"Anyway, if you'd like me to teleport you back to Westcrown right now and then never see me again, it wouldn't damage anything important," he says eventually. "But I think the Church plans to do a failure analysis of this incident and would like to hear your perspective. They'll send people to Westcrown to do interviews, probably, but it might be more convenient to do yours while you're here."

"I'll probably hire someone else for the duration of the convention, on account of you obviously having too much to do already, but I hope you'll consider returning to Cheliax more permanently as soon as it wouldn't be a disaster for Lastwall to lose you. We have the archmages, of course, but—"

"I'd certainly like to, and—a great deal of my actual job has been obviated on account of the fall of the Th—" wait, no, "—of the Infernal regime, but I've acquired several additional jobs on account of being the most powerful wizard around. I think it probably would be a disaster for Lastwall to lose me now."

"Of course. Anyway, I'll stick around for the failure analysis. I don't know that I have anything to say to them that I didn't say to them yesterday, but perhaps they will—interpret it differently, in the context of recent events."

"What is your impression of the operations of the Church in Westcrown?"

Oh good, it's de Luna, he won't have to carefully avoid saying anything that could imply the existence of Alfirin.

"My impression is that it doesn't have enough people," he says. "I realize that you probably know that already, and knew it a long time ago, but it's the—obvious relevant fact, here."

"I spoke to Select Iustin at the temple yesterday morning. I told him that Select Wain had been saying things that I thought were unorthodox and dangerous, and I asked whom I ought to treat as my—advisor on religious matters and liaison to the Church, since in effect I had been treating Sir Cansellarion as such, just on account of him being the only Iomedaen I actually knew well, and that was quite evidently not the best use of his time. We ended up getting into an argument about—the role of the Church in liberated Cheliax. I spoke somewhat rudely, I think, for reasons I now identify as—grief, really, at the death of Aroden and the loss of the support His church used to give the Empire. That was rather more recent for me than it was for you, of course. I regret the way I spoke, certainly insofar as it might have disposed Select Iustin to ignore my rather more urgent warning about Select Wain. Possibly I should have left off the request for an advisor altogether until I was assured that something would be done about the first thing, although I think the request for a Church liaison was a reasonable one that the temple ought to have been able to fulfill. The Archduke of Menador has two in his entourage. If I erred there it was by not requesting one much sooner."

"In general—well, do you want my opinion on what you should be doing, or just on what you are doing?"

"Both, please."

"I think the Church is neglecting the rebuilding of Cheliax. I know it isn't the sort of thing you've set yourself up to do, and I'm going to have to accept that Aroden's church is gone never to return, but—well, I don't need to explain theology to you, but defeating Evil doesn't necessarily mean stabbing it with a sword. The evil that's happening right now in Cheliax is that millions of people are still damned who are now free to save themselves, and they don't know how. Millions of people are looking to Iomedae for a way out of Hell, and maybe they should actually be looking to Sarenrae or something instead, but they're not. They're looking to Iomedae, and what they found was an Iomedaen priestess who was too poorly catechized to avoid—let's be quite honest here—leading hundreds of them straight into the Abyss."

"I think you're neglecting the convention, specifically, because you think of it as an archmage's folly and not as a thing that's actually going to affect the fates of millions of people. I can explain why it's the latter thing, if you don't believe me. The only one of you who isn't neglecting it is Sir Cansellarion, and he's actually prioritizing it for reasons I don't even agree with, though that's not at all relevant to what happened last night."

"I think the policy of exerting absolutely no authority over Select who haven't sworn an oath is admirably Lawful, in the abstract, but that whoever devised it," and yes, he knows it was Iomedae herself, "should have also devised a contingency plan for what to do if an uncatechized cleric starts giving inflammatory political speeches while wearing Iomedae's holy symbol."

He is diligently taking notes. The time for figuring out which other thing the Church is also neglecting they should neglect more for Cheliax's sake is not right now. Right now - the man warned them, and they should listen to him. 

"How did you identify Select Wain as likely to pose a problem?"

"Her conduct in the opening session of the convention's committee on excising diabolism. She started by declaring that she didn't mean to obey Élie Cotonnet, who had forbade us from proposing the expulsion of other delegates, and she went on to propose that anyone who 'sought power' while reading Evil ought to be put to death. To be clear, the thing I was initially afraid of was not immediate mob violence, it was the actual implementation of this policy, which I thought was insane even if carried out exactly as proposed and likely to lead to escalating rounds of purges and counter-purges if attempted in practice...I was also concerned that Alfirin might perceive Select Wain as a threat and either murder her or rewrite her mind into something more convenient. I'm not sure that's not still an active concern, though it seems like less of one now."

"—on that note, if Wain is still alive, you ought to limit her interaction with Sir Cansellarion, who might find himself obliged by his oath of honesty to reveal to her that the Queen is secretly Evil. I can't imagine that would go well."

"Was there anyone else from the church on that committee? Did she have any advisors or assistants?"

"Not from the Church of Iomedae. Her closest ally on the committee was a cleric of Calistria, which was another cause of my concern."

"Why was there a ...committee on excising diabolism, and who decided who would be on it?"

"It was one of several committees that the Duchess of Chelam proposed forming in the opening session, and the assembly voted to approve her proposal with only minor amendments. The membership was...whoever volunteered, with the condition that all four estates of the convention—noble, religious, elected, and sortition—had to be represented. I think the Duchess's intent was to keep all the people bent on bloody vengeance distracted from the other business of the convention, but putting them all in a room together at all was an obvious mistake. I joined in the hope of being a voice of moderation, though I stopped attending after the morning of the second day when they started purging members from the committee itself."

"And then Wain decided to give an incendiary speech, which was...also on the second day?"

"Yes. The speech was a surprise to me. I was actually denounced in it, albeit mildly, for opposing the purges on the committee. Most likely this was a minor factor in the incitement of my own murder, compared with the revelation later that day that my father's name was Thrune, but it may have been a factor—I do have a suspicion about who published that page from the Ancient Houses, and it has nothing to do with this situation, I think, it was merely inconveniently timed for me."

"What was the policy around giving speeches, anyone could do it? Do you know if the Church delegation had any internal rules about it?"

"Yes. There were rules of orderly debate but she was following all of them. President Cotonnet could in theory have interrupted her but he wouldn't have. What he could have done is given Sir Cansellarion five minutes to compose a response before allowing debate to move on to something unrelated, though I found out later that Cansellarion hadn't slept in eight months so I'm not sure his response would have been particularly effective."

"I'm not sure there...was...a Church delegation, strictly speaking. There was Wain, one other Select who may or may not be a former priest of Asmodeus, and then Cansellarion, who was attending in his capacity as Count of Lladó rather than as a representative of the Church, and as far as I know none of them had spoken to each other prior to Wain's speech."

"Do you happen to know anything about how that decision was made?"

"Which decision?"

"To have as the church's only representatives attending this fairly important event two non-Church members and Cansellarion who has a distinct set of diplomatic obligations. It's fine if you don't know, I'm just trying to get oriented before I get there."

"I don't know anything about the Church's internal process there," assuming there was one, "but I suspect the limiting factor was that all non-noble delegates had to be native Chelaxians, which didn't leave a lot of options given the Goddess's recent constraints."

"There was also the requirement that nobility who wanted to attend had to do so personally. I think Cotonnet was hoping most of us wouldn't bother to show up. For my own part, I probably would have come myself even if I'd been allowed to send a man, but Cansellarion might have had the option of appointing someone less busy."

"All right. What kind of support could the church usefully have provided you over the last few months and with the start of the convention, if we had say five people working on it?"

"Myself, or the convention in general?"

"I'd like to start with you since it sounds like you specifically requested more support and didn't get it. The convention does not seem to have especially wanted our support, which makes for different dynamics around providing it."

"If I'd had five people starting a few months ago I'd probably have assigned them to advise some of my vassals who grew up Asmodean and claim to have converted but don't have much of a grasp of what that means. Absent the urgency of the convention I'd have divided them between that and establishing a temple in a city that doesn't currently have one. Notably, though, I didn't request more support a few months ago, because I knew the Church was shorthanded and I trusted you to be making the right decision about where to put the people you did have. I was upset about the lack of support, but I didn't think you were making a mistake by not providing it, and mostly I still don't."

"The way in which I think the Church is making a mistake, what I mean when I say you're underprioritizing Cheliax, is—well, first, that you've been given considerable political influence and have totally failed to wield it in a productive direction, but that's not relevant to me. The thing that's relevant to me, that I didn't try to correct earlier because I didn't quite realize it until this morning, is that you don't have effective communications with the government of Cheliax. I suppose that the Queen has her own reasons for not wanting that, but that's all the more reason why I do. I don't need five people for it. It probably doesn't even need to be one person's full-time job. But there needs to be someone that we can go to with questions of theology or Church policy that are relevant to our duties, or requests for Church support in a specific area, or to tell you that you're about to make a disastrous mistake, who can and will see that it's dealt with appropriately, and where it won't be a disaster if they're taken away from their other duties to do so."

"Do you think that it would work for that person to be a lay priest and a new graduate - that's what we sent Narikopolus - or would they need actual experience with diplomacy or governance?"

"... I think the Church's sole representative to the imperial court of Cheliax ought to have some experience in diplomacy and governance, yes." Seriously. He understands that they're shorthanded but if they have one person with experience in diplomacy then this is what that person is for.

He doesn't say the latter part out loud, because far be it from him to claim that Cheliax is the most important country on the planet even though as a purely objective matter it probably is. "A lay priest would still be helpful, if you can't spare anyone more experienced, but I, personally, was raised in the Church and am in less dire need of the specific function Narikopolus' advisors were serving. If you're going to allocate more people to serve in that capacity, and you probably should, you should allocate them to anyone important who was raised Asmodean—I could make a list of suggestions, actually, if you'd like."

The Church has, in fact, several experienced diplomats, but diplomats aren't completely interchangeable. You lose a lot by pulling the one man who can function in Oppara where he's trying to prevent a civil war or at least prevent the Church from being destroyed in it and putting him in Westcrown where he knows no one. Cyprian's man is managing relations for the ongoing invasion of Razmir, which is a geopolitical priority of the Church's because it is ruled by Mephistopheles. The people in Molthune are doing approximately the same thing that they'd do if you sent them to Westcrown, that is trying to talk down the government from executing thousands of rebels and avoid the place being permanently ruled by an evil king.

 "Are you in contact with Lastwall's embassy in Westcrown - they do not speak for the Church but they are diplomats and can give advice in their own capacity -"

"It hadn't occurred to me that those were separate things," he says. They weren't when he was originally alive. "Nonetheless, I'm not sure it would have been appropriate—"

He pauses. "Actually, I think I am poorly accustomed to the way international diplomacy and church-state relations normally work in this era," it's the whole thing where there's more than one state in Avistan, "and should not be presuming to tell you how they should in this case."

"It's very useful to have notes of what stands out to you as badly done, even if - perhaps all the moreso if - it's how things are done in this era and no one in this era has had occasion to directly compare to how it used to be done. If you'd find it useful to summarize what's public about how Lastwall and the Church are currently allocating resources I would be happy to, though my initial impression is in line with yours that the current allocation represents a very substantial error."

"What I mean is that my instincts for how things ought to work are calibrated for an era in which a united Empire dominated Avistan and Aroden was alive. We hardly have the option of returning to that situation even if I think it was a far better one—I suppose it might still be useful to hear a summary of your resource allocations. I will try to take an outside perspective and not compare them too much to the way things were and cannot be again."

"The Thrunes attempted to release Tar-Baphon as part of the Four Days' War, and succeeded in substantially weakening the seals placed on his prison. Archmage Cotonnet replaced them, but the underlying vulnerability "that it proved possible to use the three fragments of the Great Seal to affect the largest "significantly changes the dynamics of defending it, and will require greater sustained long-term investment. We're negotiating for the order dedicated to that aim to have a significant long term presence in Westcrown and in Kraggodan, and increasing efforts to remove those agents of Tar-Baphon who played a significant role in bringing it about. Our current assessment is that at our present level of investment the chance Tar-Baphon gets out this century is better than one in twenty.

The Worldwound no longer poses a threat to the continued existence of the Material but remains as full of demons as Belkzen is of orcs. If we pull out the Church's resources Mendev will probably be overrun and the March of Gundrum, a protectorate of Lastwall, certainly would be. We've contemplated a forced evacuation of the March and then abandoning the forts there, which would free up eight thousand men and quite a lot of resources spent on related logistics, probably get thirty thousand civilians killed on the March and in northern Ustalav, and constitute a betrayal not of any formal agreement we have made but of our commitments as almost everyone in the area actually understands them, if it's done for some reason other than Tar-Baphon getting out. Without deciding to abandon that front, there is a minimum staffing commitment where going below that staffing commitment increases overall casualties. We're below that staffing commitment.

Across the lake, we're heavily involved in Cyprian's war in Razmiran. The place is ruled by an evil archmage who represents himself to be an Evil god, and we are reasonably confident that during the Four-Day's War he became an ally of Hell. We are currently working with Cyprian's people and with the rest of Razmiran's neighbors to remove him from power; the soldiers are nearly all Cyprian's but most of our top strategists and advisors are involved and we expect to risk most of our key people should Razmir emerge to fight or start burning cities. We judge Tar-Baphon likely to get out this century if we fail. The Goddess directed us to do it this spring.

Across the rest of the Inner Sea - a well-staffed temple in a peaceful stable place is a net asset to the Church; it produces converts and donations. There is a minimum staffing commitment below where what you're doing is in the long run counterproductive, eating your seed corn. We're below that staffing commitment. 

The obvious question is - if you are expending resources in a long-run counterproductive way in response to temporary challenges, why not take out a loan? We did that right after the death of Aroden and are still paying it back. The Church presently owes the Church of Abadar sums such that monthly payments on it are fifteen percent of our revenue, and judge it unwise to go higher. The Worldwound is becoming less of a problem over time, and in fifteen years we can hand over the forts to the people of Gundrum; resurrections are cheaper thanks to the Archmage Naima and we have a list of people who a Raise Dead wouldn't suffice for who we hope to return to life over the next five years; if the war for Razmiran goes well we anticipate that next year resources devoted to Cheliax wouldn't effectively cost more than twice their nominal cost in the staffing shortages they create elsewhere.

Also, Arazni is missing from Geb. Has been since the Rovagug spawn event."

"—okay, I'm sure you can't confirm or deny that this is actually the case, but if hypothetically Élie Cotonnet had something to do with Arazni's removal from Geb, would anyone have pointed out to him the profound unwisdom of being predictably on the Material for the sake of bloody democracy?"

"Anyway. What part of that do you think is a mistake? I think it'll be awful, trying to rebuild Cheliax without much of the Church's help, but I'm not actually willing to trade that much chance of Tar-Baphon getting out to change that. There are a couple regards in which I'd argue you should—be risking more for a chance of actually winning, given you can't hold the line indefinitely anyway, but all the things you mentioned do in fact sound very important. And concerning, I wasn't aware of the Arazni situation at all."

He's not going to comment on Élie Cotonnet's decisions. "I should not go into what promises to be a fairly complicated investigation with my recommendations prewritten but my sense is that you are right, well-managed diplomacy with the archmages is worth more than the lives of a few thousand soldiers, and that treating Westcrown more like Oppara and less like Almas could have significantly improved the Church's relationships there. Obviously there are - complications -" in that Alfirin does not like the Church much and probably doesn't actually want more presence - "but there are always complications in Oppara, too, and it's just understood that the cost of doing business there is having someone competent and loyal with an enormous budget for bribery who can intervene before any well-intentioned junior members of the faithful say out loud 'all your nobility are Evil!' From my current state of knowledge I'd let the situation deteriorate in the north and have a mansion in Westcrown where some man we dragged back from the time of the Chelish Civil War hosted, and attended, all the right parties, probably formally as an attaché of yours, and jumped on junior Iomedaens when they entered the city to put the fear of Hell in them. We also do not formally oblige anyone chosen by the Goddess in Taldor to join the Church but they certainly get an in person meeting in which they are advised by gentle introductions to many examples of the reason for the policy to never open their mouth in the presence of the nobility other than to say 'as a humble servant of my Goddess I am ignorant of that and cannot speak to it.' You don't actually need the ability to give them orders; no one the Goddess chooses wants to discredit the church and get themselves killed."

"I won't be staying in Westcrown after the convention, though I can host your man until it's over. Other than that, I don't have any disagreement with that proposal."

"Was there anything else? A few things occurred to me about relations with the archmages, as you were speaking, but I'm hardly on expert on the subject and it's unrelated to the present failure analysis, at any rate."

"I 'm happy to speak of anything of interest to you but I have no further interview questions. - and you have, of course, our regrets. You identified a problem and took every reasonable measure to take it to those institutions that should have done something about it. I deeply regret that that didn't work."

"I don't hold it against the Church. I'm sure you'll learn from your mistakes, and I'm glad to help you do so in any way I can."

"The thing I wanted to say was about Tar-Baphon. I'm something of a student of history. As far as I can determine there had never been three mutually allied archmages on the face of this planet at the same time, from Earthfall until a year ago. I would guess the gods wouldn't have allowed it, when prophecy functioned. Now prophecy is broken, thanks to a chain of events that included the death of Aroden, and there are four. Five, maybe, if you've got Arazni stashed somewhere. I'm not going to speculate as to whether Aroden sacrificed himself to achieve this result or whether it's sort of the Age of Glory after all. What I am pretty sure of is that we—civilization, humanity, whatever—have the opportunity to do something better about Tar-Baphon than grimly compute the probability of his escape. Of course, Iomedae might not be that involved in it; three of the archmages—okay, two of the archmages, it's not fair to count Arazni—appear to dislike her personally despite sharing all of her major priorities. But have you asked them whether ending Tar-Baphon for good is on their to-do list? Do they know your estimate of his chances of escaping if they don't?"

It's not a thought he'd had. It is, he suspects, not a thought anyone'd had. "We haven't. I will keep that in mind, though - probably only to bring up once the war for Razmiran is finished."

"Why do you think no one thought of it?—you don't have to answer that. I certainly don't mean to interrogate all the Church's priorities, I'm a layman who barely knows what he's talking about. But I do think I've noticed something—missing—from the Church of this era compared to the one I used to know, that I'd guess was lost with Aroden, and I doubt I can give it back to you but I can probably explain what it was?"

No one thought of it because everyone's busy and tired and can barely see how to do the things they already have no choice but to do. It is - valuable, sometimes, to have someone look at the Church from outside it and say what they honestly see. "I would - appreciate hearing that."

"The short way to say it is that you don't act like people who think it's your destiny to surpass your gods. The Iomedae I knew was the goddess of victory. I can see how, in this awful century, she turned into the goddess of desperate triage, but—you're all so busy barely not losing that sometimes you don't notice that you could, instead, do something different and win. It's not just Tar-Baphon, it's—I think Valia Wain is actually a symptom of the same basic thing. You've lost a lot of—not necessarily knowledge, but emphasis—on how to deal with the kind of Evils you can't just stab or shoot. I suppose seventy years of having to make a truce with literal Hell because otherwise demons will eat the planet would do that to anyone."

It seems unlikely that Valia Wain's failings, whatever they are, are the Church's, since she more or less never met anyone in it. But - he takes the point. "I think that this century has done enormous harm to the Church as an institution and I very much hope that we're soon in a position to start rebuilding. And - if you think that you could plant, in the Heartlands, a church culture that you are more excited about, I'd try quite hard to find the resources to enable that. For now we should do all of the work on figuring out all that went wrong here, though. Shall we head out?"

It's not about what excites him. The modern Church of Iomedae is depressing to him, yes, and also to almost everyone in it, which is more the problem.

"Yes, let's."