"Then you will not be able to interview it, but if you circle up you can learn scrying and then when you have spare slots you can interview dead mortals by Message if they are interested."

"But that will not help whatsoever with interviewing dead demons." Pause. "Do you think Geb—"

"No."

"You did not permit me to finish explaining my idea!"

"It was clear from context."

Sosiel presides over a funeral — if it wasn't obvious before, it's very obvious from seeing everyone gathered in one place that there are almost no young men in the village — and then, if Blai doesn't have further business, they can return to the main army.

He wants to make sure the survivors are up on ghoul related best practices (they seem pretty savvy but just to be absolutely sure) and then yeah no further business here.

They are very grateful for all the help!

Ember starts sweating and shaking on the journey back (probably from yesterday's excursions, ghoul fever usually takes longer to set in), but fortunately they have all these people specifically chosen for their ability to cast Remove Disease, so they can get that handled before she starts showing any of the more severe demonplague symptoms.

The army has no major emergencies to report, but a few minor incidents. (A stray brimorak showed up, attempted to toast this squad at range, and left before they could shoot it down; there were no fatalities, but they did lose some of the supplies they were guarding. This person turned himself in and confessed to having given some military secrets to a total stranger; it felt at the time like it made sense but he suspects in hindsight that he was enchanted. This unit commander tried to order his attached Gorumite cleric not to get into a really pointless fight with a wolf that their unit encountered, the Gorumite said, quote, "that's an illegal order, dumbass," and further clarified that he has sworn a sacred oath never to back down from a challenge, the unit commander would like it clarified that surely that doesn't count? Gorum is literally Chaotic, it's not like he told a paladin to break their vows.)

Suspected role of enchantment is a mitigating factor and so is turning oneself in; they should figure out what the secrets are and if they can be made moot pronto.

Sacred oaths of clerics count even if the god and/or cleric aren't lawful, if you start fucking with that you can't retain clerics one way or another. It might make sense to have people who have this particular oath sworn to figure out how it applies in edge cases when it cuts more expensively against military functioning, but taking a few moments when you're not even otherwise in a hurry to kill a wolf does not seem like an obvious one of those. If they are going to interpret this oath in a way that would cause problems with, like, idiot civilian kids testing boundaries, taunts expressly devised to divert them from a time-sensitive hustle to a strategic objective, somebody coming up with the bright idea to challenge them to follow orders, etc., they need to have a chat, are there lots of Gorumites with this policy operative?

The secrets were mostly details about the army's spellcasters. Fortunately he didn't know much about the Knight-Commander's new companions (although he did give away that the Knight-Commander is an angel in disguise), but he knew more about the people who've been with the army for longer.

If he's worried about the clerics leaving, they can just tell the Mendevian clerics they're not allowed to leave! Admittedly it might be more of a problem with foreign clerics.

Someone will attempt to do an impromptu survey of the Gorumites. That one has sworn never to refuse a challenge from an equal. That one has sworn never to refuse a challenge from a worthy opponent but is leaning pretty heavily on the definition of "worthy". Those guys are part of the Gorumite military order he was briefed on earlier, their oaths are mostly pretty functional. 

...are they allowed to order the Gorumites to stop swearing sacred oaths? It doesn't really seem like they're using the concept responsibly.

They cannot just tell Gorum He's not allowed to leave, is what Blai meant by "one way or another". Blai doesn't know if He's actually likely to do that but it does not seem particularly Lawful to call a bluff in this way.

What is "an equal", what is a "worthy opponent"?

They are, insofar as Blai can tell based on the Lastwall handbook, allowed to order the Gorumites to stop swearing sacred oaths at least while they are still serving in the army (they can't order people to continue to follow military orders beyond their term of service).

An equal is someone where you wouldn't be able to tell in advance who was going to win the fight! So if a random civilian kid taunts him that's obviously not an equal, because he would definitely beat the kid, and if a vrock challenged him he could refuse because the vrock would definitely beat him.

A worthy opponent is, you know, one that's worthy. They can't be a total pushover, they've got to be honorable, they shouldn't be someone it'd be dishonorable to fight like an old man or something, that sort of thing.

Is there any chance they can remand these classifications to their commanding officers, who, given the nature of military information handling, may often have more information than they do about what's going on and whether someone or something could be a disguised lilitu, or whether some target their unit is supposed to engage goes from worthy to unsuitable (subtype: undermatched) because of the diversion of the unit's Gorumite?

Worthy-opponent guy is fine with that. Challenges-from-an-equal guy is worried that his commanding officer will decide that something isn't an equal just because said commanding officer would rather he didn't fight it.

Well, different things are equals to a whole unit than to an individual cleric, yes? He's really throwing off the calculations about what things their unit is equal to if at any moment he might be distracted by whatever power class of demon is most compatible with his self-assessment. Presumably he would not like it if he had a sentient sword that would abandon him whenever it encountered another talking object to clash with because he's featuring his sword in his determination of what he's equal to.

That would be really cool actually. ...Admittedly he would probably want a backup weapon just in case.

Well, everyone's tastes are different. But they don't have a backup cleric for his unit.

If he's already fighting something else it would be okay to wait until he's finished fighting it before accepting the challenge. But his unit-commander might take a broader view of what he doesn't want him to be fighting.

If he cannot see square with his present one on this Blai is willing to have him reassigned but will want the Gorumite to do the legwork of finding one he can work with. But in Blai's opinion part of fighting, and moreover part of war as a whole, is all the parts that aren't directly trying to wound the enemy. Logistics and transit and lines of communication and strategy and morale and such. This commitment to this narrow interpretation of a challenge from an equal, for this one man, throws a wrench in the works of smooth operation along every other dimension for the greater battle they're conducting.

He joined the army to fight demons, not to figure out logistics or transit or lines of communication! ...But he's willing to swap to another unit, sure.

Great. He'll have better luck getting his choice if his present commander doesn't have any additional complaints accumulated between now and the request coming in.

Yessir.

No one has other urgent business for him! (If he feels like spending time solving minor complaints, there is a never-ending supply of those, but if he has other priorities, no one is going to proactively attempt to get him to spend his time addressing them.)

This is a fine time for anything that's, like, borderline maybe important, but he will decline to hear iteration 45 "can we swear oaths to not be conscripted".