"Lecture requirement here requires an open audience, lecturing your candidates counts under the second requirement of workshops or classes. Open lectures will help get applicants, at least, and gets a bit of prefiltering. Three [Clerics] is your minimum; are you expecting to undershoot or overshoot that, or is there too much uncertainty?

"What do you intend to have the outsiders doing? I'm not picking up if they're—more like additional staff that needs their own permits and accommodations, or more like a fire elemental you're summoning for class."

"I have in mind five different patrons who might conceivably find it worthwhile to establish churches here but I don't know at all whether any of them will be interested nor how many clerics they will each choose to pick up if they are. My plan with the outsiders is -

"- so, these entities live on other planes and have an agreement by which they can't just do as much interfering as they would like in the lives of mortals, because some of them oppose each other and would just waste their power cancelling each other out, and also it could possibly be destructive to no one's benefit if they were too active even without that. They can trade it among each other and such. Summoning elementals doesn't meaningfully impinge on that as far as I know, but summoning aligned outsiders can, and I don't want to overspend my patron's budget. My plan is to call one inevitable as a consultant and try to get a little clarity on whether I can avoid it, or pay Her back in a currency that can meaningfully translate into budget instead of just being a completely different resource. If I can't, and every summon for information is costly to Her, I will go on what I have and let the patrons who choose clerics here distribute visions and so on with Their own budgets as it suits Them to do so. But if it turns out that I can just spend all the diamonds Khelt is willing to front towards this project on it and it works fine, perhaps even leaves Her with more budget than she started with if we pay generously enough, I can buy copies of the texts of the churches we're hoping to establish branches of, here, and we can get underway on translating those; I can maybe also get outsiders who've worked closely with patrons I have less familiarity with to explain the philosophy behind their projects. In any event I don't think they necessarily need permits and accommodations, they won't be here for very long at a stretch."

So there's a sort of nonintervention treaty, or not nonintervention but investment limits...

"Okay, that enough to go on for a first pass. It sounds like figuring that out is a priority, then. If you can get copies of standard texts we can copy and distribute them, if they're the type of text that's appropriate to widely distribute, and that will improve the candidate pool a lot and just be generally good, right... summoning sapient outsiders might be a legal gray area with immigration but by your description it should get cleared without much fuss, with the Crown's backing the project.

"I'm sorry, I've been asking all the questions. Do you have any for me?"

"- well, I need to know how to get a summoning approved but I don't know if you're the person to go to about that. How do you expect to advertise to possible candidates?"

"I or whomever you hire for the role is the person to do relevant liaising, yes.

"It sounded like the [Cleric] patrons are linked to specific professions? Art, travel, farming, there were a few others? I'd reach out to the relevant guilds or associations, or places they frequent—the National Galleries, the Driver's Guild, the Ministry of Agriculture, and put up posters, distribute circulars through them, run adverts in their newsletters. If you're interested in catching people young, and the demographics are appropriate, the universities as well; it'll work especially well for the arts. As a fallback you can put out a general newspaper advert, but I'd suggest that only if the previous methods have lackluster results, because you'll get a very dilute applicant pool."

"Professions isn't exactly the right gloss. They have topics they're interested in, and a cleric of a god will typically resonate with some aspects of those topics taken together. They don't have to be young, though if the state's interested in having the greatest number of cleric-years per recruitment effort it makes sense from that angle."

"Whether you want to recruit young depends on—whether [Cleric] is the sort of class you want someone to dedicate their career to, or more of a class you take a dip in. Leveling slows as you age and most people tend to focus on getting a single class high; if you get a thirty-year-old Level 17 [Farmer] it's going to be hard convincing them to invest a lot of time and effort in [Cleric]. But if you don't think that's a major concern then it doesn't matter as much."

"Oh. I think you're mostly going to get dips. The levels in the locally conventional fashion work normally but the real measure of cleric power is circles, and those improve almost exclusively with combat experience. You will probably get only first circle clerics for that reason unless some god is extraordinarily impressed with someone here. People can make a career off being a first circle cleric, creating water and copying books and healing, but it's perfectly compatible with spending most of one's time on other things."

"...Huh. So leveling a [Cleric] class ordinarily is going to be less efficient? But it almost seems like that makes it even more important to select for people more circumstantially disposed for clerical careers, because the natural incentives are against it, and you want at least some of these people to stay to run the churches and not go back to farming, or whatever they were doing before."

"The people dispositionally suited to being Erastilians might not be remotely suited to run city churches. Desnans will have that issue too. Some gods' natures just aren't convenient for an urban centralized church structure. I'm not sure if I'd say leveling the [Cleric] class is less efficient than leveling other classes, I haven't leveled much in anything else, but it doesn't appear to unlock new circles of spell; my skills improve the range of my energy channel and give me a danger sense and some sort of mental resistance and do... something I haven't actually confidently identified... when I'm communicating with Iomedae. These are all fine things to have, probably, but they aren't spell slots."

"If the interaction of your world's circle system and our world's level system isn't well understood, all the more reason to study it, I'd say. But if some types of cleric aren't suited for urban contexts, universities are going to get a worse hit rate. We can run both the university and professional strategies and see how the results compare."

"That sounds wise to me."

Someone informs them that another candidate has shown up.

He continues to interview people till he's got an idea of who will best be able to work with him, but honestly with employees who aren't used to being motivated by torture he's not hard to work for.

Most of the candidates have a solid resume, know what they're talking about and can produce useful suggestions on candidate procurement and logistics. He'll be able to find an uncontroversial choice that clicks well with him.

Great. Do they have time to approve a Planar Inquiry of an arbiter inevitable in the morning?

Yep! They've even managed to scrape up a few diamonds. Sizes vary from Limited Wish to one Wish diamond. There's more where they came from but this is all they have on short notice.

That's at least more than enough that he won't be shortchanging the inevitable, even if it gives him the worst of news about how expensive this all is. Does anyone want to supervise the calling in case it's the only one?

He's borrowing the summoning facilities of the [Mage]-work wing of the Scholarium, since they don't want him doing just anywhere, and they want someone supervising, yes. The program manager has also acquired a secretary for the project which definitely wants to record an exact transcript because this is a somewhat historical event. The palace has also asked to attach an observer to the project, who also wants to attend and acquire a copy of the transcript for the King.

Arbitrary members of the Scholarium also want to watch and there is in theory space, but he probably should not let in gawkers, though it's of course up to him.

He is inclined to let people in if they think they might want to be Abadarans based on the small amount of information that may be rumored thus far, but has no reason to let other would-be rubberneckers in.

Shortly after breakfast the following day they can all watch him cast Planar Inquiry. He has notes ready so he doesn't forget any of the things he wants to say to the inevitable. He warns them that the inevitable will have Truespeech which might make transcribing it come out sort of weird. The casting time is ten minutes and he should not be interrupted and people should be judicious with their comments once the inevitable is present if they must say anything at all.

There is no intersection between the category of people who have heard of his Planar Inquiry plans (mages of the Scholarium plugged into the rumor mill) and prospective Abadarans, so it'll just be him, the facilities supervisor, program manager, secretary and palatial observer.

They are excellent at following instructions and shutting up, and the transcription issue is noted!

The summoning chamber is a circular workroom designed for dangerous magic, with equipment for drawing and binding and enchantments in the wall for emergency banishment et cetera. Hopefully the outsider won't mind the stale decor.

They might care to jazz it up some if he winds up summoning agathions but for an inevitable this is probably fine.

Ten minutes of casting pass.

It's a basketball-sized sphere with arms and one eye, when it appears, made of copper and fitted with bronze, levitating in midair.

"Thank you for answering my call," Blai opens. "One of my principal concerns in this transaction is to limit the expenditure of intervention budget by Iomedae and Her allies; if you will bear with me a moment while I explain the situation I would like to pay you for your attention to that desideratum, over and above everything else I list - with the caveat that I expect to be able to materially pay well above market rate."

The sphere bobs in the air. "Go on."

"I am from Golarion, but by some accident am now on a plane or possibly a spatially distorted planet which once had gods who are now understood to be dead. The people of the country in which I am presently residing wish to establish clerical traditions of some benign patrons and have engaged me to assist with this. I know it is possible for Desna to reach here and I have continued to receive my own spells from Iomedae, so I expect it to be possible, but it would be supported substantially by access to materials from and consultation by inevitables and various angels. The country is prosperous and its Lawful Good king is backing the project with a substantial budget, but I don't know to what extent you or an angel would be able to convert diamonds into offsets for the intervention costs of further callings. I don't know if that information itself is expensive. If what I ask can be fully bought with diamonds, other gemstones or currency, services, input into the founding of the new churches, or some other resource available to me, I would prefer very strongly not to overtax Iomedae's budget directly nor make it more expensive for Her to borrow from Her neighbors where necessary.

"That all having been said, I am in the market for the holy books of, in rough priority order, Shelyn, Abadar, Erastil, Sarenrae, and Desna, preferably as they circulate on Golarion in Taldane; the names of other outsiders who would be willing to be called for and are competent to offer consultation on ethics, moral philosophy, and the teachings of the listed deities; and the names, books, and supportive outsiders of any other gods I am ignorant of who might be interested in investing in a church here and are within the same alignment range."

The inevitable bobs in the air thoughtfully. It looks at the diamonds. "For what I see on the table," it says, "and the promise of the same again or the equivalent in other forms on a future visit to deliver followup materials, I can get you all of the following: my name; the books of those five gods printed in Taldane; seventeen minutes of my personal or delegated attention on finding consultants resident within Axis only such that I will be able to recommend them to you if called again; and a potentially partial answer to one followup question touching on the topic of intervention budget."

None of Blai's notes help him pick a question. It said Axis only - is that just because it can't get out of Axis trivially to look up agathions and archons, or - should that be his question - he's not even Commune trained, what was he thinking dabbling in calling outsiders like this - he mustn't waste its time -

"Am I correct in thinking that you enjoy a much more liquid exchange rate between intervention budget and material wealth in Axis than I can expect to obtain in any Upper Plane?"

"Pretty much," says the inevitable.

"If I might have your name, I can plan to call you again at this same time in - three days," they should be able to pull together more diamonds by then, "to receive the books and references in exchange for a similar payment."

"I am Sroridekron Calantus," says the inevitable. It picks up the diamonds, and then it vanishes.

It's a basketball-sized sphere with arms and one eye, when it appears, made of copper and fitted with bronze, levitating in midair.

"Flying sapient nonhumanoid copper-bronze golem" is sure how one might expect an intrinsically lawful extraplanar being from a place called "Axis" to look like! The Scholarium facility's observer immediately gets to sketching it on a notepad.

[...] If what I ask can be fully bought with diamonds, other gemstones or currency, services, input into the founding of the new churches, or some other resource available to me, I would prefer very strongly not to overtax Iomedae's budget directly nor make it more expensive for Her to borrow from Her neighbors where necessary.

The Crown's observer is raising a mental eyebrow at the nonchalant volunteering of the His Eternal Majesty's treasury in this way, but concludes on a few moments' reflection that it is a reasonable ask from the Select that his project for Khelt not incur externalities on his own patron; the Crown can approve or question thereby accurately quantified expenses on their own merits.

the names of other outsiders who would be willing to be called for and are competent to offer consultation on ethics, moral philosophy, and the teachings of the listed deities

Some stuff in there that's nonobvious how it's relevant to the [Clerics] project, the Crown observer thinks, but presumably the Select knows what he's doing and they're not going to second-guess him.

The inevitable bobs in the air thoughtfully. It looks at the diamonds. "For what I see on the table," it says, "and the promise of the same again or the equivalent in other forms on a future visit to deliver followup materials, I can get you all of the following: my name; the books of those five gods printed in Taldane; seventeen minutes of my personal or delegated attention on finding consultants resident within Axis only such that I will be able to recommend them to you if called again; and a potentially partial answer to one followup question touching on the topic of intervention budget."

Wow, that's a terrible exchange rate for five books, seventeen minutes of HR work and one question and answer!... but a pretty good rate for repeatable extraplanar contact and securing what might be a critical strategic asset. Honestly, the weirdest thing is that summoning the actual outsider is cheap and paying it to talk to you is the expensive part.

"Am I correct in thinking that you enjoy a much more liquid exchange rate between intervention budget and material wealth in Axis than I can expect to obtain in any Upper Plane?"

The program manager has been briefed enough to understand all of the individual concepts in this sentence, but he has no idea how this question was generated and what the exact implications are. There's clearly some byzantine logic to this whole exchange.

He looks at the observer from the Crown after it's all over.

"What's our upper limit on spending?" he asks.

    "I'll need to get back to you on that. Less a matter of spending and more a matter of justification. I expect the stones for the follow-up and a few more after that to be approved without fuss, it seems obviously worth it at this juncture to get reliable texts and sources, but I think you're going to need a good case for why it's necessary if you want to make this trade of this cost—every day, or something like that." He looks at Blai.

"Absolutely not, I don't think I can get anything as important as the books at rates like this. Depending on what the recommended other outsiders want to charge for their time it might be worth summoning them occasionally but only if we're really not getting anywhere and want to push harder on one of the possible churches. It does sound like I shouldn't summon any angels and only inevitables are likely to be able to straightforwardly turn gems and money into the essential resource of 'not spending the forces of Good's intervention budget' - which is at least in Iomedae's case in particular always being spent on the most important things in all Creation - but there are probably inevitables who have studied all the relevant patrons if we do need more help than the books. Is there a Skill or something for translation? I will be able to read all of these books and I can render other people also able to do that with a spell for a day at a time, plus anyone who is chosen as a cleric will be able to prepare Comprehend Languages; but with several possibly quite long books and my lack of skill as a translator it might be wise to spread it out."

"So we should be expecting to run the program principally off imported texts and your own knowledge, and sparingly if at all with direct consultation? There's a [Translate] spell; I expect I can get books translated with a turnaround time of a few days."

They're also curious what "the most important things in all of creation" are, which is a very bold claim.