Sortition: Karrag | Glowfic Constellation

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Karrag has a wife and children, hiding somewhere in the hills. Assuming they haven't also been captured, and pressed back into slavery. He would count how long it's been since he saw them last, but shortly after that he was sentenced to the mines, and now there is no sun to count by. He counted sleeps, at first, but sleep comes rarely, too, and there is no constant stone to mark. So he knows only that he has been here longer than most of the men and boys around him, and that his time is drawing near. He prays that slaves arrive in Volkorgoth, but it seems unlikely. Volkorgoth is a land for warriors, not for beasts of burden. He should have died a bandit. Now he will end up a ghost. There are many in the mines, echoes of despairing men and boys, violent in death as they were too afraid to be in life.

He feels the hand on his shoulder like Pharasma’s touch, and cannot tell, at first, whether this is what it feels like to die of bone-deep exhaustion, with no other cause. But the touch passes through him, and suddenly he can breathe, as he has not breathed in months. He stands and turns, to look on death.

Death is a human woman from the desert, speaking calmly with the overseer in dwarven. She looks up at him, appraising. He would have feared that look, once, but anywhere on Golarion is better than the mines, and Karrag is not dead yet.

“Karrag of Hellcoast,” says the woman, “you have been selected by lot as a delegate to the constitutional convention in Westcrown, which will determine the laws by which the government of Cheliax will rule. Come with me."

He drops his pick and goes.

Karrag is listed in her records as an agricultural slave. Clearly, something happened between then and now. Now he is stuck in a hole in the earth with dozens of other people, both men and children, some of them as small as Rahim. The air is thick with poison dust. Everyone is poisoned, apart from the occasional dwarven overseer, and most of them are coughing. They are uniformly barefoot, and half are practically naked, what clothes they have reduced to rags. A child's body has been dumped behind a rock.

It's easy enough to find the head overseer. A middle-aged dwarf with a thick beard and the expression of one utterly inured to his surroundings.

She does not take a deep breath. It will not help, here. "My name is Naima Cotonnet, spellcaster in the employ of her Majesty. Are you authorized to sell the slaves here?"

The dwarf shrugs. "No, but you can have them for twenty gold a head, if it's not worth tracking down the duke. I don't record deaths, just ore numbers."

She nods. Grimaces at the scene around her. "I thought that Chelish spellsilver mining was done on the Maiestas river."

"The Pillars operation? They mine spellsilver there, sure. Only way humans can do it, but it's a trickle, compared to what we dig up here."

"Most of these men are human."

"Most of these men will be dead inside a year. Maybe two, for the orcs. But you can't sate Chelish appetite for spellsilver with whatever shit rolls down the river. This tunnel taps into the vein it comes from, and we dig out a lot more at once by going underground to the source. Three times the ore at half the expense, easy. It's dirty work, but it's where the lion's share of your pretty rings and headbands come from."

Naima taps her fingertips to the terrifyingly magical rod at her hip. The week of the Four Day War, she spent almost a month of time making it, in a flurry of reckless magical experimentation. Her materials exploded, setting her back several weeks, and destroying at least ten thousand gold worth of spellsilver. She had been so, so frustrated with herself - but about the time, not about the metal. In the end, she had not needed the rod for the war at all, although she had later used it in the fight against Arazni. It was less use for their final mission than she'd expected, because their final mission had required a dozen fights back to back, and the rod can only be used three times a day.

She closes her eyes and estimates, now. At least one hundred deaths, she thinks. She deals in such numbers every day. But for a moment, she lets herself feel as if she killed the men herself, with her own hands. Much worse than the experiments that led to Varanthe's creation, if she weighs only in blood. Perhaps the men deserve it, but the children cannot.

There is no point in thinking about this.

"Overseer, what would you pay me to heal the men here before I leave? I do regenerates and heal much of the damage done by poison and disease, though the poison itself remains in the body. I normally charge one gold per person, but right now I'll do it for half, since I'm here anyway."

"Fool deal for you, but I've got no reason to take it. This is the duke's operation directly. A new shipment of his convicts and orphans will arrive for free at the same time next month no matter what I do."

"These ones would last longer. I assume you could still do more work with more men."

"Maybe I would. But listen, wizard, it's one thing to give you a half-dead orc. Nobody in Pharasma's wide creation gives a shit about him. But I start handing out gold, and the accountants might take notice, see? Heal the men if you like. But I wouldn't pay you the soul of a cat for these bastards, much less currency."

She grimaces. "I will take the orc as payment, then." And she starts down the corridor again, tapping as she goes. A child breathes. A man regrows a leg. Another regrows his fingers. The men around her breathe, and breathe, and breathe, and breathe. It will make no real difference. She can fix the tissue damage, but she can't remove the poison from their lungs. Even if she could, they would die in another year of continuing to do the same work anyway. There isn't even really any mercy in it. She reaches the end of the corridor, and has no work to channel her anger into.

"Pick up the corpse," she tells the orc, who stares at her, uncomprehending. "This one," she tells him, hauling up the dead child. The orc takes him from her, and she teleports them both to the temple of Abadar in Westcrown.

Corpse to an acolyte of Abadar; three silver to transport it to the Pharasmins. Gold to a real Abadaran, to set up his account. She looks at the orc's clothing, or lack thereof, and grimaces again. Some part of her dearly wants to take the man clothes shopping, however confusing it would be. Because it would be confusing, really, but also because she would be good at it. Someday she will have time to fix everything she sees for long enough that it personally bothers her, she thinks. Then she corrects herself. Someday, she will have saved enough people that they will have had time to fix everything she would otherwise have seen and been deeply bothered by. She will have only petty annoyances, then, and time to deal with the sorts of emergencies a tailor handles.

Not today. "Aurelio, this man needs lodgings, clothing, and an explanation. Clothing first. You will go to the tailor on Daveth street and buy three outfits, fine enough that he looks like a carpenter or a carriage driver, and simple enough that he can put them on without assistance. One hat. One pair of good boots. Collect a receipt and submit it to my secretary. Explain the convention while he is being measured."

She turns to the orc. "You will be free in two months. First, you have to yell at us."

Then she teleports away, to get the next one.