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An adventuring party recruited from Osirion teleports into Azir on the 8th of Desnus. Rahadoum's recruiting contact in Osirion wrote ahead to note they were expected. Couple of guys he's known a long time - a wizard, a ranger - and a new guy, sorcerer, probably to replace the cleric they usually travel with. They spend two days in Azir getting oriented and head out to the front. The ranger wears an unusually high quality amulet of Nondetection; the sorcerer wears a headband for intelligence, which is a bit unusual as sorcerers usually don't need it to cast, but some variants do; they are otherwise unremarkable. Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, no reading, which could mean neutral or 'hiding it'. They work quickly and effectively, manage resources reasonably well, get recommended to higher-ups for a closer look on that account.
"Destroying evildoers changes the balance of forces between good and evil by one. Redeeming them changes it by two. Or - in Leareth's case probably we are talking about bigger numbers."
"I - am not sure–" Moondance bites his lip, swallows, eventually switches to Mindspeech. :I am not sure he still needs redemption. After Cheliax... We have seen what he does, when given the resources to win without committing great evils. I - could not truly see it, until now...:
And he dissolves into tears again, scrunching himself up against Starwind.
"It does seem to me like he was trying very hard to change into someone who could be a trustworthy ally to the forces of Good, and trusted by them in turn. I'm not sure how he feels about that now."
Vanyel looks at the two of them, his eyes unyielding. "It hurt his feelings very badly. And - made it difficult for him, emotionally, to be open with people and trust them, because - he tried letting down his guard among allies, and just honestly doing his best to help, and then you took advantage of that to destroy his immortality method and let the Star-Eyed attempt to steal his soul." He pauses for a moment, letting that sink in.
"I think it did less damage than it could have," he says, finally, "because - all of us backed him. The pharaoh, and Aroden, and me. So I don't think it's going to result in him feeling like actually it's not safe to cooperate with anyone after all. But it could have."
"Ironically that would have been almost precisely Urtho's mistake. Taking an eager would-be ally and insisting he could not possibly be cooperated with until it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm not actually sure that we've averted the worst of it. We can't cooperate with the Star-Eyed, now, and that's a very costly loss."
"I do not think it so unreasonable of Her to declare that someone who has done such great wrongs as him ought not be supplied with resources and given a country to rule," Starwind says tightly.
"To say so, of course not!! 'The Tayledras oppose installing Leareth as Aroden's heir and insist he pick somebody else' is the kind of thing allied countries say to each other all of the time! It might've gone fine!"
Vanyel hesitates for a second or two, and then goes to hug him.
"Starwind, I think that's an oversimplification of the situation. He would have taken it into account; Aroden does try to cultivate allies, he's - had more of a chance to have that be rewarded instead of punished. Which is exactly the chance we want to give Leareth, now. He's a very, hmm - he's very sane, he's going to respond to what works."
Vanyel is dangerously close to losing his temper. He forces himself to take a deep breath. "First off I don't even think that's true. He - made promises to me, about Valdemar, when we spoke in our dreams, and he kept them - he confirmed later under Truth Spell that he never lied to me. Secondly, I don't know, good for him? Hunger is bad and disease is bad and death is bad and as far as I can tell he IS just the only person in the entire history of Velgarth who's actually said that the status quo is unacceptable and needs to change! And all it ever earned him personally was the gods trying to murder him all the time, but he kept trying anyway!"
"Aroden was a lawful neutral god who managed to negotiate the noninterference of more than twenty other gods, some of them Evil and lots of them Good, for his planned manifestation on Golarion. He has a bunch of allies, he's compromised on a bunch of fronts for them. He'd want to know what the Star-Eyed was offering for it, but - gods, She'd have paid so much less than She's paid now."
"It is possible to fail someone by obeying them in a mistake you could have corrected them in. But I'm not clear on how much you could've corrected Her in it."
"Moondance, ashke, can you stop that?" Starwind sounds worried and also frustrated. "This is not - you are not..." He doesn't seem to know how to finish the sentence.
"Starwind–" Savil grimaces, also apparently lost for words, and eventually just goes to sit next to him and put her arm around his shoulders. "I'm sorry. I - know it's hard that he's so upset and you're getting backwash from it, just - I think he needs to grieve?"