One more arrives.

Luvick Siervage, once Soividia Ustav's marshal, was made a vampire by his own request, a thousand years before Tar-Baphon made his homeland synonymous with the undead; he had chosen altogether the wrong path in life to become a lich, and vampirism seemed the least unpleasant eternity open to him—other than Axis, which he did not expect to be granted and could not have fulfilled him anyway. For a thousand years he ruled the shadows of Ustalav, before the Whispering Tyrant came, his own vampiric lieutenant at his right hand; Siervage has never forgiven and will never forgive them, for taking his wide-open hunting grounds from him. Now he rules only the underworld of Caliphas, though with an iron hand, and he is careful—so careful, in fact, that most of the mortal residents of the city have no idea that there's an army of vampires living in their sewers.

Any change in Ustalav's leadership would have been dangerous to his position, but Razmir was a man (certainly not a god) he expected he could have come to terms with—until he invited in the paladins of Lastwall to purge the country of undead.

Well. He is older than Iomedae, and whatever Her pretensions of 'defeating Evil', he will be here long after the ancient gods tire of Her existence.

(He is not a wizard, but vampires can dominate the wills of mortals without needing to cast a spell for it.)

He regards the others with indifference, whatever his feelings toward them; he will destroy Tar-Baphon's remaining cultists later, when the immediate threat to his survival and power has been eliminated.

(Luvick Siervage gets a nod that is an actual salute from Czaszar, for being plausibly the only person in this entire mess who is not, legally speaking, in revolt against him, and not  for being the highest level, best-equipped undead in Ustalav not currently sealed inside Gallowspire, even though he is.)

(It's very important to keep these distinctions straight, when you're the legitimate Emperor of Taldor.)

The Mirrorgrave is no less respectful on the outside, though he is, of course, plotting to destroy Siervage to damn his soul to Hell, the only right and fitting punishment for his refusal to serve his rightful lord and master, the Whispering Tyrant, lich-god of all Avistan.

"We are gathered here today," says the Grand Prince of Taldor through his pawn, once everyone is assembled, "because war has been made on us. We are not friends of Razmir, that intruding false god, but we were not his enemies." His mortal puppet steeples its fingers. "Until such time as he called in the hateful servants of ascended Iomedae, to seek us out and destroy us. Brothers and sisters of the Whispering Way, this is not a war against a king of Ustalav; we have seen its kings rise and fall, survived lords and ages and dynasties. This is not a war against a mighty wizard, for we have killed mighty wizards before. This is a war in our own defense against Iomedae, the paladin-goddess who seeks our destruction; not a war with the slaves of doddering Pharasma who says 'some day' but with the Hounds of Heaven who seek to end us all today! Brothers and sisters of the Whispering Way, our enemy is here. She bound Tar-Baphon, she shattered Belkzen, and now her hosts come to end us. But in her folly there is hope, for the Hound of Heaven is distracted, her attention is diverted; some of her attention is paid to Asmodeus, some to the Worldwound. So, for a moment, she is vulnerable."

A harsh smile. "And in this moment, should we unite, we can tear down her little puppet-kingdom, slaughter her hunters, and bring death to her proxy, this 'false god' Razmir!"

"And how, Great Emperor—" his tone is not mocking though his use of the title is— "would you propose to accomplish this?"

(He could end Razmir's rule over Ustalav in a single night of blood and terror, but that would reveal to Lastwall and other forces that he and his army, in fact, exist, and that is not yet a price he is willing to pay. And there is nothing they can do against Razmir himself—the balance of power in Golarion largely holds because ninth-circle casters are incredibly hard to kill, even for other ninth-circle casters.)

(So are liches. Don't get above yourself, Siervage; you're stronger than me, but not that much stronger and I can feud with the best of them.)

"There is not a one of us," says Czaszar, "who does not have a hidden army, a trove of forgotten secrets, a secret scheme ready to unleash upon the world when the time is right." 

A dark smile. "I certainly do. The temptation we are all under -" and again his eyes scan "- is to hold it in reserve to benefit ourselves, while our brothers and sisters in the Way sacrifice ourselves. If we hold ourselves back, the paladins will come for us one-by-one, but If we all unleash our strength across Ustalav, our might combined, every scheme unleashed together - it will be effortless! Shatter his domain, slaughter his priests, crush his paladins, and this will will draw him out. And then we can strike. Though no one of us can match his greatest heights of arcane power," a galling admission, "with our might combined -" he snaps his fingers. "That! for Razmir."

"My lords?"

His voice is smaller, and not as haughty as the others', for he is neither as ancient nor as mighty as they, but he speaks up nonetheless.

"I have no hidden army," he says, "but I have something else: a count of Ustalav in my command, if I can make my possession more, ah, stable. Most importantly, we are separate people, unbeknownst to any—he is Dominated by Razmir's mages, but I am free to act.

"If Razmir has one weakness, it is his vanity. Unsurprising, perhaps, for a man who styles himself a god. But he is eager to expand his worship, and he will, perhaps, look less closely for reasons not to do that than he should. I do not know how he binds his 'priests', but he must; it is said that none have ever betrayed him, and they are all of a sort who, under the right circumstances, certainly would. We cannot, ordinarily, simply infiltrate his order. But if Count Conwrest were to become a priest of Razmir, I would not be so bound."

"My dear skull," says the Mirrorgrave from behind the mask of his mortal pawn, "I have watched Razmir's priests in Ustalav. They are Evil. A bare handful might be called Neutral. Moreover the great majority - all, frankly, save the youngest sweepers and altar-cleaners - possess arcane power of the third circle, or the trinkets to fake it, and when they discuss their tedious mortal lives they do so from the perspective of ambitious fools of low birth who sought advancement here because they could get it nowhere else. If Count Conwrest applied to become a priest of Razmir, he would need to do so from within a Dominate Person, could not pass the alignment qualification, and lacks the arcane power to be considered." He raises an eyebrow. "I do not think your plan will succeed, alas."

"And yet," says Remek Czaszar, "there is wisdom in it."

He smiles a skeletal smile.

"Before we go, let me say this: That when the day comes we must gather together in person to unite in truth, I propose we bind ourselves to our alliance via accepting through Geas an oath to this pact, never to abandon the struggle against Iomedae, Lastwall and her puppet Razmir and to devote our hoarded strength to the cause of opposing them until no fortress in all Ustalav or Lastwall is held by Iomedae's allies, one hundred years have passed, or it is the universal agreement of these pactsworn extant on this plane that the need is ended, taking no hostile action nor betrayal through inaction against any member of this pact who has not thus harmed us nor swearing oaths falsely to them, nor seeking to end this Geas except through fulfillment of its conditions, under the full pains of the Geas, and cast the first spell on myself, going to this meeting without treasures so that slaying me would avail nothing, before laying the next Geases on each of my brothers and sisters who will join me against Razmir. And then I will accept this Geas I swear to be laid on me by each fellow of the Way who can lay it, and urge them to lay it, also, on each of themselves. For I do see in the wise Head's words a way a plan might come together, and when it does, we had best be united or perish we shall."

(Geas is a funny spell; it has a useful property to wizards seeking to bind themselves to honesty, which is that it can't be broken except by a more powerful spellcaster's Remove Curse, and so no wizard can remove a geas he lays himself unless he can wish it away - there's rumors about a limited wish wording that could accomplish it, but not only does this require meddling with wish-wordings, but it would take quite a valuable diamond per Geas, making the cost to remove six different identical geases immense even for a wizard who got around the self-protecting clause. It isn't perfect security, but it's as close as you can get with a nest of treacherous backstabbing snakes like the Whispering Way.)

Given that he apparently isn't useful to the plan, he won't be swearing any oaths about it, and especially not having any Geases laid on him. Look where that got him last time.

"I will swear this oath," says Siervage, "but I offer this caution: a Geas will be visible to other wizards who might thereby uncover our conspiracy. We should, at the same time as we lay the Geas, disguise it."

(This will also make it easier to disguise not having the Geas from the other conspirators, should he find a way to achieve that.)

I wasn't born yesterday! 

"Such a disguise, lord Siervage, seems superfluous; few of us will be meeting with outsiders who know or care that we should not be so sworn, and possess the arcane sight required to distinguish the spell. Unless, perhaps, I am mistaken?"

(Czaszar already has loads of ideas for ways to mess with people trying to get around the Geas, and for that matter also has ways to get around it himself that hopefully dispelling everyone before they show up to the in-person meeting won't get around, and hopefully between everyone they can make sure that everyone, or ideally everyone but him, is actually bound.)

He does in fact have some such dealings, but not enough that he's actually worried, and on reflection the possibility of someone else slipping the Geas is a far greater risk to him.

(He didn't actually intend to break the oath anyway, merely to have the option.)

"Understood, my lord Emperor."

"And I too shall swear, Remek," he says, deliberately misusing his rival's epithet, "and take no hostile action against the members of this pact until the pact agrees the war with Iomedae is settled." It is not, in fact, a betrayal to go destroy the Whispering Tyrant's seals as soon as Razmir is dealt with, it's a recruitment operation.

And after some more inconsequential back-and-forth, the meeting is adjourned.

The proxies will be retrieved, not to spare their lives from the elements—they will be killed later—but because the Whispering Way's enemies know the method by which they conduct their business, and a circle of dead commoners in the Hungry Mountains where no commoner should be indicates clearly to those that may find them that the Whispering Way met there in conclave.

In the weeks after Razmir's initial conquest, Ustalav began to settle into something of an established status quo. A few dramatic raids by Razmiran wizards, mercenaries and soldiers had put paid to any organized centers of resistance against his rule, replacing it with the absolute, bone-dead refusal of anywhere out in the country to acknowledge him as their overlord if they did not have a Razmiran official out in their own back yard. The Hungry Mountains were totally out of his control, all except the most lowland parts of Amaans and Virlych a solid wall of resistance to Razmiran oppression, but the cities were in fact getting divine healing by Razmiran priests, who were happy to take over the remnants of the Pharasmin support organization if Bishop Yasmardin Senir (who Razmir is happy to offer the title of head of the Pharasmin faith in Ustalav) didn't have the manpower to fill it. No, no Razmiran official had any hope of traveling through the countryside without an armed escort, but the cities were, at least, pacified, at least after the first urban mobs ran into a complete willingness of the Shackleborn to unleash pike and sword on them, and individual 'pacification forces' occasionally spread out from the cities, especially in the southern coastal counties of Caliphas and Versex, to make sure the nobles whose peasants worked particularly rich and important farmland knew who was boss, and were prepared to swear under Zone of Truth that they intended to pay taxes to Razmir and follow the laws from now on.

(Outside the Palatinates, that is, who had been independent in fact before they were independent in name, their freedom bought by Lastwall and who do not here enter into our story.)

Something resembling stability appears, even if it is not, in fact, really stability. In Barstoi life goes on much as it did before; in Caliphas the king continues to reign even as he does not rule; Razmir begins considering which of the counts he will keep on under Dominate Person (which must be recast every ten days or so, at considerable expense and some risk) and which are harmless enough to be released under Geas or dangerous enough that they should be deposed for relatives who would prefer an empty title to a doomed rebellion.

Count Ristomaur Tiriac does not, overall, consider this a disaster. True, there are paladins in the west, but not in his own domains, and he has Razmir's Lawfully given word that they will refrain from interfering with him and his work so long as Razmir still holds authority. Count Tiriac is not a good person - a good vampire would have faced the sun before his first massacre - but he still, vaguely, associates goodness with things he approves of; he has made no use of the Furrows, and has no objection to them ceasing to exist. He is not especially satisfied with the research materials that Razmir has given him, but it is still some progress towards a final cure for his condition, and he can (and plans to) make any support beyond that which he is already contracted to deliver conditional on Razmir's further support for his own research.

Overall, thinks the count as he sups his brigand, this is about as well as he expected things to go, as long as no one is fool enough to take a swing at Castle Corvischior and the second-most powerful vampire in Ustalav.

Meanwhile, Jean Riudaure has been doing what he does best: keeping an eye on (ostensible) friend and (certain) foe alike.

It is not happy work. Purging a country of its secret nests of undead is uncomfortably like purging one of its remaining sparks of Goodness, modulo the amount of torture employed and, of course, the end result. But Jean Riudaure is very, very good at it, no matter whom he serves.

The chief problem with Ustalav, from his perspective, is that unsolved murders, disappearances, hauntings, and other such evidences of undead activity are by now so common that no one pays them any mind; this he resolves to change. In every city, now, there is someone to whom, it has been announced, all who wish to see Ustalav free of undead should report any and all such happenings, and another such person riding circuit around each county to get reports from the villages. The picture he thereby gets is still, he is sure, tragically incomplete, but it is complete enough that someone looking at the whole thing (such as him) might begin to see see patterns. He is nearly sure, for example, that the Whispering Way met via disposable Dominated proxies, as is their known habit—not that this is, in fact, information. Of course there is a conspiracy against Razmir; probably, in fact, more than one. He still knows frighteningly few of the details.

There's this really strange tendency for circuit riders to get jumped a lot! Totally inexplicable, of course.

(Jumping even a mid-level paladin typically does not turn out well for the thing doing the jumping.)

And a few weeks after the conquest, Lastwall requests a meeting with Razmir's representative for a routine status update.

And Razmir's diplomats will also want to touch base with Lastwall in this, to hear Lastwall's latest round of complaints about how they did all sorts of evil things they weren't supposed to do but that Lastwall had not contracted for them not to do!

Razmir's representatives will be available to discuss the situation. Do they want the con man, the priest or the Very Very Very Busy Decent Person?

They'll take Falkenheim and Telriana, if that's possible. They're not particularly interested in trying to negotiate with anyone who's been mind controlled into thinking Razmir is a god, however.

Getting both of them is in fact a concession, but not an impossible concession.