"I imagine we'll have questions afterward, then. But nothing else we need to know or say now, I believe."

"I suppose I'd best get started, then.  Gravis, you know the drill, with me.  Is anyone else intending to observe."

"Just Estel and Corl. I'll be with our troops, but Estel can retrieve me in two rounds if needed."

"I'm inclined to suggest I and Genevieve go with you, unless you would prefer otherwise.  She's useful for harvesting demon bits.  And where would you prefer the Clockwork Priest?  If you've got wounded you haven't gotten a channel for yet, they can Cure Light at will, mostly.  Vive, this is one of the ones that has cures, right?  Not inflicts?  Not sure I recognize the symbol on it.  -- Actually what other spells does it have?"

"Yeah, it casts Cures.  As for the domain spells - enlarge person at will, then bull's strength thrice and magic vestment once.  Dedicated to Kurgess; do you not...know about Kurgess?"

"Oh, I know about him.  I just think brawn's much less useful than finesse so I never made much time to know about him."

"...Okay, that's fair.  Anyway, at will enlarge person is very useful for melee frontlines, which is why we brought this guy," she pats the clockwork's shoulder with a clank-clank, "in particular, Herder Ata.  I'm hoping that was the right call?"

"Certainly could be! I imagine we'd need to train squads to get full use out of it - how fast could a team of eight cycle through to get it, eight rounds? - but it would help. I'd say the thing we pointlessly wish for most often is fly but that's a lot harder to get."

"Yeah, we have some options there, but they're only one a day.  Could get an at-will jump, though, with bull's and fly.  Not very helpful, probably, but possibly not as bad as not having anything.  And yes, one spell a round, unless you get a really good Pathfinder Chronicler to run herd on them.  I've seen them get multiple turns of effort out of people in the same round, though that's a pretty - high-circle, for all that...they don't really have circles like that at that point, it's a specialization that leans heavily into the song part of song-sorcerer - thing."

"I think jump would do more harm than good - not great for keeping the squads fighting in formation. We'd still need to do archery volley drills, I'd guess, where if we could do aerial charges we might be able to ease off that. That's probably the hardest lesson to make stick. Holding back and covering the air in arrows isn't much like hunting or normal - normal for Kellis - fighting."

"Oh, yes, I was thinking 'some poor sod does a leaping tackle', not about - formation-ness.  Though, what do your forces think of javelins as things to hurl at your enemies?  There's thorn javelin in the big book of domain spells, at first-circle, and I think that it'll stabilize in an item; I've seen baby hunters cast it.  It's definitely something we can get into the clockworks, though that clusters your men closer than is ideal if you have them all grab one a round to volley.  I suppose magic stone slings are right out, since they're a bit too costly to equip regulars with, though we have seen zombies, which I'm sure Diana would say makes it more worth it...  Maybe if we do birds with - oh, but do they cast, I don't think so, so the orange prism trick isn't viable...probably not worth it anyway, most of the flying ones have spell resistance, but it would have been really cool to see a swarm of clockwork birds beaming a demon to death.  And of course there's the problem where you're trying to pierce damage resistance with low-enchantment gear so you really need to get every available erg..."

She's going to be occupied thinking about solutions to this problem for a while, even after she exhausts her readily available thoughts, unless someone prompts her otherwise.

"I'm probably hopelessly constrained by attempting to solve the problem from within my idiom, which is to say I'm a crafter and not a fighter, but preliminarily I think I would solve this with potions.  Well.  That and my favorite way of cheating more magic out of less magic.  ...which requires field-capable alchemists to scalably deploy, gah!  And you're not going to have anyone chomping at the bit to learn magic stuff, not around here.  Every time I think I'm on to something I suddenly remember I'm not.  Maybe it's worth thinking about arming the birds some more, though..."

"A lot won't work for us, but if there's something one on-site alchemist can keep available for a dozen or two men, that's probably worth considering. We have one or two, I think, southerners who-" are probably criminals in their home countries, but actually she shouldn't say that. "-Who didn't like Lastwall or Cheliax and found us rather than switch teams."

"Better here than in there, certainly.

"Wonder what your people'd think of one of Vive's ballistae.  I bet they're actually strong enough to lug the thing around."

"What's it weigh? I think we've got a few who could handle sixty, maybe seventy pounds of kit without slowing down, a hundred if they're berserk, and they're mostly wearing thirty pounds of armor." Ata herself can run with 120 pounds if she's got her belt on, 300 while she's berserk. But she's not going to brag.

"...Hmm.  It depends on the construction - the works put out a 'build your own' kit, for an army on a budget, which is maybe thirty in metal parts, but you'd need to have some sort of ability to rapidly hew and assemble wooden parts - or some equivalent - in the field, because I imagine that minor creation's right out for supporting infrastructure...there's the collapsible tripod, which is about half that, overestimating, and isn't necessarily battle-tested, it's mostly used by surveyors, though one of them wrote in to say it made a decent bludgeon in a pinch...I think that one was from Ustalav.  Anyway.  I think a mostly metallized ballista...

"Oh, hmm, you could base the tripod off of the same spell, come to think of it...ah, wait, no, it vanishes after a round...

"Anyway.

"You'd want to split the parts up a bit, probably, but you could add it to a two-man or three-man team and they could crank off a shot a round, or more, with training, especially if you had the budget for good support equipment - throwing what's effectively a spear with much more strength, distance, and accuracy than any man.  Maintenance might be a pain point, though.  With the - preferring it to be magicless, and possibly less overall understanding of metals and care requirements thereof?  I'm - imagining that the name 'Steel Exiles' has a meaning, because unfortunately if someone told me one way or the other it has completely gotten lost in my head somewhere."

"It does. We don't fight or live or recruit like other tribes and we'll take people on loan for a few years, hence 'Exiles', and we have steel and they, overwhelmingly, don't. Before I came up with the plan to found this clan, I had been exiled for breaking taboo - nothing life-ending, but I couldn't go home without making restitution - and if I'd brought home a dozen master-made steel longswords, that would not just have paid my debt but probably got me made Herder. We don't have the tools to mine iron, or to forge it. The toughest armor you usually see is lamellar horn, arrows are usually bone, and axes and such are often stone. Steel comes from trade, to Kellis, and there isn't much trade."

"...I have a thousand questions about the steel and smithing situation and most of them are probably 'why not?', but that's a lot to get into.  Still, if you're looking to get into that, it is positively our sacred duty.  Erm.  The - me, not, um, Lastwall.  But seriously if you haven't a forge across your nation - my Order would be pretty much honor-bound to remedy that, if you asked."

"We've been planning to get a forge here, since we won't move that often, but nomads can't bring one with them. For all that it's entirely tents, this is the most permanent Kellid settlement there is. And I don't think there are any rich ore deposits either."

"There's a lot you can do with just a trench - well, two trenches, one for coal and one for water - and the occasional charcoaler.  Getting the ore is harder, though.  And anvils are pretty heavy.  Not that I know a lot about this myself; I'm am alchemist, not a smith - but we'd be happy to consult on getting you stuff that works for you.  Diversity of vision is one of our greatest strengths, as mortals.  Can't imagine Pharasma deciding one day that she really wants Cayden Cailean to exist, y'know?"

"...Really, what has always surprised me the most about the gods is that Iomedae was a mortal woman once.  Touched the Starstone and everything.  It - wouldn't feel right, living in a world without her.  And there aren't many gods that feels particularly true of, to me?  ...My apologies to the Arodenite in the room.  You've surely had worse, to have had and then lost yours.  But the thought that she had to invent herself just...staggers the mind to contemplate."

She shrugs. "Honestly, I think very little about gods. A lot like smithing, really - it just isn't part of Kellid life, it would have to intrude awkwardly to start being part, and no one bothers to question it because life is fine without it."

"Yeah, I don't spend much time considering Absalom."

"...You don't?  It's only the biggest city in the known world, with the Starstone in it, and...okay, yeah, I see what you mean, it's just sort of all the way over there, and we've got a lot more locally important concerns going like...presumably getting you to what you need to be doing, Herder Ata?"

"Eh, it's mostly 'being here, visibly leading'. We're training like an army, but everyone here is still used to - what did 'Stel call it - 'kratocracy'. Having the reminder that there's someone more dangerous than you around watching to see if you break discipline matters to them."

"Ah.  Like the Commander, but backwards."

He pauses a moment, thinking, a gauntleted finger held up.

"...Which is, I think, to say that - Watch-Commander Pallas is the bulwark upon which we are fearless in truth, rather than in the way that paladins just simply do not rout - because even as we are risking our lives, we trust her and her venturers to bring their support to bear upon the lines that cannot hold.  It's not a matter of discipline, but...it's adjacent, in some way.  ...It's not unlikely that I am not truly saying what I mean, though; I've the Splendour, but hardly would I credit myself the wisdom necessary.  Bonnie?"