Yes!!! Voshrelka was right about the archmages funding raises for everyone! 

Feather will try to get Liushna's attention by jumping up and down and windmilling her arms and, if that fails, shouting loudly. She really doesn't want to spend her only wild shape of the day (and her beastspeak spell) on ten minutes' wet flying if she can avoid it.

Liushna does notice her, though whether because of the jumping or because of the other people on the street giving her strange looks and moving away is less obvious. She banks, turns, and swoops down, dropping the last few feet to the ground. 

"Hi, Feather! How have you been?"

"I'm fine - we're both fine - are you alright? Voshrelka told me yesterday she wasn't sure if the archmages would raise you, I was so worried!" Feather looks her over, although she has no clear idea what kind of damage from dying and being raised she's looking for.

"I'm fine, now. My tent was a total loss--someone burned down the building I'd been sleeping on--but I didn't leave anything else there, and the mob didn't do any damage to my stuff that a few Mendings couldn't cure. I'm still--thinking about the implications of there being spells to just anti-deadify people." 

"I was taught that dead people could be raised but I don't think anyone in the forest can do it, it's fifth circle for clerics, so it was really only rumours for me too. I guess I assumed it didn't have any big implications, because it's so rare and expensive. One of my teachers always says that - everything is possible, everything exists somewhere, but also, almost everything is very rare and far away. So it doesn't really matter - until a pair of archmages decides to become your neighbours! If they could raise everyone all the time that would be huge but it sounds like it's only a few a day? That's still enough to keep everyone important and powerful alive, though. I guess the human queens already had that, from clerics."

"I didn't even know it was possible! I keep thinking, what if I go adventuring and get really really powerful--people mostly die doing that, obviously, but people mostly die anyway, right, and--maybe I could get my whole tribe, maybe I could get my ancestors--there are so many dead people! It would be really good for there to be fewer!" 

"Well, you'd have to be a cleric first, or maybe an archwizard," Feather says reasonably. "But - I don't think that means everyone should go adventuring, because if enough people go out than someone will survive and become strong enough and then they can raise all the others? If they can only raise a few people every day, that's not enough to make up for everyone else who dies trying. Maybe all the Good clerics do go adventuring, though."

This segues very nicely into the thing Feather was wondering about. "You - died to save some children. They're still at Erastil's temple, I gave them some of my delegate money yesterday" - while you were dead, she stops herself from saying. "In case you... didn't come back. I'm not sure what's going to happen to them, they didn't really want to talk to me or any strangers, and they said didn't know you either but maybe they just didn't trust me about it."

"Well, they didn't know me, except insofar as they can probably recognize me if I show up, like, there was a guy holding a knife on them so I acted but I didn't have any prior acquaintanceship with them." 

Huh. "Why? I mean, obviously it's Good, but - seriously risking your life for strangers - is it the wanting to be an adventurer? I thought - well, I assumed - that you care a lot about your tribe and it's important for you make the convention go well for them and to - get to go back. It's probably presumptuous of me, to ask you to explain yourself, but - I really want to understand better. If you think it was important enough to risk your life over, I want to take that seriously."

"That night, I couldn't figure out who was fighting who or why, and I couldn't ask anyone because I didn't have the right spell for talking as an owl, and if I changed to a human I wouldn't be able to change back and get away. So I just - healed some people who were safe to get near. I can't even be sure if I did more good than harm, for all I know one of them went on to kill children! But I wasn't going to risk our lives, my mission is important to the Forest. And I didn't know the archmages would raise any delegates who died, obviously."

"--Well, I'm not going to say you shouldn't heal people in case they kill children, obviously, most people would never do that! But--I could hardly stay here, working with the humans on their laws and claiming to be their ally, if I let their children die." 

That sounds like something Voshrelka would say, but Feather doesn't think Voshrelka would seriously risk her life to show the Chelish what a good little druid she is.

"Because of - what it means to you to be someone's ally?" she checks. "Not because of what they expect or would like you to do." If so it's not about Good per se, it's about Law, which is less interesting to Feather personally but is a comprehensible reason.

"Well...sort of? Like, that's part of it, but--it's not just about what it means to be an ally, it's about what it means to be not an enemy. Like, killing the guy holding a knife on them was fine, because he was an adult who had made his choices, but--killing children is a vile thing to do, that's--basically saying you want to wipe out the other party and leave nothing at all behind."

Killing all the adults and leaving the children alive also... usually... results in them dying? Because they starve to death, or are eaten by predators? ...no, Liushna isn't a druid and that's not what she means. To most* people, children are instinctively precious, even strangers of another race.

To a druid, children are those targeted first by predators, those who die first to hunger and disease. In Chelish humans as in many other races, it is natural for most children to die before reaching adulthood. Being natural, any attempt to 'fix' this will tend to fail, usually with horrible results somewhere else.

And so Feather was trained to suppress the instincts that are counterproductive in a druid, even a Good one, but she was also trained to notice this in herself, and not to think (and, importantly, never to say to non-druids) that the instincts are wrong. Good is natural, even though Nature is not Good. On a population level most children die; on a personal level, a Good person will risk their life to save a child. The population the druid tends to is made of such individuals; there is no contradiction, even if one needs much Wisdom to fully understand how the parts combine into the whole.

(*) Elves and Asmodeans excepted.

"I'm worried that - you can't really be their ally, because there is no them. They fight each other, and kill and torture and enslave each other's children. You can side with a faction, you can find some of them who are Good, I came here hoping to do that! But even a faction of Good Chelish would be, at best, a minority of them. And - if I want them to make peace with the Forest, I can't afford to make enemies of all the rest of them. And maybe you shouldn't either, if you're not allied with a faction that will dominate the others." 

"None of that means you shouldn't save children, I just worry that - if you keep doing it, or at least if you seek it out, you'll definitely die again and might not come back this time. I'm sure there are some horrible things in this city that, if we saw them, we'd feel we had to stop them, and if I thought I was an ally of the Chelish - if I though they were my allies - I'd be looking for the most horrible things I could find to stop them, and I'm not. Because - I don't think that if I die doing that they'll repay me, or the Forest in my stead."

"And the archmages might be raising delegates but at the same time the rulers are executing delegates, they started this morning, and I assume the archmages aren't going to bring those back. So at best we're - limited to what they think is lawful, when the whole convention is about them not knowing what's lawful or what should be. There are probably children being Lawfully murdered somewhere in the city and it would be for us unlawful to stop it." She sighs.

“…Well, I don’t care about being Lawful or not? And if you never take any risks you never get stronger.”

"The Lawful thing is so that the archmages will bring you back if you die again! Are you saying you're going to - take as much risk as you can to get stronger as fast possible?"

“Well, no, but I am going to take risks where the upside is really important?”

Feather sighs. "I'm worried that if you die, you're not - buying nearly as much Good with your life as you would if you kept on living it. But it's your life and your choice to make. And - I think I understand now? Thank you, for explaining."

"...do you want to find some children being horribly mistreated and at risk of being killed, because I expect that's a thing somewhere in this city, and try to save them?" At the very least, there have to be children around who are in worse situation than 'in an Erastlian-run orphanage'. "I - to be honest I'm very scared of dying of something the archmages won't want to resurrect me from, and failing my mission from the Forest. But I want to be a good ally to you. And to Voshrelka."

“…Is that a thing you expect to be able to find? Yes, absolutely!”

"I can certainly try! So - the first thing is to ask some birds. By which I mean some actual birds, and also Songbird Laia at Shelyn's temple, she struck me as a very Good and sensible person. And maybe Voshrelka. And - they have slaves, they breed slaves, because all halflings are enslaved, that means they have slave children. It's unlawful to help them though and I doubt many humans would think you were being a good ally. There are probably children dying of hunger or disease or something. And - if you just look around, some of children on the streets look horrible, they're not eating enough or they were clearly beaten or wounded. (So were some of the adults.) Probably some of them are worse off where they are than at an Erastilian orphanage, except I'm not sure if the Erastilians can feed everyone, or are willing to. We can at least pay for a few, I don't really need the Chelish money from my stipend. And the other orphanages that aren't Erastil's were until last year Asmodean ones, and half of them still are in practice, taking children out of that definitely counts as a rescue if we have somewhere better to put them." (Feather spent a lot of time asking the Erastilians how orphan children were treated in Cheliax.) "Maybe instead of giving out goodberries I can sell some spells and buy normal food, the humans don't have a famine right now."

Short pause for breath.

"The humans have many children over replacement levels. In case you didn't already know that. That means most of them die in childhood. And when parents can't keep all their children and prefer some to others, they kill the others themselves, or cast them out. But that's me thinking as a druid. If you care more about children being actively harmed - I spent several years talking to Chelish humans who live outside the forest, before I came here. They always told stories about being tortured, or torturing each other, including children. And murder. From what I've heard at the convention, I don't think the city ones are very different. Even if there aren't many, and I'm not sure there aren't many, we can probably find them just by asking around."

They always insisted to her that they were completely unlike Nidal but Nidal is just over the border and Feather was never very clear about the ostensibly large differences between Zon-Kuthon and Asmodeus.

“…Obviously children die sometimes, of disease or dire misfortune? That’s bad but it’s not the same as someone deciding to kill them. I think the Slavery committee is on track to abolish slavery fast enough that that’s the most efficient way to help enslaved children.” She’s not sure she believes Feather about parents doing that to their own children, Feather as established does not understand humans very well. “I’ll ask around about orphanages and at orphanages about their food situation.”

"At the orphanages we should talk to the children too, to make sure they're being treated all right. Actually we should talk to children in general, to find out how the ones who are all right live and grow up in the city, what they spend most of their time doing, what they're afraid of, do they know about horrible things happening or being done to other children. Probably I can find children who'll let me ask some questions in exchange for a Goodberry or some coin or something, I don't know if they'd be truthful with a stranger but it's better than nothing. I - we - met a lot of different people at the convention, right, and maybe some of them know things we'd want to know, I haven't been asking about children in particular but I can start. We don't have to stop after the convention resumes, either, we'll still have evenings free."

The pull of doing something useful and Good with her time is seriously threatening Feather's cold resolve to stay aloof from internal human squabbles so the Forest isn't seen as taking sides. And it'll help her learn more about the Chelish; how they treat their children is obviously important!

“Right. Poor little lambs…I’d be tempted to take some home with me if they weren’t so tragically flight-devoid. Oh, and can you only talk to birds, because if so I should stick to non-birds, so we get a broader range.”

Lambs are not known for flying but neither are most chicks! ...this analogy may have gotten away from her a bit.

"I can talk to a lot of birds at once - everyone in a mile range - but they only know the kinds of things birds notice or care about. Something that's easy to tell by sight, yes, something that requires understanding or caring about humans as humans, no. I'd only try it because there are so many, even in a city, that if I ask all of them someone might have seen what I want. I can talk to other animals, one by one, if there's someone specific who might know something useful. Until I run out of spells, anyway."

“I can talk to animals one by one indefinitely!”

Wow. "Wow! That's - really great! I don't know how to do that." That helps explain why Liushna is such a great person! "I haven't heard that more powerful druids can, either, I just assumed they just get more spells and the spell lasts longer until it's enough in practice. I should ask Voshrelka if her forest knows a better way." Feather can't think of a reason such a power would be secret if it existed, but she can't ask the senior druids of Ravounel anytime soon, so Voshrelka will have to do. "I don't know any specific animals I'd want to talk to yet, though. Maybe if one of the birds has something interesting to say I'll go talk to them some more. It takes ten minutes to cast the spell for talking with all the birds, though."

“I don’t think Druids can, it’s a strelta,* Imazi and Shalyene get those and Druids don’t.”

*hex

Feather doesn't know much about how mages other than druids and clerics work, and tends to round them all to wizards and sorcerers, and Liushna isn't a wizard.

It would be immensely frustrating and unfair if sorcerers could have unlimited speak with animals and druids couldn't. Of course Liushna isn't the one she's frustrated with. She's even likely to raise some of her children as druids! The itarii are the only people outside the forests who Feather ever met who have their own druids and she respects them immensely for it. If she wasn't at the convention it would be the highlight of her year to discover that. She wrote home about it, of course, and she expects some people will fly to visit them and try to establish ties. Druids outside the Forest, but closer than any other forest, are Important.

"I wish I could learn to," she still says wistfully. Maybe if she lives many reincarnated lives and becomes very very Wise she can learn to become an imazi, whatever that is.

“I don’t know how you would but I have discovered so many things to be possible since coming here!”

"I've mostly discovered very many things I don't understand yet, which is less of a surprise, but yes, I think almost anything is possible! If you're Wise enough, and try hard and long enough, just like with adventuring." Feather contemplates how many risks she'd be willing to take, to eventually learn to speak with animals at will. Of course she'd take all the risks if they were just to herself but she has Greystripe to think about, and a responsibility to the whole Forest.

"Right now I'm working on speaking while I'm an owl, without using a spell. Third circle druids can do it, I haven't got it down yet but I have a teacher for it back home. And on changing shapes more times every day, that's just a lot of meditation and hard work on my own. Something druids don't already know how to do is very far away, but it feels so liberating to know it exists, right? To meet a friendly person who knows how, and not just - hear a story about a dragon far away or something. I'm very glad I met you." She smiles widely; she's pretty sure by now that itarii use smiles like humans do.

(Well. Her kind of humans. The Chelish humans don't seem to smile at all, in comparison.)

"I don't think the Wisdom thing is universal, I cast from cunning and sorcerers cast from splendor, we just use wisdom for making good life choices and not for becoming incredibly powerful. I'm glad I met you too!" (Even if she is gladder that she met Voshrelka. Feather is deeply confused but she's also a sweet person.)

"I don't mean casting from Wisdom, I just mean - understanding and learning some things is more suited to wisdom than cunning. Wizards do math or something and that needs Cunning, we try to understand people and empathize with them and that needs Wisdom." Wisdom is best because it helps you learn to become someone else who has more cunning or splendour or whatever else you need.

"I think probably being able to do things like resurrect the dead and give people new powers is more based on achieving phenomenal cosmic power than empathizing with people. Not that empathy isn't great! But I would really like to resurrect the dead." 

Two days ago Feather would have said only clerics can resurrect people because the gods rule the afterlives where the souls are, except apparently druids can reincarnate dead people!

"I'd like for you to be able to do it, too!" she says instead.

"Voshrelka says it's fifth circle, which is so high, but--people get there! Apparently!"

"Fifth isn't that high. I mean, I know people at fifth, I hope to make fifth myself eventually and not die on the way. Archmages are at ninth and it's a surprise we have several on the same continent. I think you can make fifth as a cleric! If a god sponsors you, I'm not sure which god sponsors wanting to resurrect people but probably a Good one?"

"I think I should probably just try to get there as a Shalyene instead of trying to find a god that likes what I'm up to enough to help me get stronger faster." 

"How do you know you can learn to resurrect people as a shalyene and all you need is more power? You already know what shalyene can do, but you didn't didn't know resurrection was possible. Unless you think you can invent it? I think I'm confused about how shalyene get new spells."

"From our patrons! And from other Shalyene."

"What are patrons?" Is this something she's supposed to know? 

"...The Itarii have a good relationship with the spirits around our mountains, and we work with them for magic. Most of them just work with the Imazi, but particularly powerful ones can empower Shalyene. We're more like clerics than like druids or sorcerers." 

"Oh! That explains a lot! You said you weren't a cleric so I assumed you were some kind of sorcerer.  I've never heard of spirits making clerics like that. Does that mean you - pray to them? Are there different spirits who want different things from their followers? I don't think druids have dealings with spirits that aren't - being an animal or plant at the moment, and I always thought they're not sentient, or at least not normally. Are they - well, all right? Are they happy, do they suffer..."

"Shalyene don't directly talk to spirits much. Imazi do more of that, and it's a more--equal--relationship than clerics have with gods. They're...different from people, but like, in a different direction from how animals are different from people? Mostly they're alright but they're possible to hurt or anger." 

Oh good, it doesn't sound like there's another burning moral emergency over in the spirit world. ...the other Good druids would have told her if there was, she's being unfair.

"That sounds great! So - you hope you'll get to raise the dead at fifth circle, but there haven't been fifth circle shalyene or imazi among the itarii until now?"

“Or if there were it didn’t get into the histories. If someone left home to get stronger, and succeeded but never made it home…anyway, yeah.” It’s sort of a weird way of putting it, though, why wouldn’t they be able to? It’s probably just, like, a cure spell but bigger.

You can't cure the dead! Curing is for the body; raising is for the soul.

"How are you still getting spells when the spirits are back home and you're here? Did some spirits follow you around?"

“I don’t know, I can’t talk to them.”

"I guess clerics can't really talk to their gods either. ...it's maybe a bit clearer to me now why you call the world Gozreh, if all the spirits in the world can sort of act as little gods." This is fascinating and Feather has a ton of questions that Liushna probably can't answer, such as 'what happens if the spirit empowering you is reincarnated as a normal fox or something'?

"I think - one thing I should learn from all this is that the Forest should reach out more to people outside it. We live close by and we have things to teach each other, and we can help one another, and - we're too used to thinking the outside world is hostile, but not all of it is. Maybe someone in the Forest knows about the itarii outside it but most people don't and I think they should."

“Surely the Itarii in the forest must know something.”

"Maybe they do! I never asked them, because I didn't know what to ask."

“That makes sense. The world is so big.”