<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/c/cf/Olivia_the_cleric.jpg)</div>Too soon the promise to help is given. Is it a trap? Olivia considers it for the first time, as she tugs to free her quarterstaff from the branches above. It could be. She recalls in a sudden stir of memory a fellow adventurer explaining to her the term<em>honeypot, </em>and the way press gangers prey on reckless young men with a siren's call. But her word has already been given, and there are two important ways she differs from her companions.<br/><br/>"I'm a healer!"<br/><br/>The first is her role as a holy woman, which is a lofty position suspended on a delicate web of trust. Faith is the source of not only Saint Ovara's power, but that of her honey-anointed too. It's faith which unites strangers under a common banner, faith in a common set of principles which makes them strong. So long as a good, dutiful holy woman holds faith, too many doors to count open to her. The hands enduring stinging nettles to push back hoary growth are fueled by that faith and beholden to it. She cannot break her word extend Saint Ovara's mercy.<br/><br/>"Please stay where you are, if you can!"<br/><br/>The second is the perspective of the church. For too long the world has been us versus them, man versus wild, clan versus clan, human versus orc. Saint Ovara has shown her a better way, where all beings come together under one will and no corner remains for evil to fester. She sees Serana to her left unsheathing a blade weighty enough to fell a tree, Yula to her right brandishing a needle designed to keep the<em>them </em>safely spleen-puncturing distance away from the<em>us, </em>and she knows she must set a good example herself. She must show her companions that there's a common good in the world, and if not to convince them, then to convince herself. She feels the ground give way under her shoe and slides inexorably down a hump of earth, into the thick of it, pulled at least as fiercely by duty as by gravity.<br/><br/>The others must think her too soft, a bleeding heart ninny of a cleric. But it isn't just the forty lives of the colony running through her mind, as she lands- it's the risk to her own life, if a trap is sprung before she's had the chance to prove her good intentions.