wasting time or effort. Prove you can navigate a strange city, or interact with its humans.

It is a reasonable demand to make, if she is going to operate here. She lets Tattletale slip from her mind for now, and turns her attention to the city that she can finally see properly. What is it like?

It is a place of incredible wealth that has fallen on hard times.

There are easily tens of thousands of people living here, maybe as many as a few hundred thousand, if she takes the crowd she can see on the street (even in the rain) and extrapolates based on how distant the most distant buildings are. Each one of them that she can see is wearing clothing with an incredibly tight weave and even dye job, often in hard-to-acquire colors, like the plumage of tropical birds. Many of them are carrying equally colorful umbrellas covered with some lightweight fabric that repels water.

Despite that, a lot of the clothing is torn, or starting to develop holes — especially the popular blue pants, for some reason. There are people in patchy, dirty clothing sitting on the sidewalk who everyone else walks past and pretends not to see. Even the least wealthy people have some garments of the same incredible fabric. Most people look well fed, although not everyone. Most people look healthy, although not everyone.

The architecture of the city itself tells the same story — there are towering buildings visible through the rain that stand impossibly tall. Their sides are stark, the color of granite or clay. The windows are glass, so impossibly well made that they would be hard to see, except for the beading droplets that beat against them when the wind gusts. The roads are wide, and smooth, paved with huge slabs of stone that must have been quite expensive to bring in. The gaps between them are smoothed over with tar, so that the vehicles can traverse them at high speeds with only the smallest bumps.

There are lights — not just in the buildings, but illuminating the streets, and guiding vehicles and pedestrians through intersections. Obviously magical lights, with steady unblinking colors. They reflect of the watery sheen of the road, painting the scene in streaks of eye-catching light.

And yet ...

The lower walls of the buildings are covered in scrawled words and pictures that are at odds with the dignified aesthetic of the upper floors. Some of the magical lights are smashed and broken. Further down the street, one of the glass windows has been smashed. There are holes in the road filled with rainwater that have not been patched, even with gravel.

The overall impression the place gives is of something grey. Not grey in the way stones are grey, with rain-washed faces. But grey in the way that ash is grey — something that was once colorful, which has had the color stolen from it, until all that remains are the bleak and despairing lines of a place that was once better.

And the colorful distractions of the people who refuse to see it.

Human cities share a fundamental flaw: they are too big. So big that people cling to them even as they degrade and fall into ruin. If a tribe's old hunting-grounds are empty they can migrate, if a village's fields fail their children can homestead anew; but how do you make a start on building a new city, when nothing you make in your lifetime can compare to even the ruins of your forefathers' mansions?

Aria has seen cities fall into decay and ruin before. Oppara too has many old palaces and grand monuments, and if its pride is no longer this is the seat of empire and civilization, at least it comforts itself that once it had been. But pride in past glories is no replacement for present comforts. The humans who live in Oppara are prideful, resentful, angry, forever upset with their rulers and subjects, their peers and neighbours, the entire world around them. Their legacy does not fill their bellies, and it does not satisfy them when they are hungry. They fight each other endlessly over their ever-shrinking commons, because they do not know how to make them grow again.

Humans and other intelligent races build cities, and nations, and societies, which eat food and fight each other for territory, and succumb to parasites and disease and old age, until their bleached skeletons are scavenged by adventurers. This is their natural cycle, sure as the salmon swim upriver. Individual humans are not happy in a decaying city, and yet they struggle to break free.

This city might not yet be as decayed as Oppara. The homeless and the hungry are fewer, the streets are cleaner, the wealth on display is perhaps greater to begin with. But just as the sun in the sky is moving sideways and slightly down, she feels this city will go on to die if nothing changes, and for a simple reason: 

Most of the people she sees are not happy.

Aria stops walking in the most secluded spot she can find on short notice - the rain is helping by driving most people indoors. 

She turns around to Tora, and relates her conversation with Tattletale. Tells her about Bitch, and the meeting tonight, and that they will probably stay in this city for days or weeks to come.

Tells her about Hookwolf.

You will end him. 

It is not a question.

I promise. 

Even if she hadn't already decided to do so, she would do it for Tora's sake. Because she doesn't know what this Hookwolf is capable of yet, and her Tora might not succeed alone but she would certainly try.

It takes her a few minutes to calm down enough to continue walking along the street without terrifying passers-by, if any city-dwellers can tell when a cat is bloody furious and the 'bloody' is about to become very literal.

Why not find him now and bite his head off? I know you have a better plan but I think I could bite his head off. Aria's excellent planning is half the reason Tora keeps her around, the other half being deep unshakeable love.

You probably could, dear! He can't be a powerful man if he tortures ordinary dogs. Someone truly powerful or rich would use grander beasts, tigers and lions and elephants. 

I want everyone in the city to get the right message. So no-one dares to do it again, even after we leave, even after a generation. For that I need to know more. About the organization he's part of, the city that can't put him down, the other men who go to his fights. I need to find out what will make them not do this again as soon as you've stopped biting heads off.

I don't want his simple death or disappearance. I want its effect on everyone else.

And I need to talk to Bitch about the dogs we will rescue, to know what should be done with them and to make sure no-one takes revenge on her after we are gone.

Human things. But she wiggles her ears in the equivalent of a smile.

Are you going to ask someone else about Hookwolf, now?

Maybe. But I think it would be best if I approached strangers as a human, and without a tiger. And I don't know yet if outside this city is safe. Do you mind being a statue for a little bit?

I don't actually enjoy listening to you talk in a language I don't understand, you know. I'm just very good at daydreaming so I don't get bored.

I don't mind skipping ahead to the head-biting. Or food, whichever happens first. Or if we meet someone who'll talk to me, or some interesting people who aren't humans, or some new kind of animal. I'd like to see those lizard-dogs more clearly. And you promised me something fun tonight. And I want to hunt, we tracked down that snake but it wasn't prey.

You can statue me for a bit, just let me out if anything fun happens. She brushes against Aria's flank to indicate all is well again.

Then Aria will look for somewhere secluded, because she doesn't want to expose any of her abilities to strangers if she doesn't have to. Is there somewhere they could be unobserved without leaving the city, or does she need to cast a spell about it?

There are plenty of run-down buildings and alleys that run between them. Even in the most prosperous parts of the city, there are still places like that. If she just needs to be unobserved for a moment, there are plenty of choices.

Who knows what lurks in alleys or peers at her from a window? She doesn't trust cities because she is, fundamentally, weaker inside them. But this isn't a very secret spell; some paladins have a similar one. 

Two large cats step into an alley and don't come out. An indistinct ripple like a heat-shimmer rises through air and is lost in the downpour.

Normally she'd do this as a hawk, but it keeps raining and while she could deal with that, it would make her stand out in the sky. She gives up on the hawk's eyes and flies as an air elemental, indistinct in the hazy sky.

She wants to see the general layout of the city (rain permitting) and its surroundings, and then she'll try to locate temples, markets, taverns, and other such things of interest to travelers. If she were an unremarkable adventurer teleporting into this large city for the first time, where would she go to buy supplies and unobtrusively ask questions? For that matter, can she see any obvious adventurers?

She passes over a man in blue plate riding some kind of device through the streets, but other than that there are no obvious adventurers.

There is also a lack of shops catering to them — there are restaurants, certainly, and probable taverns. But she doesn't really see anywhere that sells weapons, magic items, or armor. In a city this large and this (previously) prosperous, Golarion would certainly have places like that. Here, the closest she can spot is a shop which sells "guns". People treat them like weapons, and hold them a bit like crossbows, but unless she flies down to take a closer look it's not obvious how they operate.

There are not-obviously-adventurer-specific stores selling all kinds of things — fresh produce, much of it unfamiliar to her, books, many places selling clothing.

There are no temples she recognizes, but there are a few building that stand out to her as probable-temples. A large white building with a tall spire, a rundown building with a star symbol painted on the outside and wood over some of the windows, and a marble-and-glass building that is seeing a good deal more traffic than either of those.

Those three seem promising! She will descend with reasonable stealth into range to look at them with Detect Magic and to overhear any public conversations. Since the marble-and-glass building has the most people, she'll start there. What are the people talking about, what are they doing just inside the doors, and how magic is this place?

Not magic at all! Or at least none that she can detect.

The building looked a lot like a temple from the outside — fancy, visually distinct from its surroundings, lots of symbolism and ornamentation in the carvings — but the people inside are mostly talking about taxes and "car registrations". People walk in through the doors, and make their way to various scattered counters — or further into the building — and talk to attendants there, often bringing out various paper documents and showing them, or arguing about requirements.

There is a big statue of a larger-than-life figure in the atrium, but people don't seem to treat it very worshipfully, instead mostly ignoring it.

Taxes and paperwork: a sure sign of humans who have built cities and come to regret it.

How about the other two places?

The more run-down building has nobody in it, except a tired-looking older gentleman re-arranging some chairs in the largest room. The building with the spire is likewise empty except for a woman writing at a desk.

Both have the feeling of places that are used regularly — little dust, plenty of wear on the carpets — but not right now, for whatever reason.

Annoying. She doesn't have all day. (How long until sunset, by the sun's movements? How long are the days here?)

She reviews her mental repertoire of information-gathering spells - everything she learned and forgot and learned again over the long long years, everything she might try to meditate about that might help her.

Studying nature, the local terrain, general information, et cetera: not useful.

Asking animals. Asking plants. Asking all the birds in the city at once. But the birds are hiding from the rain, and what would she ask them anyway? She could find Bitch's territory that way, the birds would tell her about lizard-dog sightings, but it would take too long and the meeting place could easily be elsewhere.

Finding specific kinds of animals, plants, aberrations, magical phenomena, and so on: not useful unless Bitch's dogs happen to be in dog-lizard shape, and even then it might not work if their transmutation doesn't change their fundamental nature as dogs.

A variety of ways to study places and travel to them that are only of use once she knows where a place is.

Seeing any part of the city (without being a hawk about it): useless unless she happens to see Tattletale, Bug or Angelica, and the former two claimed they would be hard to recognize without their masks.

Finding and seeing through illusions: she doubts the meeting place is disguised by an illusion, rather than just being somewhere she isn't.

Seeing everything along a river: she had the bad luck to land in the only human city in the world that isn't built on a river.

At least two different methods of scrying, but she won't recognize Tattletale's surroundings.

Or she can go back to pick up their trail, which would be admitting defeat a little, and might also lead somewhere Tattletale would rather not have her go.

She'll try talking to people first. It's unlikely to help, without giving away information that would let someone track her, but she has no better ideas.

She can only do that once, though, because she can't change shape many more times and she wants to leave one in reserve. The last two buildings don't have enough people, and the first one has too many annoyed people. Has she seen anywhere central, with relatively many people, who aren't busy hurrying out of the rain or arguing with tax-collectors?

Extrapolating from how far the sun moved, the day here is probably 14 or 15 hours right now, and she has about 5 before sunset.

The rain puts a damper on how many people are out and about at this time without urgent business, but she does spy an enclosed building — probably a market, since it seems to contain many different shops — that has a crowd of people loitering inside. Some of them are sitting around at little tables eating food, or just walking from store front to store front. There is a large skylight, which is actually what drew her attention to this building in particular. Perhaps the other nearby large buildings are also subdivided internally.

Does it rain so much in this city that all their markets are built indoors? ...she appreciates the aesthetics of skylights. If people are going to stay indoors, they should at least see the sky. Oppara isn't big on skylights; they like to flaunt their wealth with high-quality magical lighting (as if it can compare to sunlight), not with giant constructions of glass.

She'll find a place nearby where she can land unobserved and change back to human. And then, an unremarkable-looking adventurer who teleported into the city for the first time will go exploring!

She is wearing tasteful leather armour decorated with leaves and carries a staff, and has the usual adventurer's set of weakly magical equipment - belt, headband, cloak, rings, some pouches hanging at her belt. To someone who can see magic, all of it is will look quite unremarkable unless they are very, very good at spellcraft, or have spent a long time around druids.

When she first enters the building, nobody pays particular attention. But as soon as they do notice her, she quickly becomes the center of attention of the small crowd. A few people flee from her, deeper into the building, casting nervous glances over their shoulders. Others just display a certain amount of tension, turning away from their shopping or hunching over their food.

A young man wearing a leather jacket — with small ornamental spikes on the shoulders, not practical for combat — glances at the other people he had been talking with, and then stalks towards her.

"You a cape?" he asks, trying to sound tough. "Or just a weeb?"

As far as Aria could figure out, Tattletale used the word 'cape' to mean 'powerful people', whether mages or fighters or clerics. It might be an established social rank or caste, the way Taldor has nobles. She's not sure of the implications of claiming to be one, but she doesn't want to explicitly deny being one either - not if that would imply lower prestige.

"I'm an adventurer from a far land visiting this city for the first time," she answers neutrally. "And the second term you used didn't translate. Do you have any business with me?" He clearly isn't wearing a helpful attitude, and she'd rather choose who to talk to.

And then she recasts detect magic. (This needs to be done every few minutes while she's using it, but that's fine; it's not unusual for people to go around recasting detect magic all the time.) Does this man have any magic about him, or any others she can see within sixty feet?

Not in the least — everyone here is completely nonmagical.

Jesse relaxes a little at her answer, but not much.

"Where on Earth are you from that you think it's okay to go walking around in costume if you don't have powers?" he exclaims. "Haven't you heard what the nine think of that?"

The nine what, some kind of local lords or something? Is this one of those places with sumptuary laws, where you can't dress like an adventurer unless you are one? She is one, though, so she doesn't see the problem.

"I am not powerless, nor am I dressed up in a costume; these are my everyday clothes. Who are these 'nine' and what is your relation to them?"

He splutters at her for a moment.

"You know, the Slaughterhouse Nine. The crazy people who go around killing people and torturing anyone who offends them," he replies. "There was that convention in ... California, I think? Where people were dressing up as heroes and villains? And the nine came and made an example of them for suggesting that villains were 'cool' instead of 'terrifying'."

"Is California in this city? Are you afraid they'll show up at any moment because they'll hear a woman dressed a certain way?"

He looks uncertain; he's not really sure where this conversation is going, but dealing with crazy people is hardly ever a good thing, right?

"It's, uh, no. California is on the West coast. We're on the East coast," he explains. "And it's not that they'd, like, definitely show. It's that nobody does it, because they might. And when they do, it's bad news for everyone even vaguely near their target."

He surreptitiously wipes his hands on his jeans.

"So you're telling me that this country has... nine very powerful Evil people, who spend their time hunting down rumours of someone who dressed in a way they don't like, or - who publicly admire Evil, I didn't really get that part... Or maybe have magic to notice when anyone does that, and then they come and murder everyone in the vicinity?" This isn't particularly unbelievable, Chaotic Evil people get up to much weirder stuff than that. "I still don't understand why you think they'd target me. At home I would be perceived as a fairly unremarkable adventurer." Human cultures are endlessly variable and maybe she has the wrong lapel pins or something. If everyone teleporting to Tian Xia had to dress up for it, she likes to think she'd have heard about it, but - probably not if it's new from the last few years and isn't a centuries-old tradition.

"Lady, have you seen anyone else wearing leather armor, that weird jewelry, and carrying a big stick?" he asks, rhetorically glancing around at the other people in the Mall. "You look weird as hell. But yeah — the nine are definitely evil. And it's not admiring evil they object to, really, it was ... trying to say that villains weren't scary. They want everyone to be scared."

Some people were pretending to be Evil, by wearing the local concept of a stereotypically Evil costume (which may or may not involve leather armor), but they also pretended that Evil wasn't scary, so some actually Evil people showed up to kindly explain that, no, they were wrong, real Evil is very scary indeed? That... sort of makes sense, as a story.

"I do not claim Evil cannot be fearsome," she offers. "Are there no local evils that you fear, and if not for the nine across the continent people here would be unafraid to mock Evil?"

"Ah. Um."

Jesse waves a hand vaguely.

"There are plenty of local villains, and I certainly wouldn't mock them, but they're, like, on less of a hair trigger? Lung is fucking terrifying, but he's not going to care what you're wearing, as long as it isn't, like, disrespecting asian traditions or whatever."

Maybe this Lung is so Lawful Evil that he cares more about disrespect to traditions than disrespect to himself. Or maybe this poor man is obsessed with Evil people who might object to his thoughts.

Aria does want to talk to the locals, to hear about this city and its local evils and perhaps some mention of Hookwolf, but she is on a sundial here.

"I need to buy a map, or get someone to sketch one, and ask where some places are in this city. I can't read the local language, so I'll need to take some notes, and I'll pay whoever helps me for their time. Can you tell me where to go? And if you want to tell me more about local Evil... uh, villains, I'd appreciate that too."

This is rapidly becoming the most surreal conversation of his month. He had originally come over here more to impress Ellen than anything else, but now that he's caught in the flow of the conversation he's strangely reluctant to break it off. This could be, like, an incredibly weird new cape, which is pretty cool. And getting paid is, if not cool, at least worth it.

"Uh, sure. I think the Brockton Bay Merchant's Association gives out maps, so, like, people know where to go to buy things," he mentions. He cranes his neck, and then points to a little collection of plastic pockets containing various pamphlets that has been attached to the wall between the entrances of a t-shirt shop and a place that sells chicken.

He walks that way, awkwardly half turning to see whether Aria is following him, and then plucks the appropriate folded paper from the piles and holds it out to her.

A merchant's map advertised to strangers should be good for locating major landmarks. The maps she saw in Oppara had important temples and palaces drawn much larger than life, to draw the eye and to assert their importance, and while they didn't much look like a bird's eye view she had occasion to learn to mentally translate between the two.

She assumes it won't have enough resolution to find a random street address, but she's still off to a good start!

Aria accepts the map and carefully unfolds it. What does it show?

It is just the sort of slightly exaggerated map she expected, although not too badly distorted. It shows a sprawling city built on a roughly circular bay. The map focuses on the downtown area (with an inset for the area right by the beach at higher magnification), where a number of shops are highlighted, but it also includes some other notable locations, including a building floating in the middle of the bay. The streets are laid out on a fairly regular grid, with the occasional existing street cutting across them.

The streets are labeled, although that doesn't help her much. It's difficult to guess whether the meeting spot would be shown on the map or not, because the map doesn't go all the way to the edge of the city.

Jesse helpfully points at one of the highlighted buildings, on the north side of the downtown area.

"We're here — this is the Greenrun Mall, but people mostly just call it the mall."

A castle on an (artificial?) island out in the bay implies the rulers care more about security than ease of access, which fits with Tattletale's story.

With Jesse's help she locates the 'bank' and mentally reproduces her travels so far. Because of the rain, she didn't appreciate the true size of the city; it sprawls out well past what she could see.

"Thank you. Who are the main gods worshipped here and where are their temples? I might not be familiar with their local names; tell me their main areas of concern."

Jesse blinks in surprise.

"Um. Well, I think it's mostly just the one god? I mean, plenty of people just aren't really religious. But I think the most common religion is Christianity, since it has a lot of variations. And Islam and Judaism aren't nearly as common, but those three religions all worship the same god, I think, but, like, in different ways."

Jesse casts his thoughts back to half-remembered Sunday school. 

"And God is mostly concerned about ... people not doing bad things so that they don't go to Hell, I guess is how I'd put it. There's a lot of rules like loving your neighbor and not eating ... fish on some days? Or maybe it's only eating fish on some days? It was a long time since I've been to church."

"I guess there's plenty of refugees from Japan that follow the Shinto gods. I think the leader of those is all about ... storms? And maybe farming?" Jesse tacks on, lest someone think him narrow-minded. "And there's also, like, Buddhists and so on, but I'm not really sure if they have gods in the same way — I think the Buddah is different."

That sounds pretty reasonable! One or more local Good gods, and a bunch of others mostly worshipped by immigrants, or perhaps just ethnic groups this man is unfamiliar with.

It is never not weird to hear maybe-Erastil and probably-Gozreh referred to as minority gods, but farming and the weather are not, fundamentally, city concerns. This man must come from generations of city-dwellers who think farming means the drovers coming in on market day. Captive generations, born and raised in the artificial heart of the city and unable to survive outside.

"Please point out the biggest temples on the map, where people go to worship and for healing. And then I'd like to learn how to find places with an address given. I can't read this language, you see, only speak it." She has a vague hope he'll think of a solution she hasn't but failing that, she's like him to read out the names of the biggest streets and quarters for her.

She takes out a quill (she made it herself, naturally) to make annotations in Taldane, and a tiny traveler's vial of ink (guaranteed no spills!)