The Count is busy (ghouls. Like, a lot of them.) but if it's an emergency he can be back in a minute, and if it's not he'll probably be back by this evening?

It's a matter the Count will likely consider important, but not urgent. If he'll be back by this evening, or even tomorrow evening, the (newly-minted) Archduke will stay here rather than spend another Teleport on coming back.

Of course. Rooms will be prepared for him.

"Archduke. What brings you here?"

"Ser. I've been reading the copy of the Acts that you gave me, and I've noticed some changes from the version I'm familiar with from my original time, that I can't conceive of the Church having made deliberately. Perhaps we should go somewhere more private to discuss the details, and do advise me if the changes were deliberate and I shouldn't tell you what was in the originals at all."

Oh. That.

"Yes, of course. I don't think the matter is so private as to warrant a trip to my holdings in Molthune." The castle in Lladó does not have any rooms with a private sanctum. He leads the Archduke to a room with only normal amounts of privacy, checks for scrying sensors, (He can usually spot them if he's looking) and offers Alfonso a seat.

"It was... partially deliberate. And a mistake. Some church leaders made some edits to the Acts and other texts. Unedited copies were kept, of course, but at some point in the 41st century cultists of Geryon managed to infiltrate the archives and now there are a dozen different supposed originals, and half a dozen different explanations of who made the original decision, when, and why. Whatever the reasons it was not a good use of Iomedae's resources to send someone from Heaven to correct them. But if you have the time to record what you can remember - there are historians in Lastwall who would love to talk to you about it."

"There's really only one glaring error, which is that the archmage Alfirin has been entirely deleted. Everything else seems downstream of that."

He has heard that name before, from Arazni, used to refer to Myrabelle. He tries to keep the surprise off his face. "Interesting. An entire archmage missing. Involved in the Shining Crusade, or in Iomedae's later acts?"

"In the Crusade, and also with Iomedae, uh, personally, for a short time when they were younger. She wasn't mentioned at all in the later Acts."

What.

"I - did not think the Goddess had personal attachments. Of that nature. Perhaps that was why she was removed, unless it seems to you like there might have been other reasons?"

What?!?!?

"...I think when convenient you should really speak to the historians in Lastwall about this. And we should confirm with a commune that this is not itself the work of Geryon."

"I don't know, but—if it had been the only reason I would have expected them to remove the romance, and leave all the parts in which she's an essential asset of the Crusade and she and Iomedae show no sign of personal fondness for each other. And no, of course the Goddess doesn't have personal attachments—the most memorable part of that whole episode is her declaration that love is already overemphasized among the Good gods and it would improve the world if the next one had no concern for it at all, and I don't doubt that she became the god she wished to see."

"... I apologize if this is ... disconcerting. I'd be happy to receive Lastwall's historians at my estate; it would be much easier than my coming there. I have plenty of spare hours but few spare days."

"Of course, I'll pass the message along. Thank you for telling me about this, it's disconcerting to learn but - fixable now."

Then, if Cansellarion has nothing else he's been waiting for an opportunity to discuss, he'll return home.

It's a while before Cansellarion has business that takes him to the new archducal seat, but when he does he requests a brief private audience with Blanxart.

"Of course, ser," he says. "Is this about the, ah, matter we discussed previously? Regarding the holy books?"

"Yes, my lord." He takes the time, again, to check that they are not being spied-upon. "It is not very much to say, but I thought that you might want to know, and you knowing is unlikely to endanger you or anyone else - Alfirin is the queen."

Oh. It's such a small world after all.

It's not surprising that the woman written of in the Acts of Iomedae would want to stick around. It's not surprising that she would succeed at it. It's not even that surprising that she would want to be Queen of Cheliax. The only question is—

"It doesn't surprise me that she's still around. Did anyone Commune as to whether she's—reasonably the same person, in values and priorities, that fought in the Shining Crusade, and not—a lich, or some similar but stranger thing?"

"She's not a lich, she's not undead, we should not reason about her psychology as if she were an undead version of the person she once was, and 'reasonably the same person, in values and priorities' was not our exact wording but is pretty close to a question we asked that got an UNCLEAR. Followup questions aimed at interpreting that answer revealed both that our question was insufficiently specific and that the Goddess did not know the answers or have the ability to cheaply discern the answers to many possible narrower specifications."

"I suppose nine hundred years is likely to change a person no matter how they survive it."

"I haven't had a chance to speak to Lastwall's historians yet, so I'll tell you, briefly, now that you'll believe it—Iomedae did trust her, in the crusade, even later on when she was—almost a god, and certainly not the sort of person to let personal attachment influence her decisions. Maybe this was a mistake, and it was certainly in a very different context than Alfirin being Queen of Cheliax, but—she did."

"Well. That may have changed. She said that I should act to limit Alfirin's influence on Golarion."

"But not to overthrow her—hm."

He pauses in thought a moment. "On one hand, I'm not sure Iomedae wouldn't have said that of any monarch—Lastwall, notably, isn't a monarchy unless you account the Goddess herself as Queen. On the other, I'm not sure that her being Queen of Cheliax is even the sort of influence the Goddess is worried about. She's an ancient archmage. Some of those have countries, in one sense or another, but I don't think they're typically that involved in the actual running of them."

"I wish I could speculate more on her plans, but—if Iomedae knew anything about them, she didn't put it in her holy book. I guess she might have put it in private records that the 'Geryon cultists' also stole." The Church isn't dumb, so he doesn't see the need to say out loud that when an ordinarily competent organization decides to delete all records of a hostile ninth-circle enchantress and then can't account for that decision after the fact, one hardly needs to invoke Geryon to explain it. "The Goddess speaks of her—at least the younger version of her, when they were in love—as someone who wanted, basically, the same things that she did, and mostly disagreed about what costs were worth paying to achieve them."

"She—well, the person in the Acts—reminds me quite a lot of Aroden, actually—at least the young Aroden that his holy books speak of, whom we can only assume actually existed. She was certainly one of those Arodenites who took the "surpass your gods" thing very seriously."

"I really, really don't think that she means to sacrifice the entire population of Cheliax to ascend to godhood. But I do notice the possibility occurring to me, when I otherwise can't fathom what she wants Cheliax for at all."

"The most flattering explanation is that she simply wanted to take it away from Hell. That would be very convenient, if true. I do not intend to act as if the most convenient things were always true."

"I suppose we can hope." Though Cansellarion himself said that she had paid great costs to ensure that she, specifically, ended up ruling it when Hell's regime fell, which probably wouldn't be true if that were. "Regardless, if the Goddess thinks it wise to weaken her influence, I will act as I may to do that. I won't weaken Cheliax to do it. I assume you understand."

"Of course."