Fia doesn't dislike Feradi, exactly, although maybe if he were in the habit of disliking people he would. Feradi is rude on purpose, mean on purpose, just to prove he can be. It's unpleasant to be around.
But Fia can't really fault him on the philosophy, given the givens. And anyway, he's probably nicer when he's at home, when he's not flaunting his contrast with Cretari citizens.
Aten likes Feradi quite a lot. Many people are good at games; anyone can be good at games. Almost no one is good at being good at games. It's the sort of thing that only comes with a genuine passion, a desire to prioritize it over other things. Anyone could copy that but most people don't, because why would you. Aten feels no urge to copy a genuine passion for working, even though it would make him much richer if he were employed all the time instead of half: what use is money if you've overwritten the parts of yourself that would benefit from having it?
Feradi innately cares very much about table games (or, mostly the one), which is why he's good at being good at them in a way that almost no one else is. And accordingly Aten is fairly fond of him.
So when Feradi comes and dangles a new card game in front of them, and says he expects Fiaten to enjoy figuring out the rules by playing much more than by copying the knowledge or having them explained, and does not say but does imply that he'll only go along with this if Fiaten gets them both lunch and also dessert, well...
They aren't exactly rolling in money at the moment, but it will not literally cause them to need to pick up a job immediately, so Aten mentally leans on Fia in the way that means he wants him to accept.
If they do this then that means Fia is going to have to be the one running things while they eat, since Aten can't be seen in public. And as much as Fia doesn't strictly dislike this guy, surely they can come up with a plan that involves the one of them who likes Feradi much more than the other being the one to interact with him for long blocks of time?
(Fia also cares very much about table games. In fact, he cares about them exactly as much as Aten does. But he's much more into the social connection they can bring, generally, than the actual mechanics.)
Fine. It's not going to work, though.
"Sounds good! Should we bring the food back to my place so we can get started playing sooner?"
"You're probably right." He told you so.
But it ends up not mattering, because then there's some sort of monster like nothing any of them have seen before, close enough that even though they're a normal amount of quick for people of these builds in this location, they can't dodge the (honestly very pristine) mirror coming at them.
That's so unpleasant! That's as much unpleasantnesss as he thought would be in the next hour or so!
Both of them are at least in sleeves; it was fall in Chraida. Fia is wearing two layers on top and he passes the outer one to Feradi. They only need one of them to be warm.
Is anyone else around??
Not immediately? - That might be a group of people, dark shapes tromping along in a line alongside that weird glowy wall of light there.
Fia points to them emphatically. ...That's pretty far and Feradi's in sandals; if they've already picked this for the copying direction they should swap shoes.
...He accepts this. They're small on him but he doesn't change his foot size about it.
It is SO COLD. Taking Feradi's heat as fast as he can will definitely keep him from accumulating more injuries from this than Feradi does, but it's really really uncomfortable to be losing that much heat even if he's getting some of it back immediately.
The patrol group forms up and trudges in their direction but not like they care a whole lot about whether the two of them live or die.
In that case huddling might be better than trying to make forward progress.
This does not obviously affect the behavior of the patrollers. Eventually they're close enough that one of them calls out something in a language.
Feradi knows the most languages between them; he calls out selections until they're close enough or until he's too cold to keep trying.
Fia tries to shuffle them closer once it seems like that might help, and - can't, which means that if these people won't come within like two him-lengths (and he's really not tall) they're going to freeze to d - okay, that's close enough; that's a person and he's going to copy their warm warm warm warm warm - and immediately get chilled again after each one, his borrowed heat radiating back into the environment - and then he'll start working on grabbing the language.
"If you could speak Taldane this whole time what the Abyss were you on about?" snaps the lead patroller. "State your business."
"I couldn't speak Taldane this whole time." He manages to pack a lot of derision into the statement. "...Freezing."
"I didn't see you cast shit - what are you doing here if you don't have Endures or even coats, that's suspicious as a thirty-page contract -"
"We were somewhere warmer! There was a monster; it ate us. And now we're here because of that!"
Fia super does not know what that means (and neither does Aten). "Uh..." What does that mean - oh - oh. Wow this situation is even weirder than they thought, by a lot, and they obviously already thought it was the weirdest thing to ever happen to them.
...Can he take one of those?
Ech. Well, he can still keep copying the body heat from this person every few seconds, in between grabbing as much of the language as he can.
"We'll survive without them. If we can stay next to someone better equipped."
"We can double your heat onto ourselves. The same way we're doubling your Taldane onto ourselves. This is normal for everyone on the planet we came from." Okay, up, he's not getting any less cold sitting in the snow.
"I want to register that I'm calling bullshit now," pipes up a voice from the back of the patrol.
"Shaddup," says the leader. "Well, you picked a fine place to land on this one if that's really what you did. It's called the Worldwound because demons crawl out of it straight from the Abyss every day."
What can they find out about what demons are and what methods these people have to figure out whether a given being is one -
There's spells but every spell has a counter and the spells they can use whenever they want are the ones demons would be by that token most expecting. Demons are of course the Chaotic Evil outsiders who want to fuck everything up for everybody.
"We are not demons," he tries, even though there was nothing about demons being unable to lie.
"Okay -"
"Fuck's sake -"
"Shaddup." Back to the visitors. "This way." And they tromp back toward the ward line they were following before.
- They can do that! These are still pretty miserable conditions but he certainly feels much less miserable about being in them.
"You don't get to go inside till the Commander says so," says the sergeant sternly. "To be clear. You've gotta be checked and account for yourselves to him."
"We are happy to cooperate with safety measures!" Demons seem like a bad thing to exist. "As long as there's still someone to double heat from, or we will die."
"That's the stupidest power I ever heard of," someone says.
"Stay where we can see you," says the sergeant.
It's another thirty minutes or so from there. They pass a patrol going the other direction and pause to give a brief report of the weird situation.
That's! A! Really long time! To every few seconds feel like you're stepping out into notably-colder-than-freezing weather! But it's very preferable to the alternative.
Fia is almost entirely concentrating on staying warm and picking up the language except when it seems like there's something important that wants other context, but the subtly weird look Feradi's giving that person sure is that. - Oh that's weird. Oh, that's weird - he can't really - see it - but -
And then it's time to move on, and move on they do.
The fortress comes into view. It's huge and severe and grey and there's something in it that is anchoring or otherwise related to the wardglow that they've been following.
The patrol they're with won't even approach the door with these weirdos. They have a shouted conversation with the archers up on the parapets instead explaining that they found these weirdos, who, exasperated sigh, say they didn't spot any demons and also the following other claims.
The archers send them to stand back a little farther to await the Commander.
That seems fine! Or, it's awful but they clearly have some sort of situation that makes keeping people desperately uncomfortable necessary. In any case, cooperation.
Here is the aforementioned commander!
"I'd hear your explanation," he says to the aliens.
Fia has been mentally rehearsing this. "Hello! I'm Fiaten; this is Feradi. We were on our planet where it's very normal that everyone can double traits from other people onto themselves, and then there was a creature like nothing we had ever seen before and it transported us here!"
Oh huh the commander also has that - weird thing - this is not the time.
"I expect this ability to be very helpful in dealing with, well, whatever the demon situation is. I would like to," (Aten is also provisionally fine with this; it seems like something that probably won't fail bother them if somehow they can avoid actively helping, Fia has reasoned) "and Feradi presumably also will if it means not dying."
"For example, we've been doubling body heat and the ability to understand this language off of these people. We don't seem to be able to get Endures directly, and you have - something - that I can't really see very clearly, but we're used to being able to copy almost any other trait a person can have onto ourselves."
- Glance at Feradi - "In the country we were in, all citizens take on certain personality traits, that make them... these words don't quite capture it, but something close to 'Lawful Good'. Other places do things differently."
The Commander turns to somebody. "Go get Detected and fetch out a copy of the Worldwound treaty."
"Yessir."
"The Treaty covers and protects contributing soldiery and adventurers of all alignments," the commander continues. "But if you have no prior exposure to it and your usual means of managing your abilities with respect to their security implications is just being Lawful I want you familiarized with it before you set foot inside my fort."
"...Can we at least be brought out warmer clothes while we do that? It's very unpleasant to lose this much heat, even when we can get it back."
"Can you afford them? We don't operate on generous margins here and I'm not presently committed to letting you in at all."
"Surely you can take them off our corpses if you decide to let us die?? We can't leave."
"Fuel is dear and objects generally do not go spare. But here is your copy of the treaty." The runner hands it to the Commander rather than get too close to them and he tosses it over.
Fine fine yes, they will huddle around and read this as well as they can given that the conditions are this distracting.
The treaty is intended to force a bunch of people who range from "Chaotic Evil but not specifically pro-demon" to "paladin" to "Asmodean" to "penal battalion member whose crime was freeing slaves" to "rando adventurer just here for the circles" all to cooperate without murdering each other or having to be able to sign their names to an agreement. It's not too hard to figure out what thread through this treaty is Commander Artigas's playbook - he is allowed to leave them out in the cold if they are an evident security risk, and the patrol only brought them this far on the thin fact that they said they hadn't seen any demons, which is technically useful information insofar as you can trust it. If they're permitted in - that is, if they convince him that they won't be more trouble than they're worth, they haven't already been useful enough to demand shelter - they have to go on making themselves at least yea useful, although if they're specifically going on patrol he will have to give them appropriate cold-weather gear for it. There are limits on disciplinary action against misbehaving adventurer visitors that suggests that he is super allowed to torture his own men to death if he wants. Also incidentally this is written in a different dialect of the same language all these guys natively speak.
A lot of this goes over Fia's head, though Aten picks up on a bit more of it. (Including that these people could be really wrong about whether demons are actually bad.) "I'd be willing to help with a lot, assuming that - things are as they're presented. And if you don't have anyone else who can double, I'd think we'd be better at that than other people."
"Better at what aspect of it?" Cmdr. Artigas inquires, and he also looks a little fixedly at Feradi, who's made no such pronouncement.
"Well, we can tie anyone else for whatever they're best at, and then do that with everyone and be tied for the best at everything. - Sometimes there are practical barriers, but. Ideally."
"...Naturally I will do at least as much for this operation as is necessary to not be left to die in the cold. More if you're paying."
"Independent adventurers usually make financial arrangements that do not involve individual forts at which they appear becoming responsible for salarying them, and that is the form in which you'd be claiming hospitality here. Do you expect that either of you is powerful enough to be detectably aligned?"
Feradi is gonna either need to say that Fia speaks for both of them or independently answer all these questions.
"I am not obliged to disclose the details of the tests I undertake to determine whether people are demons or not."
"And if I decide on this basis to let you into the fort do you intend to abide thoroughly by the Worldwound treaty?"
"You may come in." And he leads the way into #11.
It's not warm, inside, but it's not windy and that helps a lot.
"Caldentey will show you to a room you may sleep in."
The guy whose coat says CALDENTEY will do that yup. It's a depressing stone room with six beds (bunked) in it.
"Uh-huh. You're entitled to three bowls a day. Kitchens keep track. Vallvé'll talk patrol schedules with you when you're ready."
"It's still nice to have sometimes, but we can probably get it ourselves in those cases."
"How will we contact Vallvé when we're ready for patrols? Is it known how long it might take to get us equipped for them?"
"He's one of the desks in the office end of the hall. I'll be quicker about the boots and coats if you run out of questions soon."
In their usual language: "Well. Shall we see if the cards survived the snow?" He takes them out, inspects them for damage, and starts shuffling.
"Sure." Insofar as Fia likes games as bonding, well, it's more useful to do that with Feradi now than it was before. And it's not going unappreciated that he's not quite mean-on-purpose enough to hold them to the dessert agreement under the circumstances.
This game is asymmetrical, with Feradi playing three cards to Fiaten's one. Sometimes all four get put in a pile over by Feradi; sometimes the card they play seems to be invalid and gets returned to them; sometimes they get to pick one of the three Feradi played.
Over time, it becomes less of Aten nudging Fia into the moves he likes best, and more of just Aten playing directly, until -
........Aten looks between the card he played and the ones Feradi did and tries to puzzle out whether how this could be about that.
"No, you, Champion. Don't play coy; you insult me if you think there's any chance I didn't notice two decades ago you didn't die to turn yourself into that Cretari dandelion puff."
"You insult me if you think I built a second personality I wouldn't be dear friends with. Be nicer to him."
"Fine, sure. It's great that he got us in here, to whatever extent his boundless friendliness is responsible for that. But listen - did you take a look at the dispositions here? I can tell he doesn't like me. I don't mind; I don't shape myself for Cretari regard. But he's not going to find success cozying up to these people; they're worse than I am. Stick around, why don't you. Bet it's safer for both - 'all' - of us."
"That means more than nothing coming from you, Champion, but it'd mean more than that if I thought stuffed toys could really dislike anyone."
Oh death is he using that as a name. That's got to be cut off immediately. "We've been calling him Fia and me Aten."
"All right. Aten. It stands that the people here are not merely operating under desperate conditions and are pieces of work in their own right; of the two of you you're the better suited one now that we've made it in." He takes the four cards and puts down three rhombuses. "Why didn't you take the magic?"
"...We saw the 'Endure' and the thing the commander had." Though now he's looking at Feradi for what he could mean, of course.
Yeah, there's totally something here that's much easier to look at than whatever those guys had, though still not easy to interpret. It's something about - it's not strength, in his muscles directly, and it's not... not-getting-hurt, in his everything directly...
Seems like magic, yeah. Take. "We were concentrating on the language and keeping warm. Give me my shoes back."
Feradi takes all four. "Was that the only thing you noticed the commander had?"
"He has the single most anxious disposition I've ever observed. I suppose most people'd get rid of it, back home, so we may expect to see more here." Two antis and a rhombus, all low. "I don't know that him being more afraid of us than we are of him will do us much straightforward good, though."
"Hm." Square 3. "...Fia notes that unsure-footed people are often harder instead of easier to work with."
Eventually they are out of cards, and Aten has gotten much better at figuring out some patterns, but there's still an outcome that cuts against his expectations every once in a while. Feradi declares that he's lost, which was at least the expected outcome based on how many cards he earned.
And then they can go and try to find the patrols guy.
Patrols guy wants to attach them to separate patrols from each other, since they have not evinced having different abilities from one another, both speak Chelish, and aren't exciting enough to build a whole new squad around.
"We'll each go on two. With whoever you would have sent one of us along with."
"We send out a patrol from here or one back where it came from in each direction every fifteen minutes if there's nothing wrong."
Take take time system - wow these years are really long. "And how often does a single person usually patrol?"
"Most of the soldiers are on patrol at least out and back one fort along every day and often more. Takes a few hours each way depending on the snow."
"You can't have already been counting on us going at the same specific time. Just send us on double whatever you were already going to."
"I'm not counting on you at all, you can fuck off into the cold without making it worth our while to give you coats first if you want. If you do want it worth our while I want you shoring up two understrength squads, not one."
Finally. They didn't have to be so bitchy about it. Here are their assignments, their squad leaders will have their cold-weather gear.
Huh, not for a while. Aten checks for things that are non-obvious about how patrols work, and generally how to do well at them.
Patrol Facts: usually nothing happens and it's just a long annoying hike. Sometimes the weather kicks up and you must make shelter right where you are because the alternative is risking wandering into the Worldwound right through the wardstone line. Sometimes there's demons and then you have to fight the demons, and the following common knowledge is available about their usual weaknesses. The sergeant will make a report at the destination fort after the patrol and they have a brief rest to eat and then usually turn around and go back. Some patrols carry mail or other cargo.
Yeah, they're getting cold iron spears, there's no point in having them along if they don't have even those.
Well, then, probably the thing to do is move the next round of their card game wherever people seem to be hanging out, if that's a thing that's happening anywhere in this strange place, and keep half a mind on watching out for and picking up useful context and skills and whatnot.
Yeah, people hang out there even when they are not actively eating. They attract some rubbernecking. There are local card games, too.
Nope, they seem to have a smaller deck (though at least one popular game uses two shuffled together) and different suits and stuff.
- this rubbernecker is interesting! What the fuck even is that! Besides the owl. He's also interesting in non-owl ways.
- That is so interesting, and now it's Fiaten's. It's so much more scrutable than the commander's thing, and so much more concrete than the thing off Feradi - what does it do -
If he'd like to also rip a bunch of Owl Guy's knowledge on the subject -? Then with some Math Homework he can determine that he's got - lots of Endure Elements, and a Communal Endure Elements, yep. - nope. He can't hold that last one.
They're pretty good at math, and if they weren't, they could be in an instant. - Okay yes, that's an unfamiliar concept; they need something for that. Easy enough.
Fia thinks it wise to finish out the game, and Aten successfully communicates this to Feradi via facial expression. (And Feradi has this ability as well, they can see. Probably had it faster than they did.)
Do any of the rubberneckers have questions?
(Fia would especially like to leverage conversation into starting to build rapport with Owl Guy, if possible.)
A non-owl guy eventually asks why it was okay to play a six that time and not the time in the last hand when a six was present.
"My current guess is that it's because all the dealt cards are of keyhole suits instead of being three different ones, meaning that cards within their range are legal. I haven't determined whether this holds true for the other halves." Wow, he's notably worse at being friendly with strangers than Fia even when the words they'd use are pretty much the same. But maybe Feradi's right about this style working better with the local dispositions.
Score. (He emotes neutrality about this.) "I've determined that in dealts with only reds which are also all even, black evens higher than the range will score. It might be less restrictive than that, but at least those take when there's nothing complicated going on with the numbers." He has similar conjectures for most of the deals, though there are plenty of combinations for which he hasn't gotten anything to work in his favor yet.
Aten has explanations for why he expects some of the suggestions to be illegal moves or losing, and wants to know what information Owl Guy expects to gain from anything he doesn't have one of those for, when it isn't obvious. Also his name, what's that.
"...I do, I just didn't expect people's names to be on their clothes. Coats aren't so rare here that they shuffle them around between people as needed?"
"Well, us. ...We can heat rooms, some; it's possible we should do this."
Nod. (Close enough.) "And it wasn't fatal because we can double things from other people onto ourselves, including heat. Which is also something we can do inside."
"No, but through a small hole in one, or from the other side of a heavy blanket which mostly covers a doorway."
"...we haven't got small holes in walls. Anyway, one person doesn't warm up a room much, you need a few bunking for it to be really noticeable."
"It's something everyone on our planet can do. Most anything that comes off of people?"
Fia has an instinct and Aten cuts in before Feradi can say something derisive. "We can grow it and cut it off."
"Oh. ...so you can't dump it as fast as you can pick it up, you can't chop heat off, you're just saying you can keep warming up a room as well as you would the first moment you stepped in there for a while, or as well as somebody with an Endure up maybe."
"There are things a person can do to shed more heat. And if you have the other person right by a fire..."
"Is there a single way here for them to make it worth our while to do more than the bare minimum."
"Some foreigners won't," shrugs Bartra, "they want coins even though they're heavy, they spend more places."
"Could be worse." He's out of cards; he collects them and starts shuffling. "I won."
"Eugh. - For the weather. For the money, I more meant the availability in places which are not here, except insofar as this limits our shot of getting out of here."
"Hm." He looks in Bartra's general direction with the obvious-to-Citrelians look of someone picking up information, but he doesn't let it distract him from passing out cards for another game. With some to Bartra as well.
Ooh he gets to participate in the puzzle this time. The owl peers down at the cards too and he pets it absently with one hand.
"Hoo," says the owl. It scoots a little farther up Bartra's shoulder to nestle against his ear more closely.
He cannot, at least immediately, copy the owl's wings at human scale and on his back without replacing his arms. So that's sad.
He checks that the owl doesn't have a visible name tag. "What's your name?"
"He's my familiar," Bartra says. "Not too bright yet but not just a regular owl out of the woods."
"...Huh." And poking at it, yeah, it's hard to say but this does sort of have the feel of fundamental difference and not just a human who underwent some changes. - Oooh, darkvision. "What else?"
"There's a couple tieflings. Nothing else here at the fort besides more familiars but if you see enough adventurers pass through there's sometimes oddities. Elves and aasimars and shit."
Feradi recovers enough to play his cards. Only two of them, now. He points to Aten.
Anti four, to keep them all the same suit. "What's it like, being a wizard? We don't have those back home either."
Shrug. "Gotta do all that math we gotta be good at, to cast spells. Spend a lot of time on cantrip duty."
"Wizards in general? Same requirements. Artigas doesn't make it hard to move squads if you want one that's angling for more circles and calluses or the other way 'round though."
Oh that disproves one of Bartra's tentative sub-hypotheses, fascinating - "Better'n my last one. Gets in his own way less."
Hm? (Fia makes the connection.) Oh. Nod.
"Anything we should know to make a good second impression, here?" (Four to Feradi again.)
"Playing cards isn't suspicious." Here's his next guess chosen more for value of information than for odds of points.
"Dunno what people get up to on your planet. Don't think Vallvé likes you, but maybe that's not because you're suspicious."
"It really seemed a reasonable request to me, that we might be able to stick together for our first times doing something dangerous and unknown on a new planet, when we didn't even know there were other planets with people on them. We offered to do double the number, too."
"Mm. ...Is this a completely different set of rules with three players instead of two."
Bartra's got guesses but also isn't telling! His owl nibbles on his earlobe affectionately.
Aten mostly goes back to concentrating on the game, since Fia thinks that's a fine way to build rapport with this guy, and Fia spends the time poking at Torus's attributes. He thinks they could probably have feathers for hair, if they wanted, as things currently stand. But they both like their hair and there's no way they're getting it back if they change it. Maybe they can go for feathers if they end up having to grow it out a bunch for wall insulation.
Dealer win (or player loss) again. Feradi looks neither disappointed nor gloatsome about it.
Bartra is not really relating to the game as something you try to win, yet, he just wants to see how fast he can figure out its moving parts. He is keeping in mind the possibility that one moving part is "Feradi's a huge troll", though that's interesting in its own way albeit not in a way that would get him to keep playing once he settled on it.
Eventually he glances at the time on the wall changing and puts his cards down to go see to something he's supposed to be doing.
"- If there was something we wanted to ask the commander about - are there protocols for going about that?"
"Should do." Nod. ...'The cheerful match is complete' is not a standard polite phrase in this language, let alone one that rhymes, and if there's an equivalent friendly thing to say at the end of games here Aten's not fast enough to find it.
In any case they can head over to Grec.
Reading a letter in one hand while he lets a kitchen girl fill his stewbowl that he holds in the other. "Mm?"
"Hello. We would appreciate a chance to speak with you or the commander, more privately than this, and expect you'd also appreciate having done so."
"...It's about becoming a wizard." (Probably this guy has some interesting stuff on that front, but this seems important enough, at least potentially, that they want both their attentions on it.)
Tiiiiime systemmmm. "Probably not less than two minutes." (And not longer than several hours, probably, if he wants to keep them for that long. There are the patrols.)
"That seems up to you," how do you be polite and formal in this language, "sir. We don't seem to have much else in the way of places to go, if you end up wanting a more thorough discussion at a later time."
"Fine. I can take dinner in my office." He jerks his head in a vaguely beckoning manner and heads for the stairs.
...Are they sure they want that? It seems probably fine, but they don't know if there's a way to get rid of it without casting it if it's in some way not. If he had longer to look at the math he might go for it, but for now he leaves it there.
Office. It's not very big but it's got its own fireplace and bookshelf. He sits at his desk with stew. "What."
"Congratulations, if you want to trade spells do it in the mess hall and you have to cover your own ink."
Nod. Sure. "Is there anyone we should start by casting Endures on? We didn't have to prepare them but I don't know whether that will work multiple times a day."
"- Maybe. We don't have any of these things back home; one moment..." What's a sorcerer that's a sorcerer. "No. We doubled being-a-wizard onto ourselves, and then also doubled the prepared spells. But we would need to be next to another wizard in order to have them again."
"Oh for fuck's sake. Explain in small steps like you're aware this isn't your planet exactly what you did."
"Everyone on our planet can double traits from other people onto themselves. This lets people there do lots of things, such as eat or sleep only rarely, because we can double the just-having-eaten or just-having-slept onto ourselves, but humans are the only people there and we don't have any magic. When we arrived here, we survived by doubling each other's body heat onto ourselves, and then that of the patrol. We can speak to you because of having doubled the language from them, and continuing to do that from other people around us. And so when we encountered a wizard, we also doubled that. Or, part of it, I at least couldn't hold it all."
Grec facepalms. "Okay. So, usually, if you trade spells, it's a trade. They get something. If you're just copying - can you tell what it is before you get it -"
...Oh. "If we look at it long enough." Probably they're well positioned to give favors and can do enough for Bartra that he won't be mad at them. Hopefully.
"I can shut down anyone who makes a fuss about you doing this with Endure Elements and anything else we want scores of in a day. Everybody has Endure Elements if they have anything up here. But rarer shit, somebody's going to have mortgaged their house for it, and they'll fucking shank you if they've got more cunning than sense which most wizards do, and we can go after them in full fervid imitation of Hell's creativity for the next week solid for fucking with the treaty all we want, that won't bring you back. What spells have you already taken?"
"Okay. Help yourself to the Endure Elements, it will be a lovely asset, we can pay you for it out of the wand budget. How many slots a day?" He's digging a chart out of his paperwork now.
"Right, at least this didn't go on for ages without my noticing." Sigh. "Any other things you might be able to do that you might as well run by me?"
"We can heat rooms some amount, with the right setup. And grow arbitrary amounts of hair, if someone has theirs long enough to make it worth it."
"...okay, uh, I think we can probably just keep sending people to cut firewood when the shipment's stingy with the coal, but that's good to know, and I can't think what you'd do with the hair - braid it into rope or something? -"
"Okay. Spend your Endures on yourselves because you're both on daytime schedule and were surviving with no coats so they haven't got you down as urgent recipients, see if you can refill 'em, let me know if you can because that's a big deal."
"I caught something about - doing combat meaning you can grow to do more powerful magic?"
"Mm. Indefinitely sounds good. ...If you keep the two of us together, as long as we aren't injured in the same place..."
"Indefinitely sounds good. We can revisit the question later if we'd really like."
"All right. I can tell Vallvé for you. Instead you're going to be sitting in the front hall tagging every outgoing with an Endure except for your sleep shift. - you're entitled to a full sleep shift even if you've got a ring and I imagine that applies to your deal too."
"Is there not some more efficient way to get this result, if they last all day? Can they be refreshed or does the timing matter."
"You can re-up people, yes. The efficient thing would be having you two on different sleep shifts, we can have someone else who's got an Endure prepared sitting there on Prestidigitation duty."
"This and not us getting everyone who goes through the food line, or some other occasion where people are gathered more densely than a handful every fifteen minutes?"
"...could do it like that but there isn't already a reason to have a wizard sitting in the food line. Guess we could move the dish duty station from the kitchen to the dining hall..."
"If we were going off each other then we could each do every other person in line, which might be helpful if we'd otherwise not be fast enough. I wouldn't so much mind not getting an unbroken eight hours of downtime if this method freed up other blocks of time."
"The kitchen's serving round the clock, since patrollers are coming in at all hours and want a bowlful right away."
"If we could get the rushes and then hang out somewhere conspicuous where people could come get tapped if we'd missed them - I assume they would be well motivated to do this - then that still might be more efficient than one of us being in the front hall. Depending on proportion."
"There's a rush after prayers because that's when most of the clerics and anyone coordinating with them are getting underway. But it's just a little bump."
Feradi has the look (to Citrelians) of taking something from Aten. "...Is there any chance this is worth introducing a new structure to condense people somehow. So far the only thing on the line is our free time, but who's to say there's not something else you'll want us doing on top of this later?"
"You can try to get a teleport next time teleporters come through, or you can walk around clockwise till you hit Kenabres and from there head into the rest of the world," he shrugs.
"We can try the front hall for at least a few days and see how it goes. ...Are there any sorcerers here? We might be able to get something else off them. If they wouldn't mind."
"Couple people with a little splash of something but you'd have to ask them. Asmodia Vives, Ricard Llorens, and we're not sure if Sunyer is a sorcerer per se or just a tiefling."
He nods. "I don't suppose anyone here actively enjoys sitting around and occasionally casting spells?"
"We're soldiers. If you need someone sitting around occasionally casting spells, I'll put someone on duty doing that, I'd do worse for unlimited Endure Elements wands. - oh, we may want to send you through the stables once a day, too."
"If someone enjoys it then I also can," he clarifies. "Unless that's as rude as with spells, though I hope I'd be able to offer something in return - is it a problem that we've been taking the language and whatnot?"
"You also can... ...enjoy it? Uh, people don't usually go around announcing what they most enjoy. Language is fine, behaves more like you've gotten a Share Language casting nobody had to spend a slot on than like stealing it out of someone's spellbook."
Aten nods to confirm. "I would appreciate hearing it if at any point you think of anything other than spells that would be delicate to copy. We're used to doubling whatever's convenient."
"Don't shapeshift into specific people," Grec replies immediately. "Security problem plus it's provocative in itself. Ideally you'd be recognizable as yourselves but if you decide you're done with whatever you're doing with your hair and pick something normal to replace it that's fine. If that's even hair. ...demons have some useful shit but they're also Chaotic Evil outsiders and I'm not sure how good your aim is. Does this work on your clothes - no, you would've turned what you had on into coats if it worked on clothes -"
"It's hair. ...Once it grows out I might try something with feathers from Torus, because the limitation is things that are a part of people and apparently owls can be people here. I'll be careful about taking anything from demons."
"Tor- oh, animals work as long as they're familiars? - I know everybody's familiars but some people hide theirs from most people, might also be provocative, but the owl's known, yeah. - you're going to want Sunyer's cold resistance, he'll be all right about that if you're not weird about it. I think he only wears a coat to hide the tail."
Ooh. Nod. "I also got the ability to see in the dark off a half-orc? I didn't get his name but I would recognize him."
"There's plenty of halfs and quarters. Anything lots of people have isn't as big a deal."
Nod, nod. "How dear is food, here? We never have to eat but it's nice to when it's possible to afford."
"You're entitled. It's not good. If you try a bowl of porridge and a bowl of stew you've had the whole range. Prestidigitating it only helps so much. - you may copy my prep of Prestidigitation, everybody worth calling a wizard has that one."
Three of those, then! Nod. (Seems easy enough to get rid of if he wants to replace one, and even though he should have the knack for re-catching it now he hasn't actually tried that.)
"Anything else you think some people from a planet with only humans and no magic besides what we came with should know?"
Context context - oh. "We can't do that. Can't even look at them, really. ...But why not?"
"They come from gods, you really don't want to provoke gods, if any gods want to give you spells they can do that on their own."
"Again, I don't think we even can. Which follows if it's - not something that's a part of them -"
"Mm-hm. It's possible there are other kinds of casters this applies to but they'll be harder to identify."
"Should we just try and ask you if we encounter anyone who isn't a wizard or a sorcerer?"
"Hm. - Sorcery is not a single thing the way wizardry mostly is. Our sorcerers are the normal kind, I think, but anybody might say they were a sorcerer to spare themselves explaining that actually they prepare spells of even-numbered circles and have to spend an hour tending a potted plant every week and cast by farting, there's no end of weird shit. So check with me on sorcerers too."
"Only humans, no magic... you mean only human people, right, you have plants and animals, you're not doing some fucked up thing where you eat each other and then heal it off, because don't do that, that's how you get ghouls."
"...Yes, only human people. I've never done that. I might have thought of it if food became scarce here."
"Well, don't do it even if you'd otherwise starve, ghouls're bad news. We... hm... since your thing doesn't work on your clothes we might have higher cleanliness standards than you, Prestidigitate yourselves every day at least or you'll stink."
Aten likes this guy. He appreciates that Grec's trying hard to think of a wide range of things that could trip them up (even though in practice for this case he thinks that people being able to copy finding enjoyment in washing clothes probably means their standards aren't too different?). Nod nod. - And he'll try that now, how about - "Prestidigitation." And can he catch that again, yes good.
"And you probably haven't got to drink any more than you've got to eat but if you decide to the water in the cistern's clean, the clerics make it, the snow only probably won't give you demonplague if you drink that instead."
"Entire. We Prestidigitate out the cistern regularly so it doesn't get slime, but the water's conjured clean."
"What are some of the other most notable things magic can do? We can pick up context, the same as anything else, but there's a lot to cover and we don't quite know where to aim."
"Light. The permanent kind in the mess hall ceiling want ruby dust, the temporary kind's a cantrip but one per wizard. Lots of buffs to make people hit harder or make more of their saves or whatever. Fifth circles get Teleport, and we'll get ahold of a strike team that has that with Sending off a scroll if anything big hits. Some demons lean on enchantments a lot. Healing is mostly a cleric thing but we've got Infernal Healing."
Some context - "Teleports are rare enough that we shouldn't be getting sent around with them to put Endures on multiple forts per day?"
"Right. They're not abundant, it sounds like you can't get them yourselves, and they're kept in reserve for emergencies we need stronger people to handle. You could in theory be going between several adjacent forts to distribute Endures there but they can also pick them up when they come through here more efficiently, it's the patrollers who need it, not the cooks and whores."
Is it the case that they could cover effectively five forts instead of kind-of-three, if they went to other places... not really; they'd have to wait around there for people to come in, in order to get all of them who were going to do that, and then they couldn't be covering things here. Maybe if they split up, but Aten's not very keen on that idea. (What's a whore.)
That's really concerning but probably there's nothing immediately to be done about it. They still want to keep basically the relationship they've established here so far; if they want to change anything here they can probably best accomplish that by being really helpful people who everyone owes a lot to - and this is just one perspective; they should pick up some from other people, especially from the whores themselves. Now what's Infernal Healing.
"That sounds reasonable." Feradi has clearly noticed their face journey, but also, clearly, has not latched onto what it's about - and is trying to continue the conversation over it.
Grec is making it clear that it has not escaped him that there's a face journey occurring over there but sure. "It'll still get more slack in the whole line, we'll be able to spend slots on other things so our casters will have more flexibility including when they're adjacent, and that means that their casters will have that much more, and of course we go through a tremendous number of wands over the winter and if you stay that long you can have a lot of the savings."
Fiaten's voice is suddenly about an octave higher, though it was pretty deep before. "Savings in what? Money that trades using people on a torture planet??" (Now that he's said it out loud planet does not quite seem like the correct unit, but that's really not the most important thing here.)
Blink, blink. "...we can pay coin if you're being foreign about it, you just get a worse deal that way."
"See, okay, a torture - realm - is not actually something we have, back home; it is very shocking to learn that you have one of those and even more so to learn that you think - that you're aiming for it."
"We don't have Hell in the basement, you people probably show up there like anyone else and just don't know about it," shrugs Grec.
"and even if we didn't, one, we didn't know it, so it doesn't affect the surprisingness, and two, most everyone in my country is Good. So no, we wouldn't show up there."
"Suit yourself. Why is this coming up right now and do I need to be planning to send you clockwise to get away from the icky devil-worshipers or not?"
"I don't know. It came up because I looked at what you meant by Infernal Healing." Sigh. "Do you want to provide any more context for our consideration or should we just go off and think."
"If you want me telling Vallvé you're not patrolling after all you need to put in some time putting Endures on patrollers," says Grec flatly. "Good people like holding the Worldwound too, it's not like the demons are the ones who've been cosmically assigned to punish our sins and only go for us and leave the paladins alone, you'll be in perfectly fucking fine company."
"If there are any Good people around I would like to speak with them to confirm this."
"They come through sometimes refreshing their teleport locations, we don't have any permanently installed and I don't know when to expect the next batch. And Detect Good et al aren't wizard spells so you'll be taking their words for it unless they're paladins," says Grec, rolling his eyes, "lotta people with inflated ideas of their own saintliness out there."
"Getting one of us in proximity to a demon so that we can look at its traits and confirm it's bad news would also work." (Similarly they will be able to tell whether people are actually good.) - Oh, he should also look over the treaty again. Normally he'd have committed it fully to memory; in retrospect it seems obviously important to have done that, but it was so cold. He can probably do it soon; they want them to follow it so it would be weird to not let them at it again. ...But thinking over what he remembers, it at least doesn't obviously seem like Grec's wrong or lying, here. "I will do at least one day of Endures for everyone here."
"We don't do much live fucking demon capture but maybe you'll get lucky." Where's Feradi at, Grec looks his way.
Great. Grec absolutely has all day to wait and will tolerate this. And eat his stew, which has been a bit neglected.
Memorization first, then comprehension.
Okay. According to Grec's intuition, this indeed is off-tone for the sorts of documents his country produces. Which is - not a conclusive good sign, not close to it, but a lack of a bad sign.
"I will do at least one day of Endures for everyone here," he repeats. "If you're unhappy about us going and thinking for a while first I'm willing to tack some additional hours onto it. Given our response to this is there anything else you'd like to let us know about."
"No, not really," says Grec irritably. "You, whatever your name was -" he's looking at Feradi, "are you with him on patrol versus Endures for your lodging or no?"
"Lovely. I'll tell Vallvé for you and he'll owe me a favor not having to hear it from you direct. Shoo."
"I," he's managing to put on some sarcastic bravado but it's clear he's somewhat shaken, "do not wish to be tortured."
"And you, presumably, have some knowledge of how to be a good person. Even if it's a sickening Cretari version of the idea."
"So it would seem! ...I was still right that the other one should be out and you should hide away. I'll make an attempt at kindness and say you probably couldn't help it, but that really could have gone better."
"So we'll play some more Wheelstack before we head back out there." He claps Fia on the shoulder. "And he can relay to me what you think about various moralities. ...How - aware - are you, when he's the one... controlling things. I can't see the other of you at all."
"It had to be that way, otherwise this would never have worked for living in Creta. Fairly, is your answer. We can split attention somewhat; I was looking at the owl's traits while he played the game - is that what it's called, is that a hint -"
"...You don't have to answer that. I don't expect going 'I'm not telling' in a friendly spirit to be Evil."
"Anyhow. I don't think we get free attention this way over a normal person - or a normal Citreliac person; I guess everyone else here has probably got it worse - but we're maybe a bit better at dividing it. We have active thoughts the more our thoughts are different than the one of us in the lead, otherwise... it's like I'm still there, in the background, and if something happens that's - obviously, I came out when we found out about... all of this. That hasn't happened before, where we couldn't help it."
"That it was." Sigh. "In any case, I can advise on matters of morality, even if I'm not otherwise... doing things."
"How much do you want to just - take traits that I have - obviously you can and may -"
"Not especially. Maybe once you've swapped; I've already done some of that. If things are looking dire then I'll try. Better to die to myself than to die and go to Forever Torture Island, but until then..."
"Does your Goodness compass have a heading on whether we should stay here among the icky devil-worshipers or head somewhere more nicely populated?"
"It's difficult to say. If they're right about the demons being as bad as they are it's easy; this is plausibly the place where the two of us can do the most good on this planet. And... it's probably foolish to think we could help the people here become better people, Aten thinks so - so we could move somewhere along the circle even if we wanted to contribute to this cause. But...
"I do think I would like to try, here, for a while. ...I am not entirely sure of my own alignment - pretty sure, but not as much as I'd like - so if we're risking getting caught up in this scheme rather than being reincarnated back home, I think I have to try things that are more heroic than necessarily sane. If the conception of Good that matters here is even close to 'the sickening Cretari version'. Or the broader Citreliac one.
"But I don't know that they're right about the demons."
Sighhh. "Patrols, maybe. It didn't seem like we'd be that fast on encountering one that way but it's probably faster than getting one here somehow or waiting for someone from somewhere else to show up."
"On a more purely logistical note, I think we should tell Grec-or-somebody about your division. It could look like demon possession, based on what I've seen, and that seems like a pretty straight and well-paved road to getting executed."
"I don't know if it'll regain you any social points with him, but it at least might. Who knows."
Shrug. "Can I delegate that to you? I assume he'll want confirmation from me, but - seems more suspicious if I'm there, don't you think -"
"Sure. Are we staying on doing Endures around the patrols until we're conclusive on the evidence re demons, is that the plan?"
"I can convey that too." And he starts shuffling.
Not quite an hour after they left, he's back at Grec's door.
He enters. Nod of greeting. "Two things. First, we'd like to stay on helping here for the time being."
"A security forewarning. Fiaten caused himself to have dual personalities, back on our home planet. I've known this for years; it's not necessarily the work of demons if he starts behaving drastically differently."
"You've already seen it. The country he was living in has mandatory personality traits for all its citizens. They've got to want to be kind to each other and listen to their government and a bunch of shit like that. So he - broke himself in half, somehow, and kept one as a normal person and put all that on the other. The normal one was running things, since we're not in Creta anymore, but finding out about your afterlife situation made him swap back for a bit."
How does one make a familiar - apparently like that, kind of. "A bit, yes."
"I haven't done it but I understand one can customize them a bit," Grec elaborates, "and if one's familiar were always going to be the one getting mindread instead of oneself that would affect the matter. Anyway. The Commander'll be pleased you're staying on for the Endures."
"Mmhm. I can start now, if you'd like." (Ugh.) "You said there were stables?"
"If it'll take longer than fifteen minutes then I suppose I should start," (with the people? What if there are people being kept in the stables. With the humans? No, there are more than humans out here too) "in the hall. I was imagining there being fewer stable-dwellers such that it might be possible to get all of them at once?"
"Not so long as fifteen minutes if you cast at full speed. Is Fiaten going along to make you a perpetual machine or do you need other company to copy?"
"I can go get him if there's not something surprising about what's in there such that I'd need a guide regardless." Is there anything obviously like that he can get off of Grec -
"About the horses? Not especially. They're... black. Fluffy, for horses. It's a cold-tolerant breed."
"No secret horse people being kept prisoner who I should skip over? None of them will bite off the fingers of anyone who tries to touch them?" (Actually, a moment ago he wasn't sure what the selection of animals would be, so this is already informative.)
"If any of the horses are people that'll come as a perfect surprise and it's probably a demon," says Grec tiredly. "I don't know all their temperaments but if people were losing fingers I'd hear about it."
"Alright. ...We're going to want to go on patrols, in a day or two. The familiarish half thinks it'll help confirm what you've said about demons."
"Only if you find any. Most don't. And the ones you do find are usually stunned from having gone through the barrier and will not be awake for interrogations or whatever it is you have in mind before they are killed."
"As long as they're not dead we should be able to get some information just off looking at their dispositions."
"Uh-huh. Well, you can go on patrols, though I have gone and already taken you off the ones Vallvé assigned originally and most people find it is not in their interest to have the schedulemaster wishing they would catch fire so perhaps you'll wait a day or two."
"A day or two," he nods. "I expect despite the rough start here we can come to create a situation where almost no one wishes we'd catch fire."
Grec buttonholes an internal patroller and has them show Feradi the way to the stables; there's a route that doesn't go out of doors.
Then once he goes and collects Aten the two of them can touch a lot of horses.
The horses are, as promised, fluffy and black. They are domesticated, on the whole, though they vary slightly in temperament, and no finger amputations are attempted.
Soft!
...Probably they should not risk missing another patrol before it goes out; it will be better to pet them tomorrow. Off they go.
Patrols go out every fifteen minutes, divided among those returning to adjacent forts and those whose home posting is #11.
Some of the squads are chatty amongst themselves! Most of them seem to have a strategy of interacting with foreign adventurers which boils down to "don't". Maybe it smooths things over about the icky devil worshiper situation. This wizard-sergeant will smile in an approximately friendly manner, insofar as Chelish people do that, and wave, though, while she's waiting for it to be time to go; her squad has formed up a little early.
People are confirming amongst each other that these guys have been here doing this thing for like kind of a long time now! But they're reasonably good at keeping their voices down, so while they also say other stuff it's hard to catch more than the occasional word without trying really hard. Maybe the next fort over has a cold going around. Maybe this bag of mail should get where it's going a little quicker, can it go right out with the next counterclockwise, yes, fine, here's a cut of the bribe.
Then they will keep at this and play cards in between at least until someone comes to tell them to stop.
Playing cards is permissible, though there isn't actually a table in the hall so they will be sitting on the floor to do it.
They can catch bits of incoming reports, when a shift change makes it so the report taker is a different lieutenant who prefers to stand in a different place. Mostly there's nothing, sometimes there were footprints and they investigated and there was nothing, one party reports a group of three stunned dretches they took out with no incident.
Well, Fia promised a full day, so if no one comes to break them up for a 'sleep' shift that seems fine for now. As long as people occasionally pass by with full bellies. (Sometimes they will want to break for five minutes for whatever passes for a bathroom here but it would be surprising if that weren't fine?) They can also copy unstiffness so the lack of table is not that inconvenient.
The outgoing patrols are usually recently fed. Nobody comments on the bathroom breaks if they time them responsibly.
A full day is long enough that some people encounter them twice, by the end of that period, and are notably cheery about their presence, having put together that these guys are why they get Endures even for patrols in the daytime when the wind isn't ridiculously awful! This takes the form of fairly subtle facial expressions and also someone trying out some kind of stupid nicknames but with an attitude that they'd be better nicknames if he could think of any.
There is a slant rhyme available in Chelish between "wand" and "million" but it makes a stupid nickname whichever order you put the words in! "Slot" and "prince" alliterate but this is immediately identified as a dirty joke and shot down by the guy's squadmate!
That's charming! He's tempted to point out how 'warm' and 'magnanimous' sound like they have a root in common, but he's not sure of it and maybe it would be tacky for him to suggest anything.
Surely at some point someone will show up to relieve one of them?
Grec himself is going out on a patrol toward the end. "I've got my squad. You've been at it a day, that's at least your coats and such bought," he says. "If you need anything while I'm out, the Commander's in and I've caught him up on your deal."
"...Have we already gotten everyone who'll be going out while we're off?"
"Not literally everyone, there'll be somebody doing a double from two away and such. Most of them."
It would be good to know whether there's a convenient way to let unEndured people know that they can flag one of them down, and also Aten would like to know how to obtain their coats and such, and for that matter what 'such' is (the food and room, probably? But if there was something else he wouldn't know about it). But it seems like Grec's on his way out and after yesterday it's probably better to keep unobtrusive.
Unless he went out some side door Bartra should still be in the building? Is he hanging out in some findable place.
Bartra has an office, though he has to share it with some other wizards! Before they find it Caldentey delivers them their coats, though.
Aha. Well, they're warm if the two of them end up in a situation where they need that.
Oh hey a room with Bartra's name next to it. Knock knock?
He happens to be in! So is another wizard, reading a book. And Torus the owl is there too. "What is it?"
"We wanted to note our appreciation for you causing us to have the Endure spell and check whether there was something we could do to make clear our gratefulness. We didn't initially know that copying spells would be a delicate matter."
"...huh. I mean, you can buy spells, usually. If you stay on long enough it'll come out even between getting more of my slots to myself and getting the spell on even in survivable weather."
This is conciliatory enough for a Chelish person that the other wizard looks up from her book, a bit taken aback, but she doesn't say anything.
"Grec said he would make sure there wouldn't be a problem but we also wanted to make sure of that." Shrug - wow he is also maybe worse at shrugging than Fia, he feels like that looked unnatural. (Fia can't tell from the inside how it looked.) "And if we make worse mistakes in the future it would be nice to have established a record showing we're not working in bad faith and will make good on this sort of thing."
"Well, you know, stay in the bounds of the treaty and the Commander'll see you're safe for it, he's very big on that."
Huh. Nod. "Well, we're putting the Endures on everyone, so if something comes up for you in particular, let us know."
"If you're free. I think I've figured out almost everything for two players but he's really aggressively not been giving me all-but-rhombuses and odd two-hearts to test things against. It's not urgent."
They actually prefer the mess hall since they'd like to be findable if anyone else wants to get tapped.
Trying to reveal as little information about the puzzle as possible by playing a card game well!
And throughout it no one approaches them to be tapped, so after one game it's probably worth approaching the commander to ask about that.
He can be found in his office; he's taking a report but it doesn't last too long and the reporter ducks out to make way for them.
"Hello." (Since Feradi mentioned it he'll take a look at this guy's disposition? For Fia's calibration if nothing else.)
Commander Artigas: has a disposition. Your Sense Motive score must be this tall to ride except that if you use magic you can apparently just see it so there it is. "Gentlemen."
Yikes. It's so... detailed. It gives Aten more of an intuitive sense for how valuable the thing the Cretari government is doing, where they make everyone keep certain traits in case one of them turns out to be important. He understood this before; it makes logical sense (though, huh, now that they're here they do not actually have to keep being this short? Maybe their body should be taller, they should think about that later), but he hadn't felt on such an obvious, apparent level that, oh yeah, things that are awful to experience can be turned into something useful. He wants to turn this guy over to a team of developers and have them pick his thing apart until they come out with something that gives a nice boost to attentional capacity when stacked with other Citreliac standards, and that also isn't - that.
"Commander. I hope we've justified your decision to let us into your fort."
"Yes, your assistance has been very valuable in defiance of the irregular introduction."
Okay stop looking at the thing and get down to business. "We wouldn't mind being more so. If we're taking breaks in the mess hall and someone doesn't have an Endure up, I don't mind being approached for a casting." (Feradi does mind, at least a little, but given that he doesn't want to go to Hell he's on board with the plan anyway.) "If there was an easy way to communicate this to the people it's relevant to, we thought you might know it."
"Do you intend to extend this to people whose duties do not take them outside of the fort?"
"Yes, but it would neither free up other spell slots nor directly affect patrol efficacy and I don't know whether to imagine you to be invested in the comfort of the cooks and such."
"...We're not aiming to be less concerned with the welfare of people considered non-vital given that there's apparently a torture realm which w -"
"- You play chess? You have chess, on this planet?" Feradi takes a quick two steps toward the bookcase but stops himself before touching anything he wasn't before.
"Yes, I play chess and relatedly it exists on this planet, though I don't know if it's much like the sort you're familiar with, as variants exist even here. I can have a sign posted to the effect that anyone including noncombatants can ask you for Endures free of charge when they spot you in the mess hall. - assuming I understand correctly that you're approaching this as a charitable Judgment-oriented behavior and do not intend to charge for it, but I can also post a price if you have one."
"Free at least for today. We're planning to stay here for a while; given that it's our time and attention more than the individual Endures which are valuable to us, it might be worth it to assemble people densely some number of times per day rather than have us posted up for long stretches. It would free us up for trips to adjacent forts, and whatever else comes up that's good for us to do. We discussed this with," how do formalities, "your First Arcane, but we weren't sure at that time whether we might be leaving soon."
"...If it turns out you're all completely wrong about whether demons are even bad, I don't expect us to stick around. Short of that, I'm not sure. There are kinds of things I can think of us learning which would make us want to leave but not unwilling to wait through a notice period first."
"Is there," how does he put this, "a specific one which would be less disruptive than one slightly shorter than it? Long enough for some sort of delivery to come in, for example? Which is less than a," season? No, the years here are longer, "month."
"As a general rule we are meant to expect supplies on a weekly basis but it is not particularly unusual for them to be delayed such that they're doubled up, and they are typically responding to requisition orders from longer ago than that for anything that isn't invariably recurring."
"If," he rifles around in the commander's knowledge for stuff that's approximately the sort of thing which can happen, "a party showed up and offered to teleport us somewhere on the other side of the Worldwound, because they were going to give us another spell that we could use to save many lives there that were in immediate danger... well, first off, is that something you'd prefer we do?"
"Assuming they passed checks to make sure they were not demons, which they probably would be since there is no way for a letter to have gotten very far with you among its contents yet, but for the sake of argument, yes, the availability of strike teams floating between different sections of the border is important to its overall stability."
"Not necessarily soon, just as a reason we might want to someday leave without warning."
"Strike teams normally have permanent postings from which they travel and to which they return. Since you do not come with your own teleportation power that is slightly less obvious as an approach for you but if you are absent for less than a day the need for notice is reduced, we can keep enough wands to cover that even in inclement weather on hand."
"What if they didn't have a teleport for us to come back with? Or would they, always."
"If... the teleporter who fetched you died? Teleporters are worth Raising, this would still usually not delay you more than a day. If there were more emergencies in rapid succession? Then #11 not having unlimited Endure Elements wouldn't be one of them and we'd ride it out."
"It's fifth circle, and requires a diamond, but it is in general doable, yes."
Can that happen to them??? Probably if they get enough money somehow. In between all the charity. "I see." Wow. "If we won't leave the Worldwound in general without at least a month of notice, does that approximately satisfy your concerns?"
"This is if we don't learn that all the demons are actually just fine people you happen to have a grudge against. But perhaps you're willing to bet on that."
"It has crossed my mind to be concerned that you will meet a demon and adopt its properties and be best described as a demon thereafter. You might also meet a succubus quick enough on the uptake to present an appealing pack of lies with or without enchantment backing them. I do not expect you will come to an accurate assessment of demons and decide that they are fine; they can't even agree on that amongst themselves."
"...I am not very concerned that we'll decide to risk taking traits from demons and then turn - automatically evil. Perhaps I should be concerned that we could be made to do that without deciding it."
"If you have not already been made aware of the existence of enchantments you should catch up on that immediately, do you require instruction or just permission to 'double' what I know?"
"Saying some things out loud will give us a better idea of where to aim?"
"Succubi in particular can at will mimic charm and suggestion spells, and once a day attempt an outright dominate. The main protection against the former is to have in mind rigid limits on what you can and cannot be persuaded to do by people you believe to be your friends and by compelling arguments, the latter you just need a good Will save and to operate in groups such that one person being compromised doesn't ruin the entire enterprise. There are other enchantments but succubi are the most common threat of this kind here."
This is, Aten decides, less alarming than the torture dimension, especially since that one also turns you into a bad person and you get tortured. Does the commander's knowledge think that it's normal to do practice runs against Charm Whatevers?
No, but there is some extracurricular Charm Person use among the wizards and anyone who knows what's good for them can navigate that.
"You expect demons to be obviously different in disposition from people here?"
"Yes. Even if there are Chaotic Evil people among my soldiers they're human levels of both."
Nod. "I'm not sure that we can relevantly operate in groups. Except to the extent that I'm always doing this. I don't know that I expect that to help here."
"Doubling things onto ourselves is a personal, internal action. It's not that we can't operate in groups, it's that I'm not sure doing so would prevent us from becoming demons."
Should he be worried that Feradi was right about Creta and that Fia's innocence has worn off on him? - No, Feradi also looks surprised, to the extent he's having a facial expression at the moment. "...I suppose that's another reason to keep us together, so we can keep an eye on each other's dispositions. Unless you think it would certainly be obvious to anyone watching."
"It might not be visually clear, no. It'd ping to Detect Fiendish Presence unless you somehow collected important features of a demon and did not magically qualify as one."
Is that one of the ones that's infinite for lots of people or just for them or for no one.
"You have no insurance. I can put in a request but you're not currently well-described by the official threshold for use of the scroll, and also I only have one. However, I expect if you die that I'll describe your abilities to Fiducia Boian, the Abadaran insurance adjuster, and he might take a personal interest. He'll want to be paid back and I can relay to him in this event what you have to say about that."
"The Fiducia has a sideline in it. I can send him a letter asking that he make his way here sooner than later but Worldwound mail is slow and unreliable."
An occasional business dealing which is not his main occupation. "That is the traditional way to pay for things, but you have valuable skills and could perhaps arrange to repay your insurer in that way."
"The Fiducia would come up with some elaborate formula about this because they are not all worth the same amount - we need them more at night than while the sun is up, in winter than in summer, etcetera, and you're using them in many situations where normally we'd simply oblige the men to go without, which is advantageous but does not in a strict sense save money. The figure for wand charges is some fifteen gold apiece, but yours will average less costly than that for this reason and because you don't represent a specialized materials supply chain and tying up a crafter for the time it takes to make one, as well as because you lack the convenience of allowing any caster to expend the needful charges on the spot."
"Depends on how likely the Fiducia believes you are to die and how retrievably; part of the purpose of insurance is to create incentives to steer towards legibly lower-risk behavior. On the order of thousands of gold if you want to be assured of a serious attempt at retrieval even if you require a better grade of spell than a Raise Dead."
"- Prestidigitation." And there's a white king in his hand. He examines it.
It looks and feels flimsy and unrefined, but it is identifiable as a white king and not a different piece and will hold up to gameplay-typical handling. "Yes, like that," says Commander Artigas. "There are variants for which an ordinary set wouldn't be suitable anyway."
