"But there is one more thing you must do. You have wronged us; shall we not avenge? Subhuman I may be, but I am a merchant of Venice, and I will have my pound of flesh."

She blinks, too whipsawed by the rapid changes in her estimate of her future to grasp his meaning. The body she currently inhabits is beautiful, as subhumans see these matters; did he mean...? To her surprise, she finds that she would refuse him and die, if it came to that; so she had been mistaken before, there is something in her besides the need to survive, after all. Even if it is only a deep-seated revulsion at bestiality. She takes some comfort in the fact, in spite of the howling outrage of most of her being at the thought of death; some tiny fragment of her personality has been preserved, then, through all the triage and the errors of copying. Strange that it should take utter defeat to bring it out.

"We'll have your apology, Osiris of the galactic core; each individual human you meet, from now on, will hear you humbly say, on your knees, that you are sorry for what you did. Starting with me."

Her mouth falls open, the first time she has lost physical control of her subhuman body since - well, ever; this is his idea of a pound of flesh? A simple apology, a few words? And yet - behind the subhuman face, impassive again, the soul of Osiris writhes at the thought. She, who has traveled from beyond the visible stars, whose lightest word would, if not for the Accursed Herb, be a binding command to these subhuman vermin, is to kneel? To apologise for her actions, as though she had done a wrong to an equal?

(And now the butterfly-wing effects of a quantum structure's collapse has worked its way up to structures still microscopic, but biological in scale now and not molecular; a neuron fires, the concepts pride and disgust and defiance are activated a little more strongly... and the effect cascades further. Milliseconds later, an electrochemical impulse is travelling down a nerve; muscles contract - and the difference is visible to the naked eye.)

He is an old man, and though the moly powder in the air prevents her from ordering the guards to lie down while she kills them, she still has her fine control over this excellent youthful physique, tuned by exercise beyond the tolerance of most subhumans. She can kill him, at least, before they can react; perhaps the soldiers too, if their first shots go wild, as they well might. Then she will die; a single subhuman body, even with full conscious control of each muscle and with an immense intelligence guiding it, is just not sufficient against the hundreds of soldiers thronging the cathedral. But she will die, after these many thousands of years, as a true human, one who wields subhumans as tools, not one who kneels before them and apologises.

He has led men in battle and countries in war, but he was never a great man of his hands; the Aiello will fight, when needed, but it is not the core of them. He has no time to react, would not have had time even in his increasingly-distant youth, when he commanged tenant militias in the Venetian Spring. And even the legendary warrior-Doges, even Chiano the Lionheart himself, did not stand against the Plotter In The Desert in single combat and live. He is halfway through a surprised blink when her teeth meet in his throat; after that, though he has time to hear the shouts and the shots, there is nothing more for him to do in this timeline.

Ok, how about this one?

Ok so character setup. Abramo Aiello is from a timeline that diverged from our own; comes of an extremely prominent family (that is to say, I played the dynasty in Crusader Kings and converted the game forward) in an alternate Republic of Venice, and has just finished leading that Republic in the Eurasian War. He's not any sort of fighting man - he is nearing sixty and has led a mostly-sedentary life after the customary tour of duty East of Suez - but he has the qualities that will let you climb to the top in oligarchic politics and hold your own as leader of a small but wealthy state surrounded by Great Powers. I'm making him a cleric (of Abadar, if I get the opportunity to choose in-game); giving him a Noble/Leader background; and dumping all his physical stats in favour of the mental ones. I end up with:

STR 8

DEX 8

CON 9

INT 16

WIS 18

CHA 16

To be clear this may well be dreadfully unoptimised, I have no idea!

Ah I get skill points, cool. Ok Abramo is a politician so he's probably good at Persuasion, indeed he must have given some pretty good speeches when he caused Venezia-oltre-il-Mare to fight on and keep the capital-in-exile in Damietta, close enough to the front to hear the roar of the guns on a still day. So points to Persuasion... I can only put one point into it? Hmm. Well, obviously Abramo knows Literal Nothing about Golarion so the Knowledge skills are right out. Because there aren't that many options I'll cheat and say that his excellent education in economics counts as Lore (Religion) for Abadar. Perception is another good skill for a politician, probably. Umm... ok having seen a mechanical device of greater complexity than a scythe will probably help him on Use Magic Device, right? And fine, he doesn't know the history of Golarion but he knows a lot of history and geopolitical theory and praxis; I'll take a Knowledge (World) after all on the grounds that he's never heard of Cheliax but he knows what makes countries tick.

Ok feats next. He's probably ahead of most of Golarion in that he's seen more than zero (0) guns in his life, and in fact commanded riflemen in combat, but sadly that's not one of the Exotic Weapon options. Ok Fast Learner seems reasonably thematic, and History of Terrors because the Aiello struggled for literally centuries against the mind-control abilities of the Jackal, to the point of having two bloody revolutions within Abramo's lifetime.

Ah I do get to choose the deity, great, Abadar. The Aiello are a trading family, their arms are "Azure Three Bezants", three gold coins on a blue background, because their wealth came originally from the sea. Positive channeling, and let's see the domains. Nobility seems like a no-brainer for a dynasty out of Crusader Kings, and... yeah Travel, as all the Aiello do an apprenticeship in the Far East and learn how the trade works.

Lawful Neutral. 

Ok these beard customisation options are not as good as Crusader Kings', but we'll do this short one with the mustache ...sigh, it doesn't look a whole lot like the character portrait I chose, but whatever. Separation of gameplay and narrative is the lifeblood of AARs. Can we get a hook nose? ...not really. Meh. Not a great fan of this voice acting, but I guess "Reserved" will do.

And ta-da, character sheet and new icon!

Ok cutscene, I feel like I've read this a couple of times and won't write it down... Terendelev doesn't get a character portrait? A strange omission even if she's going to die in the next few exchanges, after all she's a major Named Character.

As I was saying. How about this one. We've got demons, dragons, vaguely medieval-but-actually-more-Renaissance street parties?

Uh... ok this is not what he was expecting to happen after having his windpipe torn out. Indeed he wasn't expecting the thing with the windpipe either. The war was won, dammit, that's what it means when you sit in the enemy's capital and dictate terms to the alien power behind their thrones. 

...no you idiots the Jackal was many things but it wasn't a demon, and also London hasn't had city walls since the sixteen hundreds...

...a dragon? Never mind it's some sort of figure of speech obviously... wait what language is this? Not the fluid musical Veneziano he grew up with, not the grunting barks of English, not the thin whining alienness of what passes for Coptic in what used to be Egypt...

That chanting does help with the pain in his chest. Oh, right, that explains it then: His oxygen-starved brain is having some sort of fever dream before shutting down entirely. Maybe influenced by the Jackal as some sort of final vengeance? Its powers are strongest in dreams, although the moly powder and cold-iron chains should prevent that - but even now they still don't know the full extent of those powers. Perhaps it's burning through some last reserves to get him, it can't have expected its body to survive that.

Probably the demons will come and torture him any moment now, but it can't well last more than a minute.

Well... the demons don't seem to be appearing right this moment. Maybe the Jackal is busy fighting the occupation soldiers crowding Westminster Abbey, and doesn't have time to direct his dying dream? Whatever; he supposes he might as well cram in a final few seconds of conscious experience. Although it's already been longer than he'd have expected to be remotely functional. Some trick of subjective time? 

Let's have a look around, then. 

We've got a cobblestoned city square, with festive multicolored flags somewhat failing to hide that fundamentally this place is a bit muddy and grimy, but indicating a market with enough surplus in it that one could profitably sell dyes and cloth. We've got a stage on which people are playing flutes and lutes. We've got a knife-throwing booth! Drinks in barrels! Bonfires! A pretty good attempt at a festive atmosphere, really!

Knife-throwing, is it? Abramo is better at throwing reserve divisions into armoured breakthroughs, and the weapons division keep promising that Next Year For Sure he'll be able to throw missiles across major bodies of water, but... knives, after all, have symbolic importance. He'll have a look.

Thump!

Well, that's satisfying! Also lucky; but fortuna is one of the two cardinal qualities of the prince. Abramo will exercise his virtu, and quit while he's ahead. What else is here? ...oh, a mannequin? Well, why not?

Ok so you just punch it?

...oh.

All right, there are the demons. A little behind schedule, but Abramo has noticed that entities whose plots span centuries sometimes have difficulty with timing on the scale of days, much less minutes.

...not a metaphorical dragon after all, apparently. But definitely a dead one.

Very philosophical. You fighting or running?

This is a dying nightmare, directed by the Jackal as vengeance for Abramo leading the coalition that drove its armies from the Volga to the Rhine. It hardly matters what he does, it's not going to end well for him. It follows that all that's left is defiance. Abramo has had a lot of practice at defying the enemy of mankind and all its works, and sees no reason to stop just because he's dying.

"I'll fight."

Locusts; how thematic, for an enemy out of Egyptian legend. Abramo despises locusts; they eat the crops, they suck all surplus out of a market and make it impossible to profit, they never ever land on the supply lines of armies fighting for the Jackal, and it doesn't matter how many you kill... short of chemical weapons, that is. Which unfortunately are in short supply at the moment. But the Jackal seems to have made a mistake: It's given its locusts an identifiable leader, a specific target to aim at... and a crossbow is a lot like a rifle, really. Abramo bares his teeth at the ancient enemy, raises the crossbow, and fires.

Then he can have a canyon to fall into!

Falling is a classic human fear, but qua nightmare vengeance-torture it seems a little weak, honestly. Maybe the Jackal is dying too, and not entirely in control of this dream?

It's been, like, ten minutes of subjective time. Can we get you to notice that that's really not very realistic for a man whose windpipe has been torn out? Also that this cavern is very detailed and textured for a dream, especially one produced by an oxygen-starved brain's final moments?

Oof, ouch. 

All right that's actually a good point. The "vengeance dream" hypothesis does look a bit unlikely. 

...Abramo will certainly come up with a different theory any minute now, he just needs to take stock of his bruises first.