:Congratulations, Songbird:

Awwwwww wait is that literally his title now. Well. It beats Demonsbane, that's for sure. 

A trainee arrives with a meal tray for Blai. It's not a meal that would be particularly exciting for a healthy person; Shavri was thinking ahead during the night, and asked Gemma to sort out something as densely nutritious and easily digestible as possible for a patient with damage to their stomach and gut lining that's inevitably going to affect digestion - she doubts the Remove Sickness spell will actually fix that - and who's fairly likely to lose everything still in their stomach at some point after the spell wears off. Thyey also wanted it to be soft, and definitely not acidic like many fruit are. Everyone is likely to be developing painful mouth sores as the mucous membranes start to break down, and they have enough Healers with the painblocking trick to give everyone painblocking while they're eating, but not all day; better to avoid making the problem worse.

Blai will get oat porridge, nice and overcooked until it's basically a liquid, with broth rather than water, with just the whites of a few eggs disguised in it for the extra protein, mixed with plenty of cream and honey and cooled to just-barely-lukewarm, ready when he wants it. 

Gemma will come painblock herself. She's had, like, an entire five candlemarks of sleep, and she's the best at it second to Shavri. She might as well start now, even though whoever needs to talk to Blai about whatever it is hasn't arrived yet. 

(Painblocking is pretty impressive, at least when Gemma's doing it. It doesn't affect Blai's ability to feel his body in general - and some of the physical sensations are still unpleasant, or the heaviness in his limbs, or the feeling of being the wrong temperature, or the weird lingering pressure of a headache, or the pervasive nonspecific feeling of something being terribly wrong - but the part where it hurts is just...gone. It doesn't directly affect the nausea but even some of that was apparently secretly stomach pain.) 

Oh. That's nice. Seldan likes that better. (It's not even being done on him, but still.) 

Blai has a good pain tolerance but he still appreciates it! :Thank you: "Remove Sickness." Ohhhh that's better. Porridge in face.

And there's lots of honey-sweetened ginger tea to go with it, even without all the extra salt this time since the porridge has that covered. 

Shavri's self-assigned task for the next candlemark is to convince Blai's digestive system to DIGEST ALL THIS FOOD PLEASE NO SERIOUSLY THAT'S YOUR ENTIRE JOB. 

(Gemma Mindtouches her to ask if she's had any sleep. Shavri suppresses the instinctive desire to COMMIT MURDER about the interruption, and tells Gemma that she's fine. She's figured out a lot of tricks for getting better Sight-detail on this particular kind of damage and routing around it - the creepy trick to get Healing-Sight up on a DEAD BODY is honestly pretty useful to have as an alternate angle on living people, at least if particular organs of theirs are messed up enough - and she's not sure she can teach it to anyone else. She can rest once everyone's been able to eat; she can take more of the stimulant if she needs to, though for now the dose late last night seems to still be holding her.) 

Joshel arrives! 

He's excited and nervous and oh dear gods everyone here looks sick. Aaaaah. Are they sure Blai is up for talking to him? 

Yep. It's important, and Blai is fully qualified to rise to the occasion for anything really important even if he's dying (and he's substantially less dying than he was a candlemark ago, yay.)

Seldan is here for Mindspeech translation! It's less necessary here since Joshel is also a Mindspeaker, but Seldan is also feeling better after the Lesser Restoration and channel, and he's up for doing some amount of digging-in-Blai's-memories to make this go faster and be less tiring for his Herald. 

Right. 

So Joshel does know what god picked him and what spells he got, which is apparently more than some people, but he's not sure which of the spells is which? And is kind of scared he'll fumble actually casting them, it's not like he's mage-gifted. 

Also there aren't any temples of Abadar here! Is Abadar going to want Joshel to found one? Joshel is incredibly honored to be selected by Abadar and he wants Abadar to be getting everything He paid for with that and he's scared that he's going to screw it up? 

Blai can demo the gestures for everything except Floating Disk, which he doesn't know since he doesn't get it as one of his domain spells. If that doesn't work then Joshel can probably just safely try them. Does he know the relevant cautions about how some Abadarans channel negative? Joshel will only do this if one of a) Joshel himself is evil or b) Joshel is Neutral, but decided, perhaps while not really paying close attention, to channel negative, but it's a possibility on the table. Casting should be instinctive.

Abadar has temples in Golarion cities but they also operate as banks and insurance offices. If Joshel doesn't want to give sermons and doesn't even have a copy of the Abadaran holy books, operating a bank that is not very temple-y should be fine, as far as Blai knows. If there's only one of him, even that might not be necessary; Abadaran clerics are allowed to go adventuring or go into unrelated businesses or whatever as long as they're promoting and enjoying gains from trade. Uh, Joshel might be religiously required to charge for his spells but Blai has no idea of the market clearing rate and he's not sure if there are exceptions, like, maybe the Heralds count as having him on retainer sufficiently for that to be good enough?

Huh! ...The Heralds, particularly in terms of things like their relationship to the Healers' Collegium, really don't operate internally on a market basis, so it's hard to figure out who even ought to pay him for healing in this particular situation, even if it feels like in principle it would be sensible to have processes for that, just to keep track of internal resource allocation, and it wouldn't be that complicated in principle for the Healers to charge the Heralds and vice versa for various services, but in practice he suspects no one will go for it because no one at Healers wants to do the ledger-keeping. ...Probably Leareth's org is set up to be able to pay him, and Joshel is not already employed by them, but Joshel isn't sure if it's un-Abadaran to charge them for it just because it's less weird and complicated when Nayoki is only one of five patients here. And also Blai has a good point that Joshel doesn't know what the spells should be worth in Valdemaran coin, which has got to be a different answer than it would be in Blai's world. - On reflection it all just seems very messy and he's inclined to ignore the problem and just heal his colleagues, sorry Abadar. Maybe he can try to...do an auction, or something...for the Floating Disk, since he can't use it for healing, but honestly that sounds like way too much hassle to set up today, and less valuable to the Heralds than Joshel just spending his entire day here casting the spell that his Companion reports, via Seldan, might be helpful for the progressive damage. 

...Joshel doesn't want to give sermons per se, but if it would be Abadaran to go give lectures at the Collegium for un-Gifted students about topics related to banks and trade - and to insurance to the extent he personally knows things about it - he's kind of always wanted to do that? It seems like none of the students in Blues find it inspiring as something to train in, but he always felt like at least some of them should? 

Abadarans are definitely allowed to give lectures for free, at any rate, that's why Blai knows things about Abadaranism is that he would listen to Fiducia Boian explain stuff every time he came by #11. It's... probably okay at least for now to not figure out how to charge for his spellcasting if it would be that complicated and ill-timed, because Abadar can probably see that and would have accounted for it, but if he does come up with something that isn't too riddled with transaction costs to implement it might behoove him to do so. Blai doesn't immediately think it seems un-Abadaran to charge Nayoki and not fellow members of the organization that has Joshel on retainer, but it might have to be for that reason and not for the awkwardness reason? It's probably okay to not use the Floating Disk. If he doesn't cast it he can just leave it there tomorrow and it will probably be that little bit less pricey for Abadar to fill up his slots if some are leftovers.

How long does will the Floating Disk last? And does he need to follow it around personally to direct it, and is he likely to be unskilled at this the first time he tries? Maybe he can find something the Healers need hauled around, rather than invite Shavri's wrath by disappearing off-site to sell it to a merchant transporting their goods. 

(Shavri is kind of scary this morning. Joshel does not want to invite her wrath.) 

Probably an hour, and he needs to personally lead it but it does not so far as Blai understands it have a particularly great skill component, it should float along quite evenly after him wherever he goes.

Joshel should be delegating figuring all of that out to his Companion! That's what they're for!

...Seldan also has lots of ideas but he should probably not take this on, especially if it involves a lot of Mindspeaking people not in the room to figure out what's going on with various logistics in Haven. But, like, plausibly at some point there will be a Gate to the Iftel border, even if the Heralds don't manage to negotiate crossing into Iftel to help there are still a bunch of Valdemaran border towns in serious trouble that will need relief supplies, and if a Floating Disk can support more weight than a person can carry while not taking up more room than a person, that means a smaller or shorter-duration Gate which is less tiring for the mage - that's not obviously the most valuable way to use it but it's what came to Seldan's mind first - 

- he's going to go harass Joshel's Companion, who's waiting just outside the building, to make herself useful already, and then save his Mindspeech. 

For what it's worth, Seldan also thinks it would be pretty shocking if Joshel was anything except Lawful Good? Vanyel managed to read Good despite all the killing Karsite soldiers, and Joshel is just as much a do-gooder personality and wasn't even in a combat role, his work under King Randale's reign has been basically all allocating Valdemar's treasury-spending in ways that improved people's lives. 

It'll hold about... less than Blai's weight but he's seen one carrying yea many books? He doesn't know the spell well. It's mostly a wizard spell.

Blai has no specific reason to doubt Joshel's goodness, it's just, like, conceptually possible, for there to be an Evil Abadaran, even if they would also have to be the kind of person you could trust with all your money.

...Great, that's a good idea, both the specific thoughts Seldan floated but also the concept that Joshel doesn't personally have to try to figure this out right now. Joshel can make Seldan invite Shavri's wrath instead of him

Should he try casting some of his little spells to see which one is the one that might help the Healers? He has Virtue and Guidance and Stabilize but he's not sure which is which and separately has no idea which one someone thought would be good to stand here casting all day.

He does have the two Remove Sickness - Abadar was very helpful even though Joshel did not know what to ask for and tried to get "what Blai asked for" and that's apparently not the usual way one is supposed to ask for spells - anyway he's starting to see why that seems...indicated...for this situation, given that Stef is currently very clearly trying to vomit quietly and not bother them. Should he use that? 

Virtue might be useful to cast all day so that the Virtue robustness and not the real nonmagical kind can be eaten up by the progressive damage, but it's perfectly safe to try the others while locating it, and Blai will recognize them. Guidance is this one. "Guidance." Joshel's Remove Sickness won't last very long, he will probably want to plan to chain the two of them together and maybe also tack on Vanyel's if he got them and Karis's if she did to get a reasonable food-digesting duration.

...The thing where Golarion spells need you to say a specific word and use a specific gesture is super weird, mage-gift doesn't work like that, but given that all of them are perfectly safe and also he's been reassured that they're reusable and he won't waste them if he casts something that isn't needed at that moment, Joshel is perfectly happy to figure it out with trial-and-error and practice. 

This is incredible!!!!! Joshel can do MAGIC now!!! (It's been a long time since he last felt insecure about not having cooler Gifts than Mindspeech and a little bit of Farsight, but his inner twelve-year-old trainee is delighted.) 

:That one is Stabilize:

Perfect. Joshel should memorize that one and be ready to go cast it on a moment's notice on whoever Shavri points him at. Hopefully they won't need it, with the frequency of channels they should have available, but it could come up if a Healer fumbles badly enough, and the chances of that are only going to increase with time. 

Once Joshel's experimentation gets there: Virtue does make a test subject (Seldan, as the least likely to suffer if it disrupts the Healing link or something) have noticeably slightly more life-force for the spell duration! Which isn't very long, Joshel really would need to be running around the room casting it more or less constantly to get a real ongoing effect, but Shavri thinks that while it's up the patient won't suffer for lack of having an active Healing-link maintained constantly. Which probably means the best way to use it is to rotate, having Joshel hang out and tap a couple of people at a less frenetic pace so that they can drop to three rather than five Healers. That's going to be important by tonight, they're going to run out of anyone who's had any sleep today. Shavri doesn't need sleep, it's fine

Shavri is not at all apologetic about the fact that this is pretty repetitive and tedious. Guess what SHE'S been doing for nearly the last 24 candlemarks straight. 

...You know what just occurred to Seldan. The Healers would almost certainly benefit from Guidance. Shavri especially. 

And here comes Karis. 

She doesn't look excited or happy, like Joshel did. She looks...haunted, mostly. 

Blai's happy to tap Healers with Guidance, though maybe not while he is still shoveling porridge into his mouth. :Hello: he thinks at Karis.

(Seldan will relay out of necessity this time. At least Karis knows how to shield, a rare skill in non-Mindspeakers, so he doesn't have to use his own self-discipline to nobly refrain from reading everything in Karis' surface thoughts, because that's both unethical - unLawful, really, in Blai's terminology - and rude, but so tempting, and Seldan is worse at resisting temptation via self-discipline when he feels terrible.)