"Yes, that's fine. In that case, I'll ask for a Teleport wizard to come to the fort to pick you and some other people up. They will most likely arrive tomorrow morning."

"Alright! I'm very excited. I've never teleported before. Though I have Plane Shifted — oh good, you have a phrase for that."

She thought he was a druid from how he described the origin of his magic, but druids don't get Plane Shift. Not that she's an expert on druids. Maybe there are druid circles that can do that.

"I'll update you with more details after I cast Sending."

She will Look at Conrad and Damian to signal them to take over.

"One of the patrols ought to be arriving now. Would you mind healing them too?"

"I would not," he says, smiling.

They are going to exit the Chosen's office now.

The patrol has indeed arrived! They look uninjured.

He's still going to offer.

"Anyone who needs healing, please take my hand. It takes a minute to a few minutes, so please go one at a time. The person with the most severe injuries first. I can do two at a time." It's good training for his exertion of Carnation powers to do healing on multiple bodies at once.

They will form lines! The two closest hold his hands.

They have some minor bruises and scrapes but nothing major.

"Aside from the longer casting time, is it really the case that your healing doesn't have any limits?"

Derek will reply since putting his tendrils into the two Chelish people doesn't require thought, though once he's done so he will need to actually think to do the healing.

"If I suddenly stop talking, that means I'm focusing on the healing.

It totally has limits! I can run out of, hm, I call it energy but I don't know if that's the best term. But I have a whole lot of it and I've never run out unless I'm deliberately trying to or trying to do something really big. Healing people generates energy for me, actually, so it's self-sustaining.

Oh, and I have a lot of trouble with brains."

What an odd set of constraints. Healing people makes him more able to heal people????

He wants to ask more questions about that but he feels like it could be annoying, given that he's casting, so he refrains from doing so.

Derek will heal the wounds of the soldiers scarlessly, but besides that, he will also relieve tired muscles, aching joints, cold-stiffened limbs, etc.

A lot of these people have the thing with humans here where it's unusually difficult to restore their flesh and he has to put in more energy to do it. He still doesn't know what's up with that but he doesn't really know how to ask about it to the other people here.

One of them is missing a toe.

"Do you want me to regrow your missing toe?"

WOW that feels great, did he hit them with a Restoration or something?

Toeless guy looks at Conrad and Damian. What does he say.

Damian will ask Derek, "The Regeneration, is it also only limited by the energy you speak of? Which is abundant?"

"Yes! It's free! In the sense that I am charging nothing from it and nothing material is alienated from you in its casting."

That phrasing is SO OMINOUS but clearly the correct answer here is yes so he is going to answer yes.

Wow, this guy's fear responses are really acting up. Does he have social anxiety? Sorry socially anxious Worldwound soldier!!

He will wordlessly restore the guy's toe.

He will thank Derek.

Soon everyone has been healed.

Wow. Unlimited Regenerate. Yes, it takes minutes to cast, but still. He wants to be able to cast an unlimited number of spells a day.

"Okay, great, that's everyone.

It's been several hours. When do you guys eat?"

"Dinner should be in an hour. Or, well, we call it that, even though the sun doesn't set at this time of year."

"Yes! I've never been far enough north or south to experience a white night.

Is it fine if I cook for the fort? Are you fine with eating a lot of meat? I can create most any meat — it is part of my powers.

The cold weather is making me want to eat shabu-shabu. That's um, very thinly sliced meat that you quickly cook in broth. Typically with vegetables, but I don't have any vegetables right now. Do you have a fire or a stove?"

Yes he would like a reprieve from Worldwound rations.

"That would be lovely. I've never had that before, but I'm interested to try it."

Then, to Conrad, "Go tell the people on kitchen duty."

Conrad goes to tell the people on kitchen duty.

"Regrettably, you won't be getting the real experience, since I forgot to restock my Bevin...I meant, my personal demiplane — cool! You have a word for that! — and so I don't have the spices and other ingredients like noodles and mushrooms and such. So it might be kind of bland and boring.

I only need a source of heat, since I can make everything else. Do you have a wide open space I can use for it?"

A personal demiplane. Okay. That's seventh circle. A druid who has Plane Shift and a demiplane.

"We can use the channel room for it."

He will lead the way to the channel room. It's a circular room 60 feet in diameter.

"What's a channel room? And yes, this room would work well...ah, so, I forgot that there are dozens of people in this fort. Shabu-shabu is meant to be eaten by like, fewer than a dozen people over a pot. But I can make multiple pots if there are sources of heat."

"We use this room for healing channels, which have a thirty foot radius. Many clerics can do it — Chosen Serra can't, but we have other clerics visit and do it. Having a room big enough to accommodate it is useful so you can pack as many people to be in the area of effect as possible.

And we aren't all going to eat at the same time. We stagger mealtimes so there are always people on duty."

"Ooh. I want to see one of those someday. And yes, that makes sense. How many heat sources will be available?"

He is going to Message...

"Sorry, the stoves in the kitchen aren't movable."

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

"Hm...I could take out the stove I was working on in my demiplane, but I'm still not too confident in its design and I'm worried it would explode. I can take out my normal one but it needs, um, lightning to work. But like, a continuous and regulated form of lightning. I didn't make that one, I just bought it. If I take out the lightning storage too...I think it will be fine for tonight.

I have two of those. Alright, I'm going to go into my demiplane to get them."

And he vanishes.

"Detect Magic."

No auras are to be found.

That's...he would have expected a moderate or strong conjuration aura, for a Plane Shift. But even if druid spells do things differently, druid spells would still have an aura...

Maybe Derek can conceal the auras of his spells? That seems like the most plausible reason why he can't detect anything.

Derek reappears with two induction plates, two large metal pots, and a minifridge-size home battery.

The black box containing 'continuous and regulated lighting' is totally not ominous and scary at all!!!!!

"Okay. Let me get everything set up now," Derek says, and he crouches down in the middle of the floor. He then gets wrapped by some sort of reddish membrane, which expands to become a white cuboid.

The cuboid then expands and deforms to become an 8-shaped table, with the heaters in the middle of each hole of the 8 with the pots on top. A reddish tube expands out of the table into the two pots and begin to fill them up with water. Bulges appear at regular intervals on the table, which then open up and retract to reveal bowls and cutlery.

All of the furniture and tableware is made out of ivory. Derek figured out the way to make ivory a while back such that it is dry with no biological matter inside and having the external pores be sealed to minimize porosity, and now this Worldwound fort will be able to experience it! The chairs are padded with white wool cushions. The edges of the chairs and the table are decorated by mother-of-pearl inlay in the pattern of blood vessel anastomoses.

What a wonderful spell.

"Typically, you would put in more things like vegetables and seaweed and such, but I don't have those, so I just put salt in the water."

The rest of the people who are scheduled to eat dinner right now file in, along with Conrad. He tells them to sit.

Derek has already connected the induction stoves to the battery and the pots of salty water are simmering by the time they arrive.

Once everyone has been seated, the same bulge-and-reveal thing will happen and plates of very thin sliced meat will appear, arranged in rows. There's slices of chicken, pork, beef, and mutton, which he has labeled on the plates by engraving them with Taldane text.

Derek will show the process of using chopsticks to swish the meat around in the broth until it cooks. "You want to put it in for two to five rounds or so, and then it's good to eat."

THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN WORLDWOUND RATIONS

...some people drop the slices in the broth and look vaguely uncomfortable.

"It also took me a while to learn how to use these. Here, I can..." and he will make hinged chopsticks for them with finger guides that work more like tongs. And then demonstrate their use.

They seem even more vaguely uncomfortable! But if the archdruid wants them to use it...

They find the experience of using it much easier.

Okay, great!

Derek offers to create more meat if they want and assures them that this is not limited in any way.

Brief silence.

"Can you do other types of meat too?"

"Yes, lots! I can do goat, bear, reindeer, cat, dog, human, sparrow, ferret, so on and so forth. Including aquatic animals too, but it's rarer to cook them this way, where I'm from. The ones I made are just the most common meats people eat."

Human??????????????

Maybe he just has a generalized meat conjuration power and that doesn't mean anything more. He kinda doesn't want to eat more of the meat now. But he's committed himself to this course of action — being the first one to ask things of Derek because he seems like he likes showing off, thus leading the way for the others to do the same.

"I haven't had bear meat before. Could you make some?"

Bear meat!

He's not really into it, but he finds the taste interesting. "Thank you!"

"No problem! For later, do you want me to remove the furniture or keep it?"

"The table is too big to be carried out of the room. But the rest can stay! They look delightful."

Big smile.

When everyone else has left, he resorbs the table but leaves everything else intact.

"Did people not like what I made?"

"They did! What made you think that?"

"I guess it's just, people didn't really seem like they wanted to be there? Or, like...they looked very serious about it. They didn't look like they were having a fun dinner, more like...undergoing a trial."

"Mm, they're just tired," he lies.

"Okay, that makes sense. So, where should I put the other food? And is it fine if I create other things too, like sugar syrup and milk? I can put them in ivory boxes."

Damian will lead him to the storehouse!

"Yes, that would be most welcome."