"Auctioning the spots makes sense if you know how many there will be or are prepared to collect only after discovering this information. Do you have relevant immigration controls of any kind? He can weigh a coin and - Abadar's ass that's a lot of diamonds does he maybe want to get those into a safe deposit box and insured before he is robbed for the wealth of nations that he's got in that box if he's not going to need THAT many people raised right away, Sothis is pretty safe but WOW. Raad has Raise Dead prepared, once.

:...That would probably be a good idea.: He hadn't been very worried about them in Kimbry's saddlebags because she can look out for herself perfectly well, but it would be nice to stop having to worry about it at all. :If you have it prepared today and you come with us, there is one specific person: well, Companion, :that is particularly time-sensitive. I believe our allies wanted to eventually pay to Raise all of their casualties in the - events - and that's eighty-something. ...Also I was told there's a time limit on using that instead of a more expensive spell but I didn't really follow what it was. It's been: a week? no, longer - nine, no, :I believe it's been ten days. Since most of the casualties.: It's gotten very blurry, especially after that night he stayed up for thirty-six candlemarks straight in order to cast Guidance several thousand times but he wasn't getting enough sleep before that either and then the Nap Stack really confused him. Maybe Joshel should have reviewed a calendar before he rushed through a Gate for this, he's so unprepared. 

He's now trying to figure out if he's supposed to try to explain the whole complicated situation with Leareth, given the part where Abadar really liked him or something and he received extremely confusing instructions to pray to Abadar about the conditions provided for Leareth's soul by the Shadow-Lover. But it's really very complicated. And he hasn't even managed to get as far as explaining Iftel yet. 

"The price of a Resurrection has actually dropped to that of a Raise Dead of late but that is specifically because Archmage Naima can perform a Resurrection with no diamond at all twice daily and has effectively cleared the market of would-be Resurrections, so you might need to bring the body to one of her circuit locations to take advantage of that if anyone's outside the Raise time window. My Raise will work eleven days after death and there are higher-circle clerics than I if necessary. Raising eighty people will require - well, eighty diamonds, and a lot of clerics indeed to get it done in a timely manner, or you can trade off either by paying more in other currency for scrolls - where are these coming from -"

:...I think diamonds aren't nearly as expensive in our world because they're - not particularly useful for magic and so they're a luxury good.: Lady Treesa did not actually contribute her jewelry to this stash, that he knows of, but she did apparently have at least one diamond large enough just lying around. :Our allies are - it's actually very complicated and I don't know if it's the right time for the whole explanation, but they're a...private organization...that was preparing to invade a kingdom and now aren't doing that and I guess they have resources to spare. They did say they might need their own diamond mine to source enough for everyone they eventually want to get back, but I guess that's the sort of thing they can just do.: 

Cicerone Raad's brow furrows in disapproval at "invade a kingdom". "A much better purpose to put an invasion force to. Well. I can prepare Raise Dead only twice daily. Most people who can do it at all can do it only once a day. So for tomorrow you're going to want the mysterious fourth circle spell and a great many castings of Gentle Repose, is that right? Which means some second circles can come along and make themselves useful..." He's starting to take notes now.

Oh yeah that's clever, they should do that. :We managed to get a Gentle Repose on the earliest casualty but we did not really have any spell slots above first going spare after the - emergency. ...Is now a good time to go back to the beginning and try to explain everything, I think I'm not doing a good job of explaining and there's...a lot of elements.: 

"Please."

:Okay.: 

Deep breath. He can do this. 

:Several weeks ago Select Blai Artigas, a third circle cleric of Iomedae who I believe was traveling from the...interplanar rift full of Abyssal demons?: which Joshel has blanked on the name of, :to the diplomatic meetings that were scheduled in Cheliax, unexpectedly got teleported somehow to our capital city. We initially worried he was a spy for Leareth, the immortal archmage who was running the organization previously planning to invade our kingdom for complicated reasons. We were trying to learn more from him and - there was an attack at a festival - he saved a lot of people. We concluded he was unlikely to be working for Leareth.:

:We tried to send him to some allies of ours in a remote location, because it seemed bad for him to come to Leareth's attention, and - discovered that the place had exploded. Shortly later Select Artigas did come to Leareth's attention and was kidnapped. I've...lost track of some of what happened, it was very rushed...but we blamed Leareth for both attacks and assumed the invasion was happening now. One of our people, Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron, went north to try to negotiate with Leareth or possibly kill him - they had been speaking regularly for a couple of decades in a shared lucid Foresight dream.:

:We were trying to call in our allies for the anticipated invasion. We ended up out of contact with Herald Vanyel and…there was a lot of confusion. We learned afterward that Leareth believed Select Artigas’s god had been responsible for the attacks, which Leareth didn’t in fact do. He released Select Artigas and Herald Vanyel intercepted him in the north…:

It sounds like so many things, laid out like that, and also completely insane.

:…Any questions so far?: Joshel adds faintly.

"Is it important to this context what a Herald is?"

…Probably, given that Blai is (complicatedly) sort of a Herald now. So many things he can say about the situation have a “complicatedly” attached.

:Heralds are people chosen by intelligent magical horses to serve the kingdom of Valdemar. It’s a miracle that was set up by, we think, a number of different gods, we don’t know which ones, our founder prayed to all the gods who he thought might help. Companions are supposed to be - impossible to corrupt and to always have the good of Valdemar as their priority: though guess what is ALSO COMPLICATED, :and they give us advice and it’s - a lot of why the people see Heralds as trustworthy with important things.:

Ah. Space Paladin Horse. "Understood. Go on."

Great, Joshel is glad he’s capable of explaining SOMETHING clearly. Where was he again - there were so many events and he did not write out a timeline before this - he kind of wants to just skip to the end, to the bits that are screamingly salient now, but then he would just have to go back to embarrassedly fill in the gaping holes in the story.

:Our later understanding is that several gods - particularly Vkandis and the Star-Eyed Goddess, I think they’re local to our world and not known in yours, we have no idea of their alignments but I doubt they’re Good - anyway, we think They were interfering to push for a war between Valdemar, our kingdom, and Leareth. Leareth kind of saw himself as fighting the gods and after everything I think a lot of us have come around to conceding that he had a point there even if the methods he picked were horrifying.;

;But - going back to where I left off - Select Artigas was able to confirm that Leareth was Lawful and get several useful Minor Prophecy spell castings, I think that spell doesn’t work here but it does in our world. Meanwhile all sorts of suspicious coincidences kept us out of contact and - we thought Herald Vanyel was dead. There’s a Death Bell tied into our kingdomwide wards and it’s apparently something gods can tamper with. We assumed the worst. Herald Vanyel and his party were up north, they realized something was badly wrong, though not what, they sent Select Artigas back to explain. We - completely panicked about it, and kind of took him prisoner on the assumption he was compromised with a lot of mind control by Leareth. …And then an unlucky avalanche took out Yfandes, Herald Vanyel’s Companion, she was traveling to be a relay for long-range Mindspeech communication between us and Herald Vanyel’s party. That was - ten days ago? I’m not sure? - but she did get a Gentle Repose. She’s still the highest priority to Raise because it’s very bad for us to lose our Companion.:

Questions?

Notetaking notetaking. "I can Raise her today if she's the single highest priority."

:…I think the only other person who is even conceivably a higher priority is Leareth and that’s complicated in so many ways. - he died later. Pileup of a few different godinterventions, one failed but took out his immortality contingency and the next one succeeded and also. Left a mile-wide forest fire around the entire border of His country, about two hundred miles of which is also our border, and - oh, the four people who absolutely need healing spells were originally injured by the same attack. Select Artigas is one of them. They didn’t get to Leareth in time. I - sorry - I know I skipped really quite a lot in the middle but it’s been. A really, really bad week. If we can get second-circle clerics to come they’ll also have a lot of channels, right, we can - I was on the border, we were getting as many people a day as we could -:

Oh no why is THIS the moment that Joshel’s mind is picking to start having emotions about the last week. He wasn’t done explaining at all! 

"Yes, they'll have channels, just weaker ones. Even a very weak channel will prevent someone from dying to damage, though. - we might actually just want a wand of Gentle Repose, though..."

:I think the channels being weaker literally doesn’t matter, no one in our world has the - extra life-force thing? - that powerful people have here. I don’t know how a wand of Lesser Repose works but I’m sure we can pay for it. I - um - what other questions do you have that you’d want answered before you go asking people if they’re willing to come…?: Joshel could use a minute to let his feelings get over themselves but it’s a time-sensitive emergency and he’s not going to ask for that.

"Let's see. If I'm sending people to all the major churches... 'Peacetime disaster relief on a newly discovered planet outside this system' - it is, yes? - 'with different magic; travel and accommodations provided for relief workers, overwhelmingly clerics wanted particularly for Raises; additional capacity for interplanetary conduit method to be auctioned; return trip anticipated to be available reliably but routine service not established, pay scale...'" He looks at Joshel expectantly.

:…I don’t know us to be at war with anyone at this time but I’m slightly concerned that calling it ‘peacetime’ will misstate the situation: Joshel admits. :We think Haven, our capital, is now safe, but a week ago Select Artigras was nearly assassinated by - we think the Star-Eyed Goddess. Who isn’t specifically a concern anymore, we shut down the Heartstone that let Her easily act in Haven and then…uh, I think I may have missed something here but Brightstar - who Gated me here, he’s also the one who wrecked Leareth’s immortality - anyway he’s clearly helping us now so I…guess…things are okay with Her now? But Vkandis was clearly very against something and it might’ve been us getting a Gate here, because Leareth was the one working on that, and we’re all really hoping that He’s out of options to do anything else but if we’re asking people to go to the Iftel border they should probably know things are complicated.:

Joshel can, given a minute, produce some thoughts about pay scales (in Valdemaran denominations). Maybe they should offer…hazard pay…for relief workers specifically volunteering to be on the Iftel border? Now he’s kind of upset that no one ever thought to offer HIM hazard pay for working on the Iftel border while a cleric of a god Vkandis might really hate 

"Background combat risk only?" ventures Raad.

Sure. (Wow it’s kind of awful to run into the fact that “is it currently peacetime in his kingdom” feels so ambiguous.)

What else. 

:- The specific people we urgently need healing for are Herald Vanyel, who is also a first-circle cleric of Shelyn now, and his lifebonded partner Bard Stefen, and Select Artigas and his Companion. Which he has now, it’s complicated. …I have absolutely no idea if this is relevant to you or to anything here but supposedly Abadar tried to…buy…Leareth’s soul…from the Shadow-Lover who is one of our gods and has him right now.:

Joshel thinks those were the two things that kept coming to mind when he was in the middle of something else? And now he can just wait for questions? …He’s so tired. Possibly still overheated, he should maybe have set aside dignity at some point and taken off his wool tunic, he’s slightly dizzy now. It’s just that feeling like he’s at least presenting a good figure as a Herald was the only thing making the “ignorant foreign bumpkin” aspect more tolerable.

:…Could I trouble you for water again, I’m sorry, I didn’t prepare that spell today.:

"Create Water. How... did you come by the information... that Abadar tried to buy his soul."

What even was the story there. Joshel heard about it as a cryptic and fragmentary request that he pray to Abadar to get Leareth’s ???soul-storage conditions??? improved with the Shadow-Lover, with this fact provided as a single line of context on why Abadar might actually care.

:Select Artigas spoke to the Shadow-Lover before when he almost died and among other things told the Shadow-Lover, who seemed to be - I don’t know about  an ally, but not steering for the war - to try talking to some gods of your world, including Abadar. Later on Select Artigas and his Companion were…able to go talk to the Shadow-Lover on purpose, I’m not sure how, They normally only talk to dead or dying people. The report I received on what they learned there, er, included that claim.:

Raad glances at his notes. "They... are dying if I don't misunderstand?"

:- I mean, they are, but pretty slowly, that was probably four days ago, normally people only get a Shadow-Lover conversation if they're very - acutely - dying - I don't know, maybe that's why it worked, I was on the border at that point, they sent me a letter.: 

"That's... definitely interesting. I will have to send the pharaoh a letter about that. At any rate. It should not affect what message goes out for recruitment. Do you have Scrivener's today?"