Samora is not having the worst day, because there are no ghouls and none of her friends are dead, but it's definitely worse than average. None of the patrol that got wiped out were people she knew, but they were brave and good and would probably have been her friends if she had known them, and it's a sobering reminder that you only have to get unlucky once.

Which makes it an especially unpleasant time to be doing the hurry-up-and-wait in the medical tent. At least when you're patrolling you're moving, going somewhere, reaching out with all your senses to notice the demons before they notice you. She's already inventoried the supplies and topped off the cistern before the last batch of patients and now she's just sitting around waiting for something to happen and debating whether to start a conversation.

On the one hand, boredom and sinking into a funk. On the other hand, one of the other healers is Asmodean and talking to him might actually be more depressing than enforced idleness. She can smile at the Caydenite, at least. Hopefully she's having a better day than Samora is.

Tetula is having a brilliant day! All of her days are brilliant, actually. 

"It's nice to get a bit of rest," she says.

"Been having a busy week, then? Or do you just mean boring and empty is the best way a medical tent can be?"

"Everyone's been having a busy week! But I like it when the medtent is empty because it means no one is hurt."

"Or they're all dead."

"I think it's best to look on the bright side of things! --Oh, and before anyone asks, the reason I'm here is that I have the Travel domain and at fifth circle I get Teleport. None of the major Lawful Good deities give Teleport so it's a good way to help out Lastwall!"

"Teleport's an awesome spell, I hope you get there! And it would be important to notice if everyone was dead but I heard the strike team got the fucker that got that one patrol so today should be about average."

"How did you end up with Iomedae, if you don't mind? I love hearing people's origin stories."

"Well I grew up in Lastwall, right, so the church was really involved in stuff, and I took classes in swordsmanship and theology and was passable at the one and actually good at the other. And I wanted to go adventuring and do important useful things, because yeah you might die and waste your first life but you'll definitely waste your first life if you don't try to do the best thing you can think of, and I'd heard lots of adventuring stories and thought I'd be suited to it. So I asked the Inheritor to empower me if and only if it was better for the cause of Good that She do so and She did! And then I went around with a party down south for a while until I got strong enough to be useful up here. How about you, what's your story?"

"I was a slave in the River Kingdoms and I got sold to a bad master and I didn't want to belong to him anymore, so I prayed to Calistria because I'd heard that She helped in this sort of situation. And then it turned out that the hot adventurer I sometimes had sex dreams about was actually Cayden Cailean and he made me a cleric and it turns out that the Travel domain is really helpful if you want to run away from your master because if they get close you can climb over rocks that they can't. And then I reported to the nearest church of Cayden Cailean and they were like 'so, you want to be impossible for your master to find, and you have the Travel domain? Do you want to fight at the Worldwound?'

"You'd be surprised at how often this happens."

"Wow, that was badass*! I'm glad you made it out. It must have been quite the shock finding out the dreams weren't just dreams." That seems like an utterly ridiculous use of divine power but Cayden Cailean isn't known for being efficient. Or maybe it's the cheapest way for Him to vet potential clerics; she wouldn't know. "Does that part also happen often?"

*The Taldane word used here literally means "bardworthy".

"Well, he sends nice dreams to lots of people, he has a deal with Desna about it. If Cayden Cailean's clerics try to act in a lot of places where he would want them to act, it'd end up worse off for everyone, but he can go-- you know, things are better somewhere, at least you can be free in your dreams." She laughs. "I don't know how many of them involve orgasms."

"That is the most absurd waste of godpower imaginable and Cayden Cailean is the single deity who most deserves to be crushed under Asmodeus's heel."

"And Asmodeus is the single deity who most deserves a fun party where he can relax and stop being so Helldamned serious all the time!"

"I would criticize that plan for seeming unlikely to work but I don't actually have a workable plan for personally killing Asmodeus either. But of course I'd say that whether I did or not."

"Funny, because Asmodeus definitely has a workable plan for killing Iomedae."

"Guys, if the conversation continues like this we're going to wind up dueling and I don't think that's very conducive to the medtent providing adequate medical care."

"I'm not going to duel him for suggesting Iomedae and I have the exact same capacities and planning ability. It's almost flattering, if you look at it sideways enough. But you have a point that it won't go anywhere useful." She contemplates making a crack about how Asmodeans aren't allowed to think about anything interesting but decides it's better to actually change the topic. "What are you planning to do once you can teleport?"

"Time-sensitive supplies for Lastwall, unless it seems like there's something more useful I could be doing with it. Traditionally, of course, clerics of Cayden Cailean with Teleport get killed smuggling people out of Nidal, but as worthy as that cause is, it involves going to Nidal."

And they say Caydenites don't think about tradeoffs and priorities. This one at least seems pretty cool.

"Supply runs are always helpful. And as you say, much less likely to be interrupted by dying. Actually, I think that's something all three of us can agree on: fuck Nidal."

"Fuck Nidal," he says with great sincerity.

"I guess once I'm actually fifth circle I'll have Commune and can ask Cayden what he thinks. As long as you make it through your first run, you've saved more than one person from Zon-Kuthon, and they matter just as much as you do. I assume this is a great comfort once you're Maledicted and in Xovaikain."

(She is, conspicuously, not using godpronouns for Cayden.)

Tetula is... impressive. He kind of thought clerics of Cayden Cailean would be like "ah, who cares if you have a patrol tomorrow, let's all go get drunk! the only thing I care about is beer! I didn't prepare Cure Light Wounds today because I wanted to turn all of Lastwall's poison supplies into beer!" But here she is risking her life to save people from Nidal, many of whom will probably still be Lawful Evil when they die and therefore will go to Asmodeus and become useful tools of His Will. 

"It's better than break-even if you get two people out and they go to good afterlives but there are a lot of things better than break-even and I don't know how well people trying it do on average at various power levels. Most of my long-term planning has involved the fact that I've got a big Lawful organized church that can point lots of people at the same project at once with logistical support, and if you don't have that resource to take advantage of that changes the math." She shrugs. "Makes sense that you'd want to spend a Commune on it." Another advantage of big Lawful organized churches is that you can redirect a lot more resources off the results of one Commune, but again, can't use advantages you don't have.

"There's also quite a lot of logistical support involved in a Nidal rescue operation! The Teleport cleric isn't the one who finds the people who are going to defect, they're too hard to replace-- although I can't give any more operational details, even if I know them."