"Keep the forests down, chase heavy duty criminals, that kind of thing."

"Sounds like a similar enough idea, then. More formalized, maybe? There's a lot more orders than that in Mendev, many are pretty small, people start new ones sometimes. Which I suppose comes from how you can be a paladin first and looking for an order second."

"Was yours just the closest or what?"

"I tried the closest one, on my commander's advice, but it didn't much suit me. Ended up taking some time to go see what other ones there were, and found one in Nerosyan I liked. I owe them a pretty long letter about this entire trip."

"Didn't suit you? The ass-sticks weren't your color?"

What is it with this man's insistence on trying to get on his nerves. It's more of an interesting puzzle than anything, though, at this point. Maybe he isn't trying to get on his nerves at all and this is just how he thinks normal interactions with people are supposed to go.

"It was, mm, the sort where you stick to killing demons, follow very simple strict rules and don't talk about philosophy. I kept wanting to talk about philosophy."

Snicker.

Smirk.

"And they definitely wouldn't have let me come here. So we'll have to see how that works out."

"Whyever not? We fight demons too. We are all good friends," says Vives with a perfect poker face.

A solemn nod, though he doesn't quite manage the straight face.  "I will be sure to let them know."

She laughs. "Will you! I guess now you've said it you must!"

"Exactly so," grin.

"If you forget, when would you fall about it?"

"I wouldn't, unless I put it off on purpose so long that it was basically my fault.  It's not Evil to forget things, and I didn't swear to it."

There's turnover, in the dining hall, as people go to sleep or on their patrols or off to do whatever else, and eventually his conversation breaks up.

There are classes listed on the wall - Taberner teaches the one on Taldane, apparently, to recruits who talk in paint-peeling Hellcoast accents and need to work on that so they can be understood by others at the Wound.

There's an ebb and then if Marcus stays put also a flow as new people come in for stew.

There's the First Arcane for his.

Huh!  It might be fascinating to see Taberner teach a class, but it'd be pretty strange for Marcus to show up to the Taldane one.  Is there anything on the schedule he might want to learn?

He does stay put – it's more pleasant to sit here than in his room, and it's not as if he has anything else to do.

Can the First Arcane be induced to sit with him by being looked at?  He still hasn't quite figured out the Chelish wordless communication situation.

The schedule has items like treaty review, archery drill, topology circle, stellar navigation, demonology, snow shelter construction, basic patrol skills, and new regulation seminar.

Grec will meet his eyes and drift over with his stew!

What an excellent schedule!  He wants to go to, well, honestly all of those except the topology circle.  It shouldn't be a bad way to get to know people, either.  And it says so much about the place, that they have the time and effort to spare to do all this.

Grec gets a nod. "First Arcane, do I have that right?"

"Yes. Ser Aemine?"

"Yes. I had a wizard question, if you've the time. Well, two, but only the first one's important."

"I seem to find myself a wizard."

"So, Infernal Healing. The thing I really need to know is whether it has any Evil effect on the target, and in particular if it-- might possibly be a Falling offense somehow. But I'm also curious what it even means for healing to be Evil in any sense, if you think you can explain it without making my head spin."

"It's got devil's blood as a component and makes you glow Evil for a minute. They don't use it as a cheap Malediction, and they would if they could, but that doesn't tell me what the Judge or your goddess make of it."

"Mhm. And you don't happen to know, in practice, whether anyone's cast it on a paladin? Well, most do come with their own healing, especially the ones that make their way up here, so there probably wouldn't have been the need."