(Look, Sister Kerismei can get a little personal with the knives, but it's not like she went to torture school to learn how to work for Hell! That's totally different!)

Blai can go into more detail on the spellcraft lesson plan, with the caveat that it's been a couple decades and he's integrated the knowledge in non-lesson-plan format since then.

Great!

...Once she's asking him about that, she is curious about the torture curriculum. What methods of torture did they cover? What proportion of the course was theoretical as opposed to practical? Did he encounter the claim that torture without the use of truth magic was ineffective as a means of gathering true information?

"I believe your interviewee has already expressed a disinterest in answering such questions."

"Did he? I don't recall that." She turns back to Blai. "Time travel boy, your answers here will be highly useful to my encyclopedia."

"...I'm not sure everyone else wants to hear it. Also please don't call me that, it might prompt awkward questions outside of fairly specific company."

"It is by far your most notable trait, but I will endeavor to forget the moniker." She pauses for a moment. "Done. In any case, select boy, if anyone present prefers to be less informed, they are welcome to leave."

...is anyone leaving or are they all going to evince the desire to listen to the torture class curriculum for some reason.

None of them are leaving. Ember looks a little concerned for him.

"...if you insist. Major topics were avoiding infection-prone injury in anyone we intended to leave alive; the distinction between showy affairs for public display and more illegible methods that may be as unpleasant but are harder for subjects to later describe to others as such; and the applicability to interrogation. It did come up that some people can and will continue to lie especially when they expect it to be hard to verify. There was a mixture of theoretical facts, demonstrations, and practical testing, with the former dominating in terms of class time unless you count the fact that one of the vicars was a hobbyist and usually had someone or other on hand whether we were actively witnessing a demonstration or not."

Ember looks like she is trying very hard not to cry.

"What happened to them afterwards? The people who were tortured, I mean?"

It's lovely to see bird girl developing a passion for scholarship!

"They died, sooner or later. - the ones who were there for that. The students in my cohort all survived."

Ember looks significantly more upset about this than she did when she was talking about being personally burned at the stake! (Not at Blai in particular, just generally upset.)

"And you don't know where the bodies are, so there's no way to save up for a resurrection?"

Of course not, resurrections are for legendary heroes like the great warriors of the First Crusade.

"That... is true, but I have no specific reason to believe that the best use of a resurrection did I have the money for it and the access to those bodies would actually be those people. There are a lot of dead people at any given time."

"—If I had tortured people to death for some reason I would want to bring them back? It would be my fault, so I'd want to fix it, like how if I borrowed someone's spellbook to copy a spell and damaged it I'd want to pay to fix it even though I don't go around giving money to everyone with a damaged spellbook, except more important. I guess if they were happy where they ended up I wouldn't try to bring them back anyway."

But they were from Cheliax. He's not actually sure how often Chelish people are damned but it's got to be more often than usual, otherwise Asmodeus wouldn't waste his time having a country.

"I suppose that might need to go on my list of things I should seek catechism about. It, uh, doesn't come up in the Acts, considering."

"...Maybe if I can learn how to do Resurrections without needing a diamond, like you said, I can bring them back? A-and then they would get to be okay, even if the ones from your timeline weren't..."

Ember's voice is shaking but she is managing not to cry.

"I don't see why you couldn't do that if that is what you'd want to do, apart from the access to the bodies."

"What happened to you there must have been very terrible, but so is what happened to them, and it would be good to help if I can. ...I don't know if there's anything I can do that would help with what they did to you, I'm sorry."

"I don't need resurrecting. ...my counterpart may be in for a bad time, but again there are many people in for a bad time, always."

"It would be good if we could help him too, but I don't know if we can."

Nod.