Following the ascetic practices of his sect, Shen Qiao has never, in his life, had a sip of alcohol.

Normally, Shen Qiao's golden core would simply purify his system of the alcohol, as it would any other poison. But Shen Qiao has only perhaps one percent of his normal qi, and his golden core is busy dealing with other poisons anyway. 

In short, Shen Qiao is drunk. 

He starts giggling. "I can't see anything!"

"You've had a bad fight," the bartender says. "Just sit back and try to breathe." He'll try to get Shen Qiao more comfortable.

Yan Wushi has a technique which allows him to move his hand without creating wind. He uses it at this very moment to almost slap Shen Qiao in the face, stopping only a hair from his cheek. 

Shen Qiao doesn't notice.

"He's blind," Yan Wushi says to the bartender. "I assume this is new."

Switching to Chinese for Shen Qiao: "you weren't blind the whole time, right?"

"No! I've never been blind before!"

He giggles like this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to him. 

"It's new."

"Shit," says the bartender. "You have it prepared -"

Odd shakes his head.

"Can you tell your pal we can fix it in the morning, and that you've already paid?"

"Yes," Yan Wushi says, completely truthfully.

And then he realizes that (1) any lies to Shen Qiao about whether his blindness is going to be cured are going to be proven false in the morning (2) literally nothing he can come up with in the way of horrible implied payments, etc., is funnier than Drunk Shen Qiao.

Feeling rather put out that he had such a good setup for a technical truth and then had to tell the actual truth anyway, he says to Shen Qiao, "they have good medicine, they'll fix it in the morning."

"I don't know who you are but you're really nice," Shen Qiao says. "All of you are very nice."

"Right. We should get your friend some water -" he has a mug of water to attempt to provide him, clean from a Create Water cantrip - "and to bed - Odd, do you have another Share Language -"

Odd shakes his head.

"Right. The Share Language on you'll go away after a day, an hour after dawn after he's got his spells I can ask Odd to come by and fix your friend's eyes and put the spell back up, you've already more than paid -" (though possibly not by quite as much as he thinks, gold's more valuable in China than around Lake Encarthan).

Yan Wushi is torn by a horrible dilemma. 

On one hand, there's a drunk Daoist. 

On the other hand, morning spells???? He has so many questions?????

"I'll take Shen Qiao to bed," Yan Wushi says, "and then if you don't mind answering my questions I'd like to figure out where I... am."

He nods. "No problem at all. And for your question - this is Marten's Rest, in Free Nirmathas, on the continent of Avistan." He quirks an eyebrow. "See you when you come down, so you can know what that means."

Yan Wushi takes Shen Qiao's hand. In Chinese: "come along, a-Qiao, it's time for bed."

Shen Qiao comes along willingly. 

All right, what do the accommodations look like?

Crude but functional! It's just a couple rooms above the tavern, but they have two beds each; the mattress and pillows are stuffed with straw but thick, the blankets are wool but there's enough of them, and sheets haven't made it up to Nirmathas yet. The floors are wood and the windows have wooden shutters but not glass panes and the lights come from the windows. There's a generous supply of candles, but "candles" are indeed the highest-tech option.

He shoves the beds together, helps Shen Qiao take off his outer robes and get into bed, and taps a couple acupoints so that Shen Qiao will Go The Fuck To Sleep.

Then he goes back downstairs and bows.

"I don't think I got a chance to introduce myself," he says. "I'm Yan Wushi, Sect Leader of Hehuan Sect. I am the third or fourth best adventurer in"-- okay, 'the civilized world' seems a bit rude to the barbarians and 'jianghu' doesn't even seem to be a word in this language, technically the empire has disintegrated but whatever-- "the Empire, depending on whether Ruyan Kehui is having a bad day, not including people whose rankings are unknown because they've been meditating on a mountaintop for the past four hundred years."

This seems appropriate from an adventurer from really far away, which is, indeed how the bartender was already conceptualizing it! He'll also bow, less smoothly. "Right. I'm Juanne, this is the Sword and Tankard, I run the place; I was an adventurer for a few years after the war, figured Cayden Cailean's fighters were always talking about how they'd retire and start a bar and someone should actually do it, so he gave me a cleric circle. This empire your group's in might be over in Tian Xia? I met someone from there once, looked sort of like you."

"Tian Xia also sounds like it's Chinese," Yan Wushi says, pronouncing it with the correct tones, "it means 'under the Heavens.' I don't know who Cayden Cailean is or what a cleric circle is."

"It's what people from here call the area where people who speak what you call Chinese live," he says. "- Huh. Cayden Cailean's god of adventure, parties, and drink. Cleric circles - won't that translate anywhere? The gifts the gods give us."

"The god situation in Tian Xia is that normal people pray for rain or success in battle or a lucky marriage for their children or failure for their enemies, and then the gods arrange for that to happen via coincidence, visions, incarnating and dealing with it personally, literally just rearranging the rain clouds, and so on. They don't grant standardized miracles to priests, though this does seem like a better system. How do you make merits for Cayden Cailean?"

" - Huh. The gods can do that, but they mostly pick clerics over here. Cayden Cailean wants -" he gestures "- come back the evening and you'll see. Drink and enjoy yourself and do the right thing whatever the stakes, and make Molthune and Cheliax and all their lot screw themselves!"

(One of the people eating raises his tankard with a "HEAR HEAR!" and drinks.)

Yan Wushi has some broad disagreements with Cayden Cailean-- he doesn't drink or do the right thing-- but Cayden Cailean definitely seems to be in the least annoying ten percent of deities. 

"What are Molthune and Cheliax up to?"

"Cheliax worships Asmodeus, who's the god of lawyers and tax collectors and writing rules that sound fine and then screwing you with them. Pushing people around. We and Molthune kicked them out - ten, fifteen years back? and then Molthune started doing the same thing to us, so we kicked them out, too, but every few years they try again."