remedial goodness for Chelish archdukes
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"Ivet and Iolanda, I guess," she says, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, trying to make people out. Everyone's still too far away. "Half sisters. My cousins're out there, too, and Estel's oldest son, and Guim, and then a lot of lesser lords who participate, sons of barons and things. They're probably fine, but I think they went in without any clerics, this time."

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Even if they get a cleric from Vigil they wouldn't help with this. 

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"Do they take the civilian orcs prisoner? The little children?" 

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"Yeah. Well - " she bites her lip. "There's no point in leaving them, is there? They'd starve, or come down raiding in the fall and be killed anyway."

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"They can't make it through the winter without raiding?"

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"You can't grow food in the mountains. Not enough food for all those, anyway," she says, gesturing. 

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And of course orcs won't be responsible about only having the children they can feed. What did Iomedae do. Other than consider 'kill them all' and rule it out.

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You could at enormous expense build forts and a wall like Lastwall has on its orc border. You'd just be neglecting, you know, the Worldwound, no big deal.

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"You want to head down and meet them? They'll be up to the castle soon. Without the orcs, they're going to hand most of those off outside the town."

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"That sounds good, let's do that." 

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Queralt will lead them down.

 

 

It's a while later that some number of the riders come up to the castle. Up close, several of the riders are themselves obviously orc-blooded. No full orcs, if they can reliably tell the difference, apart from one woman who's heavily pregnant and riding with her hands bound. Her horse has been tied to one of the others.

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They can tell the difference. It is a relevant racial category at home, too. 

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"We lost Enric Moya and Pol Nadal, but no others," announces one of the riders, the only half orc woman in the group. "And have a matter for you, Highness. The woman is Alfonso's first capture, but she is a cleric of Dretha. If we promise not harm her husband's children, she will heal for us and be Alfonso's. Otherwise, she swears she will kill herself. Alfonso would keep her, but I do not know if the law permits it. If you say we kill her, we kill her."

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“We have no healing,” complains the only other woman present. A wizard, by appearances, in her late twenties. She tosses a wand to one of the children present, who swings it gleefully. “We’ll have to send south for more wands, but we’ll run through them less quickly, with even one cleric.”

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A young half orc man, an archer like the others. “Barely turn a profit, this way. Maybe I’ll be a carpenter instead.”

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A male wizard, younger than the woman. Tense. "Is it legal?"

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 Narikopolus is frowning. He glances at the Iomedans, but doesn’t wait for input. He says something in orcish, first. Then -

"She'll have her promise or not by nightfall. For the moment, take her to the dungeons. Ivet," he says, when Alfonso begins moving. "The rest of you, good work. Head on inside."

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Ivet bows, and leads the other horse away. The others head for the stables and disperse.

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("You could pick one, too," he tells Iolanda, not quite laughing. Iolanda retches theatrically.)

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It is not helpful to go 'everything you are doing is barbaric and evil'. It is not helpful. Not at all helpful.

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Yeah, he can see how this is probably not going to fly.

"Do you know Dretha, either of you?"

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"The, uh, orc god of women's concerns?"

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Wobbly hand gesture. "The orc fertility goddess. Evil, naturally. Normally we kill the clerics, but Ivet is right, the law no longer requires it."

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"I am not sure it is a good idea to make an agreement with a Chaotic Evil cleric because she might betray it, but that's a - practical matter, not a moral one, and I understand that when you have no clerics the practical situation is very bad.

The, uh, moral concern would be that - well actually I think there are several of them. Do you usually kill the young children, when you raid orcs?"

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"Some of them. Most of the men are killed in combat in the mountains, or afterwards. Then we lose anyone who can't make the march south, either walking or being carried."

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