"I'll do my best!"

"Very well. You were born in... 4606, correct? Or do elves use some other method of determining their ages?"

She nods. "The same year the Worldwound opened. My father thought it meant I was fated to help close it."

What an excellent opportunity to ask about the early 4600s!

Ember does not really remember the early 4600s well, but she'll do her best! She was born in a forest full of elves and other creatures that she doesn't know the human name for. She thinks the humans might have been having some kind of war, but she's not really sure. In any case, after her mother died, her father decided to bring her north...

Nenio will gladly ignore the rest of the group's conversation to interview Ember! She goes through Ember's travels on the way to Mendev, with only slight frustration at Ember's lack of knowledge of details such as the human names for the places she travelled through, but eventually she does get to the point of asking Ember questions about her arrival in Mendev and eventually Kenabres.

She looks down at her hands. "...Most people were very kind, but the Prelate didn't realize that we were there to help, he thought we were working for the demons. So he and his friends tied us to stakes, and built up a bonfire, and told us to apologize to their gods so we wouldn't have to be with the demons when we died. My father died, but then one of the Prelate's friends changed his mind, so he pulled me out of the fire and helped me get away. ...But he died too."

"I suppose they wouldn't necessarily choose to publicize it if the Prelate had undergone an Atonement that long ago?" speculates Blai.

"I don't know what that is! ...I remember that a few months after my father died, the Prelate left the city for a long time, and people didn't know if he was going to come back?"

"Atonement is a spell that lets someone who has fallen away from the permissible alignments for their sort of empowerment and their empowering god to reconcile with them and restore their lost magic. The spell itself would not have taken long unless there was some kind of incense shortage but the required changes to the subject's state of mind might involve - remedial lessons or something."

"He was trying very hard to keep the city safe, he just got mixed up about who was helping and who was hurting. I don't know if Iomedae would take away his magic just for that. ...I'm not angry with him."

Is this kid an actual agathion from actual Nirvana or something. 

"Even if he was - enchanted, and managed to make a mistake without his own judgment entering into it at all - Iomedae would likely still take his power, for that, the way you'd take a knife away from someone so drunk he mistook his neighbors for potatoes, and Atonement is the way we have to ask that She notice that someone has in this sense sobered up. But it is not hard for me to believe that this is a kind of error it would be characteristic for him to make of his own will." But if he did fall back then he should REALLY have taken Blai's warning a TOUCH more seriously when Blai was like "hey have you considered it is possible to fall".

"It can be very hard to tell. The crusaders kill a lot of people for making very bad mistakes, as if that could make the mistakes go away, even if the people they're killing don't want to hurt people any longer."

"...There's a difference between killing a demon cultist who might have repented and burning a little girl at the stake!"

Head tilt.

"Even in the event that someone has to be executed because they, rightly or wrongly, cannot be trusted, burning at the stake is not a humane method. The Lastwall handbook favors long drop hanging or if that is infeasible beheading or the swiftest possible other practical method."

She didn't know that! That's good to know!

"If they had cut off my head, it would have been hard for the Prelate's friend to change his mind and save me. ...But maybe it's better for other people, I don't really know."

"That might depend on exactly what made him change his mind - it's possible he would have been able to rescue you without himself dying in the process, if it hadn't been fire - but yes, that's a possibility, the best policy does not mean the best thing every time."

Nod.

"Pardon me, sir, are you Thall the Wallflower? Her Majesty requests your presence."

"......Wish me luck, everyone."