There are rather a lot of crusaders from across Mendev at this party, most of them without magic and some without even all that much combat experience, but in some ways that just makes the exceptions better able to stand out. There's a woman with spiky black hair going around annoying people with questions about their knowledge of academic treatises, a couple of people who look fairly similar to the person who guided Kybele to the Grey Garrison's back entrance, and a dark skinned man carrying a surprising amount of paper with him. Seelah, Camellia, Irabeth and Anevia are also all in attendance; the first of these is either drinking with friends or just exceedingly friendly when drinking.

What is on the paper, she asks her domain sense from all the way over here.

Mostly a mixture of blank pages and sketchwork in varying levels of completion, though a few of them do seem essentially done. They're all carefully stored to prevent crumpling.

Maybe Iskander should talk art with that guy.

Yeah, okay.

"Hi there. I'm Ky's brother. She thinks you have drawings and wants me to talk to you because I also draw."

"I didn't think it was that obvious. Do I still have some paint on me, or is it just that I'm a cleric of Shelyn? Either way, it's nice to meet a fellow artist; it feels dreadfully unpopular as a pastime in Mendev, to say nothing of the professionals."

"We're not from around here. And it's not obvious, she just has a thing for paper and it didn't look secret to her I guess. If it was I can tell her off for you."

"Oh, no, it's the opposite of a secret. Helping to share beauty with people is as important to Shelyn as creating it in the first place; I would advertise it more thoroughly if I thought it would help. Would you like to see some of my current works in progress, or is there something you've made you want to share?"

"I have a couple of doodles but haven't sat down to do a serious piece since we got here." He can show off the doodles, though. There's one of Ky, one of Terendelev in dragon form - he didn't get a great look at her so some of the anatomy is guesswork - one of a giant centipede from underground, one of the angel sword.

"These are quite nicely done! I especially like the linework on the sword, and it's easy to tell you've had quite a bit of practice drawing your sister; it does a great job of capturing her expression, and the shape of the facial features is quite good. Would you appreciate some constructive criticism, or should I restrain myself?"

"Go ahead, but keep in mind I mostly sketch intending to do woodcuts."

"Oh, that does lead to an interesting set of constraints. I'm less familiar with it, but I think that means you'd have a though time getting anywhere with more precise shading or the like, so I'll skip those bits. The first thing I noticed is that the legs on a dragon don't usually look like that, the joint looks more like this..."

With an interested audience, Sosiel is happy to talk shop for quite a while, though he'll wander into talking technique more generally with sketched examples after a bit if Iskander doesn't keep him on track, and rapidly sketches some work to show off particular points or pull things out of his portfolio, which largely consists of portraits (of people Iskandar has never seen, plus Queen Galfrey) and landscapes. Most of his advice is pretty good, but while he's happy to compliment realism or stylistic choices in the drawing of the giant centipede he seems to feel that the purpose of art is centrally to encapsulate beautiful things - though this might be slightly harder to notice since he considers character to qualify when drawing humans.

"I didn't get a good look at the dragon, it was the first time I ever saw one!... My background with the woodcuts is mostly informative illustrations to go with news articles, Ky ran a newspaper back home."

"What a charming idea! In Andoran we mostly use pamphlets for newspapers, since they're cheap to produce in bulk, and they're pretty much exclusively in text so you can mass produce them with scrivener's chant. You can do a bit of art with that if you're really good, but it's fairly limited and most of the scribes that work as printers can't do it. But with woodcuts, you could leave an area blank for the artwork and just stamp every complete copy, or maybe even a pamphlet of art. I'll have to mention it in my next letter back home, maybe with the prospect of artwork in the newspapers someone will find a way to get more detail from them, or make woodcuts with a spell. Sharing art with everyone like that... it's almost surprising the Eternal Rose didn't offer to choose you for it, though of course I don't know your alignment or personal philosophy."

"The whomst?"

"Ah, the eternal rose is the title we usually use for Shelyn in Andoran, though I understand it's not universal; I think some countries in Tian Xia call her the Lady of Chrysanthemums, and I assume there are many others I haven't heard of. She's the goddess of art, love, and beauty and so chooses a lot of us to be her clerics."

"Does... being a cleric... help? With doing art?"

"Not so directly, I don't think, at least outside of rare occasions; I've known my share of great artists who were completely unempowered, and a Lillend showing up to inspire you is pretty rare even if you're a cleric. But it does help me to see the beauty in people to know that there is someone out there that wants me to do better, and to convince people that doing art is important and valuable and worth respecting, and it's great for the sense of community with like-minded people. Plus of course the best way to learn art is often to get lessons at the temple, and once you're a cleric you have the time to learn to make art you're really happy with since you don't have to spend all day working or worry about running out of food unless you focus on making and selling popular art."

"I guess that does sound nice if you don't have a -" don't say illustrati, they're not being up front about that "well-to-do twin to mooch off."

Sosiel laughs.

"Well my brother is also Shelynite so that wouldn't work for me, but that does sound like a good deal if you can swing it. How'd you two get into the business of running a newspaper? Did you inherit it, or just decide it sounded like a good idea one day, or what?"

"It's her paper thing. She had a library back home too and decided to branch out. Big into encouraging literacy."

"I've tried giving lessons before, but I haven't the knack for it; I'd often get impatient with the kids, and that's not good for anyone. Making sure kids have teachers who aren't evil is important, but I leave it to people who are better qualified for the job."

"Are a lot of schoolteachers... evil?"

"Back before Andoran got its independance from Cheliax, pretty much all of them were, yeah. And once we got our freedom we obviously needed to change that but you need a lot of teachers if you want to put everyone through school like the Chelish did and of course it's not like the kids in the orphanage could learn from their parents instead or anything so someone's got to help them."

"That sure sounds like a really bad problem to have!"