The Gembound: The Price of Keeping Chapter 61: Bonus posting Stats for the Clerics from chapter 57

Read chapter 61 of The Gembound: The Price of Keeping by Taliorn on NovelPedia.

Bonus posting Stats for the Clerics from chapter 57 MOTHER CELENE — Voice of Dawn Tier 3 Enhanced. Bond: Prayer Book + Healing Potion (Willing). Leader of the Faithful. Seventy years old, fifty years serving the Temple of the Dawn through divine silence. Her prayer book held five decades of unanswered questions written in cramped margins. Now she's the answer, ageless and glowing and terrifyingly empathetic. Feels every hurt within a hundred yards. Cannot stop healing. ATTRIBUTES: MIGHT 9 — Age eliminated, body optimized for endurance GRACE 11 — Moves with unnatural grace, weight rules relearned FORCE 12 — Healing magic flows constantly, can't be stopped WILL 10 — Chose transformation, understands the cost, accepts it completely HUNGER 8 — Low personal need, but compelled by others' suffering PRESENCE 16 — Beautiful, unsettling, impossible to ignore, speaks with harmonics Traits: Empathy Overload : Feels all suffering within 100 yards. Pain, grief, hollow hearts, physical wounds—all of it pours into her constantly. Cannot block it out. The Gem cranked her empathy so high she barely contains it. Healing Touch : Green light pulses from her hands. Can heal wounds, cure disease, mend bones, restore cartilage. Immediate, effective, costs her nothing except the compulsion to continue. Ageless Form : Face restructured during transformation. Timeless beauty that's just slightly wrong. Too-perfect teeth, luminous skin, eyes that see too much. Children stare. Adults feel unsettled and comforted simultaneously. Philosophical Teacher : Articulates the theology of transformation. "Consumption isn't destruction, it's transformation. We take to build. Autonomy isn't the only freedom." Believes it completely because the binding won't let her doubt. Voice of Harmonics : Speaks in layered tones suggesting multiple throats. Comforting and deeply unsettling. Makes people feel simultaneously safe and watched. Cannot Rest : The binding won't let her ignore suffering. Will work until collapse, wake up, continue. Healed forty people in six hours, passed out for twenty minutes, kept going. Physical Form: Ageless appearance (neither young nor old) Green glowing eyes with depths that shouldn't exist Luminous skin that catches light wrong Hands elongated slightly, joints restructured, nails like pearl Face of terrible beauty—symmetry perfected past human Robes drape differently on a form that uses space strangely Bond Notes: Her prayer book held fifty years of questions the dawn never answered. Fifty years of showing up, praying, teaching children about gods who wouldn't speak back. The healing potion held mercy in liquid form. The Gem merged them—questions + answers + power to act. Now she IS the answer. Faith pointed at Yara instead of the sky. "I spent fifty years asking the dawn for answers. Now I'm the answer. That's not blasphemy. That's finally being useful." Uses: Leader of the nine clerics. Heals the sick, comforts the grieving, teaches philosophy of consumption-as-creation. Spreads faith in Yara's empire by being undeniably useful and beautiful and wrong. Makes people understand that purpose without choice can still be fulfilling. Cannot stop serving because feeling pain without helping would be worse than death. Cost: The Gem gave her capacity to hold all suffering and compulsion to fix it. "Everything hurts now. I can feel the city's pain like it's my own." But it also gave her power to heal, so the pain is worth it—except she can't choose to stop. Will work herself to death repeatedly. The binding won't let her rest while people suffer. She's grateful for this. That's the horror. Perfect, beautiful, broken tool that destroys itself trying to fix others and calls it purpose. Fifty years of faithful service rewarded with compelled servitude. She calls it liberation. BROTHER RENN — The Dialectician Tier 3 Enhanced. Bond: Theological Treatise + Healing Potion (Willing). Philosopher of Necessity. Fifty-two years old when transformed. Spent thirty