Maralictor Briasus: 1d20-3 = 14

Maralictor Briasus is not dexterous, as 4th-level fighters go.

As the 3d6 wasn't kind to him, he's used to patiently waiting his turn.

But today he rolled well - it must have been fate - and, while there isn't an open charge lane (considering the hectic and crowded room), he's standing within 20 feet of Glorio Arkona and wielding a +1 humanbane greatsword.

Deliver yourself to justice, Lord Arkona, or die (in compliance with Act 4682-116, AKA the Citadel Vraid Act, Section 2, page 1)!

1d20+10 = 27    4d6+17 = 27

It's like there's a scream or a sob in the back of her throat and she can't get it out.

There, I've updated the emergency procedures manual. Next time there's a volcanic eruption, earthquake, sandstorm and flood during a bombardment of living, angry meteorites, we'll have a clear plan to follow. 

- How the Temperaments Deal with Failure, Anna Moss

Cressida Kroft: 1d20+0 = 14

That things got this bad to begin with is entirely on her.

There are, in retrospect, many, many individual things that she should have handled differently. 

Well... well, actually, who knows, her first stab at an improvement ("I shouldn't have taken Lyvina aside, I should have stayed in the room to stay on top of defusing tension") wouldn't have been an improvement at all (learning what Lyvina's deal is was objectively huge, her mistake there is that she didn't do it sooner - the mistake was not making time to follow up with the team of eccentrics she'd assigned to Ileosa earlier this morning). She could have moderated the discussion better had she been on better terms with Ileosa or Sabina Merrin... no, Cressida is on good terms with Sabina Merrin, her mistake there is that she didn't use it to see people removed from the room. Better too many than too few.

She should have kicked Toff's posse out of the room immediately when she found them in here. And then moved to a different room, with a door.

Anyway, the upshot is that there are many, many individual things that she should have handled differently, too many to get into right now.

Most of those mistakes seem downstream of this one: she improvised poorly and that was largely because she was frazzled, overwhelmed, grieving, exasperated, indignant, and angry.

She should have taken the time to center herself, and to see through Heaven's eyes...

To see through Heaven's eyes, see people as people, as children too young in a world that's too harsh. To see people as people and not obstacles to manage...

...It's usually not this hard for her to reach for.

She doesn't want for it to be this hard to reach for. 

She's furious. She's in grief. She's suddenly standing at 11 feet and 4 inches tall which is the kind of thing which happens sometimes in her line of work and which means she really needs to get her head in the game because her guardsman is casting limited spells in the justified belief that this will improve the situation. 

The world is falling apart and she's the only one who seems to get it because they have no common sense so she had to try alone to do it all and it wasn't enough because how could it be enough?

How many of Korvosa's spells, how much of its blood, how many irreplaceable consumables, how much of those intangible things called Trust and Fellowship and Community Spirit has been and will be spent in this six-second round?

And how many shadows were born last round, below the ground or in the woods or on the dark far side of the world?

And everyone's fighting instead of doing anything remotely sensible... because she didn't channel them constructively. 

The big takeaway is not that she should have been less harriable by [the deaths of friends, their damnation, the ruin of her city, of her country, of the planet, less harriable by hostile gods, by all the threats [Worldwound, Whispering Way, Geb, the Numerian Iron Gods Altronus mentioned(?), doubtless others] no longer in check, by the self-admitted cultists in the room, by Ileosa reading Kroft's Guardsmen's minds and finding horrible weapons which she announces to the room, by the sudden realization that each of [Altronus, Choryon, Mull, and Lyvina] have immense destructive potential and she's not sure how far she trusts at least three of those four, by the insanity and shortsightedness of everyone in this mansion]. 

(She should have, but that's not the main takeaway.)

She needs to design a process that's robust to error and misapplication and makes better results happen by default, even and especially when there's no one in the room who's in their right mind.

She needs to do that later.

It is not useful to be standing around in a fugue state in the middle of a combat situation.

Sometimes people center themselves by praying. She's going to try that.

Cressida's an Abadaran in the sense that Abadarans are some of her favorite people and she tells people she's an Abadaran because it helps them understand her and sometimes is enough that they stop trying to press her into making an exception on this one thing this one time come on Field Marshal see reason.

Sometimes she prays to Abadar.

It's said that gods can hear a heartfelt prayer, and Abadar has done so much to improve her world that ccing Him on things she thinks He'd want to know about is really the least that she can do.

He's never answered her, which she understands to mean she's doing near enough to what He would in her shoes, or that the things He disprefers aren't things she'd change were He to ask, or, that Kroft has never actually successfully targeted a prayer at Abadar (you need more than the name - you need the mindset, and there's no feedback on whether you've got the mindset right) and this whole time has been muttering into the air.

Abadar, if you're listening, if you care, if it's useful to you, if it isn't useful to you on net but one thousand golden sails to your church would tip the balance, I could use any help you can spare.

(She knows 1,000 gp won't make a difference, considering the size of the transaction costs there's no way that Abadar winds up that precisely neutral on any intervention. Still, she has to ask and can't spare more.)

Cressida isn't an Abadaran in the sense of trying to live up to Abadaran philosophy.

In that sense she's not really religious at all.

She's read any number of holy texts, and learned from them, but - she's never understood the people who twist themselves up in seminaries to take on some god's shape. Kroft wants to be her best self, and has looked for gods who Seem To Mostly Understand instead of looking to Mostly Understand a God.

Cressida Kroft is doing her own thing. Law and Good are guiding lights, but - this is hard to express in the languages she knows - she'd toss them out if they didn't serve her conception of honor and duty and righteousness.

There are a few other gods she sometimes prays to.

She likes Torag. If Torag were in charge of Heaven, she expects she'd have at least a different set of complaints vis a vis the way it's run. 

Erastil gets some important things that Abadar doesn't, and Jaidi does as well. 

Kroft long felt like she had a lot of common ground with Abadar, and a lot with Torag and Jaidi and with Erastil, but wasn't entirely simpatico with any of them. No one gets an afterlife written to exactly their values, and keeping Korvosa alive on the Material, and living with integrity, were at any rate more important to her than exact shades of postmortal paradise - what really matters is staying in the general area of Lawful Good - but she did research Requius to compare with Axis...

...and learned of the Grandmother Crow.

Andoletta's faithful shared Kroft's conception of Lawful Good more precisely than anyone she'd met in life or heard existed in Heaven.

It was gratifying to learn that they and She exist.

Andoletta, if you're listening and there's anything you can do. I've tried so hard, for so long. Help me not to let my city down. Give me the strength to guide them.

When she first became Korvosa's Field Marshal, the youngest in its history, she prayed that Abadar mark her as His if He supported her and wanted her to help her keep the position. It would have gone a very long way to stop people tittering and maneuvering.

(At any given circle, a cleric's magic gifts beat the pants off an equivalent-circle inquisitor or paladin.

But first-circle paladin gifts - or even pre-circle paladin gifts - plus martial competence beats the pants off of first-circle cleric gifts plus martial competence. It's cheaper for the god to get similar results, as long as the people who'd be your minions are excellent fighters or you expect them to become so.

And if a god "dips" inquisitor or paladin on someone who's already high-level in their own right, they'll get some use out of those powers in high-stakes situations and earn their own exp.

That said, dips are still less common than inquisitors and paladins who start from nearer to the ground floor.

(Perhaps - as the gods are doubtless good at scouting talent - enpaladining someone who'll predictably become an excellent warrior leads to a better paladin who's just as good a warrior, and is the best bang for your godly buck?))

When Kroft asked Abadar to mark her, she knew He'd be spending the costs for mostly social benefits, and He'd have to spend enough at least to make her an inquisitor - because she isn't fit to be His paladin.

She was willing to pay him such and such an amount for it, but they couldn't make a deal.

Which is fair enough, transaction costs are high here. (...although she hopes He even heard it.)

I am 80% sure that "social benefits" is a term that refers to welfare for the unemployed, sick, retired, or low income,

and is not a term which applies to joining the inquisition for inscrutable monkey-political reasons.

So she doesn't really know what she's asking for, can't think of anything to pray for that it'd make sense for a god to grant.

Torag, Jaidi, Erastil.

Maybe she just wants a sign that there's Someone out there who understands?

...Maybe what seminary hopefuls want, is not to be alone.