The FOOL who authored the recent pamphlet entitled An Urgent Warning for All Good Men knows NOTHING about the will of HOLY IOMEDAE, HERO OF CHELIAX! For he ignores that although there are certainly many FOUL DIABOLISTS within Cheliax, they have to a man been denied the UNHOLY MAGIC of Asmodeus. Such a thing can mean only that HOLY IOMEDAE, HERO OF CHELIAX has SLAIN the Prince of Darkness. Yet to strike down a god is NO EASY MATTER, and she has been left too TIRED to empower new priests. If there were truly a ROT within Lastwall, she would have stripped ALL priests of Lastwall of their powers, allowing NONE to spread corruption in her name, yet JUST TODAY there were channels done by many men of Lastwall, including BLAI WAIN, MARIT WALLER THE TENTH, and ASPEX CANSELLARION. We should REJOICE that HOLY IOMEDAE has won such a GREAT VICTORY, and not cast ASPERSIONS against Lastwall's HOLY MEN.

This one has his name wrong too, which is obscurely comforting even though it doesn't actually say anything horrid about him.

Is Asmodeus dead? He doesn't know how to feel about that but fortunately his feelings don't matter to anyone at all.

Asmodeus can't be dead because if He was, why would Iomedae have any priests at all? She's a god of war, and She's still doing things, so the war's not over.

Valia is disappointed in the quality of the pamphlets now that she's started asking Blai to read them to her. She should write her own pamphlet. She'd be better at it. 

"She could be planning for wars with - other evil things. Geb. Urgathoa."

"Oh. I guess. Do you think that's it?"

"I don't know. The last time a lot of priests suddenly lost their spells, their god was dead. But it didn't occur to me until just now that Asmodeus might be." He thought he was a captured piece or a tool no longer needed, not an orphan.

"I didn't know priests of Asmodeus lost their spells. In Pezzack we killed all of them."

We - they - "One day every priest at the Worldwound on the Chelish line of forts woke up and didn't get spells. I think some were killed at that time."

Valia had also been under the impression that the Worldwould had been closed by the archmages. She frowns reflectively at the pamphlet, praying on it. "I think we had better assume Asmodeus isn't dead because it would serve Him well if everyone stopped worrying about Him and let Him regroup and try again."

"It will probably be clearer in a few years, if He regroups somewhere else in the world."

"Well it would be useful for the diabolism committee if we knew now but we'll just have to do our best."

"How is that going?"

"It is run through with secret Evil people masking it with magic. I thought I was being appropriately wary of the Enemy's presence everywhere but apparently I was not being appropriately wary of that at all. More than that -

- so Asmodeus likes to say that everyone is damned, right, that doing Evil is easy and doing Good is next to impossible. And lots of people believed that, and believed they were damned, and believe it still.

I think that in Pezzack there were lots of people who hadn't done much Evil but hadn't opposed it much either, and then when the army came for the city it was terribly clear that they weren't going to spare anyone on that account at all, and so everyone knew, deep down, that even if they'd screwed up every minute of their life until that one they were on the side of Good, because it was the only side that wanted them alive. And I think that this is - a way that Pezzack was lucky, sort of. The people of other places hear that we want to rid Cheliax of Evil and they don't think 'oh good, the people who butchered my family will be gone', they think 'oh no, I'm probably Evil, they probably want me dead'. That's my theory of why they're so odd about it. And I think I can fix it. I am going to give a speech."

"To - tell people that you don't want them dead?"

"To tell people that the problem is the people who are powerful wizards and nobles, concealing their evil and attending the convention trying to enrich themselves and Asmodeus and all the worst elements of the old regime." 'worst elements of the old regime' is from one of the Galtan pamphlets. Valia is trying it on for size. She's not sure what she thinks. "And I know we're not allowed to propose expelling anyone from the convention but to maybe propose that if you feel the need to use powerful magic to stop radiating Evil before you go to the convention then maybe you should just stay home. Use those spell slots to help the poor. Work on repenting."

"It's not obvious to me that using the spell slots to help the poor is a more Good action than trying to steer the convention in a Good direction, which might not change someone's read right away even if they were going about it with perfect contrition and diligence."

"Well, if they were secretly decent people who just happened to be Asmodean nobles who are Evil, sure, it'd make sense for them to go to the convention and try to do Good. But they're Asmodean nobles who are Evil so I don't really think they're at the convention to try to do as much Good as possible. And anyway I think that it undermines the whole convention to have a bunch of Evil people around hiding it so you have to waste a lot of time figuring out who's actually trying to make the convention go well and who isn't. And - people would be angry if they knew. The people who read the pamphlets, they mostly think that the convention is Good people trying to do the right thing and normal Chelish people who the archmages brought there. If they knew that it's powerful Evil people who served Abrogail Thrune just as happily as the new Queen they'd be - betrayed -"

"There's not that many of them," she reassures him, since he seems troubled by the prospect, and pulls over the next of the ridiculous pamplets. Maybe it will be about something like how we can solve the food shortages by eating the demons from the Worldwound and it'll cheer him up by how ridiculous it is.