Fortunately for the newly resurrected subject's comfort, there is an emotional support bird nearby. She's been hovering since she finished her two designated Plant Growths of the day. There are rather too many people in too much disarray for anyone to care about a bird, much less a well behaved one that stays very politely out of everyone's way and just wants to hang out near this one (scary) corpse of a monster. One little blackbird is perfectly harmless, in all this din, not even leaving any kind of mess, like other birds might.

Anyway, then she turns back into an elf once the person who restored Liushna departs, to the alarm of several people nearby.

"Welcome back," says Voshrelka, in Sylvan, because Share Language has definitely run out by now, even with the subject deceased. And, anyway, the human language is annoying and she likes Sylvan better.

Liushna...does not appear to be a ghost. 

"...Did I survive?" she asks incredulously. 

"No. But the archmages did see to your swift resurrection." If she sounds surprised, it's because she is. It's still even technically the day after! If she hadn't been sitting in here watching everyone run in a panicked and overworked scramble for the past several hours, she'd almost think they were competent. But of course, she knows better.

"They can do that!?"

"I think in your case they threw a truly insane amount of money at it and had someone else do it, but, apparently, yes." Can she gently get Liushna up and perhaps out of this temple? It is very crowded and both of them do not fit in, at all, and it's making Voshrelka nervous.

Yep sounds good. 

"What circle is that? I don't--we usually have someone who's third-circle, in any given tribe, and often one of the bigger tribes will have someone who hits fourth. But I've never heard of--if you die, then if you're really lucky you come back as an undead, on your own, and if you're not really lucky then that's it." 

"Fifth, for clerics." Fourth, for druids, if you don't mind some side affects and a likely species change, but she's not saying that until they are out of the temple.

Inconveniently, it's raining outside.

Well, that's annoying. Liushna raises a wing to shield Voshrelka; no reason both of them should get wet. 

Aw. That's very sweet. She feels justified in finding, watching over, and retrieving your corpse, you're a good egg.

"Thanks. Uh - it's only been a day, you haven't been away long. The convention is suspended while they sort out this mess - you weren't the only delegate to die. One of the victims was an," there is no Sylvan word for archduke so she switches to Taldane, "archduke."

"--Wow, I wouldn't have expected that. Most of the dead I saw looked, you know, like the kind of people humans don't think are important."

"It was nominally directed at diabolist nobility, but a lot of others used the cover of violence to do, well. What you saw. But there were several sieges upon houses of important people, a lot of things burned down. It's why the rain, now, actually."

"...Meaning...archmages...can also control the weather?"

"Yes. It was one of the first things they did, to put out the fires and get people to stop burning things and go home. I don't think they can do it casually, but, well." She motions around them.

"Wow. ...Do you know who found my body." 

"Me. I was going to carry it off and sort it out myself if they weren't going to take responsibility for their massive fuck ups."

"I--really appreciate that. Do you know what happened to--I was trying to rescue some kids, I was holding one of them when I died--"

"When I last saw them, which was this morning, they were all fine. I and a helpful wizard got them off a roof and to a temple of Erastil. The one you protected lived."

"Thank you." 

Liushna is not going to cry, here, in front of this many humans. 

But she's so relieved they all lived. 

She still thinks that Liushna should have just, you know. Flown away, like a sensible person, but.

... She remembers being that hopeful and well-meaning, once.

So instead she just nods. "Bright Morning Feather also said to tell you that she'll be, quote, 'looking out for you.'" No comment on how useful that will be. "But I'll let her know you've been restored to life. She was worried. I don't think she's the only one, though I have mostly not been in the delegate social circles for the past day."

"Makes sense. Poor girl, I hope I haven't inspired her to say anything wrong again." 

"I think she will do that entirely on her own regardless of your intervention. I did convince her to start handing out Goodberries to the populace though, so."

"That's...good? Probably? Honestly, she's pretty confusing. I have concerns about Ravounel forest as a whole." 

"I suspect they're a druidic cult. I haven't personally interacted with them, but. ... They've always kept to themselves. I don't think Infernal Cheliax helped with that."

"Apparently a tribe of Itarii moved there at some point. I hope they're okay..." 

She worries her lip slightly, looking out at the city. It's not only her long-lost conspecifics that provoke concern, this grey and drizzly evening. 

"I hope the same." Okay, here's a place out of the rain for them. Granted, it's under a bridge, and they will both need to fly to get there, but Voshrelka now has access to the fourth circle spell Air Walk, and she's totally going to use it. Is she a little smug about literally walking her way up to the nook? No, because she's very smug. Fourth ciiiircle!

Liushna is not aware that that spell is fourth circle, because the Itarii druids don't have it, because why would they ever need it, so she remains unaware of the heights Voshrelka has reached. 

Except literally! She flutters up to the literal heights Voshrelka has reached. 

Ahh, out of the rain. Much better. 

Yes! And no one can bother them up here. Which is preferable to the alternative, and she didn't even have to use another wildshape for it.

"So. Is there anything you need in the immediate sense?"

"--Well my bow seems to be intact, and my familiar seems to be okay, now, so...I should check on the halflings' house, I guess, I was sleeping on their roof." 

Nod. "I... don't know the specifics, but I don't think it's good. There were no halfling bodies in the main temple of the god of money, but someone was arrested there, related to halflings. One of the men who was on the slavery committee, then stormed out and wasn't let back in? He said a halfling," actually he said a slip, but Voshrelka will not be using that word, "stabbed him in the eye. I don't think any of them would do that without reason, and it didn't sound like he treated them kindly, after. But I don't know what's happened to any of them, or the state of their house. Sorry." She actually wasn't aware they had a house, and furthermore could not locate it, so. She extra cannot help.

"--Wow. Uh, was it the one who's a cleric of Abadar, the one with the stupid beard, or the other one?"

“I don’t know the criteria for a beard being stupid, but he had one, and wasn’t the cleric of Abadar.”

“That’s probably the guy who stormed out of the meeting and got offended when this was interpreted as quitting. Good for whoever got his eye, I guess.”

"Yes. Pity that it was healed, but. Perhaps soon he will lose his head."

“Yeah.” SIGH. “You know, the humans in Pezzack seem reasonably sane. It gave me inflated expectations for the capital.”

"This was... when they were arrayed neatly with an obvious enemy to fight and bring them together? Yes. Humans have trouble when they don't have one of those. I think it's why they reacted the way they did to the associated speech - it would be so easy, if they could just kill the bad people and everything be fixed. Instead of the reality of how fixing things is difficult, and slow, and how it kind of sucks, actually."

"In Pezzack when we killed the bad people it did fix things," Liushna grumbles. "...I mean, there was work rebuilding afterwards, obviously, but that was just...work. Normal people work that you do everyday, for normal problems that aren't Asmodeans." 

"Pezzack was smaller, and simpler. A lot of the problems of this are... who count as the bad people? I'm sure the people who killed you thought they were killing a bad person, because to their eyes, you were stealing children. I'm sure the man of an ambiguously stupid beard thought he was hurting bad people. People are stupid, sometimes, especially in such large quantities."

"I'm honestly less mad at the people who killed me than at the guy who was holding a knife on the kids when I found them."

"... why would someone..." Sigh. "Because one was a tiefling, I'm guessing? But I suppose neither of us will know. Ugh. I hate civilization."

There is enough room for a bedroll here! She will accordingly start laying hers out. She'll be sleeping here, probably, if the city doesn't descend into riots again.

Liushna left her sleeping stuff on the halfling roof and will have to investigate that whole situation before she decides on any kind of long-term sleeping situation but she can in fact sleep on bare stone. 

"I didn't ask, just put a couple of arrows in him. But I thought that was probably it. It really is increasingly looking like 'civilization' is the problem, although the whole system of nobility is also deeply concerning and I'm not convinced that that's essential to the whole thing." 

"Nobility's also insane, and I can't say it's my favorite thing ever, but... hm. My major problem with civilization is that the people themselves do not seem to understand it, either? They participate, and insist that it's the best possible way to conduct themselves, constructing a massive flammable hive of people that all can't directly feed themselves if outsourced food isn't reliably brought to them, and point at any major achievement as only possible under this system of theirs. Like those of us they call uncivilized haven't made achievements either, just because we didn't breed out of control and don't make big impressive cities with shiny monuments, where seventy percent of the population are miserable and oppressed. I think I pity them more than anything." Though, for the record, she does also hate them. If they stopped trying to grow like some kind of malign fungus, instead keeping their insanity to themselves, it'd be one thing, but no. Everything else can burn in favor of this thing that they think is clearly better, and that she hates.

...Liushna contemplates Westcrown. 

"That makes horrifying amounts of sense."

"It is the best explanation I have for why they're like this, but I will not claim to have complete understanding. I'm attempting to earn goodwill for druids by feeding them. There's a fourth circle druid spell that makes a banquet."

Is she smug about this, and kind of bragging? Respectively: yes, and then no, because she's definitely bragging. She's so pleased about it, okay!!!! Fourth circle!!!!!!!!!!

“Really? How big of a banquet? You’re fourth circle?”

"I am!" she says, sounding actively pleased about this instead of her usual dour. "Mmm, it does a multi-course feast that would entirely feed, hm... around fifteen people? Who will then be full as if by Goodberries for the rest of the day. Thirty can comfortably split it and be full for twelve hours. Sixty, everyone would eat, but it'd perhaps be just one ordinary meal for them, instead of a magical druid meal. Still probably more nutritionally sound than what they might normally have, in this city, the general populace eats far too much bread for my liking."

"Oh, wow, that would--free up so much time from hunting and gathering. ...Is there any chance we could, like, send a druid to the Barrowood to study, or something, our druids don't have very many fourth-circle spells because...they don't hit fourth circle very often." She's not bouncing but only because the current space isn't convenient for it. 

"I think just directing members of your tribe to fly blindly into the Barrowood to find a teacher would perhaps go poorly, but.... I expect I will be busy flying all over the country, for at least the next year. I can come visit and give introductions, and teach druid spells while I'm there, and set individuals up for apprenticeship as they'd like?"

"That sounds amazing!"

"All right. I expect I'll be able to find them eventually, but let me get out my map for slightly more directed wingwork." Map! Where on map should Voshrelka go to find tribe?

Pointing out the general Itarii territory is easy; pointing out the specific mountain peak where the Windwhip tribe currently lives is slightly harder and Liushna is not actually sure the people who made this map were totally clear on individual mountains instead of just the whereabouts of the mountain range in general, "but if you can't find us, we're on good terms with the Waveskimmer tribe and they can probably tell you where to go. They're the ones who've started working with Pezzacki fishermen because it's good to have both a boat and a flier when fighting water monsters." 

Voshrelka nods, and takes neat notes to keep track of this information.

"I'll come visit. I might not be able to make this year, because Plant Growth circuits, and who knows how long this convention will last, but certainly the year after."

"Okay. Oh, and you probably want to visit the Berrycrag tribe, they always have a druid for a Rokoa." 

Nod nod, more note taking.

"I am happy to be directed. It's a terrible pity, that we lost ties with your people, after the civil war. I'm sorry for it." It's kind of hard to keep in contact when, well. Asmodeans. The Barrowood being chopped down. Everything going rather literally to Hell. That sort of thing.

Nod nod. "I don't think the ties were ever very formalized, but it probably isn't a coincidence that I haven't heard of the fairy protocols being used as far back as anyone alive can remember." 

"Yes. At one point we were actively avoiding getting anyone else caught up with us - Infernal Cheliax was... not kind to its enemies, and decided the druids of the Barrowood were one of them." Granted this was because the druids started displaying why Cheliax should not piss of the druids, but still. Enemies are enemies. "In many ways avoiding your people was to avoid anyone having any reason to know the name of your tribe, or anyone in it, or have any reason for any thought to ever be about you, even under extended torture. I don't think it was the wrong move, since clearly you and your tribe are alive - and helped Pezzack rebel, at that, well done! - but. It is a tragedy. Sorry."

"Well, they have been attacking us, it's just, it's actually really hard to get up to where we live if you can't fly, mostly. I'm not saying they for sure couldn't have managed it if they had prioritized it harder, but," she makes a face. "The really powerful people could get fewer valuable prizes by murdering us than by murdering dryads, you see." 

"Yes." She nods, pensively. "I suppose sourcing allies as sacrificial volunteers might've been tactically better, but...." She frowns and shakes her head. "No, those times are hopefully behind us. I'd like to avoid such brutal calculus*."

(*In Sylvan, the meaning here is less about math and more about gardening. 'Use of deadly pesticides in an intelligent and systemic manner,' is the closest literal translation.)

"Yeah. Although, the fact that Ravounel apparently has Itarii in it doesn't seem to have made the situation worse; maybe next time things are awful you can send us a messenger going 'hey anyone who wants to risk their life to hit fourth circle, come volunteer in the forest.'"

Nodnod. "I'll remember, and tell my clan likewise. We do not tend to turn down volunteers, if they're not..." She motions vaguely towards the city around them. "... some venture into the wood to seek allies against their enemies, without respect to those allies? I'm not quite sure how to describe it. People that want to throw us at their enemies, perhaps."

"I don't know of an appropriate phrase in Sylvan but in Draconic it's 'cannon fodder.'"*

*Does not idiomatically refer to cannons.

"Indeed. I suppose I can try to bring in loan words from Draconic as necessary, but I tend to try to keep my languages from blending together too much, else I'll start using too much Sylvan or Draconic when I should instead use Taldane. Or in one memorable case, Goblin." Goblin is really good for swearing. It has come up.

"I usually use Chelish or Draconic if I want to go out-of-language for swears. Chelish has some good ones."

"Goblin's better," declares Voshrelka, with the certainty of speaking it. "Really, it's downright impressive how dedicated to swear words one language can be." 'Shove something up one's anus' is, for example, one word, and is meant to combine well with nouns, and that's not even one of the particularly detailed ones.

"I'd love to learn some, if you don't have anything better to do at the moment."

"I'll be happy to teach you how to swear well enough to make a goblin proud." Possibly this time would be better devoted to teaching her Taldane, but, see. This is much more fun.