They pretty much all have another option - exile is common but not the only acceptable possibility. Hopefully we can figure something like that out here; it sounds like having a way to stop a daeva from taking summons would do it, maybe that'll be possible.

Can you invent spells for that?

Clerics don't invent spells, exactly, but it might become available, yes. Or the wizards might invent one.

She has no further questions.

He looks up the GCP.

They were founded not too long after Revelation, by Singaporean Lilie Ho. The current head is Rochelle Chua and they're still based in Singapore for office operations but the circles and prison are on Ganymede.

The time zone difference is pretty bad but this is important. He emails asking for an appointment to speak to them.

Is this regarding subscribing the nations of your world to our services or another matter?

- James

Another matter but potentially a fairly urgent one.

-Raafi.

If you can give me some more information I'll know who you should talk to.

I expect Fharlanghn will find your handling of daeva unacceptable and will dismantle the program when he discovers it, unless we have an alternative to present to him; I'd like to see if we can find one that will be mutually acceptable.

I can meet you this afternoon 4:00 our time to discuss the threat posed. Can I have a short version by text to warn our subscribers in case they want to put out advisories and engage security? In particular on what time frame should we expect the entity in question to attack our summoners?

If your prisoners have access to the news and any of them are praying to him, he could go there directly as soon as he's able to get to this world; I don't know when that will be at all. If they aren't it will take him a little longer but I'll be surprised if it's very much longer - a day or two, maybe, if he's distracted.

I don't know what he'll do if he comes before we have something worked out. He isn't usually violent if he can accomplish things other ways, but this is the sort of situation where he might be, and gods aren't the sort of being you can fight. You may be able to negotiate with him but you'll have to understand that he's not human, psychologically; you're not going to be able to convince him that other things take priority over peoples' freedom of movement - it's possible to talk him into waiting while a plan is implemented but not into agreeing to let a situation like this continue indefinitely.

I do think we can figure out a solution, though. There's magic from my world that may already be able to stop a daeva from taking a summons, and if it isn't, I expect we can develop something that does.

I'll be there at 4.

I'll get the extranet to Ganymede cut off just in case. Thanks for the heads up.

You're welcome.

He emails the next day's clients to let them know about the change in schedule, sleeps, does his devotions, and gets to the GCP office fifteen minutes early, at 7:45 by his clock.

They let him in. James has an office. They sit him down and offer him a cup of coffee. "So what I'm not clear on - I'm not clear on several things, though I did skim your blog and video presences - is whether you're here to help us do damage control so superpowered rapists and torturers and murderers aren't turned loose via what I can only assume would be the murder of their summoners, and summoned again under inadequate if any binding; or whether you're here to evangelize the belief that they should."

"The former. I do understand your perspective here, and agree that it's an important one - this is one of the things clerics are for, is finding ways to reconcile divine interests with mundane ones. I'm mostly worried about it because it's rare for us to find situations that have gotten this far out of hand, from Fharlanghn's perspective. It's hard to know how patient I can expect him to be."

"Out of hand?"

"He doesn't permit people to be held against their will at all. Our prisons all offer the option of exile or at least death - with a known afterlife system - as an alternative. I understand that you can't do that in this case, but he's not going to consider the situation acceptable just because we consider the alternative unacceptable."

"...okay. The human prisons do usually affirm the right to suicide but daeva can't. Exile'd be fine but it's not enforceable. The high profile prisoners have fans, sympathizers, or just folks who wouldn't know them on a random..."

"I might be able to enforce it, if you'd find that an acceptable solution. I have magic that can disable people when they take specific actions already, and I might be able to get something more targeted, or a wizard might be able to develop something suitable once we have contact with my world."

"Attaching the security of the prisoners to a specific, famous, irreplaceable person won't fly."

"If I can do it other clerics will be able to. Possibly not many, if it takes a particularly powerful spell, but at least some."

"There aren't any other clerics right now and we have no experience with the cleric labor market. I need a reasonably polished proposal to take to Chua."

"I expect any cleric of Fharlanghn to be willing to do it for free, under the circumstances, and most clerics of any chaotic good god - waiting for a suitable cleric to come is a reason he'll accept."