...is pretty much everything in the Empire, actually
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Iomedae will bow a wild guess as to the right amount to bow. "Praepositor. I am very grateful for your time." She has been adapting her speech as they approach the city. It is important to giving speeches successfully. She will not sound native to Oppara, and isn't trying to; she is a soldier come from the distant frontier, and that is the whole appeal and the whole argument behind what she is saying. But one can sound like the very image of a soldier come from the distant frontier, the way an actor would play it, or one can go quite a bit past that and be actually hard to understand, and it's very important she isn't hard to understand.

 

She is blazing and earnest and really strikingly young to be the Knight-Commander of anything, though when she speaks it is not hard to put together how it happened. "I have come to Oppara to explain the situation on the front lines of the Crusade against Tar-Baphon. I have been speaking all downriver, as I go, and I have a speech that is my best present short account of it. It inspires men to enlist, obviously, and to the priesthood, though it's not the best I've ever composed for that purpose and that is not my primary purpose with it. 

My primary purpose is to explain that we are losing the war and that there is more at stake than the Empire realizes. It will need to be adapted for the city, of course, and its most striking claims may need to be proved before it is spoken at all. I was not sure whether it was wiser to speak, and thereby come to the attention of those empowered to heed what I'm saying, or to try to get their attention first when they have no particular reason to expect I'm worth listening to. Do you want copies of the speech I have? Do you want me to give it? Or is that the wrong starting point entirely?"

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"Of course," he says, nodding, as she thanks him. "We are all very glad to hear from the front, and I am most sure your speech will be greatly appreciated." The only question is if it's by the blues or the greens. "One must be careful to avoid spreading alarm and despondency, of course - may I have a copy of the speech?"

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She can present him a copy. "I am not inclined towards despondency and have never found it to help men hold a position but alarm seems appropriate. The war is going very badly, and Tar-Baphon is trying to ensure the Empire is too slow to catch on; if he doesn't want the alarm raised, I think it's a safe guess that we do."

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"The necromancer who calls himself Tar-Baphon," he observes, taking the speech.

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" - I think it's important that the necromancer is Tar-Baphon, the one Aroden fought, and not some imitator."

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"Mmm," he says, reading it, slowly, scribbling notes on a piece of paper as he does. "There are, certainly, those who agree with you."

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"I hadn't realized there were those who disagreed! I suppose I'll pay for the Commune to set the matter to rest!"

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"The Communes have been cast," he says, "and well-reputed clerics known to be chosen of gods of Good and of Law have reported both answers to the question." 

He continues reading.

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What?

 

"What did Aroden say?"

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"That is a complicated question," Praepositor Emilian says slowly, scribbling a few more notes.

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"The Crusade runs Communes. I routinely get questions onto them, if there's any space left." Because she cares about asking Aroden questions wildly more than anyone else does and is willing to hang around making herself inconvenient for the chance to ask things like how many stars there are in the sky. "I have not specifically asked that one because I did not realize that it was in question but I did ask, this fall, whether I was correct in my impression that Tar-Baphon meant to take the world when he was finished with the Empire, and that was 'YES'."

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"No doubt this is the case," he says, going over a paragraph of her speech again. "The Church has yet to formally commit to a position on this topic, and the answers to those Communes that the Church in Oppara has carried out are not a matter for public discussion."

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"I think we ought to go at once to a senior priest and explain that - one plausible guess is that Tar-Baphon, the one Aroden fought, is trying to take the Empire with enough subtlety we do not realize the need to fight back until it's too late, and that towards that end he impersonated a priest or Dominated one or Suggested one or found some way to directly interrupt the spell, and so the Commune needs to be done again in a secure location under controlled conditions, at once before his spies can learn of it, ideally by a priest powerful enough that even he cannot easily interfere with them, though close observation with magic should at least make it much more difficult to cheat. And we should ask firstly - is the original Tar-Baphon, who you fought, active again in the world and an enemy of the Empire?"

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"I will take your suggestions under consideration," he says. "- For the moment, however, let us return to the topic of your speech." He puts it down and looks at her soberly.

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It seems somewhat less important to explain the 'everyone is lying to you' thing if the first and most urgent problem is that the Enemy's intervention is far more pervasive than she imagined it. But sure, they can discuss the speech.

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"You appear to have mortally insulted seventy-one eminent officers and nobles of the Empire, including your own commanding officer. Are you aware of this?"

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"I am endeavoring to find the least insulting possible phrasing of 'everything that has been reported to you about the state of the war is false', and certainly would much rather that sentiment be conveyed in a way that injures no one, but in fact everything that has been reported to you about the state of the war is false so it's a difficult situation. I did pick a specific example the major parties to which are dead, to - mitigate the problem."

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"In the event that General Arnisant has failed to report a series of serious military defeats to His Imperial Majesty, may the righteous gods uphold him*, and instead lied in dispatches, he is guilty of treason against His Imperial Majesty, may the righteous gods uphold him. Further, I observe that Colonel Guiretz's brother is a spatharios of the Guard and his uncle a vestetor."

(*: Prior to the reigns of the Emperors Sabbatios I and Taldaris II, the traditional style was 'may he reign a thousand years', but it was changed to stop emperors from getting ideas.)

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"Praepositor - every man in the north wants to win. No one has sowed confusion among us about what we're facing. No one is in doubt that if we lose - and we are losing - everything Taldaris built and everything Aroden built and everything anyone else built will be destroyed utterly and irrecoverably. They are loyal to the Emperor, they are risking much more than just their lives for the Emperor, and they are lying because they believe it is impossible and futile to try to tell the truth." You are not actually doing very much to dispel the impression that it is impossible and futile to try to tell the truth. "If the Emperor sees fit to send them all to Heaven it is the Empire that will be the poorer for it. I don't want that. But we are all going to die if Oppara slumbers under the impression there is no real threat in the north. The most important thing is that you are accurately warned. ...but it's also extremely important that no one is wrongly shamed for having been in an impossible position and done their best possible service to the Emperor in it, so if you have advice on how I can explain it better that's precisely what I'm here for."

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"I certainly do not mean to claim that the army is disloyal in any way," he says, "and can certainly see that you do not either. Now - when you say in the third paragraph 'today it leads us to ruin,' you realize that this is a strong statement. Perhaps 'today it may lead us to ruin' would be a better one? Certainly warnings of disaster to come are not treacherous, but saying that an event is certain against the Emperor's wishes may be somewhat... easy to misinterpret."

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" - sure. It won't lead us to ruin if instead we do something different and avoid that."

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"Second, you say that the usurper's attack on Vitoria-Gasteiz was 'impossible to prepare for even had it been expected.' That is a stronger statement than that it was successful, since it is a declaration that, had the full armies and wizards of the Empire assembled there, they could not have defended the city. I trust you realize the significance of that?"

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"If the Crusade had had advance warning of the attack they could not have assembled in Vittoria-Gasteiz a force sufficient to hold it. He moves with overwhelming force, when he moves. There's nothing in the north that can scare him off the battlefield nor survive his attention on it, short of a Miracle from Pharasma and we can't spend those lightly.  Had the full armies and wizards of the Empire assembled there ....I don't know. I reason only from the fact that if he was not afraid to rouse the Empire from its slumber he would move more quickly. It follows from that, I suppose, that they could have held it, or at least inflicted intolerable losses, or been able to impose enough of a risk that Tar-Baphon - that the entity calling itself Tar-Baphon wouldn't consider it worth the effort."

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"Then it follows that it was not impossible to prepare for, merely unprepared and overwhelming? It is certainly not treasonous to say that a fort was not ready to be the crisis point for a war, nor that the commander was overwhelmed, nor that any officer needs more men, but since you do agree that the wizard calling himself Tar-Baphon fears the full might of the Empire..."

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"Yes, I understand. I am not trying to undermine confidence that the Empire can fight the wizard calling himself Tar-Baphon once it realizes it needs to. Overwhelming force that even the brave and loyal men at the front had no hope of withstanding."

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