:Do you, er, need anything else? Is there anything specific you want to ask about Valdemar, or should I just give you a summary of what I think might be relevant?: 

Katri was instructed to shadow him until someone else takes over, but honestly in his position she might want some time by herself in her room rather than having a stranger awkwardly hovering and trying to be helpful.

:...I could just go do some work nearby, if you'd rather - get settled in: she adds hesitantly. There's shielding on the building, but the regular guest-rooms in this wing aren't shielded on the interior dividing walls; she could park herself nearby and still keep her Empathy open, which ought to cover both "Blai has a problem he needs help with" and "Blai surprises them all by turning out to be up to something nefarious after all." 

:I'd appreciate a summary, I wouldn't expect to know what would be most important to know about the place.:

:That makes sense. Right.: 

Katri glances around, then goes to pull out the stool and sit, so Blai can have the more comfortable chair. 

:Valdemar was founded about eight hundred years ago. The story is that a baron from a place called the Eastern Empire fled with his people - the Eastern Empire wasn't a very pleasant place, probably still isn't, they use a lot of mind-control magic to force everyone to be loyal to the Emperor and they're always trying to conquer their neighbors. Anyway, Baron Valdemar managed to get away and kept fleeing west until they found land to settle where no one else lived yet, because it was just-cleared Pelagirs. Oh, right, er, the Pelagirs is what we call the land that was damaged by magic in a war between some very powerful mages two thousand years ago, it's slowly being repaired by some people who call themselves the Tayledras and serve the Star-Eyed Goddess - the whole western half of Valdemar would've been Pelagirs when Haven was founded.: 

She swings her legs. :Anyway, the history says that at the end of his life Baron Valdemar was - scared that even if his son was a good ruler, eventually the kingdom might end up - awful the way the Eastern Empire was. So he prayed to every god whose name he had ever heard for a way to keep that from happening. ...Maybe also did a big magical working, I don't think he wrote down very clearly what he was doing but he was an Adept mage. He did get a miracle, the first Companions walked out of the Grove and Chose his heir and his herald, which is why everyone who's Chosen is called a Herald now. Obviously Valdemar is a lot bigger now: and significantly moreso than when she was born, even, now that they've annexed Lineas-Baires and the Lake Evendim region and the north, :- but it's still the law that the monarch needs to be Chosen, because Heralds can - be trusted to not be corrupt and put the Kingdom first. Heralds aren't all of the government, there aren't enough of us - there's a Council in Haven, and a lot of local governance is done by the noble landholders - but Heralds do have the final say in a lot of things, and - I think that's what makes us different from a lot of our neighbors, that Heralds can always be trusted.: 

It's a lot more complicated than that, of course. Katri doesn't feel like getting into it right now. 

:...Er, any questions so far?: 

:Every god he'd ever heard of? Are there no well-known Evil gods here? What does Adept mean, is that what you have as a power marker in place of circles? How many people make Adept? Heralds sound similar to paladins, but I don't know how much overlap there is, should I summarize paladins for a comparison?:

Blink blink. :...No, what? I've never heard of there being evil gods.: Unless you ask Leareth, in which case it's most or all of them, but that's hardly the mainstream opinion. :I'm sure he wouldn't have prayed to god if They only had a reputation for doing bad miracles or something, but I've never heard of any gods like that.: Presumably if They ever existed, They would have quickly stopped being relevant after everyone caught on? But also it feels like the...wrong category of thing...to apply to gods in the first place. 

:Er, Adepts are the most powerful degree of mage-potential, yes.: Except for Vanyel, but they don't have a word for whatever Vanyel is. :It's based on how much power you can channel, the cutoff is whether you're strong enough to pull node-energy directly - I'm higher end of Master-potential but I can only safely use ley-lines. I think in Valdemar it's been - you know, I'm not sure what it was before the war, we lost a lot of people, but right now there are eight active Herald-Mages and only two of them are Adept-potential. 

...Sure, what are paladins?: 

:On Golarion gods come in all alignments including the Evil alignments. It's a problem.

Paladins are empowered by gods - but a specific god, who has to be Lawful Good or Neutral Good or Lawful Neutral. The paladins themselves are always Lawful Good and will lose their powers if they commit even one evil act, even if it's not enough to change their alignment. They cast spells, when they're strong enough, and they become immune to fear and they have a healing power, but even a brand new paladin can detect evil without the spell whenever they like, and they can hit evil targets with particular force. Some of them wind up with magical horses, though some of them have a weapon bond instead.:

Wow! That does sound like a problem! Katri looks so concerned! Also confused. 

:Um, you have to have Adept-potential to train as an Adept but I do think someone has to have that training to really count. Some schools of magic count it differently - there's one where someone only counts as an Adept if they can perform a particular spell that gives them a lot of extra power, which can take people decades of training even if they had what we would call Adept-potential all along.: Brightstar wouldn't shut up about it. 

:And that's interesting. I can see why Heralds remind you of that, but I don't know if it's really the same. Heralds are just chosen by our Companions, and I don't think we have any reason to expect the god - or gods - who did the miracle in the first place are still involved in that? Er, and Heralds can sometimes do bad things. Sometimes it's trainees getting up to mischief, and - misjudging how serious it is.: She was never one of the trainees who got up to any mischief, serious or not, but there's maybe, maybe, a very faint wistfulness there.  

:You'd get a real earful from your Companion afterward, of course, you wouldn't do it twice. But adult Heralds can still - make mistakes - too, do something in the heat of the moment that you would've known was wrong if you stopped to think. If a Herald ever does something really, really evil, they can be repudiated by their Companion. That's...Which doesn't affect your Gifts - our Gifts don't come from our Companions, though there is a theory that being Chosen makes potential Gifts more likely to awaken in the first place - but, er, the Herald usually doesn't. Survive it. - it's very rare, it's only happened a handful of times in our history.:  

And, again. Complicated. Apparently moreso than anyone knew even just ten years ago. 

(She's noting to herself that she's still pretty confused about 'alignment' and how it's apparently so important in Golarion, but it seems easiest for Blai to wrap up explaining Valdemar and answering his questions before she gets distracted asking him more questions about his world.) 

:The thing it takes is specifically training, not field experience, fighting monsters or wars or anything...? I... suppose having the death penalty for particularly severe Evil acts by Heralds would probably be functionally similar to having paladins fall... is it not confusing to be guided by a nebulous mass of anonymous gods? Do they not have importantly different teachings and emphasis?:

Calling it the "death penalty" is kind of oof even if it's not really wrong. Katri winces slightly and then decides not to dwell on it. 

:I mean, field experience definitely matters but you wouldn't usually say someone wasn't a real Adept if they were new to it, just that they were inexperienced.: 

And she frowns at him. :...I don't think it's confusing at all? We're not here to serve the gods, we're here for Valdemar. And, I mean, in Valdemar anyone can practice any religion they want, that's one of our laws that's never changed, but - honestly I think Heralds in particular tend not to have much time for that.: 

:...you don't have time for practicing a religion?:

:I guess I don't mean that literally, just - for a lot of Heralds it's not a priority?:

She tries to actually think about it for a moment, and then shrugs helplessly. :I feel like for some people, they - put their religion in the spot where duty goes, how they judge what's important and what's right is all wrapped up in what they think their god wants.: The Tayledras are like that and it's a little bit creepy. :And I think that's the thing Heralds - don't really have space for? We learn about ethics in our training to be a Herald, not from a god's teachings, and our first duty is to the Kingdom and its people. I guess I do know Heralds who try to make time to attend services with one of the temples, but I think they mostly don't - use their religion's lessons to decide how to prioritize their work, or go to a priest about a thorny question related to their duties as a Herald, that would be weird.: 

:I am so confused about how your gods operate their churches here. Priests ought to be - capable of understanding things like that and contextualizing their advice appropriately. I have not been anywhere near specialized in spiritual counseling in my career but that part doesn't even seem complicated.:

:I don't think the priests would necessarily give bad advice! Just, it's easier to explain to another Herald who has all the same context, especially when you trained together and spend all your time working together? I mean, it might actually be good if we got outside advice more often, Heralds can be - kind of insular - but I guess it feels like more work. And normally you'd go to your Companion first, anyway, and they might ask the Groveborn if they weren't sure. The Companions do get hunches about things, they sort of all have Foresight, and some people think Foresight always comes from a god or gods, but that's disputed.: 

She peers at him. :...Also I think I'm confused. Do gods in your world directly lead churches and give Their priests instructions on what to say? Because, um, I don't think that's exactly how it works here? I mean, a lot of temples were originally founded because someone got a vision from their god centuries ago, and then sometimes a god will intervene if Their church is really off track - like with Queen Karis and the war with Karse, there was a corrupt high priest who'd staged a coup and Vkandis gave Karis a miracle for a night that convinced everyone He disapproved of that - but that's not common.: 

The story she's heard that sounds most like getting direct instructions from a god is with the Tayledras, but even then, Brightstar just claimed that the shamans could seek advice from - whatever it was he called the dead spirit priests? Not the Star-Eyed directly. And Katri is never sure how much Brightstar is just being a typical eighteen-year-old male and exaggerating for effect. 

:Gods on Golarion are generally much lighter touches than 'directly leading' the churches, but they choose the priests, and can reject them if they go astray - instead of a miracle in the event of a corrupt schismatic they'd just remove the priest's powers. I guess I have very little idea how churches would turn out without this feature, if they had to steer solely by visions, which I think is more expensive...:

:...Huh, right, it being normal for priests to always have god-magic probably would make things go differently. Especially if it's easy to check that it's really god-magic and not someone using unrelated magic to fake it. ...I mean, I think it's stupid to use mage-gift to fake miracles from Vkandis, that's just asking to be set on fire, but it's apparently not even the first time in Karse's history that someone's done that.: 

:Some gods even have specific spells only their followers get. ...He can set people on fire but not give them cleric circles? That's bewildering.:

Well, Katri finds it bewildering to imagine gods directly micromanaging access to magic for what must be hundreds of people - not even granting Gifts and letting the priests go from there, it sounds like, but handing over individual spells on request! It gives her a bizarre mental image, possibly inspired by Select Blai's egg-filled bread roll earlier, of his god carefully packing and handing over a lunch-bag every morning, making sure to include his favourite snacks. And then doing it again and again for all the priests. Obviously gods aren't subject to human constraints like "wanting to scream after spending too long doing something unbearably tedious", but it still feels like surely They would never have time for anything else! 

:I think it's not trivial to set people on fire, it's - what did you call it - expensive. ...It seems a lot simpler than giving individual priests magic every day, though? I mean, I would think the way gods use magic would be totally different from how humans do.: 

:Well, cleric spells are different from wizard spells, even when there's spells with the same name and effect it's possible to distinguish them, but - when I said 'expensive' I meant in what's called an intervention budget. Gods at least on Golarion often work at cross-purposes and too much of their concentrated attention is potentially destructive, there's something like a treaty among them to limit that. It restricts actions but it also restricts the flow of information. Choosing a new cleric is information - about who is suitable for a given god and what was on their mind at the exact moment of the choice; I think when the latter information isn't useful people tend to be picked in their sleep instead, or just at the moment of dawn when they can start preparing spells - but since clerics mostly all work the same way, it's not very detailed information. I guess the ones active here just don't have that equilibrium at all, or they're not the kind of entity that can choose clerics in spite of being otherwise godlike, but it's strange to me.:

:Huh. Your gods sound really...organized?: She frowns. :How do you even know They have something like treaties? That doesn't seem like something They could communicate via choosing particular people as priests.:  

:Some of them are Chaotic and I don't know the details of how the treaty is enforced. When Iomedae was a mortal, intervention budget was a research area of hers. She was a paladin in life, of Aroden, who is now, uh, dead of trying to move to Golarion to bring about the Age of Glory and caused several other problems in the process. There are spells that get more information from gods, mostly yes-or-no questions. I'm not powerful enough to cast Commune, but if I could there would be training on how to do it most efficiently or I'd refer my questions to people who were trained that way, and I imagine the spell is used sparingly.:

:Oh! That's neat! I bet Queen Karis would've really liked to have a spell to ask Vkandis yes-or-no questions when they were planning to take back the country from the corrupt priest, even if they had to be sparing with it.: 

:I imagine that's the kind of situation where it's worth it, yes. There's a chapter of the Acts that's almost entirely about this, and then bits and pieces throughout the rest of the book, but I don't know if it's worth your time since you don't have Communes with your gods and they don't seem interested in directing your operations here.:

Nod. :It would be interesting to hear more about the Acts, but I guess we got distracted from talking about Valdemar. Do you want to know more about that? Or about how magic works here, since it sounds like it's different?: 

:I'd very much like to know more about magic here, it seems possibly more likely than gods to come up in a situation where it would be tactically unwise to pause and ask.:

That seems like a very sensible priority to Katri! 

:Right. So more or less all of our magic is most like what you were calling 'sorcerers' – people have to be born with it. Specifically, you have to be born with potential for a Gift, and the Gift might or might not awaken, usually between age twelve and fourteen or so but it can be earlier or later. Gift-potential runs in families, but it can look like it skips generations since not all potential Gifts awaken. We don't fully know what makes a Gift become active, though we think that probably exposure to it helps – so if someone is around active Mindspeakers and has potential Mindspeech, it's more likely to awaken later - it would explain why Gifts seem to awaken more often in the royal family.: 

Pause to think. :Right, so when a Gift awakens, usually the person with it doesn't know how to use it except instinctively, and you need training to learn control. Practice seems to strengthen a Gift, especially as it's first awakening, but it levels out pretty quickly and the only improvement after that is in efficiency and finesse. All the Gifts can appear more or less powerful between different people – for example, I have moderately strong Mindspeech, so I could speak to you like this from half a mile off and could manage ten or twenty miles with another Gifted Herald. Really weak Mindspeakers need to be in the same room or even touching someone, and strong Mindspeakers like Vanyel can manage hundreds of miles.

:There are a lot of Gifts. Mage-gift is the most general, you can learn to do all sorts of things with the right training, including putting spells into artifacts. The other Gifts usually do one thing but with better efficiency and undetectably to mage-sight, and some of them you can't imitate with mage-gift at all. - many but not all of the Gifts come with a receptive or sensing component, and an active component, like how Mindspeech lets me read thoughts and also project to communicate with people.: 

Does Blai have questions so far?