It is, conventionally, a week's travel from Iomedae's father's holdings to Kantaria. They are only thirty miles apart as the crow flies, but that's cutting through the forest, and you have to be very foolish or very powerful to cut through the forest.  You'd need magical horses from a caster powerful enough that they can ford a few rivers without slowing, and you'd need to be able to kill anything that considered you prey.  Ordinary men go along the river where there's a trail cleared, and cross it at the north bridge where the lord of Hassant lives, and that route is three times as long but won't kill you. 

A third circle paladin and a fifth circle wizard can ride directly, and should be there in three hours. 

When they hear voices, about an hour in, they both pull their horses to a complete halt immediately and without discussion. There aren't usually men this deep in the forest, and a lot of things that sound like men aren't.

The sudden stop is more noticeable than the rustle of leaves before it was. Guim quiets and stops suddenly himself, listening. He shifts his weight in preparation for outright picking Ferran up and running, not that he'll be amazing at doing both of those at once.

Ferran clenches his jaw as tight as he can and tries to quiet his breathing and stop making vaguely pathetic sounds. He has no idea what Guim has noticed but he would prefer it not notice him first.

Please don't let it be centipedes. Please don't let it be centipedes. Who do you pray to for it not to be centipedes. Are there any gods who don't actively want him devoured by centipedes. ...well, probably lots, he's not arrogant enough to think that most of the gods care what happens to him at all, but the centipedes don't actually need much assistance -

Iomedae isn't scared, but she isn't going to be stupid either. There are a lot more things that can kill you if you're careless than things that can kill you if you're smart. She nudges the phantom steed in the direction of the voices.

Alfirin casts an Arcane Sight then follows a short distance behind.

There are two young men standing between some trees, one human and half-orc. Late teens or early twenties, both of them. Both are obviously outfitted for combat, but certainly not old enough or strong enough that they ought to be wandering this far into the forest by themselves. The human is wearing some magic items, including a cloak and a ring. His armor is black and bearing something that very much resembles the coat of arms of House Narikopolus. He's got a mangled foot that he's avoiding putting weight on, and looks like he would probably have collapsed a while ago if the half-orc weren't very insistently keeping him upright. The half-orc looks like he's also sustained some injuries, but nothing obviously serious.

The half-orc is paying attention, though the human is fairly well distracted. Neither one of them is going to figure out where Iomedae and Alfirin are before they are noticed, though they're keeping pretty still now.

"No illusions. Minor cloak and a ring," she mutters as the men come into view.

So probably exactly what they look like, which is Narikopolus's men who got stranded in the forest somehow. "I'm a paladin of Aroden, do you need any assistance?" she calls loudly, and urges the horse towards them.

"Did you make that out?"

"They must be foreign." They don't look Nidalese, though. "Sound friendlier than centipedes, anyway."

Yes, yes, it could be worse, though it doesn't especially feel like it. Maybe he can collapse and make Guim talk to them. That's honestly sounding pretty good right now. Maybe if he really determinedly sits down Guim will let him actually do it.

Well, okay.

"Can you repeat that? My lord's son is injured. He needs transport out of the forest."

She is wearing what is, in her own time, very good armor; but armor is a matter where there is a great deal of innovation and it is not shockingly impressive nine hundred years on. It has an eye of Aroden engraved on the chestplate. Her cloak is brightly colored with the arms of the Knights of Ozem. 

She dismounts and repeats herself, more slowly, a bit puzzled. She doesn't understand them either and this is Menador, not somewhere where you'd expect to find foreigners - 

She knows Taldane. The language these men are speaking is not Taldane. It's also... not not Taldane? It's less not Taldane than it is not Hallit or not Draconic or not Giant or not - relevantly - Sylvan. Comprehend Languages. She gestures for the men to repeat themselves.

"We were separated from our hunting party, and my lord's son was injured. He needs transport out of the forest. Our hunting party can't be very far away, though they might also be injured." He can't imagine them having lost, not with Carles in the party. "You said you're -?"

"He says the injured man is the son of a lord, they need help out of the forest, and the rest of their hunting party should be nearby. I don't have a tongues prepared but do have a third open and can fill it in a minute or a quarter-hour. They don't seem to understand who we are or recognize your arms, do you know theirs?"

"That's the house Narikopolus only it'd be very odd for any man of their house not to speak Taldane." She steps in to Lay On Hands on the injured man all the same.

Oh gods that's so much better.

....this woman is not dressed like an Asmodean cleric. She is definitely not a druid. She has healing powers. He knows powerful enough fighters can have healing powers, but he has a sinking feeling in his stomach that that's not really the most likely explanation. Probably these people are criminals? Foreign criminals with a cleric of a foreign deity? In the middle of the Barrowood, for some reason? But if these people are criminals, then why is he not dead? He can recognize his own name, so it's not that they don't know who he is.

Even healed, he doesn't think he's in any position to arrest them. He stands and nods, instead.

"Thank you, that's much better. We can look for the rest of our party alone."

We can??? What???

Well that's wildly suspicious. 

...not a man of house Narikopolus, but wearing his armor. Bandits, hoping for the impersonation to which they committed themselves by wearing the armor to be over as swiftly as possible? But - 

- no, that doesn't make sense either. They requested help getting out of the forest at first. And you'd cover the armor, if you were a bandit and didn't think you could pull off the impersonation, say because you didn't even speak a word of Taldane. She does not in fact have confident suspicion, she just has several hundred questions.

"We were going to Kantaria," she says, slowly and carefully. "I can shout for your men, or defend you from what else may come if you call for them. But if they do not hear us, then it is wise I think to come with us. My wizard can make more horses."

They are ALSO going to Kantaria. Unless Carles means to make them keep killing things, but he really doesn't think they're in keep-killing-things territory. Honestly given the snow is gone he thinks they're in get back to Kantaria as soon as possible and figure out what's up with that territory, but he's not in charge, now, is he.

He doesn't actually spend all that long thinking about this. If Carles is around they will probably have the manpower to arrest her, and they probably won't make him decide whether they're doing that. 

"Fine. I'll yell for them now, then."

"CARLES! IOLANDA!"

Might as well prepare the tongues while they wait. She wishes Curiosity were here, she's on edge and an extra pair of eyes wouldn't hurt.

She finishes the spell in about a minute and then pretends she's not done and still distracted while actually paying much more attention to the strangers.

The whole party is not in fact too far away to be called to by very loud yelling, though it takes them a minute to arrive. It consists of one somewhat older half orc out in front, one woman with blood red hair dressed like a wizard, one male human cleric, one female half-orc, and a few other riders behind them. 

The half-orcs have the same coat of arms on their armor, while the wizard has it sewn onto the shoulder of her coat. Her other shoulder has an Asmodean pentagram sewn into it. The cleric, too, is visibly a cleric of Asmodeus. 

Oh, Baphomet cultists. Fuck.

She reaches for her sword; it glows with holy light. 

She is still confused, very very confused -

- "you wanted to avoid a fight?" she says tensely to the man she healed. "Saying, we will leave -"

It's really not the smartest way to start a fight but tongues -

She appreciates Alfirin. It's really really not the smartest way to start a fight but if, in fact, his bizarre about-face was because he regretted helping his cultist friends ambush them then she'd prefer he live. (The sword's not merciful. She doesn't prefer it enough to give up the sword's being holy.)

He wants to be OUT of this FOREST

Do they really have to arrest them, really - he still doesn't understand why they didn't attack him first -

"She healed us," he says, backing away, instead of making decisions. Please please someone officially relieve him of command -

The half-orc narrows his eyes and holds up his open hand instead of drawing his own sword. His companions have drawn their weapons, but they don't attack. 

"Are you a cleric?"

Baphomet cultist orcs wearing stolen Narikopolus armor who are confused about whether clerics get Lay On Hands or can empower their swords as holy...?  

"No. I'm a paladin." She doesn't say 'obviously' but it's not impossible to read into her tone. "On leave from the war, visiting Kantaria. You are wearing the arms and armor of the Doux of all Menador, and your companions the signs of civilization's great enemies." Just in case they, she doesn't know, had some fae alter their appearances and they don't know it; it doesn't really hold together as a theory but neither does anything else.

Still obviously confused. 

"We wear the Archduke of Menador's armor because we are the Archduke of Menador's men." Ferran has backed away far enough that Carles thinks he can place himself between him and these two if necessary. They can't do much to prevent the caster from targeting him besides kill her, if she has an interest in killing him, which it sounds like she doesn't. "Paladins are illegal in Menador, but if you happened here by mistake while teleporting away from the Worldwound, I suspect the treaty may protect you. I don't happen to have its terms memorized."

"...paladins are not illegal in Menador," she says, this being a particularly important point of confusion. "Baphomet cultists are. I am not familiar with 'the Worldwound', but I have my commission from the Emperor." Who will want to hear about it if the Doux of Menador's men are orcs and cultists.

It is particularly confusing that they are orcs, honestly. Why would orcs believe they could get away with pretending to be the Doux's men.

"...Baphomet cultists are also illegal in Menador," he says, since that's the easiest thing to address. "Which Emperor?"

"The Emperor is Kydonis, praised in all the paradises."

"No, I mean - what country are you from?"

"...I'm from here. My father's land is two hours' riding west of here, and it was his father's before him, and his father's before his, and his father made the place habitable in the first place. His lord is Hassant, and his is the Doux, and the Doux serves the Emperor. What country are you from?" Do orcs have countries?

"I am from Cheliax. I have lived all my life in Menador. Whether I still am in Menador or not, I certainly was this morning, when we set out into the Barrowood. My father is Archduke of Menador, and has tasked me with killing its monsters, though not currently with arresting those who break its laws."

"I want to understand one thing first." He gestures to Ferran. "You healed this man?"

She considers whether there is any polite way to say "you are claiming to be the son of the Archduke of Menador and you to all appearances are half orc" and decides there is not, since she can't name a single man she knows who wouldn't kill you for saying something like that of their father.

"I did."

He takes his eyes off Iomedae for long enough to clearly address Ferran. "What condition were you in when they found you?"

"I couldn't stand," he says, quietly.

"We couldn't leave Ferran to pursue them if they were to run," she suggests. "It would be irresponsible."

"Mmm."

"You said you were, in fact, trying to get to Kantaria?"

This is the least incomprehensible part of the whole conversation; they are trying to figure out whether they are obligated in having a fight they do not want. It is confusing how anyone with any honor in their heart could associate with Baphomet cultists at all but it's - a hopeful sign.

"Yes. My father told me that there is a great beast stalking the lands around the Barrowood, called the Iron Gargoyle, so we wished to travel to Kantaria and ask where it was last sighted. Have you heard anything about that?"

"No. We were doing routine forestry work and ran into a group of colossal centipedes."

"Like the monster that Iomedae killed?" asks one of the riders in back.

"...I haven't killed it, I was just planning to ask if it would be helpful to do so while we're here."

This gets some stares.

"What year is it, right now?"

"...3805. Which is how long it's been since Aroden ascended."

"Is that possible?"

"No, I don't think so - not without the direct and extreme miraculous intervention of a god, anyway - but it's probably related to the snow, right, if I had to wildly guess I would say that something in this region of the forest is - echoing something that happened in it before, maybe -"

They don't...seem...like they're acting. Which might mean they're really good actors or it might mean they're all enchanted (they don't seem enchanted either...) This doesn't seem like any particular lich's (or vampire's) style that she can think of and it's an awful lot of effort to go to to get them but it's still far more likely than that they're actually from the future when paladins are illegal and the laws are enforced by Baphomet cultists.

retreat-question? she signs at Iomedae.

It's not only a lot of effort to go to to get them, it's unnecessary, if you have the resources this implies and are watching the two of them closely enough and have some way to make sure Arazni can't see your every move. Anyone capable of this would also be capable of having just - killed Alfirin at range at some point after they set out. 

The two signs she makes back means, roughly, I'm-noticing-something-you-aren't question?

No.

Sometimes undead do unnecessary inefficient things because they're all weird obsessives! Maybe this is someone's hobby! Maybe it's not related to the war at all and they just rode into a faerie ring!

...OK that last one is actually pretty plausible. She checks for faerie rings.

(There are no immediately visible faerie rings.)

Iomedae's theory was that these people rode into a faerie ring which made them look like orc Baphomet cultists but that doesn't explain thinking it's a different year or that paladins are illegal!

"If she is an illusion, we should to leave this place before we're attacked again. If she is not, we should deliver her to the Archduke." 

"It sounds like she doesn't have any objections to that, really."

He chews his lip for a second.

"All right. Iomedae. There's no reason to hang around in the forest, and we are, in fact, heading back to Kantaria. I think, almost certainly, we are going to find the Archduke Ignasi Alfonso Avernus Narikopolus de Kantaria, who will tell us, if you haven't disappeared by then, that you have broken the laws of Menador. At that point, I will tell him that you found his son disabled in the forest, and that you attempted to save his life by healing him."

"But suppose, hypothetically, that we find the Archduke you expect. What do you intend to tell him?"

"That we encountered in the woods a number of people under some terrible curse which has led them to believe that they are from another world where it is illegal to be a paladin in Menador and laws are enforced by priests of Baphomet, who claim membership in the Archduke's family. ...while being in some cases apparently orcs. And that if he wants the people so afflicted gone the Crusade can take the ones who aren't Baphomet cultists."

"None of us are Baphomet cultists. It's always illegal to be a Baphomet cultist."

Then why are they wearing symbols of Baphomet - 

oh. That's ...worse?

"Is that a priest of ...Asmodeus? That's - every honorable man in Menador would die before he let the devil's forces rule his land."

"Asmodeanism is the state religion of Menador. For the moment - oh, Ferran, I'm assuming command until we get home."

Actually that happened a long time ago but, like, thanks. He nods.

"For the moment he is under my command, and I will not see him harmed."

The priest bristles at this, a little, but he does so silently.

Iomedae believes very sincerely that you'd have to kill every adult man and woman in Menador to achieve that, and that the fact this happened is probably why half these people are orcs, but it would really not be productive to say that.

"If you serve Hell, you will be tortured for all of eternity; while your ancestors look down in horror from paradise you will forget your names and all else as you suffer for the amusement of devils that will hate you all the more as you get more tedious in your suffering."

Wow, harsh.

"That may be, but Nulgreth and Verex just don't speak to me."

"- you can escape the evil afterlives. All of them. Even if you're presently a cleric of Asmodeus, you can renounce him and do it. You can have Axis, you can have Heaven, if those aren't to your taste" she has never actually met a Lawful orc "there are a thousand other paradises. They want you. You just can't serve Hell. I'm not going to kill your priest, unless the Archduke asks me to. But if you would not see him harmed, get him to stop."

"Well, I'm not going to evangelize or convert to anything in the middle of the forest. We've waited long enough here already."

"Iolanda, can you do horses?"

"Only one, today."

Iomedae remounts her own horse. She is quite upset about the Asmodean purported Menadorans. She is not going to ask Alfirin to spend one of her spell slots on this.

Iolanda spins up a mount for Ferran.

The lady totally offered for the wizard to make more horses before but apparently that's not happening because Carles made her mad at them now! Whatever! It's not like he lost his horse in the process of dramatically saving Ferran's life or anything! And then didn't get credit for that because instead everyone was focusing on the lady who claims to be Iomedae! Even though he almost died!

He comforts himself that probably Ferran himself remembers this. Maybe this will matter somehow. 

Apparently he's jogging. With some minor injuries sustained by being knocked off his traitor horse. The other horses are tired from the centipede dramatics and probably can't travel at full speed. 

It's fine. Whatever.

Their horses are much much faster, but it seems like a bad idea to abandon what are hopefully a group of badly deluded people who she knows to be committing a number of serious crimes in the forest. "Do you have a way to check," she murmurs to Alfirin instead.

"They do not appear to be enchanted," which probably means they aren't but she's not confident, it seems like it should be possible in theory to hide enchantments on a person even if she doesn't know any way how short of mind blank. "I could try reading their thoughts but that only tells us if they believe it. You can check the priest?"

How Evil is the priest.

He's pretty evil. If he weren't an evil priest he would have to be really quite powerful, for the reading he has, but more likely he's just an evil priest who has reached second circle by adventuring.

(The two older half-orcs are faintly evil. No one else in the party is detectably so.)

Iomedae doesn't actually know how the strength of an evil cleric's evil aura relates to their strength as a cleric. If they were all dead she could make some pretty useful inferences from how evil they are. It has been her operating assumption for the whole conversation that if there were a fight, she and Alfirin would win, because they are wandering around on horse and therefore don't have a fifth circle wizard and in a fight among humans, the side that does have a fifth circle wizard wins.

But she should not kill them, though realistically Narikopolus probably will when the orc opens his mouth and accuses his house of bestiality. 

It's slower going, at the pace of merely mortal horses, but still not that long to the edge of the forest. She draws closer to Alfirin as they approach it. If it's not their Kantaria they should teleport out immediately. She doesn't even bother to sign this. It is obvious and Alfirin is definitely also thinking it.

If it's not their Kantaria she has no idea where to teleport to but a mishap is better than walking into a city run by Asmodean priests.

If it were her she'd try Oppara or Absalom, which have existed with identifiable landmarks for many thousands of years and are probably there even in alternate dimensions (though it sounds like Kantaria-run-by-Asmodean-priests isn't part of the Empire, which makes more sense than the Empire tolerating it...) but Alfirin can figure that out herself. 

They crest a hill and she realizes in a panic that she isn't sure how to tell Asmodean Kantaria from the city as it ought to be. There isn't a big yawning portal to Hell or church of Asmodeus or anything.

She's looking to see if the strangers are alarmed by the appearance of the city. Maybe they're expecting a different skyline or a moat of fire or Asmodean banners and skulls everywhere.

He's not expecting a moat of fire or Asmodean banners or skulls (not on the outside, anyway), but he is expecting a city with updated wall and gate construction. Really he's gotten tenser the closer they've gotten to the edge of the forest, since the snow has failed to reappear. The appearance of the city seals things, though. It's where Kantaria should be, but it isn't their Kantaria.

"Well, fuck."

Right. 

Iomedae is enormously relieved, of course, because it would have been very bad for the Crusade if she got herself lost in another universe and also because if the only signs of their story are that they confusedly believe it then maybe it's not real anywhere and Kantaria will never be ruled by Hell.

...also she can imagine how she'd have felt if it'd come out the other way, and that's how they feel, probably. 

She pulls up her horse. "Well," she says. "Welcome to Kantaria. Dealing with devils is illegal here, as across the whole civilized world. If you ...would like to understand why that is the rule, I am happy to try to explain it as it is commonly understood. I have not been asked to assist the Doux in enforcing the law in his territory, but I will assist him if so asked."

Presumably it's simply the same thing in reverse. They have some other state religion here and don't want anyone worshipping others. 

"We don't mean to cause trouble. We'd appreciate a rundown of the local laws, including what the religious limitations are and what constitutes dealing with devils."

He's surveying the nearest fields, when he can do so non-obviously. He's trying to determine if he can tell from whoever is out of the walls at the moment what the population breakdown is.

There aren't orcs, if he specifically means 'are there orcs'. There are humans, and on the road there's a caravan with some dwarves. But no one in the fields is visibly an orc, and at this distance it'd be visible.

"The faiths of Abadar, Aroden, Pharasma, and Erastil have an honored role in the health and growth of the Empire. Their priests can travel freely and they can be relied on to speak to the law, should you need to know it. Naturally a travelling priest may be ignorant of the specific concerns of a place where he visits, and must obey its lords or depart if their guidance does not comport with his own oaths. The Empire is very large, and the present war concerns peoples from all over the world, and the followers of Sarenrae, or the faiths of Vudra and Shu, may practice their faith so long as this does not involve breaking the law. And our inheritance is Aroden's; He wants men to become gods. His saints and those who ascended after Him we may worship, even if they are evil - it's probably a bad idea, usually, but it's not illegal.

The other Evil gods are the enemies of civilization. Asmodeus does not want men to be gods, because He wants all to be His slaves. With Urgathoa we war right now over the question of whether life should continue at all. The demon lords - it sounds like you understand already why a place would ban the demon lords. It is not permitted to be a supplicant to the enemies of mankind. It is not permitted to accept the powers of a priest from them. It is not permitted to make deals with them. It is not permitted to carry their symbols, or their unholy texts. 

I have never before encountered a people raised in a place where they were expected to worship Asmodeus but reasoning from the case of those who escaped from Zon-Kuthon - I think there is an argument that such people are the best equipped to warn others of the evils, and I would think it unreasonable to hold against anyone believing that which they were born with. But they'd have to figure it out pretty quickly, once they were out of Nidal."

It's not surprising to keep field slaves separate from the peasants. But even among freemen, there are usually at least a few men with visible orc blood in any sizeable group. Initial appearances suggest this Kantaria wants half of his men as neither gods nor slaves. You could say Asmodeus is winning, there, but this would be giving the entire sphere of theology more attention than Carles is used to giving it.

"What would you suggest a stranger from such a land do first?"

Iolanda sighs and takes off her jacket. She glares at their Chosen meaningfully until he at least puts away his unholy symbol and the worst offending pieces of his uniform.

There's not really any good reason to let him keep the symbol and it should probably be confiscated rather than just tucked away. But that can wait until they've brought this to the Doux' men, as long as it doesn't get overlooked.

"I think there's a case to be made for joining the Crusade, if you would choose life's side of it. I would say that - I recruit for our cause - but it will get you out of being damned and that's really the most important matter, and people are more tolerant of - oddity - from people who can fight, when there's fighting to be done. And the most provocative of your claims are less provocative far from those they have implications about. And there are orcs, on the Crusade." She hasn't met any, and certainly the overwhelming majority of the orcs fighting are fighting for the other side, but looked at from one angle that makes orcs on your side useful for espionage, doesn't it.

'I want to go right the hell back where I came from' is clearly a wrong answer here. If you imagine them as Nidalese refugees that makes some sense. 'I want to get someone else out' is at least comprehensible, if completely doomed in practice. It's possible that getting back at all is doomed in this case, though they should really try at all before giving up. 

The most provocative of their claims... right. This would be a very stupid imposter-with-a-claim plot, but no one likes those no matter how stupid they are.

"Coats of arms, too," he tells Ivet. "We don't want to confuse anyone, do we."

"There are no orcs here?"

She begins removing her armor. She hasn't said a word this whole time, and isn't starting now.

Ferran doesn't want to remove his armor, but not as much as he doesn't want to have to decide what to do about any of this.

"There's orcs in the mountains but we have not negotiated peace or trade with them." She doesn't really think they want peace or have anything to trade but it's probably more neutral to observe that this hasn't happened than to guess why.  "There are free orcs in the Empire but I wouldn't know precisely where to suggest you find them. I have not heard tell of any independent orc state, but the world is large and has many corners I haven't visited."

They're not orcs.

They're not exactly orcs, but it wouldn't be helpful to argue the point. She seems to see them as orcs, and is very generously giving them instructions on how to behave like law abiding citizens anyway, even though she's very possibly recognizing them as raiders from the mountains.

Gods, he's going to need to figure out if anyone else in his party can be trusted to have a successful conversation with anyone under these conditions.

"We haven't negotiated peace or trade with them in 4714 either," he says, instead, which maybe isn't that much better.

...well, that's to their credit, one shouldn't negotiate peace or trade with Asmodeans. It would probably not be diplomatic to say that. 

"I really think that it would be wise to come to the Crusade. If you know things about - a future that could have come to pass - then that's valuable, as we can learn from it and surpass it, and there's steady pay, and I think very very few of the men end up damned, however they started out."

The more she suggests joining the crusade, the more he wants to turn right back. There's good reason to do so immediately, too; they don't know what effect caused it, or if the evidence or mechanism is more likely to disappear the longer they leave it. 

Realistically, though, they're going to need to resupply and prepare new spells before they can reasonably venture back into the forest, and he doesn't have much hope of determining what's going on without consulting with Iolanda. Which he'll presumably want to do in private.

"Certainly we'd appreciate help in determining what happened, and we seem to have nowhere else to go for supplies at the moment." If it comes to it, they can shelter in the forest, but it isn't very safe and he'd prefer not to do it. It just might be safer than Kantaria.

"Do you think they are confused people to whom we should be rendering aid or lost time travellers we should be bringing to Arazni's -"

"They seem very thoroughly confused if so but I've never heard of time travel like that actually happening... If we bring them to Arazni's attention she'll be able to tell, and it doesn't seem very costly to bring to Her attention everything approximately this implausible because things this implausible should be rare."

"...yes, all right, you're right. Can you Send her today? I want to give them some time to speak among themselves, I don't think they're going to collapse as a command immediately, maybe we can ride into town to buy them some supplies and we can contact Her then."

"As long as you think they aren't going to try to flee while I'm casting." In her - admittedly limited - experience, Arazni doesn't answer sendings before they're sent, even though She probably could. "Might also be good to delay taking them to the Doux' men until then..."

"They'd have to leave someone behind. I don't think they will. I suppose we can stay here and keep an eye on them but - I think it'd be better for them not to." She does not actually want to be hospitable, exactly, to Asmodeans - there is no Good in acting like what they've done is acceptable - but she does not think she would change her mind about anything important without time to think about it. 

Back to them, then. "We're going to ride into the city, buy you some supplies, and inquire about whether the inn'll have you if you want to stay the night. I intend later today to meet the Doux, and to explain this matter as best I can, but I'll come back first, in case you think of anything else he ought to know."

He would mostly appreciate her not giving him reason to order them all killed immediately, but he can't think of a way to indicate this that doesn't sound incredibly suspicious. He thinks he prefers staying on the edge of the forest; it makes it easier to bolt back into it with Ferran in an emergency.

He nods. "Thank you for going to the trouble."

She doesn't want them all killed immediately! They'll go to Hell! But she's not entirely sure what she'd do if some avowed Asmodeans, some of them orcs, wandered out of the forest, and she doesn't know the Doux. The thing that would keep them safe would be if she could tell the Doux they were leaving immediately to go north, but she's made her case for that and if they don't want to she can hardly insist.  She nods, instead, curtly, and rides with Alfirin into the city.

Carles gets started on removing his outer armor. He hates to think about riding into the forest without it, but he's less worried about centipedes than he is about angering entire empires that may have two separate reasons to kill them on sight.

"You still think it's something in the forest echoing something?"

"...no. I don't know what it is. I don't think it can reasonably be a location-bound environmental condition, because we're far past where we were when the snow disappeared, and we haven't come out of it yet. My new best wild guess is that we've experienced some sort of accidental planar travel, and we're seeing an area of another plane that's been modeled to look like Kantaria, for some reason. That could be the fey world, a large demiplane, or conceivably one of the outer planes. I think it would be more apparent if we were on shadow plane. I don't know whether to expect the planar travel to have been a single event or a location we accidentally passed through."

Chosen Vallvé dismounts and begins looking for a place to pray to Asmodeus, not because he expects it to help them at all, but because it seems reasonable to make a report under these circumstances.

That sure seems like dealing with devils, though he doesn't remember whether it's on the official list. If Carles were going to pray, which is not something he generally bothers with, he would at least not make it visually obvious, but Asmodeus is a stickler for those things.

...

Holy Erastil, I am a mortal and not worth your consideration. But as patron of hunters, of archers, and of fathers, I ask your help in returning home to familiar faces and familiar duties, if this would serve your purposes.

Well, that about covers it for prayer. It's almost certainly pointless, but when the situation is this desperate you might as well take the time to ask. 

"How are we going to get back?"

"I don't know. If it is another plane, we might be able to trade for transit somewhere else, if we can get out of this immediate area. It feels suspiciously normal to me, though. In a perfect world we would aim to investigate the way we came in tomorrow, when we're resupplied and Iolanda has her spells back, but I can't say for certain that we'll be given the opportunity. And frankly I'm not very hopeful that we'll find anything. It would be different if we had noticed anything to look for, besides the lack of snow. But forests are large, and I didn't see anything else. If our working theory is a plane shift, then we may want to get far enough away from here to determine which plane this is, and buy another plane shift. But that'll require dealing with people for a while without giving them reason to kill us."

Iolanda isn't going to pray. She is going to note down everything she remembers about the circumstances and location of their transit, before she forgets anything else.

The strands of fate around Kantaria are broken and scattered, as if someone had a very nice sweater and let moths get at it while he wasn't looking. Still, Erastil can see an archer and father and leader of a lost hunting party quite clearly relative to his surroundings. The father asks for help returning home to his family and his work, which is not one of the prayers that Erastil is very best at granting, but it's well within his area of possible concern. He can see the father clearly enough that, in another moment, he realizes that the home he left behind was ruled by Asmodeus, and that another member of his party is about to alert Asmodeus to their arrival from another world, at which point Asmodeus will very probably try to collect the entire group and pull them to hell.

Erastil has the information first, though, so Erastil has the advantage. The nearest potentially reachable and useful mortal in the area is probably the paladin of Aroden that the father was speaking with only a while ago, who is probably capable of standing against most fiends Asmodeus is willing to send for this.

Erastil has already packaged and shot the relevant information to Aroden before Hèctor Vallvé begins his prayer.

Sorry, Iomedae's doing what now? She's supposed to be slaying the Iron Gargoyle on griffon-back. It's not one of the things she does that sometimes kills her so he wasn't even paying attention.  

....huh. 

Would you like to pay me not to kill your priest?

- looking ahead slightly here, the default is that you don't kill my priest, your paladin is off in the city talking to innkeepers -

- and Alfirin is about to send a Sending to -

Isn't Iomedae busy doing high profile aerial combat? 

Oh wait that looks like a problem -

The default is that we handle this. But we're pretty busy, so -

Yes, fine, I'd like to pay you to not kill my cleric. I'll just send someone to go pick him and his party up -

What's this "and his party" business.

They're all related to the same incident, they're all devout Asmodeans -

None of them are, not even the priest, because devout Asmodeans aren't a thing. Habitual Asmodeans, maybe.

They can pay him to leave the rest of the party alone -

She could open a Gate under them all right now and drop them in Nirvana. It's not even expensive, she paid up front for the right to hang around and do that whenever she wants.

(It's still expensive -)

(It's called lying, dear, you're allowed to do it to Asmodeus.)

Here's a bid: he gets his cleric, she can melt the rest of them down into Nirvanan goop, everyone's happy. 

Terrible bid. She doesn't even get out of bed for that kind of money.

She's being paid to stay in bed. 

She can open the Gate under them from bed.

...which is to say, deal. If that's how he wants to play this. 

Nonintervention from everybody else, and he'll retrieve his cleric, final bid take it or leave it. 

Ohhh now he wants nonintervention? In response to a Sending she's going to get in just a minute? She doesn't really think -

Take it. 

He can think about it harder than Her, because He's mostly being a god right now and She's mostly being an archmage right now. 

Deal, she tells Asmodeus instantly. 

Why. 

Take a closer look at this. I think it might be really quite important. 

"There are civilized foreign orcs we met riding in. I wanted to check, for them, if you'd host foreign orcs here."

          "Host 'em right up on the tallest spear I've got, if they'd like that." 

"I thought as much. Thank you." 

      "Civilized enough to carry silver? As long as they stick to eating their own young I'll take their silver."

"Thank you."

She returns with an armful of supplies to Alfirin who is nearly done with the Sending.

Chant chant chant, but that doesn't look like an Iomedae here to say "The Asmodeans have summoned a pack of devils and fled with a dozen hostages" so the chanting is less anxious than it was a minute ago.

The Asmodeans were at her last glance at them talking and maybe praying but she can't prevent people from praying unless she kills them all on the spot. Hopefully they will think it through and stop being Asmodeans, but she doesn't expect it on this timescale. Nor does she expect them to join the Crusade today. Maybe in a few months when the shock of the arrival has lessened.

She ties some food and blankets for them to her horse while the spell finishes up.

Aaand sending.

Encountered evil adventurers. Believe themselves from future, some supporting evidence. Asmodeans, one cleric, orcs, locally politically sensitive descent claims. Please advise.

"Acknowledged."

"Arazni has no advice for us at present, so I guess we should proceed as we were."

" - you made such a face. All right. As we were is I was going to drop off some food for them and ask them if they have any sudden changes of heart that i can use to make them sound less alarming to the Doux and then go get a meeting with him. Right? ...I guess we should have thought through what exactly we'd do if Arazni didn't have advice? I really kind of expected Arazni to have advice! Like, either 'they're delusional' or 'they're real', if nothing else - is there a problem in Vellumis -"

"She didn't mention any! She didn't mention anything, just, quote, 'Acknowledged.' Which means...probably it doesn't mean they're delusional and she's mad at us for wasting her time, right? Right? So if it's not that and she barely used any of the sending response then probably she's constrained in what she can say about it, so they're probably genuine? Or maybe She can't see, but then she'd say that she couldn't see - "

"Oh wait, I didn't think at all about -" 

She closes her eyes. 

"If they're delusional that's no concern of the gods, and the gods would not have done anything around it, though it is possible Arazni would still answer that way, if she prefers us not to be able to tell whether they're delusional or not, or if someone else prefers that - which Asmodeus might, I guess -"

" - you don't think Arazni would make a deal with Asmodeus -"

"Well, she probably would if it was about the Beast or the Abyss or something like that -

- and maybe about other things if He was offering enough, I know it'd be stupid for any mortal to take a deal like that but She's not -"

Iomedae looks around for privacy and then realizes 'looking around' is a very stupid amount of precaution to take -

"Let's bring them supplies now, and proceed on the assumption they're real and Arazni constrained in what to do about it, and - there's something important I want to tell you but I don't think this is really the time."

"OK. Suppose they're real, what does that mean we should do -

...first priority I guess is learn everything they know about how Menador became - will become - might become - you know what I mean, becomes Asmodean. And then I guess everything they know about how the Crusade goes if that's not related...

First actual step is probably...getting them somewhere secure? Do you have the authority to arrest them? Did you agree not to, I don't remember...?"

"I said I intended to present the situation to the Doux. The situation is puzzling enough that it seems reasonably likely I can persuade the Doux to handle it however it is good to handle it if we wind up confident there's a good way to handle it, even moreso if we wind up persuaded it's what Arazni wants. I did not specifically represent that I wouldn't arrest them sooner but I'd prefer not to - they were trying not to arrest us, when they weren't sure which world it was -

I don't think I have the authority to arrest Narikopolis's son. I definitely have the authority to arrest an orc for claiming to be Narikopolus's son. I'd really be happier to get some more specific authority first, if they're not going to make things worse..."

"I think executing them is a bad way to handle it and letting them go free is a bad way to handle it and I don't really know what a good way would be besides - something that gets them away from situations where they're likely to be executed or escape."

"It seems like - the kind of thing that almost has to be some error, like you could show them Hell on a scry and they'd go 'well, nevermind', but I think people mostly don't work like that and especially not when they're feeling cornered. 

And without Arazni's support I don't think we can take them on crusade. It'd be very bad to have Asmodeans, if we don't have assurance He's not up to something.

I tried talking to them. Maybe you should try."

"I can prepare another tongues. In my fourth. But I'm not very persuasive."

"I find you very persuasive when you are right. It's a good trick, being right."

"I'm not any more right about Hell than you are! I think."

"I would be surprised to learn we disagreed about Hell in any important ways! I guess maybe what order to evacuate it relative to Xovaikan.

But - I think there's a sort of person who does not want to be persuaded, and will back away when they sense you trying to persuade them, and expects paladins to be opposed to their religion, and - maybe you have a better angle. Certainly your continued employment does not directly depend on you sharing Aroden's opinions of Hell, that counts for something."

"I'll try."

Guim is sort of unclear on whether they're expecting to be able to shelter in town tonight, so he's working on building a lean-to in case they're stuck out here and it rains. It's not big enough for everyone, so it's pretty unlikely that Guim will be the one who ends up using it if it gets used. He mostly stops being annoyed about this when Ferran and Oriol start helping him build it. 

Ivet is tending to the horses, who have worked quite hard. Under normal circumstances they would probably want to alert another party to help them transport the centipede corpses - they hadn't expected to kill anything that large, but they do have edible meat and the carapaces are very hard, suitable for fine armor if you handle them right.

These are not normal circumstances, and she has a very bad feeling about the town. It's better to know where the corpses are than not, and have something to trade that they're not especially attached to, but it seems likely that only a few of them will be able to enter the city without causing problems. 

One of those people is Ferran, who of course they do need to strengthen. Perhaps it's good fortune for him after all, to have something necessary that demands that he and not Carles do it, but Ferran seems unlikely to see it that way.

Chosen Vallvé takes a few minutes to find and clear a spot to kneel, says his preparatory prayers, and then begins giving his report of their circumstances to his master.

At which point a wizard nearby breaks invisibility and the imp on his shoulder chirps 'your Lord commands you come with us' and the wizard reaches for his hand.

Huh. Well, under the circumstances that seems pretty likely to be genuine. He accepts the teleport.

He leaves. 

"What just -"

Carles has drawn his sword without forming any firm ideas about what to do with it. No point now.

"Iolanda?"

" - I'm sorry, I have no idea. Obviously it indicates that the situation is - of personal interest to Asmodeus -"

She almost instinctively checks her belt pouches for devil's blood. She has it with her, of course. It's now their only independent source of healing.

"Or to someone else."

"But why take the Chosen, then? I suppose if some - fairy, or something, thinks he's easier to manipulate by impersonation, but I don't - augh."

At the gates of Kantaria Iomedae can barely see the men at the edge of the forest, and is only half attending to them, but she doesn't miss a man appearing, or one vanishing. 

"- cleric's gone," says Iomedae, jumping onto her horse, immediately furious with herself but not in a way that proposes an obvious better action - she could have incapacitated him alive, maybe???

" -oh. We should've - " stopped him, somehow, but she didn't think to because she didn't really believe that they were important instead of delusional and she was hoping Arazni would tell her what to do -

"What the hell just happened?" she demands as they crest the hill, which probably, come to think of it, answers itself.

He still has his sword out.

"I don't know. A wizard with an imp appeared and told Vallvé to come with them, and they teleported out a moment later. He didn't say anything to the rest of us."

"Just - out of nowhere, he didn't use a scroll of sending or anything -"

"No." He was praying, and Carles didn't even contemplate stopping him because it did not for one moment occur to him that it might have any effects beyond being possibly illegal. He doesn't know whether he'll make things worse by admitting that, so for now he doesn't volunteer it.

He sheathes his sword. He's still visibly annoyed, but he doesn't have anything reasonable to stab about the situation.

Who is paying enough attention to notice something like that, that fast? The gods. So one of them did it, and there's a few obvious guesses. No one would've bothered with a move like that if the visitors weren't real and important. So they're real and it's important. And Arazni didn't ignore them because they were wasting her time - she could've alerted them in time to prevent this  - well, maybe, it would've been close - so she ignored them because this advanced her goals. ...probably she didn't send someone to kidnap the Asmodean priest, though she could have. Probably so could Asmodeus.

What should they have done instead? If you execute people on the spot just for being Asmodeans who didn't know it was illegal then they'll go to Hell and there exists a dimension along which you're worse than they are, they didn't want to kill her. Kept them supervised while she contacted Arazni, probably. She pitied them and wanted to give them space to think and that shouldn't have been a priority until she ruled out broader strategic implications. 

What are the implications of changing that habit -

"...I think they're not delusional," she says to Alfirin in Hallit, "and that means we should bring them back with us. Right? Even if Arazni's unhelpful ongoingly instead of just in that moment, we can - learn about their timeline -"

And it was just him which - makes no sense, if she were an evil wizard she'd have taken as many as she could teleport - 

As a non-evil wizard she is still pretty tempted to take as many as she can teleport to - not-here. Vellumis, probably, where there's more people to keep watch and it's harder for evil wizards to sneak in invisibly -

"I think we should take them back, but I can't get all of them and I'm not sure if it's wise to split them up or leave any part of their group unguarded."

" - this is Crusade business now, there are evil gods involved and we're not on leave we're just on site. I propose you take as many as you can carry and go back and convey my orders to Laskaris or Tsaphas to come get the rest. ...this will be a lot harder if we don't have their cooperation. I don't know if we can secure their cooperation."

"I can try talking to them, but if we can't get their cooperation I have one suggestion and could prepare another one and a sleep? Which is as many people as I can teleport anyways, if they all land or if the sleep gets two of them."

"In light of Vallvé disappearing we want to take the rest of you somewhere more secure." What would be important for her to hear about the Crusade if she were an Asmodean displaced in time... "You won't be executed because you have information we want to have." and don't want Hell to have, but that ship has probably sailed and she doesn't want to give these people ideas about devotional suicide.

Not because they haven't broken any laws. This fucking place. 

Okay, he does in fact have an obligation not to hand Ferran over to foreign powers that intend to imprison him and probably mindread and possibly torture him. He'd also like to not experience any of those things himself! But, more relevantly, his obligations do in fact demand that he not just go along with this. 

Iolanda's mount should have several more hours left on it, so with Vallvé gone they do have enough horses for everyone, though not all of them are accessible from here. Fuck. He doesn't think he can get everyone out of this.

"I understand. We were thinking we'd do better somewhere we're less likely to give offense anyway. Give us a few minutes to pack up our things, though."

"We're Teleporting. We won't be able to take the horses. Alfirin can take three now, while the rest of you pack, and our allies will come back for everyone else. ...and, I guess, I'll assign someone to board the horses for now? Or sell them and give you the money, if you'd rather."

That is way too agreeable for this big of a culture gap and this weird of a situation. If the situation were reversed she'd say much the same thing and be lying through her teeth. (He doesn't seem like he's lying but she hardly knows the man and he worships the god of Lies - or is that Norgorber? Probably it's both?)

"I don't think you're telling the truth because in your boots I'd be scared half-witless and plotting my escape, and you don't seem like an utter fool. I think your worries are - probably inaccurate but I have no idea what they are if you in fact have them? But we'd like to be able to work with you instead of against you, at least on the things we can agree on.

...You are right that you'll probably give less offense where we're going, but that's probably not going to be no offense because Taldans are easily offended by other people not being Taldane. When this is all over if we're all still alive I can take you some place that's not Taldor."

Damn it. It's not new information that he completely sucks at diplomacy and that's why they have him killing centipedes, but you don't get out of dying merely because you have a good excuse for being unprepared for something. Shit, fuck -

He laughs. "Should I be asking for advice about what to worry about?"

He doesn't dare give a signal under these circumstances.

"I think the biggest things you have to worry about are being taken to Hell or being killed and reanimated by Tar-Baphon's servants, but we're going to try quite hard to prevent both of those and I suspect you worrying won't actually make much difference. I'd rather you tell me what you're actually worried about and I can tell you if it's applicable. And then because you have no reason to believe me, Iomedae, who's a paladin sworn to never lie, can confirm that I'm telling the truth."

Ivet doesn't think she needs a signal to know that they are in fact plotting their escape, but it seems hopeless to get everyone out with the wizard waiting right there. They cannot possibly outrun or overpower a teleport wizard, not unless Carles can successfully kill her in one stroke, and this seems like a terrible thing to bet on. No, the only plausible option is to give them three people and for the others to try to escape before the unspecified allies come to pick them up.

They will probably insist on Carles. They might not insist on Ferran. It would be better for her and for Iolanda to be in the second group, as they have the best chance in the forest. Guim, then, and one of the other young men working on the shelter. Probably Oriol, as the youngest of them.

She will grieve losing her brother later, but the other paths are suicide for everyone.

"Give up the shelter and start packing," she calls. 

He's been told that best lies have as much of the truth in them as possible. He's also been told that the best lies are made up out of whole cloth, but he doesn't feel like he has a whole lot of cloth to hand at the moment.

Sigh. "At last discussion, our wizard is worried that we've ended up on another plane, and can't be very certain what we'll find if we venture further away from Kantaria. Of course I'm concerned about what we'll find. But I do want to get our bearings, and I do think the best way to determine exactly where we are in relation to where we started is to see more of the world."

Aaand you're completely fine with wherever the enemies of your god who have ambiguously arrested you want to take you because you can't think of anywhere you'd rather be than with the Taldans who will dislike you for not being Taldane slightly less than the other Taldans because they're too busy fighting a war to be picky about living allies?

"I think whatever happened with you is weirder than just winding up on another plane, though I guess if I were a fae I could be making that up. You, Ferran, and your wizard in the first teleport? Any objections?"

In Hallit, "I don't think I got through to them and they're probably planning to flee, if they've planned it in advance they'll refuse the teleport and then scatter the moment I'm gone. I don't have a plan to handle that so I think we have to sleep or suggest the three of them?"

"Probably. ...or sleep all the horses, I think I can prevent any of them fleeing if they have to do so on foot." 

Ugh -

Yeah sorry about your presumed escape attempt but in the absence of the cleric the party leader, the wizard, and the ranking noble are the obvious top priorities.

She speaks to Carles, not to the wizard. "You should not begin with the strongest party members, if the others are to wait at the edge of a forest known to be full of monsters. Take Guim and Oriol. Or I can go with them, and you can remain here and rejoin us in the second teleport. We have almost died enough times today."

"I'll be staying with you. Not - primarily to keep you safe, obviously, but I will keep you safe."

"Respectfully, Lady Iomedae, I believe in your ability to win, should the Iron Gargoyle appear. I do not know that I believe in your ability to win without losses."

"We won't be waiting long. I think it is very unlikely for a problem to arise that I cannot protect your people from but that your commander can, though I see that you all trust him and have never known men to do that wrongly."

Okay, think.

Iolanda does not actually give that many shits about Ferran. She's - been trying to build a wall around any consideration of deliberately assassinating Ferran, because frankly she doesn't need to bother. Ferran is going to get himself killed fair and square at some point. Ferran would be a terrible Archduke even if he survived, and her father is not a complete idiot. And - at the end of the day she does not actually think it is realistic or reasonable to see all her brothers dead. If she comes to power, she wants it to be because she was just that much fucking better than everyone else, and she would sort of like Tomas or whoever to be around to see it. And - she would like the respect of her siblings and would like to be regarded as someone you can trust to be loyal.

All of that is - really extremely different than being willing to die for Ferran, though. She just isn't willing to die in a stupid fight that won't even matter so she can tell who the fuck even knows that she died defending some idiot teenager who is afraid of his own shadow and wouldn't have done the same for her anyway.

.....she also really, extremely does not want to be tortured for information. She knows her mother coddles her and she's only ever been baby-tortured. But she knows what Cassiodor's family did to him, and - no.

She could break and run completely independently, but she's not sure she's willing to be that obviously cowardly or to leave Carles. Damn it. Carles is going to be stupid and get them all killed - not that she can see any paths that don't involve capture or death -

Guim has slowly over the course of this conversation worked out that they are probably being arrested. He's confused about why Carles is acting as if they have plausible deniability about being arrested and also about why Iomedae isn't saying that she's arresting them, if so.

"What's Iomedae goddess of?" he whispers.

"...battle, I think."

"Honor and courage and Menador," he whispers back. "That's why you say 'Iomedae, Lady of Valor, guide our swords', when you're defending a settlement."

Ferran has never said that in his life, but okay.

No, he's heard that one, so courage makes sense. "You're sure she's honor, too?"

"I think so. I've always heard it honor and courage or honor and glory."

"Wouldn't have been much of a goddess of Menador if she wasn't, would she."

"Alright, then ask her what she's arresting us for and what they do to prisoners if they haven't done anything, and have her swear to it."

"It'll be the same either way."

They could fight otherwise. "Ask her."

There's a little bit more heated whispering before Oriol threatens to do it himself, and then Ferran takes a deep breath and clears his throat.

"Excuse me. The men want to know what we're being arrested for."

"On suspicion of assisting a priest of Asmodeus illegally operating in the Empire."

Have they done that? They didn't bring him here intentionally. He can't think of anything they've specifically assisted him with since they got here. Of course they've done many things you could call that - but not anything you could call that that she hasn't herself witnessed already -

"Are we being arrested for something you believe we did, or something you know us to have done." He's speaking too quickly but he doesn't know how to stop doing that.

"I could arrest you for claiming to be of the house Narikopolus, which I do know you to have done. But I would prefer not to, and in fact don't care very much about that if you're not going to do it ongoingly, whereas I care a lot about the fact you are Asmodeans and your Asmodean priest somehow contacted assistance and fled. I would be relieved to learn that whatever his and Asmodeus's plot you have no knowing part in it, and don't currently know whether or not you do."

He's not even certain the priest was taken by Asmodeus, though of course that's an obvious guess. This still seems like it might be protective if ignorance is actually protective here.

He glances at Guim and Oriol.

"The men want to know what you do with prisoners."

"We're a paladin order. ...do you know what a paladin order is?"

Well they are ILLEGAL. 

" - I've not known any myself. We fight alongside them at the Worldwound, but I've not served there."

"Paladins are chosen by the Good and honorable gods, like priests, and renounced for many more things than priests are. For dishonorable conduct, of course, but also for willful cruelty, for killing innocent people, sometimes just for failing to defend them. No one has died in the custody of my order save for if they were convicted of murder, or desertion, or of work in the service of the Enemy. ...this may not help you, if you are serving Asmodeus. But if you aren't, then when it can safely be done without furthering His schemes here or those of the other evil gods, you will be released. We will not steal your possessions, or charge your food against them while you're not permitted to leave. We don't torture people. I don't know if that answers your question."

He swallows and glances at Guim and Oriol before turning back to Iomedae.

"We want you to swear that no harm will come to any one of us in your custody who's committed no crimes in your territory which you've not already witnessed or learned of. On your honor as a warrior of Menador."

That should really be a request, but at least the kid is trying something. He has an awful feeling about what the kid is trying, but he's not going to be able to get an uncooperative Ferran out.

She does not need their cooperation, of course, and it is unwise in a confusing situation to bind oneself to a particular handling of it that Asmodeans requested when they had more context than she does. 

But also, it seems that there is something like this which ideally any person surrendering to any authorities would be assured of and she should set the Asmodean element aside and think about what that is and whether she can promise it.

"I have not witnessed or learned what you said to your priest before he fled, or whether any of you spoke to the wizard who arrived for him, or what he was doing prior to that and whether you could have interrupted him in it. I do not understand what forms your devotion to Asmodeus takes, and many forms of it are crimes, in this territory, not all of them crimes I would have known I was witnessing. If we determine that a man has had no part in any crime beyond what was said to me when we met, and what I have witnessed since then, I can promise he will not come to lasting harm at the hands of my men or with my leave, though we may not release him until we know Hell's plans here and whether he is an instrument of them, and we may make it a condition of his release that he not further those plans.

Aroden can issue orders that take precedence over mine, in this matter; so can Arazni; so can the commander of the Crusade General Arnisant, or the Emperor. They never have, I do not believe any of them will, and I think they are all more likely to kill you if you don't come with me now.

Would this be reassuring to your men, if I swear to it?"

Devotion to Asmodeus isn't, like... a thing you do... he doesn't think that he has personally worshipped or prayed to Asmodeus since he got here, but that being in some cases an entirely mental action he's not entirely sure he can be sure of it, and if it's just, like, being okay with Asmodeus he doesn't really know how you would even stop doing it -

He's also so bad at contracts, gods, he doesn't think he remembers all of that. 

"Not counting whatever any of us may have done before we arrived in your Barrowood today?"

"I think under most circumstances it would be unjust to punish things done in another land, and it is not our custom, but the situation is very odd and I am not sure how I'd evaluate past acts that imply significant future problems, like if someone ...has a bow that is actually an enslaved dryad whose clan now wants revenge, or promised their firstborn son to Hell - I'm not saying that even an Asmodean would do that, there's just a lot of things I would be promising to ignore, and I do not trust my own imagination that far."

"I think that we have all obviously done things in the course of our entire lives that would have been crimes if we had been living in another land."

Of course there's no particular reason they'd be entitled to any better deal than 'unconditionally surrender or we'll kill you, and we may decide to kill you anyway' if their captors can easily kill them, but if they're going to count every act they've taken in their lives towards 'work in service to our enemies', and treat 'work in service to our enemies' as a capital crime, then he doesn't really see that any assurance whatsoever to enemy prisoners is possible. It's not obvious why you would even bother taking them.

- because they have information, they said. Right. Otherwise they would in fact be executed.

"Yes. And in most cases I can imagine it would be unjust and evil to charge you with those. But this situation is very unusual and I have a very poor understanding of what we are dealing with here, and so I am unwilling to promise that nothing done before you came to our lands would possibly be relevant, though if you want to provide a specific example I can maybe offer a more specific assurance."

So, what that is is instead suggesting that he immediately confess to everything he's ever done that he thinks could possibly be a crime, which specifically will not improve the situation for him in any way, but will significantly lower the amount of effort she needs to put into getting him to confess to any partiular crime.



"I can't think of any reassurance you could give us, then."

"Understood. Are you going to go with Alfirin?" 

He tries, for another moment, to think of something brave and noble he can do in this situation instead of being absolutely pathetic and useless.

He's pretty sure there's nothing. That's what being a prisoner is. He has been captured by enemy forces, and is utterly at their mercy. He has no power and no dignity and he shouldn't have engaged. He thinks possibly talking to these people is in general a mistake. He wishes he were back in the forest with a mangled foot, and he really especially wishes that he were home with his wife and his nephew who he hates. He wishes he could run a model of how they could possibly get out of here, but he can't even really think about that very well anymore. 

Maybe everyone else is less dumb and will manage to escape somehow if they don't have a bunch of dead weight to deal with. 

"Fine. I and Guim and Oriol will go with you."

Yaaaaay.

"Alfirin told you which three she wanted. - would you like to be unafraid? That is a power of paladins. It doesn't make you mistaken about your odds, just - like a very experienced veteran who is pleased with where he's headed."

It honestly seems pretty fucked up to phrase all of your orders as questions if in fact none of them are questions. It also seems pretty fucked up to essentially assure people that you're going to execute them and then offer them enchantments so that they will be okay with this. He's just going to have to get over feeling upset about any of this, though, because from now on basically everything that happens is going to be enormously fucked up and there's nothing he can do to stop it except stop giving them so much goddamn undefended flesh to attack.

- now that he's noticed that half the questions in this conversation have been orders he is suddenly unclear on whether this is in fact also an implied order to accept an enchantment. He passionately hates being afraid, but at the moment he passionately hates the idea of being stripped of it even more. He can't think of any way to figure out whether that's also defiance that doesn't make him even more vulnerable.

He says nothing.

"If there are reasons to take a different set of people first we are willing to listen and may oblige but we do in fact need to hear the reasons."

"Guim and Oriol still think you might have honor, and the others won't leave without me. We're also the weakest, and most likely to get in the way or be killed if anyone else appears or attacks us, and likely to be safer anywhere else." He has no idea if any of that is true. It might be true or it might be the complete opposite of true and he doesn't know which and doesn't care anymore. He doesn't know why he's still talking.

(Nothing is an order, she has no authority to give them orders until they've surrendered which they notably haven't. Everything she says is backed by the threat of force, which is completely different.)

"We'd prefer not to have a fight, and expect one is least likely if you and Carles go first. I would accept a surrender from your party and then not care who goes first."

What???

"What are the conditions of surrender in this period," he asks, sounding almost bored. They've lost any conceivable element of surprise they may have had. He thinks they have some chance of getting someone into the forest if they all move at once, which he doesn't think they have much hope of coordinating, but who it is will be practically random, aside from "not him", since most of the plausible scenarios where someone gets away involve Carles attacking one of them instead of getting away himself.

"You won't attempt to escape, or spellcast, or resist a teleport. You can retain possession of your things."

"Does the surrendering party get any particular benefit out of agreeing, in these circumstances."

"We'll be less paranoid about who departs in what order, or with which possessions, if we aren't expecting you all to refuse Alfirin's teleport and then try to kill me. It doesn't make me able to offer you a promise about what I'll do if we later learn that you have sold the soul of your firstborn child to Hell or something - which I am not accusing you of, I just don't know very much about this situation which makes it very dangerous to make promises about."

So, no, because their default intent is to kill all of them for things they did before meeting any of these people, and the main thing you offer people when demanding that they surrender is assurance that there is some condition under which you won't just kill them all.

"I'm morbidly curious what exactly you would do if one of us had."

"It would probably involve ensuring no such child is at any point conceived."

Iolanda resolves her blistering fury at her circumstances into a personal resolution to kill Chosen Vallvé very slowly if she ever sees him again, and possibly also some other people.

"Oh, for fuck's sake. If nobody's going to run, then at least don't spend five million years talking about not doing it. I surrender and I'll go with you."

He honestly has no idea whether to take that seriously, but at least if she's lying it's her lie and not his. "Fine. C'mon, Ferran."

Well. He tried.

"Thank you. Your pick of three, then." She is not completely sure she can trust them but - you can't build trust if you aren't willing to extend any even when the stakes are relatively low. 

"I'm not in command." She's not going to glare daggers at Carles because she has enough perspective to know that she'll probably stop being furious with him for failing to trigger a reasonable escape attempt in six to eighteen hours if nothing life-ruiningly terrible has happened to her by then.

Ferran regrets all of the things he's said so far and his new strategy is not giving them any additional information about anyone in the group.

"The three of us'll go."

He'd tell everyone to listen to Ivet while he's gone, but they are mostly not actually stupid, and it probably is a mistake to give their captors any additional information about who is or is not important, or in what ways. The ideal would be to appear to be giving them lots of information while not actually giving any of it, but Carles is not in fact specced for subterfuge at all.

"All right. We'll see you shortly."

She dismounts and holds out her hands. "Hold hands in a ring please."

They do. They even all actually take the teleport.

Great. Iomedae relaxes somewhat once they do that. 

"I don't expect it'll be long," she says to everyone else, "but I have food for anyone who would like it, and can answer questions, though probably with about as much difficulty understanding one another as we've shown to date."

Asking questions is revealing to the enemy what one finds most concerning.

Well the last time he suggested they ask Iomedae something it went TERRIBLY, so his optimism is going to need to take some time to rebound, here.

She doesn't push it. She unloads the horses and bundles up a egregiously unreasonable amount of gear to just wear herself for the teleport and keeps an eye on the forest and leaves them be as long as they aren't running.

Taking hands for the Teleport Alfirin realizes that she's never teleported conscious prisoners before and is uncomfortably aware that the half-orc could from this position easily break her arm and probably prevent her from spellcasting.

...Fortunately, that does not appear to be their escape plan! They arrive at one of the regular teleport points and she drops the hands rather quickly. She instructs them to follow and leads toward the keep and the dungeons.

Vellumis is a war camp, not a city; almost no women, no children, mostly humans and dwarves and the occasional exotic beast of burden or war elephant or something visible in the distance. For a war camp it's very very large, much larger than Kantaria, stretching on (when there are no buildings to get in the way, which there usually are) far out towards the horizon. There are walls and more walls under construction, roads and more roads under construction. 

The keep is stone, and large, and very well built, and there's magic shimmering all around it if one has cast a Detect Magic to appreciate it with; abjuration, and conjuration, and illusion and transmutation and even some divination, for some reason. There are guards. Alfirin is not so important they know her on sight.

Iolanda is too depressed to continue trying to figure out what plane this looks like. She's agreed not to spellcast, and therefore doesn't have a detect magic up. She waits anxiously for someone to confiscate all of her things, including her spellbook and her devil's blood, even though Iomedae just said they could keep their possessions if they surrendered. This isn't how she's used to surrenders working and on an emotional level it seems insane to her to allow prisoners to keep their weapons.

Carles is going through most of the previous interaction and grudgingly deciding that Iolanda is right; what he should have done, if he were better, was successfully organize an escape attempt,  but if he couldn't do that he should have cleanly ordered everyone to lay down weapons and cooperate - not because that gets him any concessions from their captors, but because it prevents Guim or Martí or Oriol from doing something idiotic and getting themselves avoidably killed. This is different from a formal surrender and isn't an agreement with their captors and therefore doesn't, at least in his mind, tarnish his ability to make agreements. It was difficult to think through at the time because - well, mostly because his enemies at no point demanded it or anything adjacent to it, and he finds something about their manner of taking prisoners and arresting people very unnerving. Mostly the lack of orders? When Carles takes prisoners he gives them all kinds of orders, which allows them to easily determine what the least dangerous response is, and if they take their chances with some other response then they take their fucking chances and probably die.

You can't really go around being more than mildly annoyed with foreigners for taking prisoners incorrectly, though. It's a deranged response to everything. It's -

- honestly, Guim is right that the reason this is frustrating is that these feel like the sort of people who ought to have honor, and clearly have some kind of system that's meant to serve some kind of purpose, and it's frustrating that whatever positive qualities the system is meant to have are not comprehensible or accessible if you don't have some necessary background information he doesn't have.

Probably most of the prisoner captures Carles has presided over would appear insane and deranged from the perspectives of foreigners who don't hold that the most important thing for a man is that he die in battle.

He's going to shut up for a while until he can think through his ongoing strategy a little more calmly and a little less like a child who wants to respond to everything with "it's unfair".

It's not really very much like the camps where they keep captured orcs - it is, in several ways, the complete opposite - but that's still the first thing he thinks of. 

"Wizard Alfirin, attached to the Knights of Ozem, escorting three surrendered prisoners to the dungeons. The watchword is Sparrow. While you're verifying, send a runners to Tsaphas and Laskaris, also with the Knights, to meet me here most urgent, Knight-Commander Iomedae's orders."

Is she enchanted? Recently enchanted? Illusioned? Recently illusioned? Is there magic about her that'd make it hard to notice? Are there any special security requirements? No? All right, go ahead, Tsaphas and Laskaris will be told where to meet her. 

Carles doesn't think that he or Ferran ever technically surrendered, and is uncomfortable with the gloss that they did given that, but they probably... should have, if Iolanda isn't planning to truce break... and correcting this gloss feels pretty fraught right now. Hopefully it doesn't matter.

The dungeons are clean and spacious and very magical and presently empty. They will take the prisoners' weapons and spellbook and record what they took and give the prisoners a copy (their 900-year-old Taldane is easier to parse written than spoken) and check if anyone requires healing.

Technically he's got some centipede bites, but he wasn't really planning to do anything about them.

(A part of him perversely relaxes when they take his weapons. He realizes he was not entirely sure they weren't going to let him keep all of his possessions out of the misapprehension that he has committed himself to never attempting escape. This would have been insane, but he doesn't have a very confident sense of what these people are likely to do yet, and he doesn't relish the thought of trying to figure out what his own honor demands if anyone else chooses to engage in such insanity.)

Iolanda waits with bated breath to see if she gets to keep her spell components and her devil blood, while giving no indication that she's doing that.

No those go with weapons. The person writing them down will ask what the blood is.

Iolanda can guess the question from context, but apologetically pretends that she cannot. She will gesture to indicate that it's of a kind with the spell component pouch.

All right fair enough, he'll take all that off to a nearby storeroom. 

This doesn't leave her without one hundred percent of her spell components, but it does leave her without most of them.

Are they rooming together, or separately?

Separate cells, near enough to see and hear each other. There aren't enough for the whole group; maybe they'll double people up then.

"Well, it could be worse."

Grunt.

 Tsaphas and Laskaris arrive together and look in mild puzzlement from Alfirin to the dungeons. "Thought you were on leave."

"It's complicated and potentially secret. The knight-commander is just outside Kantaria, to the southwest with five additional prisoners. You are ordered to retrieve them. You have the location and three teleports between the two of you?"

"The teleports, yes. I don't have Kantaria-"

      "No."

"Can I get it off you?"

"Yes."

He will ignore that Alfirin looks tense about it and read her mind for a picture of Kantaria and then they'll head out. 

The others haven't tried to escape. They've been standing there glumly while Iomedae tries to figure out the logistics of selling the horses.  "Thank you for coming. This is secret; I need these people transported back with us, and I need someone to stand watch here a moment while I try to get a good price for the horses, unless either of you have a clever idea to get the horses north where I expect they'd sell for twice as much." The front needs horses but more importantly Iomedae knows who to go to to sell horses there and won't be visibly in a rush.

"I've actually always wanted to check whether you could kill a horse, Teleport with it, and then do a Breath of Life on the other side but you'd need setup work in advance. Surely in an provincial capital you can get the fair price."

"The fair price for a good horse is twenty six solidi but if I demand that of some man here it'll practically be robbery, it's worth less than that to him."

"He should be happy to help the Crusade, then, sir."

"I don't think the Abadarans would say that but I'm not entirely sure what I'd say instead...I'd just sell at whatever they quoted me except that's not fair to the prisoners."

"- I think the Abadarans would say, if you told them you'd sell the horse for a fair price, then you already promised them twenty six solidi, and what you then do with the horse is entirely your own business, you can eat it if you want."

"Or sell it for whatever I can get without drawing a sword and informing someone the fair price is twenty six. Thank you, you're right, that's the answer."

He turns to the prisoners and instructs them to hold hands for the Teleport.

Iomedae will translate, since she still has the Tongues up.

They'll cooperate with the teleport.

Ivet can't understand the discussion well enough to know what's happening to the horses. She supposes it does not, in the grand scheme of things, especially matter.

Then Iomedae will sell the horses in town at a price that does not make the buyer stammer that he has a family who'll go hungry, and join the last group for the last Teleport out. 

And then she will march into the part of the keep that has a permanent portal to a dead magic demiplane that has a permanent portal to another -

"Am I allowed to consult you on this matter at all or should we proceed as we would have a couple of years ago?"

"How would you have proceeded a couple of years ago?"

"Probably not had the resources to follow up at all...the question was ill-posed, I think. Should we proceed as if we have spare resources to look into this, but not your assistance, because I did infer already that you could have prevented the Asmodean cleric from wandering off, and didn't, and I certainly don't have enough information to second-guess you on that but it leaves me at a bit of a loss because ordinarily the thing I would do about this is ask you what to make of it. If it's real, if there's another world with Asmodeus ruling Menador, I want to go conquer it immediately, of course."

"No one will transit back and forth between worlds. You should talk to them. You can try to hunt down the Asmodean, but I predict it won't work. - you should have contacted me faster."

- well that's all of the questions answered. Iomedae has enough of an understanding of the larger picture to understand that Arazni is curt when explaining herself is expensive, and that it isn't annoyance, but this does not always wholly dispense of the visceral sense of being a misbehaving child.

"Oh, and you should go back and deal with that King of the Barrowood, at some point."

"Thank you."

They bring the prisoners bread and soup after a few hours, after some hurried cultural consulting on whether orcs eat the same things as humans.

If they'd asked him he would have just told them to pretend all of them are humans, but they haven't, so he's not giving any advice here.

It's pretty good for prisoner food.

Iomedae comes in a few hours after that.

She spent the interim reflecting. Her goal is to learn what is going on. The simplest thing to do here is to have one of the wizards Dominate them and then ask all of her questions. Then she'll know what's going on. She thinks this is Evil, done to innocents. They aren't innocents, they're Asmodeans serving Asmodean house Narikopolus, but - at least half of the reasons it would be evil to do to innocents still seem to be in play. 

The alternative is to talk to them like people, and the argument against that is that it's been going terribly so far. But it doesn't exactly get in the way of giving up and doing the other approach. And it has been going terribly so far for reasons, so if one wants it to stop going terribly those reasons need to change.

She looks for Carles, when she comes back. 

He's sitting with his arms crossed and his back to the wall of his cell, mostly looking bored and staring at the opposite wall. He's in fact observing his surroundings pretty closely, but there's no call to look like it. He doesn't immediately look up at her.

"The next step, I think, towards my goals, is to have the wizards Dominate you and give me a complete account of your world and what you know about its history and how Asmodeus ended up ruling it and what His servant who fled might be planning here against us.

 I don't want to, though, because there is a sense in which you are my neighbors, but for a thousand years, and that's not at all how I'd approach it if my neighbors were without any apparent intent on their part involved in some plot of Asmodeus against Menador - I wouldn't have to approach it like that, because they'd want it straightened out too. I don't know if you want it straightened out too. I don't really have any idea what you want, except if it were me I'd want to get back to my duties. I don't know if we are in the convenient situation where we want enough of the same things that we can settle matters just off that. But I would like to try to figure it out before I ask people to treat you like a traitor for crimes that you did not actually know were crimes when you did them. And instead of that, hopefully. Will you come talk? You may refuse, and might as well if you're going to refuse to talk to me about anything important anyway. Refusing won't make things worse, except by making it less likely we can think of anything that's actually better."

He regards her levelly. He doesn't have to think for long; the alternative is not better.

"I'll go in for questioning."

"Thank you." The guards will let him out, then, and lead him to another room, at which point Iomedae will wave them off because she's not particularly afraid the man will try to stab her. 

"RIght," she says. "The thing I most want to know is what your priest is up to, and whether I need to fear Menador being infiltrated and conquered by the Church of Asmodeus - so when that happened, and how it happened, and why people let it happen. The thing that I want to know that is probably most relevant to your own interests is whether you and your people are working with him, or with the Church of Asmodeus, and whether I'll regret it if we let you go with your possessions and your money and a tolerable understanding of local law in some place where our enemies won't find you. 

I am happy to answer your questions, too, but I don't have much idea what they are."

Carles does, very momentarily, consider how much he wants to help this woman.

The thing is, Carles doesn't actually give a shit about Asmodeus.

"I don't know what the priest is doing, besides presumably working for Asmodeus. I am working with him in the sense that we generally need healing to venture into the forest and kill things before they eat the peasants, and not particularly in other senses. We use the church in general for military signaling purposes, and - well, I've been told that discussing myself as a member of my family is illegal, I don't know if you want me to work around that."

That is - much much better than almost anything else it could have been, really, given Menador being in the service of Asmodeus at all. "And the healing has to be priests of Asmodeus because they ban all the other gods? - we are no longer in Menador and you can discuss House Narikopolus of your own world freely, as long as you're not trying to confuse anyone about the extent of your affiliation with the Doux's house in this world."

"Mmm. Worship of most other gods is permitted, actually, just not their organized churches or clerics. The temple in Kantaria has half a dozen other shrines inside."

"I suppose that's slightly better. What happens if someone is selected as a priest or paladin, can they leave or are they killed?"

"Killed, if the authorities can find them. Doesn't happen very often. You can be executed for heresy, or for primary worship of another god without being empowered, or effectively acting as part of their church, but you can get away with a fair amount out where we are. Unless it's Zon Kuthon." He quirks his lips into half a smile. "Or Iomedae."

"Iomedae.  Is, uh, a god." ...not a very useful one, if Menador's ruled by Asmodeus!!!

"It's funny. Iomedae was the patron goddess of Menador, once, or so they say. You don't get a shrine in the temple, and your Acts are illegal to read, so I don't know what Ferran and Oriol are working off, exactly."

"- I'm not upset about becoming a god, I'm an Arodenite and we are supposed to aspire to it, but it sounds like Menador's patron god failed badly at Her one responsibility."

"Nah, I think you had some other ones. You'll have to forgive me for not having read your Acts. I know they have paladins of you at the Worldwound, still. Big tear in the fabric of reality leading into the Abyss. It's really quite a mess."

"Sounds it. Is that...related to how Menador came to be ruled by Asmodeans?"

"Probably somehow. - Look, I never went to school. I can read and write and do math, but that's about it. I will tell you what I know, but please don't mistake me for a historian. 

As far as I know, the Thrune Regime is about a hundred years old, came to power in a civil war before that, and favors Asmodeus as the state church. The worldwound is also about a hundred years old. It's up in Mendev, if that's a place yet, and it takes the combined might of Cheliax and Taldor and Lastwall and probably half a dozen churches to keep the damn thing contained."

Iomedae would not even have guessed that a person in Menador had heard of a school, those being a thing in grand cities. "Well, I guess we'll see what we can do about it. - we can't be going back and forth between worlds, I did ask the gods about that. The Thrunes, that's the family name?"

"...yes. What do you mean, we can't be going back and forth?"

"'No one will transit back and forth between worlds.' I don't know if that means it's impossible or just forbidden. I am sure you have people important to you back home - and one doesn't always have to do what gods say just because they're gods - but for now we should assume we can't get back there. If it is any consolation, if we could then my Empire would try to conquer it."

Okay, there continue not to be any benefits to having feelings about anything in this space. "Mmm."

"Did the priest of Asmodeus say anything about contacting anyone? Cast a spell?"

"I think he was praying. He didn't consult me about it."

"For how long was he praying before the other man arrived? Did you see him arrive?"

"A minute, maybe. I did see him arrive."

"Did you recognize him? What did he look like? He teleported in?"

"I didn't recognize him. He was, I don't know - sixties, human, I couldn't say a region because I don't know how people dress in which place here, with graying black hair and an imp on his shoulder. I assume he teleported, but I don't know that I could have distinguished some other means of appearing or disappearing."

"Was anybody else, other than the priest of Asmodeus, doing anything that might've summoned him - casting a spell or praying -"

"I didn't see anyone else visibly praying. Iolanda is the only one who can cast spells other than the priest, and she was writing something in a journal. Some of the others were building a shelter, and some of them were tending to the horses."

"What's your best guess of what happened? Who the man was, how he found you -"

"My best guess is that Asmodeus wanted his cleric and sent someone to pick him up. I have no idea how he found us. Maybe he was himself a devil, I don't know. I have never known Asmodeus to respond to a prayer with something like that and I don't have a lot of guesses about what it means, other than 'the situation is extremely important to Asmodeus'."

"That is our guess too. The gods don't know all of what happens that far in advance, and news of a world where Asmodeus wins such a victory is of interest to all of them. The civilized gods can all share what they know, as long as one learns it, but Asmodeus has to kidnap someone. Why do you suppose his man took no one else? Would you have refused?"

"I don't know. I suppose I would have asked questions."

"Who should I talk to for a more complete history, who got the best education -"

"Iolanda knows the most in general, of course, though I don't know if she has much focus on history. Oriol knows whatever they teach you in ten years of public school, which probably isn't better but might have more history."

"What's public school?"

"Just regular free school. For all the freemen who aren't aristocrats. They do reading, writing, mathematics, history, religion, and a little bit of physical training. Smartest ones go to the wizard preparatory school at age twelve, I guess that's also public school."

"Huh! Who's paying for it?"

"The crown."

"I wouldn't expect the crown to have enough, in taxes, to have schools for all free men. Are they doing that instead of fighting wars?" That would be very commendable and also a very odd thing for Asmodeans of all people to have been the first to do. "Or are very few men free?" That would make more sense.

"Most men are free and most children attend school. We still fight wars. I don't know what the crown's books look like."

"Who're you at war with?"

"The Abyss, like I said. And recently the eastern provinces, though that's been colder for the last few years."

"It was surprising to me that Oppara hadn't stepped in to - well, frankly probably to just kill every living thing in the region - that's not what I'd do, but it's what I would expect them to do, if a province gave itself over to the worship of Asmodeus."

"What's Oppara? - the whole country's Asmodean, not just Menador."

"Oppara is the capital of the Empire - did something happen to it, I suppose that would explain the nonintervention - when you say 'the whole country', from where to where do you mean?

"Cheliax is - top of the inner sea up to Menador, and then in the west up to the ocean, and in the east until you hit Taldor."

" - right now all of that is Taldor. Menador is part of Taldor. Canorate is part of Taldor. Vellumis is part of Taldor, Elidir is part of Taldor, Westcrown is part of Taldor, the Aspodells are part of Taldor, Augustana is part of Taldor..."

"I don't know all of those. The ones I know are part of Cheliax. Except Canorate, that's in Molthune. Cheliax used to be a part of Taldor, I think, but it declared independence. ....almost sure that's a separate event than the civil war, but I'd want to double check."

"Do you happen to know when it became common for many free men in Menador to be orcs, or of orcish descent? Did that happen with the Asmodeans, or earlier?"

"I'd expected to see them in your fields. Though among the freemen you don't often see people more than a quarter or so orc."

"I think I would have previously expected that if anyone tried to enslave orcs they would kill everyone in the dead of night and run off. At least often enough it was not a wise thing to do. I - am not really sure what I should learn here. If we forgot about the rule by Asmodeus and I had only learned that orcs could be perfectly ordinary Menadorans I would regard this as one of the best things I had learned in a long time. But that's rather confounded by the rule by Asmodeus. I - do you understand why people in places not ruled by Asmodeus feel so strongly about it?"

Shrug. The answer he expects is true is that Asmodeans do things differently than them, and people hate anyone who does things differently. The Asmodean church is also in various ways unpleasant, but -

Oh, hey. The problem with this line of conversation is that previous attempts down it have felt uncomfortably like Iomedae is demanding he develop religious convictions so she can refute them, but he can say something else here.

"In my experience Asmodeans don't actually like the idea of free orc-blooded Menadorians, except that they like freeing slaves who win enough battles in the colosseum. But if they're going to free then they also immediately want them as far away as possible from themselves, so they give them some land in northern Menador and tell them they can be ruler of it if they can defend it. Some full blooded orcs have become minor nobility by starting there. Do you not take slaves at all, here?"

He's going to be mildly surprised if the Asmodean church is actually a strongly positive influence on orc-blooded men's position in society. He doesn't generally think of them that way at all.

"The Empire takes slaves. And has ways for them to win their freedom, though I don't know many specific details. Menador probably will take orc slaves, once the river's safer and there's somewhere to sell them. Maybe it is one of those things where over hundreds of years more examples build up, which permits more people to notice it can be done. I will make sure the Crusade, where it's handing out land for service, would offer it to orcs, though we don't have very many."

"I do know about the process of taking mountain orc slaves, if the situation is in fact that you'd prefer to but you haven't figured out how to do it without them killing you."

"- I expect that someone would value that information. Paladins are generally believed to not be able to take slaves at all, because we cannot do Evil things and under nearly all circumstances taking slaves is evil. Taking prisoners of war isn't, and in the mountains it seems like it might be more of that, depending, but - I would still expect that most of the evils that are a consequence of slavery would result unless someone was being exceptionally careful to avoid them."

"I'm getting the impression you're busy, personally. Doesn't seem better to slaughter them indiscriminately, though, if that's what's happening now."