This shallow valley in the foothills of a broad mountain range is usually unoccupied aside from the occasional shepherd and flock. Today, though, it's bustling: much of the space is taken up by a hastily erected tent city, mismatched canvas scrounged from wherever it could be found, with cookfires clustered in the rockiest section and a field hospital laid out near the small lake at the bottom of the valley, all in use by an especially heterogenous and ragged collection of humanoids. Near the hospital, a bit of space has been left free for various purposes, including the music performance it's currently being used for, which has drawn an audience of children and their parents.
"Clean and Reduce Pain are the only uncommon orisons I know - among the common ones, maybe Virtue if you don't already have it, it gives the recipient temporary physical resilience."
Nod. "I assume you have Purify Food and Drink, too? It won't benefit as much from the repeatability but it's useful in ways you might not expect - in particular if we're having a waterborne disease outbreak that's what you use on the wells for it."
He turns and enters an inn.
It's cozy! There's a comfy couch by the door and a low sturdy table for travelers to leave their bags on while they check in, and they can smell roasting meat and hear people talking and laughing in the common room in the back.
Raafi asks about amenities; they have some rooms with desks and can put Blai up in one, but no on-site baths, they recommend visitors try the bath house a few blocks over.
Well, that sounds rampantly uncomfortable to navigate in a strange culture, all right.
When Blai fails to indicate approval, Raafi thanks the innkeeper and heads back out. "Sorry, I don't have all the inns memorized in this part of the city anymore. There are a few more we can try."
"I'm accustomed to just having the fort wizard Prestidigitate me where I stand, heating water for baths at the Worldwound would be insane. If there weren't any inns with private baths I'd figure it out in a bathhouse but it would be a considerable undertaking."
Should he mention that the big bath house - run by the Luxuriants, of course, not that they advertise that - offers a service where they bathe you, no he should really not.
"The Cleaning orison can do that at the same time as your clothes, just not at the same time as everyone else's clothes, if it comes down to it. I'm sure we'll find someplace with private baths, though, it's a common thing to want." He continues on.
Blai follows. Wonders vaguely how Grec is doing, though for the last few years Grec has been important enough to not be on Prestidigitation duty, they had a newer wizard for that.
The next place Raafi wants to try is just a couple blocks away, not far enough for the silence to get too awkward. Unfortunately, he freezes when he steps inside, holding a hand out to block Blai from going any further while he listens to something - presumably the hubbub from the common room. After a couple seconds he turns snd shoos Blai out.
"Gnomes," he explains when they get outside. "I recognize the accent."
"It's no trouble. All right, third time's charmed..." he heads off again, to a place a few streets over and a couple streets down. "This place used to be my favorite, but they changed their ale supplier and the new one wasn't nearly as good - won't matter to you of course. I know they have baths and they at least used to have desks in the rooms, it's been a few years."
Not so many years that the proprietor doesn't recognize him, though. "Raafi! Long time no see!"
"Jan! How's business?"
"Oh, better, better. You were here for it when Old Nan retired, I think?"
"The thing with the drinks?"
"Yep. Tough times, that. His apprentice never did bring the price back down to something we could afford, he's selling to the adventurers now. Ungrateful. Anyway, it took us a few tries but we found someone even better, if we can tempt you back?"
"Not tonight, I have an invitation elsewhere - my friend needs a room, though, what do you have open?"
Raafi gets him set up with a corner room with a desk and access to the baths, and promises Jan that he'll stop in next time he's got a spare evening to try the new ale.
Maybe "party member" is just too long.
Blai settles into his room and attempts to figure out laundry and bathing arrangements.
As Raafi predicted, they don't have overnight laundry; it's 4 copper for a load (up to three outfits) to be taken away in the morning and dropped back off by dinner. The baths are open 24/7, though, just take the provided key down to the mens' bathing area on the first floor where there's a big tub of water being heated over a fire, a slightly smaller tub of cold water, and an attendant to haul the water into the individually sized tubs in the private bathing rooms, which have soap and scrub brushes and towels stocked by the tubs.
He will do his own laundry in the morning, he supposes, since there's a spell for it he can maybe get and if he can't Raafi can. Is it customary to just wear a towel when going back up the stairs?
...if it is the option presented to him he'll take it. Any other complications in his evening?
Then he will make progress on the chess book and then sleep and then prepare the day's spells. He can get the Cleaning spell, and when he tries it on his clothes he can catch it. which makes the clothes shopping trip retroactively unnecessary but oh well. He doesn't prepare Reduce Pain (he wants Guidance and Mending and Create Water) but it feels available. And a Make Whole and a complement of oh-shit spells in case something comes up that he can dump for healing when it doesn't... and then he and his clean outfits go out to meet Raafi.
Raafi's down in the lobby, catching up with the daytime staff. "Good morning! I wasn't sure if you'd want a hot breakfast; if not there's a pastry place right up the block."
"Excellent. That probably answers what you'll be doing today, then." He pauses to say goodbye to the hotel staff and leads the way toward the pastry shop. "I need to get started on figuring out where exactly the refugees are going to be sent, so everybody knows where they're going and it's not too chaotic when we split up."
"Do you already have an itinerary written for me or was that waiting on knowing if I'd be able to use local orisons?"
"I have it written down, it's just pretty sparse." He hands it over.
- Greens
- breakfast
- Mage's Guild - get Pearl
- Big Reeds
- fix granary
- retrieve tent canvas
- Refugees
- Mend tents
- Raafi: Sendings about channels
- Raafi: discuss refugee relocation with Pelorians
- Raafi: discuss refugee relocation with refugees/determine logistics
- Raafi: misc troubleshooting
- lunch
- Twin Ridge
- channel
- shopping (canvas, bag of holding)
- Hempholme
- channel
- dinner
- shopping (canvas, bag of holding)
- Refugees
- sleep