Stef isn't at the garrison today, which is fine with Venn, both because she finds Stef a little annoying (because he will not stop singing about his hot boyfriend) and because it means she's first in line for deployment when the call goes out.

She's a biiit less excited about going to help one of the Chelish forts (especially since the Four Day War - they've been called to several Chelish forts in the aftermath, and some of them been distressingly unprofessional, though not the point of Venn reporting a treaty violation), but Rowen reassures her that fort #11 is actually really well-run, Chelish or not. 

Song-sorceresses have an easy time preparing. She slides into her chain shirt, straps on her singing steel buckler, helps Marit finish putting on his fancy paladin full plate, and then they're ready to go; her, Rowen, Marit, and the (admittedly kinda hot) ranger who's too cool for names and calls herself Demonscourge. 

They appear to find the forces of #11 already locked in battle with the hezrou, a platoon of melee warriors hedging in its movement with spears and maces and swords while the archers harry it from the fortress parapets. When the teleporters emerge from the designated teleport arrival room and get a quick Fiendish Presence check from the wizard awaiting their arrival, they're ushered right out the front gate just in time to watch one of the Asmodeans land a Channel Smite on the demon.

Rowen assesses the scene. 

   "Going to pop us right in there. Prep for Dimension Door in fiv-"

Venn casts Invisibility, "three, two", slaps her buckler and harmonizes with it, starting up her inspiring song, "one", and takes Rowen's hand, "mark!"

And suddenly every soldier fighting the hezrou in melee is feeling braver, more sure of themselves, and much deadlier.

Marit smites evil and charges. Demonscourge starts unloading arrows.

The thing about strike teams is that if they are good at their jobs, which they generally are, they end things so quickly upon arrival that it feels silly to have called them, but there's no shortage of casualties on the ground belying the idea. Hezrous don't even flinch at cold iron; the holy attacks and smites are the only things doing much.

Once the hezrou is down the commander directs those of his soldiers who are still up to check for pulses on those who are down, and follows the calls to stabilize people who need it.

The song-sorceress switches to a far less commonly-heard tune, and suddenly everyone in range to hear it begins to notice their wounds stitching up. 

(It's not efficient to keep this going for long, not when they don't know if they'll be attacked again. But it's much faster than running around trying to stabilize everyone.)

- okay in that case the commander will start getting bodies that aren't waking up again dragged away to be buried appropriately. Would the visiting party like any of the demon parts, he's not sure what on a hezrou is useful but they can have first crack at it.

Demonscourge is their expert here and has several requests (at least one of which might be for trophy purposes, but she sure isn't clarifying.)

Venn stops singing once it's clear who will and who won't get up on their own and looks around.  Rowen is hanging around near the fort commander, waiting to debrief. Marit is keeping his distance from everyone at the fort, which Venn definitely understands, but - it feels a bit cruel right now.

She heads over to where Rowen and the fort commander are.

Rowen looks at the footprints and sighs. "Urdina, it's good practice to drop your invisibility after an engagement. Avoids spooking friendlies."

whoops.

She reappears next to the two of them with an embarrassed smile. "Sorry."

"I appreciate that you are not an invisible demon," says the commander, and he returns his attention to Rowen. "Do you have a replacement Sending scroll we can purchase from you?"

(She gives an exaggeratedly fancy bow.)

Yep! He carries a few (as well as other strategically relevant scrolls) on him, and will sell them at worldwound-agreed-upon prices to any fort that needs them, including #11.

Good. The strike team and Commander Artigas (it says ARTIGAS on his coat) can all migrate indoors while the rank and file bury the dead and burn whatever parts of the demon are not exciting. "Do you accept Chelish notes to exchange with the Abadarans, or shall I dig into the coinage supply?"

Rowen is a professional and avoids wrinkling his nose. ('Demonscourge' is not especially professional, and she's glaring at anyone who looks at her. Rowen sighs internally, and makes a note of it for later.) 

"Chelish notes are fine."

Artigas counts out Chelish notes for the scroll of Sending. He is remarkably mild-mannered about all the glaring.

Rowen hands over the scroll and pockets the money. "Do you need anything else, Chosen?"

If not, he'll send Urdina to grab Marit and then they can get to a private room before Demonscourge starts insulting people (He kind of hates bringing her to Chelish forts, but if there had been two hezrous they would have badly needed her. So it goes.)

Venn peers around unobtrusively. How's fort #11 doing?

The place looks a bit harried at the moment, people updating each other with lists of names of who died, the hall looking sparser than it probably usually is.

"If you could spare a channel, I believe the song helped considerably but any demon that got a look at that fight or even just the blood on the snow will be expecting us to be on the back foot, and at present they'd be right."

...He looks at Urdina. She nods at him.

"...our Paladin has one of those unusual channeling abilities that isn't very good at healing, and he likes to save it for battle, but Urdina here can sing for your people - her healing song has the same effective range as a channel."

She beams a bit. She's very proud of her healing song! (Stef can't do the healing song.)

"I'll see the injured packed in." He locks up the scroll and sweeps off to do that.

She glances at Rowen, who gestures after Chosen Artigas, and then she hurries after him.

It's a bit of a long walk, apparently. "...How do you usually handle the lack of healing?" She's heard it's a big problem at the Chelish forts.

"We can prepare it. And have devil's blood, for Infernal Healing, though that's on a tight ration at the moment."

Right, because of the war. She nods somberly.

"...Sorry about our ranger," she says, after a moment. (She is sorry about Demonscourge, but she's mostly curious to see what the Chosen has to say about it, if anything.)

"Facial expressions are not forbidden nor indeed mentioned by the Worldwound treaty."

...this startles a laugh out of her. They sure aren't!

Follow follow.

"Up on the table, please," he says, directing her to one, and then he's getting the fully intact soldiers to move adjacent tables out of the way so the injured can crowd in.

Venn hops up onto the indicated table. She resists the urge to pose dramatically, and instead glances around to get a better idea of what's going on here.. 

He has ever managed a channel before, apparently, and knows how far out thirty feet is and how closely people can huddle in around her before some of them are occluded from the line of effect. Eventually he is satisfied with the layout and gestures encouragingly at her from the edge of the circle. He took some damage in the fight but has not been letting it slow him down.

"If you need to cycle a new set of people through, make a signal and I'll stop. I can do this for about two minutes." 

She takes out a beautiful-looking lyre and plays a backing tune for her singing. She doesn't need to, for the magic, but it makes the song sound better, harmonizing with herself. 

She's excellent with both song and string, of course, and as before, the wounds of those in range slowly but surely start to heal up.

He assesses the scratches and sprains of a few other people but ultimately does not see fit to interrupt her to rotate anyone in.

Then she will sing until she runs out of song-sorcery, finish out that verse, then bow with a flourish. 

"Thank you, Miss Urdina." Soldiers disperse, gossiping under their breaths (seems like none of them knew there were song-sorcerers who could do that and someone is making what might be a sex joke about how a song-sorcerer like that would fare under the duke back home).

She glances a bit sadly in the direction of the joke as she hops off the table, then heads towards the Chosen.

This one? He was making his way back to his office but he stops when she's clearly after him. "Do you need directions to where your party may spend the night?"

She nods. "If it's not too much trouble, that would be great." 

Proobably she should have just headed back the way she came and looked for Rowen? But she is admittedly kind of curious about this guy, he seems more reasonable than the soldiers.

"Down that hallway, the one that would be your second left from the fort entrance," he says, pointing, "you will want room 15, that should also be what your party members were told."

Venn nods. "Thank you."

She valiantly resists the urge to go Invisible on the way to the room, because she is a professional Worldwound Strike Team Reserve Member.

The room is unoccupied except for their party. It has beds big enough for two-if-they're-friendly-and-it's-cold, bunked, enough that the room could sleep sixteen if it had to. An un-uniformed woman is dropping off blankets and ducks her head to Venn as she arrives. The party is presumably entitled to rations in the mess hall, which is in between everything else and easy to find again as soon as they're hungry.

Ah, she's back. He nods at her. "Urdina. Any trouble?" 

She shakes her head. "No, sir. Their commander organized everything." 

She slips off her backpack, putting it down next to one of the unclaimed beds. "I'm going to go hang out in their dining hall for a while, if you don't need anything."

She's curious why #11 seems to be doing so much better than the other Chelish forts she's been deployed to in the weeks since the four day war, and a dining hall is the right place to investigate. 

"That's fine." He'll send Marit to check on her if she's not back in an hour or so, but he's not worried. She's good at this kind of thing. 

She flashes him a smile and heads off to the dining hall. 

People there are eating stew, playing cards, chatting. Blue hair attracts attention, though she's not the only person with a little color (there's a wizard who's got a streak of white in his, and one of the whores is sitting with a different wizard who's ?flirting? by putting interesting colors on her arm). There are, of course, Asmodean clerics; their motion through the room prompts little ripples of attention but not alarm.

Well, she wouldn't color her hair like this if she didn't want the attention. 

She'll get herself some stew, reflavor it with magic, and then look around for a good place to eat while absorbing local gossip. 

"So I said, yeah, I think I can figure out making ox parchment, it'll be kind of shit, you want a goat or at least a calf for the good kind you write spells on, but for letters it'd do maybe. So I'm on that now, apparently, till the supply is back to normal, Prestidigitating the fur off the damn hides and trying to rig up a stretching frame."

"You'd think the one thing the government'd agree with the last one about is the fucking Worldwound."

"You'd think! But I'd take this over fucking patrols or I wouldn't've let on that my folks made parchment."

--

"You ever heard of a singing healer?"

"Yeah, sure, is that not how how they usually do it?"

"Fucked if I know."

--

"Trade you the sequel for your bird book."

"Fuck you, Inky loves the bird book."

"Then I guess you'll never find out what happens to Lady Blanca, will you..."

It makes sense that they'd be having trouble staying supplied, with the regime change.

She returns her stew bowl and then finds an open seat within conversational distance of the parchment-maker. Gives a little wave, when the people there look at her.

"Hey, blue bard. Is the food any better down south?" asks the guy the parchmentmaker was talking to.

She grins. "I wouldn't know. I heard from a retired wizard that I'd better learn the trick for Prestidigitating flavors if I was going to fight at the Worldwound, so I did." She looks around. "Any requests?"

"Chicken and dumplings."

"Peach cake."

"Idiot, it's still going to be shaped like rice and beef, haven't you ever gotten Txell or somebody to do this one for you?"

"I don't fucking care, it's been so long since I had peach cake at this point I won't know the difference."

"Salmon and potatoes."

"Oh that's a good idea, I'm stealing it."

"Bitch."

Prestidigitation will indeed not change the texture or shape, but rice and beef that tastes like peach cake can still be interesting. She spends a bit of extra time to concentrate the peach-y flavor in the beef - she's been doing this for years, now, and small differences like that can matter a lot.

She does a similar thing with the salmon and chicken flavors, for the other three.

Om nom nom. "What'd you do yours to be like?" asks the salmon-idea-thief.

"I've been experimenting with spiced dried fruits for the beef, lately - it's a good flavor profile for how chewy the meat is. Today was apple/cinnamon/ginger."

"Huh."

"We had apple for the porridge last fall."

"Raisins are better."

"You'd get sick of raisins if you could hold onto them through a whole game of poker."

"Fuck you."

"You can eat cinnamon? I thought it was just for Communes."

 "I've never eaten real cinnamon; I picked up the flavor from the other song-sorcerer at my garrison. He says it's the kind of ghastly expensive spice that rich nobles with more money than sense eat to show off how wealthy they are." She grins. "He might have just been fucking with me, though, he does that sometimes when he gets bored."

She does her best to subtly steer the topic of conversation towards fort #11, and how it's been faring recently. (Her best is pretty good.)

"Yeah they just fucking sent out, fucking, flyers, to post to the wall with all the other bulletins. Cheliax under attack, hold position, prepare for supply disruptions and some personnel recall, and then four days later. Four fucking days."

"We've been on seven-eighths rations, the bastards."

"Better seven-eighths for a long while than halfsies for a short one. Especially as the patrol schedule hasn't let up."

"Yeah, yeah."

She nods sympathetically. Being on reduced rations sucks. 

Have things been settling down since then? She's been to a few other northern forts since the Four Day War, and they all seemed... less, uh, put together than #11.

"That's because for some reason Artigas keeps trading units with the neighbors and they keep letting him even though he gives away fuckups who can't follow an order if it's holding a Light right in front of their nose."

"They like excuses to have the rack occupied, I've told you that."

"You'd think they'd run out of racks! Or space to put racks! Or room in the schedule for somebody they're only feeding to make them patrol, to be on the rack instead!"

"I'm not saying it's how I'd do it, just, that's why they keep letting him trade and haven't been like 'hey fuck you for hogging all the good ones'."

Huh. Now that's interesting. "Huh! It certainly seems like a good strategy for a fort commander, if you can get away with it." Is anyone at this table a transfer from one of the other forts? 

Yeah, salmon-idea-thief is. "I came in through #48 and my whole squad got swapped here. We just patrolled thisaway till we got here and then stopped. The squad broke up after that when the cleric died though, I'm on these assholes' squad now."

"Bitch."

"And they love me."

She nods solemnly. "I can tell!" 

She's curious about what they think about the commander.

"Well, he doesn't keep the rack full."

"Not like he's squeamish, he'll do it for desertion just like it says on the books."

"Makes Ventura do it, more like."

"Sure but like it gets done. I heard Grec say something one time and Artigas was like, something something, it's on the books, but real mercilessness would, something something, Hell is better at torturing people anyway."

Venn is herself squeamish (for definitions of squeamish that include "anti-torture"), but she's been to a Chelish fort before, and she's pretty good at controlling her facial expressions. It's just not very useful, being horrified or sad at Chelish worldwound soldiers, and so she doesn't do it.

She's still curious about Artigas. She rotates between tables, ingratiating herself with food flavorings and then catching up on local gossip, with an ear towards the unusual commander. (She asks about plenty of other things, too - it's no good to seem like you're snooping, even if you're doing it out of simple curiosity.)

One line of questioning gets her only repressed giggles.

--

"Grec" is apparently the First Arcane, in charge of the wizards and wizard-specific situations, though he also patrols sometimes (nobody gets out of patrolling - even a lot of the cooks and whores marched here, not urgent enough deployments to get teleported in with the stew ingredients, making their way around the border with regular squads, though the cooks and whores did not per se have duties on those patrols besides "walk"). He's very much Artigas's man, though he's got a favorite whore and nobody seems to take the idea that he and Artigas are fucking seriously. (Artigas, notably, does not appear to make use of the whores at all, that anyone leaks to Venn.)

--

Artigas is the Lawfullest Lawful Law-hole who ever Lawed, and will come down even on people he otherwise likes for minor fuckups like "claiming you had eyes on the squad cleric the whole time even though actually once you took a piss break and were not staring at her during that minute". Not, like, with the rack, generally, but if you do it a lot he'll trade you and he's very free with removing people's alcohol rations or putting them on worse shifts or reassigning them away from their pals if he thinks they're making each other worse.

She exchanges anecdotes from the other forts, tales of the more exciting incidents she's been deployed to, and other tidbits she thinks they might find interesting. 

The things she's learning are fascinating! Better yet, she's pretty sure she's not getting the full picture, missing some important details that will make the rest of it make more sense. Social mysteries at a Chelish fort have a potential to be terrible, of course, but she's curious. 

She disentangles herself from the last group she's been chatting with and heads back to her squad's room. 

Ah, she's back. That was almost an hour, but not quite. "Learn anything interesting?"

Urdina's definitions of interesting are very different from his, but she's got a good eye and ear for troop morale. #11, according to her, seems higher-functioning and less socially frictious than #9, #20, and #43 (those being the other Chelish forts she's spent non-combat time at). Her best guess is that this has something to do with the commander, Chosen Artigas, who has some sort of non-obvious trick or strategy for making good personnel trades with the adjacent Chelish forts and whose most gossip-worthy trait is apparently that he is "really lawful, no, like, more lawful than that, lawful like you would not believe". (She does a good but also totally unnecessary Chelish accent for that bit.)

She thinks she's missing something about what's going on here, but she doesn't think it's urgent. He nods approvingly.

"So are you angling to fuck the guy?" She doesn't look up from the carving she's doing with the hezrou skull. (She's pretty sure Urdina isn't, in fact, angling to fuck the guy, but she's being weird and this is an easy way to make fun of her for it.)

The 'nice' thing about Demonscourge is that because she doesn't (as far as Venn can tell) actually care about how Venn reacts to her barbs, there isn't any practical reason not to radiate the annoyance she's feeling. (She doesn't say anything, of course. That would be Unprofessional.)

Sigh. "Demonscourge, Marit, you two should get something to eat soon. Urdina, do they need to be on the lookout for anything?" (She shakes her head.)

The other two leave to get their dinner.

Venn loves to stay up late when there's reason to, but she's not feeling interested in shooting the shit with this particular squad today, as much as she likes Rowen and Marit. She's asleep before the other two return, which means she's the first of the four to wake up.

She goes through her morning routine in silence and then sneaks out of the room to see if the mess hall is open.

It's open round the clock. It's serving porridge.

It's - quiet? There are maybe slightly fewer total people but also they are having much softer conversations.

Well. That's odd.

She'll make the rounds to see if anyone wants flavoring, and also to see how fast they clam up when she approaches. 

"I've got us covered here, we're all having blueberry pie."

"Have you eaten yet? You're entitled to a bowl even if you're leaving immediately but if you have the slack we could use another song."

...Huh. "I could probably do another healing song. Did something happen?"

"An overnight patrol got a bit beaten up. I'll have them roused if you're available." He starts looking around for nearby people who have just finished eating.

 "...did something happen such that you can't use cure light wounds for this? The limits on my song-sorcery mean my healing is only really useful for large groups." 

"We can pack more marginal cases in, there are always blisters and chapped skin and such."

Hmmm. "How bad are the injuries? I should check in with my squad leader if you need more than a few moments of song - I don't want to use too much of my power without letting him know, first." 

"I'm not night shift. I do know there's a fucked ankle, so they might take a bit to get here, go tell him."

Oookay. She goes back to their room, and, oh, good, Rowen's awake.

She sits down on the floor next to him. "Sir, I think something unusual happened here last night. Weird mood in the mess hall, and their second-in-command wants me to do some healing for routine patrol injuries, was evasive when I asked about their usual healing." 

He blinks. It's far too early in the morning for intrigue, but it seems that intrigue is happening anyways. Okay. What are the relevant considerations...

"Stef gets back from his leave today, so if you want to spend your song-sorcery here, I won't stop you." He pauses to think. "...Don't spy on our allies, obviously, but if there's any tactically relevant information that you can learn licitly..." he waves a hand vaguely. "Be careful, though. The people here are reliable allies. They are not our friends." Urdina isn't stupid, but she can be dangerously optimistic, in his opinion.

He shoos her so he can prepare his spells in peace.

Venn heads back out to the mess hall. She doesn't want to spend all of her song-magic first thing in the morning, though...

"I can do about half as much healing as I did yesterday," she tells the second-in-command whose name slipped her mind.

It's on his coat, GREC. "Got it." He's got people assembled, including somebody leaning on a crutch for the presumable fucked ankle. They scootch aside so she can stand on the table.

It's the same song as last time, but instead of singing with lyre accompaniment, she plays it on a flute. It's still beautiful, and still heals the wounds of the audience, slowly but surely.

 (She keeps a watchful eye on the assembled soldiers, before, during, and after, trying to see if she can learn anything more about what's going on here...)

They huddle up pretty pensively. The ones who were on the overnight patrol look pretty groggy, which makes sense if they were woken up from sleeping off their injuries to come get healed; the squad includes what look like four martials and a wizard, which is understrength for a patrol squad but maybe they lost a guy against the hezrou.

...usually you'd have a cleric in there, right?

She'll play until they're all better or until she's used about half of her magic. 

Not every squad has a cleric, there aren't enough to go around, but a lot of them do.

"Thanks," mumbles the guy with the ankle.

"Of course," she says softly.

She's... going to get a bowl of porridge? And see if she can learn anything more by hanging out in the mess hall? 

The porridge has chunks of pear in it so nobody gets scurvy.

Everybody's whispering except those guys who are just talking about their card game.

She'll loiter around the card game players and watch the game, making small talk while she tries to read the room.

They are gambling for raisins.

The room continues to be whispery and illegible.

Man. What is going on here. 

...It could be nothing? But she's suspicious. 

She glances abound. Is Grec still in the room?

Yup, over there giving a briefing to a squad who look like they're on their way out.

Cool. She is going to hang out nearby to see if he needs anything. 

"- if they have the same - what is it?" he asks Venn.

Whoops, hovering too close. "...ah, just checking to see if you'd like me to pass along anything to my commander, sir." Like the fact that your fort is having MYSTERIOUS PROBLEMS. 

"...you planning to go on foot anywhere for refreshing your teleport locations, or just pop right back home?"

"Not up to me, sir. ...I'll likely be on standby after this deployment, our primary song-sorcerer is returning to the garrison today." You know, if your mysterious healing problems seem like they might be persistent. 

"Well, you know, if you get sick of that we're always lower on healing and getting more frostbite up here than down there," he says. He waves the patrol along and they skedaddle.

Venn nods. "I'll think it over." 

She heads back to their room. "I think something happened to their healing situation. The second-in-command invited me to stay here instead of at the garrison, and he was casual about it but he's nervous - I'd say they're not desperate now, but if things don't get better, they might be." 

He raises an eyebrow. It's a hunch, he can tell, but Urdina's hunches are really good, when it comes to people. But...

"...Are you actually volunteering to stay here and help them out? Well-run or not, it is a Chelish fort." 

She thinks about it and then nods, her face unusually serious. "If that's ok with you, sir. For a few days, while I figure out what's happening here. I think it could be pretty important." 

He closes his spellbook. "Alright. ... if you're right, I think you can do a lot of Good, here," and he knows her well enough to know she could have suppressed that pleased smile, but it's still charming, "I'll go talk to the second-in-command." 

He goes looking for Grec. 

Grec's not in the mess right at that moment but he comes down the stairs a minute later.

He'll head over. "Do you have a moment?"

"- what is it?"

"Urdina mentioned you'd appreciate it if I left her here for a few days, instead of having her on secondary standby back at the garrison. I can authorize this, but wanted to check in with you first" and he's not going to say and be sure she'll be treated well because that would be unprofessional, but he's thinking it.

"- yes, absolutely, if it's just her we'll want to move her into a smaller room but we'll be glad to have her. When are you expecting to pick her up?"

Hmmm. "Well, her senior bard is starting a two week shift, so unless something happens to him she's not urgently needed back for at least that long. I expect I'll Sending her in a few days to get a status report and go from there. ...Don't send her out on routine patrols if you can help it, it's not a good use of her talents and she's supposed to be on reserve duty." 

"Understood, we can keep her in the fort."

He nods. "Good, thank you."

And if Grec doesn't have anything else, he'll do the mildly-dramatic heel-turn cloak-swoosh that Urdina did an impromptu lesson on a few months ago when they'd all had a few pints because she was right, it is fun.

("Swoosh, wizard, swoosh," somebody mutters under their breath.)

He pretends not to hear them and heads back to the room. "Alright, Urdina, you can take your standby shift here, at least provisionally. I'll Sending you in a few days for a status update, but you'll be on your own until then." He frowns. "Are you sure about this."

She gives him a Lastwall salute (which is a little bit of a joke because neither of them are in Lastwall's chain of command and she always moves like she's wearing full plate when she does it) but her voice and face are solemn when she says "Sir!"

She snorts. "...don't do anything too stupid, kid. They might be in trouble, but they're devil-worshipers, the lot of them. You can't trust them just because they're Lawful."

...She turns to Demonscourge and nods seriously. "I'll try not to. Thank you."

She'll pack up her things and report to Grec.

Grec has in the interim figured out what room to assign her to. "And you're welcome to look in on any of the classes and drills posted unless the instructor can't abide you," he adds before hurrying off in response to some gesture of beckoning from the kitchen end of the room.

Venn drops her stuff off and then will look for a schedule of classes and drills posted (she's not especially interested in the drills, but maybe something interesting will surprise her.)

Coming up soon: treaty review, Common Taldane practice, archery drill, topology circle, stellar navigation, demonology, snow shelter construction, basic patrol skills.

Okay, she's actually curious enough to check out... all of those besides Taldane practice and topology, though she may not stick around for some for very long. Are any of them at the same time?

(She'll also dip into the mess hall for flavoring and gossip whenever she gets the chance.)

Basic patrol skills is right on top of treaty review but otherwise they're scattered around.

The gossip continues thin and quiet until Grec takes report from a neighboring fort's outgoing patrol, and then he goes and tells four different people things, and they all run off to tell other people who are not in the mess hall things (in one case bringing along a porridge delivery), and then it gets a little louder. People quiet down when she gets close, but:

"- them too?"

"Why not back when -"

"But tomorrow -"

"- going to send -"

"- the Commander?"

...she focuses on that last one without being obvious about it. What about the Commander, exactly?

"No, I haven't seen him either."

"You think Grec's -"

"No, but..."

Huh. She hasn't seen the commander. She hasn't seen... any of the Chosen today, actually.

What does that... mean? She's not sure, but it sure seems worrying.

She keeps listening in, and checks out the classes, too. Treaty review? 

Treaty review. They've got a copy of the treaty annotated in more colloquial Chelish for the class to pass around and share - everyone has at least the rudiments of literacy - and since she's there they might as well use her as an example of what they are and are not allowed to do to other treaty-applicable people. Like if she stabbed somebody they'd have to at least kind of try to make sure it wasn't a Suggestion if they could safely do that before killing her in self-defense, stuff like that.

She's happy to be used as an example! (She can even pretend pretty convincingly to be Suggested, if the instructor wants her to.)

Sure, they can do little skits, apparently Oriol over there used to be in a theater troupe before they turned bandit and all got sentenced to the Wound and he'll play too. It lightens the mood.

Unsurprisingly to anyone who's been in a room with her for five minutes, Venn is great at little skits, and when she drops character, she's grinning (a big display of emotion locally, but still actually rather restrained for her).

Some people laugh at her in a way that is about that and not the quality of her performance but they then move on to the next participant's question, which is a hypothetical about how much they would be obligated to feed a giant. (The treaty doesn't have this but arbitration precedent from seventeen years ago does: they are not obligated to feed anyone who eats more than a horse, such individuals should get Rings of Sustenance. They also don't have to house a giant indoors.)

(She notices and doesn't really mind - if she'd want to avoid attention, she'd control her facial expressions. She does take note of who laughs unkindly, though.)

Huh! She did not know that about the giants. It's an interesting tidbit of trivia to store away in her brain.

Anything interesting afoot afterwards?

(Chelish people do not really know how to laugh kindly.)

After class there is -

- an announcement in the mess hall? People passing through stop to hear what's going on while everyone who was already present settles down.

She will definitely go check that out! 

The announcement that there is an announcement consists of Grec standing on a table, just like Venn did to sing for people, and waiting until he's got critical mass.

"All right, shut up, everyone," he says, when he does. "Word's come in from neighbors on both sides now. All our clerics woke up without spells this morning. We have to presume it's the whole line. Artigas remains in command. If you've simply just fucking got to check in with him in person without me there then Farre y Puig and Bartra are both acceptable substitutes, but nobody goes to his office without one of the three of us, I don't care who you are because who you might be is fucking always a succubus. I'm still second. Our orders stand. And to tide us over while the guy next door scrapes together a devil calling arrangement he thinks holds up we are borrowing that there song-sorceress who's got a healing song." He points at Venn. "Couple weeks. She's not to patrol, so we've got her all to ourselves. If you want to know what happened to your favorite Chosen the answer is that Ventura's dead and we're hunting down the following as deserters -" A few names. "The rest? They'll see you in weapons classes catching up. They're soldiers like everybody else here. Keep order."

What? That - that's the kind of thing that happens when a God dies -

THE GOSSIP IS A LOT LOUDER NOW

...Do they seem scared? She starts humming quietly, not putting any magic into it just yet, as she scans the crowd with concern.

Mix of scared and angry and incredulous denial.

She doesn't draw attention to herself, but she slips towards the center of the room and pours magic into her humming, making it a bit louder but mostly low enough to be mistaken for the conversations happening all around her. 

Without an obvious source, edges of the fear start slipping off the minds of the people in the room, courage bolstering their hearts. 

(She can't keep this up too long, even using the trick where she pulses her magic on and off, but in times like this, even a minute can make a huge difference.)

This pushes the mix a little toward "anger" but one person says "we buried a hell of a lot of people yesterday, who wants to go pray to Pharasma with me before anyone officially tells us we're allowed, see if we can reach her from Neutral Evil" and then that sets the tone.

!! She volunteers (in her quite distinctive voice) to come pray to Pharasma with them.

"Well you're not Neutral Evil."

"Idiot, it doesn't matter, she can be Neutral Anything. Neutral Blue. Whatever."

She laughs (warmly, but not a giggle. She's not flirting, here.) "Neutral Blue, yeah! One step from Pharasma." 

They commandeer an empty classroom and all try to figure out how to see if Pharasma will cleric anybody.

Venn drudges up everything she's ever heard about Pharasma and her church, which turns out to be quite a lot - enough to lead a bit of an impromptu seminar.

Wow that's really useful okay.

Nobody gets clericed right then and there but it helps to be doing something.

Huh! That gives her an idea, actually. 

She asks Grec if he can take her to the Commander when he has some free time.

"- yes, all right, what about?"

"Making myself useful!" 

She outlines what she's thinking.

Grec starts leading her up the stairs to the office while she's still mid-ramble. He knocks twice and then casts a Light on his belt knife for some reason and then the door opens.

Artigas can't exactly have been up all night with a revelation that only, definitionally, arrived at dawn, but he looks a little like that anyway. He has a glass object with some internal convolutions for bouncing light around inside it; he holds it out and Grec re-casts on it. He looks at Venn. He goes back in and sits back down at his desk.

"What's going on?" he asks.

"She wants to take on some more work besides a couple minutes' singing, sir."

"Commander. Being a song-sorceress means picking up a lot of information, some of which that I think might be useful to run classes on, while I'm here? Someone in the mess hall suggested praying to Pharasma, so I just did one on her churches - I was thinking I could do some other True Neutral and Lawful Neutral Gods, but I'd want to clear the list with you beforehand, and maybe see if there are other subjects that'd be high value?" 

She doesn't really know what to say about the de-clericing because it's hard to tell exactly he feels about it, though "not good" is an obvious guess from his appearance. Probably stressed. It seems like a very stressful situation, even though she's hopeful about it being a good one in the long run.

"Gorum too, some soldiers might be able to reach Him if they haven't done much of note in their lives and there's some reason to think He's more permissive about the edges of alignments anyway."

She nods thoughtfully. "Okay. The order I was thinking is - Abadar, Gorum, Gozreh, then maybe Irori - I probably only want to do one God a day, there's a trick for pulling everything I know together just right but I can only really do it once before sleeping. And then... are there other topics that might be helpful? Demonology, maybe, I doubt at my best I'm better than your local expert -" which is probably the Commander, actually "- but I'm probably less busy and might have some tidbits they don't, and vice versa?"

"Nethys, before Gozreh, in case any wizards are up for double duty. The demonology instructor is usually Lt. Espina. You can offer her your assistance."

Nod. "That makes sense."

She glances around the room, mostly looking for something to say - huh, anything interesting on that bookshelf behind him...

There's a lot of bundled letters in there but some actual books, yes. The Disciplines. Naturally. And a copy of the treaty and a precedent compilation to go with it. And something in Infernal. The code of Chelish military regulations. A book about chess and its variants.

Huh! Once the current thread wraps up, she nods to the book. "You play chess, Commander?" 

"Yes..."

...she's curious, is the thing. She likes trying to figure out what's going on with people, and she has no idea what makes Commander Artigas tick.

"I know you must be horribly busy, but if you'd like a new opponent and don't mind if they're mediocre, feel free to call on me." She trying to strike a balance between 'not flirting' and 'not a huge chess buff or anything' with her tone and body language, which is not a particularly large needle to thread; she does her best.

"Mediocrity is readily addressed with piece handicaps."

She smiles. "I will happily take whatever handicap ends up making for interesting matches!" She's got no reason to be prideful about a skill that she obviously does not have much of.

"Perhaps later in the week," he says, exchanging a glance with Grec.

"Once things are a little more... settled."

She nods easily. "Of course. Let me know." 

And if there's nothing else, she'll bow and let Grec escort her out, and then ask him how best to organize her religious lectures and where to find Lt. Espina.

Lt. Espina's on a patrol but will be back in time for her class and should probably be best accosted after it. She can put her lectures on the bulletin board like so and obviously shouldn't schedule Nethys opposite Topology or anything like that.

That makes sense! She'll make a posting for her Abadar lesson, and then - hang out in a corner of the mess hall, offering food flavorings, playing non-magical music quietly, and chatting with anyone who stops by (as long as they're not too rude to her).

Grec goes off to talk to the camp followers. For the rest of the day they can be seen hauling snow into the fort, trudging back and forth.

...right, no clerics means no Create Water. 

In the evening, she'll check in with him again about using the rest of her healing song for the day.

"This is a good time. I think we maybe want a minute during the porridge quarter of the day and a minute in the evening unless there's a reason to spend it all at once."

She nods. "That seems reasonable, though do let me know if I can cut off early on any given session - I can stretch the magic a lot further if I'm using it to help people with mundane tasks." She has a bit less to go around today because of what she spent during the announcement, but hopefully this won't leave anyone too badly off till morning.

"I'll assign Sgt. Espina - no relation - to monitor people and let you know if it's dropping in use." He introduces her briefly to Sgt. Espina and then goes off to pour a bowl of stew down his own throat.

She designs a quick signal with Espina (Sgt.), gets on a table in the center of the room and announces the tentative healing schedule, and then does the lyre and singing version of her healing song.

Sgt. Espina performs this task with a Resistance to keep time and cuts Venn off before (though only just) the minute's up.

She hops off the table with she's done and goes back to eating food and offering flavorings and conversation.

This guy wants the weirdest food she's ever had. That guy wants venison and barley and dill. Another guy wants carrots, just carrots, bowlful of carrot flavor all by itself. A fourth guy wants halibut and lemon and bayleaf and garlic.

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

The weirdest food she's ever had was a fruit salad with soy sauce (heavy on melons that got soaked in the soy sauce) paired with very bitter and spicy meat, which is a bit tricky to map into rice and beef but she does her best.

"Wow, it's awful," he says, and he takes another huge bite, "wild that anyone eats this," nomf.

Venn laughs. "I'm still not sure if the cook really had a thing for extreme flavors or if she was pranking us, but she ate all of her portion and looked like she enjoyed it!" 

"Well, you know," chew chew, "if you're bored enough."

She nods agreeably. 

After dinner requests dry up, she'll go looking for Lt. Espina to swap notes on demonology. (She knows a wide but not very deep variety of things about the most common demons, but does have some useful anecdotes about scarier things she's seen when being called in and heard in the garrison's mess hall.)

Lt. Espina is planning to do a refresher on hezrous, since now everyone's seen one in real life except for the wizards who happened to be asleep at that time, but they can plan some stuff farther out too.

She'll get everything Venn knows about hezrous, which is mostly the standard stuff but a few odd tidbits - how they fight in groups, their surprising intelligence given their actions, etc, and similar facts about many other uncommon demons of strike team tier. 

"Good. Next I'm doing quasits, I do quasits oftener than anything else but succubi and still people are so confused about the anti-invisibility procedures..." The lieutenant will keep extracting demon information as long as Venn will tolerate it.

Venn is willing to stay at this until she runs out of demon facts or one of them needs to sleep. (She's also got Invisibility, if Espina wants to do practical demonstrations.)

Espina is a wizard and will go to bed at the time her shift prescribes. She curls her lip at the idea of nonessential spell slot use.

Venn does not have a wizard's flexibility with her spell slots but won't push the issue.

She heads to bed, spends some time playing with her lyre and thinking about the people she's met here, and eventually falls asleep. 

The next morning she does her mealtime Prestidigitation routine and waits for the injured to be gathered so she can heal them. 

They all corral into place without much fanfare. She can quit after thirty seconds, this time, it's all minor nicks and chapped lips and stuff at this point. ("Is this what it's like in forts with the good channels all the time," somebody mutters.)

(...Pretty much, yeah, she does not say because it absolutely would not help.)

How's the fort morale (and gossip) this morning?

Grim. They are on the whole in their Chelish way glad that she is there but they are only borrowing her for a couple weeks and nobody's gotten Pharasma'd and people are trading disparaging remarks about whether anyone in the fort is the slightest bit "like the Commander's Abadaran pal" or "like that Gozrehn from last summer" or "a wizard who's also got any common sense".

...Makes sense. Well, she'll do what she can while she's here. 

Abadar class! Abadar is the God of positive-sum trades, the creation of wealth, of cities. He is said to keep in his vault in Axis with copy of every piece of mortal writing and art, which Venn finds delightful. 

This is not of especial interest to the folks who show up. Could she compare and contrast with Mammon, perhaps.

She doesn't know as much about Mammon but she does her best! Abadar cares a lot more about the creation of wealth than the acquisition - building things that make it possible for people to become rich. He's called the God of Walls and Ditches, and some people think this is unflattering but walls and ditches are really important... 

So like, the walls of the fortress? Do those count?

It's a bit of a special case? But the entire worldwound effort is something Abadar cares about, she's pretty sure, demons being opposed as they are to civilization. 

The insurance guy is an Abadaran but you don't see them in droves showing up to fight. The Iomedaeans are assholes but they show up to fight.

One of the three fifth circle clerics in rotation at her garrison is Abadaran; he has teleport, and he seems like he hates the demons a lot, but Venn agrees that there's definitely less of them here than there are Iomedaeans. She thinks it's probably just that Iomedae cares a lot about the Worldwound? Both Lastwell and Mendev hold part of the line, after all. 

Still, the Abadaran supply lines are an important part of the operation! The Sending scrolls each fort relies on to be able to call in strike teams quickly are primarily sourced through the church of Abadar, and she's heard that they also arrange for the production of cold iron arrows that get used out here.

Grumble grumble that barely counts. How do you even GET to fifth circle like the insurance guy or her fort's guy if you don't fight.

Oh, her guy fights in addition to teleporting. She has never met the insurance guy and could not really say either way what's up with him.

She decides to wrap things up - they've covered the relevant facts about Abadar, people can try praying to him if they feel so moved.

A couple of them stick around to try but their hearts aren't really in it.

Yeah. Well, it was worth a try. 

The lunch routine is becoming familiar: food flavoring, chatting with people, some non-magical music when it feels appropriate. 

The music is popular. One guy snags a whore out of the water-carrying line and twirls her around the room before putting her back to go get another batch of snow. His friends make fun of him though.

D'awww! (She mostly keeps the reaction internal, lest the man catch more flak, but her heart sings. Little sparks, lighting up the darkness...)

The next evening, Rowen hits her with a Sending to tell her about the cleric dropping and ask for a status update. It happens when she's in the middle of telling a story in the mess hall. She almost drops the reply, but she manages to let him know that she's fine, she knows about the cleric dropping, the fort is holding together with her help, and she remembers her codeword in time to tack it onto the end, which is not policy but it's better than nothing. (Embarrassed, she resolves to have a precomposed Sending reply for next time.)

Security on the corridor for the commander's office lightens later in the week, as nobody murders any of the other #11 ex-clerics nor appears to try.

Cool! She loves it when people aren't murdering each other.

She'll find some time to drop by. 

He lets her in. His Light-globe is aglow but the adjacent letter-opener and copper piece have expired. "Do you need something?"

"Nothing urgently, if now's a bad time! But if it's not..." she's been assembling a mental list of fort personnel who she thinks are struggling the most (or at least the most visibly) with the current predicament, at least in terms of morale. 

"I do not at this time have a lot of ability to affect our predicament. Do you have a suggestion, or just advise me to keep an eye on them?"

Yeah, lots of them are in fact just stressed and scared and the situation is objectively stressful and scary, and the kinds of things she'd do as a bard to improve morale don't seem like they'd land very well due to cultural differences - she's already doing what she can, there. But some of the troops have fixable problems - in particular, she's found a few pairs of people she thinks would benefit from being discreetly offered squad swaps for personality fit reasons (she can go into her reasoning for each pair at length, if required).

Squad swaps he can do. He can guess at the general shape of most of them but what's behind this one -

Oh, that guy and his squad wizard had some kind of falling out since the announcement. They've both been really professional about it (she continues to be impressed with the professionalism here), but to her it's obvious the way they... shut down a little bit in each other's presence, in a way they absolutely did not when she arrived. She thinks they could really use some space from each other, at least for now.

...well, he has no particular objection to swapping the guy out of the wizard's squad, he's plausibly ready for a promotion anyway and they do need a couple new sergeants since the hezrou, he can put a bunch of the Musical Guys on his preliminary squad and let him approve it.

That makes sense to her! (...hmm, that bit of hesitation... because it's a very un-Asmodean reason to swap people around?)

If she doesn't ask she will not find out. He writes an appropriate order and puts it under the Light-paperweight-doodad presumably to be delivered through whoever that Light belongs to.

She looks at him consideringly. "Would now be a good time for some chess? I don't have anything on my schedule for a while."

He stills his hand mid- some casting-esque gesture that obviously won't work, reaches for his water pitcher instead, and pours himself some snowmelt. "...yes. This would be a fine time."

He can still cast Prestidigitation.

...She keeps her wince of sympathy internal; she's pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate it.

Once she catches on to what he's doing with Prestidigitation, she starts making pieces for her side of the board.

"One without a handicap, to guess how much of one would be best?"

She nods.

Venn knows the rules to chess, has watched people play it, and has even halfway-listened while someone explained opening strategy to her, during a particularly slow day.

None of these things are a substitute for any real experience. Blai easily trounces her.

They can try again with him missing nearly half his pieces.

Venn laughs at the sight of the board.

She tries just as hard this time, and it's much closer! (Blai may notice she's paying a lot of attention to him relative to the board, as though she's hoping to figure out how he thinks about the game from external observation.)

That doesn't work very well, but maybe she is one of those people who can make it work more than zero! He is paying as much attention as he possibly can to the board. Paying attention to things that are not the board is awful, why does anyone do it ever.

(Because people so interesting!) 

She can definitely make it work more than zero, but not enough to win this game.

"You keep making me move my king and then taking other units when I do!" She's grinning. "I guess I need to be protecting him better?"

"The king is the win condition. If you don't protect him, you lose," Blai says, setting up again and taking an additional one of his pawns off the board. "That's why you are forced to move him when he's threatened; if the rules did not require that it would just be an elaborate way of resigning, to decline to do so. Every other piece can be traded, sacrificed, handled carelessly if you're trying to do a timed game - not the king."

She nods thoughtfully.

This time, she abandons the standard opening she used in the previous games (she'd pretty clearly learned it by watching someone else without understanding the benefits) and attempts to trade pieces with him aggressively. She's not great at it and often ends up trading down (including a hasty queen-for-knight trade she winces at), but it's a much more straightforward goal than "don't make mistakes", and this handicap is pretty large... 

Yes, with a handicap this big it's to her advantage to try to do lots of trading! He is willing when it's his (only) knight for her queen but he will not willingly trade pawns straight across if he can avoid it. His rook winds up doing a lot of work this time.

Pesky thing! She attempts to chase it down with her two bishops.

Her one bishop.

Her... one bishop, yes.

"When did you start playing chess, Commander?"

"I learned when I was a child."

She nods and starts pushing her pawn line forward, and then looks at the pieces on the board thoughtfully. 

"Do you have any other wizardry?" she asks, a few moves later. 

Headshake.

"Huh. Well, it's definitely the cantrip to pick if you're only getting one, as much as I like some of the others." 

She's trying to do something tricky with her remaining knight, and even managed to have it be protected by a pawn in the process.

Guidance and Create Water are not wizard spells so yeah probably.

It's worth taking that knight, because she can't retaliate. If she moves the pawn, his rook has a clear path to the king.

She looks at her pawn, and then at his rook, and then at her king, and finally at Blai. "Ah."

From that point on she tries harder to make sure she can actually execute on her trades, which (when combined with the sizeable handicap) will get them into a non-trivial endgame (where she quickly loses her remaining pawns attempting to get them promoted too aggressively).

Pawns get vacuumed up steadily and then he has to chase her all over the board but can inevitably corner her.

She initially finds this process confusing, but her face lights up with understanding once she figures out the end-state (a few turns before it happens).

"Huh! Was there any way out of that for me after you took my last pawn?"

"You could have forced a draw, at one point."

"Oh huh. Show me how?"

"I'm not certain I will get the position exact, but -" He reassembles something strategically like what they had some dozen turns ago and demonstrates.

Neat! "Ah, I see." 

She considers the example board a bit longer. "I've never really gotten to that kind of mostly-empty board before. It plays so differently from the rest of the game..."

"It happens more when there are fewer pieces to begin with, especially since you were trying so hard to trade them."

She nods. "I thought that going for trades would work better since I started with more pieces than you, and I think it did, though obviously not well enough..."

"You were right, it was to your advantage to do it, at least in principle."

Oh good, she's glad that was reasonable in theory, if not well-executed.

Does he want to play again?

...the Light on his doodad expires before he can answer.

Northern forts don't have any windows.

Ooop! "Let me - " she casts Dancing Lights.

"Thank you. But I think the duration would make for a choppy game."

"And I might get distracted making them dance." She laughs. (...she does, in fact, enjoy a Dancing Lights show, but she expects the appeal would be lost on Artigas.)

"Thank you for the games, Commander, it was a pleasure. I'd be happy to do this again sometime."

"I seldom turn down a game. If you run into a wizard please let them know I could use a new Light."

"Will do!"

She goes looking for a wizard she has any rapport with (which is a decent chunk of them, at this point - some of them Just Don't Like Her, of course, but she's been doing her best).

Here's one.

She gives a polite bow. "If you have a moment, Commander Artigas needs a new Light for his office."

"- yeah, I got it. You'd have to fucking, Stone Shape one of the Continual Flames out of the ceiling, in the mess, and guess what's fourth circle for wizards..." Off she goes.

...right. Stone Shape is third for clerics.

Artigas really deserves to be picked up by a better Lawful God than his former patron. Not useful, Urdina, her inner Rowen chides her, though not unkindly.

Venn finds some time the next day to come back for more chess. 

The Commander can still do paperwork - and even woke up during the alarm last night to go out and help beat a demon to death that beached itself across the Wardstone barrier - but he's less busy than he was before. He has time for chess. He thinks they've got about the right handicap level till she improves.

Excellent! She's going to try a knight-centric strategy this game. 

She's a bit chattier, today, often asking him questions after he makes a move. At first it's chess strategy basics (she's especially curious about how he thinks about playing while handicapped, it seems difficult), but she starts weaving in other questions as the game goes on. How long has he been at the Worldwound, and how long has he command of fort #11? 

Playing while handicapped is not fundamentally different from playing with a lot of pieces captured, or (in a redeployment variant) one's opponent having lots of extras. It will limit his possible endgames - can't rook-roll with one rook and no queen - but the middlegame is all about looking at what's there, not what would have been in another boardstate.

He's been at the Wound for twenty years and he's had the command of #11 for coming up on eight, the promotion came about a year after he... hit... third circle.

That makes sense! (Rook-rolling?)

"I must admit that I'm very curious about and impressed with Fort #11, as compared to the other Chelish forts I've spent time at? Your people are" better-adjusted, less miserable she should really finish this sentence without a noticeable pause to search for a non-offensive thing "easier to work with than I was expecting. More lawful, in some ways. If you don't mind my asking - how did you do it?" She knows what his troops, say, of course, but she wants to know how he thinks about it (or what he wants her to think about how he thinks about it).

He can demonstrate between games how to corner a king with two rooks.

"I trade units a lot for - fit. Quite often my counterparts in adjacent forts expect to be able to beat people into shape who I'm not finding success with and I am often able to make use of soldiers they have performance problems with. Different styles bring out the best in different men."

Neat! She'll try and keep both her rooks alive next game, or at least do her best to avoid losing one not in a trade. (She's hoping to at least get a draw or two today.) 

She nods at the answer - very similar to how his men tell it, though 'beat into shape' is of course a very different spin on it than 'wanting to keep the racks full'. "Was that something fort #11 was doing before you were in charge?" Or did you come up with this, and if so, how did that happen?

"Not systematically, no, though I do think everyone does it somewhat because it is not hard to become fed up with a particular troublemaker who it would be more fuss than it's worth to execute and instead send him off for someone else who hasn't irritated you personally yet."

She attempts to trade a bishop for a knight and leaves a pawn exposed in the process.

"That makes sense. What did the transition to doing it systemically look like?" 

He rejects the bishop; he only has the one knight and it's gonna eat the pawn. "Mostly like writing a lot of letters and trying to observe traits that make someone handle their job well or poorly under specific commands."

Phooy. She moves a new pawn out instead.

"Why'd you start?" 

"I'd been in the habit of trying to arrange to be in command of the most suitable possible force since I had only a squad; it seemed the obvious extrapolation."

"Huh." She stops to think, and then makes what for her is an unusually good move.

 "Yesterday, you seemed a bit surprised when I suggested swapping Tarlev out of his squad, and I was wondering why?"

"They didn't have any problems before and I have not been out and about much, recently."

She nods. "I do wonder what happened between them... Maybe I'll get to know one of them well enough to find out before I swap back. I do like Tarlev, he can be funny."

"I'd offer to assign you to his new squad but you're not to take routine patrols."

She nods. "It is my fortnight off, after all! I'll catch him at mealtimes." 

She threatens his bishop with a knight. 

"Check."

Her king retreats deeper into her protected corner of the board, and she hums thoughtfully. 

Venn does end up managing to draw the last game that they play, which she's very happy about. She leaves to go help Espina (Lt.) with the demonology class (it's Quasit day) and then hangs out in the mess hall playing her lyre and chatting with people who swing by until it's time to do her evening healing.

One of noon patrols got ambushed pretty bad, and she ends up needing to use most of her songpower for the day patching them up. (She really can't wait to get her third circle spells - there's one Stef showed her that would be so useful for this. She knows she's close...)

The alarm bells go off.

Ah, fuck.

She pops to her feet and looks around to see if anyone knows what's happening. 

No reports have made it inside the fort, yet, but someone on the parapets is clearly very agitated and everyone's running for their armor and weapons, stew abandoned on the tables, the people she just healed refusing to wince as they form up. Grec charges down the stairs hollering for all hands against a large mixed attack, with the Commander following, slowed by his mail.

She runs to her room to get her armor and bow and then rejoins the main group. 

"Bartra, get the scroll."

Bartra accepts the key out of Grec's hand and goes for the lockbox and when he starts to read the scroll it blows up in his face.

...uh-oh. 

Do any of the fort wizards want a Invisibility from her?

"Give it to Bartra's bird, it can make it to the next fort with a note -" He grabs a corner of destroyed scroll to scrawl on. The snowy owl hops anxiously on Bartra's shoulder.

She holds out her hand for the bird to land on, projecting a calm she doesn't exactly feel. 

Invisibility.

"I can spare another casting if someone wants one." 

"Bartra himself." The next patrol to come this way might spot the bird dead in the snow but they might not and he's on buffs anyway. And then Grec's out the door.

Barta can have an Invisibility, and then Venn puts one on herself and heads outside. 

There's archers on the parapets and the force that goes out the front door is the melee guys and their support. The archers are focusing on the demons of the small gathered horde that is not yet clashing with the soldiers, so they don't hit their own. The Commander is leading from the front, calling out unit numbers and orders to go with them while he's meeting a hala mace-first.

Venn finds a position near the vanguard and fills the air with courage, a simple refrain that lingers in the heart.

She scans the battlefield, looking for places to throw down a Grease and the kinds of demon that use enchantment in combat.

No shortage of those.

The commander takes down the hala but looks blue-lipped by the end of it; he moves on to the next demon, flanking a guy with a spear -

Contagious Zeal on the commander, Unbreakable Heart, she starts singing her courage song again (she's almost out), interrupts it right away to use Saving Finale on Txell, casts Grease under the demons further ahead, hoping to slow them down...

She slows them down, so instead of a single wall of demons they have a staggered mass of them that keeps coming as they fall and bleed and expend their spells and somebody on the roof switches to the cheap arrows and the Holy bow even though they miss half the time like that and there are fewer demons, gradually, not monotonically, sometimes one can get a summon off even this close to the Wardstone barrier. The commander swats a schir clear through the shimmering wall and it passes out, ignorable for the moment, and he has to turn his attention to something else - at some point he switches his mace to the other arm, something too badly cut or wrenched in his right to swing at full strength - and there are fewer demons, but fewer soldiers, too, and the bird won't be anywhere near the next fort yet.

She stays right behind the vanguard, drops another Grease, spends her last second circle slot on a Glitterdust, bangs her shield to her final burst of courage-song, and they're close, but that fucking Hala won't stop harrying them -

she strings a cold iron arrow, whispers a prayer, and hits it through the eye, and it's hurting bad but now she's visible and it's very angry with her,

She is surrounded by people who REALLY hope she makes it to tomorrow for their own sake if nothing else and one of them gets between her and the hala but he's definitely fighting a lot of impairment to function at this point. A shot from the Holy bow gets the hala in the neck and that helps, though. Doesn't help at all with the demon that was behind Venn and has now realized where she is though. A claw goes right between the links in her armor.

Augh - it hurts horribly, but she's tough from years of adventuring, and it'll take more than that to bring her down.

She takes a step away from it, fires another cold iron arrow straight into its face, and it strikes true and she feels a rush of triumph before realizing she's now in range of the last schir on the field - 

The schir can think of nothing it would like better right now than to stab her with its drool-encrusted halberd.

Venn can think of lots of better things she would like better than being stabbed, but unfortunately her preferences don't seem to be very relevant, here.

The halberd pierces her chain shirt right where the armor was already rent by claws, stabbing deep into her back. She cries out, staggering, barely on her feet.

The Commander and a nearby fellow mace-bearing guy converge on the schir but the fellow mace-bearing guy then slips on some demon blood and doesn't get up again right away.

ow the arrow it hurts goes onto ow the bowstring pain pull it back owowow aim carefully hurts release -

No more schir.

There's a brief quiet, on the battlefield. An arrow sails down from the fort to lodge in a demon that might have been twitching or might not.

She's out of song and there are so many soldiers on the ground, not moving.

Is there anything she can do - she stumbles over to the man who fell trying to save her from the schir and tries to tend to his wounds, she's not trained in medicine but obviously the basics are "stop people from bleeding", she can try that.

Artigas is right there. "Commander, I know it's a long shot, but if you haven't tried praying to Iomedae yet..."

("I've got three drops!" calls Grec.)

"If I haven't what?" says Commander Artigas.

She supposes the incredulity is rather reasonable, all things considered, but... "It might work, I can explain why I think so but it would take time, people are dying and I'm out of song, I can't do more than hold a wound closed -" she's trying to keep the emotion from leaking too much into her voice, she knows it makes Chelish people uncomfortable, but it's hard.

She prays to Shelyn. Eternal Rose, please - this man has done Evil and has spent much of his life in the service of Hell, but holding the Worldwound has been the work of his life, regardless of how he got here. You have always taught us that nobody is beyond redemption, that it is worth reaching out - please, help Iomedae see him, hear him,

Okay fine he feels stupid but that doesn't fucking matter.

The bard thinks he can reach Iomedae and she's right that it's hardly time to explain how in the world she came by that idea. This is not literally metaphysically impossible. He's probably Evil but you can, you are allowed by the laws of Creation, to switch in an instant, if it's the right instant. Going from Good to Evil is simpler but not necessarily faster than the reverse, and he doesn't in fact need to go that far, just to be on the right side of the board, the side with fucking healing, he won't have Stabilize and they'll still lose at least a hundred men here today but even with his two channels a day they can hold it down to that.

He's got a knife on his belt. If it doesn't work he can swipe somebody's sword but he thinks the question here is not about the quality of his sharp object. He unsheathes it and -

Well, how did he do this last time. I will serve.

This does not work instantly but he can go on feeling stupid for a moment longer in case there is a configuration that does. Perhaps Iomedae has higher standards than desperate underslept supplication. Or this just won't work because he's fucking Evil, but -

Asmodeus lost, lost something even if He's not outright dead, and Blai has not been turned white from black and placed on the board on the other side, but he could be, he's standing ready. He has nothing tethering him to the service of Hell any more. He is not attached to lying or whoring or torturing and he has no personal ambition and no pride and no contract granting any devil title to his soul but he is pretty committed to the Wound and She does that too and he can stand on Her side and he will serve -

"IF YOU'RE UP, GRAB SOMEONE DOWNED BUT BREATHING AND GET IN RADIUS," he shouts. Let them think the bard has another song, it's quicker than explaining. He starts dragging fallen men into closer proximity.

THANK YOU SHELYN, THANK YOU IOMEDAE

She scrambles to her feet and starts trying to pull someone into range. She's too weak to move a body on her own, but she can help someone else,

Probably the bard got stronger. Grec drags a dying man by the ankles, joins the group converging on her.

When the radius is full a couple of moments later he climbs up on a dead demon's carapace so he can see everyone and holds his knife up and channels.

WHAT

- she knew Artigas wouldn't have had them drag people together for a channeling if he didn't have them, but there's a world of difference between knowing it and feeling the wave of healing energy close up the worst of her wounds and bring fifty men from the brink of death to their feet. 

...She catches the shock on as many as several faces - the theologically complexities will need navigating, of course - "Praise the Gods!" she shouts, because that's a pretty straightforwardly safe thing to say in this situation.

Actually from the look on everyone's faces that's not idiomatic in Chelish at all.

"I have one more! If you're up find someone breathing!"

Well, no, it wouldn't be, but it's better than Praise Iomedae and - not important right now.

Venn runs to look for survivors, she's no good at carrying them but she can check quickly and call them out to others as she keeps moving, and it's important to be visibly helping.

Txell can't drag a person by herself either but she can split one with Venn, if they call for a porter on a guy and nobody shows up promptly enough.

Sure, she'll carry this guy with Txell.

He's still heavy and she's still bleeding - she grunts in pain at her wounds, but doesn't stop. 

(Howwww does Txell seem to be holding together? The last few minutes have been, uh, a lot.)

Grim-faced but doing her job, which at the moment consists of getting this downed swordsman into the channel radius.

Part of being good at talking to people is knowing when to not to talk - this is one of those times.

When they get the man into range, they set him down gently, and go to grab another.

And presently they are healed.

She breathes a sigh of relief at the number of men who get back on their feet. (It's - still a horrible tragedy, of course, but it could have been so much worse...) 

Select Artigas allocates the three drops of devil's blood that Grec has.

Everybody starts dragging themselves inside. The bodies are going to have to wait a little bit.

Venn sings a soft song about victory in the face of defeat, about holding the line for another day, about bravery and grief and loss. It's not one she's sung at Fort #11, before.

"I thought you were going to pull out another round of healing," Txell says as they head in.

She nods. "That certainly would have been less surprising, though... a lot less effective, too. My healing just isn't that much, next to a channel." She glances down at the visible gaps in her chain shirt where her now-healed wounds were.

"It'd stabilize people. ...maybe not enough to get them all indoors and they'd freeze overnight, but maybe enough that the next fort could've used their Sending and not biffed it."

She nods. "Yeah, it would have been much better than nothing - I do try really hard to save my last bit of song, but I wasn't sure if we were going to survive this at all, without it." 

In a lower voice "...I think it was very brave of him, though. To pray a God, hoping they'd care more about the Worldwound and the people holding it than what Pharasma thinks of them,"

"Hell, I tried Nethys the other day, but it didn't work."

She nods. "I tried Shelyn, when the announcement came out, just in case... I am grateful to whichever Gods involved" (Iomedae for sure, possibly maybe also Shelyn, maybe others,) "that Commander Artigas got picked up."

"With a knife. Does that mean Iomedae or is it Abadar's secret third holy symbol or what."

Ah, she wasn't sure who all had caught that specific detail. "...knife means Iomedae, I'm pretty sure. Which I think makes sense? She obviously cares a lot about Worldwound defense, right, and there are many legends of people's alignments changing dramatically just in time to save or ruin them..."

"Not like that. I guess different places censor different shit, maybe you've read a thousand."

She laughs. "A few dozen, and mostly songs, but that's enough to know it does happen, sometimes? So it's worth trying, in a crisis." 

More quietly, "...as far as I know, almost nobody does the amount of censorship Cheliax does."

"Well, maybe the new regime'll change it," shrugs Txell, "won't get me more books up here."

"I certainly hope they will, though I suppose that's what you might expect the bard to say." She grins.

"I think there's song-sorcerers back home? I dunno that I've ever heard them being particularly fussy about censorship."

This might or might not have been Txell's original bowl of stew from when the alarm bells rang but she's going to Prestidigitate it up warm again and eat it regardless.

The commander comes in a bit behind everyone else - clerics get some training in non-magical medical assessments that is, whatever the motives, applicable to figuring out how it's safe to move people and who needs to be channeled at most urgently first thing in the morning and who needs a wound cauterized so it won't be infected come dawn. But eventually that's handled and the information passed on to those who need it and the living are all walked inside one way or another.

He had not come to dinner yet when the bells rang, so he doesn't have a previous bowl of stew to reclaim.

He's going to go stand on a table to make an announcement to everyone well enough to chew.

"If it escaped anyone, I am answering now to Iomedae," he says loudly. "Expect changes accordingly."

Ragged shellshocked nodding.

He steps down and gets a bowl.

He'll find the bard not quite hovering nearby once he's gotten his food, but doing something in the neighborhood. She nods at him. "Commander." (She wants to say congratulations, but she's still trying to gauge whether or not that's actually appropriate, here.)

"- Miss Urdina. Thank you."

She smiles. "You're very welcome. Congratulations, both on the channels and the lives saved." 

"I suppose I will need to write to Lastwall for instructions." He finds a place to sit.

"I can tell you everything I've picked up from working with them in the meantime, if you'd like?" She'll take a seat nearby. (She's... not particularly hungry; fighting always makes her feel vaguely sick, afterwards.)

"I've met paladins but they did not tend... chatty. So yes, if you please."

She's met chatty paladins (and slept with one or two) but they tend to be the exception, and also she imagines that even dear Siena would have precious little to say to the commander of a Chelish Worldwound fort. "I'd be happy to - tomorrow morning after breakfast, perhaps?"

"I expect to take breakfast an hour after dawn. Probably in my office since I'll have Light again and letters to write, but you may join me."

Nodnod. "I will see you then!"

She sticks around a bit longer, and then heads back to her room.

She doesn't sleep very well that night, but that's okay.

He is up at dawn. He mostly has been, but - not perfectly on the dot, these recent days, and now dawn is back again as a thing in the world that can touch him through the walls.

He spends an hour kneeling in unaccustomed forms of prayer.

And then he gets himself a Light lit, and calls for a porridge and starts writing.

Venn wakes up tired and hungry.

She cleans herself off with magic, hides the bags under her eyes, eats her porridge quickly, and heads up to Commander Blai's office.