Vanyel swings by after he's used up all the reserves that multiple Lesser Restorations can eke out on diamonds. "You wanted to talk to me about something?" 

"Yes. If you can wait a little, I will have Nayoki join us." 

She does so a few minutes later. "Aroden said–"

"Yes, I wish for you two to plan a trip to Haven. The pharaoh will likely send a diplomatic party either with you or shortly afterward."

And he explains their concerns about Starwind and Moondance. 

Vanyel frowns. "I - think you're right, probably, that we should make sure they can't do this again, and - that that's a higher priority than whether it's fair to them as people. And I agree there's a concern they'll Gate out if they have any warning. Just...I also get why the Heralds want to take their time with making a decision first, and - you'll really be leaving me with some explaining to do to Randi." 

"Oh, I think you ought agree on burning out their Gifts through the Heralds' official channels, whatever those are. Nayoki will not be doing that immediately, I just thought I would send her in case your Mindhealer is not comfortable with it. It had sounded as though the Heralds had already discussed using pre-emptive compulsions to keep them captive, and narrowly decided not." 

"True. I think Randi will forgive me for it, just - feels a little like abusing my position, getting away with that." 

"I know. But, I suspect their judgement may - not be unaffected. There is a Heartstone in Haven, I remembered." 

"Oh." 

Vanyel freezes. 

"Oh no. I - completely didn't think of that - I don't know what powers it'd actually give Her but I bet She can affect the Companions' Foresight that way, and...a lot of the Heralds just trust their Companions' gut feelings on things fully..." 

"That reminds me, I ought also explain our plan there." Leareth relays his conversation with Abadar and the tentative plan. 

Vanyel looks both awed and very concerned. "Abadar thinks you - we - can pull that off?" 

"He claimed so. I intend to do considerably more planning before we carry it out." 

"You had better! When you die it scares me." 

Vanyel can't help chuckling a little, even though it's not really funny. 

They discuss further logistics. He can be ready to leave the next day. 

"Thank you," says Carissa Sevar, with a smile that must look incredibly fake, why is she so bad at this, she needs to practice in front of a mirror or in front of Grandmother or something. "That's all I wanted to know. Uh -"

And she leaves. Maybe she needs to practice exits in front of a mirror too. Practicing exits in front of Grandmother wouldn't help because Grandmother always wheedles you into staying for some pie and another three hours. Her heart is pounding and her mind is meandering. She tries walking slowly, home, in case it'll get the heart pounding under control, which it kind of does.

The man that the Inheritor has been sending her strange dreams about is Aroden's son.

Aroden's heir, she corrects herself, she does not know whether or not he's Aroden's son, the person she asked to identify him from a sketch said "Aroden's son" but he was just a random person in Egorian for the coronation, he wouldn't have more information than she does about that. What everyone knows is that Aroden has a wife, and children, kept them far away during the war lest anyone threaten them, lives in the palace with them now. They're all very old. Aroden can extend his own life but not theirs, maybe. And Aroden went to Tian Xia, in search of allies for his war and battles that'd give him the strength for it, and Aroden long ago travelled the Great Beyond and maybe knew where allies could be found on other worlds, and he'd built up an army in the world called Velgarth with its strange sorcerers, and one of them was his heir. People were assuming his son but probably Aroden is beyond petty mortal concerns like paternity and also the distant ancestor of literally everyone in Cheliax. 

Probably.

So why is the Inheritor sending visions of Aroden's heir? Aroden's heir, standing in the snow. Aroden's heir, fighting with magic. Aroden's heir, deep in intimate conversation with another person she doesn't recognize, and which none of her sources recognize either...

...there are several possible explanations but the likeliest is that he is evil and in the service of Asmodeus or something and she needs to do something about it. If she didn't need to do anything about it, she probably wouldn't be getting visions about it, and if he were a perfectly lovely person suited to take over should anything happen to Aroden she probably wouldn't need to do anything about it. And if he just needed...advice...or something...the Inheritor could probably give him that herself?

This leaves the question of what Carissa Sevar, who is twenty-five and has third-circle spells like anyone competent in school and was working full time enchanting weapons for the crusaders at the Worldwound before Aroden showed up and closed the Worldwound, who was evil until she got an Atonement to neutral about it three weeks ago and has been a cleric of the Inheritor for two, is supposed to do about it. 

The main question is - how does this cleric thing work? If the way it works is that Iomedae is functionally omniscient and picked her because she is the absolute best person in all of Cheliax to do something about the situation, then she can actually do a lot of reasoning from the precise fact that she's the absolute best person to do something about the situation. ...it's mostly very confused reasoning, but still. For example, probably enchanting weapons is a necessary element of the solution, and probably Iomedae's agent needs to be someone who has attracted little attention in their life and can pass undercover. ...it is getting way ahead of herself to assume that she is supposed to assassinate the heir to Cheliax, that is stupid and almost definitely not what she is supposed to do, presumably she is supposed to learn enough to take the proof to Aroden so he can pick a better heir, but anyway, she should still assume that enchanting weapons will be involved somehow, if she was literally the best person in Cheliax for this job. 

But maybe that's not how it works at all and actually all of the Inheritor's clerics and paladins got this dream and she should instead use detect alignment as often as she can get away with it, in large crowds, scanning desperately for people who like her carry a loud Lawful Good alignment which is unlikely to be their own, and get in on the secret conspiracy, and make weapons from the comfort of her basement. 

That option sounds a lot more soothing which is no information about whether it's right. 

Or maybe the dreams are just to prompt her to do research and there will soon be additional, clarifying dreams about what to do next. That option sounds even more soothing and is - almost certainly wrong, actually, gods have limited resources, she remembers reading that, sending instruction is costly. Probably if she does nothing next she'll get dreams prompting her, assuming this mission is in fact specifically meant for her, but those dreams cost Good something, cost the Inheritor something, and she's pretty sure that you're supposed to walk alone as long as you can and not need constant prodding from behind. Better to do something wrong, and need correction, than to do nothing at all. 

- unless you do something that tips off Aroden's heir. That would be much worse than doing nothing. And she's not sure if she can reason from the dreams that she's probably not going to do something wrong or Iomedae wouldn't have sent the dreams, because Foresight isn't a thing anymore. 

What actions definitely won't tip him off and are probably a good idea. 

She asks an aunt in Egorian if she can move to the city. Says, vaguely, that maybe she'll open a magic shop or something. Learn to enchant something other than weapons. She sells all her possessions that definitely are not going to be useful for saving Cheliax or joining a conspiracy that saves Cheliax or - she should keep an open mind, maybe it'll be something entirely unrelated to that. 

She's heard of people who can bluff truth spells, bluff casual mindreading. She might need that. She starts looking into it. She's not 100% sure this is how being a cleric of Iomedae is supposed to work but her goddess is there every morning, proud, determined, full of righteous conviction. 

That evening Aroden prepares a Sending to the pharaoh, alerting him that Vanyel is planning to depart the next day for Velgarth, probably it makes sense for him to do so directly from Cheliax and then retrieve the diplomatic party once he's cleared the air with Randi. 

Once he's waited for confirmation, he sits down and prays to Iomedae. 

And she catches him and then they're sitting, in his mind, in a room together. 

"Very good to see you! I hear you have instructions for me regarding some superweapons." 

She smiles tightly. "The agreement reached among the gods was that they would be stored in a vault of Abadar's devising, that can be opened only when this is sought, at once, by a servant of Abadar, a servant of mine, and a servant of Asmodeus, working together. Obviously I'm annoyed and would've liked a better deal, but we don't think we can hold the Star-Eyed off without Asmodeus and it doesn't take a very large coincidence for her to wreak some catastrophic damage. Abadar is of the opinion that I should like this because - well, because I am the lawful good god of record on it despite being the youngest one, which sets a precedent for future agreements, and because it's not like there was any set of agreements where I got to keep the superweapons and use them if I saw fit. I do not, in fact, like this, because I don't like losing even when the other options were losing more. But I've agreed to it. Also, we'll all owe you a favor. I could try to outline things in more detail than that but - not usefully, I don't think. I predict once you're a god you'll be satisfied with the deal."

Aroden nods, thoughtful. 

"No, you would not like it," he says, almost absently. "It seems reasonable enough to me from this angle. Reserves more option value than destroying them entirely - which is what I would have been tempted to do - but makes it very unlikely they will ever be used for anything not of world-threatening stakes." His lips twitch. "You will all owe me a favour? Surely I owe you something for making it possible to do safely at all. Anyway. What specific instructions do I need to know?" 

So she explains how to access the vault and which order to take the weapons in (some of them are more valuable than others and also some are easier for the Star-Eyed to potentially disable dangerously) and the terms of the godagreement in weird edge cases like Nefreti showing up to run off with the weapons (he doesn't have to stop her, though the gods probably will).

He thanks her. "I am glad we are doing this. I - am not especially angry with Her, anymore, I cannot expect Her to act outside Her nature, but... It cost us so much and it could have been so much worse - it scared me, Iomedae, I spent the entire fifteen hours - thirteen hours, I did sleep in there - terrified that something would go wrong and we would not get him back..." 

"I understand. It destroyed a great deal, and was aimed at destroying more than that. We can expect people to grow outside their nature, and gods are just people, after a fashion."

"I suppose it would be silly to expect less of gods than of mortals." He shakes his head. "I am told Abadar is furious. At the lack of Law more than the outright Evil of it, I think, She broke an agreement they had made about Velgarth souls and She did it to try to steal His cleric. The pharaoh is certainly very, very angry." 

"Abadar is furious. He's expending quite a few resources, you know, on this retaliation."