"I don't think Asmodeus has ever been called impossible to ally or cooperate with. I'm - concerned, to hear that that'll be a novel experience, but delighted to offer it."

Meanwhile: 

Malduoni made his first pass through Haven five days ago. At that point, there wasn't much to learn there. Valdemar's leadership, which as far as Malduoni can tell is approximately some sort of Lawful Good, indirectly-god-chosen paladin order, knew only a few fragments, and didn't appear to be trying much at all to learn more. Their neighbour Rethwellan was trying harder to slip people through the miraculous barrier, despite not even sharing a border with Iftel. Hardorn, and the stateless area north of Valdemar, had the benefits of being not particularly closely guarded. Karse was of interest because Malduoni was already fairly sure both countries operated under the same god.

Haven was of relatively less interest, and at that point Malduoni took some initial notes and moved on. 

It wasn't until an hour ago, skulking invisibly along the Valdemar/Hardorn border near the intersection of both with the barrier, that Malduoni picked up on some hints to the contrary - apparently, Valdemar is the first country to receive a peaceful diplomatic party from Cheliax. And even for him, it wasn't instantaneous to reach Haven. There were precautions to be taken first. 

Which is why he arrives at about the time that Leareth's people are talking to the Chelish diplomats. Who have apparently been there since the morning, but Malduoni can't be everywhere or hear everything at once, not when he's chosen to operate alone in presumed-hostile territory. 

Some judicious use of Detect Thoughts lets him orient fairly quickly. Most of the important people here, inconveniently yet unsurprisingly, shield very well, and his magic item for continuous Detect Thoughts isn't enough to get past it. He's prepared the spell, though, including in higher level spell slots. 

So, situation: diplomats arrive (not very secretly). They are not immediately informed, but at this point there are already two prisoners being kept on-site (very secretly, or Malduoni would have been here days ago.) One is a Chelish wizard; the other is a mage from - some other faction? Skip forward to late afternoon: two prisoners disappear. Along with the King's illegitimate daughter? Bafflingly, the local authorities decide to confess almost all of this?

Skip forward two hours, and the daughter is returned unharmed by the other faction???

The diplomats themselves are not immediately possible to locate, but mindreading lets Malduoni determine where they went. The room is shielded very well. The door, however, is neither tightly-fitted enough nor directly shielded to prevent a ninth-circle wizard from slipping through, invisible and inaudible and in gaseous form. 

Circumstantial evidence hints that at one of the diplomats is a high level cleric of Asmodeus.

So when Malduoni casts Detect Thoughts, just before slipping into the room, he casts the one he prepared in a seventh-circle spell slot, and Persistent Spelled, which in practice makes it approximately equivalent to a ninth-circle spell. There's almost no one this would fail on. 

(It's also, at a guess, likely powerful enough to trip whatever the wards are that Valdemar has over its entire territory. But with him invisible and gaseous, it should also be fairly hard to locate or identify.) 

Vernus Laborda is a fifth circle cleric of Asmodeus, and the highest-ranked person here, but not actually the one doing the talking; he has a telepathic bond with Hulien, who's a sorcerer (and accordingly has the magic items for presence rather than wisdom), and occasionally gives advice. It is sometimes useful for other parties to be mistaken about how decisions are made and often useful to be underestimated. 

Vernus Laborda has assessed everyone in the room - the tense, mostly-Lawful, mostly-competent delegation from Leareth, the locals, who are clearly lawless and out of their depths - and he has a proposed approach to evangelism in Valdemar and has set it aside entirely as a topic of thought; it's not very interesting. He's having a harder time figuring out Leareth's people. They seem moderately competent; they hate Velgarth's gods, which the church of Asmodeus wholeheartedly agrees on - they're clearly directly personally loyal to Leareth, so a great deal will depend what he wants, but no one seems to actually know the answer to that. Sevar might know, actually, but with all communications filtered through Leareth they're in effect not able to talk to her, especially now that Leareth's people have made it clear that Law here, in the absence of specific reciprocal trust, mostly amounts to 'we'll follow our incentives'.

The remaining question is whether it's worth delivering a much more valuable prisoner into Leareth's totally unknowable custody in order to get negotiations started this week rather than next. A week sooner would be valuable, if a likely outcome is an alliance; it'd be actively bad, if a likely outcome is Leareth involving himself in the war. 

....Malduoni is so incredibly confused. 

Who is this 'Leareth' person, who apparently hates the gods - who was important enough to be kidnapped back and forth by two different factions, but then escaped - what - 

It's useful to know, that Law here runs approximately on following incentives - and also informative about Leareth and Leareth's faction, that it seems they were willing to say it fairly outright, to a faction they presumably consider their enemy... 

He needs more information. Detect Thoughts will last twenty minutes, as will his Invisibility. Not all the time in the world, but - time enough to learn a little more before he decides whether or not to act. 

What is the local Valdemaran Herald thinking about. 

She's anxious and off-balance, feeling deeply embarrassed and wrong-footed about every single interaction with the Chelish diplomats. Most of all she's incredibly tired. 

She's confused about Leareth. Leareth, the man who nearly murdered Vanyel multiple times. Who burned lives like cordwood to carve his passage through the mountains. Who made the artifact that fed the entire royal family of Lineas to demons...

Leareth. Who claims that he's trying to do right by all the people, everywhere, including the millions, billions, who aren't even born yet - who could exist if he fixes everything - 

Leareth, who said under a coercive Truth Spell that all people are lights in the world. 

Leareth, who nonetheless wants to murder ten million of them to– 

...and that's the thought she can't even look at, yet, it's too big, too absurd, too nonsensical for words... 

Leareth, who Jisa apparently mindread - well, Looked at with Mindhealing Sight, anyway - and instantly volunteered to help, because he was scared and alone and injured and she thought her adults had done something awful. 

Leareth, who returned Jisa unharmed the moment it was possible to do so. 

It's too much, too fast, and she can't cope with this AND with figuring out smart questions to ask Leareth's staff AND with the stupid goddamned Chelish diplomats. 

Focus. What are this 'Leareth's' people thinking about. 

Ebet doesn't like the Asmodeans. They're well-spoken and charismatic and so slimy. He's worried that he's massively screwing up the decision on bringing over the Asmodean who offered to heal Leareth. Maybe it just is worth it, and worth all the assurances of safety they would have to provide? He's confused about what the Heralds want or are trying to accomplish, here; his best guess is that probably everyone is very sleep-deprived and therefore making a poor showing of themselves.  

Talli is honestly kind of bored. She had PLANS this evening. She isn't even slightly worried about being captured against her will - she can raise a Gate from that doorway to a safe, remote facility in under a second, if she must, and she's very confident she could take Herald-Mage Savil in a fight and also fairly sure that the Chelish envoys wouldn't intervene. She was, however, told very firmly to "place nice." She's letting Ebet do all the talking because she would just manage to offend everyone. Leareth does not select his elite combat mages for their charm. 

The Healer is nervous. He's active duty, he consented to potentially dangerous missions, and he also specifically consented to this one, where the worst-case scenario was a lot worse than this. Still. He hadn't expected the danger part to start for another few years and he isn't a fan. He also wishes he could sit the Asmodean cleric down in a room and interrogate him about magical healing for a week straight, but that's besides the point. 

The three soldiers are varying degrees of anxious, bored, and kind of itchy for a fight. One of them is thinking that guard missions where their only job is to stand there and look tough are so pointless. 

"I wouldn't take their word for it," Tran says dryly. "Not sure if you got this part of the report, but Asmodeus is fond of torturing people. ...I guess maybe Leareth wouldn't care." 

He's relieved that the Chelish diplomats haven't tried any torture, but also irritated that they're being way more polite to Leareth's people than they were to the Valdemarans, who are at the very least an actual country. 

WOW. Ebet is pretty offended about the claim that Leareth wouldn't care! There's no point in saying anything, though, and he's enough of a professional to hide any visible reaction. 

In another room, with Jisa on his lap while Melody examines her mind for signs of tampering, Vanyel lifts an apologetic hand. 

"I'm sorry - Web-alarm, Kilchas says he checked it out and doesn't have a clue. I'd better have a look." 

"Of course. Do you have to -" 

"Should be able to do it from here. I'll just need to be in trance." 

And he closes his eyes, and lets Valdemar unfurl to his Othersenses. 

- what is that. 

A burst of magic, powerful enough to exceed the alarm threshold, but completely unfamiliar. Which presumably means it's Golarion magic. Not their teleporting kind, though. Something...else. 

And the Web can't quite pin down the location of it either, which is odd. It's in Haven, definitely. Probably somewhere on the Palace grounds... 

Vanyel doesn't like this at all. And he likes even less that, when he checks with Yfandes who tries to relay to Kellan, Savil is apparently out of Mindspeech contact. For some reason she relocated the questioning to a Work Room. 

:Stay put: Yfandes tells him firmly. :The Companions will do some reconnaissance, and we'll get Kilchas on it. Jisa needs you there right now: 

...This world is, apparently, so appallingly complicated. 

Malduoni is intrigued by this Leareth figure. He badly wants to know more. Ideally, to speak to the man himself - except that apparently he's injured right now - 

He doesn't have a plan, yet. But he also has an entire seventeen minutes left on Detect Thoughts. 

What is the Asmodean cleric thinking now? How about the other two envoys? 

“It would be rather astonishing if they didn’t care,” Hulien says. He is partially reading this off Ebet’s face but also it just seems obvious. The things that have gotten the strongest reaction from Leareth’s people so far have been everything to do with gods. “Asmodeans go to Hell, and spent so many thousands of years there that eventually their mortal life is a distant memory. You can favor that or oppose it, but what nihilism, to try to be indifferent! 

We are happy to talk about Hell and why we are eager to go there. One observation, which might be more productive than objecting to your phrasing - Asmodeus could, if he chose, keeping the workings of Hell a secret. The nature of its ninth layer is a total secret, known to no one living and to no other gods. Velgarth’s gods, apparently, have chosen to disclose approximately nothing about what is done with souls here. But Asmodeus doesn’t lie to us. The process of becoming a devil is  painful. You should care about that, though I do not think it is the only thing you should care about. Certainly I expect it’ll be much of what we speak of with Leareth’s people.”

He has done this many times before but is absorbed in doing it for this audience, which is Ebet, not Tran. The Valdemarans are savages and while every life is valuable to Asmodeus and they are worth engaging on those terms they are not worth engaging as a polity.

Laborda is still weighing whether to go with these people north. Might depend how they take the torture conversation.

Interesting. 

Malduoni has a few options here. One: gather as much intelligence as he can and leave before he can be detected. At that point, he could stay in Haven and follow the Chelish diplomats - if they all remain here - or he could attempt to follow Leareth's people to their base. He's still not sure if Velgarth Gates can detect an extra person passing through, but plausibly they can't detect a gaseous mosquito, and if they could they wouldn't know what to make of it - it's a risk he would consider taking, anyway... 

He could reveal himself. Not as his true self, of course, but as a ninth-circle human wizard, either under one of his existing pseudonyms - he has one as an adventurer who mostly works in Tian Xia, which would hold up to substantial scrutiny - or as Malduoni, Keeper of the First Law in Rahadoum. Both would attract questions. The second one, a lot more questions. 

But...he would have substantial leverage. He reads as Lawful, and they'll know that he's familiar with what Golarion sees as Law. He's visibly powerful enough to, almost certainly, escape Leareth's facility unhindered if he so chooses. He could offer a commitment to guard the cleric's passage... 

If he wants that to happen. If he's willing to pay the price of making his existence known. 

...For the moment, he still has more than ten minutes left. He can afford to bide his time. 

Ebet is thinking that he wishes they'd sent a scholar for this discussion. He's not going to be very eloquent on this topic. Then again, Leareth wasn't aware of the Chelish envoy either. 

"So the pain is - instrumental, part of becoming a devil?" he says. "Why is that necessary, rather than just - lessons and deliberate practice and centuries of training? What traits do devils have that are, er, shaped by the torture?" 

“I mean, there are also centuries of practice and training,” Hulien says. “But there are some magic abilities, some physical gifts, that can be imparted only through an arduous magical ritual, called fleshshaping, and it hurts. No training will turn an Ungifted person into a Gifted one, right? Some things can be done through instructions, and some only through changing the shape of a soul. - I think you can actually also get the sensation to map to ecstatic overwhelming pleasure, actually, but then people get addicted and can’t bear it’s cessation.”

"...I suppose that would be an awkward downside. Anyway. I'm sure Leareth will be willing to hear as full an explanation of Asmodeus' justifications as you're willing to provide, once he's recovered." 

"What do the other afterlives do? They must have some equivalent." 

“Mostly no, actually. In the Abyss most people just die in the grub stage. Abaddon eats everyone. The Maelstrom achieves their results through constantly providing you with inconsistent and uncorrelated sensory input, but no one knows exactly the end result, since eventually chaos beasts stop being observable. In the Boneyard if you don’t get sent anywhere else you eventually crumble to dust. In Elysian and Axis you stay human. In Nirvana you go through lifetimes as various animals. Heaven destroys the self-protective and self-interested impulses, which permits them techniques Hell can’t use.”

"I...see." 

Savil can't help thinking of Vanyel and his - highly unpleasant - Gift-awakening. 

Talli is wondering how Heaven even does that. Also Hell sounds weirdly appealing - but, like, for a year? Not centuries. 

Ebet is mostly curious about the animals part but this doesn't seem like a fruitful line of conversation. "Anyway. Is there anything else we ought to cover - would you like to write a message to Sevar, for Leareth to pass on if he approves of the idea?" 

"If you want us to travel to you - either to heal Leareth or just to talk - we'd want you to send someone authorized to negotiate on Leareth's behalf, someone whose agreements Leareth is committed to keeping. If that has to be him personally, we recommend the conversation occur at long-distance via magic. Then we'd want commitments that our minds won't be altered, our souls won't be sold off to the various local gods, and we won't be prevented from leaving. 

You can communicate to Sevar that we've made contact with Leareth, and hope to negotiate a face-to-face meeting soon." The intended message, which will be taken very clearly, is that she should not try to do amateur diplomacy and should shut up and keep her head down.