Nod.

"I want to Seal it, and... I think this might be something you'd be interested in helping with."

He removes the part of his costume covering his face and raises an eyebrow. He manages to make it clear that he's listening, but his face is somewhere between neutral and a frown. Not the easiest of customers, apparently.

With the shrouded mask off, the Shepherd still looks old. Maybe not chronologically—Matthew is in his forties and could be older than him—but something about his affect unmistakably says that he has seen a lot (of what, who knows) and is old.

"I'm not gonna hide my motives, here. They're twofold: one, that new Seal is a good idea, I think, and to Others that's just an extra, in addition to Solomon's, which means they can coexist with other people; and two, people are in fact dying, that thing kills them and then keeps their ghosts and I'm not super happy about that."

The Shepherd shrugs and doesn't blink.

"...why do you collect ghosts?"

That one is hard to answer with facial expressions.

He removes a pouch from a pocket. (A custom-made shroud? Normal clothes underneath it? Anyone's guess.) He dribbles out a line of salt in a ring, not touching any of the salt himself. Then he makes some passes with his implement.

A ghost materializes. He's dressed in a hospital patient's gown, and is sitting up with a smile on his face. Then his expression changes to shock and pain, and blood starts spewing from his mouth. Despite the salt circle, the surprised feeling from his last moments leaks through. While he says "why is this happening to me" around a mouthful of blood, the three of them experience some fraction of what it felt like during the death.

Then the Shepherd steps into the ring. He must be feeling all of it, but if so there's no sign. The ghost looks at him and stops repeating its phrase, then calms and returns to the Shepherd's staff. The practitioner gestures twice, once from the site of the "death" to himself, and once from there out into the ether.

"—you want to help them? Find peace, or something?"

He nods.

"He does also torture them," Matthew interjects. "The ghosts. The finding peace is for the actual people."

"Is that true?" he asks the Shepherd, knowing full well about the power of technical truth in this system.

Nod.

"Why?"

He doesn't answer.

Matthew sighs. "They're ghosts. Impressions of one specific moment, usually a messy death. There's not much you can do with one that isn't giving it more of that, and he's hardly going to dissipate them all."

"What a misleading way to describe the situation 'torture' was." It does speak of the Shepherd's character, though. "Whether you think what you do counts as torture or not, it's still probably better than whatever those ghosts are going through under the Hyena's care "

He nods, but then looks straight at Sadde and shrugs.

The experiences of the ghosts, it seems, don't matter to him.

He frowns. "If you don't actually care, why do it at all?"

He doesn't reactivate another ghost, but he repeats the second gesture from his last display. From the site of the death out into the ether.

"And the people the Hyena killed don't get that, then? I suppose they could be out of your jurisdiction, you can't psychopomp the whole world..."

He balances his staff horizontally. The lower end points eastward in the direction of the Hyena. The end with the curve, heavier, points toward the hospital ICU and tilts downward.

"They'll still be here, and they're not something you can fix. The Hyena you can fix, you can get rid of that problem entirely. Right now they're a neglected scar, lots of people dying and not moving on under your watch."

He doesn't say anything. But the staff wavers and ends up back closer to horizontal.

Aha.

"Do you not also have a responsibility towards them? It's your jurisdiction, and your duty to help them move on. It's a solvable problem."

He considers. Looks back at the hospital. People die, occasionally. Once each. But they don't have anything actively preventing them from going on, and he'll be back.

The staff rotates. It passes horizontal, keeps moving, then the tip of the end strikes the ground.

He beams. "That's the spirit. Pun unintended."

He doesn't look very spirited. More like he's embarking on an unpleasant errand.

Matthew doesn't either. "We'll need you to handle the ghosts surrounding it. I can probably avert most of the other Others, and won't be useless against the Hyena either. Sam, what are you expecting to need in the way of equipment?"