Belrun nods.

"Seems like that's a conversation for later, then, probably just with the mages - I can pull in Sandra and Kilchas too, that still won't be unwieldy for a meeting. We could talk about difficulties in conquering Valdemar, I suppose, but," glance at Keiran, "anything specific would require handing over sensitive information that we don't actually want Leareth to have at this point." 

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"I would ask if you had ideas for generalities here," Keiran says, "but, as you've pointed out, you aren't a diplomat and you certainly aren't a military strategist, so that feels a bit unfair to you to expect." 

"And I don't know what Leareth already knows, because I'm not really acquainted with the intelligence arm," she nods. "So if I got a list of interesting facts about the defensive posture of Valdemar he might just wind up going 'yeah I know'. I can mention this obstacle in my letter in case we don't get a dream soon."

"Noted." 

"What about the number four you mentioned?" Dara says quietly. "It's a bit hard to think about when it's very hypothetical like that, but - hmm, do you think there are any resources Valdemar has that could be thrown at it with our active cooperation but not just captured in an invasion?" 

"Hm, that depends on a few things - if you'd destroy your own resources to keep him away from them then they can't be captured, and it's possible he'd have an inaccurate estimate of your willingness to do that. His being generally unpopular within Valdemar and with its neighbors apparently wouldn't sink the operation but it'd make everything higher friction in a way that makes all further use of the territory costlier, but at that point we're getting into the 'would you prefer to be peaceably annexed' hypothetical."

"It doesn't seem completely obvious to me that being peacefully annexed should be off the table?" Dara says. "I mean, that'd be a really, really long negotiation, obviously, and it'd have to get to a point that you trusted us enough to tell us a lot more about Leareth's intentions, but - there's a really huge upside, right? So it seems worth putting in effort even if it's very unlikely to work out." 

Tantras mostly looks too confused to interrupt, this time. 

"I agree," says Belrun. "The huge upside of 'not a war' is, y'know, why I'm here, and that's sure one way to have not a war. Uh, I don't know how thorough your debrief is - the major obstacle to this working on Leareth's end would be the Companions and by extension their creator or creators exerting counterproductive influence on the country."

"Huh. What's counterproductive about what the creator of the Companions wants?" 

"So that's hard to say because we don't know who they are and the Companions are, as you have mentioned, not telling. Leareth's experience of gods as a group is that they're those people who keep trying to murder him and thwart all his plans even when they don't involve conquering things and instead involve improvements to, like, banking, so he's not starting from a position of much confidence in their having compatible goals with him. There is some reason to think gods vary; it is possible some of them, perhaps even including the local one or ones, are friendlier than that. But they aren't demonstrating this legibly. It's possible they actually can't. Leareth thinks they interact with the world primarily through the use of Foresight and I've hypothesized that this might be so bizarre compared to how you and I see the world that a god literally cannot hold a conversation except in the sense of 'generate a string of words that leads to a desired result' - a process that would only incidentally touch inputs like 'is this string of words true' or 'does this string of words dispense responsibilities fairly among the mortals it will be received by'. But in practice an agent that cannot hold a conversation is an awful lot like one that refuses to. The Companions are a promising way around that, if that's the problem, if they'll talk to me."

"Wow, I never thought about how gods would work, but that kind of fits." She makes a face. "Also that makes me dizzy even thinking about. I've got a bit of Foresight, apparently, but I haven't had any visions yet or anything. I don't think. What would it even mean to have that be the primary way you interact with the world?" 

"Well, for one thing it means that literally any event happening is evidence that at least one god wanted it that way, which let me tell you is pretty uncomfortable when they seem like they might want to kill you. Uh, they do a lot of - coincidences. Not all of them, Vkandis in particular does really big overt stuff, but mostly it's - luck, happenstance. Like lining up me and Leareth so we'd have enough exposure to each other to get lifebonded instead of whichever one of us noticed first fleeing the city."

"...You both would've run away if you'd caught it in time?" Dara's forehead scrunches. "Honestly that's very rude of the gods, making a lifebond where both people don't even want to be lifebonded in the first place. I guess they're not the sort of beings that care about politeness, but still." 

"I'm very sensitive to mind control. The version of me that isn't glued to Leareth is gone and she isn't coming back, so I'm doing my best with what I have, but yes, I absolutely would have gotten out of there as fast as possible if I'd had a moment to catch on before it was too late, and he would have too."

"Mmm." Dara looks thoughtful. Sort of worried. "...I mean, probably the Valdemar god doesn't want a war either? Wars are pretty bad and it'd kill a lot of Heralds and Companions, right, that seems like not something they'd like." 

"There is no really compelling evidence that any god wants all and only good things for people."

"What do you and Leareth think they do want, then? I thought they were supposed to be good and protect their people and all, but I guess I never thought about it myself." 

"It seems like they want things to be predictable. Which makes sense if their sensory interaction with the world is almost entirely Foresight, right, if things can go any which way because they don't have control over enough factors then they're basically blind, and that must suck for them, and I'd love to come to some sort of compromise but the ways they have of rendering people predictable are mostly nonconsensual and often outright adverse. Leareth's pretty sure that even if he'd never met me, if I'd gotten anywhere on eradicating any diseases, some god would have stepped on me. They don't like big changes to how things fundamentally work, even ones that are purely beneficial in terms of people's quality of life, even ones that don't seem on a casual inspection to interfere with their operations. He's been trying for two thousand years."

"Hmm." Dara looks faintly offended by this. 

Savil is looking VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. 

"I mean," Tantras says, "if the things Leareth tries usually involve invading countries then I kind of can't blame the gods for stopping him." 

"It's not frequently about invading countries. I mentioned that they also intercept banking reforms. And magic printing presses. And democracy, which is kind of the opposite of conquest although I guess it could have taken the form of a coup, Leareth didn't specify."