Knock knock!

"Come in, come in. Ah, are you another delegate, sir?"

"I am, in my capacity as the Marquis de Juncosa. Have I the honor of speaking to Theopho of the Runes, cleric of Erecura?"

"I am. High Watcher, if you'd prefer a title to the full style. Is there something you seek counsel about?"

"There is, yes - do you have much background on the details of soul-sale? It's not a secret but I find in the current climate people pretend they've never heard of the practice."

"Not in full generality, but yes, I know of some variations on the theme. Step inside this room, if you please; I consider it a religious duty to give honest counsel and most prefer that I therefore am equally insistent about promising that it is private."

"Understandable." He steps in and takes a seat. "So, my father being a bit paranoid after fully three of my siblings proved defectors and abandoned us to go chase Goodness in some far-off place where we never heard of them again - one of them after a fairly creditable attempt at patricide - he told me I could stand in line to have the March but only if I sold. Young, foolish, preoccupied with temporal concerns, I drew up a set of three wishes I liked the look of and signed on the line. I dabbled a bit with attempting substitutionary transfer of the contract's burden in my twenties, but was not able to come up with a replacement satisfying to my counterparty. I'm not here to talk to you about that, though. I am here because that charming abbess of that now-Irorite monastery suggested that your Goddess, being that she lives in Hell, might be a valid holder of the other end of my leash and any other leashes yet in circulation among, for instance, the wizard population, leaving me much better affordance to throw myself into the new regime for the remainder of my life without fretting about my eternal reward."

Young and foolish to older and foolish, he doesn't say.

"It's not entirely impossible, I suspect, but rare enough that I've never heard of it. And I would wager that doing anything of the kind at scale is explicitly prohibited by Asmodeus as part of the agreement which allows My Lady's Gardens to exist. Her clerics, very likely are permitted; others, I do not rightly know."

"All my arguments for petitioning the government to put any resources to the problem rely on there being a bulk solution for the wizards, but if there were an individual option I at least have the fortune that none of my own children or favored cousins or any of that ilk are in a similar basket. Is it the sort of thing you have the wherewithal to look into?"

"Frankly, no. Scrying the Gardens is generally impossible; Erecura likes her secrets and her privacy, even from her own. A commune would work, but as far as I know that requires a fifth-circle cleric of the correct god, either to cast it or to create the scroll used to cast it, and I am nearly certain that at third circle I am the most powerful cleric of Erecura on Golarion."

"It's similar to Contact Other Plane, isn't it? I have met a couple of wizards in the described condition and they are generally, if so troubled, also of a circle to cast it, should you know of Her attitude toward such overtures."

"Hmm, that could be possible. I'd expect a large rate of refusal to answer, probably fifty-fifty if my memory of that spell's usual results is right, and likely an unsatisfactory one if you get the truth, but it isn't hopeless."

"I'm aware I'm chasing very tiny chances," he sighs. "I discovered recently that not everyone is operating under the same assumption as I am, that it will do me no good however useful it is to my fellow man, if I accumulate any good deeds while they're contractually forbidden from affecting my outcome. That being my understanding, I'd like to have something left to give away afterwards rather than frittering it all away on divinatory scrolls only to discover that I'm no less Hellbound, but if this still seems the best chance in a few weeks or months you might well see me and one of my wizards again."

"My honest advice, Marquis, is that from your personal standpoint, you ought to be making arrangements for a flesh to stone."

"Or the Mercy of the Final Blade, as is so routinely touted in the pamphlets, I know. But none of my wizards enjoy a seat at the convention. Clerics by the dozen but if they've got a wizard in the hall they've done it by accident. So I will hang on a bit longer and see if there's anything clever to be done."

"Well, I can promise at least one, besides the archmage: me. Fourth-circle wizard and third-circle priest, like a very small and much saner Clepati. I suppose it's not a waste of their time, unless they get backlash and are dimwits for weeks. But I predict at the end of your efforts you'll be back to asking Iomedans to protect your statue until they get the victory over Hell they swear they'll achieve someday."

"I can at least say I would sincerely hope not to be awakened in a hundred years to find the place flipped back again, asked to take up the helm of my old territory in light of a purge leaving it vacant and in need of diabolist leadership. The Good folks have the better pitch. But they weren't there, when I was sixteen."

You could have run away, Theopho thinks, a March is nearer the border than Westcrown and I pulled it off.

But honesty does not compel him to rub salt in the man's wounds. And he did get lucky. Probably very lucky.

"My own foolish decisions when I was sixteen worked out better for me, but I certainly still wish there had been better ones I could see. I hope you find success, and if not that, then peace. Was there anything else you wanted to ask about?"

"No, though if there's anything I can do to be of use to you I would welcome the opportunity to learn it."

"I will never turn down donations toward my temple's upkeep, particularly if my advice has been helpful, and I will keep you in mind, Marquis de Juncosa, but no, nothing specific."

Aniol inclines his head, drops some gold in the donation box on his way out, and goes about the rest of his day.