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."

"Makes sense! I'll avoid speculating about it. I'm curious what other large-scale things your church does but we can talk about something else if it's going to be too hard not to get near secret stuff."

"Well, a lot of it's the same thing any cleric does-- healing, purifying food and water, counseling people who need help-- except we're particularly likely to do it by running a tavern. Which helps, you know, there are a lot of people who're scared to talk to a cleric of Sarenrae or Iomedae, but they can talk to the guy who runs the bar down the street. There's a network of Cayden Cailean clerics who know what opportunities to do good there are, and they can match you with something that would help-- not just clerics, we help out all kinds of adventurers. If you're an adventurer who wants to do Good and doesn't know how, it works very well to find the cleric of Cayden Cailean at the tavern."

"An excellent way for things to be. I wonder if there are a few of your taverns in Lastwall--on the one hand we need more churches like a fish needs Fireball, on the other hand the more different perspectives the better."

"I think there's at least one. Even paladins need to loosen up sometimes. I bet it's in the holy books somewhere."

"Yeah, there's absolutely stuff in the holy book about not going insane from stress. We just mostly have taverns run by non-clerics." She has actually read some of the sayings of Cayden Cailean in theology lessons, though not all of them because they're not particularly organized and mostly applicable to the kind of people who read them not-for-class. "They don't give adventuring advice because everyone who wants to adventure independently leaves the country, but they sell good beer."

"That's pathetic."

"What, beer? Oh, you mean sanity. Not surprised you'd be against that."

"Alcohol is unhealthy and self-indulgent and makes you worse at work. 'We need fun in order to not go insane from stress' is a rationalization so that you can allocate resources away from fighting for Good and still feel like you're ruthless consequentialists. At least Cayden Cailean's worshippers aren't trying to pretend to be minimally competent."

"So the thing here is, Asmodeans, maybe not the actual empowered church hierarchy but most of the other ones, only do what they're at that moment being threatened or tortured into doing. Whereas Iomedaens are often trying to do as much as possible, which means thinking about how to arrange their lives to maximize the amount they're capable of, and it turns out that doing something enjoyable once or twice a month increases how much people are capable of more than the couple hours a month decreases it, at least if you want soldiers who can actually think."

Tetula realizes her hands are empty and takes out her drop spindle.

"I don't want soldiers who can think. Thinking is their commanders' job. Soldiers are supposed to reliably do what the hierarchy tell them, and they have a hard enough time with that when they aren't intoxicated."

"Obviously I would never be drunk on duty. And obviously you can't have your soldiers think or they'd realize that being Asmodean sucks." (Samora didn't think to bring any spinning because she's usually patrolling and can't do all three of walk, spin, and watch for threats at the same time. Note to self, she should make sure she has something to do next time she pulls a day of medical tent duty.)

"Yes, their preference to drink instead of work is one of the many examples of the weakness of mortals."

"I just do fun things and it works out fine!"

"Not everyone is lucky enough to enjoy fighting demons." Samora is a very lucky person in a lot of ways. "In my experience you do have to think ahead to what you really want sometimes, and put off what you want in the short run for what you want in the long run, but I wouldn't actually be a better soldier if I never drank. Just because the ability to sacrifice fun for effectiveness is a virtue doesn't mean you can get out of actually looking at how much fun buys you how much effectiveness and only making the trade when the tradeoff actually exists."

"I don't actually like fighting demons very much, I don't like killing beings even if they're Chaotic Evil and, you know, going to try to destroy the world. But most of the time when you're patrolling you're not fighting demons, you're just walking. The scenery here is gorgeous. I make up games to help myself pay attention, like trying to see how many different kinds of bird I can identify. And it's really nice when you go back inside and take off your armor and warm your feet in front of the fire-- my toes always get cold when patrolling, even with Endure Elements, is that true for you guys?-- and drink a cup of warm spiced wine. So patrolling is basically fun. Nearly everything is fun if you think about it the right way. Maybe even killing demons."

"Yeah, the killing isn't the fun part. The fun part is--when everything slows down and it's like you know what's about to happen before it does and what the people to either side of you are thinking and you're completely focused on what's happening right here right now. And getting back inside and warm is great too. I always end up with cold ears, not cold toes, but--" she shrugs. "Who knows why Endure Elements does what it does."

"I usually only get that in the medtent."

"I'm with Samora. The moments where everything slows down and you're completely focused on what's going on and you know exactly what you're doing are one of the best things in life."

"I only get that way in the medtent when things are really bad and I'm having to bandage people and drag them around to get everyone in range for a channel before someone dies. Usually it's just wait around, do a channel, wait around some more. Which is definitely also satisfying but in a totally different way from combat."

"The joy of combat is that in combat incompetent people die, which is unlike other areas of life, where incompetent people continue to live and annoy you."

"What, no, allies dying just sucks. Even if you're evil and don't care about the people themselves, it sucks on a purely practical level. If someone was so incompetent that it wouldn't suck if they died then they wouldn't get sent on patrols in the first place. Anyway, everyone is incompetent until they get a few fights under their belt and figure their shit out." Samora would know; she was a complete idiot when she was a brand-new first-circle.

"...someone's idiot nephew wants to be a great warrior so he pulls some strings, gets sent off to the front, turns out to like whoring more than he likes drilling, gets eaten by a babau. Unlike in normal life, where someone's idiot nephew wants to be a cunning and ruthless leader and so forces six people with actual jobs to waste their time entertaining his delusions."

". . . That sounds like a Chelaxian problem."

"Cheliax is better than Taldor because occasionally the idiot nephews annoy their uncle and get executed."

She's not going to just  take this guy's word for it about what things are like in Taldor, but fucked up if true. "In Lastwall when someone's an idiot they just get a job that's easy enough they can do it and nobody kills anybody about it. Tetula, do you know what they do in the River Kingdoms?"

"I think being a powerful person in the River Kingdoms is safer than being at the Worldwound if you're clever, but if you're not as clever as you think you are you're probably going to die in the next revolution."

"That just sounds like a mess." Is it in fact the case that most places suck. Otari didn't seem to suck that much, and Tetula and Chrisor are both here in some sense because their homelands sucked, so probably not. "Too bad we don't have an Abadaran in here; they probably know all kinds of things about how to incentivize people to do jobs they'll be good at."

"I think the problem is that some people think they'd be happier if they could boss people around, so they try to boss people around whether or not they have any reason to think they'd be any good at it. Ideally you'd tell people that it won't make them happy, but if people reliably did things that made them happy and not things that would make them miserable we'd have at least a tenth of the problems in Golarion solved."