The closest thing, the country of Geb, was immediately off-putting. The wrong kind of tropical, and the hidebound traditionalists running the country were happy to offer vampiric slavery and loath to offer influence. It took him months of chasing rumors to get more serious leads.

But now it is Calistril, and he is ensconced in a remote manor in Ustalav, in deep discussion with the priestess of Urgathoa who serves the manor’s master as a secret religious advisor. Her goddess has the means he needs; Tar-Baphon will forever evade Pharasma’s justice under her protection, and the same might be on offer for him, if he can provide service impressive enough.

They scheme. Urgathoa counts every cough, and the archmage Naima has risen to her attention. In the eyes of the common man, Bertran is powerful indeed, but his eyes are turned ever upwards, and he cannot hope to defeat an archmage. But inconvenience one? Cause her to regret spitting in Urgathoa’s face? That he could imagine, especially now that Cheliax seems to be her husband’s pet project. There’s going to be a constitutional convention in Cheliax, whatever that is–but for them, the important part is that everyone of note in the country is going to be in Westcrown.

Bertran won’t be there, of course. Inconvenience, remember? Cheliax is a much more fruitful playground for Urgathoa now than it was a year ago, with the priests of Asmodeus gone and not enough new ones to replace them. Diseases spread more readily; the numbers of undead slowly tick upwards. Travelers spread disease in the hopes that Urgathoa will spare them; inquisitors no longer hunt cultists, tho the country is not totally without defenses.

But Bertran sees a tipping point. Cheliax is, in some ways, stronger than ever; if you freed Tar-Baphon, he likely couldn’t conquer the country; the archmages would just put him back in the ground. But its institutions are hollowed out, its nobility shattered, its rapid response teams on an indefinite vacation. The correct attack is not depth, but breadth. If the archmages can solve any problem in a day, you just have to make two problems a day, and win on volume. 

And he knows how Chelish security operates, and where to find the holes left by every wizard who can cast Sending also being able to cast Teleport, and the clerics able to cast Sending being unable to cast at all. He still has his kit for scrying on communications officers, and can read some of the reports; not as many as he’d like, with so many of the officers retired or replaced. The country is large, and the country is rich–but the subsidies from Hell have evaporated, and the subsidies from the archmages are not as large, and focused on other things besides. The economy is not running at large profit margins; it can absorb some shocks and some losses, but enough of them and merchants send fewer caravans, and towns produce less goods. Fewer caravans on the roads means the bandits need to bite into them more deeply, and so they need more guards, which further drives down profits. Bits of the internal supply network depended on the occasional teleport, the price of which is now significantly increased.

He does some math, he annotates some maps. If this fortress is overrun, then this whole valley could be quickly turned, without any message likely to make it out. Much of Cheliax is already wasteland; he thinks they might be able to double the amount that is, and then it gets hard to predict. Will crusaders recolonize Cheliax? Will the Cheliaxians abandon it, fleeing to other countries? They’ll figure that out when they get there.

They pull in more of Urgathoa’s servants.

Finder’s Gulch is a bit too remote to be anyone’s top priority, and the wights in the mountains are just one threat of many. This is in part because Ilcayna Alonnor can keep some eyes on politics, and notice when one of her hunting grounds is overly strained, and lay off, rotating to prey on a different country. Barons and minor adventurers might ride out against her, but they are easily defeated, and she never has to deal with the full force of Logas, or Cettigne, or Senara.

But the Queen of Isger is now also the Queen of Cheliax, and there are whispers that she might soon be the Queen of Molthune. Ilcayna might no longer be able to lay low, as all her hunting grounds will now cry out to the same protector. When the living visitor arrives with the unholy symbol of Urgathoa, she stills the hunger of her wights and hears him out.

Wights are precious to her, and useful to him; she is trapped in the mountains, both geographically and socially. The humans all around her know of her army, and stay far away, but he could seed her army throughout Cheliax, where the humans do not know to hide. He tells her of the day when all the Chelish nobles will be in Westcrown, unable to respond to a sudden surge. He paints a picture of how they can infect whole villages, and then send the newly created wights in all directions, infecting new villages in turn, and leaving behind some in bogs and woods, ready to ambush travelers on the roads or be discovered by wanderers in the future.

They will have to be careful, and wait until Convention Day. But they have months to prepare, and he can Teleport; they slowly move her army in place, and grow it when they can. She’s not willing to go along with the boldest of his plans, which involve deliberate sacrifice of some wights, but is convinced to go along with a subtler one. (He is used to working around religious objections to efficiency.)

Zoreena Neska is a distant relation of the count of Barstoi; a thief who has been a vampire for a little over a century. It is not particularly daring to steal wands and shells of Sending from Chelish military forts, or make a perhaps reckless number of spawn along the way, but not particularly daring is her speed, and she never felt particularly maternal.

Bertran scans the thoughts of the captured guards. “This one,” he says confidently, and Zoreena begins to drain him. A loyal vampire might just hide and trust that service to the new regime would buy them accommodation; an ambitious vampire will set their eyes on becoming the baron, or the count, or perhaps climbing higher still. They’ll bury him, and leave him with a vial of Zoreena’s blood; he can drink that to become a full vampire, and then turn the remaining guards, locked in the fort’s jail, into spawn of his own. Bertran guesses it will be two days before the villagers make it to the fort, begging for help with the wights; plenty of time for him to get settled.

He collects the reports and mail he can find, and then the two of them Teleport away, and he begins planning their next strike while she retreats to her coffin.