Zerri looks positively delighted that this test worked. "How big can you do? I mean, healing wise. Lost limbs, that sort of thing?"

"I can keep a lost limb from bleeding out, but I can't reattach one, let alone regrow it. There's clerics and some others who can, though - clerics are a more healing-focused tradition, paladins are really secondarily healers, primarily warriors. I can't do anything about scars. I can cure blindness and deafness. If someone's still alive, I can keep them that way, no matter how badly injured they are, and I can bring them back to full health in seconds, unless 'full health' is unusually tough. I can restore to life someone who's died within the last minute - that one requires diamonds, I have some but not enough if people make a habit of dying - and I'll eventually be able to raise anyone who's died within ten days, but that might take a while, it's a high-power spell for me. As mentioned earlier, I can cure diseases and poisons, and I've yet to run across one I couldn't heal. If we're in a combat situation, I can make any healing more effective for allies within a hundred twenty feet of me, and I can heal one person within that same range every six seconds, though those only last a minute each and I can only maintain them both at the same time for a maximum of three minutes a day."

"Well, we'll definitely keep avoiding dying and losing limbs. Bad habits, those are.

If we can get between worlds, getting some clerics on board could be useful. I imagine a lot of people would be happy to exchange cheap manufactured diamonds for magical healing. Especially if you can deal with disease. If it works on Nurgle's Rot-- well, there's a lot of species who'll love you and healers in general.

Being able to keep someone alive indefinitely is definitely useful. Our souls don't get eaten by Slaanesh immediately, but we only really have a few days of wiggle room, if we're lucky. If we can be stopped from dying and kept alive, that's a ticking clock we don't have to worry about."

"Most clerics will have limits per day on things they can heal, I'm a bit unusual in not having that, but yeah. In my world, there's actually wealthy people who just. Arrange to be resurrected every time they die. And who have died over a dozen times. Usually higher level adventurers, but 'taking resurrection for granted' is a very large part of why we're being so badly affected by the Death Curse. ...And I realized I have no idea if the Death Curse extends here! So my resurrection ability might not work. If it does, the Death Curse shouldn't apply unless the resurrected person travels to my home plane, the Death Curse tends to immediately snatch souls in its reach."

"Oh, we have people like that too! I'm not sure anyone is up to a dozen yet. Though, you know the Drukhari answer to 'how do we power this?'... yeah, same answer with resurrection, just more so. Your home's way of resurrecting sounds much better.

Well, if the Death Curse reaches here, we'll have to deal with it as it happens. Hopefully being eaten by Acerak isn't as bad as being eaten by Slaanesh? It would still be very bad. So. Let's hope it doesn't reach that far."

"If you're not having a problem in general with resurrection, it might not be able to reach this far, so that's good at least."

"I haven't, like, checked Commoragh recently --the Drukhari homeworld? capital? one of those things --so if they have a problem, I wouldn't know. But I feel like I would have heard about the flailing panic if it was a problem, even out here, so they're probably fine.

...I mean, serves them right to have resurrection go haywire, but I'd like to think I'm a better person than to wish soul eating on people. Even if they are truly terrible."

"Maybe if we grab the artifact Acererak's using we can modify it to just mess with unethical resurrections. Or direct souls through it so we can put them back, no risk of anyone getting eaten."

"Oh, it's an artifact, not an inherent property of Acerak?

...I shouldn't want anyone's souls eaten, I don't want anyone's souls eaten, I don't want to be tempted to have people's souls eaten, but if we can make torture resurrections not work--

that would be very good."

"Wasn't suggesting the soul eating parts. I think the artifact, the soulmonger - which's actually speculative, it's not confirmed this isn't just a new ability of Acererak's - just gathers souls, and then Acererak's doing something to those souls. Probably consuming them for power, that's common with liches, just not on this scale. So if we had it, we could gather souls ourselves, keep them from getting eaten, and put people back without divine intervention. Possibly reducing the cost of resurrections, I'm not actually sure what effect that'd have."

"I didn't think you were suggesting the soul eating parts. I'm just worried... about the temptation, you know?

If we could make it clear that no, resurrection-by-torture will not work, and are able to enforce that, that would be amazing. I mean, it'd turn Commoragh on it's head, but that place really needs it's head turned."

"Yeah, it's tempting to punish the wicked." She did, in fact, have a life before becoming a paladin. "It'd be great if we could somehow shut down all the torture, but 'for the purpose of resurrection' is probably a good place to start."

"Yeah, and we've got an angle on it. And maybe if we're lucky, once torture-rescurrections don't work, people might think we could shut down other things, and stop doing them pre-emptively... it's not likely, but there's a chance."

"Should at least give momentum to anyone objecting."

"Yeah, and that's got to be worth something.

Plus, while the Haemonculi covens-- the people who actually, like, perform the torture-resurrections -- aren't likely to stop torturing, they can only torture so much because of the resources people give them. Resources that they've been given mostly to perform the resurrections."

"That'll help, yeah."

It took Kaemoque most of Zerri and Liliane's conversation to process the full implications of what just happened to him and his wound. "When did you learn to do that? How? Why?"

"I'm not from this - plane? Universe? World? Anyways, I encountered a creature that tried to eat me or something, apparently failed badly enough to teleport me away, landed here. In my world, there's three kinds of magic - well, debatably, it's not clear if one of them, psionics, is magic or something else - and I learned divine magic, which is useful for healing, fighting or bolstering undead, aiding allies, things in that general vein. I'm a type of caster called a paladin - our magic is powered by oaths we swear, and the conviction to hold to those. My oath was compassion and mercy, to aid others wherever I can. It was in my power to heal you, so I did. I swore my oath a few years ago, and was taught by another paladin, the dwarf Eldgrimmr. Rather late in life, actually, most of those who seek to learn are bright-eyed and young."

"I can imagine how a creature might use teleportation as an attack, but only if they teleported you somewhere dangerous. Maybe it was aiming for the vacuum, and missed? I'm glad it did, healing is definitely useful, especially if you can deal with things bigger than grazes.

What do the other two types do? We've got one type of thing you could call 'magic,' but the system itself isn't specialised, if that makes sense? The practitioners are, however.

And powered by oaths sounds interesting. Less dangerous than the sources around here, but it sounds like it's more limiting. I mean, it sounds like you couldn't decide to not heal me when you found out I was injured," says Kaemoque.

Zerri makes a confused-thinking face. "Wait, how old are you? I don't know how tieflings age, but you look young? I mean, no offence, if thinking someone is younger is offensive."

"The oath's more - I wouldn't be a paladin if I was the sort of person who wouldn't heal someone if it was within my power. And I'm allowed to ask for money for services, especially if that money's going towards a righteous cause and the person I'm asking can afford it. I usually don't, but it's not disallowed by the oath. I can also have priorities, especially with limited resources - keeping spells in reserve for an emergency was something I used to do when they were limited."

"Psionics deals with minds. I don't know much about it, just that telepathy and such are commonly associated with it. Psions are extremely rare, though, I'm not sure I've ever met one."

"Arcane magic is - pretty broad. Usually doesn't do healing well, does do damage well, plus a bunch of other things. There's... Enchantment, illusion, divination, transmutation, necromancy, conjuration, evocation, and abjuration, of the schools of arcane magic."

"I'm in my seventies. I'm actually middle aged, I'm part elf, I think part human, distantly part fiend - 'tiefling' is a catch-all for 'has apparent fiendish blood, but less than half'. Most don't live significantly longer than their non-fiend parent race. I started deaging when my divine spark started growing, I'm not sure what my lifespan is now."

"Ah, so it's not super behaviour controll-y. I'd be worried about you getting stuck in dilmemmas, or being forced to heal your enemies, or something. If it's more a promise to do what you'd do anyway, with the ability to priorities. that's less worrying.

Psions sounds similar to our psykers-- as does arcane magic, to an extent. The range of things psychic powers can do, the specialisation seems to come down to the individual person."

"You're 70?!" Zerri exlaims.

"You're part human?!" Khelresse follows up with.

"Er, culture clash, I think," Kaemoque says. "The humans we've met are-- not half so articulate, I'd say. And 70 sounds hilariously young to us."

"I'm the oldest person in my team by a few decades and by life stage, so I'm usually pretty much surrounded by children. Interesting, being on the other side of that. And I'm not sure, I know my father was a tiefling but I've never actually met him, his other half could be a bird-person for all I know. Human might be translating oddly? Humans can get pretty articulate where I'm from, I'm not super exceptional I don't think. A bit more classically educated than average, but I've met human wizards who can think circles around me."

"I mean, I wouldn't call any of us middle aged, we're young by Aeldari standards, but we all have at least a century or two?

Maybe you're kind of human is different from our kind? Our kind tend to be a little slow. In both 'running speed' and 'on the uptake' terms. And they tend to be missing concepts. Which, like, could be cultural, but still. They don't pick them up easily."

She kind of doubts the 'slow' thing, she's never seen credible proof of actually lower-than-average-intelligence races. But given that she hasn't met any of their humans, she'll avoid that argument for now.

"Elves come of age at a century. A couple of other races are similarly long-lived; there's a lot of diversity in my world, though. More races than I can count."

"We come of age at a century-ish as well, if we're Trueborn. It gets more complicated if you're Vatborn, which is most people. Our natural lifespan is about 1000, our unnatural lifespan can be ten times that.

There's a lot of species around here too, it's a big galaxy, though there's only a few major ones. We're one of the longer lived species, but we're competing against a few actually-immortal ones, so."