"...huh."

"Is that...surprising?"

"I just wasn't imagining becoming a god as involving becoming worse at things."

"It's not that it makes you worse at things, exactly, it's that - when you have a plan that is still a human sort of plan you can explain it fine, but if your plans are now far more complicated than that and involve negotiated agreements with twenty other gods then they can't be explained in simple terms, even though you're not worse at explaining. And you have more attention than a human but still not necessarily enough attention for all the things you are trying to do simultaneously. A god that were trying to imitate a person would be very good at it, but if you just want to be a person, why become a god."

"Mm, I see."

"I know people who spoke to Iomedae during the Chelish Civil War. I don't know if I know anyone who has more recently than that -"

"- I got a pretty specific dream about the Whispering Tyrant, I don't know if that counts..."

"...I think not strictly speaking? It's not talking."

"I think She meets with the Glorious Reclamation people regularly but they don't talk to anyone outside the order, so..."

"Whispering Tyrant, Glorious Reclamation..."

"The Whispering Tyrant is in Ustalav, it's one of the threats Lastwall was founded to look out for. The Glorious Reclamation is the paladin order devoted to operations in Cheliax. They work closely with Iomedae because intelligence operations benefit a lot from comparing notes from the human perspective and the god-perspective, but they're very secretive, for obvious reasons. We worked with them to arrest the Chelish wizard - Iomedae had direct input on that, she said that if we waited ten days then no one would draw the connection between her arrest and your appearance."

Okay, they're calling it an "arrest", that's good to know. "What actually is the Whispering Tyrant? The ruler of a country? Some sort of magical something?"

"A lich. It's a kind of powerful undead magic user. They can be nearly impossible to destroy. He brought the orcs of Belkzen under his control and used them as an invasion force to conquer the whole north of the continent, which he ruled for six hundred years, expanding southward. A crusade called the Shining Crusade was launched to destroy him. Iomedae fought in the Shining Crusade, and Aroden's herald Arazni was killed in it. It lasted several decades, and eventually they defeated him and imprisoned him in Gallowspire, in Ustalav. Lastwall was founded to, among other things, be ready - he probably won't be imprisoned forever, and we haven't yet learned how to kill him for good..."

"Wow."

"You can see why we want more allies!"

"It does sound like you have a lot on your plate."

Bells ring and they clear out, speculating quietly about which of their many enemies will be a problem first.

Kyeo goes for a long walk.

The whole city of Lastwall is much like the bits of it he's seen; not rich, but tidy, and well-maintained, with children playing outside. There's a market with dozens of kinds of vegetables and fresh bread and eggs and chickens and oysters. There's a cemetary, and near it the memorial with sculptures of the dead as angels. There are parade grounds where the cavalry practices. There are churches.

He is followed by a single guard at a moderate distance; the guard makes no particular effort to conceal himself but doesn't stay right on Kyeo's heels, either.

He didn't really expect otherwise. It's still nice to stretch his legs and get some air. He walks briskly to keep warm. Skirts awkwardly around the market.

The city walls are tall and unmistakeable, at the city's edges; there are soldiers stationed on them, and a grand gate through which wagons piled with goods pass. There are barracks up against the walls. In a flower garden there's a boy and a girl about Kyeo's age, kissing, and past that some young children whacking at each other with toy swords.

Eventually the bells ring for dinner.

He meanders back for dinner.

At dinner the topic of conversation is a friend's unit which took terrible losses in a fight with a vampire on the border with Ustalav, and secondarily complaints about a neighbor's rooster, which is very loud in the early mornings apparently.

Kyeo had neighbors like that. Roosters are sure annoying.

They're vaguely surprised that in the age of starships no one has invented better roosters or anything but maybe technology can only do so much. 

"Oh, it's probably possible to get new generations of chickens incubating artificially but that doesn't mean it's as efficient."

They are intrigued by the concept of artificial incubation and agree that it doesn't sound worth the trouble for chickens. Maybe someone will figure out how to make Silence permanent cheaply, and it'll make having neighbors much pleasanter.

That sounds like a great idea to him too.

He visits Carissa again the next day.