Karis moves with quiet dignity. (And politely ignores the fact that Blai is currently shoveling porridge into his mouth.) 

:This morning: she starts, :I was– not exactly praying. You told me before, when I said there was no limit to what I owed Vkandis, that - that made you think of the god of Nidal, from your world. ...And you were right. I did have a line, and the Sunlord - crossed it.: 

She shakes herself slightly. :...Anyway. I was - awake when I would normally pray, thinking about - having No One to pray too - and I felt a different god. It felt like -:

It's hard to put into words. Karis tries to just think the feeling of it at Seldan instead. 

Hello, precious one.

The sun still smiles on you.

She is the Sun that shines on everyone every morning just the same no matter what they did in the dark of the night, so long as they will open their eyes to see Her.

Karis is to take all those wishes and hopes and carry them with her, backed by magic.

:- And I know there are many gods in your world, and - it seems I have standards. So - I did not say no, to belong to this god, yet, but - I need to know who They are before I can be sure.: 

:Oh. Sarenrae. Neutral Good, goddess of the Sun and redemption. Known to be very specifically opposed to the destruction of the universe. She... smote a city once... but she had a reason and still considers it to have been a mistake:

Oh. 

...Wow. Karis has some emotions about that. Maybe kind of a lot of emotions. It's not Blai's problem, though, and she's– she'll try her very best to stay composed. She has a lot of practice. Her face is only a tiny bit screamy even by Chelish standards. 

:What do you think She wishes of me now?: Karis sends. :I cannot exactly ask Her church.: 

And of course she hopes the answer is 'help Iftel' but she shouldn't bias it toward her priorities, at least not until Blai has a chance to answer without that pressure. 

(Seldan is of course not going to miss all of of the emotions, thanks to Mindspeech overtones, but he's capable of taking the hint that someone doesn't want their feelings all over the place, and he can carefully filter that out from Karis' response when he bounces it to Blai.) 

More importantly: Sarenrae! What's Sarenrae's holy symbol, they're going to need that and it might not be as easy to scrounge a pre-existing object as it was for Joshel - he pokes around in Blai's memories rather than interrupt. Oh, pretty. Seldan can bounce that as clearly as possible to the trainee previously assigned an unexpected craft project, who seems kind of irritated with him over it but at least it doesn't involve being in the room that now unavoidably smells of vomit at all times. 

:I have somewhat sparse information because She is not that popular on my continent mostly because She is very popular in a historically rival continent's major empire; it was at the time She gave them Her patronage an unsolved problem to do that without winding up backing unproductive warfare, though I have no reason to believe She is fond of it. All things considered She does shake out to be more martially oriented than Vanyel's also-Neutral-Good Shelyn, though, albeit with the predictable enemies being, say, demons, the undead, Evil cultists, things like that. But I would be unsurprised to find Sarenrites operating... orphanages? Adventuring to protect villagers from monsters? Serving at the Worldwound, though I met only a couple and only in passing. Advising kings and lords on their redemption and that of their endangered populace. Itinerant healing. Managing charitable work with the poor. If She chose you while you were already at prayer whatever was on your mind then may be a better guide than my guesses:

Karis looks...very faintly embarrassed, almost, as though she's worried that Blai might think what she was praying about is weird. 

:...I was not praying, exactly: just ruminating on how she wished she had a god to pray to, :but - I suppose I was thinking about Iftel. How their country deserved better than what happened, how they– ...they deserved a better god.:

She hesitates. :- And I was - I know this is stupid but in some sense I was worried about Vkandis. It was a very - extreme - thing to do. If King Randale did something like that to his own kingdom in a panic then I would be very worried about him.: 

:Yes, that makes sense as the kind of thing that would appeal to a redemption goddess, I think:

It feels very...something...to be picked out and granted magic by a redemption goddess when you, yourself, are the one who needs redeeming. But maybe it makes perfect sense. Karis knows all about - trying to do the right thing, acting with what you thought at the time was a critically important reason, making decisions with haste and without having the full picture because tomorrow might be too late. And then waking up one morning in a world where thousands of people were dead and none of it had needed to happen at all. Karis knew she would need more - leverage, than what she had, to even begin to try to set things right, and if Sarenrae is offering that, and isn't secretly evil, then - she's not going to say no, because that would be unfair to the people she can help, however much a quiet voice insists that she isn't the one who deserves it.

:I - need advice: she sends. :I want - if I had no constraints or commitments, I would go to Iftel. They need help more, and - I understand them, more than the Heralds do. But I am still the Queen of Karse.: Even if she hasn't been back since all of this started at the Midwinter Festival, at first because they thought the war was coming now and later because the Heralds thought it wasn't and...no longer felt they could trust her. Karis thinks there was a mistake somewhere in there and she still isn't sure what it was. 

:- I am still the Queen, but - I am not sure I have the right to it. I served on Vkandis' orders, and I am not - and the priesthood in Karse will not -: It's all coming out in fragments. Karis takes a deep breath. :...I do not know what to do.: 

She should go to Iftel! And take it back from Vkandis on behalf of her new and much better goddess possibly that isn't an entirely Sarenrite motivation. Iftel is probably very badly going to need...something, though Seldan isn't sure if that thing is a new Queen...and Karis could do it. She's a very impressive person. But it feels very important that she not - overstep, while speaking for Sarenrae, in a different world with no existing church. It feels important to do it right and it's not like Seldan is bloody qualified to advise on how to speak for gods. 

:I... do not know how to manage the Vkandis: what the fuck is the demonym :priesthood. I don't know what their traditional relationship to the monarchy is or whether they'll believe the news out of Iftel. It may matter if Sarenrae has picked more clerics other than you that you might want to coordinate with; so far we've only found the handful here but there could be others in less constant contact with the Heraldic apparatus. - there's a spell for that, if it's still in question tomorrow:

:The relationship - with the priesthood and the monarchy, I mean - is complicated, but - it has historically not gone well for the monarchy when there were significant disputes.:

For one thing, the priesthood has all the mages, and while technically Karis has allies who have mages, she really doesn’t want to, what, go occupy her own kingdom with Leareth’s troops, which she’s almost certain is what would happen in practice if she asked the badly overstretched Heralds for their support.

:There is a spell for - finding other clerics? I would very much like to know if there are others.:

Karis didn’t put the part about the priesthood of Karse maintaining a chokehold on all the Gifted people into words, but Seldan does know that, or at least he assumes it’s still true now - it was in his time, and it makes sense in their church, Gifts are seen as something granted by Vkandis even though Seldan is pretty sure that has nothing do with it and Gifts are inherited just like the shape of people’s noses is. And the rest is also obvious - Karis could try to hold the monarchy against the opposition of the priesthood, and it would be her right to call on her Valdemaran allies for help, at which point Randi would point out that they don’t have the mages to spare - and do have an 800-year-old precedent against conquering their neighbors, and this would be pushing it even if it could be justified as aid to an ally rather than a Valdemaran invasion - but they do have Leareth’s entire organization currently displaced from the north and not actually busy…

They probably don’t want to go there. Especially if Karse is actually doing okay as it is. 

:Finding others of your same stripe. It's first circle, you'll be able to prepare it; it's called Find the Faithful. ...If you are, as of your last contact, on good terms with the priesthood, it might make sense to bring some of them with you on any trip to Iftel you make, rather than relying on them believing secondhand reports about the explosion:

What a useful spell! That’s excellent advice, Karis would have had no idea. In fact she doesn’t have the faintest idea what spells she has right now, though she can feel them there waiting to be used, which is very odd.

:I left on good enough terms that I think that could be arranged with the right framing: she sends, thoughtful. :…I think it would not be right or fair to - not explain until we departed for Iftel, let them think I had miracles from Vkandis - even if it would make things much simpler?:

:I don't know the Sarenrite church policy on that. I certainly would not go around representing myself as having magic from a source other than my real one, but I think of that as a Lawful feature and Sarenrae isn't Lawful. You might be, though, or might be in this respect in particular:

Karis definitely feels spectacularly uncomfortable at the prospect, but she isn't sure if that's because she's Lawful or just because she's imagining the sheer awkwardness of it coming out after the fact. 

...It's definitely something that could be unwise, Seldan thinks, which - honestly feels like half of why he cares about any kind of Law, he suspects, the less Lawful thing might be simpler or quicker or less frustrating today but it's very often short-sighted. Karis is the one who's been maintaining a relationship with the current priesthood for...Seldan isn't sure exactly how many years it's been since the recent war ended, but he's absorbed from ambient Companion-gossip that it must be approaching a decade...and she probably has the best instincts for what approach is most likely to salvage any trust. Which is generally worth salvaging if you can, he thinks, even if - your gods are enemies now - not that he personally has experience with that but it seems like it must be conceptually similar to your kingdoms being at war...

:You have context on your resources and the people you're dealing with that I don't. There may not be any brilliant solution that gets the clear ideal result along all the axes that matter. But Sarenrae trusts you to handle it:

Apparently!

Karis should really ask about the magic next, how to figure out what she has and whether they need her healing here, but - that isn't the question she finds herself asking next at all. 

:Do you think there– do you think you will find a way to reach Golarion?: They could hope for miracles from the other world, but - they've already been offered miracles, and that doesn't seem to have been included. :Jisa was not sure...: If there was any way to do it without Leareth. To get Yfandes back, and - well, apparently Leareth himself now, too, 'if whichever god has him now will give him back at all', Jisa had said...

:I was hoping Leareth would manage it. It is still possible that when the Constitutional Convention's date arrives and I'm not there as expected, the archmage who called for it in the first place will bestir himself to wonder about my whereabouts. I don't know how likely that is:

:…We don’t have a backup plan at this point: Seldan admits. :I would rather not just sit here waiting for rescue from another world, but - I don’t have a better plan. Yet.: They lost the critical battle and that doesn’t mean the war is over, and Seldan absolutely still intends to genuinely, actually try to think of something, but— gods, it’s tempting to keep putting it off until “when he feels better” and he shouldn’t actually be confident that will ever happen. They’re in a better situation with so many more channels available, Shavri was clearly enormously relieved, but what they really need is more Lesser Restorations - maybe if Joshel goes and gets into a lot of fights - but Seldan picked up from Blai’s memories that a newly selected cleric is expected to take years to get second-circle spells even somewhere like the Worldwound…

The Worldwound is arranged to succeed at an operational goal over getting its individual participants circles, so someone adventuring recklessly can circle up faster, but only because a dozen other people adventuring recklessly are dead to make up the numbers.

…Yeah. It doesn’t seem like they can afford to let any of their three first-circle clerics - that they know about so far, at least - adventure recklessly. And Joshel and Karis aren’t inclined toward that sort of thing and Vanyel is but is bedridden. If Someone had picked up Jisa though it’s a relief that didn’t happen, Seldan thinks, the last thing Jisa needs is any more powers to enable her…being herself. 

On that note, any idea how to narrow down what spells Karis got? She doesn’t even know if they’re healing-y, she was very caught off guard and didn’t even think of requesting particular “miracles” as an available action, and Sarenrae apparently handed her something anyway, with no more specific instructions than “take all those wishes and hopes and carry them with her, backed by magic.”

Can she do either the gestures or the words alone?

Oh is that how you make the miracle  spell happen at a specific time on purpose? (This is especially counterintuitive to Karis, who has no Gifts but has conveyed a miracle for Vkandis before, which was completely different and mostly required…getting herself out of His way.) 

…Oh, there might be something there? Like muscle memory, that’s so interesting given how it’s not like she trained at this, but like muscle memory it’s hard to think about and describe in the abstract? She might have to just - try it, to get the practice - but it would be pretty upsetting to waste it, she can feel that she only has a few.