"I wouldn't have thought the gods would permit it," he says, and then a thought occurs to him. If Aroden could, somehow, have given his life for a world in which mortals were actually permitted to surpass him—well, he obviously would have done it, so it doesn't really matter whether he did it on purpose. Maybe there is some glory to this age after all.

Frederick shrugs. He doesn't know what the gods permit. Or care, really, when it concerns his business and not theirs. The important thing on his end is -

"So, besides being Count of Egorian, hypothetically, if every other Chelish noble were to drop dead tomorrow, what else do you have a plausible claim to?"

... probably that did not literally happen, right? But it's unfortunately plausible that after this long, enough of them are diabolists that it's worth using that as a simplified gloss of the situation. Oh no.

"Frankly, it has been seven hundred years," he says. "I'm not sure that even my claim on Egorian would be 'plausible' anymore, nor wise to grant me regardless. I am a foreigner now, even in the county of my birth, and Her Majesty would likely be wiser to grant my titles to some Good adventurer for his service—what has become of my former holdings?"

" - well Egorian was made capital of Infernal Cheliax, then flattened by an earthquake, and then given to Inquisitor Shawil, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you're not getting that specific one back, no."

'Shawil' doesn't sound like a Chelish name, which isn't ideal, but aside from that—and the earthquake—it's exactly what he proposed. "I see," he says. "If it's relevant to you, my mother was the granddaughter of the Archduke of Cheliax—the title may have a different name these days, if the whole country is called Cheliax*—and I am descended, more or less distantly, from a few other comital families," along with everyone else in the duchy, after seven hundred years. "I will need time to—consider what role I ought to play in this world. I would like to speak to your employer, if she is willing to find time for me, and to a priest of Iomedae regardless."

(*) The modern name is the Archduchy of the Heartlands.

Frederick is grinning again as he scribbles this. "Oh, she'll make time for this. Not until late tonight, but she will. I'll see about the Iomedan, they're a bit strapped these days. Anything you need urgently? Scale of hours?"

"I don't think so—uh, where am I?"

Visibly, in a relatively bare and quiet stone room, with one wall of books and a large number of other statues. Most of them don't look like they were petrified in their sleep. There's a window on one side that looks out on the sea, and on a decent-sized settlement beyond some of the water.

"Hospital Island, Alexandria, Osirion. Near enough the homeland of our resident lady archmage, and where she does most of her healing research. You won't be stuck here any length of time, it's just the most convenient place to stash statues that might have a seizure upon waking up. That, or it was six months ago, and Varanthe can't be bothered to move the things again. The library's a bit bare, but you're welcome to it."

"Thank you. I suppose I'll do some reading while I await your lady, then."

What's in the library? He's mostly interested in recent history, naturally.

The focus of the library is very obviously the healing arts, and anything tangentially related to them - medicine, anatomy, botany, zoology, chemistry, magic, Sarenite and Pharasmin theological texts. But there is a smaller section devoted to other books, including some history. There are no Chelish histories of Cheliax; no reputable ones have been written recently. Frederick can get him an overview of the last century written by a gnomish author from Absalom, though, and some time later can get him some dinner.

Sure, what does a gnome think are the most important events of the last century?

(That there are no Chelish histories of Cheliax is unsurprising; obviously a diabolist government wouldn't have permitted anyone to write one worth reading.)

Oh, you know, regular stuff. Aroden died. Prophecy broke. Cheliax was plunged into civil war for thirty years. A long chapter about orc theological disputes. A very short chapter about the giant hole to the Abyss at the top of the world that's been spewing out demons for ninety years. A reasonably sized chapter about the development of Rahadoum as an entirely atheist society. A two-sentence aside about Osirion becoming an Abadaran theocracy, in the middle of a long discussion of the waning power of the Keleshite Empire.

Prophecy what?

He's actually pretty sure, now, that Aroden didn't arrange that on purpose, even if it's arguably a good thing and certainly makes some sense of how there are three Good archmages on the planet at the same time.

A giant hole to the Abyss might explain why Iomedae's church was completely useless in preventing the diabolists from winning the thirty year (what the fuck, that's not how civil wars work) civil war in Cheliax.

An atheist society seems like a worthwhile experiment (we are after all commanded to surpass our gods) but he's glad he doesn't live there.

Operating a theocracy seems like a very weird thing for the Church of Abadar to do, geopolitical neutrality being one of their main selling points.

Eventually he decides that recent history is too depressing, and eats his dinner while he waits for Naima to arrive.

And eventually - long after sunset, hours after Frederick brought in a lantern and Nenio left to return her book - Naima does arrive. She wears loud, brightly colored clothes, and looks a bit like she would rather be sleeping. He will probably not notice that she begins mind reading him immediately.

"Alfonso Antoninus Iomedae Thrune?"

"I am he," he answers. "Though I shall have to replace my surname, given what my cousins have done to it."

His thoughts show no sign of intent to deceive anyone. He's thinking that she looks astonishingly young for an archmage, and is also dressed like she's from some place where women aren't considered people, which makes it even more surprising, but really you would expect an archmage to be a surprising sort of person. He's also, underneath all this, quietly but blazingly angry at everything that could possibly be considered responsible for the albeit short-lived Infernal Empire.

"If you wish. You'll certainly find many people with strong reactions to it. My name is Naima. I am, among other things, in charge of the effort to resurrect nobles who will be better suited to rule of Cheliax than the existing set. Our current lack of personnel is worst in the region that you have the best claim to, so I expect to give you something, passage of seven hundred years notwithstanding. But I would like to talk to you for a bit before determining exactly what level of responsibility is appropriate to ask of you."

"I understand. I am not—unwilling to take up my previous responsibilities, if that is what is required of me, I just—I'm still a bit in shock, really. I had actually expected for some time that I would eventually be petrified in my sleep, but I thought that I would wake again either not at all or in the Age of Glory."

He's privately wondering how to address her—this is always something of an issue with powerful wizards, who don't typically have titles but are obviously as important as most people who do, and 'adventuring companion of the Queen' adds an additional dimension of complication.

"Understandable. That is, actually, some of my first question, more out of curiosity than anything else. What exactly have you lost, in the last twelve hours, more specifically than the entire world? Did you have a family?"

"No wife nor children, no; I would only have condemned them to a fate far worse than mine," and also his—preferences—run the other way, though there's no need to bring that up here. "My brother died adventuring, a few years—well, a few years ago from my own perspective; it was only Roderic's fault in that we wouldn't have been doing it if he hadn't made us desperate to be stronger. My sister—I hope they killed her, but—"

He stops speaking there; it feels unwise to finish that thought. "And, of course, I've lost my family name," he continues instead, "though—in actuality—that damage was mostly done well before I was turned to stone."

He has a brief inclination to ask the lady archmage to call his sister from Heaven before realizing that, if Roderic—kept her—he doesn't know if she's there and doesn't want to find out.

"Could be worse, then, although of course I'm sorry for your loss either way. I understand you've asked to speak to an Iomedan. I'm curious about the sense in which you consider yourself a devotee, and what your current understanding of her teachings is. And what exactly you want to talk to them about; it may tell me where to drop you after this."

Ah, he's being tested to see if he's actually a diabolist. If he were, he obviously wouldn't have given his actual surname, but fine, that's fair.

"Aroden was our god, but Iomedae was his chosen, and our shield against the works of Hell, which—well, you know. As for her teachings, my understanding of them is that one should do the most good that one possibly can, at the least possible cost. It always seemed a shame to me that the most efficient way to do good seemed to involve so much killing, but that, I suppose, is the fault of the things that need killing." But she could at least have sent someone to kill Roderic back when it would have been easy actually, the archmage is reading his mind if she has any sense, so there's no reason to leave things unsaid. "In truth, I was angry with her, when I learned what had become of my country, because she would have prevented it at so much less cost if she had only answered my prayers—though I did learn, later, that she could not possibly have foreseen the catastrophe because foresight itself has been shattered."

"The advice I meant to seek was on how I might follow her teachings, in a world I never meant to see and do not belong in. It is not urgent, though if you mean to offer me a duchy, that's the sort of thing about which I would ordinarily have sought counsel before accepting, even without the—special circumstances."

"Reasonable. I do encourage you to seek their counsel. The church of Iomedae is - badly overstretched, at present, but I believe we can find someone to advise you. I doubt I'll like the answer, but I ought to at least ask. Around how good are you in a fight, would you say?"

"Understandable; I have no desire to impose on a badly overstretched Iomedan church—I suppose with Aroden gone she must be busy. I'm a wizard of third circle; I spent a while trying to get stronger, but after my brother died the benefits of more strength traded off poorly with the risk of dying of something other than my cousins."

"Well, it could be worse." She's terrible at assessing administrative capabilities, but she can try. The bar is really 'has any intent to administrate anything', for counties, but an Archduke should have some skill, and that's what she's sizing him up to be. "Can you talk for a bit about some problems your lands were experiencing seven hundred years ago, and what if anything you were doing about them? What projects were you most recently occupied with?"

"The problem, aside from the diabolists," he says, after thinking a moment, "is that we were both too poor and too rich. Poor, because we were still a frontier province, then, and every farmer with a mind to be in the frontier had instead gone to Lastwall, which promised lower taxes and conscription only in wars that wouldn't damn them. I would have offered the same, but—no Emperor would have accepted an oath of fealty 'in peace or in war guaranteed by the Goddess Iomedae not to be Evil'—maybe we could institute something like that now, but not then. And we were too rich; with Ustalav once more ruled by the living, the northern trade was booming, and Egorian, being on the Lake of Sorrows, was where goods came in overland to be shipped down the river. It was no Westcrown, but it was all of a sudden four times the size of the Archduke's seat at Longacre, and it was an Abyss of a city. So my great challenges were in having a city watch that was meaningfully distinct from another gang of criminals, and an institution for collecting tarrifs at the docks that would only steal half of what it collected. I don't know that I succeeded, but I think I left the city better than I found it."

He doesn't doubt that today Egorian is among the cleanest, most Lawful cities in the world, or was before it was destroyed by an earthquake. You can get a lot of Law out of a place with enough fire and lash. It's doing without, or even with only a reasonable amount, that's hard.