There's so many questions Sergia hasn't asked. Like how likely it is that she'll die, or whether they use their memory-erasing magic to cover up the number of medieval re-enactors who die in battle, or whether she's in danger now that she knows, or what happens to her if she fails to be able to use any artefacts at all. Sensible questions that, by many metrics, ought to be the first ones she asks. Instead, she asked about multiculturalism and the history of Atlantis, which... sounds a lot less like practical concerns and more like a naturally irrepressible curiosity. 

Nicole is quietly proud. (Of herself, as much as of Sergia; it's the first time she's tried to lick someone and she feels like she picked well.) 

"Snack and a Coke it is. By the way, regarding what you swore earlier, you always have my permission to do anything the Crown of Atlantia tells you to do, including revealing secrets, unless you feel like they are asking you to betray your honour. You mostly did great on the wording, but I want to make sure I don't put you in the position of being unable to do something Crown asks."

Before they get too close to the tavern, Nicole changes the subject and asks pleasant ordinary questions about how Sergia's day went. 

The tavern is run by a married couple, one of whom brews in the SCA and the other of whom bartends as a mundane job. They sell Nicole and Sergia a Pepsi for Sergia (they don't have Coke), a green tea for Nicole, and something they're calling a "fighter candy special sandwich" - which turns out to involve ham and some kind of citrusy chutney and a frankly unreasonable quantity of pickles.

Cináed is there, trying to prevent Thorsteinn and Roger getting into too much mischief. Aleksei is sitting close to the bards and listening intently. 

She can answer pleasant ordinary questions! More on autopilot than she usually is, but it's only noticeable if you know her well or know what to look for. She drinks her coke and chows down on pickles and looks around at the people she's known for most of a year and the people she met today. Some of them are obviously involved, though she's not clear what exactly the artists do. Some of them are plainly just having a fun weekend with no idea that anything other than social drama hides below the surface. It's kind of amazing, when she thinks about it, that the same organization can fight a war and be a source of so much fun and joy and friendship and learning. It says something good about magic, she thinks, and something good about people.

(She appreciates Sir Nicole's permission to do anything the Crown tells her, and her general concern for preventing Sergia from getting caught between two oaths. Being a person it's safe to swear things to on short notice is part of what will make her such a good knight to squire to.)

And when she's done with the delicious pickle sandwich and the Pepsi and made arrangements to meet with Sir Nicole tomorrow morning, she goes back to the Barony campsite and pulls her chair into her tent and sits down to write. With a pen and the backs of a series of voided checks and her cuirass as a lap desk, because she hadn't realized she was going to need to take notes at this event.

Thing number one that she wasn't dealing with while anyone was watching and is now dealing with: she might die. Well, she's definitely going to die, the only question is how soon and of what. The death rate at various levels of expertise is definitely something to ask about; she knows people who have been in the Society for decades but it's possible that new people die a lot and then if you don't die for long enough you get good. She doesn't think newer people explicitly get used as cannon fodder but keeping someone else alive in a fight is hard.

She spends a little while turning the concept of having a short life expectancy over in her mind. She doesn't like it, but she's apparently not going to freak out about it even when she specifically gives herself the opportunity. Maybe it's because she's a teenager and thinks she's immortal. Maybe it's because apparently magic and ghosts are real and that makes her, if not a believer, at least open to the possibility that death isn't the end. But a lot of it is because dying for something worth dying for doesn't feel like losing. Better to live to a hundred, though that comes at the cost of dying full of tubes in a hospital instead of quickly on the field of battle. But it's not the worst, if she dies for something she cares about. When she was a little kid she had thought about being a firefighter or a soldier (before she had her current understanding of all the problems with the US military) in between wanting to be an archaeologist or more recently a lawyer. Choosing a dangerous job because you think it's worth doing is something people do, she's doing it, so be it.

Second thing to maybe freak out about: the memory wiping. Wiping other people's memories is definitely a "doing evil for the greater good" kind of situation, and she generally hates those. But what's the alternative? Letting society collapse into a dozen simultaneous religious wars? It feels childish to object to something when she doesn't know what should be done instead. It's wrong to not speak up against something bad just because you're worried about being childish, but "you must have some kind of better idea" seems like a reasonable standard. She resolves to ask about how often people's memories get wiped without their consent. If ten people a year in the whole country learn something they shouldn't, and five of them join the fight and two consent to a memory wipe and two swear never to speak of it and the tenth is forced to forget, that's not a priority to do anything about. If people are getting their brains turned to swiss cheese every day, maybe it is. She'll be on the lookout for opportunities to improve on the status quo and be very careful to keep the secret. (Ugh, she's going to have to learn to lie even though it's hard and sucks.)

. . . Has her memory ever been wiped? She doesn't have anywhere near a good enough memory to check her entire life history for gaps, let alone inconsistencies where a false memory was added to cover a missing one. Also she feels like maybe she should decide whether reducing the amount of memory-wiping is a priority before finding out whether it's happened to her, because that's not what would make it important.

Potential delayed freakout number three: how all of this is going to interact with her mundane life.

Her parents both definitely know, which is amazing because lying to them would suck massive balls. She'll see them at Pennsic (what is Pennsic, when it isn't being the crowning glory of summer vacation?) and she'll tell them then, to their faces, and Mom will say she's proud and try not to cry and Dad will hug her until his forge-strengthened arms nearly crush her and won't say anything, and it'll be alright. 

She'll keep her GPA up . . . somehow. There are Peers who are surgeons, for goodness' sake, she can find time to do her homework. She'll ask how many additional hours a month people usually start spending on SCA stuff when they start fighting demons. And whether it screws everything up if you take a week off for finals or a year off because you have a baby or something. (Her position on kids was previously "maybe someday" and is now "maybe someday, if I conclude this is a good world to bring children into".) Relatedly, is the demon-fighting life something people retire from? Are the knights who fight seventy fights for their seventieth birthdays still going into combat? What happens if someone gets permanently injured (or is there healing magic)? What if someone has a crisis of conscience and comes out with a completely different set of virtues? Or no magically useful virtues? . . . Do people who get R&D'd get memory-wiped? See previous argument about that being fucked up. Also, wow, there's going to be an entire new layer of social drama to stay on top of, isn't there. Terrible. But also a side issue.

That's it for things she was freaking out about. It is now time to move on to: questions about the nature of the universe! This would probably be a freakout if she was more of a scientist type, but she frankly is not and if someone is going to find out what fundamental particles demons are made of it's not going to be her.

For this section her notes are basically just a list of questions.

In more detail, where do demons come from?

Does killing a particular demon get rid of it forever, or do they respawn?

Are we winning or are they?

Is there a way to prevent demons from forming?

Is there a way to detect demons at a distance? What fraction of fights are "SCAdians go hunting" vs "SCAdians get ambushed" vs "someone else gets ambushed and SCAdians rush to the rescue"?

How many people do demons kill a year?

Is there a long-term plan for making demons less of an issue? Would humanity coming to some kind of final consensus on the nature of virtue and staying that way for centuries basically solve it, or is it even more impossible than that?

Are demons all based on things people have at some point conceived of as virtues, or are there demons of vice?

Are the battle lines purely "all humans vs all nonhumans" or are there good demons? Do humans ever disagree on whether a particular demon has a point and end up fighting each other about it?!

Can the demons talk? Can they understand the concept of a truce? Can they ever be talked into not doing the thing they were planning to do? Do they work together? Do they learn? Are they smart enough to lie? Can they impersonate humans? What are their capabilities in general?

Do demons also use artifacts, or do they have inherent magic, or do they just bite people and stuff?

Does the SCA know anything other people don't about what happens when you die? Did the thing about usury ghosts mean all demons are dead people, or just some? Are demons conscious?

Where do swords in stones and whatnot come from? Is it all extant historical stuff or can you deliberately make a sword magic and shove it into a stone so someone else can pull it out? Are there a bunch of archaeologists in on the conspiracy passing us swords?

More generally, what do Laurels and Pelicans do? 

Do archers have magic bows, or magic arrows, or a mix of both? Are there magic siege weapons? Are there magic cannons? Do symbolically important places matter, e.g. is the Tower of London demon-proof or conversely ultra-haunted?

If someone can't make it to a particular fight, can someone else temporarily use their items, or do they bond to a person? If someone dies can their items be passed on?

Okay, that was like half questions about the nature of reality and half strategic speculation, but she is who she is.

Is that everything before she starts listing every virtue she can think of and whether she believes she can cultivate them? . . . No, she needs to make sure someone will tell her parents the truth about it if she dies in battle before Pennsic. Lucia would be the easiest person to ask but she doesn't want to stick Lucia with that so she'll ask Sir Nicole.

Also she should think about fealty separately from the rest of it, because apparently her capacity for fealty-related emotions is important for other people's magic and not just her own. So, can she feel genuine fealty and reverence for the crowns of Atlantia and the men and women who wear them?

In the typical case, yes, absolutely. The vast majority of royals she's known, including the current ones, are good people: honorable and courteous, dedicated to the Dream and their own contributions to it, willing to work hard so everyone else can have a good time. Knowing they put their lives on the line to protect humanity only increases her respect. But occasionally one or both royals is just a total jerk.

Previously Sergia's response to that was to just not interact with the reign much--do retaining for the Baron and Baroness instead, go to court but don't get invested, follow them into battle because that's what you do. Maybe that's fine? Plenty of medieval monarchs were kind of awful, and people followed them into battle because that's what you did. There's that saying she's heard a few times, "I swear fealty to the crown, not the head under it", and if that attitude works then she's fine. People end their oaths with "as far as honor shall allow" or similar so they can't be stuck being complicit in something shitty, and generally nobody tries to make them be complicit in anything shitty and it all works even when someone thinks a given set of royals suck. And there'll still be the respect for any given person's willingness to fight demons, that will help a lot.

At that point the only thing to worry about is "what if the king is a bad field commander and following his orders will get a bunch of people killed by demons", and she has a long time before she's good enough to reasonably second-guess anyone there, and probably enough people have thought about that problem that there's a solution for it. So that is, if not definitely fine, at least something she doesn't have to solve on her own tonight.

Sergia takes a moment to feel patriotic about Atlantia, and happy about how awesome the current King and Queen and Sir Nicole are, and excited about being able to serve her kingdom, before moving on.

Okay, now it's time to start listing historical virtues. She'll just write down as many as she can think of first and then go over them. If she had her phone she could pull up chivalric manuals and stuff but she likes being unable to check her email at camping events.

Honor/keeping promises

Honesty

Courage

Reliability/Trustworthiness

Loyalty/friendship

Fealty

Patriotism

Prowess

Kindness

Justice

Mercy

Temperance

Prudence

Fortitude

Faith

Hope

Charity

Franchise 

Filial piety

Virtus

Disciplina

Arete

Courtesy

Grace/beauty

Obedience

Chastity

Poverty

Humility

Religious conviction

Generosity/largesse

Noblesse

Making good art

Patience

Being a good orator?

Tactics skill?

Wisdom/thoughtfulness

Masculinity 

Femininity 

Volunteerism 

Reason

It's going to be embarrassing when a bunch of these get a "what, no, magic doesn't think that's a virtue", but it's more important not to leave anything out, especially since apparently nobody knows what a lot of the Atlantis things want. Also a lot of these have a bunch of different flavors from different cultures but for now she's just going to use the concepts in her own head and refine them later.

So, which of these does she want to dedicate herself to? She probably shouldn't start with more than one or two at once, but she should bring a bunch of options because it's going to depend on what artifacts like her. 

Honor is a yes. Reliability is a yes. Prowess is a yes. The friendship/loyalty/fealty/patriotism cluster is a yes, though she's not sure if those tend to all go together or if you need to focus on at most one in case they get in each other's way.

Honesty . . . right after joining a conspiracy is a bad time to dedicate herself to honesty, but ask her again in three months.

Similarly, mercy would be a weird virtue to start caring about while joining a paramilitary force. Also a lot of rhetoric around mercy comes off as philosophically confused.

Courage: She's no coward but there are so many brave people around that it'd be weird if that was the right thing for her to focus on. That's actually kind of a problem with a lot of these, her good qualities are very normal good qualities and it's very possible all the artifacts she could use are already taken. Well, that's what cultural specialization is for. She likes the Roman conception of virtus--part courage and part initiative and part eagerness and part ambition and part determination--and disciplina, the prudence that prevents virtus from turning into impulsive recklessness. 

Justice: either a definite yes or a definite no depending on whether there are any artifacts whose idea of justice matches up with hers. And hers is tied up with her thoughts on the purpose of law and the duty of a government to its people and general American-ness in a way that might make it not workable.

Temperance: depends what's meant by it. It would be a bit sad to never be able to have a drink at a party, but totally worth it. Not gambling is easy, giving up chocolate would suck. Worth considering but not a first pick.

Prudence: if there are available artifacts that run on prudence that would be a pretty amazing life hack? Getting magic from making sensible decisions would be awesome. But is she prudent enough? Being happy with her current life decisions makes this another "very yes or very no".

Fortitude: strictly less appealing than virtus, as things that might be naively translated as "courage" go. Too much patiently enduring hardship, not enough forging forth to kick butt. Fine if there's nothing better available.

Faith: Only if faith in her friends counts. If there's a higher power, it doesn't seem very helpful. Maybe when she gets her questions about the nature of magic answered it'll turn out there's something she can have faith in.

Hope: again, she's not christian enough for the christian version. She can totally do the "never giving up on the possibility of a better world" kind, though.

Charity, and also generosity and largesse and poverty: Sergia has never been a non-student adult with a full time job and a budget and thinks she should try that before committing to a virtue based around her relationship to material goods. 

Franchise: she has read more words about franchise than 99% of modern people but probably only about 1% of what she would need to read to understand it. 

Filial piety: very possible in theory, but it's hard to be meaningfully filial from two states over and also this is the part of her life where she's moved out and gaining independence and stuff and focusing on filial piety is the wrong mindset for that.

Obedience is a similar situation: it's not that she wouldn't be able to take the required actions, but cultivating a mindset of obedience as distinct from loyalty would make her less the person she wants to be.

Arete: she's not well-rounded enough but if arts and sciences turns out to be useful for fighting demons maybe she'll work on that.

Courtesy and Grace: Sergia is honestly quite bad at these. She can remember people's titles and when to bow and stuff but she's not elegant the way Roses are elegant.

Chastity: she's technically a virgin, and apparently the Pennsic orgies mean her couple of experimental high school makeouts at parties and under bleachers won't disqualify her, but--she'd like to fall in love someday, and kiss the person she loves, and have sex, and she doesn't want to close off the option when there are so many guys out there she hasn't met.

Humility: hahahaha no. Sergia is pretty sure you can't use humility magic if you've been dreaming of being a Peer for over a decade and firmly believe you have what it takes to get there someday. Also the concept of humility is just not appealing at all.

Really, most of rest of the list at this point is stuff that doesn't resonate with her very much, except for Reason and Volunteerism and maybe Wisdom. Reason might work well with her Greek persona, if there's a Greek (or Atlantean!) artifact that wants her to be a philosopher and have conversations about the nature of law and the purpose of government and the meaning of virtue in between demon fights.

In conclusion: she's most interested in looking for artifacts that work off honor, reliability, prowess, any of the loyalty to a person or group variants, virtus, disciplina, courage, reason, or any weird Atlantis artifacts that seem to like the cut of her jib for unclear reasons.

She folds up her notes and hides them at the bottom of her handbag. Packs up everything she can tonight to make her life easier tomorrow. And then she sleeps again, and dreams of shining swords, and in the morning she has to read over her notes again to make sure they're real.

There's a feeling she gets sometimes, most often at Pennsic but occasionally at other events, that this is the real and important thing and the rest of the world is just a game you have to play to get money for the things you want in real life. She has class tomorrow, and she knows that while she's there it will seem important, but right now class feels like a dream and she is awake and has no time for dreams.

She does have time for breakfast. Whatever she does today, she'll do it better well-fed and caffeinated.

It is Roger's turn to do breakfast in the morning. He is woken by his phone (set to vibrate) going off under his pillow. He'll go back to sleep if he doesn't get moving fairly immediately - Roger isn't a morning person at all - but he planned for this last night; there's a can of the white sugarfree Monster Energy balanced delicately on top of his armour bag, poised to fall on his head if he tries moving around too much without remembering it. He grabs it and chugs the entire thing without really taking a breath.

Fifteen minutes later he's feeling like a human being who can have thoughts and feelings other than murderous intent towards everyone who asked him to wake up at this hour. He rolls out of bed, pulls on his longest tunic - it'd be normal and acceptable to wear mundane clothes on pack out day but if he wears the comfy linen tunic then he doesn't have to wear pants - and goes to get started on making bacon and coffee for everyone.

Half an hour after that, the smells of coffee and bacon start drawing the rest of the camp from their beds. Cináed offers to help in the kitchen, and before long there's toast and eggs and tea being dumped into metallic trays and put out onto folding tables.

Lucia noticed Sergia's absence from the various parties and gatherings and campfire bardic circles last night, and worried that she might have had bad news from her conversation with Nicole, or might have not reacted well to the secret and - well, Lucia tries not to think about that at all, it's one of the things she's been told not to think about but she's allowed to worry. And maybe Nicole's just a very reserved, very private, very independent person who doesn't want squires. And maybe Lucia's just feeling protective of someone she instinctively sees as a comrade even among comrades.

As the camp is waking up, Lucia goes and hovers awkwardly near Sergia's tent doors. "There's coffee ready if you want it," she says through the door, in a voice just loud enough to be clearly understood if Sergia is half awake but quiet enough to hopefully not wake her if she's deep asleep. 

"Yes I do!" She pops out of the tent in a t-shirt and jeans with her hair in a ponytail and looks around for people she shouldn't say stuff in front of. Seeing none:

"I learned a lot yesterday evening. I'm excited and nervous and meeting up with Sir Nicole in half an hour to ask her about fifty more questions."

"Oh! So - did she say yes? Did you say yes? Are you coming along tonight? Are they - Oh, I should let you get bacon before I pester you about this."

Lucia makes the awkward open-arm gesture that indicates she's offering a hug but isn't going to force it, letting Sergia step into it if she wants it and ignore it if she doesn't.

"Uh, there are probably newbies around but if you want to chat we can do it in the kitchen tent, Cináed and Roger are good at guarding it." 

Hug! "She said she'd been thinking of asking me! I don't know if I'll be able to make it to tonight logistics-wise but I'd like to? Let's go hang out in the kitchen tent for sure, I ate like half a normal dinner last night and then lost the plot for a while and I want bacon."

"Oh that is so good!"

Lucia walks with Sergia to the kitchen and has a quiet word with Roger while Sergia is getting herself food and drink. She makes sure Roger knows that if the newbies try to enter the kitchen tent, they should be informed that Lucia and Sergia have the breakfast cleanup handled and don't need more cooks spoiling the broth.

There is plenty of bacon and coffee and eggs and toast and some fried mushrooms and some leftover donuts from someone's last town run.

"I hope we didn't keep you up if you were trying to sleep last night, we were kind of getting into it with Atlantian Steel." 

"I slept alright once I managed to chill out enough, I just needed to take a lot of notes first--I'm worried if we get into it I'm going to just end up asking you the giant pile of questions I was planning on asking Sir Nicole, and maybe you don't want to deal with being the exposition machine right now? Tell me what you're up for and I can dial it back as appropriate. But I'm excited and nervous and excited!"

"Ah, so - something you should probably know about me sort of immediately is I'm actually the opposite of the right person for some sorts of questions. I, um, this is going to sound strange but uh - I have a naive and unspoiled sort of adoration for the world and faith in its beauty which counts as innocence and purity. Sometimes I kind of figure people aren't telling me everything and - yeah, not the right person. But I'm helping slay a dragon tonight!" 

(Roger is guarding the kitchen tent. It is very easy to lure the newbies away from it, because he is giving them bacon.)

"Oh gosh, that's really powerful of you, I would go nuts with curiosity. Also it sounds kind of dangerous? Like, if any of the stuff you don't know is strategically relevant or you learn something you shouldn't and it messes with your magic. I assume you have contingency plans for that, though?"

"Uh, I'm reliably informed that it is super dangerous and I'm really crazy for doing it. I guess maybe my household have a contingency plan? I trust them." 

"Well, if your knight says you're allowed I'm not going to second-guess him." She might inquire into the contingency plans and make sure she's as prepared as possible to protect Lucia, because only Sergia is allowed to take stupid risks and nobody else that's what friends are for. "Anyway, can you tell me what getting your first artifact was like? I'm imagining, like, picking up a bunch of items one at a time and seeing which one feels right or glows or something but that's just a wild guess from reading too many fantasy books as a kid."

"So for me it was more like... we discussed a range of possible options and thoughts, and once everyone was convinced the idea they had for me was going to work for me, we went out to this mountain and did a quest and I got the thing from a cave. Like they knew it was there before, but I guess they didn't do the quest for it until they thought someone could use it. But you probably won't have to do that?"

"That sounds so cool but yeah, I'm kind of hoping I have something in time for the fight today."