"Yes, that would really help!

I can probably do their interview this evening if I can talk it through with someone who - knows how people come across on things like this, and can help me not - put my foot in it?"

And she can practice her Revelation attempts on them first, and see if any of them resonate at all.

"...so, breakfast first, then I need to have a shower and so on, then I can speak to their volunteer, then I should be able to get ready for the interview.

I guess I can just ask Mr H about what clothes will arrive in time, although maybe it's good to show I'm being responsible and wearing a quarantine suit."

"Yep, those proposals absolutely make sense. If you sit down in front of Mr H, he can probably get you connected to one of the volunteers whenever you want to get ready for the interview. The volunteers will basically be ready all day; just tell him you want to talk to a volunteer and get ready for an interview, and Mr H will hook you right up."

"It'd probably be more theatrical for you to wear something historical; you wouldn't need to show that you're wearing a quarantine suit, they'd expect you to wear one under your other clothes anyway. I'll order our breakfasts and tell them that you'll want to talk to some people in private, to be more prepared for the interview."

"Yes, ideally I'd want my actual Chapter tabard, white with a white horse on a red shield, but I don't imagine local stores would have that in stock, if hooded robes are unusual. And a hood would be appropriate. But I should talk this through with Mr H, who can actually look up and order me something?"

"Yep, Mr H is quite excellent at looking things up. I'll ask him right now."

"Mr H, do you have any recommendations for somewhat historically inspired women's outfits or tabards for Judith here?"

The wall of the living room gets covered in what looks like a storefront, displaying various kinds of dresses. They're fairly modest and undecorated, and there's a variety of tabards with swords, shields and unicorns, but nothing that looks close to Judith's Chapter tabard. There is a small sign advertising tailoring services, with the names and specializations of various local tailors, on the "window" of the wall.

"Are there - fast tailoring services? If they've got a horse template for the cut out, a normal white tabard and a bit of red felt, it should be possible to combine them in time, but I don't know how backed up they get?

I know Hannaniah could knock one out in half an hour but she had a lot of practice.

And, uh, ideally a black hooded robe goes under it. Could use a separate hood if attached ones aren't usually in stock, as long as it goes up and down easily."

"Well, actually making the clothes goes by at amazing speeds; tailors do most of their work in picking out the clothes and making them fit. Calling some no-name tailor, asking for a design, getting rough measurements... I think we can get it done within 30 minutes; getting the black hooded robe as well won't be any extra work."

It can't have been more than 3 minutes since Ron ordered the food, when the elevator opens and another delivery bot shows up in it, carrying 2 squared off metal boxes of food.

"If you're willing to pay a tiny bit extra, there are restaurants making food continuously for their breakfast menu, so it's always ready. If you need anything else, just tell me while I'm having my breakfast."

Ron walks off with the box, sitting down by the living room table. Breakfast and dinner both come in quite gigantic portions, here, so it'll take Ron a while to eat the food.

"If it's only going to take half an hour, I might just ask Mr H to talk me through it when I've had a chance to talk to the volunteer..."

The sight of Ron eating reminded her that she definitely had some physical requirements.

"...excuse me," she mumbles, then gets up extremely gingerly and hobbles carefully and determinedly towards her bathroom.

The quarantine suit is very quick to get off, thankfully. The toilet is relatively low, but it's still perfectly usable, and it's reassuringly comfortable. It actually vibrates ever so slightly, massaging Judith just the tiniest bit as she sits down on it. It just works, without anything unusual or surprising happening.

Ahh, that's better.

...why is it moving. Is she heavier than it is designed for? No, it's just... doing something. Judith is not sure she approves, but it's not like she can do anything about it mid stream.

And. Uh. She never did get to the bottom of the toilet paper thing. Whoops.

Oh well, she'll just shake off, then hop in the shower and plan to mop any drips up later. She moves to start doing this...

The toilet sends a perfectly aimed thin stream of water that's just barely warm enough to be pleasant, leaving Judith squeaky clean, before a wave of warm air begins quickly drying her off, as she starts standing up. It'll take a few seconds for the wave of air to remove every last drop on her body, such that if Judith stood up quickly, there'd be a few drops from the retractable, snake-like bidet that haven't fully dried off yet.

Judith certainly stands up quickly with an undignified yelp when the toilet - attacks her? Has a plumbing malfunction?

She immediately reaches again for toilet paper that isn't there, her instinct being that some kind of horrible sewage splash has happened.

But she's not at Anvil, the toilet doesn't have weird burny alchemy in it to keep the festival goers from spreading diseases to each other, and everything seems quite - clean?

Eyeing the toilet suspiciously now, she dutifully presses the grey button.

The grey button causes the toilet lid to lower itself slowly, before Judith hears the sound of the toilet flushing, and the lid makes its way back up again.

That's quite a neat trick, although she supposes she should be getting used to this habit of objects being surprisingly convenient.

She looks at the shower briefly, but actually she's not sure she wants to deal with any more surprises right now, and she's never been very fond of showers even when she knows exactly what they will do. This one probably plays a soothing little tune like a Leaguish music box and sprays her with gentle perfume, or something.

At least washing her hands works about the same as always; she enjoys the luxury of doing it under running water rather than having to fill a bowl and keep using it, she's sure they can afford it with all these other contrivances.

Eventually she can't keep putting it off without actually having to investigate the shower and she reluctantly gets back in quarantine suit. It's nowhere near as uncomfortable as it looks, it's just... Wrong.

Clearly she does have at least some effects from the egregore bond still.

There was rather a lot of dinner and when she inspects it there is indeed rather a lot of breakfast - she's not sure how these people aren't all entirely spherical, if this is how they eat all the time and they don't even have to climb the stairs.

"I'm going to go have breakfast, I'll just ask Mr H anything else?" she says. The jug of water and glass should still be in her room from last night, and she really needs to drink a lot of water right now, even if she's not all that hungry yet.

"Yep, Mr H will answer just about any question you might have. Especially those that might be uncomfortable to ask a someone right in front of you! It can often be tough to ask what you really want to ask, especially if you're not already close with someone."

Judith is not really listening, none of that sounded urgent so she is going to take her breakfast to her room, stick it on the bed for now, drain the jug of water and set up the table again to pick at the unreasonably delicious food.

She is definitely just making sure she is properly fed and watered and not at all procrastinating, yes.

Before she can plough through the whole breakfast she has to get back in the suit properly to head to the bathroom and answer a further call of nature. This time she is slightly more prepared when she lifts her weight slightly off the seat and lets it do what it wants, although the whole thing is still remarkably unnerving.

And she didn't have the presence of mind to bring the jug with her, so that's another trip to refill it.

Eventually, Ron finishes his dinner. "I'm going off to work now. Ideally, I'll be at work for the next 8 hours. You seem like you'd err on the side of caution, so I'm trusting you to use Mr. H and know how to handle the situation with the interviews and tabard. Shout at me if there's something you have to urgently know before I walk out."

Ron prepares to take the elevator down and go to his job at the hospital. 

Judith nods distractedly, intent on her tasks.

When she's had another jug of water and really all she wants of breakfast, she succumbs to the temptation to have a nice lie down, just while she thinks through what to say to the volunteer.

Some time later, she startles awake, takes in her surroundings, groans gently about it not all being a very complicated dream.

Abandoning the table and the sad remains of breakfast, she fumbles the face parts of the suit back into place and stumbles out to the main room.

"Hey Mr H," she says, feeling somewhat self conscious, "can you find me a volunteer that's happy to have a chat and not repeat any of it unless I say they can?

And, uh, what time is it?"

"It's presently 11 AM. I'll choose the friendliest of the many volunteers willing to maintain confidentiality; I'll show him in in full size now."

A harmless seeming nerd appears on the wall with the projector, poorly hiding his excitement at being able to interview Judith.

"I'll happily keep everything you tell me secret. I'd like to help you prepare, by asking one question that I'm sure the Touch History guys will also ask: name one dish from your world that's an unaffordable luxury for the vast majority, and explain as much as you know about how it's prepared."

"Oh. Uh, hi? Um. I don't really know... the League has a lot of fancy food... I suppose almost everything is an unaffordable luxury if you, like, include all the countries that aren't the Empire? I am - not a good cook..."

Judith is very glad she did not end up straight in with this question in front of the whole world, she is absolutely making a terrible fool of herself.

"I was hoping to ask about, uh, like, things I shouldn't mention? And, I know a lot of you don't believe in souls, but I really do want to try my best to explain how you can actually see them - I don't really know where to start there though, I was hoping you might help with that too..."

The history nerd looks at Judith quizzically when she claims that "almost everything" is an unaffordable luxury. Would that even be possible without everyone starving and being too dead for the question to make sense?

"It's really hard to think of things that wouldn't be accepted to mention if prompted, let alone considering the leeway provided to someone from a clearly foreign culture... We have no sex, death, reproduction, human waste, or incest taboo. I wouldn't be worried, in general. Even if you say something people don't like, the Touch History guys will find that interesting in itself."

"Wow, you believe that there's a way of seeing souls! The Touch History guys are gonna be over the moon! Can you tell me this method? This is way cooler than trying to deduce things from people's attitudes to food."

"Unfortunately it relies on a substance I don't know how to synthesise myself," admits Judith. "It starts with the sap of a particular vine - I don't suppose you have a vine that exudes milky white sap which causes dreamless sleep? The attachment of the soul is the seat of dreams - if you perturb it, you cut someone off from the ability to dream - and with sufficient refinement, you can obtain a substance that focuses the human spirit sufficiently to do other things to the soul. To see its state, and to mark it with words, and to align it to a Virtue - and to align things and places likewise...

And if you refine it well enough, you can die and yet not pass on, and see the lives your soul once lived. But that took an awful lot of dangerous experimentation to derive in the first place, I guess it'll be a long time before we can get there."

Where to start, with someone who never had liao, or at least not for religious purposes...

"Do you have ghosts? One of the other things that we do with it is cause restless spirits to pass on - if you have something you already use for that, it might be close to the right thing. Unless it's just bells, obviously they help and sometimes they'll do the job on their own."

The history nerd listens, slightly uncomfortable and stunned.

"I don't know about any such vine, maybe it doesn't exist on this planet? And no, we don't have ghosts. We thought we did, but double-checking reveals that we made a mistake in thinking that."

Sufficient precision of observation and generally promulgating the belief in not leaving ghosts probably would be effective, she guesses, especially if they don't have the kind of major wars and atrocities that tend to leave ghosts.

"If it doesn't, it's going to be rather more difficult to find a substance that produces the correct effect, I'm afraid.

It's also possible to produce some of the effects without it - but only for sufficiently Virtuous people, and if you haven't been pushing your souls in that direction, you might not have any yet.

Do you have any concept of - spiritual forces?"

Ugh, which of those are most like the normal meaning of the word.

For that matter, why do these people even speak Imperial?

Maybe this really is ancient Teruneal. Maybe she has travelled back in time.

"Like, if someone was very - Courageous - do they leave behind a trace of it on objects that were relevant to their acts?"

"Spiritual forces? It sounds like another thing we checked and found nonexistent."

"Nope, courageous people don't have any trace left on objects they used. Things owned and used by courageous people have their own charm, but they don't any real trace in the things they used."

"Right."

Ugh. This is going to be difficult. They're clearly... Prosperous, right? There... certainly were paragons before the Way... but without liao, how do you tell?

"Without liao, it's very hard to tell what's going on. Even the ancient Paragons didn't - they didn't leave any writings that other people could understand about what they were doing. As far as we know."

Phew. Didn't quite denigrate the Paragons to the poor innocent soul in front of her.

"It was only when we refined liao and could interact with souls directly that we managed to derive - well, we call it the Revelation, but it took a lot of careful experimentation over many years to get to the point where it was obvious enough for people to change their way of life.

Spiritual forces are - the driving forces behind human behaviour? We split them into the True Virtues - Courage, Prosperity, Wisdom, Vigilance, Loyalty, Ambition, Pride - and False Virtues - Anarchy, Vengeance... Fate, Apathy, Fear, Hatred. Each of these can leave their mark on places, objects and souls."