"Desna thinks that most people will choose to do what's right, if they have the freedom to choose. In free countries, even people who aren't especially Good would rather entertain themselves by dancing and singing and watching illusion-light-shows than by hurting people."

"I still think the games make that wrong."

"Taldor's not a free country."

"There's a lot of different ways to do Desnan kinds of Good. —Uh, that doesn't mean Desnans only do these kinds of things, just, if you see a Desnan serving food at a soup kitchen that doesn't make it... the sort of thing people think of when they think of Desna specifically, if that makes sense. Lots of Desnans free slaves, all the Good gods hate slavery but Desna's one of the ones who hates it extra much. Lots of Desnans will — uh, this is sort of hard to explain. Uh, there's a good chance the romance novels you mentioned were copied off books that Desnans smuggled in. Some people take that to mean that Desna really likes romance novels, but actually it's more like... wanting to show people that they have choices that are better than the choices Cheliax wants them to make. Cheliax — wants people to think they've got no choice but to do Evil, and that's almost never true, you can always just choose to do the right thing, but it's easier when you have a sense of what sorts of things you could do.

Sometimes Desnans'll try to break out prisoners before they can be sentenced, but that one's sort of tricky, like, sometimes the reason someone's been arrested is that they're trying to fight Asmodeus and other times it's because they're, like, going around murdering innocent people. 

And then Desnans also do things like... protect roads, to make them safe for travelers, or travel around on ships to keep them safe from sea monsters, or wander around to lots of different places and teach the people in one place what the people in another place are doing, or that sort of thing."

"The most detailed known map of Andoran was created by a party of Desnan adventurers. I believe that is also true of Varisia, and likely of many other countries."

“That sounds… nice.”

He turns the words around in his head ‘show people that they have choices that are better than the choices Cheliax wants them to make’.  He can imagine another life, a worse life, where he hadn’t fallen in with the group that he did and he just kept to his same pattern of choices: scrimping by, looking for people to gouge on healing spells, no greater hope than maybe buying and learning a new wizard spell here or there.  He can also imagine a better life where the people he had fallen in with weren’t as Evil.  Where they enjoyed clever puzzles just as much, but didn’t punctuate them with a bit of cruelty at each other.  Where they worked together to stop Asmodeus without treating it like a fucked up game.  That would be the sort of choice he would want to make, if he really could feel safe making any choice.

He’s lost in thought for a minute or so.

It’s the way this group is around each other that decides it for him.  There isn’t any guarded fear between them, any tension brought on by the expectation that they will hurt each other.  Being in the cult was better than being around Asmodeans, but it wasn’t like this.

“I think I’d like to go to Andoran with you.  I mean, once we’re done with whatever mission you’re on.”

He says this softly.

He still needs to figure out how to deal with the scrying that might or might not come, but his mind is made up.

"Andoran'll be happy to have you." Assuming he cuts it out with working for Baphomet, but she bets he will. "Uh, we finished the main part of our mission already, but we had a couple smaller parts we figured we might as well do while we're here, but they should be faster."

"Did you have any other questions in the meantime?"

He doesn't want to deal with this now, but he really should start planning as soon as possible.

"Do any of you have any ideas about what to do about any possible future scry check-ins?  The particular sub-group of the cult I was previously in did not have any 4th or 5th circles, but they allegedly passed on a clipping of my hair and a sketch of my face to another branch that does.  I've never been scried on, but the 3rd circle cleric that led my sub-group would rarely (like once every several months or so) claim to have gotten orders from some more powerful, more central group that apparently had some way of communicating rapidly over long distance... so scrying or sending, assuming it wasn't just an elaborate bluff.  I'm not sure how many resources a 3rd circle wizard is worth... my worst case scenario is a 5th circle teleporting on top of my to forcibly drag me back and maledict me if I refuse.  To be clear, I think that is unlikely, elaborate bluffs are pretty central to Baphomet's theology... if they had those teleports to spare I never saw them... but I want to be prepared."

The upside of a crazy group of adventurers already willing to risk malediction is that his worst case scenario isn't exactly a new risk for them.

"...Well, the easiest thing to do is just lie to them, tell them you couldn't meet up with them but don't tell them you're going to Andoran. But that only works if they believe it, and if they scry you again in Andoran they'll know something's up. I guess in theory they might, uh, be okay with you leaving, if you're still fighting Asmodeus, but that's not a good idea to count on." There's got to be some reason they're with Baphomet and not a better god.

"In terms of magical defenses... if we knew that they were definitely going to attempt to Scry you at a particular time, it might be worthwhile to use a Nondetection to attempt to deceive them into believing you to be dead — many of the afterlives are only inconsistently Scryable — but given material constraints I don't expect that to be worthwhile. Rope Trick can block teleportation; given the pre-specified report time, we could ensure that you were in a Rope Trick at the scheduled time, but if they find that suspicious they may subsequently attempt another scry at an unpredictable time. Scrying provides information about the target's apparent surroundings, and it's possible to use a Silent Image to make those surroundings appear sufficiently different that a Teleport will certainly land off-target, though Detect Magic can sometimes function through a scry, and if they successfully determine what happened they may bring reinforcements.

If you expect them to Maledict you, there are various potential methods of suicide, but none are perfectly reliable."

"Does Scrying tell you what plane the target is on?"

"I don't believe so."

"You could make it look like he's in Avernus."

He frowns thoughtfully for a second. "I could attempt to do that, yes. I suspect it would be difficult to convincingly replicate the sounds, which would need to be done separately, but that's not necessarily prohibitive."

"And obviously if whatever we end up going with doesn't work and they do try to kidnap you back and Maledict you we'd try to stop them. But I can't promise we'd succeed, none of us are fifth-circle. Wizards go down fast but they might be able to get out by magic too."

Ideally it won't come to that, ideally the Baphomet cult can just keep fighting Asmodeus on their own and let him fight Asmodeus separately, but if the cult's not willing to go along with that they're obviously not going to just cooperate with them trying to kidnap someone and forcibly damn them to the Abyss.

He is having some feelings about this...  He tries to focus on the practical details.  He'll deal with the feelings later.

"The check-in time thing I told you is real, or at least, it is what I was told, and they generally didn't get too complicated with layers of fake plans.  So if you wouldn't mind the shift in schedule so that I'll be by myself in a rope trick around 3 hours after dawn... it might be worth it on the off chance a scheduled scry comes in, at least over the next few days, just to force a delay of any immediate teleport follow-up.  I don't have major image for your illusion plan... although I could have a silent image up each day at the time and you could throw in ghost sounds from outside the rope trick?  Except the cult is really used to throwing lots of illusions around, so I'd give them better than normal odds of seeing through them in addition to what you said about the chance a detect magic works through the scry.  I have enough material to cover nondetections for the next four days... except I think with enough strength as a caster, divinations can go right through it.  So in the worst case of a 5th circle wizard involved they probably beat it and it would put them on guard, so I don't think it is worth it."

"If a scry does go through... I'll try a lie that won't get their guard up in the event they have a teleport to spare... maybe I just say I ran off because the meet-up location was empty but looked used?"

He's glad his own former subgroup of the cult doesn't have any teleports.  Assholes that they may be, he really wouldn't feel right about ambushing them.

Nod. "That makes sense to me. ...Are they going to think it's suspicious if you're in a Rope Trick when they scry you?"

“Depending on how good the cult’s record keeping and information sharing is the central group that would hypothetically be scrying me may know some of the spells I have in my spellbook, and that includes rope trick.  I hadn’t previously learned metamagic to extend spells … but I recently reached third circle, and it isn’t implausible I learned a new metamagic recently as well.  So I don’t think an extended rope trick by itself will make them suspicious?  And if I act as if I’ve been scared by the failed meet-up, it won’t be implausible that I’ve been traveling at odd times of day and hiding in rope tricks.”

Yeah, being an idiotic coward is a pretty plausible for him.  He’ll own that.