Fair enough, chief.

Irabeth is still at her desk, working on some sort of complicated budgetary calculation.

"A moment? - also if I can take any of that off your plate I would be happy to."

Blink. "—yes, I'd appreciate that. What do you need?"

"The sum of my catechism is a handful of very brief and - not oriented at catechism - conversations with assorted paladins, and only one full readthrough of the Acts, and the Lastwall disciplinary handbook for Worldwound forts. I am missing some things such as - I am uncertain exactly what my obligations would have been if a fight had broken out at the tower and the assassin's quarry had attempted surrender, and how I should handle requests for confidentiality or that information I am offered not be used in certain ways, and possibly a dozen things I've not even thought of. Are you the right person to speak to about that or is there someone less busy?"

"...Well, I've been to Lastwall, so I suppose I have an advantage over most people here at catechism." She glances away for a moment. "I should warn you, though, I was never able to secure admission to the Crusader's War College. I picked up as much as I could while I was there, but I'm no theologian. ...Really, the person you'd want for this is Inquisitor Hawkblade, but he left for Nerosyan a couple weeks before the attack."

She's pretty sure one of the Erastilians is from Lastwall originally, but he's also... an Erastilian. It's not that she has anything against Erastil, but his conception of Lawfulness tends to be much more focused on 'do your duty to your community' and much less on the exact bounds of confidentiality oaths.

"I have spent somewhat more time talking to Abadarans - well, one in particular, the insurance adjuster Fiducia Boian came 'round once a year - and have some general principles from that source, but I would prefer to be sure that I'm doing things correctly according to my present religion and not merely that I'm in the very abstract not about to lose my alignment."

"Well, I'm happy to do the best I can if you're freeing up some time by helping with logistics. If you're looking for a better explanation... well, no one can accuse Mendev's people of wanting for bravery, but certainly many of them are wanting for understanding of what sets Iomedae apart from the other righteous gods." Pause. "There's a spell paladins get at first circle that can be used to stay up all night without tiredness, so long as one does not do anything more strenuous than keeping watch; if you'll permit me to cast it on you, you could potentially have an extra eight hours of wakefulness."

"Is accounting more strenuous than keeping watch according to this spell?"

"Not unless you're the sort to get extremely frustrated about doing figures."

"Not generally speaking. If you would like my help overnight and have the spell to spare I am willing."

Nod. "I have the slots to spare, yes."

Is it touch range? He will hold out his hand.

"Keep Watch."

And she can summarize her current accounting puzzle for Blai for his consideration. (The bartender has a stash of healing potions, and he's selling them at-cost; the Eagle Watch has scraped together some more funds in the past day, and she's trying to work out how much of it to spend on healing potions for the patrols, how much to spend on other supplies, and how much to hold in reserve for purchasing emergency scrolls from the Fiducia. Complicating her analysis is the fact that many of the newer crusaders have turned out to be worse than expected at only using healing potions when genuinely necessary, and the separate fact that some unpredictable fraction of the paladins are going to be newly able to channel tomorrow.)

"I have a channel left, if there is call for it during the night." Best case is like so, worst case like - okay, worst case that is still survivable is like so - how has the population of the tavern changed over the course of the day - how many scrolls does the Fiducia in fact have - would Dyra like to outbid him, on first circle scrolls, or can she not write scrolls, Blai certainly can't - is there a half-hour lesson he could deliver on when to hold back potions and limp in for a channel and when to use them in the field - can they rejigger the teams so people who are already good at this are the ones holding the potions in every team - his group still has some they haven't needed and could redistribute them, the loot ones not the ones Count Arendae provided which aren't Blai's to reassign -

She can provide insight into all of this except the likelihood of Dyra outbidding the Fiducia, though it does seem unlikely that she'd have been able to pick up the skill as the only caster in an underground settlement with no contact with the surface. They currently aren't bottlenecked on healing at the Defender's Heart, even though it has about half again the civilian population as it did this morning, but they don't have enough clerics to send a cleric with each patrol group. (They've lost a full tenth of the crusader force that was at the tavern this morning, though not all of that is confirmed fatalities; some of them were drained of life-force in ways that would be too expensive to be worth healing, or otherwise injured in ways that a channel can't fix, and some may have been delayed on their return and made camp in the city overnight.) Adjusting the teams is a good suggestion; it probably makes sense for her to take point on that (or delegate to Anevia), since there are enough constraints on personnel assignment that explaining them all to Blai would be impractical. They would be glad to have him teach such a lesson if he has a pre-existing one prepared, but if not they don't have a curriculum that they expect to generalize usefully to the current situation. If he doesn't expect his group to need the potions, they certainly aren't going to turn down more of them. They can potentially also furnish his group with a reserve Cure scroll; they are mostly not handing those out to the crusader patrols, even the ones who in principle are capable of casting from them, as it's very difficult to cast from a scroll while illiterate. (They're mainly interested in Rathimus's scrolls for use curing other ailments. She has a chart with the latest information she has on pricing and stock.)

Without the potions he may want Camellia to have a backup healing spell but he and Seelah can even without Count Arendae do a fair amount and retreat conservatively if low on physical integrity. Trading a potion for a scroll sounds straightforwardly fine from his party's perspective even without considering where the potion winds up.

She is glad to make that trade! Does he have a read on whether the Count is going to want to go patrolling with him, stay at the Defender's Heart while still contributing channels and spellcasting, or stay at the Defender's Heart while pointedly refusing to contribute either?

"I could not be confident in the matter. He was helpful today and did not object from detours that delayed our reaching here, but it was obviously not his first choice of occupation."

Nod. She sketches a few drafts of channel rotations tomorrow depending on whether the Count is contributing his channels to the Defender's Heart. 

"Did you want my counsel on the theological matters you mentioned, or any others? —I won't be offended if the answer is no, under the circumstances."

"I would, thank you."

Nod. "Do you have a preference for where we begin?"

Headshake.

In that case she's going to start with surrenders, that being the first thing he brought up. The single most important point to be aware of — he should be familiar with this if he's read the Lastwall handbook, but it comes up frequently with Mendevian crusaders and foreign adventurers — is that if he makes specific commitments, he needs to then follow through on those commitments. Sometimes crusaders whose grasp of Law is particularly shaky will have the 'bright' idea to promise to spare cultists if they surrender, and then not spare them; this is absolutely not allowed. Relatedly, he is not authorized to commit to sparing cultists conditional on them surrendering.

He is responsible for ensuring that allies under his command abide by the commitments he has represented himself as having made. Recommended practice is to communicate to his allies those commitments, the fact that he expects his allies to abide by them, and the steps he will take to enforce them. He would straightforwardly be obliged to intervene if one of them refused to accept a surrender that he had represented himself as willing-to-accept; she's not confident in the full range of recommended options in that scenario, but she's heard "yell at them to stop" suggested as acceptable in cases where the ally just straightforwardly missed the surrender, and "trip the ally" suggested as a usually-nonlethal incapacitation method. (If he intends to employ the latter option, it is strongly recommended to communicate this fact to his allies in advance.) Irabeth's best guess is that the theologically orthodox thing to do with the assassin was to inform him in advance that Blai intends to accept surrenders and communicate the circumstances under which he would interfere with the dwarf's assassination, with the understanding that the dwarf might then choose not to assist him, and to take reasonable steps if available to communicate to the enemies that the dwarf is not in fact under his command and thus should not be expected to hold to Blai's commitments. (The standard mechanism here is uniforms. He probably cannot acquire matching uniforms for his team, though now that it's come up it occurs to her that that might be an actually-useful application of this golem that was donated to Kenabres a century ago by some country in Tian Xia, which is capable of casting various illusions on gear.)

While she was in Lastwall, she heard a sermon arguing that if you're fighting an opponent, and someone vaguely on your side attempts to surrender, and someone on your opponent's side puts themself at risk to stop one of their allies from continuing to attack your ally, you should attempt to avoid deriving an advantage against the opponent who tried to stop their ally from attacking yours. It was a great sermon but she thinks it is highly unlikely to come up under the present circumstances.

Policy in Mendev is to not accept surrender from demons, even unconditional surrender, unless they specifically want to interrogate them; they don't have ways to hold most species of demons safely, and 'surrenders' by demons are nearly always some form of trap. Irabeth understands this to be religiously permissible so long as they take reasonable steps to ensure they don't benefit from anyone mistakenly assuming that they would accept a surrender from a demon.

Questions?

Was he at least right about it not being a tactical priority to start fighting the dwarf assassin while hemmed in by various demons if the assassination target had for some reason chosen that moment to attempt surrender, assuming Blai didn't go in shouting that he would accept such surrenders in the first place or claim the dwarf under his command and merely has it as a background thing?

He's not sure going around in illusory uniforms sends the right message to anyone who can notice that this is what's going on. Maybe just a sash or something.

He'll go over all this with his party once they're awake.