The other clerics look a little scandalized.

    "-maybe they couldn't have halflings tomorrow if they wanted 'em."

"That's going to be a mess, if that's how they want to do things."

Skip takes notes as they talk and they appear on the wall:

- HEALERS, CHURCH
- MUTUAL DANGER ASSESSMENT
- DIVINE ASSISTANCE ASSESSMENT
- IMMIGRATION
- FREE MIGRATION (NEW WORLD & DAEVA REALMS & "LIMBO")
- RESOLVE DIFFERENCES ABOUT CITIZENSHIP

"There's some business with the gods, too. Boccob in particular is very impatient about fixing your physics so that the demons can't make black holes the same way. And I haven't told the god of cities about the place yet but I do feel like I ought to."

    "Cities? That's new to me."

"He's very new, yes."

Skip adds:

- PHYSICS REVISIONS?
- GOD OF CITIES LOOPED IN

One of the other PR folks says, "...so, you have a major hurdle to overcome here, which is that people don't think of gods as entitled to... revise our physics. Our polities are run democratically, in the modern day, which means ordinary people expect voice, and we have pretty free migration between those polities, so they expect exit. You have a huge uphill battle ahead if you are expecting to circumvent both voice and exit, for billions of people accustomed to democracy, in order to make changes to the world so it's more how your gods normally arrange things."

"What do you mean by 'voice'?"

"It's sort of short for 'having their voice heard'. We do have executives who can make decisions faster than a nationwide poll, but the executives are elected, they're responsible to their people, the people can vote them out. A single dissenter doesn't get far, but if a real vote says 'no, the gods should not do thing X', doing it anyway will be massively unpopular. Same with doing things without asking, unless it's a legible emergency - my understanding is that Ganymede, uh, seemed like an emergency to the god who intervened there, but it didn't seem like one to anyone else, so he's getting no slack for his decision. That's also spilling over onto you -" She indicates Pelor. "And the other god who was there, and Raafi. You could certainly act without permission if, say, a supervolcano were erupting. That's an emergency, you could explain with no serious risk of disagreement after the fact that it was an emergency, and it would happen too fast to get voted on."

"I think he's concerned that without handling it preemptively the emergency could happen too quickly for him to react."

"- what do you mean?" asks Skip.

"I don't understand it as well as I'd like but apparently demons can make a type of thing that can instantly eat the solar system, and he'd like to change your physics so that it can't."

"...so there are ways you can phrase that which make it sound less, ah, invasive. 'Change physics' sounds very invasive. To refer to making it so black holes can't eat our celestial bodies, you'd want to say something else, like - crew, pitch me -"

"Implementing a passive defense protocol."

"Anti-WMD effect."

"Supplemental demon containment."

"Just pad it six inches deep in technobabble."

"Opt-out seamless protective enchantment. Get as silly as you like about the opt-out process."

"Yeah," says Skip, "something like that. Or, if it's taking him this long anyway, he could actually ask those executives who can make rapid decisions I mentioned. You'll notice it's never happened, so it's not a very emergent emergency in the long run, even though things would develop fast if it kicked off."

"I'll ask him which of those he likes," he nods. "You should know that clerics and wizards can go to your afterlives and bring daeva here unbound, though. Raafi is the only mortal prepared to do it at the moment, and I trust him not to take any unnecessary risks, but in the long run it's going to be a concern."

"So there's another thing you'll need to spin - you trusting someone doesn't buy anyone else's trust, at least not until people trust you a whole lot. You'll want to refer not to trust per se but to track record, checks on his abilities - unfortunately in both cases that's pretty hard to package well, here, as I understand it, since his track record is some low-profile healing and then Ganymede, and the check on his power is his god, who is mostly known for Ganymede. Anyway, yes, let's definitely have 'statement about visiting unbound daeva prospect' on the list -" He adds it.

"I'm hoping to get offstage as soon as possible, anyway."

"I don't blame you."

"Is there anything we'll need to do with that? I don't know what would happen if I disappeared but I've been assuming it would be bad."

"I have a saying that almost anything's better than saying something racist on Shortform - uh, which means that disappearing isn't great, but it's much better than some things you could conceivably do instead of disappearing. You might want to have a handoff where you pass on your more popular activities - the healing, in particular - to someone else, record that, and then say you're going to go - I presume traveling is what you do all the time, but 'going to go travel' is pretty legible as a nonspecific no-more-public-eye-please request."

    "We'll take over the healing. -if we're staying, sir."

"I definitely want at least enough clerics here for that, yes. How long do you think that will take to set up?"

"Are you going with a model like Raafi's?"

"Of the healing? What were you doing exactly?"

    "Triage and then by ability to pay, sir."

"Definitely not by ability to pay. And I imagine we'll triage differently knowing about the afterlives - we should prioritize children too young to safely summon, at least."

"That's a really good idea. If you don't use ability to pay the other common options are by lottery or by involvement in some program that recommends them to you - the latter has some awkward history, especially as implemented by religious organizations."

"I generally prefer to leave it up to my clerics to figure out what works in their particular communities; would that have an equivalent here at all, or are things structured too differently?"

"Would - letting the clerics figure it out have an equivalent? Uh, it sounds like they might pick all different things, might not have their criteria clearly posted, is that right?"

"I don't know what you mean by clearly posted," says one of the humans, "but people know how things work at their local church."

    "In the bigger cities they have to post it," adds the half-elf. "Too many people for things to get around by word of mouth. But it's different in one church to the next, yeah, depending on what the congregation needs."

"Word of mouth should not be considered reliable. It's all the more effective for that, people trust their friends' recommendations because they're different from advertisements, but if people actually need to know something you just can't rely on it. There are billions of people. Most of them live in cities - I'm not sure what your standard is for a big city. Also, you're not - hm - you have a privileged position, in your capacity as a church, at home, that you don't have here and won't have for years. Even if we assume the entire extended family of everyone you heal plus fifty people who hear about them online converts on the spot, making you the fastest-growing religion in the world, you won't have 'everyone in town knows how their local church works' status in any town unless you make very geographically concentrated efforts. Also, talking about the needs of the congregation runs into the awkward history I mentioned. There's some lingering bad blood about religious organizations requiring shows of faith, or compliance, and so on, from people in need - historically this was food and shelter, which are no longer scarce enough to cause friction if they're gated from some source, but your brand of healing still is and I worry you'd run afoul of the same bad feeling. Ability to pay is much more palatable as a screening mechanism than - for instance, I don't know what you have in mind - sitting through any given number of sermons, or professing any articles of faith, or anything in that vein."

    "Nothing like that at all."

"When she said 'what the congregation needs' she meant that, not what the church needs - things like prioritizing people who're bringing the harvest in for winter or families already struggling to feed themselves. But in general we're going to say what we mean - the Dweller ran into this problem too and it may have made things worse with him."