...The tinticures she's talking about are actually not the same thing—by which she means substantially inferior to—real healing potions, which is more of a rich people thing. Maybe it's a dialect difference.

        "Skills, or something?" Ilique says instead. "Eh, well. My specialty is body strengthening." And poisons, but that's not the kind of thing you say to a travel companion you just met, and it's implied enough anyway. "It's why we're heading for Ger; they have all the interesting herbs."

"Golarion abilities are grounded in something other than the Skill system, so I tend not to call what I can do by that name except for things I've picked up since I got here."

"Spells are where it's at," says Veront. "Or I don't know what else it is you have going on, but you said you have spells, at least. You know what you're getting."

"Yes, I have spells, though they work differently than the local kind too."

"Different, like how?"

"Slower to cast, limited uses per day, I have to decide which ones I want for the day in the morning."

The wizard squints. "...The last one sounds inconvenient. Better than not getting to choose, at least."

"There are people on Golarion who don't have to do that but they usually have far fewer options over any timescale longer than one day."

"I'm just happy to stab things with a stick and take what the levels give me," says Tessane.

They'll carry idle conversation for a while longer, but Veront will go off to a side to practice his magic after a while, and Tessane will get to redoing some of the stitching on her elbow, and Ilique isn't much for talking. There's not much on the road to point at.

Tessane will point out the rock formations that mark nominal border between Germina and Reim, when they get to it. The vegetation gets sparser out the farther they go, and it's not quite desert, but it's close to it. There's no destination in sight, but the path is worn out by ages of traffic, and the specks of a caravan ahead of them are visible in the distance.

Hopefully he's not slowing the party down too much. Maybe there's a skill for walking normally in armor that he'll get if he keeps Ant Hauling every day.

If they're slowing down for him they're not indicating it. They're carrying all their stuff on rucksacks, which is still easier than walking in armor, but they also don't have Ant Haul.

When they break for a meal, Ilique will take five minutes to go off and catch a snake from under a rock, which she extracts the venom and pries the coppery crown scales from.

When the sun begins to set, there's still no town in sight, but there are specks of campfires in the distance, at the foot of a rock. They've been flagging for a while now, but they pick up the pace when they see it.

"Are we likely to join that party indefinitely or just camp by them tonight?"

"Just for the night, unless we make unplanned friends," says Tessane. "That's the usual rest stop; there's probably more than one group there."

Nod.

There are a few other parties there when they arrive. The spot below the rock is nicely out of the wind, and nice and flat.

There's the caravan they saw earlier, the traders and guards having set up their camp around the carts. A couple of young men squabbling around a fire. A group of four set up on the outskirts, uniformed, armed and lightly armored, maybe mercenaries or soldiers. An old woman accompanied by a boy who can't be twenty, selling rations and supplies, judging by the sign and the board of samples in front of her.

Blai doesn't need to buy anything. He sets up for the night and then casts a Light and Prestidigitation to wind down playing chess with probably only himself.

He gets some curious looks, but nothing else. If anyone has any idea what he's doing—or if they don't—they don't bother him about it.

Ilique stays up a while to get some brewing in, but most people will turn in for an early night. Not all of the campers have bedrolls; the ground is soft enough, in any case.

He finds a bedroll superfluous when you have Endure Elements and your feelings don't matter. The ground will do.

He's woken by the sound of shouting in the middle of the night!

- and he's up and he's got his mace in one hand and the other ready to cast!

It's pitch dark, but someone casts [Light] or something, and suddenly lit in startling relief is the shape of a giant, armored snake, twisting over the caravaners' camp—two, no, three of them, one dragging off a struggling camel, another only a shadow against the sand, trying to circle around the outside of the campsite.

The others are waking up, slower than Blai, but some of the bodies by the caravan are unmoving. A few figures with spears are jabbing at the giant snake while others try to drag the limp bodies away.

"Sand basilisk!" someone cries.

He never did cast that summon. 1d3 fire elementals, go, and then once they're there and he's closer to the center of the action, Prayer.

The snakes are plated in thick scales and adapted to the desert sun, but aren't fire-immune. The one terrorising the caravan make its saves against catching fire, but clearly doesn't like the heat. It spits paralyzing venom at... okay, it's not sure what it was expecting to happen there.

How do the fire elementals like being smacked by a tail the size of a tree trunk? The –1 on its attack roll isn't going to get them out of that.

This, and the edge from Prayer, is buying the caravaners a bit of a reprieve to get their paralyzed(?) out of the way, but the camel-eating snake has decided to join the fray, and that other one is still circling around to flank them.

Blai casts a Divine Favor and wades into melee, flanking with an elemental.