(He then Teleports out. He has lots and lots of other business to attend to, and the Archduke shouldn’t need a bodyguard in a private house full of well-leveled nobles.)

Oh, it's the new Heartlands archduke! With no particular warning, teleporting right into the house! She recognizes him from standing outside the convention hall and asking her father who everyone was, as they left. She hopes no one has gotten it into their heads to sit down early; there is no archery, tonight, and they will all have to move.

"Archduke Blanxart! How wonderful that you could join us tonight!" 

...is she important enough to be greeting an archduke? Probably not. But it seems even ruder to ignore him.

"Good evening, Senyora—" He doesn't actually know her name or whether she has a title.

"Oh, no one of consequence, certainly. Valentia Napaciza. My father is regent of the County of Ilnea, where Taggun Hold is." They have had to rename the whole county after the fountain after the Iomedan saint; it's one of those where the previous name was changed to reference Hell, and good riddance to that, but now she's not sure she can expect anyone to know where she lives. "I have just heard it's time to gather for dinner, shall I show you the way?"

The tiefling, he thinks. Well, there's no need to be rude about it while he's their guest.

"Honored to meet you. And certainly." He follows her.

The table is set, but the men are not seated; no one is forced to move. Archduke Narikopolus lets no surprise show on his face, though in reality he feels a bit of it. "Archduke Blanxart, we are honored to have you with us. Please, sit."

He directs him to one of the two seats nearest him, across from Cansellarion and where Aniol would otherwise have sat. Aniol is, really, the most convenient possible person to need to displace.

"Archduke! I'm glad you could join us today. I feared you might stay away, after today's events."

He's read the pamphlet, then. Of course, Cansellarion knew from the beginning, and there's no point denying it in front of this audience.

"My family name ought to be of no consequence to anyone," he says. "I have never worshipped or served Hell in any regard, and while there are plenty of fools in Cheliax who will be unable to distinguish me from my infamous cousins solely on account of a name, I don't expect that any of them are in this room."

(He hadn't seen the pamphlet, actually. He was referring to Valia Wain's denunciation of half the nobles in this house.)

Antonio had seen the pamphlet - or glanced at it when his grandson brought it to his attention, at least,  but he hadn't taken it seriously until this moment.

"See, that was why I had someone Teleport me directly into the foyer."

This is better than he was expecting the evening to go after what he's heard about the day's events of the convention. At least Lord Cansellarion and the Archduke d'Egorian and the Archduke Narikopolus are all talking cheerfully to each other like they weren't all denounced (the archdukes for Evil, Alex to whom that accusation couldn't stick for madness), two of them by another priest of Iomedae, this very morning.

Maybe politics is just like that and they're all used to it. Arn has never been more glad that Iomedae made her country a nice theocracy with a chain of command.

"Blood is nothing. Let all men be judged by their deeds."

"I believe we are all experiencing judgement for both, right now."

He grins at Valentina. "That's the spirit. Very republican."

You can actually have 'promoting people based on merit not blood' without republicanism! It has all of the benefits and approximately none of the drawbacks! He's not going to get into that right now, though.

(Oh, he knows. He won everything he has in a thoroughly non-republican country. But republicanism is the order of the day, now, and so one should speak fondly of it when discussing things tangentially linked to it.)

"At any rate, I would sooner apologize for my name than for the actions for which I was denounced in the convention hall today." Glance at Narikopolus and Napaciza, the other two people Wain denounced. Granted, if he had his way neither of them would be in power either, but he's honestly more afraid of Wain than he is of them. "I'm curious of Ser Cansellarion's opinion of Select Wain's speech." He restrains himself from being angry at Cansellarion about it; he's angry at someone, but it shouldn't have been Cansellarion's job.

"Is she part of the Church?" he asks Cansellarion. Everyone is obviously going to assume so, which makes her their problem regardless, but being chosen by the Goddess is not actually the same thing and is relevant to whether there is anyone who can order her to cut it out.

"No. Not, as I understand it, for lack of willingness to join, just - a lack of time for training. I intend to get in a word with her tomorrow before the main session, if I can, and I know another paladin spoke with her immediately following her speech. No orders, of course, just advice."

He waits a moment for one of the Lastwallers to say the obvious thing, and then, when neither of them do—

"Are the Iomedaen delegates to the convention not representatives of the Church?"

Oh, that wasn't confusing or surprising to him at all, but he'll explain it to the assembled Evil nobles, since explaining Iomedaenism to them is his job. "Most people do not make a distinction between being chosen by a god and being a formal member in good standing of their church. Asmodeans, of course, consider their god by having selected a priest to have designated that priest part of His church, and he became automatically responsible to the Asmodean hierarchy. Many other churches don't even have a hierarchy such that there could be such a thing as membership separate from 'membership in the set of people chosen by the god'." With a nod to the archduke, "Aroden's Church in Imperial Taldor, if I remember my history correctly, considered its priests within the Empire to be automatically a part of the church hierarchy and subject to its disciplinary measures, though its priests outside the Empire and its paladins had to choose and join an order. 

Iomedae wrote that that latter approach struck her as more Lawful, and as offering a god more freedom to select a priest without thereby altering their course towards the one their hierarchy would order. Almost always She chooses priests already sworn to the Church, but where She's done otherwise they have the right of any person to choose whether to join. 

The standard that the Church uses internally is of course not the one that Archmage Cotonnet used to determine delegate eligibility, nor do I imagine there's any particular hope of clarifying it to the general populace."

"If the church had ten Chelish Select to send to the convention I am sure they would have, but instead there are only two Chelish Select to be found and neither has yet joined the church."

So she just showed up with Iomedae's holy symbol and they let her in. Did anyone check that she was even a real cleric of Iomedae?—for that matter, she doesn't seem Wise enough to be a cleric at all. "I suppose we can only trust in the wisdom of the Goddess in choosing her, then."

"Having read the speech, I think the Goddess did a spectacular job of choosing someone who could free Pezzack from infernal rule." 

"Certainly." The part that they both aren't saying is obvious.

"Is her membership and - chain of command situation - something that the church can encourage her to resolve by sending her someone to read her up on the matter...?"

"I doubt that the convention would do better with no voices chosen by Iomedae at all, or by throwing out every cleric who cannot speak for an organized church. But given her... zeal, sending someone to advise her does seem like a valuable use of time. Church member or no, I cannot imagine she holds no respect at all for others chosen by her goddess."

"That was one of the points I made in my letter to Vigil this morning, after a frustrating attempt to get the priests at the temple in Westcrown to address that and some other issues. Of course, I haven't yet received a response."

"If she's open to it and you are, Archduke, one of us can join her to advise for the rest of the convention. It would be surprising to me if the Goddess chose someone who did not see it as important that to the extent she is parsed as representing the attitudes of the Church she actually does so."

"Certainly. As much as I appreciate your advice to us, we will have little chance to put it into practice here if Select Wain tears the convention apart."

"I also requested a confessor for myself but the temple seemed unable to provide one."

Message to Cansellarion: Also, I'd like one who knows about Alfirin, if you can spare someone.

Diplomacy means never being infuriated by nobles who seem to believe that they personally merit much of the Church's resources on the face of Golarion in a time of dire scarcity. "I stopped by the temple in Westcrown when we arrived, to introduce myself. They have one Select, one of Ser Cansellarion's Glorious Reclamation officers and two lay priests for the whole city."

"It will be a difficult next few years but I am optimistic that in the long term it'll serve us well to get accustomed to operating with fewer divine resources and more of a lay priesthood."

"I understand Iomedae's church is spread very thin, these days. Last year I asked for four Select for Menador, and was given one, who remains in Kantaria. It was disappointing at the time, but men cannot be pulled out of the air. It's no doubt very painful to send them to Westcrown, when Mendev is still full of demons. I hope that when Cheliax's churches and armies are less in shambles, we will have the manpower to relieve them of some of their more martial duties."

"I think when Cheliax has recovered from the war's devastation and is able to again take on much of the Worldwound defense, as she has long nobly done, there will be a great many priests freed from their duties on the front. I suppose it might be in the purview of the convention to propose this, actually."

"I don't really understand the concept of a lay priesthood. What's to keep them honest?"

"It seems to me that empowered priests aren't even what Cheliax most needs from Iomedae's Church right now," he says. "The priests of Erastil and Pharasma can heal and make water just as well as a priest of Iomedae, but Iomedae holds a special place in the hearts of the Chelish people that they can't just as well fill. But of course they barely know anything true about her, and many of them seem confused about Good in general."

"They have not had much exposure. But on that front, I do wonder if sending more of our men to serve at Lastwall's forts wouldn't be a better education than begging more of Lastwall's men to come here. Unfortunately, I hear that bandit problems in the south are especially dire this year."

"Perhaps we could arrange some kind of an exchange."

"I've been leaning on Abadarans, personally, though I didn't bring any with me on this particular excursion, I wonder if they have anything suited for an exchange program - they do have a country."

"An exchange was done, on a relatively small scale. A bit under thirty of Lastwall for three hundred from Kantaria, though the initial offer was made in expectation of receiving more from Lastwall. I'm not sure how many more we can afford at such a steep exchange rate, but perhaps Lastwall and the wound can spare more now that they know we are as good as our word."

"I'll go! I have no doubt I'm not allowed to fight bandits in Sirmium, so it's no loss to anyone else. I'd much rather turn my bow on demons than let it sit idle."

"Fighting at the Worldwound does everyone some good, and Crusader's Fort is one of the few Iomedaen institutions that is set up both for catechesis and for making good use of people while they learn. And I think they near-entirely stopped getting foreign volunteers when the Wound closed."

"Not just that! The Abadarans stopped paying their share when the Wound closed, because there's not a problem-of-distributed-interests any more, there's just the ordinary problems of countries with a hostile border." 

"I wonder if there's anything the archmages can do."

"They already closed the thing. Anything else they can do would be nice to have, of course, but we ought to be able to solve some problems without relying solely on archmage charity." Archmage charity is a lot like divine intervention, as he sees it. Not something to count on, and something that needs a failure analysis if it ever turns out to be needed.

Valentia is supposed to be getting married, which really seems like it would interfere with going go the worldwound (nevermind that he did it, when he was her size and had three children). But he supposes he has, if anything, made negative progress on tracking down possibilities there.

"We can't help with money at all, but I expect we can at least fill Crusader's Fort again. And more, eventually, though it will take extra manpower to train them to listen to Lastwall officers. Their aim will be good. Their unit discipline... is probably better practiced fighting demons than fighting deserters in the south, I suppose."

"Once Cheliax is on its feet, I think you could assemble an army that can actually move in and thin the demons out to the point where forts don't need manning as it's not much worse than any ordinary forest. It'd be good for the men and good for the world. But for now - if Crusader's Fort was full again that would be a major improvement all by itself."

"Crusader's Fort does not really expect volunteers to have any unit discipline. I expect there'll be culture clash of some sort, but I assure you young men of Lastwall are idiots too."

"Well, we essentially just voted today that as soon as the army is reconstituted we should go off and conquer Molthune and possibly some other places, rather than do anything as useful as clean up the Worldwound." And then on the other hand there's the countess of Seguer, who was heard referring to Sarkoris as a province of Cheliax.

Ugh. "It certainly won't help anyone's attempts to atone for the last seventy years."

"Have you had much contact with him individually?"

"Some.  More with his armies. The civil war was practically waged on my doorstep. And then of course there was the four-day war. It's hard to say that he acquitted himself well, there, and quite unsurprising that the men who joined the army hoping to liberate Cheliax when the day came were disappointed."

"There is an important difference both morally and practically between intervening in a war already ongoing and starting one. Molthune isn't at peace. Andoran is. Inasmuch as I were inclined to weigh in on geopolitics I think the main thing I'd want to say is that that's an important difference - that one of those fights would be an atrocity and the other one ought to come down to practical calculations about how much we could improve matters at what cost."

"Unfortunately the Lord Protector is a seventh-circle wizard, and so in practice we would be relying on archmage charity, as Ser Cansellarion calls it, to do anything about him personally."

The Queen is the most powerful enchanter on the planet and could easily dominate the Lord Protector in his sleep if it came to it...he shouldn't actually assume that she would, or, for that matter, that she hasn't already done it.

"Good evening, then, Ser."

"Of course. Thank you for finding the time to meet with us, despite your busy schedule. Go with the Goddess."

Hah, so apparently you shouldn't just Keep Watch every night even if you're the greatest and wisest paladin in the world. He has another glass of wine and makes more idle conversation about Molthune. 

"Do you want to try tagging along with Wain tomorrow or should I?"

"Oh, I want to meet the woman. Don't you?"

"Not particularly. Now that Cansellarion's not here, she rather terrifies me."

"I would have guessed her perfectly harmless to her fellow Iomedaeans. No?"

"Arn's just scared of speechifying types."

"There's the kind of drill sergeant who makes you do a thousand squats and the kind that makes you see all the weakness in your very soul. Second kind's scarier. She's all yours, Marit."

There's a bit more food and conversation, and then one of Narikopolus's guards hands him something.

" - gentlemen, I'm informed that there's quite a crowd outside. I expect it's nothing, but I'll excuse myself a moment to confirm it."

He gets up to leave.

"What's the history of this place? Was it in the family before the transition?" Could people have guessed that most of the Evil nobles in Cheliax are here?

Llei remembers.

"This was the Westcrown base of House Charthagnion, which controlled the Longmarch before Archduke Shawil of Abadar. Archduke Narikopolus's by his sister's marriage, I believe, all the Charthagnions having been executed or removed."

"My wizard'll Mend the window once there's no more coming, if no one gets to it first," Aniol says, backing away from the windows.

That seems a little optimistic. "There are women and children here. Is there a - cellar, a safe room -"

He prepared two of Shield this morning; having something thrown at him was always a fairly predictable occurrence, though he expected rotten fruit before rocks. He casts one.

"Yes, of course." She runs off into the kitchens.

"Unfortunately not," he answers Ramirez. "I do have Communal Protection from Arrows, up to six people for an hour." He would normally have only prepared the single-target version, but he wanted to spend all his second-circle slots on Share Language.

Doesn't the man's bodyguard Teleport? He is unlikely to have forgotten that so presumably the bodyguard's not here. Which is too bad, because a fifth circle wizard can nonlethally make short work of a crowd.

Narikopolus hears the last bit of conversation as he returns. He takes in the broken window.

"I believe we're surrounded. Do we have any other way to signal? A scroll, a trained bird - "

"Dídac. My wizard. Sparrow familiar. Someone write something for it to carry, I'll find the man."

"Angry mob surrounding Charthagnion Manor, urgent," he writes, and then if the man hasn't been found yet, "there are civilians present and no routes of escape. we need law enforcement in force immediately." Lastwall has a shorthand but he can't assume anyone here would know it.

Dídac is hauled out of Aniol's suite and his familiar offers its leg for the message.

"Where do you want him to go?" Dídac asks. "The palace? Is there some garrison somewhere?"

"Palace. Can it find it?"

"We've been to the palace but not inside, he'll have a time finding someone to take the note. Do the windows to the interior courtyard open, to let him get up before he's in view of the crowd?"

"Okay," says the wizard, and he tosses his bird and it flies.

Good.

"We can defend the house from a mob of commoners, if it comes to that. What we can't do is defend it without a massacre. The only other thing I can think is - we could send Arn or Marit to talk to the crowd. I can't imagine them listening to anyone else present. But I can't very well imagine them listening to them, either."

"I will attempt it if our alternative is killing them all but I very much expect it to fail." Maybe if he were actually an empowered priest but honestly even then. 

"And should it fail, what would you say is the Iomedaean thing to do here?"

"The alternative is holding and hoping they don't storm the building before reinforcements get here. But if they do, it's certainly too late."

He hates this. 

"If you think the odds of talking them down will just get worse from here I should go now," he says.  There's no discussion between him and Arn about which should go; Marit's better at public speaking.

And to Aniol, "If you're asking if you're permitted to defend your families against an angry mob, of course you're permitted to do that. If you can talk them down, you should. If there's even a chance you can talk them down, you should, which is why I'm going to go try.

But while there are many principles in this world a man ought to be ready to die for, "angry mobs can burn down my house if it'd take lethal force to stop them" isn't one, and there are many fewer things a man is obliged to risk his family for. It's just a question of whether we can instead expect help soon enough no one need die."

"Then no one is left who can defend the civilians, and they tear the women and children apart. No."

"I should go set up in the parlor on the second floor, it's a good angle to shoot from. What shall the signal be that we are out of hope?"

"Shoot any man who crosses the fence. Shoot no man who doesn't. Shoot no one in the act of fleeing."

He glances at the Iomedans, silently checking whether this is an acceptable amount of monstrous.

Aniol gathers up all the dishes in the tablecloth, tosses the lot aside, and turns the dining table sideways to cover the broken exterior window.

"I have Communal Protection from Arrows," he repeats, in the direction of the Archduke of Menador but with a glance at his Iomedaen consciences. "Should also handle rocks. Up to six people. How should I balance that between combatants and civilians?"

"Combatants. If the civilians are hit, our defenses are already gone, and protection from arrows won't save them. Anyone who can shoot but not take an arrow should get it first."

And who would those people be, then?

The Iomedaeans can use a bow but Marit's planning to head out unarmed. Which will make the Protection all the more useful, really; possibly when weapons bounce off him it will give anyone pause so he can talk. 

Valentia returns, unstrung bow in hand. "Civilians are gathered at the back of the courtyard. Do you want them there, or in the cellar?" She asks Ramirez; he's the one who gave her the errand.

"Cellar. Ramriez, get your men in here if you want the protection on them, if we wait any longer for Marit there's no point."

Aniol rushes up. So does Dídac.

Xavi is not a civilian. Xavi is a half-grown Menadorian noble boy. He will pass his uncle arrows. Dídac has Ray of Frost and can snipe with that, if not terribly well.

He will cast Communal Protection from Arrows on the six people Narikopolus designates. He doesn't include himself; he doesn't intend to hide in the cellars but he doesn't really have enough combat spells to be a proper combatant.

"All right. Marit, go. Everyone else, get your weapons and take positions. They are thickest at the main entrance."

Llei is in the front hall, bow already strung, trying to make passable fortifications. There are an infuriating number of massive windows; the wall is almost more glass than stone.

Nod. "Iomedae preserve us." He goes.

Arn clasps Marit's arm as he heads out. "Goddess go with you."

"Yeah. See you - eventually." Because this isn't going to work. But he goes to the main doors and steps outside.

Iomedae forgive them. Pharasma forgive them, not that it matters, all of the defenders but Arn and Archduke Blanxart being thoroughly damned already. He takes the side opposite Llei and prepares his bow.

A miracle is the only thing that could make this situation more embarrassing!!! 

He's going to descend the steps and head for the crowd. Mobs are insane. But they contain people and if you can remind the people of that, sometimes they can be reasoned with. He looks for someone specific. A man in the forefront. Make eye contact. "I'm an Iomedaen representative to the nobility here for the convention. Can I help you?"

"You're not killers. You're not here to murder families. There are innocent children in that building. They're scared of you."

"There are no devils here, and any man who scales the fence will die. Do you think the Church of Iomedae is here breaking bread with devils?" It's almost too noisy for anyone to hear him. This is hopeless. But it's one of the first teachings, one of the most important ones, that before you kill people you try for something better. If the Goddess were here she could do it, but knowing that doesn't tell him what to say.

....that's just embarrassing. Are you supposed to shoot people who break their ankles in the act of scaling the fence? Anyone? He's not going to do it first.

"Should I -" says Dídac.

"He's busted his leg. He's not advancing like that. Give it a minute. You'll've heard we're supposed to be Good these days," mutters Aniol.

Fuck. 

Narikopolus opens fire, and kills two before they take another step.

"Ice 'em. Saving the arrows for when they're thicker."

"Ray of Frost. Ray of Frost. Ray of Frost -"

Llei is already aimed at the man with the broken ankle. He lets the arrow go.

"Iomedae forbids this! This home contains innocent people. There are no devils here. We will not let you sack it. You'll be shot if you try."

"MURDERERS!"

Another two men over the fence before they realize the people who haven't crossed aren't getting shot yet. The next one tries to turn back from the top of the ladder, but the people behind him haven't stopped and he falls. Head-first onto the ground. No need for anyone to waste an arrow.

The bench-bearers push through the crowd and slam their makeshift ram into the gate. It shakes but holds. Over on the west side another ladder's gone up, but nobody's climbing it yet. The next house over doesn't have a fence and its doors and furniture are being commandeered as makeshift shields and arrow-cover. Also, now that those doors are out of the way its valuables are being commandeered with no particular use in mind. (The occupants have fled out the back. Nobody bothered to surround the other buildings.)

"There are no devils here! There are children here! You will all die if you continue on this course!"

No firing into the crowd. No firing into the crowd. He shoots each man almost the moment their feet touch the ground on his side of the fence.

Aniol orients toward the ladder, nocks, aims, waits.

At this point it's really doubtful that anyone can actually hear Marit over the dozens of other people shouting. They ram the gate again. Again. Again. The fourth time, the lock snaps. The front of the crowd rushes through.

Dídac's sparrow has reached the palace and is trying to find an open window or somebody going inside that he can tailgate.

Marit is trampled by an angry mob and is reasonably swiftly dead of it.

Xavi keeps Aniol's quiver full of an endless supply of arrows and they fly into the mob along with the Rays.

He fires as many arrows as he can. Between him, and Llei, and Aniol, and all of the retainers who can use a bow, they can fell two men every second. It is enough to keep them from advancing very far past the broken gate, at first.

He Sleeps the first close-packed group of four who haven't been shot yet, and then joins Aniol's valet in repeatedly casting Ray of Frost.

Shooting people is easier than shooting demons. Worse in every single other way, but a lot easier.

... he's an idiot. He has Status active—his bodyguard cast it from a wand before they arrived at Charthagnion Manor—and he doesn't actually have to wait for the mob to injure him to trigger it. By that point it will almost certainly be too late.

He tells Narikopolus about this, then draws his dagger and stabs himself in the leg.

He's in the middle of helping the strongest squad at Crusader's Fort clear a particularly problematic nest of demons when he notices the change. Bad time, Archduke.

They don't have a wand of Sending. Those are expensive, and they're supposed to be the people that receive the emergency Sendings. Their cleric has one prepared, but they definitely don't have ten minutes for her to cast it.

"Potential emergency in Westcrown," he calls out to the squad captain. A lightning-quick calculation. "No retreat advised yet."

     "Acknowledged," replies the captain, and then to the whole squad, "Move to defensive positions. Prepare for possible emergency retreat."

(There is not any response immediately apparent at Charthagnion Manor.)

Probably this is not in fact the only mob in the city. Quite possibly this was timed by some hostile power and is simultaneous with much worse problems. If they're on their own....

...if they're on their own they're going to run out of arrows before Westcrown runs out of lunatics.

Shit. The servants who'd usually be the ones called to grab a bucket of water are all in the cellar. "Dídac, go put out torches as they come in, you can go on raying from downstairs."

Dídac runs.

Protection from Fire, and he is now officially out of spells.

"I think it's permissible to fire on people outside the gate with torches. I don't know if it's wise." Because right now they're mostly staying behind the gate where they're safe, and if that stops being safe it's possible they'll flood the yard. But that's a tactical call; Narikopolus is better than him at those. The moral call is his and it's fine to shoot people throwing torches at your home full of civilians.

The lamp-oil is much harder to put out; he winds up smothering it with his leather vest. The guys with real equipment will be harder to take down and he's employed doing laundry and making sorbet - ray of frost ray of frost -

"Should we be evacuating the house? I have Protection from Fire up, I can help get people out if they'd be safer out here."

"To where." They're still surrounded. Possibly if they'd thought of it ten minutes ago they could've gotten the civilians out over the rooftops but it's too late for that now. 

"I don't know," he answers Arn, "but—the mob might spare women and children. A fire definitely won't."

The mob might conceivably have spared the women and children if they'd gone out with Marit at the very beginning but it's too late for that now and also they might even then have torn them apart on the spot.

He turns his head briefly to respond and is shot through the eye. If he were an empowered priest of Iomedae this wouldn't be lethal, but he's not and it is.

The flames are out of control. He brought a really large number of arrows, but he's running out. The smoke is getting thicker. It might be his imagination but the floor is feeling warm.

"Xavi, my sword. We're going to jump."

Xavi doesn't ask questions. He gets the sword, straps it on Aniol's waist while he's still firing.

"Good boy. Cling to my back, keep your head ducked down."

Xavi climbs aboard.

Aniol stays a few moments longer. He runs out of arrows and slings his bow over his shoulder. Draws the sword.

Leaps out of the window with Xavi on his back, and starts to slash his way through the part of the crowd that looked thinnest when he had this idea. Temple of Abadar. It's nearby. He can pay for them to let him in.

Llei drops his bow and draws his sword. He stabs, slices, lets four bodies fall at his feet, but it isn't enough, they're leaking men around the edges. An arrow hits him. He screams in fury - not at the arrow, but that by the time he has decapitated the next man, another has gotten past him.

This is not defending anything. He runs for the cellar, coughing, hacking down any man he runs across and doesn't recognize.

He also runs for the cellar.

The sparrow, whose name is Pol, has gotten inside the palace. He has tried chirping at servants and guards. He has tried flying into somebody's face and gotten swatted aside. His wizard is in terrible trouble and nobody will even ask him to land so they can get the note off his leg. His wings are so tired but the note is tied on badly and hopping is difficult and slower than it normally is when he tries it. He takes off again. Looking for somebody who isn't too stupid to recognize a familiar with a note when they see one.

Valentia is outside the cellar. She kills the first man to enter her field of view without hesitation. But the smoke is thickening, and the people inside will suffocate. She tears the cellar door open. 

"Out through the servant's entrance! Out, out, out -!"

"Go!"

She shakes him off and fires another arrow. She's going to cover the cellar until every single person she herded into it is out. She's not a coward.

Dídac is not very good at casting spells while his good arm is stabbed. He's trying, but it slows him down and fouls his aim. Someone clubs him across the head with a table leg and then someone else follows up with a real mace.

Elsewhere, Pol falls dead on somebody's desk.

He gets to the cellar at a run and immediately heads down the stairs; he returns a moment later supporting a coughing servant woman. "Get the kid out of here!" he yells at Valentia. "I'll—"

The rest of that sentence is replaced by a gurgle of blood as an arrow pierces his throat.

This wouldn't ordinarily be lethal, but he's taken enough hits already that it is.

The Archduke is dead. This might mean it's too late to do anything and he should focus on what he's doing here, but it also means that the situation in Westcrown is both worse that he expected and not already being handled. It's probably just a riot. It could be much, much worse than that.

"Retreat, retreat, retreat, prepare for teleport," he calls out.

Valentia kills the man who shot the archduke, and then takes an arrow in the lung and falls.

Llei bursts into the room and clears it, killing three men, and takes stock.

- Archduke Blanxart unambiguously dead. Servants dead or fleeing. Valentia is - not breathing.

Pedro-Lluís is breathing. He slings him over his shoulder and runs out the servants' entrance, sprinting around the side of the building.

Stop rioting. Go home immediately. The primary temple of Abadar offers sanctuary for the night, for anyone injured or caught outside.

Everyone hears that, somehow, over screams and the sounds of battle. Further back, away from the house, the people at the back of the mob start to trickle away. The people in the manor already, the people killing and dying, are a little busy right now.

He should have fired at the first man with a torch as soon as Arn said it was acceptable. He shouldn't have hesitated. He hadn't wanted to cut the whole crowd down. He'd wanted a line. 

He sees a servant running across the grounds, and realizes that there's nothing in the cellar left to defend. He yells to Ramirez, jumps through one of the broken windows, and begins looking for a place to scale the fence.

His party executes the procedure perfectly, joining hands for the Teleport within the round, and he Teleports them all, not back to the fort, but to Vigil. He can't quite make it from the fort to Westcrown in one hop, and he needs to make a report anyway. 

"Unknown emergency in Westcrown, Archduke Blanxart is dead, scrying now," he tells his secretary, who is only slightly more startled than the adventuring party that just appeared in his office. Jean is already casting a Greater Scrying. "—riots," he says. At least it's not Geb. "The mob has overrun Charthagnion Manor. Make sure the archmages are alerted, I'm going in." Even alone and relatively low on spells an eighth-circle wizard can make short and hopefully nonlethal work of a mob of commoners. Protection from Fire. Air Bubble. Protection from Arrows. Teleport back to the same foyer where he was earlier that evening—

Fuck this. Limited Wish imitating Quench.

There is no more fire.

... still a lot of smoke, though. He casts Gust of Wind and flies upstairs towards the cries for help.

He casts Wall of Stone to make a bridge from this window to a window of the neighboring house. "You can't stay here," he tells the men, gesturing at the newly-made bridge. "More help is on the way." He almost asks them whether there's anyone else alive upstairs, but Detect Thoughts is faster and more accurate. The interior walls look thin enough not to block it.

Well, that was a waste of a Limited Wish. He'll save the figuring out whether it was actually a good idea given his state of information at the time for the inevitable very long failure analysis of this entire night constitutional convention.

He flies out the window and straight up, high above the city, to see if there's anywhere else that needs his aid.

Below him, through the dark and the smoke still rising from what's left of Charthagnion manor, Jean can see Westcrown burning.

Aniol finds a spot with a tree near the fence, and drags himself and his nephew both up it while harried by every mobster they pass. They bloody him but they don't get him off his feet. He leaps over the fence from a treebranch and sprints into the night, Xavi riding piggyback. He sort of means to keep going all the way to the temple of Abadar - he knows where one is - but he stops when he's clear of the crowd and finds an empty little connective alley in which to stop and check on the boy.

Xavi had his wrists tangled in Aniol's collar, and his left leg propped up by the sword sheath while his right foot was trapped in the crook of his left knee. He was on there very securely and didn't slip when Aniol jumped, waded through the mob, climbed, and jumped again. And he didn't slip off when he died, either.

Aniol puts the sword back in its sheath, moves Xavi around so he can cradle him in his arms, and proceeds to the temple more sedately.

After he scales the fence and leaps over half the crowd, Llei runs, and runs, and runs, afraid to stop anywhere, lest a completely unrelated mob try to tear apart the devilspawn. Eventually he ducks into an alley, ignoring the screams of the city around him, and lays Pedro-Lluís on the ground. It's raining, by this point. The boy has stopped breathing. Llei's mind stumbles over Erastil's name, and then Dispater's, barely half a prayer.

"Breathe," he orders, but the boy does not. He gives him his own breath, but it doesn't help.

He cannot see, for a moment. Part of that is the remnants of the smoke. Not all of it.