And eventually: the mongrel village.

Hello mongrel village, do you contain Fiducia Dyra?

Yes! Here she is!

Nenio splits off from the party to find people to interview about theology.

"Fiducia, hello. Contacting Fiducia Boian will take longer than previously expected because he will have reason to be concerned about the provenance of a letter and I'm going to need to wait until his circuit takes him to Kenabres. However, in the meantime I have another proposal."

"Hello again! What's your proposal?"

"Would you be willing to come to the surface to undercut Fiducia Rathimus? His Truthtellings are going for a very steep price."

"Hmmm. How long would I be gone?"

"You could be back as early as tomorrow morning if that is a priority for you, I believe."

Nod. "I don't have a Truthtelling today, but I can prepare two tomorrow, and as long as I'm back in time to Purify what the hunters bring in it should be fine. How much are they selling for?"

"Six crowns, with a potentially less expensive auction for one that was reserved but might not be called in, and a surcharge for accompanying the customer to another location."

Nod nod. "How much does that buy on the surface?"

"It's steep. It wouldn't buy a magic item, but one crown would get... about a hundred arrows, or a solid quality melee weapon like a sword - not a cold iron one - two crowns would get a horse if it wasn't a special horse in any way - I don't actually know what you're likely to want to shop for."

Wow, that's a lot of money. 

"Alright, I'm willing to come to cast them tomorrow as long as I can be back by tomorrow evening." Pause. "—Lann already explained about my legs, right?"

"Can you hold on to someone's back? Probably Ser Seelah's or Lann's, they're stronger than I am."

She nods. "That should work."

"If you could find a moment to test it tonight I'll know if I need to prepare an Ant Haul."

She's happy to test it with Lann right now. (Nothing against Seelah, but she's known Lann a lot longer.)

Meanwhile, Nenio has found a mongrel willing to answer her questions!

"What can you tell me about the relative prevalence of different faiths in this tribe?"

 "...I don't know? It depends on the person."

"Disappointing. Would you be willing to tell me who you pray to? If I can collect enough responses that may suffice."

 "I pray to Iomedae and the Mother of Monsters and," sigh, "Abadar."

Scribble scribble scribble. "That is most unusual! Would you willing to explain further?"

 Surfacers being confused about why someone would pray to Abadar is so reassuring! "...well, it's not that I like him, but I figure if I ask him to keep Dyra healthy we'll have longer with food and water that doesn't make us sick."

When Lann is done picking up Dyra to make sure he can do that and still climb a rope Blai will go over and ask him quietly if everyone here is, like, aware, that Lamashtu is Evil.

("Ears girl, my confusion was not about the worship of Abadar. Though now that you mention it, would you be willing to summarize your understanding of Abadar's teachings?")

Lann fidgets. "I mean, I wouldn't pray to her. But people here don't think of her like Deskari, they think of her as the goddess of their kids being healthy and strong and not coming out with" (wince) "some kind of problem that kills them right away. Or they think of her as the goddess of it not mattering that we're all corrupted by the Abyss as long as they do what's right — which isn't true, obviously, but they don't mean it in a bad way."

"I don't know exactly what it does when someone prays and then nothing obvious happens, which is by far the commonest outcome. But every religion I have ever heard of encourages it. One can imagine many reasons this might be the case - aligning the worshiper more closely via practice with their god, or granting the god some useful resource, or making one more open to influence in the future, or making the god more aware of a situation generally and more confident in acting on it in some way should that ever be desirable -

"I cannot think of any effect which might explain this universal recommendation, which I would be pleased to see Lamashtu have."

He doesn't even pray to Lamashtu and thinks it's a bad idea, but for some reason he's feeling a little defensive of his tribe!

"People say if you pray to Lamashtu your baby's less likely to die. If praying to Lamashtu makes it easier for her to twist your baby into acting like Wendu, maybe it's not worth it, but if it lets her know there's a mongrel baby who needs saving, and the kid comes out alive rather than in pieces — I still wouldn't risk it, but I'm not about to go up to a mother and tell her her kid should have died, you know?"

"I think Pharasma is the - standard - for this situation. She also doesn't want babies to die."