"It's hard to know which of them even believe it, right, because they'll get in trouble if they say anything wrong."

"The ones at the Worldwound could run, though, if they - knew it was a lie -"

"They'd have to also know there's anything better. And - there might be retaliation against their families, right -"

"I thought Chelish people didn't care about their families."

"Aren't supposed to care about their families. Which is different."

"They can run if they decide to quickly enough," someone says. "Because they get mindread regularly and it's dangerous to be thinking about it."

"We're upsetting Kyeo."

"- Cheliax is terrible," someone says gently, "but there have been many victories against it. Half its former territory is free, now. And lots of people are working to make it more. With allies from other worlds, perhaps Hell can be defeated for good."

That isn't really what he was pensive about. "Oh, how wonderful," he murmurs vaguely.

They totally lack context about what he's pensive about. They go on talking, only half to him, about the Worldwound and Cheliax and Heaven and Hell and Iomedae, the Lawful Good goddess directing the war with Hell, and other worlds without gods and what to make of that.

Kyeo only half-listens, more to get his bearings on the world and how they talk about it than to really orient himself to the conversation in front of him.

They seem to believe there to be at least four existential threats to the forces of Good in the world and yet be on the whole pretty cheerful about this; those are the marauding orcs to their north and west, perpetually crossing the border and sacking villages and occasionally amassing far more force than that when a capable ruler comes around, the powerful undead sorcerers of Ustalav, north and east; Cheliax, and Asmodeus who works through it, and the Worldwound in the north. They apparently personally consulted Iomedae about the Kyeo situation and got advice "mostly on timing"; they are debating what they would miss if they had to give up money (the satisfaction of saving up for several years for a nice magic item: "even if you'd get it after the same amount of time, I think it wouldn't feel as earned", the ability to send some of their savings each month to a elderly mother in their home country: "I guess I could send her things but it'd be very logistically difficult and what if I sent something that's not really in demand...""

Huh. It's actually really interesting to hear people who currently use money consider giving it up while giving voice to why that wouldn't be a completely lossless transition.

Someone says that unless the whole world stopped using money she'd still need it to send her baby brother to wizard school; someone says that if one wizard school stopped using money then that'd be enough; someone else objects that that wizard school would quickly get overwhelmed, and probably have stringent entry tests, and so you'd be back to the same situation of not being able to send your brother to wizard school unless he was an unprecedented genius or you had money.

Someone says that he paid his friends to spend their days off building a house for him and his fiancee and he's not sure how that'd work if there weren't money, it's too much to ask as a favor and he can't repay it in kind because he's usually deployed on the border.

A wizard offers that if they weren't getting paid they'd go work somewhere where they were getting paid, no offense, or at least do that ten months of the year; you need money to get headbands and advance as a caster. Someone objects that obviously wizards would still get those things, just not in the specific manner they get them now, to which the wizard says that that's just getting paid in magic items, which is fine, but seems more like changing your currency than like not using money. 

Kyeo doesn't know enough about how wizards work to have a specific vision of how they'd fit into the logistics but now he's wondering about it. "Of course people who need something for their jobs can get it, and if for wizards that's headbands then they'd have them, just like a pilot can't do their job without a ship or a helicopter; that's not the same as being paid to be a wizard."

"It seems kind of like being paid to be a wizard," says the wizard. "Unless you don't get to keep the headband when you retire, in which case it seems worse, because I definitely plan to retire at 30 and wouldn't want to give up the headband and be all stupid for the rest of my life..."

"Thirty? - how long are your years?"

"A baby goes from conceived to born in three quarters of a year. I'm twenty-seven now." He looks older than Kyeo but not much older.

"About an Earth-standard then... That's very young to retire."

"Adventuring is a young man's game. Retired wizards still often take apprentices and make scrolls and magic items and do scries or teleports when it comes up, just - that doesn't fill the whole day, unless you happen to love doing it."

"Oh, that wasn't what I envisioned when you said retired, I see."

"I mean, people vary in how busy they stay once they quit adventuring. But the average is probably - read lots of books, travel the world, make magic items on commission occasionally, take an apprentice if you meet one you like or if your wife has expensive tastes or if your kids show potential..."

"Well, making things sounds also important - I don't know if the apprenticeship thing would still make sense versus a classroom arrangement."

"Cheliax does classrooms."

"It's because they hate any individual relationship - people can trust or care about each other, institutions can't -"

"Sure, but it's also just the best way to get a lot of wizards -"

"It's the best way to get a lot of wizards with a Chelish bent!"

"You can't say they don't train competent wizards."

"I can say that. Name a great Chelish researcher. There are none, because research is the enemy of Evil, you have to be allowed to think in order to invent..."

"There are plenty, they're just - narrow. No opinions on anything but magic."

They get into a heated argument about this. 

On this subject Kyeo is silent.

Eventually someone rolls her eyes and tells the wizards to go argue this somewhere else, if they must - they've gotten into some very technical point about symmetric spellforms as part of a dispute about whether Cheliax deserves credit for the great Andoran wizard Morgethai - and they fall silent, and then someone points out they've run well over the end of lunch and everyone scatters to go back to work. "Do you want to go back to your rooms, do you know how to find them from here," Isavel asks.

"I think I can remember." He meanders back roomward.

This turns out to be characteristic of Vigil, and remains the same for the next few days. There are people clearly assigned to him, but not very concerned if he cares to be alone; there are enthusiastic lunchtime arguments about religion and about money and about the nature of Good. The people chosen by their god and given magic powers are the most important and the most trusted, though they sit at the same tables and participate in the same arguments; the people not chosen by their god generally seem to aspire to it, but not urgently. Their city is poorer than Ibyabek in many ways - it doesn't have indoor plumbing, or appliances of any kind, and magic lights for nighttime are apparently expensive - but there's lots of food, some of it meat or eggs, at every meal.

Kyeo is invited to religious services on holy-day, the seventh day of the week.

"I'm not sure that would be appropriate."

Shrug. "Okay. We'll catch you at dinner, then."