"We don't have a lion, no. Do you mean to fully release the confidentiality or only partly?"

"You can fully share everything I've told you with Iomedae. I am relying on her not using it against my interests, because if she were the kind of person to do so then I don't think your confidentiality would protect me in practice."

At least taking on big risks for clear reasons is something Tanya knows how to do without struggling about it.

The Select nods. "A lot of people like to pray kneeling, but I've a bad knee, so I can't, and it doesn't make a practical difference." Instead he clasps his hands and bows his head.

Kneeling is an act of abnegation. Tanya isn't approaching this... consultation from a posture of submission. Not because she wouldn't submit if she had to, but because someone who requires submission from petitioners isn't someone who's committed to the greatest Good and welcomes all allies in that cause. 

Or so she hopes, anyway. Because she isn't, actually, aiming to serve Iomedae. She is aiming to serve something she and Iomedae both want and can agree on.

She thinks through her prepared prayer-statement, nailing down her thoughts into clear words without speaking out loud (to avoid distracting Select Oliva). First the summary, then more details for each section, then the summary again just in case, all prefaced and interspersed with thinking IOMEDAE as loudly as she can.

After a few minutes Oliva opens his eyes. "Iomedae indicated to me," he murmurs, "that neither planet you are from is within reach."

"Not - reachable even theoretically, or in practice, or she doesn't know how or nobody on Golarion knows how and she can't tell us, or, or is it just not worth the price so it's not - an action available to us -"

"...does it matter? The standard - approach, for communes and this, is 'should we act as if'. Acting as if any of those were the case would produce the same results as all the others."

It matters. If Iomedae doesn't know how to do it or can't afford tell them, that's not proof positive it's impossible. She's not omniscient or omnipotent, she's not God.

Maybe another god or archmage knows how. Maybe a way doesn't exist yet but it can be built, from a fusion of Germanian orb technology and Golarion magic, because it happened before so it must be possible.

Who the hell gave her the right to declare it impossible for humans to do something?

"Does this mean people from either Earth don't arrive in your afterlives. Would she definitely know if they did. Could it be the case that they do but she'd still tell us we can't reach Earth - I assume so - could this be because the gods have agreed not to intervene on Earth and to prevent anyone else from helping them - would she do that. If. If they still went to Hell?"

"She didn't tell me any of that. I can speculate about what deals might have been worth making but is that really your question or are you only - grieving?"

What the hell is the use of grieving, she almost snaps at him.

"I want to know the degree to which it's claimed to be impossible because - it might still matter one day" - in ten or fifty or a thousand years, when people on Golarion can are better -

...

"I suppose that means it's at most a distant possibility. And I should - I know I should behave as though it is impossible in at least the short term. ...I committed to that. Didn't I. Not explicitly to that, but - it follows."

"I think I need - a little time. To tie up some loose ends. Can I use the paladin's aura again for a few minutes?"

"I'm not sure if there is a paladin to hand at the moment but we can check."

There are actually two paladins to hand but only one of them, sitting out in the courtyard, has the aura. He will agreeably flare it and resume armor maintenance.

The aura makes her remember to value everyone, and if she doesn't value them equally then the sheer amount of people out there and the infinity of suffering in Hell ensures that any specific, finite people she knows don't really count, just as she herself doesn't really count, and the obvious principled solution to the problem of how much to give to charity is that if you maximize Good you leave yourself some value for maintenance and investment but you can only ever value other people more than others for instrumental reasons, working towards the one and only goal you have allowed yourself -

It feels obscene.

She steps back out of the aura.

She can get over this. 

She told Cuoco and Belmarniss she can. She wasn't wrong.

She's a soldier. Trained to see enormous suffering and losses and go on fighting. Seeing her entire country set on fire and headed towards the metaphorical abyss didn't impair her nearly as much as the chronic sleep deprivation and hunger and tiredness and the endless. fucking. artillery barrage and she still went on fighting and won nearly every engagement even as she lost the war. It is ridiculous to think that while being well-off physically she won't function well merely because of grief, a natural and passing reaction that didn't evolve to incapacitate people.

She owes it to everyone to do it right this time.

How do people deal with this? Something about closure, right? Social validation, burial ceremonies, things that make you feel everything is still within the - general framework of reality, of how life is supposed to sometimes turn out. That things have gone badly, but they haven't gone against the rules.

She's really isn't sure if it can do her any good alone and stranded in an alien culture. Supposes she might as well try. Maybe later.

She goes back to the library to tell Belmarniss the news.

"...wow, that sucks. Have you considered writing down everything you remember in case your memory's decaying, even if you don't show it to anyone and put it all in code or whatever?"

"I've been thinking about it on the way here," Tabya agrees. "The Iomedaeans will likely set me to writing down or dictating everything useful anyway, but technologies that are of immediate use aren't the same as - remembering something of the people who created them. Leaving something for later decades, or future generations, who might - if civilization on Golarion grows enough - become able to contact Earth after all. Even if it will be too late for Germania by then." Deep breath. "I hope I'll have the free time to record something about that, or the - justification, to take that time away from helping people - it's less urgent now. It makes sense now, to spend a few years teaching or doing anything that's helpful in the short term. I... hope my memory won't decay much over a few years." She won't have any way to check if it does. Nobody else to ask, to remember them.

"...there are many things I can show as illusions that would take a long time to deacribe in writing. Especially machines with moving parts. Do you know of a way to quickly capture images or - moving images - on Earth there was a recent nonmagical technology to do it, and separately we could copy the illusions themselves - not the illusion spell, the, uh, spell parameters that produce each individual illusion - that was more expensive but it was reasonably quick, so knowledge could be disseminated and not lost -" Tanya was led to this thought by an ulterior motive, but it's a legitimate need.

"...if you put the illusion right up next to a piece of paper someone can trace it?" says Belmarniss. "Permanent Image is... siiiixth circle?"

"Sixth circle sounds too expensive. Hiring a draftsman to trace things might work, I don't really know how quickly experts can trace from an image with a lot of detail... Maybe Cuoco knows something, if Shelyn considers draftsmanship to be art."

"I'm going to sign up with the Iomedaeans, I don't have any - excuses left not to. I suppose I could still back out at the last minute when they present me with a concrete project, if I learn something I really don't like, but - that's the outside chance. I don't know what I'll be working on or where it will make sense to do it, but it's a big world and it's unlikely to be here." And she doesn't like Taldor, for whatever that's worth. "I - would like to keep in touch, if I can. I don't know if I'll be doing something classified, or even something you'd be interested in regardless of that. If there'll be a cheap way to  communicate securely, if I can afford to just fly over occasionally... If at all possible I'll arrange a way for you to contact me."

"...I'm not saying goodbye yet, to be clear, I don't know when I'll leave. Just that I probably will." And that she'll keep worrying about Belmarniss's safety once she's alone here.