"A completely verbal stern talking-to and letting her go with the others should suffice, then, and I'd like to know who had the command of her for future reference."

"Understood." The messenger provides that information. "As a separate matter, one member of the Condemned appears to have taken advantage of the distraction of the Queen's announcement to desert — that one doesn't urgently require your attention, we expect to be able to apprehend him, but we wanted to make you aware of the situation. He was in for theft, we don't expect he poses a threat to anyone."

"Thank you, keep me posted."

"I will. That was all."

"Dismissed."

The messenger leaves.

"Can you describe the circumstances under which you prayed to each of the gods you mentioned?"

"Abadar about the budget and finding people who were skimming, Gozreh about the weather, Nethys about the advancement and efficacy of fort wizards."

More notes. "Prior to your empowerment as a cleric of Iomedae, what did you know or believe yourself to know about her?"

"I knew Her alignment, portfolio, extremely loose biography to the effect that she was Aroden's paladin and ascended by Starstone after sealing Tar-Baphon - symbol and colors, habit of picking more paladins than clerics, and patronage of Lastwall."

"Can you summarize your understanding of her portfolio at the time in more detail? Under what circumstances did you become aware of the information you mentioned?"

"I knew the 'victory over evil' phrase and had heard of the triage alternative gloss. We covered it in seminary, it would have been considered embarrassing to be outright ignorant of basic things like that even if they weren't meant for public Chelish consumption."

"Can you summarize what else was covered in your seminary curriculum?"

"It was not a very short course but, topicwise, besides that genre of facts we covered the Disciplines, Infernal, spellcraft as applicable to clerics, Asmodean theology, and torture. It was also around this time that I picked up what little of Prestidigitation I have, as part of an experimental program."

That would have been really good to hear about earlier when he specifically asked whether there were awful things he should know about now!!!

"Can you tell me more about the experimental program for teaching Prestidigitation? What teaching methods were employed? How difficult did you find it to learn? Did it confer any other benefits, such as the ability to read arcane scrolls?"

"I was given a Prestidigitation spellbook page from someone who washed out of a wizarding academy, and a textbook about the spell, and once weekly could ask questions of a wizard the seminary borrowed for the purpose, and I was able to learn to hang it largely by rote over the course of months and catch it by analogy to orisons, which sufficed to allow me to retain the page - though I don't have it now - and figure out one of the applications of the spell, as you've seen. It was more difficult than memorizing cleric spells and their applications but less difficult than Infernal. I have not actually tried to read an arcane scroll; I've never had one that I considered disposable in case it failed destructively."

"Perhaps I can procure one for you. Scrolls are a particular specialty of mine, and if your training was sufficient to enable you to read arcane scrolls that could be highly valuable information."

"What do you do in torture class?"

"I believe that question is more than adequately answered by the name."

Blai inclines his head in Daeran's direction in acknowledgment.

"What was the focus of your lessons on spellcraft?" All knowledge is worth having, but this is really much more interesting than torture!