"I am still bereft of an answer about whether this would bother you." Except she isn't, really. She could take a pretty informed guess.

"If you're ever caught you'll give evil wizards a bad name which I selfishly disprefer... but I could imagine doing the same in the right circumstances, so the bad name is not entirely unwarranted. I think it would depend on your reasons."

"My reasons for wanting a lot of money? So I could buy more Osirians, probably."

"This cannot possibly be the easiest way to get a lot of slaves - is there something special about Osirians that I haven't heard?"

"You're a paladin but with an odd habit where you go 'well, it'd be all right if you had a good enough reason', and then are surprised that I haven't, since not myself being a paladin I don't even try to have good reasons. It's all right. If I learned that my mother were a paladin I would love paladins more, rather than her less. Glory to Iomedae." 

She sighs. "The paladins think I'm an evil wizard, the evil wizard thinks I'm a paladin, the one person I talk to who's neither thinks I'm a father. Someone's very confused and I'm starting to worry it's me."

They meet Tar-Baphon’s army in the field outside Urgir. Lilia finds it exhilarating. No one in her time has the resources to have a fight like that, nor a demigod coordinating their forces. You never really know, reading in the history books, if the ancient days were wealthier and more glorious or just good at sounding impressive, but the Shining Crusade was in fact wealthier and more glorious. Everyone is Mind Blanked as a matter of course rather than as a matter of careful planning; Disjunctions crackle across the sky periodically even though she doesn't catch even a glimpse of Arazni or Tar-Baphon at any point. They have as many flying cavalry as Cheliax could probably muster ordinary cavalry and as many ordinary cavalry as Cheliax could muster infantry and every once in a while the whole battlefield will be bathed in the glitter of some incredibly powerful spell she didn't know existed. 

She shadows Alfirin and is a mediocre evoker. They drive the orcs back to the gates of their city and dig themselves in. Lilia can think of several dozen creative ways to take the city but assumes that her allies are too paladins to approve any of them.

She does bring it up with Alfirin afterwards, to confirm her assumption that her allies are too paladins. “Enchanters seem like the right tool for this specific job, really.”

"For taking a city? Yes, somewhat. Less so for this city, too many of the watchmen and officers and key leaders are undead."

“The Crusade never takes Urgir in my timeline but I’m not sure why not, I don’t remember if there was a spectacular failed attempt or if Arazni died and then it wasn’t attainable.”

"I imagine it would be very difficult without Arazni; we might not have even tried. It certainly looks hard and uncertain enough with her."

“As it stands Lastwall wastes a lot of their time and energy guarding the border with Belkzen and is much weaker for it. They’ll probably be notably stronger if Arazni lives long enough to help them take it.” Lilia expects Alfirin to consider this a good thing. She is of course herself indifferent.

Alfirin thinks she would normally have at least somewhat mixed feelings about this. "That seems like a point worth making and not one anyone else would know to bring up. At least not with that degree of certainty. Thank you."

“The border eroded over time from Iomedae’s day. Occasionally a gifted warlord would unify the orcs and overrun the fortresses and the paladins would fall back. They took some back, occasionally, but they lost more than they gained. Started out stretching from the Mindspins to the Gap of Valballus, by my day was - I can draw it on a map -”

Alfirin has maps, though they're not as good as the maps available in Lilia's day.

Lilia spends a lot of Hell’s money on mapping. It’s a very legitimate use of the money and would conveniently also be straightforwardly useful to her mother once they displaced Hell. She can draw Lastwall’s 4700s borders for Alfirin.

"What was Lastwall doing, in your time? About Cheliax?"

“Nothing, they couldn’t. …when Aroden died and the Worldwound opened, it looked likely Tar-Baphon’s supporters would free him, and they committed to neutrality in the Chelish Civil War. At the time everyone assumed some ordinary Chelish noble family would come out on top; it didn’t become clear that Asmodeus was making a bid for the country until two decades in. They could naturally at this point retract the declared neutrality on the grounds that the Chelish Civil War is long since over but - it’d be unwise, they’re badly overstretched as is. Iomedae’s Church was opposing us, but not through Lastwall, through minor nobility in -” she glances at Alfirin’s map - “Moltuna - so that if it failed Lastwall wouldn’t fall with it. I’m not sure if the war would’ve in fact expanded to Lastwall if it’d happened. Probably not, Cheliax didn’t want Tar-Baphon released either and we don’t have the teleporters to cover their share of the Worldwound, but Abrogail is a sore loser and Asmodeus a spiteful god, so if it’d been going badly enough it might have escalated.

The hope of course on your part was for a very swift war where Asmodeus had no time to escalate.”

"How does one plan successfully for a short victorious war… I suppose she may not have told you." And as of Lilia's memory, the plans had not been tested against reality.

“She told me very little, of course. The plans were also not at the point of fruition. But I could likely have accomplished an assassination of the rest of Cheliax’s leadership, with the right tools for the job, and that’s the kind of thing that can make a war short if the rest of your planning is very very good.”

"Having an extremely well-placed traitor does seem like it would help."

That gets an actual smile out of Lilia.

"I do understand why she did it. I just - wish there had been a better way, or that she'd tried harder to find a better way, or - been willing to pay different costs instead."

“I understand why you wish that. …I wish I took a form you were pleased by and proud of, instead of one that you hate.”

"I’m sorry. It's - both, I hope you know. I am proud of you, I am impressed by you, you're - in many ways the best daughter I could hope for - and you’re also someone who I have been very cruel to, and made a slave of, and - even more so than in the general case, I do not want my daughters treated cruelly or made slaves -"

“You weren’t cruel,” says Lilia. She does not dispute ‘slave’.