Blai in Haven City
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"With individual names and everything! Sounds like the kinda thing some little village somewhere without any archaeologists would make up."

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"...why shouldn't they have individual names? Iomedae used to be a human, for one."

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"...Okay but you see how gods who used to be human are the kind of thing people in an isolated primitive village would come up with."

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"Not especially, I haven't met anyone from an isolated village without any contact with mainstream religion."

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Shrug. "Fair enough."

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Back to coughing up rocks! "They're all different alignments and areas of concern, it would be confusing if they didn't have names. Iomedae's the goddess of triage, picking the problem you can make the most total difference on and focusing accordingly."

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She puts her head back down. "I know what triage is," the medical professional mutters exhaustedly.

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HE HATES THIS SO MUCH "- it's translating as a medical term but it applies more generally."

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"Cool," his coworker says.

"Ooh," says the bartender, leaning in a little. "don’t know about triage."

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If the bartender wants rocks she can have them. "In a healing context you want to - ignore corpses and ignore anyone who isn't unusually important in some way but will take up a large share of spells to get on their feet - or whatever non-spell things you're dealing in instead. And you also want to postpone anyone who isn't in danger of getting much worse, unless they could be helping. There's an 'ideal' amount of injured, sort of. The more carefully you do this the more of your people live till the next day. And if you are known to be efficient with your resources people who want to lend theirs to a shared goal will be able to trust you to do what's best with their time or donations or whatever it is they have to offer instead of spending it on grift or impulse."

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"That sounds important!"

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"Yes. It can cut against some Good impulses people have - it's not bad to give your spare coin to a beggar," he doesn't think so, anyway, please Iomedae forgive him he is flying VERY NEARLY BLIND, "but my goddess is about finding the place it will go the farthest and do the most and free up the most additional resources for tomorrow, and that's probably not whoever you happen to find without looking."

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The bartender nods cheerfully. "Wow, are you really proud that she gave you magic powers?"

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"It was a blessing. I don't know if 'pride' is the right attitude, because I'm a resource, and have characteristics besides my personal character - for instance I had, at that time, a fort that I commanded, fighting ontologically evil monsters called demons on a routine basis, and it could have been that I was the best way to apply pressure to that situation, rather than the best person in all the world - in fact I strongly suspect something like that is true, because She has her own theocracy full of people who are probably better suited to Her by training. It's not impossible that She somehow guessed I would wind up on this planet and chose me for that, though on my planet prophecy hasn't worked for about a century so it would be a pretty remarkable feat of mundane prediction even for a god."

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He is succeeding at drawing attention. His coworker speaks up again. "Prophecy stopped working on your planet?"

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"Yes. A god died. It caused massive disasters the world over, including the portal letting the demons in and also the destruction of prophecy. I believe it still works on other planets and actually now that that's occurred to me I should see if Iomedae can give me some of those spells in the morning."

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"Whoa," says his coworker.

"Ask her if we're all gonna die," says the person who was being condescended to earlier. The person who was condescending to him earlier just snorts.

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"- gods speaking to mortals is very expensive for the gods. Not in power, particularly, but in the budget they all collectively allow themselves and one another - if they all meddled and spoke and interfered as much as they would be naturally inclined to, they'd destroy everything in the fighting over it, and at best cancel out their opponents, so they all abide by a rationing of communication and miracle to prevent that. I do not expect Iomedae to speak to me, I have to figure out based on my intuition and Her holy book and things I have heard from Her established church what She would want of me here, what the problem I can best apply my abilities to is given the circumstances in which I find myself."

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"You see how that's the kind of thing someone would make up, right?" says his coworker.

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"Gods do perform miracles and grant visions, just not as often as you would expect an unconstrained person with their power and values to do so. Where mortal effort can suffice and oftentimes even when it can't the gods stay their hands, busy on hundreds or thousands or millions of planets; the greatest crisis we can see is seldom going to be the greatest crisis a god can see. Iomedae studied this during her mortal life; she was a paladin, which is sort of like a cleric with fewer spells and more swordfighting, and she was planning to ascend to godhood, and did so only after she had accomplished the most pressing things that a powerful mortal with no intervention budget limitation was the best tool to solve."

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His coworker makes a face.

"Uh-huh," the condescending guy says with grim satisfaction. 

"I want to see a miracle," says the guy who was being condescended to earlier. 

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"The kind I can show you are my spells. Today I can create water, or make you a tiny bit better at the next thing you try to do, or make something glow, or repair a broken thing, as many times as I want."

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"Any broken thing?" asks the condescending one.

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"Not, like, an entire boat, you need a higher circle spell for anything really huge. It will not replenish expended fuel."

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Well, now the condescending guy wants his contact info, Blayde leaves his booth to come ask if Blai is available this afternoon, and the floating fat man floats closer and looks very interested.

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