-right, yeah, there's a few of them.

She nods.

"You can have them." He writes a note to this effect.

"Thanks!" And they can finish up their chess game and she'll head out for dinner.

Txell gets the news when her squad comes in from their patrol and Venn's still eating; she plops down next to her. "O bluest of escort missions, I hear we're coming with you."

She laughs. "Yep! Tomorrow afternoon. Wanna go over spells/group strategy at some point?" 

"Yeah, how do you handle in a fight, I was a bit distracted when it came up last."

"I have the standard song-sorcery music that makes people less afraid and better at hitting things, a mix of disruptive and support magic at second circle. Glitterdust, Unbreakable Heart, and I have a short duration Heroism variant that goes on one person and then spreads to someone else every moment. And I'm decent with a bow, though the one I carry is nothing special if the fort has a nicer one I can borrow." 

"You could probably use the Holy bow without it being a huge asspain for you. Usually it doesn't leave the fort, but if we've got a Good archer..."

"I can definitely use a holy bow, if the fort is fine sparing it. I can leave my slightly magical one here, it's not picky." 

"We have it for the demons that don't give a shit if an arrow's cold iron. I'll see if the roof guys'll part with it."

She shrugs. "No worries if not! I'll do fine without it. Anything I should know about working with you and your squad?" 

"Yup -" Venn wants all their names, presumably, and what tactics they reach for when something's going down, and that this one's dim as a rock and that one's strong but can't take a hit so good -

She nods and asks the occasional question about marching order and such.

This guy takes point and Txell's going to stick Venn third from the back.

Eventually they finish and she switches to socializing! Any good gossip? 

Someone has put about that Venn is half blue dragon; this would explain the sorcery and the color scheme. The ox parchment turns out to work for scrolls if you get a particularly nice square of it. Someone's rumored to have frostbitten the tip of his prick stopping to piss in the middle of a patrol, saved only by one of the channels occurring before anything could fall off, but that's probably not true because you need it to be colder than this for frostbite to set in that fast.

She has a fit of laughter at the half-dragon rumor ("quarter, actually, on my father's side," she says when she's calmed down, voice and face making it clear she's joking). She's happy for the ox parchment guy! 

(The dick frostbite rumor is in some ways reassuring because it's the kind of stupid shit people spread to blow off steam when they're trying to get back to normal - hearing none of that kind of rumor usually means people are really stressed.)

When she finishes eating with Txell and her squad, she excuses herself to go write letters, which occupies her for the rest of the evening.

(It's... abstractly painful, which is why she doesn't usually do it when she's in this kind of mental state. You could write a sad mope song about this! she thinks to herself, vaguely mockingly.)

The squad is ready perfectly professionally on time to head out with Venn in tow, third from the back.

She's ready too - A Venn is not, by nature, a punctual creature, but this is the kind of problem that can be reliably overcome with a policy of "No, actually, you have to get ready an hour early every time. Then you can chat at the ready spot.".

(Scan, scan, scan the horizon for demons...)

Scan the snow for footprints, more like. That is, both, but they see footprints first.

"Okay, now we have to do the entire fucking thing or we're going in the stew," grouses Txell. They have an entire process for seeing how far the footprints go and making sure that their own footprints look human so the next patrol can tell that they have done this correctly. She can talk Venn through it as they march on their detour.

Surprisingly for those who've only encountered her in the dining hall, Venn on patrol doesn't start conversations (though she'll continue them happily, of course), and is leaking much less with her facial expressions. She's an attentive listener and repeats the key parts of the protocol back to Txell at the end, just to confirm.

"Yup, and -"

And there's a fucking demon.

Action time!

The enemy is enough away that she's to apply buffs before attempting disruption, so she tags the agreed-upon fighter with Contagious Zeal - he already knows the order to apply it to the rest of them.

She slaps her buckler and starts up her song-sorcery, courage filling the hearts of her allies.

The squad has done this before. Not with specifically a babau, or on the other hand specifically a bard, but they've been to demonology classes and they have the briefing on how the bard works, and they're going to do the entire fucking thing or end up in the stew.