"Yes. There are still... Upstarts. As you have seen. But for now, things are relatively calm. At least as calm as they can be in a land where there is Warpstone in the soil."

"I'd wish there was some way to get it out of the soil, but then we'd have to deal with very clever upstarts deciding the best path to power is to grab a bunch of it out of the soil and, I don't know, eat the stuff. Probably still better than the current system, they'd deplete it eventually."

"That is actually exactly why I searched for someone like Ishaza. She is a priestess of Rhya, and with her ability to harness Hysh much of the low-level contamination can be flushed from the fields, which gives better crop yields and less mutations, which means less ghouls to haunt the countryside and more defenses for my people. Larger stones are raked from the fields and collected for disposal by agents I trust."

"That's lovely. And clever to focus specifically on the crop fields, you get a lot of the benefits of a more wide-ranging decontamination for much less work, I hadn't thought of that option. You know, I don't actually know how easy it is to learn what she can do, is she teaching anyone local? Exponentiation would speed things along quite a bit, and maybe let things expand beyond crop fields eventually. Is that, uh, actually a viable option, I don't really know enough to know."

She recalls that the Light in Warcraft wasn't restricted to people who could wield arcane magic. If it's the same here, it could be very, very important. She supposes neighbouring vampires might be uncomfortable if Crin trains up a crop of people who can wield usually-anti-vampire magic, though.

"The raw talent to harness the Winds of Magic is inborn, unfortunately, though the Draenei have a being that can grant Hysh potential off in the Borderlands. The necessary conviction to accept it is rare, but not so uncommon that it is not worth sending potentials; I take my taxes primarily in apprenticeships to educated trades, though I regrettably still do require blood."

"Ah, that explains it. I'd heard vaguely of wielding Hysh without the inborn talent, but didn't know how it happened. Unfortunate that it's bottlenecked on one being."

Won't be once she takes a trip out to visit said being. Then it'll be bottlenecked on two beings. Being part-Naaru sounds useful.

"We can't choose our dietary needs, unfortunately."

She doesn't think she's going to be open about not needing blood herself, just yet. She'll likely have to be soon, but soon isn't now.

"Indeed." 

Crin weaves her fingers together and settles her hands against the table. "I would like to formally invite you back to Konigstein as my guest. To be blunt, I would feel more comfortable with you closer to me and in a safe location, rather than wandering the blasted countryside."

This looks like a job for Friends In High Places! How does it think she should accept that offer without looking like too much of a country bumpkin?

The proper form is "I accept your hospitality." 

Conveniently simple, she could plausibly have guessed that even before picking up new social fu.

"I accept your hospitality."

"Then we shall return together when this crisis is assuredly over. My hounds should find poor Piotr if he is still to be found." 

She looks over at Ishaza. "Do you still have enough strength to restore Piotr should he be found alive?"

Ishaza nods. "There is little to treat save battlesickness. This attack was largely incompetent. And we were lucky to have Alethia." She looks out into the darkness. "I doubt he will be found alive, however. The fool who attacked did not seem bright enough to understand the value of captives."

"He did not particularly seem to be making wise life choices. The fire does maybe suggest that he had some sort of plan, since I suppose that could be viewed as an attempt to draw Lady Illemvich out and into a fight. Being very charitable to him. But- between your own talents with Hysh and the Lady's hounds and whatever other skills the Lady has at her disposal, and the fact that he seems to only have had zombies for servants- I don't think attempting that was part of a well thought out plan so much as the standard next step. And perhaps it was not even that."

Crin nods. "There are incompetent attempts on my holdings near monthly. Too many idiots who think that because they've resorted to Dhar to fix their problems they can do anything." 

She makes a cutting motion. "You did a good thing, putting that one in the ground. If you mourn anyone, mourn Piotr."

"The loss of any person, even someone like that, is a tragedy. He might have learned better, and now he never will."

"Always the healer. While I may disagree with the Empire's methods, I must agree with them that sometimes the only way in the face of the ruinous powers is to burn stem and leaf together. You've seen what Dhar does to humans."

"I've always found it curious that we're on these sides of this argument, when the Witch Hunters would burn you soon as look at you."

Crin smiles slightly. "True. And yet I observe you haven't turned me in yet."

Ishaza just raises an eyebrow.

Then she looks back at Alethia. "Apologies. It is an old argument, and not one we should drag your circumstances into."

She swallows at Crin's statement. Nods at the thought of mourning Piotr. And then at Ishaza's first statement again.

She's actually feeling a little off-center, but Discussion Time is very firmly in her comfort zone, so as it goes on the returned look of mostly-hidden horror fades.

"I genuinely don't mind, actually. You know, just for my curiosity's sake, are both of you are talking about- what makes sense as the sort of general heuristic to be discarded if circumstances on the ground look odd, or are you thinking more in terms of governmental policies, which innately trend inflexible? Or just about- a particular moral guideline, and whether it makes sense to actually follow it even when it comes to those corrupted and not initially repentant?"

"I think which of those we are talking about is, perhaps, one of the core tenets of the argument."

"Ah, I see."

Honestly, that Lady Illemvich is on the side she is is either evidence of a con of some sort or else that she's genuine.

"Well, I suppose my opinion then is mostly that I think that you are innately going to want somewhat different policies for each of those three cases, and so I will not state any opinions unless I am careful to indicate which case I mean, lest I say something embarrassingly silly and have to suffer through polite bemusement about my terrible ideas."

"A measured response." She smiles. "What then would you advise in each case?"

"I'm also not quite sure about that! I think personally attempting to redeem everyone you meet who even theoretically could be runs in to some of the same issues as a state doing so, that being limited resources and opportunity costs. Neutralizing a corrupted entity and attempting to convince them to be slightly less unwise would be worth it but for the fact that it would mean there were so many other things you weren't doing. That said, having a range different strategies being done by different people makes sense. I definitely think it makes sense for there to be people who've committed to trying to do that whenever they can, because that's the only way that your society ever notices it's wrong if it's common belief that it's literally impossible for people like I and Lady Illemvich to exist. But also, literally everyone attempting that would probably be unwise. I think it's genuinely a space where you actually just want different people doing different things, and if your thing works sufficiently well hopefully how often people do it increases. Or, well, ideally it would."

"On the state level, you want to enable that multistrategy option, but likewise don't have unlimited resources and opportunity costs remain a thing. So probably you go with a sort of standardized system that is- probably not all the way towards going all root and stem, but leans farther in that direction as far as those working for you goes. But also allow for private entities to do things differently as long as they're within a broader level of safety tolerance. Cleansing corrupted land and working with Lady Illemvich, who is not in fact killing her subjects, should definitely be within the bounds of legality, but smuggling servants of the ruinous powers into Altdorf definitely shouldn't be, to gesture very broadly at two points the line should be between."

"And I think my point about multiple strategies mostly determines my response about moral guidelines. I think there should absolutely be people who've simply sworn not to attack anyone who doesn't attack them first, and others who have carveouts for servants of the ruinous powers, and others who go one step yet farther and try that whole redemption thing to see if it's workable. I think it's very, very important for exactly which set of oaths you've sworn to be very clear to those you're interacting with. If we're talking about the guidelines that I think are going to in-expectation be best for any single individual to follow, I'd guess that you'd want guidelines that allow for what you're doing with Lady Illemvich but also allow for you to notice a servant of a particular disease-focused Power in a public place and uncomfortably near a cistern and focus entirely on the question of contamination, even if that means some degree of innocent suffering and no hope of helping that particular person."