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 out of here before Demonscourge starts insulting people (He kind of hates bringing her to Chelish forts, but if there had been two hezrou's 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 harp 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 exactly interested in shooting the shit with this particular squad, as much as she respects Rowen and Marit for what they do. 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 vaguely ominous.

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 she did not catch.

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 harp 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."