He books passage for two, paying rather than bartering it for his magical services; he wants to be able to offer said magic later in exchange for additional favours, although it won't be the main thing that will convince a ship's captain to sail right up to a besieged city. For one, there's the problem of being attacked; he thinks it's unlikely, from what he's heard, and he doubts the attacking forces would realize that the ship is coming to help the rebels. He could...tell the captain he's already made a deal with the rebel group to pay outrageous prices for his goods? And he has Fly now, he could go in and read some minds and determine whether it's in fact safe for the ship to come into range. 

He's ready to go on the intended day of departure. He doesn't have a lot of luggage with him; mostly he just has his spells and the magic items he wears on his body at all times. 

And a druid, arriving this time in the form of an air elemental and having apparently packed mostly plants - "I get lonely without them" - and berries magically enhanced to provide sustenance for months - "I don't eat animals or their products."

Aww. That's very sweet actually. 

They embark. The ship leaves the dock. 

Once the land is well out of sight, Aroden goes and asks politely to speak with the Captain. He has Charm Person cast; with this many years of practice, he can do it extremely subtly, so it's scarcely noticeable at all by someone who isn't a wizard. 

Sure, the captain will see him.

He goes in. He can read the man's thoughts, which is at least slightly cheating, and will be able to tell if it's headed in a direction where he can't make it work with just Charm Person, and then his plan is to say he needs to get some papers to prove the legitimacy of the rebels, which will give him time to cast Suggestion.

He gives a similar pitch, except with less emphasis on the righteousness of the rebels and more on the fact that they have a lot of gold and treasure from all the temples, which is not much good to them under siege, and are very desperate. He says that he's already been in contact with them, they'll buy his goods at quintuple the usual market price, and they're unlikely to face any resistance from the forces besieging the city but if they do he's a powerful wizard and it won't be a problem. 

(He hopes the rebels actually end up being grateful for him arranging them all this help, and the main way he intends to prevent problems is to fly in and do some strategic mindreading when the ship is barely visible let alone within attack range.) 

The man is tempted but his thoughts are definitely trending towards 'it'd be neat but get-rich-quick schemes tend to get you killed and I would rather not chance it'.

He has some papers to prove his agreement with the rebels - he can run back to his cabin to get them? (Which will allow him to cast Suggestion without the captain being immediately very suspicious about it.) 

Sure, he'd be interested to see them.

He does return with some papers in his hand, but they're just random notes, because he immediately inserts his Suggestion into the man's stream of thought. He doesn't have quite as much practice with this one, he's had third-level spells for less time and it's more costly to cast, but he has cast it lots of times and enchantments come easily to him. The usual considerations do apply, he wants the captain to think, but the contract is very convincing and the mage is obviously very competent and skilled and he will get very rich and buy himself a lot of favour with the rebel group, which is well-equipped and at this point the most popular faction among Rahadoum's people. (Aroden even suspects this is true, though 'most popular faction' doesn't mean they have majority approval.) 

It shouldn't be a very alien thought, because the man was already tempted and vacillating. It will wear off in five hours or so, but that's fine; he just needs the man to make the agreement and recalculate his course. If he's indecisive later, Aroden can reinforce it just by casting Charm Person again and indicating how obviously powerful and skilled he is, and if needed he can use Suggestion a second time, and - well, most people don't reconsider the majority of their decisions, once made, he may not think to question it at all. 

"You can protect the ship on the way into and out of the city?" he asks skeptically, looking at the papers but not at all carefully. He's thinking that probably it's less dangerous with a powerful wizard involved, who can cloak the ship's passage and fight if needed...

"Yes, certainly. I also have intelligence indicating we will not be interfered with anyway," (not a lie even if what he has is very much guesswork), "and I will of course scout ahead when we are closer." 

Sigh. "I hope you aren't expecting a cut before I have the fivefold you promised."

"No, no - I expect them to pay separately for my aid." (He thinks this is true, if he asks, and it seems more likely to be convincing to a merchant captain than saying he would do it for free just out of solidarity to their cause.) 

"Mmhmm." Sigh. "All right. As long as you can get the ship safely into and out of port."

"Of course. I would not ask you to endanger yourself for their cause."

(He won't. He's not, in fact, powerful enough to cloak an entire ship, he can only make himself invisible and for a matter of minutes; he can fly long enough to make it to land while the ship is pretty far out, invisibly, and at that point can both confirm that the commanders in charge of the various church armies in fact aren't planning to attack - they won't have been preparing for attacking a ship, in terms of their weaponry and spells, and they'll be confused, they won't expect the ship to be offering help to the besieged city. He'll prepare Suggestion again in case one of them is considering it although that won't work if they're dead set on attacking... He's hoping the rebels will have a wizard but not counting on it; a definite failure possibility here is one where he has to fly back and tell the probably very angry captain that the deal is off. But he thinks it can probably come together.) 

Their trip across the Inner Sea is uneventful, and smooth enough he can make the druid his requested artifact. They pass their planned port of arrival, and continue on to Azir. 

He signals for the captain to slow and stop about a half-mile out; definitely visible to both the rebels and the besiegers, so he'll be able to get a read on their response, but near enough that he can easily make it on a single Fly spell with plenty to spare. If he zooms at top speed, he should be able to get a moment over each army's command, although not long, and can gauge what their plans are toward the ship. And whether they need any little nudges. 

He has Fly prepared twice and Invisibility prepared twice, they last the same amount of time. He's most squeezed for third-level spells, unsurprisingly, since he needs Fly and also Suggestion. But he can prepare Suggestion a second time as well; he's practiced enough with his enchantment spells to squeeze in more efficiency there. He has Detect Thoughts as a spell in case his medallion fails to get through someone's natural defences, which it might, if the someone in question is a high-level caster and he especially cares to know what they're thinking of the ship just sitting out there. That gives him room for a couple of other second-level enchantment spells, which are ones he hasn't cast all that often because human magic is very stupid and they are very specific and almost never what he wants. But maybe useful in this case. He'll have to see. 

He flies in, invisibly, straining for everything he can catch a glimpse of as he approaches. 

There are war camps set up besieging the city, flying the banner of Sarenrae, Norgorber, Nethys, and Calistria respectively. People are sending over emissaries to those of the other churches they're on speaking terms with, to ask if the ship is authorized and who authorized it. Some of them are shielding out his medallion; some of them are thinking that they probably won't fire on it even if it's here to supply a despised ally-church, since supplies are badly needed and could finally end the siege. It has crossed a couple of peoples' minds that it might be here to supply the rebels but they mostly doubt it, the rebels have no allies outside of this city at all...

The rebels are planning to fire on the ship because they figure it has come to supply their enemies.

Well, he's about to land and do a lot of fast-talking convincing them (and hope they're confused enough at this not to decide he's an enemy too). He has less time to make sure he's dealt with any potential problems amongst the armies, because that he can only really do from the air while invisible, and he used up nearly half the time on the spell just reaching shore.

Is there anyone who's considering raising an objection that he really prefers not be raised? Or, on the other side of things, are there tensions brewing anywhere that could be nudged into an argument, probably about past grievances more than the current situation, and keep some relevant people busy until the question of what to do about the ship is moot? 

The emissaries from the churches of Norgorger and Sarenrae are already on the brink of getting into a fight; both of them are denying that the ship is for them. 

This person with the church of Calistria thinks they should hijack the ship whoever it's headed for, and is trying to get people on board with this plan.

He thinks they should not do that, actually, and he's going to zoom in close - which is a bit of a risk, but he can slow down so the sound isn't audible and he's hidden from Detect Magic as well as eyesight - and brush past them in a way that could plausibly just be the wind, and now they are literally incapable of speaking things they believe are true and can only lie compulsively. Hopefully that will be very distracting in addition to making it rather hard to defend their plan. 

He doesn't need to approach as close to cast a different spell on the whole crowd of emissaries. Heckle is honestly such a good example of the way humans use magic being dumb; it's exactly the same sort of channel as Charm Person and even Suggestion, but scaffolded so that the only thing he can do with it is make everyone angry with each other and him. (This won't affect him much, since they don't know he's there and he won't be there seconds later.) 

Also, because he isn't most wizards, he can steer it a little more specifically than that, although still only toward negative emotions and aggression. And it gives him a channel to their minds. He's not going to say anything telepathically with it, because that would be stupid, but he knows what they're thinking even as he zooms out of range of Detect Thoughts, and he can correspondingly nudge the exact flavour of aggression he wants them to be feeling. 

He keeps his attention half on this as he approaches the city again and the rebels currently discussing what to do. 

The rebels have some wizards; they can't hit the ship at this range, but they can when it comes closer. They're expecting the ship to have its own wizard but offense is easier than defense when your target is as big as a ship.

He swoops down while he still has time left on the spell (he has tried to develop the skill of tracking exactly how many minutes it's been), and lands a distance away, enough to hopefully avoid startling them but still just barely within Detect Thoughts range, and then un-invisibles and waits for their response. 

They're startled! They refrain from trying to fireball him mostly because they want to save their fireballs for the ships. 

" - state your business," someone yells, trying to sound more authoritative than they actually feel. The sum total of their actual authority here is that they can cast Fireball, though that counts for quite a lot, during a war.

He can technically cast Fireball too (he hasn't prepared it because that is really not what he's trying to do here at all.)

"I have sympathy for your cause and wished to help you," he says, and then explains, levelly, his (extremely ambitious and somewhat insane) plan to sweet-talk a druid and ship captain (and in the captain's case, mildly mind-control) into coming here in their aid. He promised the others money. He really hopes they actually have money; he figured they would, given all the temples they looted. Anyway, if they're willing to pay a druid past the two-week commission that he's paid upfront, and pay five times the usual price for a shipful of goods, both of them are theirs and he is pretty sure the armies watching are too confused and also busy arguing with each other to intervene and stop this.