"Does that mean it's bad to pray to the gods and ask them to help you, if the thing you're asking for help with isn't really that important?"

"The gods should be doing way less in other countries if it means they can't do as much to help with the Worldwound. Like, if the demons get out, nothing else matters."

 "I heard there's a smaller Worldwound in Garund."

  "I heard Sarenrae is busy making sure Rovagug doesn't get out."

   "Okay, sure, those also seem fine, but it's not like those are the only things they're doing."

"Is there anything we can do to give the Good gods more god-coins to spend?"

"I still don't think that's right. When my little sister was born she was really sick, and we thought she was going to die, but we brought her to a shrine to Sarenrae and Sarenrae did a miracle to save her, and I'm glad she's alive but I don't think it would be worth it to a god if it meant she wasn't able to pick as many clerics."

"Every religion I have ever heard of encourages prayer. I think not answering a prayer if it would not be best to do so all things considered is close enough to free that you should not worry about it against the benefit of providing an allied god information and orienting your thoughts around their philosophy."

"I do not claim to know exactly how the gods are making their spending decisions but the fact that countries exist which operate with more slack than Mendev, including in the form of clerics, is not unrelated to the complement of resources brought to bear against the Wound and other pressing priorities."

"My understanding is that the principal way for mortals to do that is to accomplish the gods' work without requiring their expenditures, or while requiring as little as possible. I believe this is also related to the Commune training that Lastwall runs though I am very interested in finding a way to propagate it elsewhere without losing their efficiency gains."

"Again, I don't know exactly what factors Sarenrae may have been weighing there, or whether there was a genuine miracle at all or how expensive it might be, but it seems plausible to me that if prayers for things like that usually didn't work it would be harder to acquire clerics because fewer people would perceive themselves as aligned with Her based only on assertions that, probably, on other planets, more important things are happening, and also at least Rovagug has not been released. Boneyard-dwelling babies are still an outcome worth some resources to avoid."

One of the Caydenites wants to know if this means he should keep his habit of finding something to spend his spells on before dawn even if it's pretty minor (so that he's not wasting what Cayden spent on those spells) or definitely not do that (if, say, that's more expensive for Cayden).

"I think it's wise to have some emergency capacity even if you usually don't use it - in case something happens during the dawn hour, even if you're normally up early to see about using your spells at the very last minute - and I think it is probably accounted for in the budgeting decisions that you will use your full complement of spells a normal fraction of the time such that it's not worth worrying about, but I don't myself have a very consistent policy on this because I don't know. Getting the information would probably be more expensive than refilling the spells."

The cleric nods.

If Blai doesn't specifically divert this group to some other topic, this group seems perfectly content to occupy him indefinitely with questions about the general concept of intervention budget, though a lot of them boil down to very specific pricing questions that Blai probably does not know the answer to.

Intervention budget is interesting and useful! He's content to talk about it unless they get super into the useless weeds of it.

Over time the questions start to drift away from 'how does this even work' and further towards 'how can we use this knowledge to get more resources for holding the Worldwound.' ("If we worshipped more different gods would they have more to spend on clerics here or would it just mean the gods that people already worship don't choose as many?" "Is there anything we can do with captured demon clerics to make things more expensive for the demons?")

Anyone who thinks they might have the Wisdom for it could stand to contemplate which god they most resonate with and see if they get anywhere - this is why he encouraged that one guy to have a class on Kurgess. This is in much the same spirit that anyone who might have the Cunning for it could try to be a wizard, though. He does not think it's particularly feasible to make things expensive for the demons by this avenue; what they can do to make things expensive for the demons is to win, and the demons won't recoup one metaphorical penny of what they spent.

Eventually, Nenio and Ember return.

"Bird girl seems reluctant to make definitive pronouncements that any individual has a high likelihood of recidivism," Nenio informs him. "However, in most cases, it is trivial to determine her assessment of said likelihood from the observations she does express, so I do not believe that will be a major challenge for our experiment."

"All right, which ones am I merely dressing down?"

Nenio can identify them for him! Those ones (who bird girl claims "were scared, and thought they had a way to stop feeling so afraid, and didn't realize they were hurting people" but "are ready to stop now that I've explained it to them") and that one ("He wasn't really thinking for himself," says bird girl, "just following his friend, but he wouldn't go back to his old ways unless his friend did, and his friend isn't going to") but not that one ("she's very angry with the other gods, because she blames them for not saving the rest of her family, and she's trying to hurt them, even though it's hurting her too") or that one ("he's scared of what's going to happen to him when he dies, and he doesn't realize Urgathoa doesn't care what happens to him, even when I tried to explain it") or that one ("he doesn't want to hurt people, he really doesn't, but this is how he's always done things and he thinks he knows best about whether it's a bad idea"). That one is borderline ("he's so scared, he was willing to get other people hurt if it would protect him but I think he sees now that it isn't, and he won't start up again as long as he believes anyone will find out — so if the Commander just explains to him your ideas for the experiment he'll be fine for sure").

He will include the borderline in the talking-to group.

And he will look very scary.

The cultists/ex-cultists are utterly terrified of him! One of them breaks down sobbing! All of them are tripping over themselves to promise that they'll never do it again, they mean it, they're so sorry for making such a stupid mistake—

"I'm really glad you were willing to give them another chance! None of them are bad people, you know, just scared."

"Ember, do you believe there to be such a thing as a bad person?"

"I think... Deskari might be a bad person? Because he's hurting so many people, like it's fun to him, and he doesn't want to stop even a little, and he isn't even doing it for a reason except to hurt and destroy. But I'm not sure. ...and I know that even if someone isn't a bad person they might choose to keep hurting people, I didn't pretend that anyone was going to stop if they weren't."

"I understand the distinction, I was just curious if you expected the set to be empty. Thank you very much for your help here."

She beams at him. "Thank you for listening!"

The next couple days are comparatively uneventful. Count Arendae introduces Blai to the socialite, who is honored to make a donation to the Fifth Crusade. The wizards decipher another one of the spells from the puzzle structure (an experimental fusion of Haste and Slow that none of the wizards can recall ever seeing before, albeit not one that Thall or Woljif expect to have much practical value). The Crusade encounters its share of issues along the way — more would-be deserters, a fort devastated by a demonic attack, a crate of potions sabotaged in a manner that leaves them detecting Evil, a soldier who decides to test whether the Knight-Commander is really that serious about the rules against raping prisoners — but nothing that poses a threat to the Crusade itself.

It's only a couple more days before they approach Vilareth Ford. The Mendevian line continues north from here, but the terrain is such that this is the most convenient spot for the Crusade's army to cross the river west and then pass through the Wardstone barrier. This will carry with it its own complications, of course — crossing the terrain will be slower without the benefit of roads, the demons will be able to attack them much more easily once they're across the line, they'll need to increase the defenses on the river barges that they're using to replenish their supplies — but the first complication is evident before they've even crossed the river: their scouts report that the demons have rustled up some more cultists, as well as a handful of demons that had made it across the barrier, in order to make an attempt to cut off the Crusade as they cross the river. 

(If anyone was curious YES HE IS THAT SERIOUS.)

Where do all these cultists come from. You'd think they'd run out of, forget "suitably malleable idiots", you'd think they'd run out of people. How many is "some more"?

A couple hundred. (His scouts think not all of them look Mendevian.) The demons are mostly weaker ones, even though they have a harder time getting through the barrier alive, because the stronger ones have mostly taken the opportunity to clear out of the immediate area. A solid majority of the demons are dretches, though, which for all they're easy enough to kill can be incredibly obnoxious if they drop a Stinking Cloud in the middle of your troops.

If the cultists with unholy symbols are with densely clustered enough fellow cultists, he'd like to try dropping some illusions in their midst to see if they can get them using up their channels on each other without also themselves being in range. Whoever can melee dretches fastest can have an Air Bubble to do it with... He'll game out the strategy with little Prestidigitated pieces for everyone who needs to know the high-level plan.

Nenio has lots of experience with illusions and even remembers some of it! She can suggest a few ideas for Silent Images they're likely to find particularly plausible (perhaps a strike team or a group of rival demons teleporting nearby?)

Baroness Gaunther has opinions on which of their warriors can make the best use of an Air Bubble.