Griffith considers the plans to be reasonable and thoughtful. They are ready for contact testing and Speak with Animals testing now, and will be ready for positive energy testing after fifteen minutes of meditation.

Also, wow, the crew got a nonmagical and spiritless succulent plant that looks quite similar to Griffie's base species, somehow sculpted it rapidly to look like Griffie without scarring, induced color changes, and animated it a bit with some kind of electrical mechanism? That's pretty weird, but cool. Griffie kind of wants to poke it.

Cornelia sends in the rodents.

Speak with Animals targets Griffie, not any individual animal, so it's going to be relevant to the rodents just doing contact and proximity testing anyway. Griffie casts it.

The spell informs Griffie that there are no animals nearby, and without a soul it cannot translate.

The spell also informs Griffie that there are things that look a lot like animals, probably illusions, and it will as a less reliable fallback try just reading their body language under the assumption that they are made to imitate actual animals.

Most likely, their body language indicates that they are nervous about some impending event, but confidently expect it to be worthwhile shortly after some unpleasantness.

"My Speak with Animals spell says that there are no animals nearby, and translation is soul-dependent. However, it's a very advanced Speak with Animals variant, so it is making its best guesses about your rodents based on body language. They … plausibly think this is a medical appointment after which they will get treats, if that's an animal-handling method you do with them? They expect the near future to be unpleasant but expect it to be overall worthwhile … hopefully it will be worthwhile for them and not just the rest of us. Also my spell speculates that the rodents are likely illusions. I don't think the designer ever considered utterly soulless living rodents not made of any of the four elements or quintessence."

"Yes, they get treats after medical appointments, and those little restraints are ones used for some of the more unpleasant appointments. The treats are at least supposed to make it worthwhile in ways they can understand, though I'm not an animal expert."

"Sounds reasonable to me. If the rodents are alive afterwards we can give them treats this time too, right? Shall I get to poking the ones doing contact-only tests?"

"I would expect so, assuming we have treats that work for them after any changes that occur? And yes, please begin."

Griffie gently pokes each of the rodents doing contact tests.

The rodents squirm a bit at this strange poking but do not seem alarmed.

The rodents who are done with active testing can be released into the main areas of their enclosures now. They will not get immediate treats. Sorry, rodents.

The rodents suspect this is like when they are put into the big tubes, where it doesn't hurt, but they are kept from moving. Except with more poking. This is novel, but not very interesting.

And now for Diagnose Disease! This doesn't require touch.

The rodents, like the chamomile, also have more extremely minor diseases than Griffie is used to seeing, but are, again like the chamomile, overall healthier than any other animals who don't receive magical care that Griffie's previously seen.

Griffie reports this to Cornelia.

Cornelia nods and writes this down.

Griffie administers various precise doses of undirected positive energy via Stabilize and Cure spells, and directed positive energy via Remove Disease, as instructed. They then release the rodents into the main areas of their enclosures.

Very little happens to the rodents given low doses of undirected positive energy, and the positive energy involved mostly expends itself ineffectually, a little bit partially healing up some minor scratches from play.

What happens to the rodents who received higher undirected doses is more complicated. The positive energy applied again seems to learn, first doing simple repairs very slowly, then accelerating and doing more complex repairs. Griffith is watching this time, and the acceleration occurs around when a complex positive energy construct forms throughout the body of the rodents, most concentrated near the prefrontal cortex. The complexity of the construct varies based on the positive energy dose.

Remove Disease once again targets the rodent genome in addition to dealing with pathogens, but isn't very surprising compared to the plant example.

Griffie reports this, noting that the positive energy constructs look plausibly like souls, if rather unusual compared to other souls Griffie's seen. Griffie also mentions that it's unusual for souls to anchor to the brain in regions with significant function besides anchoring the soul, so if the area the rodents' souls anchored to also performs other functions, it would be interesting to know what.

Cornelia sends an unlabeled three dimensional model of the rodent brains, and asks Griffie to indicate where.

Griffie indicates the prefrontal cortex.

"…that would be where a lot of planning and personality are done. Humans and mercurials have quite a lot of important extra things there, it is a large part of what makes us able to be the sort of species we are. Can you tell what it is doing?"

"Not just by looking, no."

"I see. It seems like we should let it settle and then begin the personality testing as planned?"

"That works, though if you can assess their physiology enough to determine the safety of giving them treats I'm sure they'd appreciate it."