"It depends on what. If it's something lay priest like I can assist you with, such as small withdrawals, entering items into secure storage, simple theological guidance, or scheduling an appointment, then yes; I'm currently selling my time at reduced rates due to the state of emergency dropping demand. If requires the attention of Fiducia Rathimus, such as healing, sendings, financial advice or the like, then unfortunately I must inform you that most of his spellcasting has been requested by the city government with significant bids, so getting their use yourself will be expensive, and purchasing his time currently has elevated rates due to him being busier than usual."

"I think it's more like the first category. First thing is, are you taking donations of warm clothing? I already dropped some off at the temples of Desna and Iomedae but I can leave some here too if people will come here looking for it."

"The church of Abadar in Kenabres does not currently operate a charity, no. If you wished to hire us as a middleman to find you a vendor looking to purchase it, that would be only moderately unusual and we offer reasonable rates for such services, but anyone looking to purchase clothes is unlikely to seek out the temple of Abadar to buy them."

"That actually leads neatly to my second question, which is, is the church interested in buying any spell components? I've got metals, gemstones including diamonds, and textiles. I'm very confident I can beat whatever price you're currently getting, and if you're not buying I might want middleman services for someone who is."

"We do regularly purchase many spell components, though for some of them you might need to underbid or increase supply more than others to compensate for competing with a regular source. Negotiating a purchase of that magnitude will require the Fiducia's input, both for determining the details and supplying Abadar's truth. I will warn you in advance; the church of Abadar is not a fence for stolen property, nor are we take any lying lightly. If you expect you cannot testify under abadar's truth that the items are legitimately yours and your offer is genuine, I advise you look elsewhere. If that doesn't dissuade you, would you rather bid on speaking with Fiducia Rathimus or use collateral? The latter requires more money, but it will be returned to you after unless it is judged that you dealt in egregiously bad faith or were never honestly looking to deal."

"I can put up collateral unless you want more than two hundred crowns' worth." Because getting herself and someone else on the same level of busy into a meeting in the absence of telephones sounds awful.

"No. Collateral for a meeting is currently at twelve crowns unless you expect to need more than an hour of his time. I will need to see it before fetching the Fiducia, but per regulations you may keep it with you until begin the meeting and it shouldn't be held by the lay priest relaying the cost."

Polite smile. "An hour should be enough, I think, and if we run over I can put up more and schedule another meeting." She takes out twelve of the coins and shows them to the priest.

He nods gravely, and then walks into the back of the temple. About two minutes later, he returns.

"Fiducia Rathimus will see you now."

Vassily Rathimus is waiting for her in a meeting room a short ways back, with a table and two comfortable chairs on each side.

"I'm told you're looking to liquidate some spell components?"

She does the best formal-and-businesslike demeanor she can manage while being a teenage girl with cat ears. "Yes. I have the ability to create arbitrary items of clothing and jewelry, including jewelry with components like powdered silver and diamonds. Ramien at the temple of Desna was able to use silver I created in this way to bless holy water exactly as though it was any other silver; if anything I make doesn't work as expected I will of course give you a full refund. I can sell you as much as you're interested in today and am tentatively willing to become your regular supplier but don't want to promise to still be in Kenabres next week. Given those parameters, what if anything are you interested in buying?"

She takes the oddly shaped jar of powdered silver and the raspberry-sized brilliant-cut diamond out of her pockets and slides them across the table. "Here are some samples if you'd like to examine them."

Vassily Rathimus is a man of great self control, who already knew coming into this conversation that it would be something very unusual. This is why he waits until he removes a scroll from his bag and casts mage's private sanctum before he allows himself to boggle.

"All financial transactions with the church of Abadar are as by default private, but if what you're saying is true this is a matter that requires additional security than simply being conducted by people difficult to scry on and the Law of the citizens of Kenabres. And please forgive me some skepticism, for the same reason; I have no cause to doubt your honesty or capabilities, but what you are suggesting is to my knowledge unprecedented on Golarion since at least earthfall. A genuine diamond of that size is, conservatively, worth over twenty thousand crowns, and possibly up to half again that much if it is indeed larger than the size required to assay a miracle. I lack the coin to purchase more than one such stone, and ten could easily exhaust everything I have stored with the church elsewhere and have a fortune in gems left over. If your ability is as you represent it, I simply lack the ability to pay you everything it is worth, and depending on the parameters the same might be true of the church as a whole even accounting for your ability to drop the bottom out of the entire market. Do you have a test in mind for demonstrating that your ability is what you say it is, or should I propose one?"

Okay, possibly she should have realized that any material involved in resurrecting the dead would be stupidly expensive. The other cleric didn't seem to think it was a big deal but maybe she just thought that because she couldn't use one.

"I was imagining you'd verify that one by using it--no charge for that one since you may not have been planning to use one today--but if you don't want to use the spell slot or don't have a relevant spell prepared or if you'd prefer a test you proposed yourself I'm fine with that. If you want proof that I can make them and am not just hiding a mine somewhere, an inconvenient limitation on the ability is that I can't do it while directly observed, but you can describe a piece of jewelry and then walk out of the room and immediately back in again and I'll be wearing it."

"I am not capable of casting resurrection, much less miracle, of my own power. I could test that it is genuinely diamond, but only by breaking off enough of it to cast raise dead or grind to dust for restoration, both of which would significantly decrease the value of the gem. Your proposed test, with some amendments, would suffice, but with some of the same downsides; since actual surety is impossible to acheive, the goal of these kind of assurances is to make faking the matter more expensive than genuinely achieving it. When it comes to this kind of money, however, that is rather easier said than done; with enough gold to purchase wish diamonds on the line, even an archmage might be tempted, so I need to to hedge out both known spells and unknown magical capabilities.

"From my perspective, that leaves a few possibilities at different tradeoffs between secrecy, value to you, and time discounting. The first involves my confirming your story, either via your methods or by me communing with Abadar, purchasing them from you, and then selling them. This will not require that I tell anyone else where I obtained them or any significant additional work on your part, but it purchases them with time and reduced profits for you per diamond. The second proposal is that I do a sending to Archbanker Sevandivasen of Absalom or Archbanker Kalit Maron of Totra, and they arrive to negotiate with you. This would mean leaking some information about them going somewhere and involve informing them of your identity and of the fact that you have a significant number of diamonds, but they are almost categorically trustworthy in this sort of matter, would be able to purchase more diamonds from you, and it would be harder to link them liquidating diamonds back to you after they confirmed that the stones are genuine. This also has the potential to be significantly faster than other options. The third is that tomorrow I ask Abadar for a plane shift, head to Aktun with the diamonds you wish to sell, and have the axiomites confirm their veracity and then sell to them. Mortal goods, even diamonds, don't go as far in Axis as they do on Golarion, but this could allow for you to earn more money than I have available without anyone else on the planet ever needing to learn or waiting."

"I'm interested in driving down the price of resurrections on Golarion, which makes the second option appealing. On the matter of secrecy--my friends outside, Ramien, and a cleric of Iomedae all know enough to infer that I can make diamods, and I mentioned diamonds to the latter but she didn't seem to find the matter interesting. Should I ask them all not to mention anything of the matter to anyone else? What sort of threat model are you working from here, am I at risk of national governments trying to shake me down for diamonds or only smaller-scale criminals?" Her affect is serious but not nervous; internally, she's generating ideas for how she could make anyone who has her in custody regret giving her the opportunity to use Dressing Room. It isn't hard, especially if she sets up resurrection insurance right now today.

"For an ordinarily large supply of miracle grade diamonds? Half the best adventurers in the inner sea would at least consider their odds, especially wizards who have reached the seventh circle, though most of them would think better of it, and you'd have some governments and churches weighing their odds. For an unlimited supply, someone like Razmir could just wait until you were asleep to sleep to kidnap you to a plane under his complete control, you'd have efforts from whatever dragons were willing to pick a fight with Terendelev about it, we might have to fend off a second major incursion of demons in as many weeks, and only the worldwound treaty would prevent Cheliax from trying the same. The black triune might attempt it, and they would be even worse. It's also the kind of news that would get a lot of old monsters to reconsider taking an active stance in world affairs, and who that would involve is about as unpredictable as it is difficult to ward off. This knowledge being public is the kind of situation where I would advise taking a sabbatical in Aktun with good kidnapping insurance, since I'm not confident that even Felandriel Morgethai or the Black Dome would be sufficient protection."

Fuck. She wants to let everyone who wants to be alive be alive, but she doesn't want to bring the wrath of every bossfight on the planet down on Kenabres simultaneously.

"If I'm capable of producing diamonds I'm capable of instantly killing myself, and nobody has seen me produce a diamond yet, so I could pretend it turned out conjured diamonds don't work and buy resurrection insurance in case someone decides I'm lying. I realize that would make it hard to spend most of what I make until I find another excuse for having it, but I'm willing to wait. I believe I can become a powerful spellcaster in my own right relatively quickly, so time is on my side here. But I don't want to endanger everyone I interact with, and if the only responsible course of action is to operate from Aktun until I'm more dangerous than I am valuable I'll do that."

"I think if that's the complete list of people you have told, you do not need anything that extreme. Most people will assume diamond conjuration is impossible without any effort on your part unless you convince them otherwise, and spying on clerics of Ramien's level or paladins isn't particularly easy. I won't assume I know the risks of your own party better than you do, but if you'd like I can tell the church of Iomedae I expect it's in their interests to bring Stasia to Vigil where she'll be much harder to spy on and some new clerics to take her place. And if you don't need hundreds of thousands of crowns in the next few days, I could simply buy a few raise dead stones from you for coin now or offer an advance on your profits while you wait for the larger stones to safely sell, and then if you wanted use some of those proceeds to commission some extra defensive items and comprehensive insurance for you or anyone else who knows enough of your secrets without the crafter needing to know who they're making it for."

"That all makes sense. I think I've got defensive items in most of the places I can wear them except one more ring--unless having four arms means I can wear four rings?--but I should definitely get my party as much gear as I can convince them to wear, and resurrection insurance for at least me and possibly all of us. I don't want to disrupt Stasia's life that much but it sounds like I may already have done and the only question is how unpleasantly. I should maybe talk to her tomorrow. How much does resurrection insurance cost per person, and how much in Raise Dead diamonds are you interested in buying at what price points?"

On the bright side, if she buys her friends defensive items and resurrection insurance and doesn't specify a reason, they'll just assume she's taking the threat of Areelu Vorlesh seriously.

"Typically, resurrection insurance costs the price of the diamond required, a small fee for the spell itself, and a fraction of the bounty you want the church to be willing to expend retrieving your body or hiring adventurers to do so, or to retrieve your soul if you expect it to be trapped or maledicted. You can pay in advance in case you need multiple in short succession and in theory you can set the bounty as high as you want, but in practice even for you I would expect you to start getting seriously diminishing returns past a hundred thousand crowns worth, since any situation sufficiently difficult that the church cannot solve it for less than that would require extreme payment to move the kind of people not typically very motivated by money at all. I suspect you could get by easily unless the knowledge leaks with significantly less than that, but if the gems truly are no object then having enough for someone to assay a true resurrection even if your body is completely annihilated or your soul sent to hell has its advantages. As for the diamonds, I don't have the funds to purchase more than six with coin at their fair price of five thousand crowns, but if you wanted more people brought back to life than that you could anonymously offer to donate or cover part of the costs for a church of your choice to raise people of your choice, or those who match certain characteristics if you don't have individuals in mind."

"There are three people I feel particularly responsible for, in addition to myself; paying for True Resurrections sounds both more reliable and better for keeping a low profile than arranging for a large bounty on retrieving the bodies. Doing it anonymously seems wise. Would it be possible to pay for the insurance directly in diamonds, rather than exchanging diamonds for coin and then coin for insurance, and avoid your liquidity limits that way?"

"Yes. Diamonds are especially liquid commodity, so it is easy to make use of them in purchases with the bank of Abadar. If you provide me the requisite diamonds and the names of who is to be resurrected if they die, I will use a sending to inform Archbanker Kalit Maron of their identities and where to send an axiomite courier to retrieve the spell components as soon as we are done here."

"Excellent. The other three people are Seelah the paladin, Ember the elf witch, and Wenduag who lived in an underground city until this morning. Is that sufficient to identify them?"

"Yes, it will be."

He reaches again into his bag of holding, pulls out a latched box, and then opens it to remove four sets of legal documents titled 'Insurance for Resurrection.'

"To confirm you understand what you are agreeing to, in exchange for this payment, we will take corresponding efforts to return you and the others listed to life, including by true resurrection, should you perish, subject to the listed terms and conditions which outline certain edge cases but do not substantively alter the core of the commitment. If you or a designated entity believe the church broke this agreement, you can go to court in Aktun or Heaven to get it arbitrated, at the expense of the church if it is the claim is judged serious even if the resulting judgment is against you."

The document, which is slid across to Brenda, goes into significantly more detail as promised.

In exchange for the payment provided, you are entering into a contract with the church of Abadar to take efforts, up to and including assaying true resurrections and hiring teams of adventurers to retrieve you, to save you from fates including but not limited to death, malediction, disintegration, soul trapping, imprisonment, and petrification. The precise details of fates in question may be found in appendix 1c. Note that this will NOT render us able to save you from situations such soul consumption by daemons, becoming an outsider and then being slain, certain defenses of the starstone cathedral, or direct divine intervention where resurrection may be impossible, and that the resources purchased may be insufficient to guarantee success. Once this contract is entered, we will refuse any contracts obliging us to violate it, and failure to execute part or all of the provisions about attempting it obliges us to pay the penalty clause for breach plus any punitive damages assessed by the Aktun arbitrators listed in Appendix 2b to you or a designated recipient or recipients of your choice, which can be changed at any point by meeting with an appropriate member of the church and confirming your identity and competence to enter contract. If you believe the church to have violated this contract, arbitration at the expense of the church for credible claims may be entered at the church's expense at any of the courts in Axis or Heaven listed in Appendix 2a...

The words go on like that for over a page, and it has several pages of appendixes.

"I swear upon my law and Abadar's name that everything I have summarized for you is to the best of my knowledge accurate, that I would expect to know if it was not, and that I have not lied to you or attempted to deceive you at any point in this conversation. If you need clarification of any of the terms or clauses in the contract, you may ask for explanation or take it to a barrister of your choice. If you desire, I will testify to the above under Abadar's truth."

She reads the contract carefully; her headband makes this relatively fast. Does it say that the named individuals can void their insurance later if they decide they'd rather not have it? If not she'll want to step outside and get their permission.