"And you can cast it armored? Huh! I should suggest to some people that they try to pick that up. I do not think you should evidence that power around anyone not authorized to know who you are but I'll see about getting you a chess set. What do you mean by mandatory fun?"

"I do sometimes have to retry, with the armor on, but I'm never casting it under emergency conditions so I just try again. I mean the thing where we are commanded to have fun once a month, presumably as a self maintenance thing though I suppose it also dovetails with what you've said about aspects of the Good."

"I do not currently have any such regulation and haven't really contemplated it. Do you know more about the justification?"

"No sir, I'm only guessing."

"All right. I'll try to get you sent a chess set. The holy book did not appear to contain the things you said about Arazni being made undead by Geb, what more do you know about that?"

"It happened after the Acts were published, and before I was born, but I can't narrow it down much further than that. She administers his country for him and has been described as the goddess of despair."

"Thank you for telling us.

What do you know about Aroden's death and Hell conquering part of the Empire - I assume the latter happened because we were in disarray after Aroden's death -"

"...Cheliax broke away from Taldor before that time. I think it might have involved Aspex the Even-Tongued but I don't know when he lived and I mostly think he was involved because a lot of Chelish people are named Aspex or Aspexia. Cheliax was, or at least I am told it was, an empire in its own right for some time; Taldor proper is... I don't really know but its people didn't have a major presence at the Wound. The king of Cheliax at the time was Gaspodar and he prepared to abdicate in Aroden's favor and then Aroden did not present Himself because He was dead and there was catastrophic weather, the end of prophecy, the opening of the Wound. There was a civil war, I am certain I have been lied to about its particulars and do not have a good way to guess which ones. House Thrune won backed by Hell and ruled - as a house, not as individuals, the reigns were often short - until overthrown."

"By archmages, plural."

"There are a married couple of archmages, Abadar's high Inquisitor, the Queen who is rumored to have swordfought the Tarrasque, and another archmage with a powerful familiar. I do think they tapped a paladin order called the Glorious Reclamation for - post-coup cleanup - but don't have details on that."

"Do you know if any of them are around yet? Probably not, Aroden wouldn't be sending Arazni if He had anything else that'd do it....All right. Of the claims that you've made the ones I expect to cause a lot of political problems are that I have my own country, especially if any of its territory is within the present boundaries of the Empire, that Cheliax breaks away from the East and especially that Aroden was expected to return there not Oppara, and of course that Aroden dies. I'm not asking you to lie, but I think you should treat those claims as very sensitive."

"Is there a - standard deflection that will parse well?"

"Probably. I am not myself any good at politics. If you were in my command I would order you not to speak of it and then that's a perfectly good deflection."

He keeps not being qualified to be in chains of command and it's getting to be distressing! "Is having been advised not to the sort of thing people who will not like many possible answers will try to override, or...?"

"I don't really expect my advice will count for much of anything.. you can join the Knights of Ozem if you'd like to, I just do not think it would be appropriate to declare all priests of the goddess Iomedae in my command here and now and it was not obvious from your...reasoning...that it would contain any of the features of being a priest of the goddess Iomedae which you value."

"...I don't immediately know in which direction it would tend to weigh but I don't yet know if I will get spells in the morning, or even channels."

"You have a strong Lawful Good aura, as a third circle cleric of a Lawful Good god would be expected to. I suppose I don't know that to translate to spells and channels. I haven't heard of previous instances of time travel. I have no experience commanding non-paladins but a cleric of a Lawful Good god really seems like it would have many relevant similarities."

"I'm probably Lawful Neutral. In my own right." Why did he say that, it's really very obvious.

"The reason paladins are generally understood to be unwise to accept a command of non-paladins is that they eventually fall if employing ordinary military discipline and you can't run an army without it. I take it that this problem has been solved in the next nine centuries and quite possibly in my lifetime, and I rejoice of it, but it still seems unwise to undertake without a theory of how I'll avoid that problem, and for a cleric of a Lawful Good god that theory is 'rulebreaking will be exceptional circumstances or inadequate training and it won't come up just like it doesn't for paladins'."

"Who is it who has my books, sir?"

"General Arnisant, who has the command of the Second Army. I do not think he has read them."

"Did he... say what his plan was regarding them, or my letters, or... anything else, really, the scroll case has the spellbook page I use to get the Prestidigitation back if I drop it..."

"He intended to run a Commune about it but I don't know what specifically he'd have asked. Probably whether to send them and you to the Church or not, and whether to call Arazni in light of how it might get her killed and also is needed to save the world."

"And this would have taken enough time that I should not yet presume I'm not being sent anywhere?"

"I have not been told anything but I would strongly expect that I would not have gotten permission to speak to you before Communes about whether this is some elaborate trick, and if Aroden said to make you Oppara's problem then the general would have done that and not done any other things. Also I don't think Aroden should send you to Oppara. You would hate it and they would be terrified of anyone believing anything you said and it really doesn't seem like the first step of actually winning."