"I don't think I'm busy with anything especially time-sensitive at the moment, just so you know.  Anyway.  Be safe out there."

Annd end call.

The expression on her face is best described as 'complicated exasperation' as she remembers why she made it to begin with.

"Good news, the Grendel don't dispute that that guy was an asshole.  Possibly-bad news, I am now highly motivated to stop every single military or paramilitary operation on this damn continent except maybe the one against the vallorn because everybody's been assholes to eachother.  I'd say war is hell, but hell doesn't involve hurting innocent civilians!  ...Where was I, anyway.  Hm hm, mm hm, hm mm," her hands shuffle unseen thoughts, "note to self, research local time travel or lack thereof if applicable, ...vallorn!"

She is triumphant over her own brain!

...On the other hand... "...Vallorn.  Is there anyone known to whom I should direct my inquiries on the subject, especially vis-a-vis ways to calm rampant magical effects in general and the safety of utilizing such techniques there in particular?"

"The Grendel just say what you want to hear, you know, you can't actually trust them?" 

"Don't touch the Vallorn without talking to the Navaar."

"They're kind of busy at the moment with the Broceliande expedition."

"Advisor on the Vallorn - that's Siân Eternal, right?" 

"No, it changed very recently, it's now Nathair Autumngale."

"Oh no, did Siân die? Her book is great."

"Might also be able to find someone who wasn't going on the expedition but knows their stuff at the library they just founded - Great Library of Hacynian, up in Hercynia."

"Or closer in, you could do worse than dropping in at Bronwen's Rest in Therunin, they're unlikely to have the expertise but they know everyone, they'll be better at pointing you in the right direction."

"I might not be able to trust the Grendel as a polity, no, but individual Grendel citizens can meet epistemic standards to make them trustworthy as sources on Grendel opinion.

"Probably would double-check if they said the sky was blue, mind," she only half lies - though she's unsure which half it is - "but this at least I'm confident in.  Anyway, that's a diversion from the whole," encompassing-gesture, "vallorn.  Y'all know anything else that's province-scale and critical to solve soonest?  Otherwise, I think I'd best get on that as soon as possible, given that some of the vallorn-touched are still conscious."

Right.  Map.  What sayest thou about travel times and such.

"Vallorn's officially the greatest spiritual threat to the Empire."

"The Thule gave up their living slaves, but it's not clear that their undead ones are all just animated bodies and no trapped soul."

"There's another war over the other side of the Empire with the Jotun, but it's pretty clean compared to anything with the Druj or Grendel in it."

"Asavea still has widespread slavery and there's about to be a big fight over the island with the ringleaders of their slavery cult on, it's kind of in hand but it's going to be messy."

"And the Iron Confederacy, nobody's doing anything about them because they're near enough to invade us."

"If you're not keen on kids dying regardless of the species, I think the Commonwealth are still in a war of extermination with the orcs on their continent, too."

Therunin is the territory on the near shore of that big awful lake, just a quick hop away in something like the flying machine. Broceliande is just behind that, going back into the heart of the Empire. Hercynia is several hundred miles further on and northwards.

Alright.  "Thank you, everyone."

Add those to her quest tracker...

"And I think I must be off.  I'll be heading to Therunin and then Broceliande, most likely.  If anyone has a burning desire to go on an adventure, speak up, I suppose."

"Do you have a vacancy for occasional provider of metaphysical explanations and common sense?" She thinks about adding, 'because you need a priest more than anyone here does' or 'because I can tell your net is going to be important and also if you keep moving like this full of holes', but they seem like unnecessary extra verbiage.

"I do believe I do, Ms. Willstone."

And that coincides with the arrival of her vehicle.

(If Evantia had said the latter comment, she would be glad to explain the way her network expands using the capacity built in as overflow.  If Evantia had said the former, she would have sighed exhaustedly.  But Evantia did neither, so neither did she.)

Evantia gesticulates vehemently at the crowd until they make space for the vehicle to land neatly. 

It's not that big, really, it hardly has more footprint than a car, but yes, there are probably quite a few excited wizards getting a bit too close.

"Our chariot awaits," she directs to Evantia.

Once they're in the air, though, and their course is set...

"So why'd you come?"

"Urizen has two kinds of priest. The Questor's duty is to ask the awkward question nobody else is asking, and the Illuminate's job is to connect nodes in the Net of the Heavens in order to strengthen it.

In both cases, chasing after someone as powerful and out of context as you is a sacred duty."

"    ."

"Of course it is, I would too, breathe, you can handle this it's technical."

She passes a hand over her face, wiping both the traces of humor and her anxious muttering away.

"Anything in particular you'd like to know, then?  Can't say I've heard of the Net of Heaven before."

"Oh, I'm sorry, was I meant to say that I was so charmed by your dashing presence that I was determined to be swept off my feet like some Dawnish maiden?"

This is, of course, delivered entirely deadpan, but there is certainly some deliberate ambiguity mixed in with the sarcasm.

"The Net of the Heavens is the connections between people - much like the stars are arranged in constellations. The Illuminate's duty is to find the brightest stars and connect them to each other, or shift them into the places they will be of most use - to themselves, to each other, to Urizen, and to the Empire.

I would like to know a great many things. Perhaps we should start by - do you have any plans or intentions, beyond sprinting across the continent attempting to fix every problem that comes to your attention?"

That gets her to laugh.  "No, I just expected, I don't know, an answer that wasn't only 'it's in my job description'?  Not to say that it's a bad answer!  Just that - there's not many people who take their jobs seriously enough to go gallivanting around the country on a moment's notice about it, statistically speaking?  I'm surprised.

"Though I suppose the demographics could support Questors and Illuminates itinerant, and - anyway, as fascinating as sociology is, it's not directly relevant to what's presently happening."

"Do I have, plans or intentions...Uh.  Not really?  I've been running on 'oh fuck, what's happening now' about the various...the Black Plateau, the Druj, the rampant slavery...oh, can't forget the town I arrived in...for the past...several...how long has it even been?

"...If I have to ask that question, 'too long'.  Okay.  Okay.

"I don't know; do you have any suggestions?"

"It sounds like we have a little travel time, so why don't we calm down, make a prioritised list, and see which things you can sensibly address immediately, and which things you should maybe take your plans to Anvil about and consult some Imperial title holders, before you discover you have made new and interesting problems.

The Empire has successfully integrated some ex-Druj, or at least their subject tribes - the Sand Fishers at Holberg, some of the remnants in Ossium - and you might want to learn some of the lessons there about the slow process of building trust and rebuilding Virtue that had to happen, much as - what is the logistical situation, anyway? You have so far seemed quite concerned with spiritual forces, but not, say, the difficulties of providing food and medical treatment for large populations of malnourished and often injured slaves in what is mostly a poisonous swamp."

"The logistical situation is basically that material scarcity can go fuck itself, except for certain legendary reagents which will either have lead time or prove outright immune to artificial cultivation - I'm still working on that; true liao is one of those, incidentally, unless I figure out what the hell is perturbing regular liao so that it has the right, hm, anchor points, or find that it can be cloned from samples.  A conjured liao based off a sample of regular liao doesn't mirror the precursory metaphysics.  ...Oddly enough, chemical analysis says that the regular stuff is a specific hallucinogen, and it works as usual; we checked.

"There's theoretical upper limits on magic-per-time throughput, but if we're reaching those it's because we needed to make a universe or something otherwise extravagant; I'm working mostly off of the high ambient levels of magic you have.  ...Damn, that reminds me, I wanted to look at an ushabti at some point, see if I could get them working better in a replicable way.  Don't want y'all to be dependent upon my benevolence, because despite it all I'm still only fucking human.  I don't trust me with the power I have, no matter that I have it; you shouldn't either.  But that's practically your mission statement, so I'll refrain from - well.  Going on a lecture about the way the power to create, especially to my absurd degree, is the power to destroy a thousand times more than you have ever made or could ever make, because creation is working against entropy.

"That said, I think I actually might trust you a bit further than my weedy unaugmented arms could throw you, so.  Here, take a look at this."

And Evantia gets a tablet set up to create an account with more access than she'd give out to all and sundry; deployment information, fabrication capacity registers, cameras...

"You don't get to order stuff that's not already on the public list without approval just yet, but I'll probably approve most things, and I rather insist you get something from the 'decent armor' catalogue post-haste.  People have tried to get at me through my people, before.  I refuse to let that sort of thing happen without making whoever tries fucking bleed for it."

Evantia skims the index, determines this is going to take a considerable amount of time to absorb, skims the armour list a bit more throughly.

"Excellent," she says, a little distractedly, "this is essentially the project we've been working on as a nation, something sped up and more scalable is - excellent.

These look good," she taps something that's essentially a force field generator, essentially the most minimalist 'wear innocuous jewellery and everyone is surprised you are now immune to swords and probably also explosions' set available, "but I'm happy to take your recommendation.

I would love to dive into this, but actually I think prioritisation is still the most important thing - as you say, there's one of you, I now have an approximate idea of the scale of your capabilities, but you still need to deploy them - and simultaneously build your Net of trusted allies to help you deploy them."

(Evantia finds that there is simply no such item that doesn't come with 'backup physical armor deploys from 4-space on a moment's notice', but that there are plenty of tastefully minimalist anchor devices with sturdy shielding.  Does she want her armor in 'fight back' (a variety of weapons are in the catalogue of attachments), 'escape and evade' (mobility augments, EWAR, decoys, integrated portal guns...), 'defend even more' (with shield projectors aplenty; "took a nuke once"), or 'S&R' (tractor beams, integrated engineering capability, vital-searching capacity...)?  There's not a single blueprint that doesn't have some capability to handle problems that aren't in its profile, but there are tradeoffs.)

"Right.  And I need information from people on problems to prioritize interventions.  There is pretty significant autodeployment capacity, though - most of the forbearance is that I don't want to step on toes that don't firmly deserve being trod upon.  Anyway.  Spiritual threats?"

"The major extant spiritual threats in my priority ordering:

The Vallorn, which definitely captures souls and impedes their progress.

The Labyrinth spirits - I would previously have downrated this as intractable, but my definition of intractable has recently updated sharply.

Various necromantia - less verified than the Vallorn, but at least the Axou do claim to be successfully capturing spirits.

Nexi of intolerable suffering - the Druj are the most obvious, but centers of abject slavery - such as the salt mines of the Grendel, some parts of the Iron Confederacy, probably some things the Asaveans are doing - also count.

Destruction of orc souls - there's something odd going on with orc collectiveness which I don't really comprehend, or this would be much higher, but there are many active conflicts in which orcs are dying in large numbers, plus of course deaths of old age and illness etcetera, and our best guess is most of them do not make it across the Abyss.

There exist many other potential threats but these feel like the most pressing - although actually I put Vallorn at the top there out of habit, and perhaps orc souls and intolerable suffering should be higher in urgency, if not in magnitude."

"I think I've done something about the destruction of orc souls already just by being around, but it's worth confirming; a moment, please."

She does something that definitely looks like communing, for a moment.  Eyes closed, head inclined slightly, hands clasped together.  "...Yeah, my contact is working on that; I'm not really that specialized in applied metaphysics as to be able to do much more than throw her at the problem.  Most of my work experience is actually at the interface of magic and nonmagical...physics and industry.

"The vallorn are an aggressive hegemonizing swarm, albeit a very slow one; you're absolutely right to give them high priority.

"I can't assess labyrinth spirits unless the hatred spirit in the Black Plateau counts, and even then I don't know what they do in the Labyrinth.  So, I'll need more information to prioritize them effectively.

"I can take a look at the necromancy; I don't tend to find it on-principle disagreeable but many, many implementations I've encountered are, well, awful.  Souls kept here against their will, for example.

"And the intolerable suffering...I should probably loop in Keth, she's got more eyes on Grendel politics and I don't want them to just collapse if I happen to them.  Or rather when I happen.  The Salt Mines need to just...not happen anymore.  But - it should be clean."

"Hatred spirit in the Black Plateau with enough intelligence for conversation definitely counts. We do not have nearly as much information as I would like on them but they tend to title themselves charming things like The Eater Of Hope, potentially actually consume souls and certainly trap them in self destructive cycles, and generally impede passage through the Labyrinth.

There are also theorised to be helpful Labyrinth spirits, in particular that is one possible mechanism for the intervention of the Paragons on the mortal world, but as anything that might be evidence of this tends to be immediately attributed to a Paragon, I have even less to go on.

As is in the name, they generally inhabit the Labyrinth, but can escape via True Liao visions or Whispers Through The Black Gate, and probably other equivalent methods.

Necromantia probably a lower priority, the Axou practice is generally with willing if not necessarily fully informed souls, no other major systemic practitioner has been proven to do anything to the original soul."

"...wait a goddamn minute, the reason true liao is screwy is because it actively breaches realms?  Well that explains the weird leftover effects on regular liao, and why it didn't conjure with the same potential!"

"...What does passage through the Labyrinth involve?  I have a vague impression of atemporality, actually, which is odd.  And is it a place you can visit, or a metaphor, or both simultaneously?"

"The fact that we don't actually know is literally written into doctrine, but this is what is known:

On death the human spirit leaves the body and travels to the Labyrinth, where things we don't comprehend happen, and eventually it gets reincarnated without direct access to its memories, but with instincts and inclinations from its past lives.

True Liao in the visionary formulation works by killing the participants in such a way that a route back to the body is held open.

The spirit of a dead human can be called to speak to by spell for ten minutes and by ritual thereafter, but does not recall anything after the moment of death.

It can also fail to travel and become a ghost or be trapped in an object.

A paragon is a human who can surpass the Labyrinth, instead of being reincarnated they go onwards. Generally this is held to be accompanied by various signs when they are alive, such as miracles - most commonly, creation of durable auras without liao.

I have further speculations but they are purely speculation."

"That is...

"How certain are you that human souls...

"...ugh, some of these things that are known just don't make sense in conjunction with other things!  Why are spirits incapable of remembering things post-death, but - specifically human souls?, undergoing the liao ritual can remember things if they come back?  How does true liao let you time travel?  If it does at all, and the Labyrinth isn't just some sort of semi-motile and semi-agentic human-specific Akashic record with opinions - How the hell do miracles even work?  I don't..."

"I'm sure I'm missing something or working from a flawed assumption but - what is this?  Why is this?  How is this, most of all!

"...I'm going to want to observe one of those soul tethers sometime, very probably.  But it's certainly not time-sensitive in the way vallorn are, only time-sensitive in the way suffering in general is.  Ha; only.  That's definitely a sentence."