The Shadowgod is very glad that Shelyn likes what They did with Iomedae's mortal! It solved some otherwise rather gnarly steering constraints and none of the other gods with opposed plots were expecting it and They think it was very clever. 

The Shadowgod is not really following what Shelyn thinks is not good for the souls about being incarnated as mortals? When they're not incarnated they just sit there not even doing anything. It makes sense that different gods care more about things They can see better, though, the Shadowgod was willing to help Abadar with the "chava" "trade" when that was what He wanted and He was helping with the Shadowgod's goals in exchange, and They would also be willing to work with Shelyn on the thing She cares about as long as it's compatible with Their other plans here. Cooperating like that seems like the way to go. ...The Star-Eyed Goddess over there might be easier to talk to first, She is also holding onto some souls from Her mortals that She smited earlier but She seems more amenable to considering that this was a bad idea. 

Does the Shadowgod not only not usually funnel souls to afterlives but also not even know about afterlives. Here, have a look at Nirvana. Souls go in it and they do stuff, but they also get less - crackly and brittle, less stretched out, less trembly. If there are any souls the Shadowgod has ahold of and is not using, they can go there. Shelyn will talk to the Star-Eyed about Her souls too.

Ohhhh what a fascinating way to do things.

...Can the Shadowgod give Shelyn some souls for safekeeping there and still ask for them back later if that soul would be especially useful for Their system with the soulgluefriends? Nirvana does seem like a nice idea but the Shadowgod is less interested if it means giving up future option value in terms of the range of potential soulgluefriends available to incarnate. 

Hmm. So, souls in Nirvana can usually be resurrected according to the usual time limit (it's this algorithm varying with the resurrecter's strength) and She is confident that if necessary Her lawyers can make the case that incarnating as a soulgluefriend is the same deal. She is less confident that the time limit will not apply, that'd require some work, and She does not think She can arrange for noncon incarnation - souls are always allowed to refuse resurrection. The Shadowgod could still stack the deck, by like, telling the soul in Nirvana about their potential friend and how much they need help and why this particular soul is a good fit, but they'd still get to say no.

...The Shadowgod will think about it. They are not inherently opposed and probably something is workable but (reluctance to let go of any resources in Their possession without an obvious route to this getting Them more of what They want.) 

Well, the same rules would apply to any of the souls who make it to Nirvana by other means. The Shadowgod could let go of a soul that needs rest more than it wants another turn at life, and sift through tons and tons that would like to go do mortal stuff with their new best friend. It's actually a really common frustration in within-time-limit arrivals to Nirvana that they can't go do mortal stuff any more, often because they miss specific mortal stuff they were in the middle of but not always.

That is an appealing pitch! The Shadowgod is not particularly placed to assess whether a mortal soul needs rest more than it wants another turn at life, except to the extent that this appears in Foresight via some mortals having a stronger tendency to Do Lots Of Things than others, and that's not even always a good thing when the soulgluefriends are concerned. But more souls to pick from is always good, even if some weird additional constraints apply. 

Good talk! The Shadowgod is satisfied with Their inroads on making godalliances with the other world, and delighted that Shelyn appreciates Their mortal so much, it really is such a lovely soul. 

The night passes, minute by minute. 

Shavri could really use a Lesser Restoration, it's been an incredibly long day, but she's not going to get everything she wants, is she. She takes some of the Tayledras stimulant, the really strong one. It makes her feel like she's a disembodied soul possessing her own body - huh, did Leareth feel like that, was that why he was always so bloody impossible to read - anyway, it's fine, her Sight works perfectly well and her emotions are gone or at least irrelevant. 

She coordinates their roster of Healers. Trainees aren't useful for this, even for the simplest part of propping up the patients' leaking life-force; it takes more skill to hold a link to someone whose body is slowly losing the ability to process its own life-force let alone get any use out of Healing-energy. Preventing the inflammation from cell damage in their brains from spiralling is really delicate work and, honestly, there aren't really enough Healers who can do it at all. By midnight, she has to make the call whether to keep people on duty longer than is really responsible or eve necessarily safe for them - Healers can drain themselves dangerously low and get backlash too - or drop to only three senior Healers who she trusts with that work. 

Shavri picks the latter. They're going to need to get through tomorrow, not just tonight. Van and Stef both need a lot of attention by now, so there's no option but to assign them a person each, in addition to the more junior Healers just doing energy-links. The third Healer will have to rotate between Nayoki - who isn't really in better shape than Van or Stef, just slightly less of a disaster to lose - and Blai, who after all needs to be clearheaded enough at dawn to pray to his goddess. Seldan will just have to cope until morning. He should be okay, Companions are very hardy and Groveborn moreso. 

One by one, in the early hours of the morning, one by one, the three injured Healers from Leareth's organization - who aren't getting any Healing-attention to their brains - stop being rousable.

Shavri thinks, belatedly, numbly, that maybe she should have thought to tell them to pray before they lost consciousness. Or, you know, said in actual words at any point that of course they'll keep their bodies somewhere safe and, if they do ever have a chance, get them resurrected with Golarion magic. 

She pulls the Healers holding energy-links off. It lets her assign an extra person to Nayoki, whose body is really faltering now, and send the other two to get a little bit of sleep. 

She sits with each of them, for a little while, and - doesn't have any feelings at all, only the distant thought that this is moderately educational to watch with her Sight. She wonders what Jisa would see on Mindhealing Sight. It's probably a good thing Jisa doesn't have to see it, her daughter has been through enough. 

Shavri gets help to move the bodies out of the room.

She gets a couple of trainees to take over poking people awake every so often to try to consume fluids. No one's happy about it either way but it's probably preferable for it to be done by someone whose face can pull off normal human emotions.

She feels so cold. ...She asks multiple people if the room feels cold to them, that seems bad for the patients, but apparently it's not that. It's just her, and maybe it's not really physical at all. It feels like maybe something in her is broken, and it's not something that all the magic in the world will fix. 

She wakes Blai a little while before dawn. If she prioritized badly overnight and he's too groggy to pray for his spells, it would be good to know that beforehand so she can frantically throw some extra Healing effort at him. Maybe she should have given him a dedicated Healer and let Nayoki die, she didn't want to but no one is surviving the day if Blai can't get his spells. 

:What time is it:

Oh, that's a relief, he's at least capable of thinking in words. Nayoki wasn't, the last time Shavri went to check on her. Nayoki probably doesn't have more than two hours without a Lesser Restoration, and that's assuming the Healers with her do everything perfectly at every moment, which is a lot to ask when they've all been on duty for more than twelve candlemarks. Shavri is going to feel like such a spectacular idiot if Blai loses consciousness or something halfway through praying for spells and doesn't get them and it turns out Nayoki doesn't even survive long enough to have gotten it anyway.

:About five or ten minutes before dawn, I think. It's cloudy and I didn't want to cut it too close. How are you feeling.: 

From her viewpoint, he's getting a bit dehydrated despite all the tea - though he's better off than literally anyone else, Stef was getting cranky enough to throw or at least clumsily-knock-over his tea on the trainee bringing it - and the honey in the tea isn't enough, his body is starting to burn its own muscle for fuel, and there's increasing damage accumulating to all the non-vital organs. A Lesser Restoration aimed at Endurance probably won't even get most of that - like with Randi, the first one got him back from the brink of dying but it didn't leave him able to walk. On the bright side, it looks like maybe some of the various panic-reactions his body was having that were causing the worst of the nausea are running their course? There's still a lot of deeper damage there, some kind of underlying injury that the channels weren't touching, but it's not going to kill him today and tomorrow is tomorrow-Shavri's problem. 

:I've been worse: He'll take his five or ten minutes to pee and drink another mug of tea with honey and salt in it. And then he drops to his knees, leaning heavily against Seldan's side, to wait for the sun to rise.

-----

There was a very serious meeting yesterday with the Senior Circle, after became clear that Leareth hadn't made it, and was still deeply unclear that anyone else with him at the time would survive. 

(Some part of Joshel doesn't even believe it. Leareth can't be dead, surely, he's too smart and devious and he's been fighting the gods for too long to go down like that. Maybe it was some sort of brilliant trick to fool Vkandis by...making a Leareth-imposter with magic, or something...and the real Leareth is off in hiding in Seejay or something...) 

Anyway. There are not many things the Heralds can actually do, but Dara did say that everyone should pick a god from the list Blai gave Seldan and Seldan gave Rolan, and pray, and maybe one of those gods is less constrained than Iomedae and can help. Shavri thought that everyone who got hurt will die eventually, in days or weeks, without more healing-magic than Blai has alone, and of course they don't have any way to get to Golarion now, Leareth was the one who could (probably) do that. 

So Joshel is up and dawn, and obviously he's praying to Abadar. The god of banks! What a charmingly useful, practical, sensical thing for a god to be the god of! Hi, Abadar, if you're listening, Joshel thinks you sound really great! 

...What else is prayer supposed to involve. Joshel isn't sure he can summon up the right attitude to worship Abadar, who he doesn't know very much about except for 'runs banks', even though he would almost certainly attend temple services if they were available. Uh. What else did he learn about Abadar that sounded impressive and good...? 

Joshel heard that Abadar's banks issue insurance! Insurance is great just, like, conceptually! Joshel read a treatise about various insurance setups that Vanyel recommended to him, and then more recently brought it up at a Senior Circle meeting when they were doing all the negotiations with mercenaries trying to find companies to be on-call in case Leareth invaded, and Joshel had been trying to figure out if anyone provided insurance to mercenary companies against, like, not getting paid if the kingdom employing them lost the war and was conquered, and if so whether Valdemar could offer to pay for that insurance, because Valdemar absolutely could not afford to pay half up front but Joshel felt like they were dealing in bad faith if they were signing contracts that they might end up de facto backing out of due to not existing as a kingdom anymore.

Although then Randi said it sounded like something Leareth would come up with and gave Van the kind of hard look that meant he was wondering if Leareth had been the scholar who wrote that book, and of course that got Tran to dig in his heels about everything even tangentially related to it, so nothing came of it... Wow, if this had happened six months ago then Tran would probably be delighted about Leareth's death, but - that was before they all got a close-up view of why Leareth's complaints about the existing gods are really quite understandable, not that Joshel wanted the man to conquer Valdemar, obviously, that wouldn't do, but - no stop going on digressions, he's supposed to be praying here - Leareth invading Valdemar to use its population for blood-magic to make a god is probably not the sort of thing you can solve with insurance but some trustworthy neutral arbitration could have gone a really long way... 

Yes, Abadar likes this one. It's been brought up in such terrible poverty, but of positive sum trades great wealth can grow in these conditions.

Boop.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dara Dara Dara something happened! 

...Shit he did not get. Instructions. For what to do if Abadar liked him! (Joshel is unbelievably touched that it seems like Abadar likes him!!!!!! This might be the second-best thing ever to happen to him, and he would call it the best thing if that didn't seem too mean and hurtful to his Companion.)

And he can't ask Blai right now because Blai is also busy praying.

Um. Can Abadar give him whatever spells Blai is getting, at least the ones he's strong enough for? Probably those are sensible spells for the current situation? Unfortunately the current situation calls for healing magic way more than it calls for insurance magic, if Abadar has that, Joshel doesn't actually know what Abadar has and is really hoping Blai will be in okay shape later today to ask for advice on how Abadarans are supposed to do things. He wants to be a good Abadaran cleric! He really doesn't want to disappoint Abadar if Abadar is willing to take a chance on him! He just. Maybe does not know what he's doing yet. 

"Whatever he's having" is not really a standard spell list order but Abadar can help him out with respect to that situation he's thinking about. He might want Virtue and Guidance and Stabilize. And he has room for two Remove Sickness, and... between Bless and Floating Disk, Floating Disk is marginally less irrelevant, perhaps.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joshel is so grateful to have the opportunity to work with Abadar and...will definitely be needing to go beg Blai to help him figure out what exactly Abadar just gave him. ...He might need to spend a while in the stable with his Companion absorbing it first, though, this is a huge deal and he just needs to emotionally take it in a bit before he tries to go argue his way past the Healers. 

Dara is of course doing her best to also carry out the order she gave the others! 

...It was difficult to pick a favorite god, none of them leapt out at her and this is possibly just because Dara isn't enthralled by the idea of belonging to any specific god, actually? She's not even enthralled about it for Iomedae if Iomedae hypothetically had anything to spare. 

She'll do...Cayden Cailean, she decides, He seems like the most likely to be...laid back and not too bossy? And is the god of parties, according to Seldan's somewhat patchy summary of the different gods' traits. Dara can see that being a god she would get along with. She's still not sure how to actually do the praying thing but she can spend a while remembering Kata'shin'a'in and wondering if all her favorite parts of it are also things that Cayden Cailean would like. 

(Dara is unfortunately Lawful Good and too far from Cayden on alignment to be compatible, even if she were otherwise aligned or directing her prayer in even slightly the right direction.) 

Nothing happens, which is disappointing, but then Joshel Mindspeaks her bursting with excitement and she congratulates him with just as much enthusiasm and then...has to spend a while getting the crying under control, apparently, because she's been holding herself together with string and willpower for so long, even once it was starting to feel like they've already lost and everything is doomed, and...hope, it turns out, unwinds a knot inside her that was holding all the tears. 

Kilchas had an obvious favorite god on the list. Desna likes stars!!! That's because She is objectively correct. Kilchas can so very easily fill a candlemark thinking about the stars, and everything he knows about astronomy, and how it's so much better than anything else that's happened in the last year, and how he wishes he could see for himself what's out there someday, or at least know. How Leareth probably knew things about the stars that he'll never have a chance to ask him about now. 

(Kilchas, unfortunately, is also LG and too many alignment steps away.) 

...Savil isn't sure any of the gods on the list would like a crusty old woman like her.

She'll try praying to Sarenrae anyway, since Iomedae isn't an option. It's probably good for her, to spend a candlemark thinking about how everyone deserves a chance at redemption, even if it doesn't come naturally to her at all - especially because it doesn't come naturally, really, she's had too much anger and bitterness in her lately. 

She starts crying about ten minutes in, which is mortifying because she's doing this in the stables with Kellan and what if someone sees her. Maybe being pissed off was better, actually. 

Treven thought that Erastil sounded oddly charming for a god, and will diligently attempt to pray to the god of farming, even though probably the god of farming would prefer an actual farmer to someone in line for the throne of a kingdom, even though Treven didn't really ask for that and, in recent weeks and months, has occasionally fantasized - not about running away from it, obviously he can't do that - but about it somehow miraculously becoming the case that it's on someone else instead. 

...Tantras tries for Abadar too, even though he really doubts he's clever enough for a god of something like banks. He doesn't think he can manage to have any forgiveness in his heart in order to properly pray to Sarenrae. He's not really in the mood to pray at all, really, he's in the mood to go set Vkandis on fire, but Dara ordered it so he's trying. 

...It's doubly disappointing that Jisa can't just aim for Iomedae, who's awesome, both because Iomedae is broke and she's supposedly Chaotic. 

Well. Desna is Chaotic Good, according to Seldan relaying Blai's notes. Stars are pretty cool and Desna likes travel too, apparently, and Jisa loooooved all of her earlier travel experiences - look, Desna! she got to go soooo far from home to train as a White Winds mage! ...It's taking a lot of effort to make it a genuine earnest prayer and not just "well, if I can't have Iomedae you're fine I guess", and Jisa is definitely worried that that's kind of insulting to gods. Cayden the formerly mortal god might mind less but, uh, she does not feel like it would be cool to be a cleric of the god of parties. Ugh.

She wants to be a cleric of Leareth's god, which would have been awesome, but it's never going to exist now because Leareth is dead and they have no way of resurrecting him without a Gate to Golarion that he hadn't solved yet 

Maybe she actually wants to be the cleric of the god she creates once she figures out how Leareth was planning to do it

Shelyn is the god of love, apparently. Love and art, which is slightly random, but - 

- Randi tries to imagine a world where love is so powerful that there's a god of it. Where love is more than just something you try to find in the cracks and corners as the world crushes you slowly between duty and inevitable disaster. More than just something that means your death will break the one person who matters most to you in the world and there's nothing you can to do to stop it. ...More than someone he cares about deeply spending half his life crushed between duty and inevitable disaster and also broken. And then it happened again and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that Randi could do to stop that either. Being King is supposed to mean you have power, but from Randi's perspective it mostly just means that he's spent his whole life under a moral obligation to keep crushing everyone he loves under duty, knowing that in the end it might not even matter. 

There are so many people in his life who love each other and are loved and it's not enough and - gods, it's bizarre to think of Van's whole...thing...with Leareth as "love" but that's not completely wrong, not really any more wrong than saying that Randi loves Vanyel, there was real friendship there – can you imagine, Shelyn, someone with so much capacity to care about other people that he found it in himself to care about his destined enemy who was going to invade his kingdom – and it feels like, for once, that actually came so close to being enough to avert a war - and then it wasn't, and he can't begin to imagine how Vanyel must feel right now. 

Oh, Shelyn. Maybe in a better world...he can't, actually, imagine that world, but maybe Shelyn can, if She's the god of it... 

Shavri had half intended to make her own prayer to...Someone, she hadn't actually had a chance to really think about the gods on the list...but, in the event, she spends the entire candlemark after dawn frantically trying to keep Nayoki from fucking dying on her, so she's not going to do that. 

...She does prod everyone else awake who can still be woken. Maybe they should try.