If you're going to conquer a country ruled by an archmage, you want an archmage of your own. If in the course of the four-days war that archmage somehow, presumably via an incomprehensible contract law dispute, got replaced as ruler of his country by Mephistopheles, you want an archmage of your own even more.


Cyprian approached Morgethai, of course. Presented her with the proof that Razmiran was now Hell's remaining foothold on the Material. That Iomedae thought this was their only opportunity to destroy it. That a Gate and a Disjunction, here and there in the right place, would make the campaign much faster and less dangerous; that the fact she could be called on would make their enemies reluctant to strike openly and catastrophically at Isarn. 

Of course, she said. She required in return only one thing: Cyprian's public oath, before Iomedae, that Andoran is his honored ally and his partner in the war to free the Inner Sea of Evil, and will always be free and independent. 


He was not willing to offer it. She wishes that she were surprised. 

He was of course invited to the state wedding of Cyprian, Emperor of Galt, and Her Majesty Aspexia III, Queen of Cheliax, and of course attended, and of course can read the writing on the wall. The Empire is almost reunified, in this marriage. The only holdouts are Molthune, which has managed to be as geopolitically isolated as Andoran and personally irritate the archmagi aside, and Andoran. Cyprian is busy this year, with Razmiran. But next year, maybe the year after, he'll invade.

It would be an outrageous thing to do without provocation. But he'll have provocation, is the thing. Andoran is constantly offering provocation. Codwin cannot actually get them to stop, not while Cheliax is still a participant in the international slave trade. He has pleaded with the Eagle Knights, he has reprimanded the Eagle Knights, he has in some cases court-martialed Eagle Knights and stripped them of their rank in Andoran's formal military. This has made him unpopular, and the Eagle Knights more popular, because the first law of the Eagle Knights is that everything they do should be overwhelmingly popular at home and make them look extremely cool. And the second law is that they almost never, actually, break the law in Andoran, and they know Codwin cannot arrest them for breaking the law in slaver countries combating slavery.  

When Cheliax does not in the first months abolish slavery, Codwin's inference, and Morgethai's, is that they intend to keep the institution in order to provoke the Eagle Knights into an act of war, and then invade, and then reunite their Empire. It will be an Evil deed. It will be an enormously destructive deed. It will cause suffering and resentment and rebellion on a scale to rival Hell's old rule. Cyprian is wrong to imagine that Andoran will have sense and not make him sack their cities. He is wrong to imagine they'll get used to the new laws with no more protestations than your typical River Kingdom. Andoran's people are free, and will fight fiercely for their freedom. And they'll lose, because they absolutely cannot contest Cyprian on the battlefield, because Morgethai is not the kind of person to burn Isarn and every other major Galtan city to the ground and cannot be decisive in a war otherwise.

He told Andira Marusek this. He begged her to go oppose the Keleshite slave trade or something. 

The thing is, it wouldn't matter. If Cyprian wants a war he'll find an excuse for a war. If the Eagle Knights sacrifice everything that makes them actually Good - the willingness to just stand up to Evil whoever it inconveniences - then Cyprian would find a different excuse for the war. If there were no Andoren privateers on the high seas people would keep assuming unrelated privateers were Andoren. She's not willing to try to tell the Eagle Knights to give up everything to make it harder for conquerers to make excuses that they'll make regardless.

It does probably matter how good the excuses are.

Does it? Cyprian answers to no one, and will invade if he wants to. The Queen of Cheliax is a slaver and probably considers it a provocation every time an Eagle Knight calls her one.

"Because of the archmages, Andira. Cyprian might be unwilling to invade if they're opposed to it. They will probably be opposed to it, if we haven't offered a provocation any reasonable person would invade in response to."

"They are Good, and should be opposed to the violent conquest of a Good and democratic country even if the Eagle Knights have seized some slaver ships, or smuggled slaves out of Cheliax, or started a couple of slave rebellions - Cotonnet is a republican himself. You think he'll allow the world's only republic to be slaughtered by the man who ended Galt's own freedom?"

"I do not know what he will do but I think that he is more likely to help us the less outrageously we have offended his allies."

"Then his allies should have ended slavery."

"Andira. Cyprian will announce - whatever he chooses to call it. Reunification. A police action to handle widespread lawlessness in the middle of his and Aspexia's Empire. That he's sending the army to help tamp down piracy. He'll invade. He'll offer terms. I will ask the parliament about the terms and the parliament will refuse them and all of the brave and good and heroic people in your service will die fighting and every major city in Andoran will burn and every good thing that you or I or anyone else has had the freedom to build in Andoran will be destroyed utterly and -"

"Yes, yes, I've heard this speech before, I notice you've had to adapt it a little to have the army coming from the east and not the west and to remove all the 'and they'll Maledict all of us'."

"Cyprian will not Maledict all of us. Will offer us appointments as puppets, probably, if we just have some common sense and stop fighting."

"Cyprian doesn't have an archmage, and has never fought anyone who does."

"I think Cyprian is underestimating Andoran's will to fight, and imagines that it won't take very much fighting before the parliament agrees to his terms after all. I think, having been confronted with it less frequently than I have, he underestimates the stubbornness of the Andoren people."

"I think you should step down."

"I think that the archmages are less likely to come to the aid of an Andoran you govern, and the Church less likely to be outraged on your behalf, and peace likely to be even more impossible to broker."

"Broker peace, you say, and you mean you're planning for our defeat. You always saw it as your duty to see us through the threat from Hell. The threat from Hell is gone. Those threats that remain, the free people of Andoran will answer, with the strength only a free people can. You're an old man fighting the last battle. Retire. You've earned it."

"...if you agree not to run, I will."

"Ah, so our elections are to be settled in secret back-room negotiations, the people presented with no real choice but the result of all the real choices already made? No. I'll run, and it is a betrayal of our ideals to propose otherwise."

"Then so will I, because you are driving this country headfirst towards its destruction and its people deserve better."

"And you are the servant of slavers and dictators everywhere, so eager to surrender to them that our victories bring you only grief. You look at the only free cities in the world and are only moved by hallucinations of them burning."

"Do you have a plan to defeat or deter Cyprian?"

"Do Good and trust that Good will come of it."

"Provoking wars isn't Good."

"I assure you I will never act intending to provoke a war. If you'd like I'll tell everyone operating anywhere where they might inconvenience a Chelish person that they're not from Andoran at all."