Okay, that doesn't match any afterlife he can think of; though he has a brief flicker of imagining he's somehow been plane shifted to Elysium when he notices the music performance in pride of place, it looks genuinely poor and not merely whimsical-in-a-way-that-comes-off-as-poor. Has anyone noticed him and conveniently taken the decision of whom to approach off his plate or does he have to figure that out now?

Nobody seems to have noticed him. However, as he looks around he'll notice a cluster of booths facing the field, each with short sign in an unfamiliar language - not all the same language, there are at least three alphabets in evidence - except for the one at the end, which has a sign that he can tell says 'Help Desk - Any Language' despite the design on it not looking like text at all.

Only half of the booths are manned, but the all-languages one is being staffed by an elderly human man with what may be an unfamiliar holy symbol hanging from a cord around his neck. He's speaking to someone, but there isn't otherwise a line for the booth.

Huh, he's never heard of a spell like that. He will go get in line for the Any Language help desk.

The ...person... currently at the desk seems disgruntled about something, but the details aren't clear through the language barrier. The man on the other side of the desk listens calmly, looks something up, asks a question, and writes down the answer, which apparently solves whatever their problem was, at least well enough that they head back into the sea of tents.

"Can I help you?"

"I don't know. I have no idea where I am and am pretty confused about how I got here, though some kind of monster was involved."

"Huh. Where were you before the monster? Did you get a look at it at all? - Would you expect a cleric of travel to recognize your language, because if you didn't come up from the slave market it's odd that I don't."

"I was in northern Cheliax, heading from Taggun Hold to Westcrown for the constitutional convention, and the monster looked like a snake with its head replaced by a full length mirror, which I've never heard of before. I imagine Desnans on other continents might not recognize Taldane but if I'm still on Avistan it would be surprising."

He struggles a bit to keep the delight off his face. "Unfortunately I'm fairly sure you're not from this planet; I've never heard of any of those places and the god of travel is Fharlanghn, here." He touches his holy symbol as he says the name.

"Well, that also explains why Taldane would be unfamiliar. My planet is called Golarion."

"Oerth, most commonly, and welcome to it. Unfortunately I'm in the middle of something right this moment," he gestures at the refugee camp surrounding them, "or I'd offer to take you around and see if anyone has any idea of how to get you home. - I should ask the wizards, actually, if they think waiting will affect your chances - how much do you care about getting back, should I be using my emergency supplies on it?"

"Oh, no, I don't think so. I was expecting to be on the road for at least a couple more weeks, and if I'm getting home by magic then presumably it can deposit me directly where I meant to go. I won't be late for a month. I have a Create Food and Water prepared, if you would show me where to put it to best use?"

"What I'm worried about is there being a magical trace that they could use to get you home that'll be gone in an hour, or a day - I don't know that it works that way but it might."

"It hadn't occurred to me to worry about that. My planet and Goddess are actually having a bad year and if that's at issue I'd appreciate your checking."

"All right, I'll just be a minute." He unfurls a portable hole on the ground behind the desk and descends into it, returning shortly with a couple of wands and a charm bracelet. One of the wands is apparently Sending; he speaks a few characteristicly clipped sentences and waits for a response.

"My teleportation specialist friend doesn't think it's likely, but she's going to come check anyway, it'll be a few minutes for her to get ready."

Wow. A wand of Sending. Blai doesn't whistle but only because he's too Chelish.

"Was there anything you wanted to ask in the meantime? Or we could definitely use that Create Food, we're having to teleport it in right now."

"Just show me where you want it. Bread and stew and eggs all right?"

"If you can do edible fungus they'd appreciate it a bit more but it's perfectly fine if not." He grabs a walking stick from just inside the tent flap and leads the way toward the cookfires. "They had an earthquake here a little over a week ago, and it caved in part of an underground slave market; the ones on this side of the cave-in managed to get free and we're helping them out."

"I can do mushrooms for at least some of it."

"Much appreciated." Walk walk. "So, tell me a little bit about your goddess? Fharlanghn is true neutral, god of travel and unofficially freedom, trade, and cultural exchange; Pelor sent some clerics for the hospital and a couple of paladins in case the grey dwarves decide to bother us, and he's neutral good, healing and community and the sun and unofficially humans, his symbol is the sun, and we have a local druid of Ehlonna around somewhere, she's neutral good, goddess of human-maintained wilderness and domesticated things, and her holy symbol is a rearing unicorn."

"Iomedae is the lawful good goddess of defeating evil and triage. She actually mostly chooses paladins, but I'm a cleric. Her symbol is the sword and the sun. She's the patron of a country called Lastwall, on Golarion, and inherited some of the concerns of the dead god Aroden."

"Sounds like we want to get you home, then, if she's having a bad year."

"I don't, mind you, know what I am supposed to do about that at this time, I haven't made it to a catechism class yet, but presumably there is something I am meant for."

"Well, you presumably had something in mind? Not that that's a guarantee, of course." They've arrived at the cookfires; Raafi points him to an area set aside for conjured food.

"I was previously stationed guarding the border of the Worldwound but one of the archmages who conquered my country recently wanted clerics for the constitutional convention so I was on my way there." And before he has to answer any questions about that: chanting for Create Food and Water.

"Sounds like interesting times," he says, when the chanting is done. "I meant when you went for your clerichood, though, in my experience that generally doesn't take if you're very wrong about how you're going to fit into your church."

"I - oh, I didn't ask Her for it, I would have told you it was all but impossible, it was a blessing but a surprise."

"Huh. And you hold spells like a wizard, you don't make them on the fly like a sorcerer, right? That's a difference between our worlds. Here, to be a cleric, you have to reach out to your god; if They reach out to you it works differently. It's also much rarer."

"I prepare spells, yes, that's how it works for clerics on Golarion. I believe in most cases in the more organized churches the gods prefer people who have been making a deliberate effort to align themselves but it is not unheard of for even those to make contact completely out of nowhere."

"I know some scholars who'd love to talk to you, if you don't mind staying for a few extra days. How about clerics without gods, do you have those on Golarion? Oh, and where did you arrive, Zelena's going to want to see it."

"Just over there - I am aware of some weird spellcasters who are sort of like clerics crossed with sorcerers and do not have gods? None who are definitely completely normal clerics apart from not having gods. And I don't mind staying for as long as several weeks provided I can make it to Westcrown when expected."

"I'll see if I can arrange for it - you should start thinking about how you want to be paid, too, I'm assuming in magic items but weeks is already a bit tight to find anything that's not common. And I can pay for any spellcasting you do for us here."

"There are magic items that are affordable in a single digit number of weeks of civilian third-circle casting?"

"Not many, but the scholars I have in mind know that I know what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like this is worth to them."

"I suppose I should be telling the Abadarans about this place when I get back, too, so I will want some pictures for them to target Plane Shifts."

"Oh, now I'm jealous, we can't target a Plane Shift more accurately than a few hundred miles. How detailed do the pictures need to be, do you know?"

"Oh, it's not more accurate for ours, they just need to be able to identify the planet, and maybe teleport on from there. I don't have either spell so I'm afraid I don't know the accuracy requirements."

"Well, I can get you some that are good enough for our spells, and since Zelena's going to be here anyway I'll ask her if she has anything that'll work in the other direction. Or maybe I'll just go with you and wait for someone to come for me, I'm sure Fharlanghn won't leave us with no way to get there if He can help it."

"The Abadarans will love you. - I don't know if you have Him here, He's the god of trade."

"I'm sure there's a regional god for it out there somewhere, but Fharlanghn is as close as we get in most places."

He eyes the angle of the sun, then takes the charm bracelet from earlier out of one of the pouches on his belt. "Ready for company?"

"Of course."

He flourishes the bracelet and announces Zelena's name, and a willowy woman in indigo robes with an intricately embroidered backpack appears.

Raafi speaks to her in a local language for a moment before turning back to Blai. "You know, I didn't catch your name? Anyway, this is Zelena Vortexa, sixteenth tier teleportation specialist, and her familiar Blink, and I'm Traveler Raafi."

Zelena asks a question before he can answer. Raafi points her at the area where Blai appeared and she strides off.

"Select Blai Artigas. Did you say sixteenth? Our spells only go up to nine!"

"...sorry, I thought that didn't feel idiomatic - our spells go up to nine but there's an upper and lower tier, sixteenth tier is upper eighth circle."

"Oh, you subdivide the circles, I see." Normally he would be freaking out about meeting an eighth circle, too, but he's seen a few in passing before at the Wound and also he got a lot of what fretting remained out of the way on his route to the Convention since there were going to be archmages there.

"Yeah; they're fairly distinct, at least for us, and people like the acknowledgement that they're making progress." He starts meandering in Zelena's direction.

Is... he supposed to follow...?

Yep, Raafi will pause and wait for him if he doesn't immediately take the cue.

OH NO HE HAS BEEN SPOTTED BEING INDECISIVE. He catches up at once.

Raafi doesn't seem to mind, at least.

"So, you said you were guarding the border of the worldwound? What's that about?"

"The Worldwound is closed now - a party of archmages has been very busy - but for about a century it was a portal to the Abyss, so we fought a lot of demons, though in terms of time expenditure it was more about logistics and weatherproofing because it's in a very cold region and my country took the northern border."

"Are you all right over there, should I be thinking about putting together a reconstruction team?"

"In the short term things are worse because a full complement of demons in the usual quantity is still present on our side of the portal, and at the same time a lot of support was withdrawn by forces that had something to fear from an open portal but not from a quantity of demons hundreds of miles away. But the number of demons will only drop from here, even if they do some damage on their way out, so it depends on what else you'd be doing with the resources you'd put into such a team."

"That sounds like paladin work, and that's not my strong suit in terms of contacts. I can ask the Pelorians, though, next time I do a supply run, they should be able to figure it out."

They've reached Zelena; Raafi's first attempt at asking her how it's going gets a stream of technobabble identifiable even through the language barrier, but his second attempt gets a much more reasonable response. After a couple of follow up questions: "Well, there's good news and bad news. She does think she can get you home, but it's going to be a research project to do it."

"Oh. How long?"

He passes the question along.

"There's a chance you'll make it to your convention but it's a fairly slim one; more likely at least half a year."

"Then I would like some of my payment in the form of a Sending as soon as I can think who would be the best person to trouble with this information."

"Of course. I have plenty of charges in the wand, I'll make sure to keep one for you."

"Probably Commandant Terzić... but it certainly doesn't have to happen today or even this week."

"I don't see a reason to wait; as someone lost far from home it's my responsibility to help whether you can pay for it or not."

"The thing is that I have only ever exchanged letters with him, he's not involved in the convention himself, and he's probably terribly busy. It would be better than bothering an archmage but if I can think of the name of an Abadaran that would be ideal since I can pay them for the inconvenience after the fact, only I'm drawing an absolute blank."

"Ah. Well, there's no rush, either, unless you think you're going to want to head off somewhere without me. I expect to be here for at least the next week, maybe two, and I don't have plans after that, so I can accompany you somewhere if you'd like."

Zelena speaks up at this point, and it very much seems like Raafi chides her for whatever she says.

"Zelena wants to invite you to her tower, after this, so she can get a closer magical look at you."

"That sounds fine?"

Raafi pauses for a moment, considering the situation. "I should probably come with you, Zelena doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to houseguests - nothing too concerning, she's just absent-minded enough for it to be a problem. I'll just need to let the Pelorians know where I'm disappearing to."

"- as you say," says Blai, who has resisted quite a lot of pressure to pursue status and attention from important people in his time and doesn't know what to do with it.

"We can take a break first, if you need some time to get your head together. Or instead. I know this kind of thing is a lot, all at once."

what no that the opposite of helps. "Is there anything useful I should be doing here and now? I have my channels for the day still open."

"Channels are a new one on me."

"You can't channel energy? Thirty-foot burst, at my circle it's usually a little better than a Cure Moderate Wounds, for everybody in the area."

"We have cure spells but not like that, all of ours have limited subjects. Zelena -" and he lapses into the local language for a few sentences. "All right, let's go tell the Pelorians the good news. How many of them can you do a day, by the way?" He's already moving before he finishes the sentence.

"Only two unless you want to lend me a Splendor headband, which might make sense if no one else can do it."

"I loaned my last one to one of the teams trying to make sure everyone made it out safe downstairs, but I can probably pick up another in the next supply run. Is there anything else like that, that you might need?"

"The rest of my abilities run on Wisdom so far as I know. Unless I am going to need to hit demons with my mace."

"If you want to hit demons with your mace I'm sure I can figure something out but I wouldn't expect it to come up here. Anything else you have that we might not, though? The spells seem equivalent so far, substituting healing for other spells, turning undead, probably you've got a couple idiosyncratic abilities depending on how you relate to your god or that you've picked up?"

"Turn undead? Turn them into what? But yes, I have domain powers, one is" actually much less useful than the one it replaced, but "a one-round thing where it takes the guesswork out of the same sorts of things Guidance works on. It cooperates with Guidance, too, and the other one is - sort of itself like Guidance but cooperates with it."

"Huh, I could see that coming in handy. Makes up for in breadth what it lacks in depth. For undead, we can turn them away, and either destroy or command them if we're powerful enough, depending on alignment - it's not that useful most of the time, one of my idiosyncratic abilities is expending that for more teleportation and I'm quite happy to trade it all in for that, most days."

"I would certainly rather have a teleport than the ability to send undead to, what, bother someone else, yes, if I wanted to kill one I'd channel at it probably." Used to be able to do that through the mace, and if he were going to fight undead he'd see about getting a sword instead and see if it worked that way, but he has not historically expected that to come up.

"That one's learnable and I think I still have the scroll, if you want to see if it translates at all, but you also have to be especially aligned with one of your god's domains - it's teleportation for me because that's what the travel domain gives me for spells. - coordination tent is just up there," he points.

"I don't think it would be that great to be able to do the touch of law more often, though I may just be underutilizing it." Tentward.

"Just to check, you do get more from your domains than that? I glossed it as teleportation because that's most of what I use, but we get a domain spell slot at each circle we can cast and we can prepare one of two spells in it from our two domains, plus we get another minor ability from each."

"Yes, I have domain spell slots and they work like that."

"It's weird how it's so close to ours but not quite identical." He pushes the tent flap aside and holds it for Blai before going through himself. There's a halfling wearing well-maintained but fairly plain clothing in yellow and brown with a golden sun pinned to the front of his shirt inside, doing paperwork; it doesn't take long for Raafi's explanation to have him excitedly running off. "They'll come get us here when they have everyone rounded up for you. What do you usually charge for this at home, by the way, relative to a normal spell, or does Iomedae prefer that you not?"

"I'm actually completely unfamiliar with the going rate; I don't believe I'm forbidden to charge but I'm at least not obliged to."

"All right, I can just make a guess of it. My finances are a little complicated, is the thing, since most of what I have belongs to Fharlanghn rather than to me, so if you want anything from me that isn't directly or indirectly related to your travels I'll need to account for it as payment for services rendered."

"He has mortal finances that are his and not a church's? Interesting."

"Well, we don't exactly have a church in the usual way, you couldn't get one of us to stick around to run it. It's more conceptually His than anything He has a direct hand in, but you do hear of someone being depowered for misuse of funds, every once in a while."

"I think most Chaotic gods on Golarion don't have churches and a fair few of the Neutrals also don't, but it is interesting that you distinguish instead of just having - personal funds that, if you weren't using them to lead a lifestyle that advanced your god's aims, you'd get declericed anyway. Like you're a church of one with a separate personal budget."

"Some of us don't bother to keep separate personal funds and that works perfectly well, but I don't mind the extra work, mostly it just means I have a bag of coin kept separately from the rest - Fharlanghn doesn't do charity outside of His domain, and I like to have the option, you see."

"You know, I'm not sure Desnans actually care much about - no, that's not true, Desnans like smuggling people even more than they like smuggling books, but you are still coming across markedly interested in helping people with travel in a way that... I guess I haven't met many Desnans on a personal level and should stop trying to compare you to them."

"Oh, helping out people who've been displaced for whatever reason is absolutely within Fharlanghn's area of concern. It's just that if I find myself in a town that's not going to survive the year because their druid took on a monster they couldn't handle, and they don't want to solve the problem by relocating en mass and I can't find someone who wants to move there and take over the role, Fharlanghn doesn't consider it His problem to solve, and sometimes a few bags of grain and a decanter of endless water will fix it for them."

"This planet is so - you have druids that attach themselves to towns?"

"Something like a quarter to a third of Ehlonna's druids are, yeah - Her domain covers planted fields, noncentrally. We also have a god of truly wild places, your druids might be more like His. What's your world like, with this sort of thing?"

"I would have said druids were seldom particularly religious, though like many things I'm talking about here it's not from personal experience; we have a nature god but the sort of person I'd most expect to find worshiping Her would be a sailor."

"Huh! Druids are much less likely than clerics to follow a particular god, here, maybe one in three druids is atheistic compared to one in fifty or so clerics, but I'm not sure I'd describe them as less religious at all, they just do it directly rather than getting that kind of guidance."

"Do... what... directly?"

"Decide what kind of practice works best for their beliefs."

"I guess I wouldn't call that a religion per se."

Raafi shrugs. "They're not any less serious about it, it makes sense to treat them the same to me."

"Understood." It's about how seriously they take themselves? Nobody else has to take them seriously for it to count??

"Well, think of it this way - the other god I follow, Lastsi, is one of the youngest ones, not much more than a thousand years old, and I'm not sure She has two hundred clergy yet. The biggest atheistic druid circle I know of, on the other hand, is over three thousand years old and has at least that many members, my guess would be closer to twice that. What makes one a religion and the other not, just the god?"

"Yes? The druid circle is certainly a longstanding institution but things can be longstanding institutions and not religions. Countries. Schools. A given order of paladins, who are the same religion as the order across the street but have a different focus. - Iomedae is younger than that."

"Oh, wow. Anyway, I wonder if that's a linguistic difference or a functional one - I'm going to have some questions about how your gods relate to their followers once I've had time to figure out what they are."

"I have a copy of Her holy book on me, if you would like to look at it. It's mostly about her adventures when she was a mortal paladin."

"I might take you up on that, if it starts looking like I won't be able to visit."

"If anything stops you is it likely it will also stop me?"

"I'd expect so, but there's a reason I called in a specialist for this one."

"I suppose you might have fewer young gods because you wouldn't have the Starstone. An artifact that Iomedae's own patron Aroden made when he was mortal, which allows those who touch it to ascend immediately to godhood."

"Wow, yeah, we don't have anything like that. We do have a few ascended gods but I think they were all hand picked by another god to ascend."

"Iomedae more or less was, it just happened that the god in question left the artifact behind. It did also ascend a small number of other gods, less notable."

"Sounds like quite a story. - I am interested, it's just that one of our core tenets is that it's always best to go see for yourself, and failing that to hear it from someone who's been there. Books are better than nothing but no substitute for real experience."

"I'm not sure what precisely you have in mind to see. I suppose you could tour Her country, Lastwall."

"Tour the country, talk to some clergy, attend some services, see what you do for people, yeah. Maybe tag along on a mission or two, if you're as focused on that kind of thing as it sounds like you might be. And probably read the book eventually, if I get that far into it, but I'd want to read it with the context of the living practice if that's an option at all."

Nod nod.

"One of the things we do is advise people, when they know they need a change but don't know where they should be, so we take that kind of thing pretty seriously. Not that you should let that stop you from telling me things, you certainly count as someone who's been there."

"I'm a - recent convert, I don't know as much as I should and most of what I do know is from the book." PLEASE DO NOT ASK HOW HE IS THIRD CIRCLE AND RECENT

"Huh, that certainly sounds like there's a story there. For another time, though, if at all. So, hm - what else do you do with your time, any hobbies?"

"I'm very fond of chess."

"Good news, that translates. Though I'm not sure which kind you mean - I can muddle through a game of rock chess without embarrassing myself too badly but I'm not entirely sure of the rules of cloud chess, for example; those are the dwarven and halfling versions in particular."

"I actually have a book of variants - on me, I'm carrying everything I own - and they can get very distant, but the base game has pawns move one square forward and capture one square diagonal, knights jump in an L shape, rooks move by rank or aisle, bishops on the diagonal, queens do both of those, kings one square in any direction."

"That sounds almost like rock chess, except that instead of the knight they have a dragon - jumps up to twice on a diagonal - and you can move two pawns in one turn. Cloud chess is more complicated, capturing pieces transforms them rather than removing them the first time or two."

"I don't believe those variations are in my book! Maybe I'll write them down and then someone can Scriven from the expanded version."

"Maybe I'll see if I can pick up a chess set in the next supply run, I really am pretty dreadful at it but probably somebody else knows how to play or would like to learn, or maybe you can teach me some tricks."

A human wearing the same golden sun that the halfling had comes in and speaks excitedly to them, gesturing for them to come with him. "They're ready for you," Raafi confirms, and heads out.

"I usually just Prestidigitate the chess pieces. I'm not good at anything else you can do with the spell but I did get that down." And out he goes to do his channel.

"Huh, we don't get that one."

They appear to have hastily deconstructed a couple of tents to make a space big enough, and it's packed tight, with the less ambulatory patients sitting or lying on the canvas of the downed tents. Some of them seem quite badly off, to the point where Blai might wonder why nobody has taken a moment to Stabilize them.

"Oh, Prestidigitation isn't a cleric spell on Golarion either, I just picked up barely enough of one wizard spell. - oh dear." He quickens his pace. He wasn't prepared for healing this morning, he was prepared for travel, if nobody else had it either that's a little weird but mostly bespeaks lack of coordination and this was a surprise emergency - when he reaches the center out goes a burst of positive energy.

A cheer goes up from the group, and the youngest of the Pelorians bursts into grateful tears.

"Is there going to be a different group for a second channel or should I do another one here and now too?"

"They have some more people they want to bring over, if you don't mind waiting." One of them is already directing the bulk of the group out of the circle, while others explain what's going on to the newly conscious, who they seem to be leaving in place for the second round. (One of the older ones is comforting the crying one, instead.)

"Of course I don't mind. I wish I'd had Stabilize prepared, did we lose anyone waiting for the circle to be arranged?"

"I don't think so, we ran through all our spells pretty quickly but I think the Pelorians knew enough mundane doctoring to keep everyone we couldn't get to together. I really should try harder to keep a wand of Cure Minor Wounds in stock - that's our healing orison - but it's too easy to run through one of those once I have it."

"Why would you need a wand of an orison?"

"...for the same reason I'd need any other wand?"

"You can't catch an orison and use it again? What about cantrips?"

"No? Now that you bring it up I can sort of see how I might try it, maybe some wizard somewhere figured it out and just never shared the trick." He takes a notebook and pencil out of his belt and jots something down. "I'll have to mention it next time I meet a cleric of the Archmage - our god of magic. It'd be game-changing, if that works for us."

"Would it help to watch me do it? If you can't then - do you need water anywhere, I can create plenty of water -"

"I wouldn't expect it to - I never got into spellcraft, I don't spend enough time around wizards for it to be worth it. We do have the creek for water but I'm sure the people farther away from it would appreciate not needing to haul it as far."

Blai nods and waits, very still as a conscious compensation for the urge to fidget, until they've swapped out all the patients in the circle.

They're significantly faster at it this time, partly because some of the refugees who heard the cheering came to investigate and stayed to help. Some of them stayed to get in on the healing, too, and there's still a bit of negotiation going on at the edge of the circle about whose scraped knee is worse than whose sore back when the halfling from before comes over to tell him to go ahead.

He can extend an arm in the negotiation direction to try to get the circle centered a little bit that way and catch them both.

"You've done a lot of good here." Raafi claps him gently on the back. "I should go check on Zelena, but if you'd rather stay and help them get people rearranged I can loan you the necklace of Tongues for a few minutes."

How rich is this man. "I'd like to be shown where water would be best placed, or maybe many Guidance castings if that would be more valuable."

"That'll take longer than I'd like to leave Zelena alone, but, hm..." he looks around, and calls out to a grey-skinned orcish-looking woman, who turns from what she's doing to head over to them. As she comes, he takes off what's presumably the aforementioned necklace and hands it to Blai. "This is Diona, she's a bit of a community leader for the refugees, she can get you started. Diona, this is Select Blai, cleric of Iomedae, the goddess of triage and defeating evil; can you show him where it'd be best to make drinking and washing-up water for everyone? And bring him back to the clearing when you're done, if I haven't found you by then."

    "Sure, I can do that."

OKAY he will WEAR the NECKLACE of TONGUES. It's just worth more than every object he has ever touched in his entire life put together, that's all!! That's FINE. "Thank you very much."

    "Thank you, Select. How many castings should I be planning for?"

"Oh, as many as everyone needs, he has a quirk for it."

    "Oh! Well, I can definitely work with that. We'll just, hm..." she thinks for a moment and then leads him off through the tents, stopping here and there to fill barrels and cookpots and mixing bowls and, in a couple of cases, waxed canvases strung up like hammocks. She's not chatty, but instead keeps a keen eye on their surroundings, occasionally pausing to offer advice or a correction to one of the people they pass, or to ask someone to run ahead and make sure containers are ready for them.

He will create water! He has done it thousands of times and it's very straightforward.

They're up by the far end of the encampment by the time Raafi catches up with them again, and he waits for Blai to finish casting before joining ranks with them. "So, it's not good news - the way she thought she might be able to throw something together for you isn't going to work, something about crossing a field of some kind? and it's going to be at least six months; she'll know then whether it'll be longer. She headed back; I was right, there was a trace, and she got everything from that that she could get from examining you, unless you happen to have some specific magical reagents in your pack."

"No, just a couple of books and - and letters and my coat and things."

"If you want a hug I'm told I give pretty good ones. Or I think the next casting spot is going to be over there."

A what. ...Blai is going to give back the expensive necklace, it is complicating the question of whether this man is hitting on him. With that safely handed off, is this man hitting on him?? That has never happened to him before! How about Blai doesn't acknowledge that that might have been a thing that was happening at all and instead heads straight for the next casting spot!

Raafi seems entirely content to take the necklace back and follow along, leaving Blai to his thoughts except to clarify where to go when Diona's pointing isn't sufficient.

Blai can create ten gallons of water every six seconds wherever they want it to go.

It looks like there are a couple hours of light left when they finish, and Diona sends someone off to try to find materials for a tent as they head toward the cookpots. "I don't think we're likely to have much luck with that for tonight, but you can have mine if not, I'm more comfortable sleeping rough than most."

IS he hitting on - oh, no, he's volunteering to sleep outside of the tent - still though - "My travel plan involved staying at farmhouses when I could find a hospitable one and sleeping on the ground if I couldn't and I don't see any farmhouses."

"Well, the offer's open. I do think you should stay pretty close, at least, if something happens in the night nobody else will be able to tell you what's going on. I'll need to talk to Geneia and the Pelorians about our plans now that everyone is fit to travel, but I assume I'll be heading out for supplies tomorrow and probably bopping around a little bit to see if I can find any better prospects than the nearest city to drop everyone off at, and you're welcome to come with me for that if you're not comfortable with the necklace and don't want to be without a translator. They're going to want to stay for at least a few days, though, in case there are any stragglers still on their way up."

Whyyyyyy is he blending all the weird friendliness with practical considerations - oh, right, he's not Chelish and he doesn't know what Chelish people are like, that's got to be it, maybe this is totally normal for foreigners talking to each other. OR he's hitting on Blai. What is the Foreigner Thing to do here - "The necklace isn't uncomfortable per se, I'm just not accustomed to carrying anything that valuable."

"I'd guessed; most people don't realize. I have an in with some bards who can make them more cheaply, if that makes you feel any better about it."

(He's not hitting on him. Not that he'd turn him down, necessarily, but 'nervous and withdrawn' isn't really his type.)

Nod. "The Abadarans will be delighted. - did she say, if it was going to be possible to go back and forth enough for it to make sense to trade any more than what I can carry on me when I go?"

"Probably not. It sounds like it'll be a hassle, closer to a Limited Wish than a True Resurrection quest but still not something we'll be doing casually. I'll definitely be visiting, though."

"I'm not familiar with the quest colloquialism."

"That does seem like something that could be different - you have resurrection spells, I assume, and they probably require a pretty hefty offering to the god providing the spell? They'll also accept someone having completed a quest in place of the offering, here, if it's impressive enough - figuring out what's a good enough quest is more of an art than a science, but you're liable to be at it for years for a True Resurrection."

"- to the god? No, absolutely not, what would Iomedae want with a diamond?"

"Diamonds are the standard fallback but I'm not sure any god prefers them, it's better to offer something more useful or more aesthetic. It's just all diamonds, for you? Do you know why?"

Diona peeled off from the group when they got to the cooking area; Raafi has followed his nose to one of the pots and laddles some stew into a bowl, which he offers to Blai.

"It's anything rather than just a spell - it's a spell rather than a routine miracle granted when any lay worshiper asks for it and isn't being an idiot to do so - because the gods all police each other to limit their intervention on the Material Plane. There are so many cross-purposes among them that - thank you - that they write off the vast majority of the power expenditure they'd put in if they were not so restricted, and operate through limited and usually very specific and standardized interventions. Picking clerics and granting cleric spells according to all the operative constraints is a major one and diamonds of particular regulation sizes are standard."

"Huh. There's a cost to it here because it's expensive for them, pulling someone out of whatever afterlife and undoing the transformations that happen in them. And I guess our gods are more, mm, cooperative, comparatively? Not that They don't fight - one of these centuries Ehlonna and the Piper are going to have a war and I'm very glad it doesn't look like it's going to be this one - but not to the point of whatever would happen without what your gods are doing with Themselves."

"... I suppose it's possible some subset of Golarion gods could operate like that but it would absolutely not include Iomedae, who prayed every day of her mortal life for the destruction of Hell and has not exactly mellowed out about it since then."

"I assume that's not entirely literal? I wouldn't expect it to be ontologically possible to destroy an afterlife, plus then what would happen to all the Lawful Evil people. Anyway it seems like our gods have the underlying physics set up differently enough that I'm not too surprised they've found a different equilibrium."

"I think existing deceased Lawful Evil people would probably not fare well in this operation but if the plane were destroyed then no new ones could be sorted there. My understanding is that Nirvana has the capacity for them if they can get the Judge to offer them up, and probably some borderline cases would wind up in Axis or even the Boneyard."

"That's very different from our arrangement, from the sound of it - you have Someone deciding where each person goes? It's part of the physics, here, like gravity."

"- oh, we have a Judge. Who also created the universe. The judgments are mostly consistent enough that you can guess if you know enough about a person, but there is a step where it's possible to get a better, or worse, result than would have been expected."

"Sounds complicated. And like Iomedae - does She have a title? - is probably not a fan, considering."

"The Inheritor. She is very - measured - in her holy book, probably because it was mostly written when she was alive and it was more constructive to praise the Pharasmin church for their invaluable assistance in her crusade against the legions of undead - they don't like the undead - than to object that the Judge should allow Nirvana control of the sorting mechanism, but there are other churches and other gods she praises with... I'm not sure how to describe... less straining for rhyme."

"I can imagine. As an aside, in case it doesn't work this way for you, mentioning a god's name lets Them see and hear you and the area around you for a little while, and retroactively for the stronger gods - they can also see Their clerics and holy symbols and the areas around us, the same way. They won't necessarily take advantage of the opportunity, They don't have enough attention to be everywhere They could, but it's generally considered friendly to Them to offer. On the other hand it's a little strange to refer to a god by Their name all the time unless you're Their cleric or something. Fharlanghn's title is the Dweller on the Horizon, Pelor is the Shining One, and Ehlonna is the Lady of the Woodlands."

"Oh, that's good to know, I don't think ours actually work that way - there's a verse about Aroden being half-blind in a forest even if His people went inside it, He was the god of civilization, and if they could have just chanted His name over and over they would probably have done that."

"It's handy that way, definitely. That's why I was proposing going back with you as a way of establishing contact between the worlds, too, if anything were going to let Fharlanghn see the place well enough to figure out how to get there it would be having a cleric there."

"That stands to reason. I think a lot of the present barriers to travel on Golarion are things no one really likes, like sea monsters, so He'd do some good there."

"We'll definitely look into doing something about those for you, yep. I'm actually wondering the most about how things are going to go with us - all the oerth clerics - and your god of trade, He sounds like one of the more important ones and I suspect there's a bit of a philosophical difference - most of our gods are fairly opinionated about how their spells are used regardless of money changing hands."

"I mean, you wouldn't see a Pharasmin making undead, since like I said they hate that, there's lots of things like that, but - Abadarans are the backbone of coordination and cooperation the world over." It was one of a million little philosophical disquiets, that Mammonites could not run the Chelish banking system well enough, that they had to tolerate a handful of Abadarans barely paying lip service to primary worship of Asmodeus, because a Mammonite will embezzle and cannot get underwritten by overseas concerns and you'd have to be a fool to take out a loan from one, and an Abadaran just doesn't have that problem, and doesn't have that problem specifically because their Law is stronger...

"It'll be interesting."

"What kind of opinionatedness do you mean?"

"They don't just care about which spells we offer, They care about how they're used, basically. Fharlanghn's probably the least picky, I can sell spells with no problem as long as they aren't obviously going to be used to enslave someone or something, but - okay, for example, the other god I follow is the goddess of pleasure, and if one of Her clerics made a wand of Cure and someone used it to fight undead I expect She'd be annoyed, that's not the kind of thing She intends Her spells to be used for."

"...wow. And this isn't because she's... also pro-undead for some reason, just because it's not Her central concern? - how do Her clerics ever go up in circle, is She just doing it by fiat every time if they can't get into fights?"

"She's not pro-undead but She doesn't really condone fighting in general - that might be another physics difference? Last time I went up a tier I'd just finished overseeing a big construction project, we don't need to get into fights."

"Was the construction project... high stakes in some way? You hear about people getting more powerful from... rescue missions in natural disasters, risky intrigue or diplomacy, but - research in doing it on purpose safely has borne little fruit and was ethically unconscionable to boot, may Hell be denied another soldier... Gods can improve Their clerics by fiat but it's expensive for their intervention budgets. Abadar is known to do it particularly dramatically when He selects a new pharaoh for His theocracy."

"It was complicated and I definitely could have failed at it but it wasn't dangerous, especially? Most of the challenge was keeping the workers safe, we were opening a mountain pass back up after some kobolds had been living in the area and there had been a few rockslides and a bridge collapse. Our gods do give fiat tiers but it's expensive, yes."

"The danger doesn't necessarily have to be to the person, like in the rescue mission case the understanding is that this works because if they fail whoever they're rescuing will be hurt even if the rescuer is in perfect physical safety throughout."

"Okay, hm... Oh, I got a tier for it the first time I wrote a book, actually, that seems like a clear-cut case."

"If that happened on Golarion I would expect it to be by purest fiat and a very strong endorsement of the book."

"It's still in circulation last time I checked but it wasn't that impressive."

"What's it about?"

"Mixed orc-goblinoid societies in the northern yellow mountains, with a focus on how to travel through the area without offending them. I was due for a tier, too."

"Oh, if you were already very close it's less strange to me."

"It works that way for wizards, too, for another thing; I suppose you could say that was all Boccob's doing but it seems out of character."

"Wizards on Golarion bridge some of the gap with study alone and I have heard they can get to second, or rarely if they are particularly brilliant even third, without participating in combat much. Is Boccob the god of arcane magic here? Ours is Nethys."

"Yep. He does have a church but the god Himself is quite reclusive and the church is very small for how powerful He is. Anyway, I wouldn't be too surprised if Zelena gets a nice chunk of a tier for our research project, even at her circle."

"I have heard a rumor that Nethys's high priestess has been known to increase in circle by doing research projects some of which blew up her church."

Raafi laughs. "Wizards are the same in every world, huh."

"Apparently! But it had been my impression that the danger of explosion was in itself substantially helping her along there."

"I'm pretty sure it's mostly down to how intellectually challenging the problem is, here, based on how excited my wizard friends get when I bring them various puzzles. The more confusing the explanation the happier they are about it, especially if they don't need to risk any limbs."

"Wizards are like that at home also, it's not as though everyone is always and only motivated by becoming more powerful. Though I did disproportionately meet those, as the Worldwound was a good place to get steady well-justified fights appropriate for a variety of circles."

"Fair enough. I haven't made a proper study of it, I only have anecdotes and common wisdom, accurate as that seems to be in this case. If you'd like a book on the subject I can see about renting one from the library tomorrow."

"I don't have any money with me, I was planning to pay my way on the road with Created food."

"I wasn't intending to have you pay for it, you don't seem like the type I can talk into figuring it out by interviewing people instead."

"- talk into figuring it out by interviewing people instead?"

"Fharlanghn does want people to learn things about the places they find themselves, or places they might. Experiencing it firsthand is best, and hearing about it from someone who did is good too, but books are far better than nothing."

"I like books."

"Then I'll ask about it at the library. Is there anything else you might want a book about?"

"The gods here. Geopolitics."

"They should have something covering all the global-scale gods. Politics tends to be more regional, here, I'm not sure they'll have what you're looking for in one book or even a few, but I'll ask."

"Even a profile of the local organization of one example civilization would be useful."

"Sure, I can get something like that."

"Thank you."

Raafi eats in silence for a minute.

"I'm not sure any of us here are the right kind of cleric for it, but if you want to talk to someone about being stuck here, I should be able to come up with a recommendation and drop you off with them."

"I thought your wizard friend was going to see about fixing it, do I need to answer questions about where I was at the time or about where I'd like to land or something?"

"No, I meant - do Golarionite clerics not... offer advice, walk people through thinking about difficult situations, that kind of thing?"

"Maybe some of them do."

"Well, we do that here, except I'm only really good for it if your difficult situation is a rough bit of terrain and the Pelorians are healing specialists, not counselors. But if you want it, I can probably figure something out."

"I wouldn't know what do with one."

"The good ones can work with that, it's not a problem. I don't mean to pressure you, just... I'd expect anyone in your position to benefit from the help, and... does Iomedae have anything to say about looking after yourself mentally and emotionally? It's that sort of thing."

"For complicated reasons I mostly know Her instructions to Her paladins and am mostly assuming the rules are the same for me. They include things like 'you have to do something fun at least once a month'."

"That's roughly the kind of thing I'm talking about, yes - one of the things they might do would be to talk to you about how best to implement that kind of rule, to make sure you're following the spirit and not just the letter of it and to help you get the most out of it, or figure out how to adapt it for a situation where the normal rule doesn't work. Or, I favor a chaotic counselor, mine helped me figure out what principles I personally should be following, to have a better life."

"...I'm very temperamentally Lawful and would rather follow whatever principles Iomedae set down for me, I'm just in an awkward position of ignorance as regards that. I'm not in any danger of going a month without doing anything fun, I'm not good at Prestidigitation but I can use it to make chess pieces wherever I happen to have a spare hour."

Raafi nods. "I'm just worried that six months is going to be a long time for you."

"...surely it will be the same amount of time for me as for everyone else and will include at least six chess games."

That gets a chuckle. "Well, you can always change your mind about it. I'll leave it alone, though."

A few minutes later, they spot the young cleric from earlier making his way through the crowd, heading for them. He hangs back awkwardly rather than finish his approach, looking nervous.

"...can I help you?"

"It's all right, Brother, you can come talk to us," Raafi says, rather than translating.

The Pelorian comes closer; he seems just as nervous of Raafi as of Blai, despite the reassurance. "Sorry, the other clerics said I should leave you alone, I just wanted to thank you for healing everyone and ask if you think I could learn to do it like that."

"Ah. Maybe, we were talking about that a little bit earlier. Hold on." He switches back to Taldane. "He wants to know if you can teach him how to channel energy, and to thank you for the healing earlier; do you want the necklace back?"

"- that might be more efficient," and then, "It came automatically with my first circle, I didn't learn how as such."

"Does it feel different from a normal spell, or anything? I just... it was just luck that we didn't lose anybody..."

"It feels different. Most clerics at home can do it more often than I can, that runs on Splendor. Some people can" he used to be able to "project it through a weapon strike, though with positive energy that's only useful against undead specifically. I met a Gozrehn once who could also somehow use it to cast Endure Elements on everybody in her range, which was wildly useful in our context, but she didn't think I'd be able to pick it up, it may have been Gozreh-specific."

"So it's more like a metamagic than its own thing?"

"...I'm used to the word 'metamagic' referring solely to a thing you can do with spells, and most people cannot attach spells to their channeling, just that one Gozrehn."

    "Okay. So probably not, then?"

"I'm going to see if I can find someone who knows some spellcrafting to have a look at it. If you don't mind, of course," he adds, to Blai. "So there is a chance, I think just not today."

    "Okay, that's good then."

"I can and should do it twice a day every day," Blai nods.

    ""Good. Uh, I'll go now?" He asks Raafi.

"I don't bite, I promise. But sure, go ahead."

    He skedaddles.

"Timid fellow."

"That's probably more to do with me than him, honestly - I don't want to be treated differently because of my tier, but some people have trouble with that, it's not a big deal."

Nod. Blai would probably have felt like that if he'd ever had a compelling reason to approach Aspexia Rugatonn but he'd have sat on it better. These people are however not Chelish.

They really aren't.

Nothing else disturbs them during dinner except a runner letting them know that the search for a spare tent for Blai didn't come up with one; afterward, Raafi suggests that Blai should pick a campsite while there's still some light left. This turns out to be wise, since most of the good spots are taken, but Raafi eventually remembers overhearing that someone might have talked a friend into letting him share his tent, and when they check the spot he'd been staying in it's still free.

Blai sets up there. He isn't very well equipped to camp - the armor alone takes up most of the weight he can handle - but he can put his head on his pack with all the armor padding on the top, and sleep under his coat.

Raafi isn't satisfied with this. "Give me a minute and I'll see if I can find something to put under you, it's getting to be too cold at night to sleep on the bare ground."

"The coat is rated for extreme temperature."

"I can see that, but it's not going to do half as much good on top of you without something underneath."

"I could just wear it?"

"It's really no trouble to get you a blanket."

"As you say."

He comes back with two, in threadbare patched blue and threadbare patched yellow. "The pile is pretty picked over at this point, but the two of these together should be good enough. I'll have to see if I can get some more somewhere while I'm out tomorrow."

Blai nods and lays them out to sleep on.

"My tent is over that way if you need me, or if you change your mind about where you want to sleep; the one with the glow on top and Fharlanghn's symbol on it." And he takes his leave for the night.

Nope he is no way changing his mind about that with an invitation like that. He has successfully avoided that entire mess since That One Time In Seminary and means to keep right on avoiding it.

The camp is only moderately quieter overnight; a lot of the refugees were on different sleep schedules underground and haven't adjusted yet, and all of them are used to sleeping while other people are awake and not used to being especially quiet in deference to sleep. He's away from the worst of it, by the cookpots, but he can tell that it's quieter still among the tents.

There's a little bit of additional commotion on the edge of the camp in the small hours of the morning, but it doesn't sound like the night watch is having any trouble with it, whatever it is.

...this is not his fort, noise does not mean demons. Even if it were his fort, the night shift's job is to raise the alarm if they need backup. He listens for a minute but goes back to sleep if it doesn't change markedly in pitch or fervor.

Nope, they've got it.

It's early autumn, and the nights are starting to get long; he might be up before Raafi, even though the older man rises before the sun.

He's pretty used to letting his god wake him but if it gets noisy and he's had enough sleep he will wake up, again, and listen to the hubbub.

Raafi swings by to check on him shortly after the sun peeks over the horizon; a few people have gotten up to start breakfast or other morning chores, but most of those who slept overnight are still asleep.

Well, once the sun is peeking over the horizon he's in prayer, sitting up with his coat over his shoulders and his little dagger-and-wire holy symbol in his hands.

Raafi doesn't interrupt, of course, but comes by again in an hour with a bowl of porridge for him. "Do you want to come with me to talk to the Pelorians about our plans?"

Blai takes the bowl, nods, stands up and starts eating while they walk.

When they get there, the Pelorians and some of the refugees are working together to tear down one of the big hospital tents that's no longer needed in its current form. Raafi pitches in, helping get the poles taken down safely and the lines bundled up for their next use.

Blai is not familiar with tents but if he can do more good than harm here he will.

It's pretty straightforward, but if he hesitates very long one of the Pelorians will ask a question and point him to where the eldest of their number is winding the ropes they're taking off the tent into coils.

He can totally do that. Off he goes to coil ropes.

Raafi joins him as they get the last of the tentpoles taken down; there's plenty of rope still to coil and canvas still to fold. "They've got three more tents to take down, but since we're ready they'll take a break after this one. Have you thought about whether you want to come with me today? Otherwise I'll be using the teleportation slot to bring one of the refugees to one of Pelor's temples, but I don't know who yet, the Pelorians have been keeping better track of everyone than I have. I can leave the necklace with you while I'm gone if you want it."

"- if the wounded were all covered in the channel radius yesterday there's probably more for me to do in a city."

"It looked like everyone was fit to travel; they might want one more channel before we leave to catch anything that's lingering but I don't think it's urgent." He considers something for a moment - "I might stop by and see if I can pick up a second translation necklace, but I suspect it'll go better if I leave you behind for that, Lastai's temple can be a bit much if you aren't prepared for it. The Shining One's temple should be fine to host you for a little while while I do."

"...a bit much?"

"Well, she's the goddess of pleasure. They do all kinds of things there, if you wanted a music class I'd suggest them too, but they do cover the obvious thing."

"Ah."

"You're welcome to come if you want, it's not like they're going to drag you down to the dungeon without so much as a by-your-leave," he's probably joking, here? "It just seems like the Pelorians are more your speed."

"The Pelorians seem lovely."

"Mmhmm. I shouldn't be long, anyway. So, drop the refugees off, ask the Pelorians - they use the title Brothers or Sisters - for donations and to coordinate things for your channels, hit up the library and the market and Lastai's temple in some order, do whatever else the others come up with, and stop at a couple other places on the way back to see how they feel about taking in the bulk of the group. Is there anything else you want to do while we're out?"

"Nothing I know to ask about from here."

"All right." He winds rope; the pile dwindles, more quickly as people finish other tasks and come to help, and eventually the Pelorians have all gathered, along with a middle-aged woman in a knitted cloak of undyed wool carrying a gnarled walking stick and being followed by half a dozen sheep who he points out as the local druid Geneia. Raafi offers Blai the necklace again as they get down to business.

The Pelorians want to break the refugees up into multiple groups, is the main news of the day; helping such a big group will put a strain on even their biggest temples, and while they could manage it anyway, it'd be better not to. They're also badly in need of shoes, still, since few of the refugees had them. A few of the clerics left spell slots open for Pelor to fill this morning and one of them got Helping Hand, which they're taking to mean that it's time to call the paladins back up and generally get ready to head out as soon as Raafi has figured out where they're going to go. Raafi suggests that he might hire a few hunters to accompany the group(s) back to civilization; the others think that this is a very good idea, since the refugees are still struggling with eating surface plants, and Geneia suggests a young local woman who might want to join them in that capacity.

"I haven't heard of Helping Hand."

"It's third circle; it makes a little illusory hand that looks for a person matching a description you give it and leads them back to you."

"Huh. I confess the usefulness isn't too obvious - I guess in a blizzard or something."

"The description doesn't have to be unique; I use it to find other clerics of Fharlanghn sometimes based on them wearing his symbol, if I want to see if anyone else is in a city I'm visiting or whatever."

"I guess it has better range than Detect the Faithful."

"We don't get that one, or at least I haven't heard of it. Here," he retrieves a small notebook from his belt, "that's my notes on common cleric spells."

"I recognize most of these but I'm not seeing Stabilize - which we covered, you have Cure Minor Wounds instead - or Share Language - second circle, lets someone else speak a language you know for 24 hours."

"Oh, very nice. I'll have to see if I can get that one, I've never heard of it before but that doesn't necessarily mean Fharlanghn won't give it to me if I ask."

"I also know one that turns my beard into cold iron but I don't think it's common."

Raafi laughs. "Why?"

"Well, demons are vulnerable to cold iron and occasionally I'd be concerned about being disarmed or grappled."

"I wouldn't expect a cold iron beard specifically to be very useful even in that case but I admittedly haven't had time to think about tricks for it."

"It's not as good as a real weapon but they do find it startling."

"It would be that. Anyway, let's go make sure nobody is hanging around the help desk and we can head out, if you're ready."

"Of course. - I also don't see Cultural Adaptation, I can't stand it but you seem like you'd like it."

"Sounds promising, definitely, what does it do?"

"It'll fix up your accent and mannerisms so you can blend in somewhere new or among foreigners or - whatever."

"That certainly sounds like it'd be handy to have. What don't you like about it, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Chelish people are - famously reserved - and I do not have tolerable instincts for behaving otherwise."

"Ah. I could see that, yeah."

"It's first circle, so cheap to test. Not dismissable though."

"I could ask Lastai's Luxuriants for advice for you, if you want to consider giving it another try while you're here. I think you'll be fine without it, though, most places."

"...if they know of the spell and you know that they know of the spell why didn't you know of the spell?"

"Oh, I'll be surprised if they do, it's just that navigating the tricky parts of something someone wants to do and figuring out harm reduction for it is a bit their specialty."

"Oh. I don't want to do it, it just seemed like it might be in your line."

"Sure - oh, I wasn't assuming it was shareable. If it is I might see about trying it when we're done with all this, there's certainly a few things I'd like to try where that's what's stopping me."

"It's not, you'll have to cast it yourself."

"We'll have to find out at some point if we can cast from each others' scrolls, I suspect I'll need one for that. It's too much like cheating."

Somebody is waiting at the help desk, and Raafi retrieves the translation necklace to answer their procedural question about using the cookpots, offering it back to Blai when he's done.

"I've never actually learned to scribe a scroll." He yields the necklace without complaint and accepts it back without comment.

"Me either, I go to the wizards for it - a lot of the divine scrolls you see for sale here are made that way, the wizards' guilds in big cities have giant pearls of Spell Storing that they'll pay you to cast into and then they take it from there."

"Wow, I don't think we have those."

"They're pretty handy. I bet they'd want a king's ransom to part with one, though."

"No doubt. I probably would have picked up scroll scribing if I had another circle, but at third it's easy enough to have someone who doesn't need their spells at the front write them."

"That makes sense. I've never actually been to a battlefront like that, I'm always too busy with refugees when I'm that close to a war." The Pelorians are assembling people for him to bring with him on his trip, a ways down the field; he heads in that direction.

"There were probably a lot of those when the Worldwound first opened but it was a hundred years ago."

"Very impressive that you held it that long."

"The Wardstones did most of it and we were losing ground, but - slowly enough."

"I've done enough diplomacy to know that that wouldn't make it any easier. I guess maybe if you have gods running your countries; mortal rulers are much more shortsighted."

"Most countries aren't theocracies and most gods don't have one."

Raafi nods. "You see the smaller gods doing that sometimes, here. It can be a good strategy but it seems to stop them from growing, past a certain point, or maybe they just grow out of it."

"I... have not observed anything making me believe that's the tendency on Golarion."

"I'm getting the impression that there's something different about our respective gods in general, yeah."

"If we had some overlapping gods I'd be inclined to think it was just that they had different rules of engagement here - there's some reason to expect Golarion to be special among planets in general - but since they don't appear to include any of the same gods so far I imagine it's more complicated somehow."

"Yeah - our gods do tend to be regional but I'd be very surprised if the Shining One or the Dweller were restricted that way."

The young Pelorian comes over to apologize for the wait; they're having trouble finding one of the people they want to send with Raafi. He seems less nervous about talking to him this time.

"Should you take someone else while they look or do they need to go with this batch in particular?"

"If today goes well I might not be going out again, and I know we had a few elderly people in the group. Best to wait, I think."

Then Blai will find a place to sit, and if it's looking particularly time consuming might conjure up some chess pieces.

It takes about twenty minutes for them to find the woman, safe and sound and sleeping in a friend's tent after her hip started acting up and she couldn't make it back to her own the night before. She's not moving very well today, either, and they ask Raafi and the others to meet her where she is rather than make her walk, but then he's ready to go - he'll suggest that Blai take one of his hands and have the other four passengers link up on his other side rather than ask him to be in the middle of the group.

That's not really LESS making it seem like Raafi is hitting on him - Blai is a grownup and knows how touch range spells work - but he doesn't bring it up.

He doesn't linger over it, at least, on either side of the teleport; they appear in the front hall of a temple of Pelor, made obvious by the two story tall yellow marble mosaic of the sun on the back wall. Raafi immediately breaks off from the group to help the woman with the bad hip to one of the benches lining the hall, and a passing cleric comes over to help, asking if they're more refugees.

"These four are; Select Blai there showed up in a teleportation accident and I think he's still with me. He has a unique healing effect and he'd like some help getting set up to use it efficiently, though - it heals everyone in a thirty foot burst, no target limit, roughly Cure Moderate strength."

    "Praise Pelor. We can certainly do that - I'm sorry, I don't recognize the title, do you have any policies you'd like us to follow in finding people in need of it?" he asks Blai.

"- no, no, just pack them in as efficiently as you can, I assume you don't have a room with a circular balcony but -"

    "Doesn't the wizard's guild have an auditorium like that?"

"They do in Hempholme but I didn't think they did here. I'll check."

    "Sounds good. And I'd expect a donation box to more than cover the rental, if it's all right with you to put one out?"

"Yes, that's completely fine."

    "I'll go get started, then. We'll need a couple hours probably."

"That's fine, we have errands to run. And one of our stops on the way back is a pretty big town," he directs at Blai, "I'm expecting you'd rather get the people most in need in two places than do it twice in one."

"Yes."

"All right. Let me get everything else sorted out here and we can head over to the donation center."

There's a desk in an alcove off the hall with a complement of lay staff behind it; he asks them to have someone get the refugees settled in and maybe bring the ailing woman to the healers' wing to see if they can do anything for her. With that taken care of, he sets off through the building. "Whatever you get in the donation box will be yours," he explains on the way, "but it's customary to donate part of it to the church in cases like this where they've helped with the logistics; I'd probably give between a tenth and a quarter after the room rental fee."

"That makes sense, thank you for the figures."

The donation center smells like freshly baked bread and vegetable stew, and is administered by a gold half-dragon who greets him by name and asks if he's back for more food.

"If you can spare it, Liss, but actually we're about ready to get moving thanks to Select Blai here, and a lot of the refugees don't have shoes. And we could use some more blankets, too, if you have any good ones. Can you help us out?"

    "Sure, of course, let me see what we have." And he heads for the back.

"Do you know if Iomedae's church does anything like this?" Raafi asks while they wait. "I could see it going either way, with a god of triage."

"Managing donations? I know they accept donations - it's a favored option for people who want to adjust their alignment and have the means - but the ones I hear about are always monetary."

"Huh, and that works, if they're doing it specifically to change their alignment? I guess I'd expect it to help, but not very efficiently."

"The money can still do good even if given with the most calculating intent. It is known to work. I have heard" from the insurance adjuster, who he is almost sure he remembers the name of and just isn't sure if he's still alive, "that the Abadarans in Osirion, Abadar's theocracy, are trying to figure out a range of effective rates for a relatively standardizable Evil - exposing an infant - but they don't think they'll ever have it very precise because the motives and circumstances and attitude still matter some and vary across various possible objects of research."

"Something is definitely working differently between our worlds, if that's coming up often enough to try to test in the first place."

"You don't have... poor farmers who have a bad year and can't keep a baby alive?"

"If they're not going to be able to keep the baby alive anyway it doesn't count as evil, I'm pretty sure. I mean, if it's a genuine mistake that they had the child in the first place, if they're intentionally having children they aren't going to be able to provide for one way or another that's a problem."

"I am unmarried but imagine that probably the ideal thing to do in that situation is abstain, it's just it's often very hard for people to do the ideal thing. Pharasma really doesn't like it when babies die because they don't have alignments and then She has them piling up in the Boneyard, and it's presumably also very bad for the baby. - before you ask I am deeply confused about Pharasma's behavior in many ways including this one, She's in charge and doesn't have to limit Herself by intervention budget like everyone else and yet babies die even when no one wants them to."

"We don't have, uh, several, of those problems... Limbo isn't the best afterlife but there's no special problem with babies going there as far as I know, and in particular abortions are fine if you do them fairly early? I'd know if they weren't, I've done enough of them and used to keep a close enough eye on my alignment. Plus we have herbs to keep the whole question from coming up at all."

"- children don't grow up after they die in our afterlives, properly. There might be a point at which abortions are fine but if there is I don't know when it would be, it'd have to be before the baby has a soul. Possibly there are herbs that do that and they just aren't reliable or available enough and I don't know about them for the obvious reason."

"Huh. Well, it's usually pretty safe to assume that if someone here doesn't want to have children, they'll probably be able to arrange for that, and if they can't it's because something has gone wrong, and maybe it's wrong in a way they should have known better than to do but that's not a usual thing."

"More things to try to cram into a sending to an Abadaran, I suppose."

"And I should get you some seeds and cuttings to bring with you, too - really at this point I should be looking for a small Bag of Holding."

"It seems prudent."

"I'm sure I'll come across one by spring if I try. - speaking of which, have you put any thought into how you're going to want to spend the next six months? I usually start heading south around now."

"If I'm the only cleric in the world with channels I should either park in a big city or, if someone cares to teleport me around, pop between them - there's an arch-healer on Golarion, she's in different cities every day tapping people with her unlimited Regeneration and Remove Disease -"

"I don't have that much tolerance for cities, but I should be able to figure out some kind of schedule that works for you, maybe do a tour of southern towns and bring people in to see the sights with my extra capacity every day. There would be a risk of me disappearing on you if something comes up, but I have the wand of Sending."

"I did notice that you have a wand of Sending but I wouldn't expect you to spend its charges on notifying me that you've been held up when I'll be able to observe that directly."

"I might not if it was just going to be a day or two, but if I get caught up dealing with a disease outbreak or something it's likely to be longer than that, and if you wanted to come help I'd still want to coordinate on not spreading it."

"I doubt I'm much use with a disease outbreak, I only have one third-circle slot a day."

"Unlimited Create Water, Purify Food and Drink, and Guidance would all be incredibly useful in a disease outbreak. I'm not sure how they'd compare to doing channels in a city for a week, though."

Liss comes back at this point with a gigantic bag of donated shoes and a stack of blankets. "Sorry that took so long, the blankets weren't sorted. Want some help stowing it?"

"Yes please," and Raafi lays out his portable hole and climbs down into it to receive the bag and blankets, taking his belt off and setting it by the edge of the hole before going in. Blai can get a brief look inside; it's pretty cluttered in there, with shelves full of wands and potions and scrolls at the back and open baskets full of coins littering the floor at the front.

"That makes sense, I'm not accustomed to any large concentration of people drinking well water but if they are - yes."

GOD this guy is painfully rich.

"Yeah, some places have magical fountains but that's not where outbreaks happen, usually. Oh, hey, Liss, while I'm down here, how's funding looking for that program at the orphanage?"

    "Which - oh, the field trips one? Slower than you'd like, I'm sure."

"Well here, then." A bag of coins comes sailing out of the hole and Liss reaches out to catch it.

    "Thanks, I'll make sure it gets put to good use."

"Thanks." And Raafi hauls himself back out of the hole and dusts himself off before packing everything back up.

Maybe everyone here is rich, and the orphans eat every day, and their keepers never "indenture" them to Katapeshi traders who aren't bound by Cheliax's laws against human slavery, and it therefore makes any sense at all for anyone other than specifically this absurdly rich cleric-of-travel to spend money on sending them on field trips.

"All right, the market or the library or the other temple, do you have a preference for what's next?"