"Urtho seemed to think everything about Ma'ar was irredeemably evil and talking had already been tried and failed. - they weren't, in fact, talking about terms at all and it's not clear Urtho had any in mind." She sounds so annoyed.

It sounds so alarming! "Did they - get along at all, before? When Ma'ar was in school? I - don't know how it would've gone if I hadn't had Carissa there at the Tower. I'd grown up with nomadic cowherding people, I couldn't read or write and I was so confused about everything all the time." 

"Yeah, Ma'ar had - liked him, trusted him. Considered him a mentor."

"Oh. Was it...really upsetting for him. That Urtho started a war." 

"Yeah."

"To be clear it was pretty unsurprising that Tantara went to war with Predain? No one raised in Cheliax would've missed it, anyway, that countries don't usually like empire-building next door when they haven't nailed that alliance down very firmly and gotten lots of appeasing gestures.

But Ma'ar - wasn't very experienced with that side of things - and he trusted Urtho -"

"Right. That makes sense." 

"I'm glad you guys stopped it. How'd you know to do that."

"Aroden designed the magic sensors the ship uses, and he figured out something to look for - Leareth/Ma'ar/Mhalir/Arodens - we should have a word for it - and so we - recognized the story - and we'd just stopped Mhalir's own tragic unnecessary war that was bad for both sides but which neither one could see a way out of -"

"Wow. That's - I'm really glad you did. It...went so badly, in Leareth's world." 

"Yeah. And in Golarion, it ended in Earthfall. And - the Andalite-Yeerk war could've gone even worse than that -"

"- I hate this stupid story." 

"It's a really bad story. And we can stop playing -"

:- stop fighting wars that we - feel like we have no choice about -:

Ma'ar's Thoughtsensing is open enough to pick up on that, though he wasn't specifically trying to read her surface thoughts. 

:I - do you think this is - like another Mage Wars - is it that part of the story...: Shudder. :I don't want to. It's - not my choice - but it seems like - there HAS to be some way to just - not...:

She is trying to say things out loud but her voice isn't working. :I don't know. It feels similar. War that - doesn't need to be happening - Iomedae says it's different. But - gods can be wrong - or it can be true that it's the best thing to do from where Iomedae's standing but that doesn't mean there's not -

- something -:

:There's so many goddamned worlds out there. I...keep feeling like we don't know enough to make a call on this - I know it's risky to wait, more opportunity for the secret to leak, but - what if in five years we find a world that would've had some better solution for us, and it's too late...:

:Yeah.:

:...I'm sorry. That - it might go that way, and - I can't make it not...: 

:I mean, you could make it not go like that. There are good reasons not to, but, if we told Asmodeus, then it wouldn't go like that. I am not trying to do that right now but if someone did that then there'd be no more reason to try to rush to pull it off before He learned it.  And maybe learning it would inspire Him to attack first, it seems to have maybe done that in my world, but. You can decide whether we do this or not.:

:...I mean, I can't decide to do something better than this. I - think telling Asmodeus would end up being worse. ...I do feel like we should really, really, really at least try to negotiate with him? I don't know how to set that up so it's...mitigating the downside risk...but I think we should try. I said that to Leareth already - he said Aroden knows...: 

Nod. :Maybe they'll get it right. But maybe they won't. Last time they didn't.:

:I know: