"He could try in the Mana Wastes though I don't really know how similar it is. I can take total eight people but Yfandes counts as two."

Nod. "All right. We should go talk to the Heralds and get on the same page about this, and then - probably sometime today we should Plane Shift back. Maybe bring Keiran and Savil too, if that doesn't put us over the total, they can talk with whoever about our Heraldic and military resources and about our magic." 

:I've passed on that we need to have a meeting right away: Yfandes adds to both of them. 

"I can do the three of us, Starwind and Moondance, Keiran and Savil. That'd be all, though."

:Mmm. Well, I guess we'll need to figure out if that's the best allocation of people: Pause. :Meeting in half a candlemark, you've got time to grab breakfast first: 

Then they can grab breakfast. 

After breakfast they trek back to the smaller meeting room - not everyone is coming to this one - and Vanyel repeats the gist of what he heard from Leareth. 

There are speechless looks around the room. 

"I...guess...we could gather some Heralds and some of the Guard to be ready to go in a week?" Savil says finally. She sounds pretty dubious of this, actually. "Any idea why it's such short notice, though?"

"I think probably worries that enough people know 'Rahadoum is going to invade Cheliax' that it won't stay a secret for that much longer. Also maybe that the gods will start scheming to interfere. Leareth was being pretty cagey over the crystal ball, though." He looks over at Fazil. "We were thinking we should go back, to talk properly with them. And - possibly bring you and Keiran, and maybe Starwind and Moondance too if they're willing." 

Savil turns to look at Fazil too. "Are we going to be welcome in Osirion too?" 

"Of course. If we're going to war in a week I think that our government too will be eager to meet face to face."

"That makes sense." Savil stares ahead for a bit, and then her shoulders droop slightly. "...Do you think this is the right choice? It's - a big deal. It could go really badly." 

"I don't know. But I think Leareth has more information than we do, right now." 

"Abadar hates war. I think if He endorses this....it could still go very very badly but it's at the very least the best shot we'll have for a long time, and a good one."

Vanyel's lips twitch, without much humour. "Abadar is very sensible. Anyway, I - guess we should figure out what needs discussing and do all of that before noon - ugh, we probably need a vote with the Council to steal Guard troops, don't we." 

Savil rolls her eyes. "I'm going to make that Joshel's problem. Let's talk about Herald deployments first - it sounds like we won't even be able to move the Guard unless they invent a new technique of Gate on a week's notice, right? But we could get a decent number of Heralds across with Plane Shifts or that portal spell the pharaoh has." 

"The pharaoh can hold a portal for a little less than two minutes, once a day. Trades off against some other things, though. My advice would be that we do whatever coordination can be done on this end, and then I Plane Shift up to seven people with me - Yfandes counts as two - and we do coordination on the other end, and then we arrange a portal once to bring people through."

Nod. "We could get a good number of people through that size portal in two minutes, if they were well-organized enough." 

And they can get to work on whatever coordination can be done on this end, which isn't all of it since they don't yet know for sure which Heralds in Karse can reasonably be spared, but Savil thinks it's not even hard to get fifty people through a portal of that size in two minutes, they were bringing the Guard through at nearly seventy people a minute for the Sunhame Gate, and realistically that's the maximum number of Heralds they can spare anyway. 

If they want to use a bunch of lantern archons for communications that don't need to be particularly secure, that's what Heaven uses them for and they can teleport even to places they've only seen a Mindspeech picture of and this might make it less of a strain on Valdemar to have many of their Gifted heralds absent.

Long-range Mindspeech isn’t guaranteed secure either. Savil thinks that would be a really good idea.

They should probably ask for volunteers from Healers’ too. And does Fazil have any sense for which of the more common Heraldic Gifts would be most useful for the Worldwound? In particular they have a surprising number of Heralds available with short range Foresight, generally very useful in battle, but of course it might not work in Golarion where prophecy is broken.

But if it does work somehow it'd be an enormous advantage. It seems maybe worth sending someone over with the first group and checking, if it can be checked? What's most useful kind of depends on what the existing plan is, and no one's going to tell them that until they're in Sothis, but Mindspeech for coordination is really hard to replicate with Golarion magic and they have speculated that you can disable enemy spellcasters fairly effectively with Fetching (this is more relevant if they might be doing anything in Cheliax than if they're operating entirely at the Worldwound.)

That makes sense. Maybe they should swap out either herself or Keiran for a Herald who has both Fetching and short-range Foresight - Callia does and she's in Horn, it's feasible to Gate her over today especially if Van can do it with Delay Pain again. Nearly all Heralds have at least weak Mindspeech, and all Companion have very strong Mindspeech plus their attention is better set up for simultaneous conversations, usually they relay messages between Heralds who are in a fight together. 

He can do Delay Pain for Van and probably they can save their experiments with whether it's necessary for after the war, wars not being a great time for experiments like that. Are they planning to head out today? They can do that but he can only summon one archon if they're going to leave today. They can always send more over through the portal in a couple of days.

Vanyel should probably find out from Leareth in a bit what they think makes sense, how valuable it is to have them there one day sooner. Sending more archons through the portal seems fine, though, that's when they'll actually be pulling most of the Heralds. Savil, on reflection, thinks she should stay back and let Keiran and Callia though, since Vanyel is nearly as much an expert on magic as she is and one of them should stay back in order to do Gates. 

That works. Their Companions will come through with the larger batch later?