The place is still very busy. Mostly by dint of being crowded - even if all the emergency healing that can be done has been done, a lot of people are physically there, and that means that walking across the room takes four times as long, having a conversation involves repeating everything two or three times over the din, and a lot of official staff time is being spent on breaking up fights about who kicked who in whose sleep and who was in a mob versus who was innocently at home putting their now-crying-and-in-the-way children to bed.

Aniol is still there. He caught a nap in there at some point, though it's anyone's guess how, and has been up for a couple of hours since then, having a long dark night of the sold.

He's not too far from the entrance.

"- you're one of the druids, yes? And that's - ah - I can show you where they're storing the bodies."

Yep, that's her, extremely obvious druid. She does not particularly want to wade into such a crowded space.

"Yes. Are they resurrecting the dead delegates? Because if not, I'll have other arrangements to make."

"Someone told me they most likely would but I didn't hear that from Archmage Naima herself. Apparently they might even get around to my nephew, though not my servants." Thisaway, step over these sleeping people - "Do you want me to carry her?"

She is very clearly not having any trouble carrying a corpse. Probably this is one of those rituals of civilization thing?

"No, thank you. ... Condolences for your nephew."

"Thank you."

Silence falls as they head to where the bodies are being stored.

"I am going to hold the church responsible if it is lost or buried," she says, flatly, but... yes, okay, she'll put the corpse down. She doesn't exactly want to carry around a corpse all day, Ant Haul or no. "Do you think that's likely?"

"No, but I pinned a note on Xavi, just to be sure. Abadarans are very organized but it never hurts to have more redundant information about who a body belongs to... do you have paper, I have some." Bought it off the temple to write a letter to his sister.

"I do, thank you." She gets out paper and starts labeling accordingly. 'Delegate Liushna, body retrieved by Voshrelka for resurrection. DO NOT BURY.'

And then she... has nothing to do. Hm.

"Druids of my power have a spell that can make a banquet, given a free table. I'd planned to ask the temple what I should do with it to still use it and avoid a stampede, but..." She glances at the crowds. Yeah, no, she doesn't super want to wade through that again in an attempt to talk to someone.

"Hmm - well, normally given that it's Abadarans I'd say buttonhole a priest and ask what they'll pay you for it, but again given it's Abadarans they'll pay you after the fact, assuming they appreciate it at all, which they might not because it'll keep all these people here that much longer instead of sending the hungriest out to seek their fortunes. Shall I see if I can inquire of one whether the teller counter is free for the purpose or whether they'd rather you went somewhere else for it?"

Fucking Abadarans. Why are they like this. Her expression of distaste is undisguised and very heartfelt.

"I'd sooner go somewhere else, the intention is to feed the populace, not to be paid for it. I want direction, not reward." The reward is the goodwill for druids.

"Yes, they're not really about farming Goodness. You might want the Shelynites or the Erastilians depending on whether the emphasis is the goodness or the farming." There's a quick, automatic smile, punctuation more than mirth.

"... I've no interest in 'farming' Goodness. It's a matter of practicality, and fostering goodwill for my kind. So. Whichever is more likely to earn me that."

"Erastilians are closer. Do you want me to walk you there? I assume you can take care of yourself, but it's wretched out."

She knows where the church of Erastil is, she led a wizard to it last night. But she doesn't say that; this man seems like he wants an excuse to escape doing nothing, and possibly the crowds, which she understands well enough. This is as silly of a dance as all of the others of civilization, but she won't steal an escape from him if he needs these silly rules for it.

"Sure. Though I'd sooner have you do the explaining, if you don't mind."

"I can do that." Out they go into the rain. "You like where you're going, or you don't like the idea of thinking about Good like that?"

"... It's more complicated than that." Also, she's an elf, and a powerful enough druid to be worth a reincarnate, even if she'll have to make the trek to Kyonin itself for the right kind. But she is risking an eternal death by coming here, so she'll engage with the question as it was meant. "I don't feel like paltry offerings to the shrine of Goodness will much matter for me, anymore. I'll go where I go, whenever I get to going."

"Anymore?"

"I am three hundred and sixty-four years old. The Barrowood has been, essentially, at war with Cheliax for about a third of that. I have killed a lot of people, in my time." The phrasing is meant to imply in battle, but that is of course not the case. She's not going to bring up how she probably has one of the highest body counts in the city, but she's aware of it.

"Oh, is that all, that's downright fixable, if you believe the preachers," he says ruefully.

No, it really, really isn't.

"I do not think I was wrong to, really. Is the problem."

"Well, I'm the wrong person to sell any mainline approach to getting out of the red, my casting about has been otherwise focused."

"Oh?"

This topic seems to hit strangely close to home for this man, and she's curious as to why.

"Sold my soul when I was sixteen. A lot of people have sold their souls, actually, I'm in correspondence with a few, but I think I might be the only one at the convention, at least the only one who doesn't keep it closely under wraps."

"Ah." She doesn't tell him that was very stupid; he already knows. "Well, if you would like to summon and kill the devil you sold it to, I'm not against assisting."

"Does that work? I think he'd have heirs."

"I've no idea. Souls do not seem like a thing that could be sold, let alone 'inherited.' But it would be very satisfying, no?"

"Honestly, not really. Contract devils do what they do like any other monster. And he paid me for it. I didn't even get completely ripped off the way some people do. It might be satisfying to drag my father out of Hell; it was his setup."

"Well, patricide or devilslaying, I've no issue with either. I've a mind to earn enough circles to become an archdruid either way."

"I suppose it might be a mercy to call the man up and end him, in a way... I'm not sure if that makes it more or less satisfying."

They reach the temple of Erastil. Aniol goes in, comes out again and shows her inside to where they've put together many small tables to make one big one for her.

She'll need ten minutes chanting in order to make it, but soon enough: banquet. It's a bit more showy than Create Food and Water.

For all that she asked there be a single large table for this, it doesn't seem to require it; each of the small tables gets a differently colored leaf patterned tablecloth. They seem to be seasonal themed, with the different tables having different sorts of foods based on the associated season. Spring involves a lot of fruits and nuts and berries, summer is a lot of meat and fish and fresh vegetables, autumn breads and cheeses and pies and soups, and winter has desserts, some of them frozen, and various fruity drink refreshments. Neatly stacked plates and utensils are provided; they are a strange sort of wood, like the trees themselves decided to grow into the lovingly patterned plates and bowls and whatever else. There are also napkins, which. Just seem to be leaves, actually, if leaves that are very soft and good for actually being napkins could theoretically be found in nature.

"Eat to your taste over what seems most nutritionally sound; the magic is built to fill in the nutritional gaps of those that eat, regardless of if you have a balanced diet or gorge yourself on the desserts," she says, stepping away and letting everyone ravage the feast. "It will last for an hour."

The Erastilians have a lot of people and they can all get through the buffet, shooed by clerics if they linger over the table too long.

Aniol looks at the food for a while and then picks up a bowl and fills it with sorbet; a lot of the people have never seen sorbet and they're going for the pies and meat preferentially.

Voshrelka herself doesn't touch it, just perches nearby and is very obviously the druid responsible for this druid based feast. She works on copying over some maps, while she's perched nearby. Not being a wizard, it is of course by hand.

He'd offer to have his man Scriven it for her but Dídac is dead.

"Does the feast only last while you're near?" he asks.

"No, I'm free to wander off. But the point is to be a helpful druid. So it behooves me to be around and appear responsible and such." She looks the opposite of thrilled by this.

"Ah. Rehabilitating your image. It's got to be nearly as annoying as rehabilitating a soul."

"More so, I'd argue. I can't even kill anything for it, not really, and it's more than just me at stake."

"Do you want me to stay and engage you in conversation so no one else tries to?"

".... Absolutely. Thank you."

"It's no trouble at all, I'm somewhat at a loose end now that everyone I brought with me to the city is dead and the house where all my books were has been torched. Though I suppose the rain might have saved them, if it got there before the roof caved in, I've not checked."

You know what, she respects that sort of straightforward and brutal honesty.

"I hope it was. I suspect that the Plant Growth circuit maps I gave to another delegate might've been lost in a similar manner. So." She motions to the map she's copying over.

"Another step of the image rehabilitation plan? I suppose even if you didn't obviously abhor Abadarans for some reason it'd be less effective at that particular goal to auction the castings."

"Quite. Also I've no idea what I'd do with the money anyway. Who would I buy things from, the woodland animals? They're more easily bought with nuts."

"If you really wanted to know, I'm sure the Abadarans would tell you even if you made faces at them the entire time."

"Not particularly. They're..." She traces a bit of coastline as she tries to find the words. "... in my experience, they seem of the mind that if something is not translated into money, it should be, and if it can't, then oh well, it should be anyway. On top of how the coins and dollars themselves change and aren't accepted in different places, or have different values for the same coin in different places, or need to be changed to something else, or whatever else have you. And money is all made up anyway, but they pretend it's the realest thing of all." She shrugs. "I prefer dealing in tangible things."

"I like Abadarans. Not because I especially have any of those intuitions, but because -

- they're allowed to want things. It's not a trait most churches have in such abundance, the being allowed to want things. I can imagine having lived my life that way with many fewer implausible changes to the past than I can if I try to imagine having been an Iomedaean or a Shelynite or an Erastilian."

"That part of Abadar is at least intelligible to me," she agrees. "Even if what they want is for me to play pretend with them that coins have value because it's 'economically enriching.' But... why would you imagine your life as if you had values that weren't your own?"

"Oh, but you overestimate how much my values have been at play in my life as it's gone so far."

"Mm. A fair point, with Asmodeus and his ilk. My intended point is more... it is very easy, to get lost in 'what could have beens.' But they change nothing, really. Is there something wrong with you as you are? Besides the," she waves vaguely, "inane soul debt hanging over your head."

"Oh, I think it's mostly that. If that were sorted out I could give a lot of money to charity, abdicate in favor of... probably one of the girls, actually, they'll get along best with the new administration... and retire somewhere to do good works. But I find it hard to engage spiritually with any instructions that seem... incognizant of the facts of the world as I moved through it."

Nod.

"But... you are feeling pressured to engage with Good gods and their rhetoric anyway, because everyone is insisting on pretending that the world isn't as it was, and everyone can just be better again, if they just try hard enough. When it can't. Do I have that right?"

"I don't think the pressure is aimed at me in particular. Even the mob last night wasn't about me. But I do get terribly sick of the rhetoric. They keep equivocating, you see, between becoming a better person and being spared the fires of Hell, and with every word they speak I know perfectly well they'd just as soon throw me to the flames and get only happier about it the harder I might try to avoid it."

"Yes. That would be very aggravating. My condolences." She considers him; it seems like he... wants something from this conversation. Direction, maybe.

"So. The gods of Good have nothing to offer you, really, except maybe a flesh to stone and a promise to not forget you in a closet. Do you want to be a better person even so? Or hang the hypocrites and their cruelty cloaked in righteousness? Or something else?"

"I don't think I'm that bad. I was very much a rascal when I was younger, but I've settled down in the last several years. I can imagine repenting, if it seemed like it'd help to do it as - a discrete activity, rather than just going, hm, I suppose that generally speaking it is the case that if I want a thing I should pay for it instead of seizing it wherever I see it lying around, yes. It'd be in a very Abadaran way, though, like that."

"So? It'd be more honest than half of the fools crowding Good churches they don't believe in," she says, in this crowded church of a Good god.

"Maybe, but their insincerity can buy more of value than all my insight." Sigh.

"In the sense of your own personal fate... yes. In the sense of what you care about here in the material..." She shrugs. "Well. That's up to you, isn't it?"

"I'm mostly comfortable, except when people have been recently murdered around me. I suppose I could spring for the Raise for my servants if their remains weren't burned beyond recognizability but that's a couple of quality magic weapons right there to shoot monsters with. - we get the mountain kind, in Juncosa, not the forest kind."

“I’m not going to take offense if you tell me monsters wander out of the forest and kill people. It’s true, and they do. Anyway, I am by no means attempting to be your conscience. Do whatever you want, you’re the one that has to live with yourself. You just seem to me like you’re… attempting to find direction? Helping living things to grow is, as you might notice, kind of my whole profession.”

"I don't suppose there's an obscure forest beastie that would love it in Hell but tragically is destined for the Abyss or something."

“To trade in your place? Then it’d need to be sapient, that’s the sort of devil-logic I’d expect…” She stops her map copying and thinks. “… An ettercap might be amenable, if you can convince it that Hell’s a new place to spin clever webs. I doubt any goblins would want anything of the sort, but they vary enough you might find one that can be bribed anyway. One of the fey might be able to get you out of the deal, though there are no guarantees that you’d like the result…” she trails off. “I’ll think about it. If you end up looking for any woods solutions, avoid any deals with hags, that will go poorly regardless.”

"I have to admit I was not expecting you to have anything in mind. I would love to be introduced to an... ettercap... or amenable goblin, if one would like to be pitched on the idea, though I must also confess I've tried this sort of thing before and the contract devil was not too impressed."

Shrug. “I don’t know any personally, trying to find something appropriately Evil that would make such a deal would be dangerous, and I cannot say if a devil would accept the trade, but. Were you expecting me to tell you to repent and accept your fate? If only we could send that rhetoric to the Hells in your place.”

"It would crisp up so prettily in the flames of Avernus, wouldn't it?"

“And spare us all the drudgery! Alas.” Back to map copying. “It sounds more likely than ordinary men accepting such a trade, but, well. I think life extension is the better bet to buy time to find other options, frankly.”

"Do I look that old? I think I have a little while to look into sifting through goblins and orcs and such. Barbarian orcs, not Baron Ramirez et al, they've cleaned up very nicely."

“Elf,” she points out, dryly. “Humans often all seem as children to me, but forced to be adults despite that. I think more time would suit all of you, frankly.”

"You're probably right."

“Mhm,” she hums, and she’s back to map copying.

The banquet has been quite ravaged by now; it doesn’t look like anything of it will last the full hour, actually.

Soon enough, the Erastilians stop ushering people in, and those that are left finish it off. Voshrelka deems her job of sitting around looking responsible for the feast complete, and stows her half finished map.

"Thank you," she repeats, to the surprisingly tolerable noble. "For the company and social shielding. I'll think on ways to solve your problem, and get back to you if I think of any suitable candidates. Either way, fortune favor you."

Then out she steps, into the rain. It's important to capitalize on her work from last night, which means tracking down the idiot dhampirs. ... The easiest way to do that is probably by the trail of corpses they left. She doesn't think it was only the mob that lost their lives in that mess of a confrontation. As she recalls, the carnage was spread out. So... best to go picking through the remains for any mysterious corpses that had been a bit more dead than the standard before they were killed. Sooner rather than later, before anyone gets any bright ideas of attempting to burn any corpses or something.