That (if Seldan passes it on) makes sense; the object here isn't to give everyone a less miserable day, it's to get them fed, which means concentrating the relief into continuous blocks.

(Seldan is continuing to pass everything on except for some of his private commentary on feelings he notices people having that seem both private and like Blai shouldn't have to deal with it being shoved in his face. Shavri seems pretty not okay but she's been here an entire day and night, Seldan is a little worried that he's going to need to be the one to harass people until someone convinces her to take a break. 

...He's also getting pretty exhausted. Companion Mindspeech is supposed to be completely effortless even at ranges much greater than within the same room or occasionally down the hall, but it's - not, right now.) 

Does Seldan get the next Remove Sickness, that might help - well, temporarily anyway -

Companions do run a pretty high metabolism (they rarely need to fast, even if their Heralds are out of food they can eat grass, or really pretty much any plant matter that's possible to chew and not literally toxic, their digestion is better-designed than horses), and Seldan might in fact feel better once he's had some form of nutrition even if the 'not feeling sick' part doesn't last. A bit of honey dissolved in his trough of cold diluted ginger tea doesn't go very far at all for him. 

Seldan keeps feeling like he's forgetting something that might be important. Maybe it'll come to him if he gets to eat something and then spends some time actually resting rather than keeping himself busy by bothering nearby Companions to keep him up to speed on the gossip. 

Shavri is thinking about prioritization. 

They don't actually know for sure yet how many channels Van or Joshel or Karis get. But if three is the usual, and it goes off how "Splendid" you are, and Shavri is even slightly guessing right about what "Splendid" means, then - she can see how Blai might not have so much of it to go around, even if he's a very impressive person in some ways, and she doesn't think any of the other three have less of it than the average person. Honestly, she would kind of like to have more to go on, she should ask Blai for definitions if she can squeeze it in, but - assume they all have the usual three, Van has used one and has two left, that's two and three and three and Blai's two. Ten channels, and for everyone except Blai and debatably Seldan, the new clerics' channels are exactly as good as Blai's stronger ones.

They got through yesterday on the equivalent of three channels, if she's calling the Cure spells equivalent to one extra channel per person. And that was when most of the people in the room hadn't gotten a Lesser Restoration at any point, though admittedly the Lesser Restorations this morning were mostly repairing the new 'cracks' that had accumulated over the endless afternoon and night. It's interesting, she - definitely noticed some variability in how well it landed for each person? And that seems to be a fact about the spell, not a fixed trait for each person; Stef got more oomph out of the one this morning than the one yesterday. In any case, for most of them it....seems to have mostly kept pace with the progression of the damage, at least on whatever single specific underlying process is affecting "Endurance" and slowly destroying their ability to hold life-force. Damage to muscle and nerves is proceeding on its not-at-all-merry way, everyone except Blai is going to have trouble feeding themselves or even sitting up unaided, but - that wasn't the part that was going to kill Randi. And of course everyone except Blai is separately weak from lack of nourishment - Blai does seem to be getting something from the porridge, however impaired his gut is at doing its job - and that can cause them plenty of problems in itself, but it's a normal problem that Shavri understands, one that nearly every Healer is used to dealing with in patients with long illnesses, not - whatever strange diffuse not-quite-injury the other thing is. 

...So where does that leave her. With ten channels left, she could space one practically almost every two candlemarks, if she had to. Even if the Virtue spell only lets them free up Healers and doesn't actually delay the rate of leaking, at that channel frequency no one's life-force would ever get very low at all. Will that slow down the other damage? She's not sure, but it's got to be better than the alternative. 

The question is whether it's necessary, and whether it actually justifies demanding that Karis stay in this room all day and spend her channels on keeping just five people alive a little longer. 

...Probably not. Shavri is loathe to give up any resource she can commandeer for this, but - there are other problems. Other patients, even if they aren't hers, and it's not her right to deny them aid just because the people in this room are ones she knows and cares about (or at least, in Nayoki's case, has gotten very emotionally invested in despite never meeting her before this.) 

:Karis: she sends, heavily. :I think you can go, if you've gotten all your most important questions answered. We can make do with Joshel and Van.: 

Karis had, uh, not actually considered that Shavri had any standing to demand that she stay here?

She nods, thought. :Blai - thank you. That was valuable advice and I appreciate it.: 

Blai was actually totally expecting the newly minted Sarenrite to stick around and do some healing, if maybe a bit more clustered than "every two candlemarks", but if she's got urgent plans to run off to Iftel he's not going to second-guess her. :Of course. If you come up with more questions I will answer those as well:

Now, what could Seldan be forgetting. Time to cast a Guidance and run through everybody and everything that might have ever been useful to track. People in the room: attended by healers, in danger but already monitored appropriately. Healers themselves: ...maybe not sleeping enough, that's bad, they need sleep, is an extra Lesser Restoration tomorrow more valuable than a Nap Stack, he could Nap Stack the room and that would probably help any of the sick who managed to sleep through it too, though it relies on them having another fancy pillow. The healers are at least getting, like, snack breaks, right? They're drinking water? The dead people: did they make sure they knew any applicable funereal customs, are they definitely justified in being confident that they aren't going to rise as Weird Progressive Damage Themed Zombies... The k'Treva attack was a false flag, is there any chance that Iftel is, do some relevant parties maybe think Valdemar or some other god or something did it. Is it possible that some other god did do it and they're unfairly maligning Vkandis - unlikely Sarenrae would poach in that case, but impossible? Uncertain. Getting to Golarion - probably waiting on Archmage Cottonet and if he doesn't show up Blai just lives here now and the dead stay dead unless they become horses, that's bad and maybe Blai should think about getting together some of those arbitrageable gems and see if he can pay an inevitable to buy a Sending to hurry that timeline up at all but - ah, his Remove Sickness has worn off, fuck, fuck fuck, okay, three fucks is enough fucks, back to worrying -

Karis at least did manage to remember that Shavri had plans for the spells she got that seem specifically useful here. She'll...stand and wait for Shavri to arrange that. Shavri looks pretty busy and overwhelmed. 

Seldan had actually noted a few times - quietly, to himself - that there had been surprisingly little Blai-worrying lately. He's almost reassured by its reappearance! And it's certainly a productive time for worrying, Seldan should really have been doing more of it himself. He's been doing his best to keep an eye on the Healers and is indeed a bit worried, there are definitely faces back here this morning who only left late last night and that's not going to be sustainable for many more days.

...Nap Stack is intriguing, it would mean one of them having to skip the Lesser Restoration but Seldan himself might be okay waiting two days for the next one? It seems to help with - stamina for receiving Healing, or something? of the Velgarth-Healer kind, but also to some extent hitting how much they can benefit from the channels, Shavri was very insistent on doing it before the channels for Nayoki and Stef - and he's a Groveborn, he has stamina for miles. Anyway if they decide it's worth it, they have until tomorrow for Lady Treesa to make another pillow, if she doesn't have one already with enough tasteless frippery sewn on. She'd be so delighted. 

Seldan hasn't been worrying about funerary customs but– what, no, he's never heard of...what even is that...oh, wow, Blai's world is incredibly messed up and Seldan is pretty sure Velgarth doesn't have that thing. Ew. 

He's almost certain that no one is going to blame Valdemar for the barrier coming down, because what the fuck, Valdemar couldn't do that. It's possible some of the Ifteli survivors with limited information sources on events elsewhere are assuming Leareth did it, but what exactly are they going to do about it? Murder him? - that's being flippant, it's a genuine concern, but that clearly wasn't Vkandis' goal, which He achieved just fine, so probably Vkandis has no reason to actively steer for it? Assuming Vkandis can still do anything, Seldan is really hoping that that was it and Vkandis is broker than Iomedae now. 

...paying an inevitable to what, that - is that a thing - that seems important to– ...he'll make a note of that to think through later. And to make sure someone is on top of diamond sourcing, they must have been thinking about it already for resurrections, he's sure there's something in the works... 

Oops, Shavri mistimed her planning and now she's stuck doing tedious one-on-one Healing with Blai if she wants him to keep down his food. She'd been wanting to find out what Vanyel has, but that was going to benefit from him having his Remove Sickness, and he should get one of Blai's, Seldan is the one who can cope the best with a shorter total duration or mistimed gaps between re-castings. 

Well, Blai is an experienced cleric, she's seen him cast spells without having to think about it too hard.

:Blai, if we bring Van here so you don't need to move, can you cast his Remove Sickness next? ...As long as I'm here you're not going to throw up even if it feels like you're about to, there's a Healing-trick for it.: 

Oh that's very useful of her, if he won't throw up he can definitely get through a verbal component. :Yes, I can:

Fiducia Joshel would be the natural person to ask about whether they've accumulated any diamonds that could be put to this use, but it might not be a good use of them to pay an inevitable for a sending - even if the inevitable could not do this for them at all it would still be very expensive, and waiting a few weeks for Archmage Cottonet to possibly notice on his own that Blai isn't there is free, although Gentle Repose is he guesses not free because they're relying on Lesser Restorations and that's the same slot - the window for Raise Dead is nine days of lying around un-Reposed, a bit longer if they get a more powerful cleric, anyone who would need a full Resurrection anyway might as well also have whatever retrievable remains are present in a box for a few years and it won't make a difference, anyone who'd need a True Resurrection can be left dead for a really long time -

"Remove Sickness."

Oh neat is that the Abadaran title, Seldan should tell Joshel, should it be Fiducia-Herald or Herald-Fiducia– not important right now. The tradeoff between waiting long enough to confirm that the archmage isn't going to find them rather than wasting diamonds, versus waiting so long that Leareth and Yfandes and whoever-else are no longer Raise Dead-reachable, does seem hard. He's going to need to mull on that one. It might depend what Leareth's org had done in terms of diamond procurement – he should probably just pose the question to them directly, if they want to collect some diamonds to try sooner and increase the odds it takes less than nine– than eight more days, that seems kind of up to them.

(Maybe Seldan will be able to make do on a Lesser Restoration every other day and they can squeeze in Gentle Reposes on the key people, but - he doesn't have infinite stamina, and Shavri did not seem to think the underlying problem causing the other problems was being solved or on track to improve.) 

Shavri manages to multitask enough to confirm that Vanyel thinks her demonstration of the Remove Sickness gesture matches one of his 'bigger' spells but not the other. Shavri doesn't give a shit about the other one, it can't be turned into a Cure and is presumably his...domain? spell? whatever that means. Why does he only get two, everyone else has three - it can't be because he's dying, that hasn't affected Blai's spell slot count at all. Weird. Whatever, not a mystery Shavri has any energy to care about now. As long as he has at least three channels, that's all that matters. 

She didn't manage to retain the gestures for any of the various 'small' spells. Joshel and Karis know theirs now, though, they can take turns showing Vanyel and hopefully figure out what he's got. Oh, and she'll tell Karis that they need her Remove Sicknesses in about an hour, they'll do Seldan next so Karis is free to go even though all else equal Shavri would really want Stef to get it sooner rather than later - maybe she can be mean and horrible and make Seldan do without painblocking - 

...Speaking of that, she'd better reassign Gemma to Vanyel, he's valiantly trying to eat but his sore mouth is obviously making it difficult. Sorry, Blai, no more painblocking either. 

Ow. (That's actually way less distracting than the nausea, though.) Wisdom affects how many spells clerics get, maybe Vanyel is not particularly Wise. It's not easy to tell, especially in adults, just by being casually around a person - Vanyel did not seem notably unWise to Blai - in school they used seriousness in general as a proxy for Wisdom when filtering for clerical candidates even though it's hardly impossible to be Wise and have a sense of humor, or stoic and also about as Wise as a turnip - anyway, what was he thinking about - "Guidance," he mutters - do they have anything even slightly like normalized relations with what remains of Leareth's organization as of now or would they be trying to make Nayoki talk to them while she's still sick? -

Seldan is no longer relaying all of Blai's potentially-relevant thoughts to Shavri, so she does not have an opportunity to hear that Vanyel "did not seem notably unWise" and snort loudly about this claim. 

Seldan had been talking to some guy who Leareth had stationed in Haven to do comms-spell relaying! He's been avoiding Mindspeaking at a distance today to save his reserves, but he would do that in preference to asking Nayoki, that just leaves it on her to Mindspeak at range and she really shouldn't be doing that. 

(Between Joshel, who has Virtue and Guidance and Stabilize, and Karis, who has Virtue and Resistance and Stabilize, they're able to determine that Vanyel got Virtue, Guidance, and Resistance.)

---

The Star-Eyed Goddess has a problem. 

She has a number of different problems, really. The biggest one is obviously Vkandis. The second-biggest is...probably the Shadowgod, who has managed to neatly pull the godpolitics equivalent of a coup over the Valdemar region. She has resources elsewhere, unlike Vkandis She hasn't burned everything, but those are - fundamentally local resources and already spoken of for local priorities. 

The third-biggest problem is related to both the first and the second, and is that She still can't see very well. The Shadowgod seems to have found some way to cheat, but She has no idea what it is and They aren't sharing. 

The fourth-biggest problem is that Cayden, who has otherwise been very helpful, will not stop bringing up how bothered He is at how She treated Her mortals. 

The Star-Eyed has attempted to ask several times what He thinks She should do about it now. Among other things that the Star-Eyed definitely cannot do right now, because see the aforementioned problems, He keeps insisting that She owes her mortal - the one who is still alive and who He was so upset over before - an "apology". The Star-Eyed Goddess has been patiently attempting to clarify what that means. Cayden has mostly been sending the same godconcept that didn't make sense the first time at her but with more frustration, and did not seem to want to just give her a specific thing to copy to tell Her mortal even though that worked before.

She did ask him if an "apology" would make the mortal more visible and legible to Her or more useful as a resource. Cayden seemed to find this even more frustrating and She has no idea why, but He conceded that it might. Which is at least an argument for the importance of an "apology", rather than just insisting on it being important without explaining! But does not clarify what it involves doing. 

Cayden eventually did the metaphorical godequivalent of storming off in disgust, but He did grudgingly tell Her that this one other goddess from His world might be able to communicate it differently in a way that works for Her. 

She will try to contact Sarenrae. 

Hello there.

Hi! The Star-Eyed Goddess has a problem with a thing and is trying to figure it out and Cayden Cailean suggested She ask Sarenrae about it!

...Explaining things is hard. She can start with the prelude, which is that Cayden contacted Her to try to explain humans and, in the process of doing this, was very upset about - can Sarenrae also see this mortal? This mortal is Hers, like all of its people are through the pact, but more Hers than most because of being a Healing-Adept. And - 

- she did this thing, here's the shape of it in the web-of-past in Foresight, all of these mortals of Hers who died because that let Her steer into this branch of Foresight for this conclusion and Cayden already lectured her about that it doesn't need to be repeated yet again. It didn't work, even though it really should have, so on that level She can't claim that it wasn't a mistake, and Cayden has been explaining that it hurt Her mortals in ways She wasn't able to see at the time, and thinks that She could have done it a different way that hurt Her mortals less if She had known to be trying for that, and maybe that's also true. 

(Cayden also thinks that the thing She was trying to achieve in the first place might have been a mistake but that isn't important anymore, although She did end up deciding that it wasn't worth burning even more of Her resources on before Vkandis went and burned all of His resources on it and She would prefer if He hadn't done that.) 

...Anyway, this mortal isn't dead, and Cayden showed her what He saw and - 

The human's mind is very loud, to Cayden's godsenses, and the thing it's screaming is trapped. It looks like there are chains of some kind wrapped around the human's mind, chains so old that the human's mind has grown around them. They normally didn't limit the human much. But now the human's mind keeps half-forming these thoughts, and then the chain tightens and the thoughts are cut off and the human hurts. The human can barely think at all, in fact, except about trivialities, because every time the human tries to think deeply about his situation the chain stops him.

The human is in a lot of pain. He is scared and alone. 

It is one thing to take the human's body prisoner, and Cayden is pretty annoyed with the archmade too. But it is far worse to take the human's mind as a prisoner. 

- and She agreed to give her mortal this message that Cayden gave her: "the Star-Eyed might have made a mistake".

It did have an effect of some kind, She thinks, for one thing because Cayden seemed to calm down about it a bit, but also because her mortal is all the way over here now instead of over there where She has even less visibility or influence, and...She didn't really follow what it was aiming for, Foresight was really very messy at the time and it did not actually go anywhere anyway, but it seemed to be something, and it wasn't something She had directly tried to steer? It was this thread back here, in case Sarenrae also has the Cayden-ability to understand what mortals are trying to do even when it's not obvious from the results in Foresight? 

Cayden has been trying to convey that She owes this mortal a different message saying something - more - about the having made a mistake? Cayden conveyed it like this but the Star-Eyed Goddess did not really follow. Cayden did agree that it could make Her mortal more legible to Her or more useful as a resource, which She would like, because She has very fewer angles to nudge anything in Foresight and cannot even see very well to give Her mortal instructions. 

Ahhhhh-huh.

So... is the Star-Eyed clear that mortals decide to do things in order to get results they like, just the same as gods do? They're bad at it and sometimes they will do things that will have results that they do not like and could have predicted in advance. But they do more or less overall try to do this.

...Cayden did sort of explain that, conceptually? It does make sense and seem like it must be true, since mortals have tendencies to do things even without being nudged - including unpredictable things! that aren't very clear in Foresight until after they happen! - and that is not true of, for example, Heartstones.

(The Star-Eyed had mostly associated this with the specific incredibly frustrating soul who kept doing all of these things for really a very long time and She had just decided that trying to kill that one was not worth any more resources and then Vkandis did it and caused a Cataclysm in the process! Admittedly a small Cataclysm that won't last as long or take so much work to clean up after, and He might have less advantage than She does to seeing the ways in which the effects of it are Cataclysm-flavored, given that He was not as involved in cleaning up the aftereffects of the last one. In any case, this - the frustrating soul, that is, though also the downstream effects including Vkandis doing a Cataclysm about it - has not left Her with an incredibly positive or sympathetic opinion of the mortal tendency to try to do things.) 

Okay, good. Step two: one of the things some mortals might do in order to try to get results they like is follow the Star-Eyed. Yes? She has this ancestral pact situation but it's still a thing they are doing and know they are doing and think they prefer the results of.

...Yes? Yes, the Star-Eyed thinks She understands that. The mortals can leave if they want! See, this one that's closely adjacent to the other one isn't Hers anymore. 

Great! That's nice that there is an escape valve for the ancestral pact.

And what a bunch of humans got for following the Star-Eyed was: killed. Does She think that is the kind of thing they had in mind as a result they wanted here?