At the end of his third tour of duty, now fourth circle, he’s offered the standard choice given those with his obvious level of potential: civilian life, as free of danger as anyone can ever be in Cheliax, or an officer’s commission and a chance to hit fifth circle and beyond. The latter choice will, of course, require him to sell his soul.

Well, he thinks, he certainly wasn't going to overthrow Hell as a fourth-circle wizard.

Now, however, he has to.

Five years later

The war in Andoran is going badly, because Infrexus Thrune is an idiot.

It's not that he wants the war to be going well for Cheliax, even though he mostly expects any resulting experiment in self-government by Andoran to be a disaster that only improves on the previous state of affairs if one happens to prefer the Abyss to Hell. (He doesn't.) The problem is that the war is going badly in a way that his specific competence is required to correct, and it doesn't actually serve his long-term interests to be incompetent on purpose. (Or so he tells himself, and while he has enough Wisdom to probably not be wrong about that, he also has enough Pride to disprefer solutions that involve being incompetent on purpose.)

Chelish supply lines are being decimated by guerilla fighters in the mountains of western Andoran; if Cheliax could retake the port of Augustana it could feed its armies without traversing the mountains, but the walls of Augustana have not been breached since the days when the Chelaxian Empire* ruled the whole Inner Sea, and they don't look likely to suddenly fall now. The city is blockaded and besieged, of course, but it's rather hard to starve out a city when its defenders have a Chelish quantity of wizards (plus foreign volunteers) and much less fifth-circle-related defection risk, and are willing to devote a significant portion of their Teleportation capacity to keeping it fed.

Riudaure does not want Cheliax to win, but there's not wanting Cheliax to win, and then there's wanting the war to go on forever because Cheliax is far stronger but its generals are selected for being stupid enough to think Asmodeanism is a good idea. He informs his commanding officer that he has a plan to take Augustana with a dozen wizards and roughly as many high-level fighters, but could they please issue the fighters Intelligence headbands first.

*Technically the Taldan Empire, but Cheliax has always been of the opinion that it's the true heir to the legacy of ancient Taldor, and the country now calling itself that is a bunch of half-Qadiran pretenders at best.

Issue...fighters...what?

"This plan cannot, in fact, be carried out by idiots. I was assuming wizards had that covered but one never knows with fighters."

(Really it's Wisdom, not Intelligence, that he requires, but Wisdom enhancement has a fraught history in Cheliax and a defection here, even by a fighter, could actually do serious damage.)

(Which is the point.)

"Your point is made. What, precisely, is the plan."

"Teleport in, announce I'm defecting—"

"Are you?" His voice grows even colder than usual.

"The problem with plans that have that as a first step is that then we can't tell if you're defecting for real."

The problem with Cheliax, among many, is that they can't abide even fake disloyalty in the service of an espionage operation. He doesn't say this, of course.

"—pretend to defect, get close enough to the gatehouse to Dispel the Forbiddance, Teleport in a team to take it over," he continues. "If for some reason you think I'm a defection risk despite the fact that my soul is the property of Hell, and Andoran for some reason agrees, that only makes the deception more believable. But, in fact, the problem most people in Cheliax would have with pulling this off is that they're not loyal enough to contemplate disloyalty without actually breaking, so they just prevent themselves from thinking about it at all. This is, in fact, an extremely obvious plan; I see no other explanation for why it hasn't already been suggested, attempted, and executed."

One does not, in Cheliax, imply that one's superiors are less competent than oneself without being lit on fire, which Riudaure now is. The effect this has, of limiting the competence of units to that of the weakest link in their chain of command, does not seem to have been noticed.

Riudaure, however, is lucky enough to have a commanding officer who will light you on fire and then pretend your idea was his all along.

"Can you. Dispel the Forbiddance, that is."

He greatly prefers being on fire to being surrounded by idiots. Well. He's still surrounded by idiots, but at least they're not incorrigible idiots.

"Intel suggests their highest-level cleric in Augustana is a sixth-circle of Iomedae," he says. "You can send someone higher-level if you like, if you think Andoran will fall for it."

Genuinely high-level wizards in Cheliax are very strongly selected for being incredibly terrible people, the sort who wouldn't help Andoran even if it would get them out of Hell, which it wouldn't. Riudaure is, in peacetime, a captain in the Chelish secret police, and difficult to mistake for Good unless he's trying hard to fool you, but no one would ever mistake him for one of those either. There's a reason he's marked as a defection risk in spite of being soul-sold.

"I'll approve a strike team under your command. I certainly don't want anyone more valuable to lose their head if this fucks up. We cannot, actually, afford Intelligence headbands for fighters but I will try to ensure that they have balanced abilitystats, as they say." A slight curl of one corner of his mouth.

"And Captain? I am sure you know what our agreement with Hell says about those who betray Cheliax having sold their souls."

(It says that they should suffer as much as Hell can make them suffer, even at the cost of any other use they might have; Cheliax will compensate their owners out of its own treasury if need be.)

"Dismissed."

"Sir."

He bows almost imperceptibly, and dimdoors out. It's not the wisest use of a fourth-circle spell, but the major is only a mediocre wizard and this is one of the few ways of showing him up that won't get Riudaure reflexively lit on fire, since he's now on the other side of the camp.

He Teleports in to Augustana's central plaza and raises his hands above his head.

A rather pointless action, since he's immediately hit by five Hold Persons and a high-powered Detect Thoughts.

He doesn't resist any of the spells, and is thinking very clearly that he is Captain Jean Riudaure, sixth-circle wizard, of His Majesty's Secret Service for the Preservation of Peace, Order, and the Asmodean Faith, on wartime assignment to the Eighth Infantry Division, and he is here to betray Cheliax because, in fact, worshipping Asmodeus is stupid even if you're going to Hell anyway.

Spell Gauge.

Detect Alignment.

"He's a wizard. Lawful Evil. Higher level than me."

Bestow Curse (Intelligence).

"On your knees, diabolist."

That was rude. No need to prevent him from thinking.

(He recognizes that the purpose is to deprive him of his higher-circle spells, but it's still rude.)

He kneels.

One soldier handcuffs him while another deprives him of his headband (+4 INT) and other magic items.

Eventually someone dimdoors in who can cast Antimagic Field. Mercifully, they Remove the Curse first.

"Keep me unscryable unless you want half the Chelish secret police showing up."

A woman arrives, in the dress of a Good cleric. Pulls him out of the Antimagic Field and Plane Shifts him to a demiplane. It's also antimagic.

(Or so it appears to wizards. In fact, divine magic works fine. It's a gift from the Church of Sarenrae to the war effort; fighting the Infernal Empire attracts a lot of foreign volunteers.)

The demiplane is a grassy field with a uniformly white sky overhead. There are house-sized buildings to either side of where they landed. She leads him into the one on the left.

"Are we still unscryable?" he asks, taking a seat in what appears to be their interrogation room, although it's vastly more comfortable than any such thing in Cheliax.

"Building's lined in lead and keys to this demiplane aren't easy to get. Are you expecting them to escalate to Wish-kidnapping? We can get you a Mind Blank."