"Yes. Thank you for the warning." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

The morning prayer crowd has thinned out a little as people have returned to their homes or been redeployed at the Garrison, but there are still plenty of people gathered around Fiducia Rathimus's altar. (The Queen is not in attendance; she generally prefers not to advertise where she'll be praying.)

That's very sensible of her. Blai goes and kneels with everyone else.

Iomedae here is the most recent sitrep but he is going to spend most of this hour desperately trying to compose a SPEECH. He has to INSPIRE PEOPLE OR SOMETHING. He has to do this with TRUE THINGS EXCLUSIVELY. He is going to need those couple of Eagle'ses that Anevia recommended. And the Sending she wanted. It is abstractly nice to be able to do that all-important logistics spell on his own now though he needs to learn wands or scrolls to make ideal use of it. Today though the ten minutes will not make much difference, or, like, it could, but that'd be a heck of a coincidence. Joran's disappearance might have something to do with Staunton's, on the grounds that in most situations people being brothers constitutes them already being connected somehow. That has nothing to do with his speech! He is not going to go stand up and hold out the angel sword and announce that brotherhood constitutes people being already connected somehow!!

WHAT DOES HE SAY AAAAAAAAH he's not sure if a Cultural Adaptation would be worse than this but it might last longer and it's not dismissable and maybe it wouldn't even HELP and maybe he'd just be paralyzed when he's supposed to get up and talk. He could... prep it and cast it then ask Nenio to dispel it when he's done with it... that's so wasteful, he's not even positive she has Dispel... HE JUST NEEDS TO THINK OF LIKE THREE MORE SENTENCES. THREE. THAT'S NOT MANY. WHY IS HE LIKE THIS.

Can he... hang a sentence on the angel sword. Can he be like, here is what I know about the history of this here angel sword. That's a fucking non-sequitur in a public speech about the Crusade. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Can he kill a sentence on introducing himself. No, that's a bad idea for two reasons, one, the Queen may preempt it, and two, someone might recognize his name and if that's going to happen the Queen will be better at addressing the outcry than he will. He's supposed to say something about the bravery of the people of Mendev? The people of Mendev are... mixed... like very VERY mixed, you've got Irabeth on the one end and cultic cowards on the other and absolutely everything in between. Can he say something that is TRUE but HAPPENS to refer only to the quality of the Irabeth-end of the spectrum and does not do so AT ALL POINTEDLY. He could... say... that... he has found finer allies here than he has ever fought beside before?? That's rude to Grec et al but like, Grec is literally evil and tortures people however relaxing Blai finds him to be around. He also does not objectively know the quality of the random adventurers who showed up at #11 because they were all quite appropriately prejudiced about the pentagram. Though in most cases he did not literally fight beside them. Not all though. Sometimes there was something worth a strike team and he got one and there was a fighting and it was of a beside nature. Maybe they're great. Iomedae he is not asking for help with this per se apart from the Splendor enhancements but You should be advised that his next best port of call for speechwriting help is Daeran, so if this matters, which he's not sure, it MIGHT, maybe a LITTLE SMIDGE of help??

He can say that... Mendev has been through profound hardship? Is that a speechy thing to say. It'd lead acceptably into the "possible to close the wound" thing. Mendev has been through profound hardship, this has - permitted? supported? - not time to get hung up on that, he'll hammer out details under the Eagle's - its best people to grow into among the finest allies he's ever fought beside, it is possible to close the Wound. That's three. Three is a lot like four. Maybe he can get away with three.

...he'll swap the Read Magic for a Light, it was annoying to not have Light last night when he was walking around by himself and that's likelier than emergency scroll reading on days of relative downtime.

Uhhhh Air Bubble, Protection from Evil, another Forbid Action because he actually used it and also almost used it before that, Ant Haul in case there's more reconstruction work or anything to benefit from that. He has a slot left. ...Detect Charm. Burst of Radiance. Grace (is he thinking about having to weave his way through that crowd to get somewhere else after having made a speech? MAYBE). Third circle... they probably don't need more Stone Shapes if he wasn't told? Probably don't need a Create Food? Uhhhhhhhh Protection from Energy and...the quasits were annoying, Holy Javelin maybe in case Specifically Quasits show up.

AAAAAAAAAAAAmen.

Iomedae is intimately familiar with the constraints that prevent her mortals from simply casting a Commune before every important decision. Nonetheless, for something of this magnitude, it really would have been a good idea in expectation for her paladin to solicit a Commune! It's not that she thinks her paladin's decision was in fact incorrect, but the policy that led to not spending a Commune here is not one that would in expectation result in good Crusade-related decisions.

Providing this soul with actual guidance on speech-writing would be far too expensive to be justifiable, but the speech going particularly well or particularly poorly could be quite impactful. She can't see it, anymore, but she can make predictions from comparable events in the past. Providing a cleric with different spells from the ones they requested is cheaper than a vision, and there's a spell at first circle that could help him speak persuasively, but she'd be paying Shelyn to grant it and that increases the price significantly. She transmits an information packet to Shelyn anyway — Shelyn has some budget reserved for the Worldwound that was recently freed up—

Hi Iomedae, great to hear from you! It's hard to tell for sure, he's pretty blurry, but your cleric seems like he might find that spell a little uncomfortable? But I do have a cleric nearby who's specifically planning to talk to your cleric later (look! it's that one!), and he wouldn't be able to cast that specific spell on your cleric but I can give him a couple other spells that'll help him help your cleric. I'll even spot you that other spell — it's more in your wheelhouse but it's cheaper to give one cleric spells he didn't ask for than two, and I know that's the sort of thing you care about! Have a great day 💖

Acknowledged. Before you actually do that, what payment are you requesting in exchange for your assistance here?

You don't have to pay me! I'm doing it as a favor! 

...Understood. In that case her cleric can have precisely the spells he asked for.

(Like yesterday's Delay Poison, today's Ant Haul and Protection from Energy feel slightly unusual.)

Probably he has Wardstone Spillage that just makes long spells last longer. He should warn whoever gets them, if he isn't just casting them on himself.

If he's finished his prayers they would like him to do the Sending to Joran Vhane now, please. They have a message written:

Eagle Watch requesting update on time and reason of departure, location, status. Currently assuming abduction or death. Extraction from hostiles likely impossible, not certainly.

and then a single codeword in Celestial.

Blai needs the pronunciation of the codeword clarified and then he goes and finds a quiet place to cast his first very own Sending.

The spell has a verbal component, but most of the component is just the intended message, repeated over and over for ten minutes until it's thoroughly imprinted into the magic. The spell's magic unwinds as he casts it, like a ball of yarn stretched out into a single cord to reach across the distance to Joran Vhane.

The response comes a moment later. I wasn't kidnapped, I left willingly. My brother's a damned fool, or a charmed one, but he's still family, and someone has to look out

(The spell cuts out at that point. Sending does not particularly allow the recipient to spend time carefully composing a reply that fits exactly within the word limit.)

Blai relays this verbatim to Anevia.

"For fuck's sake — sorry."

"You don't need to apologize to me. Obviously this doesn't rule out that he may be enchanted, a responsible departure would have involved a note - was he normally responsible -"

"More responsible than this, at any rate. —He had a chat with the Queen after you left, and he did seem a bit nervous afterwards, but I figured it was just, you know, talking to the Queen."

"Do you know what she said to him?"

Glance around the tavern. "I assume it was, you know, the same thing she was talking to everyone else about. But she didn't give me the details, and she's been busy all morning."

"Well, I suppose it's possible he just really really didn't like the idea."

Sigh. "Well, either way, it doesn't sound like we're getting him back any time soon."

"...how hard is either of them to tag with an enchantment, the new domain spell might be good for the use case."

"...Might depend on whether they're still empowered. Dwarves are hard to shake, and Joran at least is wise enough to be a cleric, but if Staunton's not a paladin any longer... I don't actually know whether that'd make it harder for him to throw off spells."

"I'm not sure either." Nobody happened to try enchanting Blai while he was not a cleric. "Well. It'll depend on whether an opportunity arises."

Nod. "In case it comes up, Joran was third-circle, mainly focused on making magic weapons."

His advisors have yet to arrive — it's still quite early — but the Defender's Heart is serving breakfast, and his companions (less Daeran) are gathered around a table together.