They don't have a lot of food but they don't have so little they can't spare some for people who helped with laundry all afternoon. They share out soup and bread and mash up some of the crustless bread for the littlest children and they eat outside under the stars and gossip. They've heard the stories in the flatsheets third-hand, some of them, and heard scandalous things about the Governor, and have apparently the kind of conception of the gods where the gods, themselves, have romances and arguments and children and jealousy and so on. Aroden and Arazni were lovers, and Aroden and Iomedae presumably, and Cayden Cailean and Desna and Cayden Cailean and Calistria and maybe Cayden Cailean and some demon lords, who knows really. Erastil is faithful to his wife but everyone else has a lot of god-flings. 

It's not home. Possibly the thing that she was looking for was home, as if a pre-infernal Cheliax might somehow be more homelike than the place where she actually grew up. But even if that were true, and it wouldn't be, this wouldn't be the time it was true of. You really shouldn't expect to find home if you travel nine hundred years into the past.

But it's no worse than any other place she's been, she doesn't think, taken as a whole. And really - okay, yes, she takes a somewhat perverse level of satisfaction in warning Iomedae about the worst excesses of her church, if it might result in a somewhat better time for her people. Sure. She is that vain and that spiteful, and she wants, ideally, for Cheliax to be a better place than she left it.

But she'll take not worse, if it also means the Worldwound is closed, and that her duties to Lariel and the other angels are fulfilled. She can live with that. And - the people here are not so frightened, or so sucpicious, or so vicious towards Ember as she would expect her own people to be. Maybe that's not a such a bad thing to trade for, even if a lot of the children are naked and a lot of the adults are illiterate. Of course, there's no reason to particularly expect that Iomedae can achieve anything like this society in modern Cheliax, in any kind of reasonable time frame, but - at least the thing she's imagining, when she imagines how Cheliax ought to be, isn't fundamentally stupid, or any more horrible than what's already there.

They say goodbye, eventually, and walk a couple streets over before teleporting back.

The Shining Crusade is as they left it. 

All right, well, she'll check in with her people. Regill has been observing the Shining Crusade camp; the others have been various degrees of goofing off (not that what she's been doing wasn't arguably goofing off, too, apart from how Iomedae told her to do it). She thinks a little bit about what reasonable ground rules might consist of, but she doesn't feel like it's the kind of thing she's very good at, and mostly she thinks she's just going to ask him to check with her before doing anything that seems likely to have major effects on anything.

In the morning, when they've rested, she can meet with Iomedae and Marit again and see if they've come up with a preliminary agreement for her to agree to, probably.

Iomedae has sent over a proposal for Korva. Marit will swear to and abide by the Worldwound treaty and obey orders from Korva unless they're unconscionable, here's how the Shining Crusade defines that, it's really fairly limited, Korva cannot order him to give his oath or order him to torture someone or rape someone or murder civilians or mistreat prisoners or divulge military secrets of the Shining Crusade; if he is given the authority to conduct trials he must also be given the authority to conduct them Lawfully; if he is represented to anyone as having authority he must actually be permitted to exercise it. 

She'd like his body back, if he gets killed somehow, and might request compensation of the Mendevian Crusade were they to, say, unlawfully kill him themselves or send him on a suicide mission that didn't seem to reasonably serve the crusade's objectives. 

She would like Korva to not arrange to have him mindread or enchanted by anyone other than Korva herself.

Korva may want to form opinions on whether he can mindread people (whenever he thinks it's warranted or whenever he suspects them of a crime or with their notice in the course of conducting criminal proceedings, or not at all), whether he can enchant people (never, in contexts where he could also reasonably employ violence, such as war and self-defense, or wherever he sees fit with notice to his superiors) and on whether he can depart Drezen (with notice, with permission, or as he pleases) and on who he reports to if anyone in her absence.

....she would like him not to mindread people without clearing it with her, or without at least giving her an outline of what he's planning to do that he anticipates needing to mindread people for and clearing that, unless it's some kind of emergency situation where he can't clear it with her and needs to do so to avert some obvious disaster... which she thinks honestly probably means that he shouldn't commit to anything other than using his best judgement and telling her afterwards, but he should, you know, still try to ask her before doing so when possible. 

He should not under any circumstances attempt to mindread Daeran Arendae, and should not reveal to anyone whatsoever that he received this instruction.

He can enchant people when he sees fit with notice to his superiors. He should give her notice before leaving Drezen. If Regill is available and she is not, he should report to Regill; if neither is available he'll just have to use his best judgement.

Right. Marit thinks it's best if he present himself as a fairly powerful fighter here to assist in training the crusaders. He is a fairly powerful fighter, and no one's going to ask if he's a fifth circle swordmage. That means he won't want to be obviously casting his own Tongues; can she provide that?

She can, and she approves of this plan.

Then he's all ready to go. 

All right. She does want to at least bring back some scrolls, ideally including Mage's Magnificent Mansion so Nenio can learn it, but everything else they can figure out after Marit's figured out what to make of the other side.

She's not at all confident that the not-a-teleport can carry more people over than an actual teleport, so Aivu and Ember and Arue can get in the bag. And - she can hope, and focus inward, and try her best to not-a-teleport back to Drezen, as it was when she left it two days ago.

And the wind swirls, and the butterflies land on her, and -

She shows up on the floating island. Of the people who are immediately visible, there's a kitsune in one area mixing potions, someone in another corner painting, some halflings who are practicing their sword techniques, a baby dragon even smaller than Aivu, some human children playing cards, and a chest that is visibly actually a mimic.

" - okay, not exactly where I was aiming for, but close enough. This is, uh, the floating island that hangs out above Drezen. The place where all of the other people who think orders are no fun hang out."

" - an interesting solution I wouldn't have thought of," says Marit diplomatically. 

(She has a SECOND BABY DRAGON????)

"Do we....Dimension Door down? Jump?"

"No, the rocks over there ferry people up and down. I didn't exactly think of it, it's another thing that sort of, uh, happened without me realizing it was going to. Then Aranka claimed it as the base of the Free Crusaders, who everyone down in the town sort of thinks of as personally loyal to me and who actually do almost nothing I tell them to. Not to say that they never make themselves useful. I was thinking of putting some of them on recruitment, when you talked about it, since - some of them kind of hang out here making art about the crusade anyway, and it hadn't really occurred to me that this could be of some practical use."

(She's pretty sure there's another dragon hatchling around here, somewhere, but it seems to be hiding right now.)

"Art is very valuable for getting your achievements talked about. Plus, you know, good for people, that's important too." 

Korva is GRUMPY about people taking art seriously. She's aware that her grumpiness about art is kind of ridiculous, given that one of her primary means of engagement in combat is literally reciting magic poetry, but she doesn't have time to dig into whatever is going on there right now. Anyway, they should be getting to Drezen.

     "Where did you guys go this time?" one of the children asks Aivu.

Aivu dances and jumps in place. "Oh, it was SO cool! I wish you could have seen it! We - "

"Aivu."

".....I have to go do something important for Korva right now! Sorry! I hope you guys have fun though!"

Marit does not comment. 

It is really inconvenient that this plan involves asking Aivu to keep a secret for longer than five minutes, but oh well. Someone else wants Ember to come heal some of the people they have in a little makeshift hospital tent, so she says she'll be along later. They don't try to keep the island at anywhere near maximum capacity unless there's a blizzard (and even then, there's nowhere near enough space for everyone in Drezen to come up), but they do try to let the most vulnerable people take some advantage of the island's perpetual springtime.

The rest of them can take the rocks down to Drezen, which is currently covered in snow. There's also a huge, obvious magical barrier that changes direction when it hits one of the towers, where Drezen's wardstone is currently housed. Patrols can be seen in the distance running along the barrier, outside of Drezen's walls. 

The rock lets them down near the courtyard outside the command center. 

"Okay, Regill, figure out what if anything we missed, the rest of you handle any business you need to before you can take any patrol shifts. I should... probably go find Nenio and give her the scrolls first. Marit, you want to follow me until you know your way around? Seelah's probably on the way, you'll want to meet Seelah."

"I'll follow you, Knight-Commander."

Cool. She is kind of self-conscious about what a disaster Drezen is and how she doesn't know how to command people at all, but no way to fix it without going out and fixing it, so.

She'll point things out as they pass them - Sosiel (their strongest cleric, a Shelynite from Andoran) up painting on the walls of the courtyard, the Sword of Valor (which, again, used to display a sword, and now has a tree), the markets, the area where a few hundred Neathers live, the area beyond that where the refugees from Wintersun live, the temple you can see at one end of the settlement from a ways off (the outside depicts Iomedae's radiant sword, but it has all kinds of shrines inside it and the cleric in charge of staffing the place is Arsinoe, an Abadaran) - and the main barracks, where Seelah is hanging around talking to people. 

Marit watches everything and asks only minor clarifying questions (are 'Neathers' a species? Which gods are forbidden?).

Complicatedly a species, sort of, maybe; the Neathers are descended from some of the first crusaders, who were mostly humans, but something happened to them - they don't seem to know what, their generations are shorter than those of humans now, so none of them remember and she suspects that none of them remember anyone who remembered - and now most of them look part human and part something else. They'd been living half-starved in the caves in appalling conditions, before, until Lann convinced them to follow her up to the surface and fight as crusaders again. Lann's one of them and Lann's important, he'll meet Lann later, probably.

...man, she doesn't even know what gods are officially forbidden, other than 'please for the love of everything stop worshipping demon lords, people'. She knows which gods the temple maintains shrines to. Maybe she should ask someone about the laws in Mendev concerning that, but it's sort of concerning not to know already, isn't it.

Anyway, here's Seelah.

"Commander! We were worried, you not teleporting back for two days. Did you teach the demons a lesson?"