"It's hard to identify the limits on gods' power because they behave so erratically, often subtly, and have to navigate around each other some unknown amount, but it seems like both their home turf advantage and their hold on specific people is likely to affect how appealing they find possessing those people in those places. So, for instance, I don't expect to be possessed at all, your non-Herald friends without particular religious convictions are probably safe, you might be possessable by whoever's responsible for Companions but likely not Vkandis since they're probably different, based on stylistic tells, and Companions are... I'm not sure but can't rule out 'kinda halfway possessed all the time by default' though that's really an upper bound."

Dara makes a small "ack" sound. 

"They don't seem like it," Savil says, sounding more curious than uncomfortable now. "I mean, they've got Companion-Foresight, which must've been something the god that made them set them up with, I guess they could get direct messages or orders that way but it seems to me that what they get is a lot fuzzier than that." 

"Yeah, I don't know as much about Companions as I'd like, I've been chatting with the one who interrupted Jisa yesterday but while she's friendlier than I expected she doesn't answer everything and doesn't seem to know the answers to everything either."

"That's good that you're talking to one of them!" Dara says brightly. "If we think the main thing in the way of us just talking about this as two countries and trying to come to an agreement is the Companions, then you understanding them better would help, right?"

"That's the idea. Though I don't think Leareth's whole deal is really a 'country'."

"What is it? Just a giant army and that's it?" 

"I've mostly been staying in a really big library with adjoining living quarters. I haven't seen all of his premises."

"Oh, right, that makes sense. I guess he wouldn't want to send you here knowing all the details, just for tactical reasons." 

"We weren't planning on sending me here when I moved in with him, it mostly just didn't come up."

Tantras fidgets. "I still feel like the 'talk about maybe peaceful annexation' plan is obviously crazy, I mean, war is really bad, but..." 

"...I mean, the nice thing about peaceful annexation is that if regardless of how much we talk about it, you guys decide against, Leareth cannot go 'okay but I'm going to peacefully annex you anyway against your will', that not being peaceful."

"Tantras, I think that's a really good point. It's not like it makes our position any worse to have thought about it." 

"It might! If it means Leareth knows more things about us." 

"I, uh. Turn out not to have a way to talk to him outside your control. Not that I want you to intercept all my letters but -"

Tantras gives her a startled look. "We're not going to keep you here forever against your will and not let you see your lifebonded! That'd be horrible. So at some point you're going to talk to him." He scowls. "Or, I mean, it might turn out he has a plan to extract you and hear all about us and then attack anyway." 

"Right, I guess none of us know for sure he doesn't have a way to do that, or that he won't come up with one. So I guess if we want to talk peaceful annexation we'll have to do it in a way that quarantines information about the Valdemaran defensive position from me but that doesn't seem like such a big obstacle it should prevent the conversation all by itself."

"I think so," Savil agrees. "This is an issue with convincing you that Valdemar is harder to invade than Leareth thought, but less so with the possible upsides of the peaceful version of this, assuming those even exist." 

Belrun nods.

They look at her and each other in silence for a while. 

"The part where we can't tell which gods are doing what and what their powers are is so irritating," Dara mutters. "I would try to make Rolan send a message to the Companion god but I'm not sure he'd even tell me for sure whether or not he can do that." 

"That sounds frustrating and I don't really have a suggestion for how to approach it, unfortunately."

Dara picks at her thumbnail. "Sorry, I'm all out of helpful ideas right now. Maybe I'll have more later." 

"Mm-hm. Do you think there's any more worthwhile ground to cover in the direction of hypothetically talking about gods, or did the one example kind of make the point -"

"What do you think Vkandis wants, in the example we talked about? A human doing that would want - power and influence, I guess - maybe wealth, land... But I don't know how gods would even think about those concepts."