Of course, Otolmens.

Boop!

- aaaaaaaah a thing is happening????

Merrin is pretty sure a thing is happening? Maybe she's imagining it and it's just that doing this mental exercise for extended periods of time produces an altered state of consciousness??? 

But what it FEELS like is - suddenly there's something there. It feels like brushing up against something so vast that she can't actually see it at all, but can still - notice that she herself is being seen, and - recognized, understood, welcomed - 

IS THIS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE HIRED BY A GOD??? In hindsight she should maybe have...asked someone what to expect...before attempting this? 

She takes a deep breath and then very tentatively tries to reach back. 

Being not a god herself nor much skilled in Erecura's ways, Merrin is not ready to hear very much that Erecura has to say; and it is not in any case Erecura's way to disclose secrets lightly.  The brief feeling that Erecura sends back, if it could be put into words, might say this:

Keep your secrets well, survive far out of your place, and grow wise.

Only for a moment does that feeling appear, and then the Presence recedes.

(Merrin's thoughts can still be read, for the most part, but not those upon matters which Merrin thinks to herself ought to be kept secret.)

All right, let's be honest here, she can't fucking believe that actually worked.

- okay she was DEFINITELY NOT imagining that! She is - probably a cleric now? Maybe? This is amazing! She was super not expecting that to work! 

- wait, what? 

Is Erecura - she's assuming that was Erecura - trying to warn her that she has more secrets than she realized? That the secrets she's been vaguely worried about are more dangerous than she had realized? This is kind of incredible as a thing to happen but vague not-in-words sense that came across just now was not reassuring. 

Merrin spends a minute or two just absorbing all of the !!!!!!???? that her brain is producing. She is now a metaphorical-employee of the god who approximately doesn't work with mortals in the mortal plane? Why? She is so incredibly not complaining but she's pretty confused! 

She is incredibly not sleepy now and, after a couple of minutes, scrambles up and heads to the door and opens it. "Um, hello, is anyone around...? I think I might have just had Erecura make me a 'cleric' and it would be helpful if there were a way to check that?" 

"I'll pass that on and have somebody come by to check right away," says a Security outside the door who looks frankly shocked by this, though not at all displeased.  "Congratulations!  Erecura doesn't choose many clerics, even in Cheliax!"

"I heard! I'm actually really curious about why!"

Actually her current best guess as to why is that actually a much wider swath of facts about dath ilan are somewhere-in-the-realm-of-infohazardous for Golarion or for Cheliax specifically and this is pretty scary! She does not feel like she got any actual concrete advice from the god who is now her metaphorical employer! 

Maybe it's not that? Maybe it's that Erecura - wants her to reinvent prediction markets here? That would be way less stressful. But on the general principle of caution, Merrin is going to work on the assumption that it's the first one. Aaaaah. 

...This is not actually enough aaaaaah to stop Merrin from grinning and slightly bouncing. 

A cleric of Asmodeus arrives a few minutes later, looking a little out of breath, does the hand gestures to cast a spell, and a few moments later informs Merrin that she is indeed a 1st-circle cleric of Erecura!  One more powerful than an average new cleric, even!

...which is much more terrible news than her subordinates seem to have realized, for keeping Merrin cooperative.  Now Cheliax is going to have to figure out something to do about all the books that Merrin will be able to read, and quite reasonably expect to be delivered to her on request, as soon as she prays for a Comprehend Languages tomorrow at dawn.

Abrogail is currently attempting to think quickly and creatively about how to avoid this blowing up their whole operation.  Send to Hell again and beg Erecura not to grant her new cleric Comprehend Languages?  Hope that Erecura works out why not to grant that spell?  Tell Merrin it's not 1st-circle?  Abrogail doesn't want to rely on Erecura knowing that much, caring that much, even if Hell can get a message to Her in time... what now, they can't possibly write as many books quickly enough as Merrin would expect to exist if they weren't being hidden from her...

(Not that Abrogail regrets her previous life choices about her cunning plan.  Irori or Sarenrae would obviously have been a lot worse.  But in retrospect she should've planned more around the chance that Merrin could be a cleric despite the antimagic shell, and maybe not shown Merrin so many books inside her room, implying that they can't claim books are incredibly expensive and all Cheliax doesn't have that many...)

Wow! Merrin is so delighted about this! She also has so many questions. It takes her a few moments to put the questions in order so that she can say them at all. 

"Thank you! I, um - what causes clerics to be more or less powerful than average? What do I need to do to get the spells?" 

(She almost asks if it's normal for gods to give new clerics messages, and then remembers that if it's the case that the message was because a lot of things about dath ilan are more dangerous to Golarion than she had previously realized, she should definitely not say that, just on general principle.) 

(Also, while Merrin is having this train of thought, her thoughts are briefly blurred out to Detect Thoughts if anyone is actually attempting that.) 

"- Um, also I don't actually know more than a handful of things about Erecura? I can infer some more just from the fact that my attempt to contact her worked and that I'm apparently well-suited enough to be her cleric, but I would feel way more comfortable with this if I had the full overview." 

WHY DID HER THOUGHTS BLUR OUT LIKE THAT.

...Erecura.

Oh no.  No no no.  Somebody resend that message to Hell at higher priority, get Dispater to tell Erecura what's going on!

Even most theology experts don't know that much about Erecura!  She's one of the most mysterious goddesses out there!  As you might expect from the goddess who governs specifically over secrecy!  But they'll try to get more information as it's available.

They mostly meant that Merrin is more powerful than most first-circle clerics are, starting out, meaning that Erecura probably wanted to boost her up more than usual, as might usually require a longer service.  Merrin will also be more powerful than usual if she has more of a trait called Wisdom, which she probably has at least some extra of?

Merrin can pray for spells at dawn - she figures out which first-circle spells she wants, probably to a maximum of three or four, and then tries to send her mind in Erecura's direction and thinks about how she will serve worship is aligned with Erecura's interests and intends to help out, while requesting those spells.

Describing all the first-circle cleric spells will take a while, but somebody could be brought over to describe some of the more interesting and useful ones for Merrin?  Cure Light Wounds is probably the single most famous first-circle cleric spell, though not in very high demand within the Palace in Egorian.

Merrin kind of still wants the complete list at some point anyway; her plan was to test as many of them as possible, though at 3-4 per day that’s going to take ages and might not be her highest priority. Is there one for perceiving magic, like what wizard students do? Also what about the translation one - it might be the one from before where people could understand her but not talk. This would still be incredibly useful for Merrin, to be able to understand Taldane directly, even if it meant other people had to have their own translation magic to understand her answers in Baseline.

There's a first-circle cleric version of that spell, yes, though it's not quite the same as the wizard spell, and how powerful it is depends on the level of the caster.  It'll last for 10-20 minutes at Merrin's current power level - if it works right for her at all, with that antimagic nature of hers, which hasn't really been tested yet.  Even if it works, though, it sounds like they should mainly go with... whatever other approach Negotiations was planning to use for that before she got clericed, considering that it wouldn't work through the whole day?  It also isn't likely to work for reading books, at Merrin's current level for casting the spell; but Negotiations can give a low-paid-employee a Tongues item, and let them translate anything that Merrin gives them advance notice on wanting to read.  Or at least, that's what the cleric would guess Negotiations was previously planning on doing.

The cleric of Asmodeus thinks from her examination that Merrin might possibly have been granted a very rare ability called 'channeling positive energy' which lets her heal injuries up to a certain level on everybody in a 30-foot radius, multiple times per day - three to six times, maybe, it depends on the person.  If Merrin can do that, she might be able to do that right away, even before praying for spells, and that would test whether or not she can surpass the antimagical effect and do magic that affects things outside herself.

The Palace isn't in fact in immediate need of this ability; they have adequate healing capacity from the many clerics who are here, praying for ordinary healing spells.  But if Merrin really has that ability and is willing to use it on behalf of Cheliax at standard rates for not-on-demand healing, some people with relatively minor injuries who don't require immediate healing could get scheduled for a huge group session with Merrin instead, at regular times each day.  That would potentially replace a lot of individual curative spells from individual clerics, who could then pray for other useful spells instead!

...assuming Merrin can in fact do that, or affect anybody outside herself.  The cleric of Asmodeus apologizes for getting ahead of herself here, she was just excited.

"...Oh. Yeah, I - think it'll be pretty useful even to have twenty minutes a day where I can understand your language directly - I can time the most important conversations for when I have that, and it'll give me any context at all on how Taldane is different and where the translation weirdness with Baseline is coming from - but I obviously can't rely on that for all the conversations I want to have." 

Pause. 

"- I'd like to test the 'channeling positive energy' thing as soon as possible," if only because she really should go to SLEEP soon and she's going to find that way harder if she still has an open mental loop about this question, "- also I'm incredibly curious why it's rare and why Erecura might've given me the really rare ability?" 

Probably it's rare because it's a big powerful power to have?  A channeler could, given appropriately careful packing of subjects, cure more people in six seconds than the most powerful non-channeling cleric could cure in a day, though only of light injuries at Merrin's present level.

The cleric of Asmodeus has no idea why Erecura would do that!  Except that Erecura is too mysterious, and even the gods too unable to forecast the future, for it to be anything as straightforward as 'there'll be some big accident at the Palace where Merrin has to heal everybody'.  Probably.

Anyways, she could grab a dagger from Security, give Merrin a very shallow cut that would heal naturally, stab herself a bit deeper than that, and they could try the thing!

If they're going to do that test then Merrin definitely wants to have personally made sure that the Security's "dagger" is sterilized. Really she would prefer a medical scalpel but she's not expecting that to be available. Also she wants to make doubly sure that, if it turns out not to work, the cleric advising her can get a normal healing spell from someone else? 

(Why is it taken for granted that random staff will definitely have a sharp implement mainly intended as a weapon? This...seems like some additional information on - something - how dangerous Cheliax is, how useful sharp things are compared to magic - maybe most of the Security staff aren't wizards? But supposedly half the entire population can learn the most basic magic, and one would expect that the staff here at the heart of where Cheliax's Governance works to be much more selected than that...) 

"I - huh - yeah, that makes sense, if it's energetically expensive. But where does the power for doing that come from? There's a plane of positive energy, right? Albe said it's the raw form of the kind of energy that goes into healing spells, and - she was somehow able to pull up a ball of the raw energy, herself? But it sounds like the 'channeling positive energy' rare power is a lot more than that, so - does it take direct help from Erecura to do that? I guess that would explain it being costly for gods to give their clerics that ability." 

Though if so, it leaves her with even more confusion as to why Erecura invested in giving it to her. Erecura, who doesn't normally metaphorically-employ living humans at all. And who is apparently even more mysterious than most gods. Possibly Erecura's reasons for it are secret, but that doesn't exactly leave Merrin feeling LESS desperately curious, here. 

Erecura is also the goddess whose domain includes 'predictions', so - maybe she's actually better than the other gods at forecasting future events, and does have some kind of plan here - which Merrin is absolutely not going to succeed at guessing, she is neither smart enough nor well-informed enough, but Erecura - might nonetheless be able to predict Merrin's future actions well enough to know that whatever it is, Merrin will end up getting it right... 

(What a nervewracking thought.) 

This particular cleric of Asmodeus is not senior enough to be able to answer any questions about how expensive it is for gods to give somebody the ability to channel Positive-plane energy into a 30-foot radius healing effect.  In general, the power to open the channel comes from the god, the power to shape that energy into healing comes from the god, but most of the energy per se is an evocation effect that floods down the channel.  Or at least this cleric thinks that's how it works.

The fact that Albe can do things should not be taken as an indication that they are easy to do!  Albe is an unreasonably elite consultant!  They wouldn't have handed Merrin off to her to be possibly flirted-with if they had normal Government employees lounging about who could easily do the same thing!

The Security will cheerfully sterilize their dagger with a dangerous-looking blue flame!

The cleric can heal herself if Merrin can't heal her.

That...does work as a sterilizing method, albeit an unusual one by Merrin's standards! And the dagger is less awkwardly enormous for this purpose. Merrin folds up one of her sleeves - her shirt is designed to make this very easy to do, and for the shortened configuration to be aesthetically pleasing and also stay in place - and then accepts the dagger and carefully checks that the flat of the blade is in fact cooled down. She picks a spot on her forearm - one not close to any near-the-surface veins - and calmly gives herself a minor cut, apparently not perturbed by this at all. It's shallow enough that she probably won't bleed copiously and make a mess during the time it takes her to figure out this 'channeling positive energy thing.' 

"You should clean and re-sterilize it before using it on someone else," she says matter-of-factly, offering the dagger back to the Security. "As far as I know I do not have any bloodborne diseases, but just on general principle. I'm going to see if I can figure this out intuitively, if not I'll want instructions." 

If she stares at her arm and thinks firmly that she wants it to be HEALED via a burst of the same bright pure white light she saw when Albe was testing the various elemental energies, does anything happen? 

Not yet?

Security resterilizes the blade, which the cleric promptly uses to cut herself.

The cleric advises that Merrin look inside herself for a sort of gate or affordance that wasn't there before; casting doesn't work by willing results to happen, it works through a sort of indescribable action you couldn't do before you were a cleric.

Great, the clearest instructions they can manage are 'look for an indescribable action-affordance you didn't have before'. Merrin...will try this? 

She focuses on how it felt when the THING happened in the first place, and - is there anything that still feels different? She's particularly looking for a procedural-memory type of feeling, like the way she can look at a wound and a box of medical supplies and it's as though her hands already know what to do...

There is totally a thing like that!  It is very weird!  It is not comparable to any of Merrin's previous qualia, only to the clericing memory and to itself!  Totally feels like there's an internal motor action she can take to do it, though.  Not like wanting your hand to move, not like visualizing your hand moving, just like moving your hand.