"Yes, we should be expecting that. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to get the books."

"And I look forward to them!"

While they wait for the book delivery, they can get some admin work done. Expensing the diamonds and sorting out a better acquisition process even if they might only be using it a few more times, reaching out to the University of Edojaf's Faculty of History to queue up a translation request, getting two [Recruiters] onboarded in advance so they can scale the screening processes faster once they're taking applications, and of course putting up adverts.

Blai probably wants to give an open lecture the first week of Mouring, or even the first day, the program manager says, to brief any interested individuals on what a [Cleric] is before they start taking applications. They can book a venue at the Scholarium, do a Q&A... let her put up a calendar.

She thinks they should do staggered cohorts next month, fast-track early applicants into a class by the second week so they can make the most of their time. They essentially only have eight weeks. Then they keep interviewing while the first cohort runs, to get a second cohort that starts mid-month. Near the end of Mouring they might want to reopen applications for an Elfebelfast batch, or they might want to pivot into a church-building stage with the ones they have?

They won't be able to decide which of those things to do till they know how many people will get picked, but this game plan makes sense. In the meantime, he is partway through a translation of the Acts of Iomedae; he doesn't expect to get any Iomedaean clerics because Iomedae is having a bit of a time at the moment, but he can still leave the book around in case things improve in a year or ten and there are would-be Iomedaeans around to read the Acts. Plus, it will help Kheltish translators get a sense of the - genre - though Iomedae's book will not necessarily strongly resemble anybody else's in most respects, and get ahead of any cultural translation difficulties.

They probably want to copy and redistribute the Acts of Iomedae just on its literary merits of being from another plane. Once the nation catches wind of the whole story there'll be people petitioning to import more Golarion books through outsiders. It will probably be useful for Blai to generate an opinion or policy about that, though it won't be urgent for a while.

The [Translate] spell is fully automatic, but very old texts do have culture gaps and connotational drift, and there are Drathian translators, so there's probably some optimal configuration involving [Mages] casting [Translate] and actual professional [Translators] doing corrections, possibly with the assistance of Share Language?

If he lets the University make a copy of the Acts of Iomedae now they can do a first-pass translation for him to compare, before the other books are here.

"I don't have any objection to importing more books through Axis but they are going to cost a lot, as you just saw. Share Language trades off against Owl's Wisdom, so I'll want to give recruiters sample Owl's castings in the days before the books arrive. The University is more than welcome to make a copy of the Acts, or I can do it, if they're slower than Scrivener's Chant, which does about a page a minute."

"Will all books be that expensive or are holy texts especially so? I think their copyists might faster than that, but more importantly their time probably trades off less expensively than yours?"

"Holy texts might be unusually expensive, but I suspect information about which things are expensive is also expensive, so they'll have to keep the price fairly high to cover any variation in that factor that they can't tell us about, I think? I can spend the time on composing my lecture if the copyists have it handled."

The thought processes that run Blai's world hang together on examination, but are so incredibly alien.

"Then we'll see if anyone has the budget to pay you for nonessential literature."

If he lends the Acts of Iomedae to the University of Edojaf—they're located out in the city, not affiliated with the Crown but large and well-connected in the way major city universities are—they'll have a translation back to him tomorrow. It's generally correct on the semantic level, including picking the right terms to mirror connotations of word choice in the source, a bit hit-and-miss on metaphors, and loses the verse.

He was losing the verse too. Do they have any trouble with the concept of living gods, over there? Some of those metaphors seem to him to be saying particularly important things about Law and/or Good and need another pass.

They still feel compelled to point out their gods are dead a lot, and have to be reminded that Golarion's gods are from anothet world! No major issues with the translated texts, though they do trip over some of the concepts a bit—he'll have to explain what praying is, they have the word but seem to have confused and inconsistent interpretations of what it means. The Acts can probably be published without any disasters, maybe with a preface and judicious footnoting to clarify the otherworldliness of the contents and define terms properly.

If he Shares Language, they'll have substantially more trouble reading the Acts in its original form, though having read the translated copy beforehand seems to ameliorate it?

Metaphors can be corrected! There are no antimemetic properties around understanding Good and Law, though it's a framing that's unfamiliar.

Well, the Good and Law is really the important part for the general publication, and the part where you can get magic if you seem like you'd make a good employee/agent/friend/servant/whatever of a given god for the lecture series.

Once he has all his revisions and signs off a final version, they can get it copied and distributed by the end of the week.

While that's going, does he want to brief the new [Recruiters]?

Yes. And cast Owl's Wisdom on them.

"Huh. Oh— huh.

"I have some ideas for how to test for this, but are there standard tests in Golarion for measuring Wisdom?"

"No, there's one for Cunning - which I can't cast - but if there's anything corresponding for Wisdom and Splendor I don't know it. Otherwise I'd just suggest having me look at a roomful of people with it. In my home country the standard proxy was being a serious sort of person, we were recommended by our teachers, but I think how high wisdom manifests might vary by culture, I don't think it's actually incompatible with having a sense of humor or anything."

Maybe that works for teachers, but for their case unless you interview the friends and family, all you're going to get is "being a serious person in a job interview", which is hopelessly confounded, though maybe not zero information.

"What I was thinking was situational perception tests, they're used for roles like safety officers and supervisors—presenting a scenario and asking what's out of place, or what's likely to go wrong. And maybe social perception and emotional intelligence tests, but I might be overindexing on the way it enhances my own skillset, there."

They think for a second.

"We can run a battery of tests on the first wave of candidates and have you check them over, and see which tests have the best correlation with your evaluation? Do you expect new [Clerics] to be able to do the same thing soon?"

"No, unfortunately Owl's Wisdom is second circle."

"Do you anticipate we won't have second-circle clerics for one year, five years, indefinitely? You said it only grows with combat... do combat simulations count? It counts for less but still does a bit for our combat-leveling classes."

"Combat simulations do not count. It's not strictly the case that only combat counts. Gods can increase their followers' power by pure fiat. This is expensive, in the intervention budget sense; the most famous case is that there's a theocracy where, to lend support to His chosen successor, Abadar increases a new pharaoh to eighth circle all at once. Very rarely, you wind up with one circle being granted by fiat to, say, settle an incipient schism, or to make it obvious to people that a particular addition to the holy book as dictated to the cleric in question in a vision is verified and accurate. You should not expect that to happen here. You especially should not try to create the conditions for it on purpose. The thing that isn't fiat, that happens in virtually every situation, is that people circle up through use of their powers in high stakes situations. It doesn't have to be combat. That is the most common, most straightforward way to do it, but people can circle up by doing espionage, rescue missions, particularly backstabby court politics - things where something actually rides on success that actually matters, accompanied by actual danger for someone even if it's not the person who's grinding for their next circle. This is one of the things I mean when I allude to the possibility that a lot of clerical activity will have to happen outside of Khelt. It is to your country's credit that it is so calm and so safe, and also it will not get you any second circle clerics."

"I see. One issue is leaving the borders of Khelt ordinarily requires forfeiting citizenship. Finding the best ways to level... circle up [Clerics], I mean, sounds like a complex topic that might require His Majesty's input.

"The reason I ask is if we have the ability to reproduce Owl's Wisdom in the future, we'll be able to calibrate screening processes on our own, whereas if you're our only access for the foreseeable future, we want to get it as good as we can while you're here to consult."

"It's possible to create magic items that replicate its effects, though usually more weakly. Unfortunately, I don't know how, so I can't teach it; there is probably someone in Axis who can but I can't begin to guess how unfathomably expensive that would be, especially since outsiders can't use mortal magical techniques the same way mortals do. But I offered the Owl's only as a gesture in the right direction. Once you have more clerics you'll be able to tell what clerics as a group are like."

"That's true, and we can compare test performances of the chosen to the rest of the cohort."

Nod nod.

Between ironing out recruitment, translation and publication details, and lesson prep in the leftover time, it's quickly the end of the week.

The summoning chamber is the same as the last time. The usual observers from the Scholarium and the Crown are present. They have diamonds for payment, more than last time, organized by size, colour and clarity.

The Crown observer mentions to Blai that it would be useful to know the relative value of the diamonds on offer, to optimize spending. "But only if that information is less expensive than the plausible gains, of course."