That was...really a very cogent explanation, for a god attempting to communicate with mortals, and the Shadow-Lover has clearly gotten much better at this since the last interaction with Blai and is trying very hard, and also the Shadow-Lover is almost certainly not the part of the Valdemargod that made the decisions here, and so it isn't really fair for Seldan to be infuriated with Her. 

Unfortunately Seldan has never been a very patient person. He gets that making plans in a fog-of-war condition is agonizing, that's true for mortals too, it's just - if your choices are between the straightforward, predictable consequences of doing nothing and the inevitable messiness of moves-and-countermoves if you try to do something that an intelligent adversary doesn't want, then - it's kind of important, in terms of deciding whether the predictable outcome is acceptable, if the consequences of it include things like "tens of thousands of people dying and a much lower chance of getting any of those people back." 

"So you - I mean You the larger god - wanted Vkandis to get what He wanted here, just because He wanted it badly enough to spend everything on it, and it wasn't clear that You could actually stop him at any cost?" 

Again, the Shadow-Lover takes a while to consider this. 

"It was not clear that We could continue to keep Leareth alive at any cost," She agrees. "But Vkandis will not get everything that He wanted." 

Did that phrasing imply that intervention budget, itself, is the main thing that casts a prophecy shadow, or did Blai misunderstand... anyway he can respect the logic of "if all paths end with Leareth dead, choose the one that cripples his killer" but the collateral damage is absolutely ludicrous. Does the Valdemargod care about that? Perhaps literally not at all. Perhaps it's even a plus if that's an active ingredient in Vkandis being removed from the gameboard.

What did Vkandis want that He won't get? Leareth might not stay dead. Archmage Cottonet's wife the Arch-Healer Naima can bring him right back if their attention lands on the situation and they feel like it. Or some shenanigan with buying a a Sending from an inevitable will pan out and Fiducia Boian or his colleagues will do it. Vkandis probably also did not really want to exploding polity syndrome one of his countries though that at least he will have sacrificed lucidly. Is that all? That doesn't seem likely all.

"What else did Vkandis want?"

Obviously Vkandis didn't get everything He wanted, one assumes He wants all sorts of things like continuing to have followers and not having the ruler of one of His countries poached by Sarenrae! …The Shadow-Lover probably isn’t being cryptic and frustrating on purpose and Blai is being very reasonable in just asking the obvious followup question, which might in fact be new information for the Shadow-Lover, maybe it’s not obvious to Her.

(Seldan’s parsing had been that the Velgarth gods don’t precisely have “intervention budget” like the Golarion gods do, and it’s more - if several different theater-actors were using the same set of very complicated and intricate strings to manipulate a set of marionettes, which is kind of what the Foresight-web in the blue place always reminds him of. It would be noticeable if one of them picked up a string and found it already under tension. …And maybe the gods can recognize when that thread-tension smells like the work of a specific other god? Seldan cannot do that, in the blue place, but he isn’t a god.

...Seldan agrees that it's not at all obvious the Valdemargod considers all the deaths in Iftel even slightly Their concern.) 

Again, the Shadow-Lover seems to puzzle over that for a while, so apparently it wasn’t obvious.

“He wanted Leareth’s soul,” She says. “To destroy it fully.”

…Shit. 

“- And You’re saying that He doesn’t have Leareth’s soul and can’t destroy it? Right?” 

“No. Leareth died in Haven, where Vkandis does not have the strongest remit.”

Another long pause for something-like-translation.

“…That was delicate to arrange. But it was a small change in the picture that Vkandis expected. It did not require using so much steering-power that He saw it to counter it.”

Okay! That is in fact really important! Good job, Shadow-Lover, finally managing to think to convey that one very important fact! 

Seldan keeps the snark to himself. “Thank you,” he says. Grudgingly, it's still tempting to be mad that the Valdemargod doesn't seem at all sorry about the other deaths and is mainly pleased that it didn't cost Them much in terms resources They could use, but - he does mean it.

There's been enough not-just-communicating-the-obvious-thing here that Seldan really should check, explicitly, with words. "Just to be clear, the thing You're saying is that You have Leareth's soul? In - safekeeping, for a resurrection if one becomes available? ...Do You see a path where Golarion contact will still happen and we'll get that?" 

More processing. 

"There are many paths that lead there in the end," the Shadow-Lover says. 

"If not Nirvana will take it. If you can - transfer it like that. I don't know if you can. ... please don't let him go on to trial if you cannot control his precise destination. He'd most likely go to Hell and be under the control of a god worse than Vkandis."

Good thought, Blai, Seldan is very glad that was mentioned. Hopefully the Valdemargod would think to check something like that first but maybe it's another of the non-obvious things!

'In the end' is...well, the Valdemargod might not care if it took twenty years. Seldan is vaguely getting the sense that They might even prefer that to faster plans that cost Them anything. The new clerics are - a little more promising than that - it's a sign that at least some actors in Golarion are invested in things related to Velgarth.

...Shelyn picking Vanyel specifically might be even more promising, actually, insofar as it implies that She thinks this isn't completely pointless because Vanyel is going to die slowly before there's any hope of getting stronger clerics over for a more permanent fix. Does Blai think that's implied? Or is Shelyn maybe fine with Her new cleric dying in a week because She'll get him in Nirvana anyway? (Vanyel at least is someone who could probably safely go to trial, right, they know he reads Neutral Good?) 

This time, while the Shadow-Lover does take a while to do the processing-and-translation-to-godconcepts bit, She doesn't seem surprised once She finishes puzzling it out. 

"Of course." A pause. "Abadar offered to buy Leareth's soul but We are waiting to see all of the paths clearly." 

Abadar offered to what

Yes, Blai will worry about Vanyel on an exclusively irrational basis if he dies.

Every religion encourages prayer. Prayer of thanks, of petition, of anything that pops into your head. Maybe it is literally just because gods are dense as fuck and need to hear very basic things from a million angles to stand a chance of communication occurring. ... that is probably not a complete answer but it's tempting right now.

"........ it's maybe all right to sell to Abadar if He does not mean to, ah, resell."

This seems like something where the Shadow-Lover might, just maybe, have put any effort in advance into saying more detail, because it doesn't take that long at all. 

"Abadar intended to place Leareth in Axis and for it to be enriched, because Leareth is Lawful and builds things." 

A pause. 

"...Abadar did also offer to resurrect Leareth on another planet, if We pay for it, but it would be very expensive so that is not a preferred path. And We cannot see what would happen in either path, so We prefer to wait." 

Wow yeah Seldan is really getting the sense that the Valdemargod is something of a miser and really, really, really hates paying for things, whether it's in "intervention budget" Golarion-style or some more nebulous godresource cost. And, maybe, They would rather wait and watch until They can see further ahead than the other gods, and do something small and targeted and clever that barely costs Them anything? Which - could take quite a long time, here, given that They can't see anything once it's in Golarion and waiting longer won't help with that? 

"...Can you ask Leareth?" he says. "I mean, Your whole thing is - talking to dead people, right? And hadn't you said to Blai before that You really wanted a chance to talk to Leareth specifically but he'd never died enough for it?" 

"... if he were resurrected on Golarion on particular he could perhaps find his way back here. I'm less sure about other planets..."

Another pause. 

"He will not speak to Us. ...One thing We cannot see ahead to is whether he would allow a resurrection by Abadar. He would need to consent to it. But We have not been able to ask him, even in this place, because he will not interact with Us at all." 

...You know, on reflection that makes perfect sense. Leareth has pretty much the worst possible associations with gods! And was just successfully murdered by one and Seldan isn't sure what the Shadow-Lover's state-of-the-art is for talking to actually dead people, as opposed to nearly-dead people who still have bodies attached, but, like, plausibly Leareth's ability to remember any context about anything is about at the level of his own memories of his life as Seldasen? 

Seldan isn't sure what a resurrection feels like but he thinks it's true that someone needs to consent to it? And - yeah, if the thing it feels like is "a god would like to yoink your soul somewhere", he can't see a Leareth who doesn't understand what's happening going for that. 

Yes, resurrections have to be consensual. "Can You let Abadar talk to him?"

Seldan miiight be uncharitable here but he’s suspicious that the Valdemargod would refuse to try that because Golarion-god-interactions increase rather than decrease Foresight noise and They may be maintain control over Leareth’s soul until They can see how all the paths would play out and pick the one They like best with full information.

….Also, Abadar is a god, and not a formerly mortal one who can communicate better with mortals, and it’s not clear Leareth would be feeling any more trusting.

Hmm. But you know who Leareth has interacted with before and might actually kind of trust?

“Can You do something to let us try to talk to him?” 

The Shadow-Lover considers this, but not for as long as one might expect if it were a completely new concept. "That can be done." She looks at Seldan. "You knew him, before, though he is less likely to remember it."

Abadar is not limited to Golarion! Prophecy works fine in Axis, he's pretty sure!

...does Seldan remember that?

(Huh, weird, the afterlife planes have prophecy and it's just the material plane that doesn't? It's still possible that the Valdemargod has low visibility of Axis-related happenings even if Foresight works in general, the Velgarth gods are very - geographical - and for example it sounds like They all had worse visibility of the area north of the mountains on this exact continent, just because it was unclaimed godterritory with none of Their followers around.) 

...Maybe? He definitely remembers thinking multiple times that Leareth reminded him of someone, and now that he's being allowed to remember even, like, a dozen scenes of his life and some names and dates– oh! There was that scholar in Rethwellan, the mage-philosopher-inventor type, who was not at all doing evil archmage things but the gestalt vibe he remembers of their correspondence is...reminiscent. If they ever met face to face he doesn't remember it, but he had a lot of Rethwellani pen-pals, Rethwellan just had vastly better academies and collegia - at the time, Valdemar was only a few hundred years old then, but maybe even now? - and nearly all of the interesting scholarship was being done there. 

"We can try talking to him," he says. "How does that - work?" Does Blai know anything about how it works in Golarion, presumably there's a way of communicating with dead souls if they can get sent to trial... 

Processing.

"I will give him an imitation of a body for this place, so that he can speak," the Shadowgod says. "He should be able to understand you. He should remember the core experiences of his life. He should be able to think new thoughts in response to new information! Abadar and Sarenrae and Shelyn showed Us how to do that. He will not remember things that happen here; We do not know how to do that. It is possible something else is not working as it should. It is much easier to speak with other souls."