NETHYS WHAT DID YOU DO

Why do people assume that every time some human falls into an interplanar vortex, it's Nethys's fault. 

NETHYS. 

He is INNOCENT. 

He appears to have fallen into some sort of... war zone? White people are being rushed into what is recognizably a hospital, although the tech level is much lower than Bun would expect for any white-person country. They don't even seem to have IVs. 

Are those... sword wounds?

He is not trained for mass casualty events. (His hospital did One (1) Mass Casualty training, and he spent the entirety of it in the morgue because the police were on his case about getting the autopsy report done yesterday.) But he is still a doctor, and he is obligated to help.

Even if he doesn't have IVs (or clorhexidine, or... anything you'd really want in a mass casualty event), he has hands and the ability to apply pressure to it.

--those sure are wounds made by a large bladed weapon. He will question why there is a blade based emergency later.

Fortunately, this is the exact attitude Cheliax's medical professionals have about some random person they don't recognize from Tian Xia showing up to help.

Someone talks to him in a language that is not Thai and also not English. Uh, it is probably also not Chinese or Japanese or Korean? Bun probably should have taken language classes. 

It could statistically be... German or something? He has no idea.

He also has no idea how to communicate he's here to help? If they don't share a language, his hospital ID card will mean nothing to them. He's just going to-- hold out his hands to show he has no weapons, and smile. This seems the right thing to do in a sword emergency.

The person is talking to Bun in even more enthusiastic Whatever That Is. 

Also, they have a bunch of burn patients over here and they are not doing well. Like, no one is even bothering to dress any of their wounds. 

WHY AREN'T THEY DRESSING THE BURN PATIENTS?

The next question is WHY ARE THERE BURN PATIENTS?, but that can wait.

As can trying to work out how to communicate! Bandages on the burn patients first.

...uh okay if the random guy from Tian Xia is going to dress the burn patients' wounds and seems like he knows at all what he's doing then they can go back to dealing with the results of the fucking demon invasion from the Worldwound. They can figure out Tongues later. 

This is a weirdly poorly equipped hospital. There don't seem to be any antibiotics or pain relievers or anything like that. No one is wearing gloves or masks. They're not even washing their hands between patients. 

If he had any time when he wasn't dealing with patients that were at risk of dying if he didn't do something right now, he would hunt down a tap, but-- he knows that he's not going to find one.

He is in a hospital with basically no modern medicine. He has an enormous amount of critically injured patients. And he is going to do His Best. Because he is a doctor, and that is what you are meant to do. (Even if after the second patient he is Highly Aware of the blood on his hands, and the fact he really, really does need to wash them so he doesn't spread infection to the patients with no skin.)

The patients just keep coming. No bullet wounds, but every other kind of injury he can imagine: people who fell from an enormous height, people who were bit or clawed by some kind of gigantic animal, people who had acid thrown on their faces. There are an odd number of bizarre injuries he doesn't recognize the cause of at all. Like, any of those is weird-- he's a pretty damn good medical examiner-- but the sheer number of them is overwhelming.

You know what would be very convenient? Being able to ask what on Earth is happening out there. The best he can guess is a war, but... that doesn't explain the animal bites (how big is that animal, anyway???) or the lack of gunshot wounds.

What would also be very nice is some running water so he can decontaminate the acid burn victims. And clean the wounds of the bitten and stabbed and crushed people.

It feels wrong to just keep putting on bandages and not supply any other medical help, but what else can he do? --he really hopes this hospital doesn't run out of those.

He could probably try to communicate a desire for water through mime?

...this is going to get interesting.

He goes up to the person who was trying to talk to him before, and mimes drinking.

...uh sure? They have some buckets of water over here, does he have... a flask... or anything?

Thank you so much kind person. Buckets are great. He bows before realising that... probably doesn't mean anything to them?

...these are buckets of unknown providence. Knowing this situation, there's a good chance the water is not clean. Knowing the general luck this place seems to have, it's probably contaminated with something awful. He only uses it on the acid burn patients. Getting whatever's burning them off is worth the risk of infection. ...washing his hands is probably worth it, too.

Weird Tian Xia treatment methods are weird! Probably this guy is some kind of cleric or something though.

The injured people keep coming. Hour after hour after hour.

He has been through residency, and can continue treating people well past the time humans who have not gone through medical training need to sleep.

That's good! Because the number of injured people is absolutely not paying any attention to Bun's need for sleep!

He Is Not Looking At His Watch.

...also he is doing his best not to judge the bizarre things his fellow medics are doing. He should, but he has enough on his plate already. As long as they aren't murdering the patients.

He's fairly sure this is a warzone. There's no other way there's this many casualties coming through.

Right, like, the guy spreading blood on his patients over there while chanting, it is important not to have questions about that. 

...No, that's a bad problem. This is-- how you get bloodborne disease? (Technically that's true, but seems inadequate for the sheer amount of 'what the hell?')

He is going to Meaningfully Hold Out a bucket to that guy.

That guy is not going to take the bucket! He does not know weird Tian Xia medicine!

Take The Bucket. Put Down The Blood. (...where did he even get the blood from???)

This flask of devil's blood he has on him! Obviously!

If he knew what that was, he'd be more alarmed.

...treating the general public for several years has not completely got rid of his sense of embarassment, but has got rid of it enough. He points at the blood. "Blood dangerous." He shakes his head very dramatically. He points at the bucket and nods. "Water safe." (Not really, but close enough.)

This is the universal facial expression of Mind Your Own Fucking Business.

...Every minute he has this fight, someone is going unbandaged. Even if he can see the future Hepatitis outbreak.

He's just going to pointedly leave the bucket next to him, and then go treat more patients so he can get to them the Walking Bloodborne Epidemic gets to them.

He kicks over the bucket.

Fucking Tian Xia. 

Do not! We have limited buckets here! ...He is very much looking forward to a) in the short term, the flow of patients slowing and b) in the longer term, learning the language so he can clear up whatever bizarre medical misapprehensions are leading to people putting blood on their patients. (Blood in patients: sometimes good. Blood on patients:  bad.)

The flow of patients is really, really not cooperating with him. 

The sun is setting. He is tired and hungry and it is becoming increasingly obvious he put in an entire day of work before he got transported to Blood On Patients Land.

In theory he should rest. He would be more effective.

But he doesn't really trust the food or the beds or the medics here not to somehow kill him or the patients if he stops.

More bandages, more buckets of water, more dressing wounds, more weird blood-smearing and other questionable medical practices...

His hands are starting to hurt and his vision is starting to blur.

Even if he's swaying on his feet he isn't putting blood on his patients.

And his vision blacks out. 

When he wakes up, he is in a tent, with a bed and not much else. 

It's... Nice of them to put him in a tent?

He's awake, but feels awful. Presumably because he kept going till he passed out. But there are people who are hopefully alive because he did that.

He needs to get back to the field hospital.

... After he acquires the Least Suspicious Local Food.

No, he is not going to do that.

Chrisor gets a Message that the weird Tian Xia cleric is awake, walks over, and taps him with Tongues. "Who are you, what god do you worship, and why are you here? No country in Tian Xia sent anyone to the Worldwound." 

(Why they didn't tell him about the weird Tian Xia cleric as soon as he appeared, instead of letting him touch literally dozens of Chelish soldiers, Chrisor has no idea. Someday, everyone in the world will be burned in the purifying fires of Hell until they become perfect instruments of Asmodeus's will, and then Chrisor will stop being surrounded by incompetents.)

(He'll figure out some kind of... interesting... punishment for them later.)

Being able to understand this guy is both very convenient and very weird. "I'm not from Tian Xia, I've never heard of there. I'm from Thailand. I came here by accident."

Why is his life like this.

"Tian Xia is the name in Taldane, which is the language I'm speaking, of the continent that people who look like you come from."

"--I have never heard of 'Taldane.'"

Obviously not! You're from some godforsaken region of Tian Xia!

"Now you have. --Who are you, what god do you worship, and how did you get here?"

"I'm Doctor Bunnakit Songsakdina, I worship the Buddha--" why is this relevant "-- and I don't know how I got here."

...that's weird. 

"...I've never heard of the Buddha. Are they-- Chaotic, Lawful, Good, Evil...?"

Of course he hasn't heard of him, he's a random white man from Taldane. "-- I have a feeling those terms mean something specific. To my knowledge he's 'Good.'" Or he's definitely good, but for all Bun knows good means something different. (And he has very little clue what 'Chaotic' would mean in the context of religion.)

"...Pharasma sorts all people into one of nine afterlives when they die based on whether they are Good or Evil and Lawful or Chaotic?"

"...no."

"...you're from a different plane."

Chrisor's day is much more interesting and some clerics are about to wind up way more tortured.

"--That matches what I've seen." He didn't expect to be on a different... Planet? But it explains why people think you should put blood on wounds.

"Are you a mortal?"

Not a question he expected to get asked! "Yes."

"Human, or some other species?"

"To my knowledge I'm human."

--he is an incompetent and he is going to be purified in the fires of Hell.

"Give me a second, I'm going to put up a Zone of Truth. --Do you have magic on  your plane?"

... What is he doing? "Some people believe in it, but I've never seen any personally. Unless defibrillators are advanced magic." He smiles before realising that joke probably makes no sense to the person questioning him.

"We don't have that spell. --People who are in a Zone of Truth can't lie. It'll last ten minutes. Just enough time to make sure that you're not someone from Tian Xia pulling something. Since I believe that Zone of Truth works and you don't, I should ask you questions under it and not the other way around." Just in case he can't throw it off (he can) or evade the truth without looking suspicious (he can). You need multiple layers of protection.

He has no reason to believe a 'Zone of Truth' will actually do anything, that's correct, but he doesn't intend to lie. Regardless of whether one should be completely honest with unknown... Authority figures?... right now he knows nothing and if he plays nice he might know something. "Of course. Is there something I can do to help with that?"

"Zone of Truth," he says, moving his hand in a precise fashion and touching the symbol he has around his neck. (And throwing it off himself, obviously.) "Try lying."

I'm from Taldane. --That's just. Not coming out of his mouth. That's a little disconcerting.

As is seeing someone cast an actual spell with an actual effect.

Disarming smile. "I can see the usefulness of that."

"Quite. --Can you repeat the things you said before? Your name, that you're human as far as you know, that you don't know who Pharasma is or what Law and Chaos are?"

"My name is Doctor Bunnakit Songsakdina, I am human unless something I am not aware of has happened, and I don't know 'Pharasma,' 'Law' or 'Chaos.'"

"What things that you've seen so far are strangest to you?"

"On a small or large scale? On a large scale, I don't know what if injuring all those people and I sincerely hope it stops. On a smaller scale: your medics are sprinkling blood into burn patients. Do not do that." Finally, he can actually communicate the problem through something other than bucket mime.

"...why?"

"I do not know if different planes have different diseases, but on my plane that would be a very good way to spread diseases that I don't know if you can test or treat here." If they don't even have antibiotics or painkillers...

"It's Infernal Healing, it's fine, I'll explain later. --You're a medic?"

That sounds... Less than fine, but he can work out how worried he's going to be later. "I'm a doctor, yes. A medical examiner, but outside of that I mostly work in Emergency."

"And you have different healing magic? A defibrillator?"

Nethys! Leave the anomaly alone!

okaaaaaaay but it wouldn't be entertaining if he had a meltdown about magic existing. It is much more entertaining if he just casually accepts it as a fact of the world! More people, to Nethys's mind, should casually accept magic as a fact of the world. This would lead to more cool magic.

SHE IS FILING A REPORT WITH PHARASMA

Don't you want to see what happens if you combine magic with the germ theory of disease?

NO

"Defibrillators aren't magic. If you have a heart beating in a dangerous rhythm, if you shock it with electricity, it can restart with a better rhythm."

"...what's electricity?"

--wait, no, that is definitely and 100% against a bunch of godagreements! You're not just supposed to intervene in things! You have to get your humans to do that!

Actually Nethys negotiated an exception where he's allowed to make visitors from Earth who don't know magic exists be surprisingly chill about the concept of magic.

...

No one thought it would come up much.

.

.

.

He likes Baba Yaga, okay? Magic house with chicken feet. Very Nethysian.

...he is neither a teacher nor a physicist, and has no good way to explain it. "...very controlled lightning."

"Oh, we have those spells. And you use them to restart people's hearts?"

Resurrection without diamonds, Resurrection without diamonds, Resurrection without diamonds--

"You'll need CPR to restart a heart that has stopped, and defibrillation can turn a bad-CPR-rhythm into something more survivable. --CPR doesn't need equipment." Which should be good news to him seeing how badly equipped the hospitals are. "Just training and good luck."

Resurrection without equipment.

"Can it be done by someone who isn't a caster?"

"...we have no casters and people regularly succeed in it."

"...then how do you do magic?"

"We... don't?"

"...none at all? But what does the Buddha do?"

"He achieved Nirvana and taught others how to." 

...so he's within one step of Neutral Good. That's fine. Chrisor can work with this. Good is just Evil which hasn't discovered how glorious Evil is yet. 

He's not going to get fucking Lastwall get their hands on this. 

"Our gods tend to be more interventionist, they give people abilities like the one I'm currently using. --Your medical techniques can be used by anyone then? Like plows?"

"You need training to use our medicine. CPR is unusual in that you can train someone in one day. For something more comprehensive, you need years of training. I'll admit I don't know enough about plows to know how much training you need for one."

"How high Intelligence do you need? --Or Wisdom or Charisma, I guess."

Why does this place keep using words strangely. "You need to be smart, but you make it sound... quantifiable."

"--I suppose you wouldn't-- we have spells that can detect people's levels of those qualities." And also read their mind, but he doesn't need to mention that to Bun, now does he. "I can do it for you when the Zone of Truth is up, if you like. --What kinds of things can you do with... non-magical healing?"

"Prevent and treat infections, set bones, keep hearts and lungs and kidneys functioning-- Those are examples. There are still things that we cannot treat, but they are thankfully getting less and less."

"...prevent infections? So if a child was going to get the pox, could you prevent it?"

...of course they don't have vaccines. Why would he have ever thought they had vaccines. "You could, yes. ...We actually eradicated smallpox, because we stopped so many people from getting it." The list of things he needs to help this world get right now is growing alarmingly long.

"...we would appreciate that a lot."

So many fewer children sent to the Boneyard, before Hell has a chance to shape them...

"I'm unfortunately not an expert on the process, but I will help."

"Anything that results in fewer dead children is better than what we have now." Bun's Neutral Good, all right. And Chrisor doesn't want to figure out how to manipulate him without more of a shape of his mind. He dismisses the Zone of Truth without telling Bun he did. "May I try the spells that determine your mental abilities? I am curious how many people on Golarion-- that's the name of our planet-- would be able to do them. People on different planes tend to have quite different mental abilities."

"If it will help, certainly."

He casts Detect Desires. What do we see here?

There are whole lot of people dying out there, and he is in a position to fix it if they'll let him help. He just needs mouldy bread and salt and boiled water and whole lot of cowmaids--

His Charisma is 13.

That's Neutral Good, all right. 

Detect Anxieties?

He's in a strange world. If he makes mistakes, or isn't as effective as he could be, many people are going to die. (He does not want to make plausible calculation of how many will.)

Oh, and his entire ability to talk and communicate right now hinges on one other person he can't be completely sure he can trust.

His Wisdom is 12.

...so he has to be trustworthy. Check. That's not too hard. 

"Wisdom is-- intuition, willpower, situational awareness, good judgment. Your wisdom is twelve, normal people on Golarion are ten, eighteen is as high as you can get. Charisma is force of personality, persuasion skills, ability to get people to do what you want. You're thirteen, same other numbers. So if wisdom and charisma matter that won't be that bad. I need to take a break before I can do the intelligence one, do you want to ask me questions?" 

"I'd be very surprised if medical skills were gated on your charisma. Wisdom maybe-- there's a lot of things you can learn, but you need to feel to be actually good at. But I have met some incredibly uncharismatic doctors in my time.

--I've just realised I never got your name." Hopefully names are not private or something in this culture.

"Inquisitor Chrisor. 'Inquisitor' means that it's my job to make sure that people are following the laws."

...Ah, he's police. (Maybe police on this plane are less... Like That than the Bangkok police? He can hope.)

"It's good to meet you, Inquisitor Chrisor."

"Perhaps the most important fact about our world is that when you die you are sorted into one of nine afterlives by Pharasma, goddess of death, based on two axes-- Good, Evil, and Neutral, and Law, Chaos, and Neutral. I work for Cheliax, which is a Lawful Evil country, and I promise you that is not at all as bad as it sounds."

I'm hoping so. "I can see how the afterlife would be important."

"Taldane is a language that was significantly influenced by Good people"-- not wrong-- "and Tongues has a tendency to give you the connotations of words? Which is that they want to help people and make everything perfect, and we want to destroy everyone and make everyone miserable. I don't know how you'd run a country on everyone wanting to hurt everyone else but I can't imagine they'd be able to send troops to the Worldwound."

He is very capable of believing in authorities that are so bad at their job that they may as well want to hurt people. ...not that he isn't going to hear out Chrisor. "I'm assuming the Worldwound is what is injuring all those people?"

"It's a portal to where the demons-- Chaotic Evil entities-- live, which is infinite, so there are an infinite number of demons trying to enter. There's an international military effort to keep the demons from escaping and hurting people. Cheliax provides some of the largest groups in support."

...that sounds like a plausible explanation for what he was seeing! "Lawful and Chaotic Evil do not get along?"

"Chaotic Evil doesn't get along with much of anyone, even Chaotic Neutral hates them. --I think I can cast the intelligence spell now, if you'd like."

"If it would help you." Intelligence is probably going to be the largest barrier to spreading medical knowledge.

He casts Detect Thoughts. How is he doing so far?

Bun is kind of suspicious of Chrisor, but that's at least partially because he has no way to check if what Chrisor is saying is true. (There's something under those thoughts about the people who upheld the law on his plane, and their general level of actually doing their job.)

His Intelligence is 15.

That's fixable. And honestly Chrisor has an angle on how to fix it. 

"So, Law is about-- keeping your promises, cooperating with other people, the rule of law, following contracts, that sort of thing. Chaos is about rebellion, breaking the rules, doing whatever you feel like no matter what the consequences are."

"I'd say I could see why Chaotic Evil would be a problem, but you have mentioned translation issues."

"Yes."

And here's the part where Chrisor gambles.

He considers and dismisses the possibility of simply kidnapping him. Chrisor knows what torture is good for, and you can't get information from it, not reliably. They'll simply tell you whatever they think will get the pain to stop, whether it's true or not. Bun is clever, and he knows things that Cheliax doesn't. They want him creative. They want him to think about what spells to use to make defibrillators, or other fantastic things Chrisor can't even imagine. They want him to cooperate. They want him-- as much as it pains Chrisor to think it-- not broken. 

Deception, then. 

The task is to give him a view of Evil that they can maintain, through trained actors and censoring books and strategic use of illusions and mind control. Not forever; Chrisor is confident in his ability to tempt Bun towards Evil, given enough time. Bun does not seem sophisticatedly Good. He is no paladin of Iomedae. And Good, fundamentally, can't comprehend Evil; there are pleasures that Evil can offer that Good cannot even imagine.

But it has to hold long enough, and it has to make Bun enthusiastic about working with them.

He has some knowledge of Bun's psychology-- not enough, but some, Detect Anxieties and Detect Desires are his everyday tools and he is skilled with their use-- and he's made a study of Good people, at his time at the Worldwound. Bun seems almost monomaniacally obsessed with medicine. The thing to do is to give him an explanation that allows him to just do medicine, without thinking about it too hard.

Chrisor has only a few moments to think of it, and for months if not years they'll have to maintain the deception. If he succeeds, it will be the greatest deed of his life. If he fails, he will have all eternity to understand the depths of his inadequacy. (There are no excuses. Lack of time to think doesn't matter. The only option is perfection.)

It's exhilirating. 

Chrisor briefly gives thanks for this opportunity to serve Asmodeus.

"Good is about-- harmony, peace, the natural way of things, knowing the box you're in and not stepping outside it. Evil is about changing things. Evil is about saying-- this is not the right way for things to be, this can be better than this. When we die and go to Hell, Asmodeus reshapes us to be-- the most ourselves. The way that we should have been all along. Perfect."

"I can see why people would call that Evil."

(He's right that Bun is the sort of person who will look at a system and go "the system has made a decision, but it is a stupid decision and I have elected to ignore it." And he has landed on a world that-- through what he can tell is just ignorance-- needs a whole lot of fixing.)

Being an Asmodean means never having to be sorry about being rightly proud. 

"--So I very much doubt that Good is going to be fond of you at all."

"You would know more about it than me. --What needs fixing first?"

"The first order of business is to get you somewhere safe, far away from both the forces of Good and the demons constantly pouring through the Worldwound. The second order of business is to get you food and sleep on a real bed."

"I am happy to help here. I have experience in emergency medicine."

"But if you teach us what you know, hundreds of people can help here the way you would."

"I can't promise to be a good teacher, but I will do my best."

"It's not like there's anyone else to do it. --I was going to explain to you about Infernal Healing."

"An explanation for the blood would be good."

"It's devil's blood. It's magical. It won't hurt them. If you watched, you'd see a soldier go from dying to standing up and talking and walking around a few minutes later. --Good clerics can channel positive energy, which means they can just-- straightforwardly magically heal people from injuries. Evil clerics can't, they channel negative energy, which can only be used to hurt living beings, which is nearly entirely useless. Infernal Healing is expensive and not nearly as good and-- we have to save it for patching up people at the Worldwound, we can't use it to treat the peasants. We need you a lot."

"That sounds better than a lot of what we have." (Though he is going to want to do some shoe leather epidemiology to check it isn't spreading something exciting and bloodborne.) "But there's a lot of... Basic things I could help with."

"I hope so. --I'm going to assign you a Security person. I don't know how long it is going to take the Good gods to notice you're here but I'm quite worried. Tanidio will do well, I think."

"I'm assuming the Good gods wouldn't approve of improving medicine?"

"Well, it's the natural way of things that children get smallpox, you know."

... Wanting to fight several deities is not a helpful impulse. "We'd better get on to overturning the natural order then."

It is said that there is, at most, one competent Security on any major project. Usually there is none. If there are two, probably it would release Rovagug.

Tanidio is the Chelish Worldwound battalion's competent Security.  

Chrisor calls for Tanidio and drops Detect Thoughts before he shows up, a fact that will cause a great deal of embarrassment for everyone going forward.

And the most beautiful man in the world appears in Bun's tent. 

Bun is a consummate professional, with the best poker face on this plane. "It's good to meet you."

So does Tanidio! Which is good because he's just learned that people from Tian Xia are gorgeous.

"The pleasure is all mine," he says, in a tone that implies that the pleasure is genuine, intense, and deeply sexual.

Presumably this is just how Politeness In Cheliax works, and not as flirtatious as it sounds.

"So you work security here?"

"He is a visitor from another plane." Tanidio can be trusted to pick up the subtext here about why flirting is a terrible idea, which is why he is the only competent Security. "He's human as far as we know. His plane doesn't have magic, but they have extraordinary medical technology. I've explained alignment to him-- Good is about harmony and peace and not changing things, Evil is about making things better and knowing this is not the way that things have to be, Law is about keeping your agreements and rule of law, Chaos is about rebellion and breaking the rules. I'll need you to keep him safe from the Good gods."

"Of course, sir." He says this flirtatiously to Chris because flirtation is his natural way of being, and to make Bun think it's less likely he's trying to seduce him, and because Chris does have a way with a flogger.

The implications of the lies here are... complex. He wants a diagram.

To Bun: "I do. It's my job to make sure everyone is safe."

... Yeah, this is just how Cheliax Politeness Is. "I hope I don't take up too much of your time away from keeping everyone else safe."

"It sounds like if I keep you safe, then more people will be safe, especially from the pox, which I can't do much of anything about otherwise."

"I wouldn't want to make dramatic promises about smallpox."

"Well, it's a gamble that's worth making, at any rate."

"For one thing he might turn out not to be human in the sense Golarion humans are human, and so none of his medical knowledge works."

... He hadn't considered that, and that is an alarming possibility. "All the patients I saw seemed human enough, though I can't be sure how much I helped."

"I want to get him out of the Worldwound. I'm going to figure out what kind of houses we can commandeer, you sit with him and make sure no one gets up to anything interesting."

And he knows that Tanidio is going to run a Detect Thoughts, mostly stick to the truth except when absolutely necessary, and avoid alienating Bun. Reliable subordinates! They're so excellent. 

In fact Tanidio does immediately cast Detect Thoughts before Chrisor leaves, so he can say it's something defensive in case Bun asks about it. 

"I hear you fainted in the medical tent."

"In my defence, there were a lot of critically injured patients, and a lot of medics doing alarming looking things."

"I suppose Infernal Healing does look terrifying if you don't know what it is."

"Where I'm from, we know blood can spread diseases, and are-- a bit paranoid about that."

"...well, we know you shouldn't drink sick people's blood?"

"There's some where I'm from where it can take a decade for you to get symptoms, but you can spread it the whole time."

"...that doesn't sound that bad? If you're not sick the whole time."

"If you have access to medicine from my world that I don't know how to make, it won't kill you. But if that's not the case it is deadly. --You might not have it at all, of course, I wouldn't know."

"We have-- fevers, the pox, cholera, syphilis, dengue, brainworms, demonplague, mumps, rubella, dysentary, bonechill, blood veil, red ache--"

That's a fun combination "actual disease he recognises," "that's not a disease, that's a symptom" and "... what?"

"Some of those sound the same as the diseases in my world. Some... Are not."

"I guess you wouldn't expect them all to be the same. --What kinds of things would you need to teach us about medicine?"

"Where I'm from, medicine is very-- specialised? So there are quite a few things I know the theory of, but I don't know how to make myself. But I imagine you don't have germ theory, or the theory of evolution, and there are other things I do know enough of how to do and make."

"--we don't know either of those, no. Should we... collect students from a wizard's academy that you can teach?"

"More people working on the problem would probably help." Things he is qualified to do: teach people working in a modern hospital how to be medical examiners. Things he is not really qualified to do: teach ?wizards? modern medicine from the ground up. (If only a pharmacist had been dropped with him...)

"What kind of things do you need to be comfortable? --I think Inquisitor Chrisor has just assigned me as your point person for answering questions about Golarion and making sure you have things you need, because"-- I'm third-circle and specialize in Enchantment-- "if I'm going to be your Security I'm going to be following you around a lot anyway, and Inquisitor Chrisor trusts me not to be an idiot."

He's just going to have to work extra hard to be Professional if Tanidio is going to be around all the time. "I'll admit I don't know about the food situation here."

"...do you need something to eat, I can get a servant to bring that."

" ... Breakfast would be good, but I was more wondering if Taldane had chillis." Please tell him Taldane has chillis. Chillis may as well be a food group.

"...I have never heard of chillis. You should have breakfast. I think that one of my jobs is going to be making sure you take care of yourself."

Alas, he has been burdened with a chilli-less existence. "I wouldn't want to burden you. I can take care of myself."

"Can you," he says with a flirtatious smile. 

(He can't help it, okay!)

It would be impossible, and cruel for him to even try.

"I can cook for myself."

"...can you cook for yourself over an open fire using ingredients you don't recognize. Also, have you eaten in the past day."

"--okay, that's more of an open question."

He calls for a servant!

The food is some kind of meat soup with carrots and parsnips and peas, and some almost-stale bread to eat with it. 

It's not great, but in its defence a) they are in a warzone and b) he is hungry enough not to care.

"Here, let me--" he says, and suddenly the food tastes quite a lot like it has chillis in it. 

"--That's quite impressive."

No crushing on the security guard. That's probably a breach of ethics or something.

He can't do Detect Thoughts and Prestidigitation at the same time, which is fine, because they're not discussing anything especially sensitive. 

"Prestidigitation, it's the first thing a wizard learns. You can probably learn it yourself, you're clever enough, and flavor your own food. --It does a couple of other things. Most wizards who can't make a higher circle make their money doing laundry with Prestidigitation."

"--laundry magic would be convenient if you didn't have machines." He is probably not going to have the time to learn spells for a While, considering the amount of medicine he needs to teach and implement.

"Cheliax has the most wizards of any country in the world, because we educate all our children, and anyone who's intelligent enough to go to wizard school can. I wouldn't have been able to otherwise." Good people like that kind of thing, right?

"Universal education is always good." Good on Cheliax for having that.

"We got a place," Chrisor says. "The Duke of Phandros has graciously agreed to let us use his summer house."

This is Tanidio's face of not having any feelings about that at all.

Quite right. Feelings are a weakness.

"That's kind of him." He is looking forward to understanding politics here enough to get the subtext.

"And we've lined up a Teleport. Anything else we need to do before you go?"

"There's nothing I need to do." He would like to check on his patients, but there isn't much more he can do for them, so.

"All right then." 

A wizard comes in and taps Bun on the arm.

It should have felt like something. Instead, what it felt like is that one minute he was in a tent, and then he blinked, and then he was inside of a living room the designer of which couldn't decide whether he was going for ostentatious or comfortable and instead wound up awkwardly neither. 

It is... Such a room. Why is the furniture like this. What was the Duke trying to achieve here. In what way is this a summer house.

"It's a nice place."

"If only money always came along with taste."

"Do the servants know we're here?" No slaves in alterCheliax, Chrisor.

Obviously there are no slaves in alterCheliax, he's not an idiot. 

"They should have gotten a Sending, although I imagine they're not very happy with us disrupting their six months off."

"I'm not going to need that many?" Or any? Though open question whether that will still be the case once the wizards arrive.

"...are you planning to cook your own meals and clean your own house?"

" ..yes?"

"... ... ...however your home plane does things, in Cheliax we believe in division of labor"-- Chrisor has a pure and non-heretical appreciation of Abadar-- "and we do not require people whose abilities are best used elsewhere to cook and clean simply because of their gender."

"People where I live tend to look after their own households, unless they are very rich. I can both be a doctor and make my own meals."

"...well, we can return the servants to their break if you have it handled"-- SOMEHOW-- "but it's probably a good idea to have it while you adjust."

Is this how it feels to talk to a woman from Osirion. Tanidio wants to hug him torture him until he understands his own worth.

"If you think that's wise." Why are they looking at him like that.

"Speaking of, you're a mess, we should have the servants draw you a bath."

Fair point, he is... More covered in blood than he should be. "That would be a good idea."

Chrisor looks around until he finds a halfling. "Excuse me, sir," he says, "can you please draw Bun a bath?"

...the halfling looks terrified but you can't have everything. Hopefully Bun will miss it. Maybe they don't have halflings on his planet.

He is going to follow the... ?little person? so he can see how one draws a bath in Cheliax.

Apparently Bun wants to know how he does his household duties! This is fine. 

Quietly: "do you think we can trust the halfling with him?"

"The halfling hasn't been briefed."

"Also he's an idiot who can't be trusted to improvise. --I want to get our stories straight."

"I'll keep an eye on them, you get a head start on getting the rest of the slaves to clear out the books?"

"Good plan."

And so Tanidio follows Bun. 

... Is the person he's following a security risk, or is this general "the gods might get you anywhere?" Either is a little alarming?

This halfling is VERY ALARMED. This situation is ALARMING. He is going to NOT MAKE ANY SUDDEN MOVES.

"...is there anything we have to do to be respectful of you? The bath is what made me think of it but I suppose I want to ask about it in general, it's really an accident that we didn't leave you alone with a woman or something."

Why is the servant terrified. Is he somehow scary? Is there a way he can stop being that?

"I'll let you know if something comes up? Being alone with people is fine, unless it's not fine here. Bathing is usually private?" Though he's only thinking of that because there's a good chance he will somehow end up in an awkward situation with Tanidio and the terrified servant.

"Oh, no, men and women are equal in Cheliax." Detect Thoughts to see how he takes this?

Positively! He wasn't sure if somewhere with this tech level would avoid sexism. Though it does raise even more questions about why leaving him alone with a woman would be a concern. "That's good to know."

(The rest of his surface thoughts are about the awkwardness of 'why is this servant looking like there is a tiger in the bathroom?')

Oh, he can fix this problem! He casts Charm Person on the halfling. 

"It's all right," he says to the halfling. "I know new people are frightening, but just do your job and there's nothing to worry about."

The halfling is visibly more relaxed.

It turns out that "drawing a bath" is a process which involves going to the well, filling up a bucket with water, and taking that bucket to the stove to heat up.

It makes sense that it's a Bit Of A Process, but it's a solidly doable process.

Even though the halfling has to do it repeatedly. It is clearly going to take half an hour to do it. 

Meanwhile--

"--yes, I mean all the books, you useless halflings--"

It feels weird to be paying someone to once a day do a half hour process? ... Though it would be very inconvenient.

"It must be nice to get a bath without having to heat it up yourself."

"Technology is a hell of a thing."

"Oh? Do you not have to do this?"

The halfling wishes that his new best friend's friend would share this information publicly!

"We have tanks that store water and heat them constantly, and pipes that connect those tanks to different rooms in your house, so you just have to open a tap to have hot water come out."

"We have pipes that bring water to various places in cities, but normally you go to a water pump to get it."

This is going to go very Broad Street Pump at some point, isn't it. "There are some places that use wells and water pumps, but you usually have your house connected to pipes, and have multiple places where the water can come out."

The halfling thinks that His New Best Friend's Friend should really get on this!

"...so taking care of a home is easier for you? It must be, if you cook and clean and also do medicine."

"There's a fair few things like that. Laundry machines and rice cookers and such like. Unfortunately I'm not an engineer."

"Those wouldn't be very helpful for us, anyway, we don't eat rice and wizards do the laundry."

"But can wizards put the laundry in a machine and then wander off for an hour or so? There's quite a few other things but-- I wouldn't be able to help you make them."

"It wouldn't take an hour to do laundry? You can prestigitate laundry clean in a few minutes."

"... That's probably more efficient than the machines, then."

Laughing: "I suppose if we had the machines we could get the low-level wizards to do something else. Flavor your food with chillis without having to figure out what chillis are."

"It would obviously be the best use of those wizards' time," he jokes.

"They'll have to figure out uses of Mending and Dancing Lights instead!"

"Mending sounds like it repairs things? Which would be useful."

"It does! It fixes anything that's broken. And Dancing Lights is--" He casts it. There are now four balls of light floating in the air.  

He watches them wide eyed. "Impressive."

One of the lights drifts over and boops Bun on the nose.

He is an adult man who definitely does not make any expressions or embarassing laughing noises about it.

Well, then, the light is going to have to do it again, isn't it. 

The halfling's new best friend is so cute! The halfling hopes that he and his friend have a happy time together. 

"Does it do anything other than touching people's noses?"

He smiles. "They dance."

This spinning pattern is showing off a little bit. 

"Maybe not useful, but still very pretty."

"If it's dark, it helps you see."

... This is a world without electric lighting. "Light and a show, then."

"I used to use them to do my homework by."

"It makes sense you'd want that to be one of the first things you teach a wizard in training."

"I had to help my mom in the shop after school so I often didn't get a chance to start my homework until the evening. --Of course, Dancing Lights only works for a minute, so it doesn't help that much, but. It was good practice."

... He was having to do homework in the dark with one minute of light at a time? And the school system wasn't... Set up to handle situations like that??? ... Because it's an education system. They do that, sometimes.

But he is still full of too-late-sympathy. "I can see why you're so good at them now."

"--I am really glad I live in Cheliax because there's no way my mother could have afforded to pay a wizard to train me and-- when I had figured out how to hang Prestidigitate and Mending I could take in work and she didn't have to work so hard. I wouldn't have wound up at the Worldwound, in any other country."

"I realise universal education is a lower priority than stopping smallpox, and one I'm less able to do something about, but--"

"It's really important to make sure that every kid who can be a wizard has the chance. --When I made second circle I hired my mom a servant and now all she has to do is gossip with the other old ladies."

It feels a bit risky to extend vulnerability to someone as a recruitment strategy by mentioning something that is actually pathetic and vulnerable, but they're lying enough already and Tanidio doesn't want anything else to keep track of.

Awwwww. "I'm glad you were able to help her."

Tanidio has developed a Theory. His theory is that, obviously, it is kind of weak and pathetic that he's taking care of his mom because he wants her to be happy, so instead he's taking care of her because it's embarrassing to have someone who's his who's cleaning her own floors like some kind of peasant. But Good people like being weak and pathetic, so he can be weak and pathetic at Bun, and then Bun will trust him and not ask too many questions about things he shouldn't ask questions about. 

In some corner of his mind, he is desperate to tell someone who gets it about how much he cares about his mom. He doesn't think about that. He's very good at tucking away thoughts that it would be inconvenient to think. 

"I suppose they educate everyone where you live. Just like they have treatments for the pox and rice cookers and laundry machines." 

"Nine years that's free and mandatory, and then another three years that's free but you don't have to do it. I had more to be a doctor, but that I had to pay for."

"That's very good. You don't get that much free school unless you're a wizard. --They make you pay to become a doctor? But doctors help people."

"Doctors earn money that can pay back their educational costs."

"I guess you don't have any equivalent of tours at the Worldwound for being a doctor."

"Being a doctor technically got me out of our equivalent."

Laughing: "That doesn't seem fair! They need doctors in war!"

"And if we had one I'd join, but-- we've been lucky."

"I guess it's convenient that there are so many things to kill, you can't become a high-circle wizard without combat."

"You can't?"

"At some point to become higher circle you have to-- be really genuinely scared for your life. I don't think anyone really knows why."

That's... Very much not how he expected magic to work! "I'm sorry that happened to you."

"I mean, I would also prefer that demons not invade Golarion and destroy the world, and I like being able to do work?"

This is a weird kind of Good. Normal Good people do not do this. No one from Lastwall has ever sympathized with him about having to do a Worldwound tour. 

"I can be sympathetic even if it was worth it? Unless you would prefer I didn't. --My world doesn't have that kind of demon, and doesn't have smallpox anymore and yours does-- that isn't because it was fair or its better that way."

"That's what Evil's all about."

The halfling really thought Evil was about the thing where he gets whipped whenever the master is angry whether he did anything wrong or not.

"And that's why I'm glad I landed with you." (He would still rather be in Viangpha Mork, but he can do more good Evil here.)

"I think the bath is ready."

So it is. "Thank you," he says to the... Small person who may or may not be human. (Chrisor said some things that implied nonhuman people existed? He's going to have to ask about that at some point.) "I'll meet you back in the main room when I'm clean and dry?" he says to Tanidio.

Smile. "Can't wait."

He is the Picture Of Professionalism. No reactions here.

And once he's the only in the room, he is going to scrub himself until he... No longer looks like he just came back from a poorly equipped field hospital.

Meanwhile--

"We've cleared out all the books. I explained to the slaves what's happening, but I doubt any of them will have much lying skill."

"Tell Bun it's polite to not bother the servants? He's meek enough that he'd do that."

"He's absolutely contemptible."

"Convenient for us."

"I can't stand to be around someone with so little pride. It's repulsive. He could ask for so much from us and he is trying to do his own cooking."

In some ways, though it is heretical, he prefers the followers of Iomedae. At least they have proper pride. There is something he respects in their determination to reshape the world in their own image.

"He's going to ask about the fact that there aren't books, even if we get the slaves to make the library look like something else."

"We could just not tell him about Scrivener's Chant, books would be expensive if you had to copy them each by hand--"

"No. Every lie is something else we have to keep track of. No unnecessary lies."

"The Duke doesn't like books, then. We can tell him how he's supposed to behave if Bun meets him. --It won't help if he wants to buy books from the town."

"He'll want medical books first, those will be easy to fix up. Very little in them is incompatible with what we've said."

"I don't like a plan that's based on Bun not wanting to read a romance novel."

"--what if we pretend the project has a low budget. He's meek, he doesn't stand up for himself, he won't question it. We're behind him, we spent all the resources the project has on a Teleport and the house and getting some people for him to teach, we just don't have money to give him expensive entertainment. We can even put the least reliable 90% of the slaves back to whatever else they were doing."

"I like it. It's not like he knows how much Cheliax cares about medicine--"

"Not just medicine. They have machines that can do laundry and cook. I think they have weapons."

"Excellent. --I doubt we can push for that until we corrupt him, though. Speaking of, do you have thoughts on that?"

"He's weak and vulnerable and almost entirely obsessed with medicine. Not a lot of angles."

"Unless we get him to want something else. --Sex is promising, I think, a lot of useful things you can do with sex, especially if you're fucking your inferiors. Teach him to be selfish, teach him to care more about his pleasure than about what other people want. If we're lucky his home plane wants men to be chaste, getting him to do something he thinks is Evil is going to be good for his Evil even if it's a sacrifice on Law... And even Good people like sex. We should recruit a bunch of very pretty girls."

"Girls?"

"Abortions."

"--Right, sir."

That's right, Tanidio might be Chrisor's very favorite protege but Chrisor still knows better and Tanidio should know his place.

"Get him drunk, too. More desires will come out when he's drunk, and it makes you violent, impulsive... I don't like how much this hits his Law but getting someone Neutral to Lawful is going to be easier, we can justify Law..."

"We don't know he's not Lawful already."

"And even Chaotic Evil might give us weapons to watch the world burn."

"I think the low status of the project will play into it too. Make him feel humiliated, make him feel degraded, unappreciated-- he's Good but he's still a person, no one wants to live in a dirty house while they're saving lives, at some point he's going to get envious and resentful and want better--"

"And we give him an opportunity for revenge, or to become powerful."

"Exactly."

And so they continue to plot until Bun gets out of his bath.

Bun is now no longer covered in other people's blood! This is a much better state of affairs.

When he gets to main room, he is entirely unaware of any designs on his virtue plotting.

"Right," Chrisor says. "So, I think the first order of business is to line up what you need-- students, presumably?"

"Students would be good. What I need depends on whether you want me to focus on teaching students, or doing more practical things-- getting the smallpox preventative to work, or seeing what diseases you have."

There is no non-awkward way to ask this, but he does need to know how many species he's going to treat. "The servant who helped with the bath-- is he just... Very short?"

"Not... especially short for a member of his species?"

"There are multiple sentient species?"

"Elves, dwarves, gnomes, tieflings, aasimar, halflings, orcs, goblins, hobgoblins--"

"--giants, strix, geniekin, lizardfolk, merfolk, all the different kinds of outsiders--"

"Assorted undead, minotaurs, ratfolk-- I am definitely forgetting something--"

"Derhii."

"What's a derhii?"

"Winged gorillas. They live south of the Mwangi Expanse."

Bun is left just opening and closing his mouth in confusion. "I-- I know human medicine. And what I know will probably apply somewhat to other species-- it does in my plane-- but I can't make promises."

"Most of Cheliax is human, but we also have gnomes, halflings, tieflings, and I guess strix but you're not going to treat the strix. --The servant was a halfling. They tend to prefer service professions like maid or innkeeper. Very domestic folk."

"--I'll do my best."

"Halflings and tieflings ought to be similar to humans. Halflings are similar to humans biologically as far as I know. They're shorter and they have tougher feet so they don't have to wear shoes. Tieflings are part human and part Evil outsider. I'd naively expect them to be like human but with some odd traits, the way that they sometimes have horns or red skin. Gnomes are odd, they aren't actually from Golarion and they don't age unless they become bored, I wouldn't expect anything you know to generalize to them."

"I'd worry about accidentally poisoning gnomes. Tieflings-- are they just externally different from humans, or internally too?"

He wants to suggest vivisection. Later.

"Internally as well, I think. There's no reason to expect their differences to be confined to the outside."

"I'd want to be careful with what we try to apply to them. I'd worry about their livers being very different, or something of that nature."

"Every tiefling has a unique outside appearance, I expect that their insides are also unique."

WELL THAT'S TERRIFYING.

(Not that he's likely to be doing any autopsies in the future, but trying to do an autopsy on someone who's biology is fairly unique due to being a hybrid-- oh that's going to be very difficult.)

"---I wouldn't want to deny them medicine..."

"There's enough work to do treating the humans."

"Is there anything special you need for students? Otherwise I'll ask for some wizard students from Ostenso Academy."

"You probably have a better idea of what students would be best suited to medical training." He is going to prove his worth before he starts asking for awkward things like bodies to do dissections on to teach the students.

"...we don't know what medical training entails."

"I haven't ever had to teach all of medicine from scratch on my own. The students will definitely need things to write with, at the very least?"

"-- I also don't know how your culture feels about dear bodies. And I am asking for a reason, but I would prefer an answer before I explain."

"Bodies don't matter very much? We know the soul goes on to the afterlife. We burn or bury them so they don't become undead."

That's good, but he is still going to tread delicately. "There are some knowledge of anatomy, and some techniques, that can't be taught without practical experience. We traditionally get students to use dead bodies that have been donated for that. ...I don't know how practical it would be if you don't have embalming or refrigeration. But it would be helpful."

"We can get you dead bodies."

"-- with their families' permission?"

(Note to self: make sure to teach medical ethics.)

"I'd worry about getting enough-- we could do executed criminals and so on?"

(This requires a delicate touch. If Bun doesn't know, it's not Evil, but if he thinks about it too hard, they'll have to have only ethically sourced bodies.)

"--executed criminals would be fine if we can't get any one else?" He very much Does Not Like It, but if murderers end up helping the advance of medicine, that could be worse.

"I'll ask around."

"I appreciate it. And if you can't-- there is still a lot I could teach."

"I'm going to get you students. Talk to Tanidio if you need anything."

"I'll see you when you're back with the students."

"I was going to ask you where the kitchen is, but you haven't been here before either."

"We can explore the house! Or ask a servant!"

"It'd be worthwhile looking around to find where everything is."

Here is: a badly decorated living room! A badly decorated parlor! A badly decorated probably also a living room!

"...the Duke really has awful taste."

"He's consistent at least?"

"Is he, though? Or is he equally inconsistent in every room?"

"Consistent inconsistency is a kind of a consistency."

"I suppose."

Library! With absolutely no books in it! Just a bunch of empty bookshelves.

"An aspirational library is at least different."

"The Duke of Phandros doesn't much like reading."

"And the library came with the house?"

"I suppose so! Or maybe he's procrastinating on filling it up."

"Fair enough, I guess." It's not his house.

Bedrooms! So many bedrooms. This house has a lot of bedrooms.

Well, it's meant to house the Duke and presumably his family and servants, so that makes sense.

"I guess you can pick whichever of those you want to be your bedroom, and I'll-- be next door? Or sleep on your floor."

"Next door would suit me?" He picks the one with the nicest view out the window. (And if asked to justify it, he'll say he was looking for a room where he'd be able to get a breeze.)

"I don't mind sleeping on your floor, and I do want to keep you safe."

"... Are the good gods likely to attack me while I'm sleeping?"