He said 'I speak for Vkandis Sunlord, and for the future of Velgarth, when I say that there are many things you do not understand, and that your intervention in this world is unwelcome.' Her main guesses are that Vkandis is actually Evil, and can see by prophecy that she's going to end up killing him about it, that there's some extremely complicated situation here she's inadvertantly stepped in, and that the mages are lying and don't work for Vkandis at all.

Well. Directing His followers to steal an incredibly destructive weapon in order to threaten Iomedae certainly sounds like the kind of thing that would be Evil! Maybe it's also complicated - the gods are mysterious and hard to understand and see the world in ways that cannot easily be conveyed to mortals - but "stealing superweapons" doesn't really seem complicated, it just seems bad.

Bestet is particularly opposed to men - or male-aligned gods, not that gods are exactly male or female in the usual way - threatening women because the woman in question is too powerful and it scares them. It's offensive. She's pretty sure that Iomedae will have Bestet on her side, in this, though Bestet is a less powerful god than Vkandis and may or may not be able to convey what's going on let alone intervene. Marlana is definitely more than ready to offer any kind of help Iomedae might need. 

- she appreciates it. Right now she's planning to get out of town so that whether or not she survives the superweapon she doesn't take anyone down with her. 

And if she dies, she wants the peace to hold. Tantara and Predain's war is a tragedy, it's needlessly destructive, it came close to being destructive on a scale larger than that, and neither of the principles even want to be fighting it. That's the favor she'd ask of anyone who wants to aid her.

If Bestet can help - well, she could....really stand to have her healing back, if that happens to be an intervention available to Bestet cheaply, and she thinks Aroden or a True Resurrection from home can and will get her soul but she would be very deeply indebted to anyone who made sure it wasn't intercepted by Vkandis, etcetera.

Bestet does not generally send visions with advice, and rarely provides miracles. She trusts her followers to use their judgement. And doesn't, per se, expect worship; Her holy texts are based on the premise that people - mostly women - will follow Her because it's a good deal for them, and unlike the church of Vkandis with their incense and ceremonial fires and scheduled mandatory prayers, practical works in the world are a far greater part of the faith than prayers and hymns and services. 

But it's said that She hears prayers, especially from women in desperate situations (particularly at the hands of men) and from women working to become strong enough to rescue those who need rescuing. Iomedae...is in both situations at once, which might make her prayer especially easily-heard, and she's certainly made waves, so it's likely that Bestet, if She is in a position to intervene at all, already knows of Iomedae's presence. Praying to her for miraculous healing couldn't hurt, even if it's in Marlana's opinion unlikely to work. And Bestet - probably would prefer that Vkandis not get His hands on a soul as apparently well-suited to Her faith as Iomedae, and can perhaps intervene if He tries something. 

...Marlana, for her part, will swear to do all she can to help Urtho maintain the peace if Iomedae dies in this stupid pointless godfeud or whatever it is. She can't promise to do it as well as Iomedae herself would, she's not experienced in international diplomacy - she runs a school where young girls learn to fight - but she'll try. 

She will thank her sincerely, then, and will attempt to address Bestet. Possibly right now, this being a fairly urgent situation. Does Marlana have any further questions or advice?

 (This is considerably more brusque than she'd usually be, but she thinks it'll go over all right. Gender is not very fundamental to Iomedae's conception of the world but there is something here which is very fundamental, a kind of clarity about what power is and what it's for, and she likes it.)

It seems like Iomedae is really very pressed for time and while Marlana does have very many questions, especially if she's to stay at the Tower and try to help Urtho with diplomacy, she can ask them of someone else who doesn't have a god with superweapons after her. 

And Iomedae will close her eyes and look for Bastet. 

Most peoples' conceptions of a god are somewhat askew from the god Itself, it's an inevitability of trying to comprehend alien beings. Aroden left behind detailed records of his decisions and reasoning and people still frequently misunderstand. She does not imagine she has Bastet, but she has - a very simple and pure determination, to grow strong enough to protect everyone in the world from everything that makes them afraid, makes them helpless, makes them weaker, everything that tortures them and kills them. She has had it for as long as she can remember and she picked up a sword and learned how to do it, herself, and then when that wasn't going to be good enough she founded a religious order to teach people how to do it, and then when it became clear enough that wasn't going to do it she began to make plans for the Starstone. Things shouldn't be like this, and she will change them.

Iomedae isn't frightened; she can't be. But she is in a desperate situation, and she does feel desperate, in the sense of 'willing to expend resources that she won't get back, and expecting a bad outcome even so'. She can't dodge a fifty mile fireball. She can maybe dodge the worst of it and endure the rest of it, but a god set on killing her would possess reason to think it would work. Maybe the superweapon and then a Final Strike while she's stunned by the superweapon. Maybe some other thing as out of context as the superweapons initially were. It seems quite likely she could die, of this, and she does not know for sure what happens after that, and that's more than she's risked, well, ever. Less than she'll risk going for the Starstone, but that she'll at least have a lot to gain from. 

And that's if the desired outcome happens, if they go after her with the superweapon; they could go after Predain instead, probably nearly wipe it off the map, and she would rather die than fail Predain that badly, if she could pick one, but she can't. 

She would prefer not this and if there is anyone who can help, she does ask for their help, and promise to repay it as soon as she can conscionably do so.

She would ordinarily also point out that Aroden will pay for local gods to help her, once He learns from her that it happened, but for this specific god that seems like the wrong spirit.

If Bestet hears her, She doesn't directly acknowledge this in any way. Which may or may not mean much; it was explicitly mentioned that She doesn't often send visions to Her followers, and even in Golarion gods often don't find it worth the intervention cost to alert someone that a prayer was heard. 

Iomedae considers it entirely likely Aroden's been watching her this whole time and just hasn't said anything because she's not making any mistakes worth correcting. She continues, trying to do the thing that makes it cheap for gods to see:

Iomedae's present intent: to Gate out to the middle of the sea with a small floating platform on which she can keep a tedious overnight vigil, watching for the first signs of a Gate at which she'll fling herself away from it up into the sky where the superweapon can be most harmlessly discharged. 

An alternative course, which Iomedae will take (she makes the intent firm in herself, so it's a clear fork in prophecy) if Bastet indicates it: instead of the sea, to the polar north.

An alternative course, which Iomedae will take if Bastet advises it, confirms the safety of her soul, and further investigation suggests it is warranted (a less clear fork in prophecy, but still a substantial divergence in Iomedae's future behavior): she gifts the magic items to those best equipped to use them to fix this world, and dies here to return home.

She holds the courses in her mind, as clearly and plainly as a mortal can, and a mortal accustomed to taking instruction from her god at the lowest possible cost to the both of them can make this perfectly clear and the intent wholly real: there will be vanishingly few paths where Bastet indicates 'second thing' and Iomedae doesn't go north. 

In the absence of guidance she'll do her present intent. Further desires, if they're legible:  she would really really appreciate being restored to the state she arrived here with, seven uses remaining of her Lay On Hands ability, if that were in the power of a god. In communing with Aroden it would ordinarily be returned to her, but Aroden is far away. 

And more important than that: she knows the purpose her soul is pointed to. It is crucial that Vkandis cannot grab at her soul, before it makes its way on that course. She doesn't think in these terms, much, but it would be a violation of who she is and everything she holds sacred, for him to rip her out of the river that will take her back to her people. 

She is not sent any vision or sudden sourceless-truth conviction of which path is best, but that wouldn't necessarily be the cheapest way for Bestet to get information to her, when coincidences can be nudged in Foresight more cheaply. 

If she wants to wait a little longer to see if some kind of sign will reach her, Urtho's people have in fact located a priest of the Nameless God of Everburning Flame who is willing to speak with her right now. 

Sounds good, she'll do that.

High Priestess Thaliss presides over the most famous historical shrine to the Everburning Flame in Tantara. There are temples in the cities too, of course, but the best-known sites are mostly natural geographical formations; this one has hot springs, theorized to have healing properties, and it also has a literal flame that burns from some kind of flammable gas that leaks slowly out from deep in the earth. 

Thaliss, like Marlana, was grabbed here on short notice five minutes ago and has gotten a very sketchy and confusing report from some of Urtho's panicked mages and also wants the explanation for WHAT IS GOING ON and to know what Iomedae thinks she or her god can do about it. Iomedae is probably kind of tired of explaining it, by now. 

Well, at first Iomedae thought that possibly the local gods were in fact unanimously worried about the peace between Tantara and Predain she's been putting together, in which case she'd want to accommodate the worries obviously. But it sounds like this is in fact not universal. Which means what happens is that a group of terrorists claiming to be acting on Vkandis's orders are threatening Iomedae with a horrifying superweapon they stole from Urtho, and Iomedae is going to go evacuate to somewhere where its detonation won't harm anyone else but would appreciate clarification about whether Vkandis really commanded this (which might suggest He's Evil and needs opposing) or whether these people are mistaken.

And she can at least make sure the chosen evacuation site isn't near any holy sites of the Everburning Flame, things like that, as long as she knows about all of them.

It would...be moderately surprising to Thaliss if Vkandis were alone among the gods in having significant concerns, rather than more likely to respond to His concerns with, well, stolen superweapons and terrorism. This is partly a fact about Vkandis – compared to the other gods, He acts faster, usually, and is much more likely to operate via flashy interventions in the material plane – and partly, though not unrelatedly a fact about the culture of those who tend to worship Vkandis. 

(No one is Evil, not really. This is kind of an important tenet of the church of the Nameless God. But people - and gods, probably, too - can be hurt and scared and damaged, and react to understandable fears in ways that cause even more harm, and the key mission of the church is to contribute, everywhere and in every way they can, to carving out spaces where people can heal and redeem themselves.)  

It seems plausible that there is a genuine concern, but that Vkandis' hasty solution to it will have immense collateral damage if implemented, and should be avoided if they can possibly find another way. Thaliss is deeply grateful for Iomedae's willingness to evacuate into uninhabited territory, though obviously it's unfortunate that it appears necessary. She can give her a map of all the holy sites in Tantara and south of it. 

And she can hardly promise that her god will be able to talk to Vkandis, and perhaps find a way forward that involves talking rather than enormous explosions, but - she will pray very seriously for it. 

Iomedae appreciates it deeply, and if she is skeptical of the claim that no one is really Evil - well, it's close enough to true of mortals, and it is one of the most important technically-wrong things to keep in mind. 

They unfortunately cannot offer her any direct help. Theirs is not a martial order, and despite the Nameless God's association with flames, it's not the 'setting battlefields on fire' kind. 

Thaliss is deeply grateful for Iomedae's honesty and her warning, though. They will probably try to evacuate their city temples, where a lot of very vulnerable people are often sheltering, and bring everyone they can to the holy sites, which are mostly rural and more than fifty miles from the Tower, the border with Predain, or another plausible target. 

And they will pray for the Nameless God to send any aid They can to Iomedae. ...To be clear they will also be making the same prayer for everyone else involved, on all sides, both because they have very little context and mostly Iomedae's word to go on for what happened, and also because one of the tenets of their faith is that 'sides' aren't real; everyone is hurting others, sometimes, and everyone is capable of stopping if given just a little space and better options. So they'll pray for the priests of Vkandis as well, and for Urtho, and for Ma'ar, and anyone else they can think of, for the Nameless God to show them better options. 

And she hopes that the Nameless God does do that. - maybe especially Ma'ar. He seems like possibly a particularly fruitful person to give better options, and the person who can choose whether the peace lives or dies, if Iomedae is killed. 

If the Nameless God happens to be a god with the same teachings, of Iomedae's own world, She could pass a message to Aroden, and He'd be very grateful, and repay Her as He could.

Meanwhile, a very very long way south: 

Shayeen has a problem. 

She already had several hundred problems. Her problems began even before she was born, really, with the petty king of one of the River Delta Kingdoms who keeps her mother as his concubine, continuing on to the fact that, fifteen years ago, said king could not give her mother a child, and her mother decided to sleep with a random wandering minstrel from the southern reach of the Haighlei Empire. It became apparent by the time Shayeen was three that she was a bastard twice over. And then war came to the river kingdoms, as it does at regular intervals, and the man who isn't her father married the princess of a neighboring kingdom to broker an alliance. And then Shayeen's mage-gift awakened, and her life became even more complicated. 

- and now the king who isn't her father is slowly dying of a mysterious illness, and her mother, who somehow still genuinely loves him, refuses to leave, and it looks like once again the river-kingdoms are headed for war, a pointless war that will last until a new set of kings re-emerge from the bloodbath, and Shayeen wants to fix it but she's only fourteen, and a girl (not that this should make a difference to anything but it does), a bastard twice over, whose only combat training is from sneaking out to watch the boys in weapons-lessons and then practicing on her own in the attic. And so she ran away, six weeks ago, to seek a mage-school or a teacher or even just a friend willing to ride at her side.

And two weeks ago she met an old mercenary in a tavern who gave her a magic sword, which you would think would be the best possible beginning to an incredible magical adventure, except that the blade who calls herself Need cannot actually make Shayeen powerful enough to defeat an army. Not yet. And also loves to tell Shayeen that her plans are stupid. None of the ballads ever mentioned magic swords that would bully you. 

So they've been wandering further east, in search of a temple to Bestet, because Need thinks that Shayeen needs some formal training and to 'grow up', and that the order of Bestet - which trains women only - is a better place to do that than with a mercenary company. 

It's taking a while, because Need has some kind of Foresight to find women in trouble and they keep detouring to rescue them. Which is very exciting, and would be everything Shayeen had ever dreamed of, if not for the fact that her homeland is in danger and she had really been hoping for a magical adventure that would result in being Queen.  

And now she has a DIFFERENT PROBLEM. Which is that Need is very, very loudly demanding that they go north. 

Why north??? Home is south!!! The only thing she knows of that's north of here is the Ceej Empire and it sounds horrible. 

Further north than that! ...Actually a lot further north but Need isn't sure, yet, who needs them or why. They need to make a stop at Urtho's Tower. 

Urtho's Tower is a real place????? Need could have mentioned that SOONER. If Shayeen had known that the ballads were about a REAL PLACE she would absolutely have gone there. 

(The River Delta Kingdoms are an insular culture, and most of their trade connections are by sea, with the Haighlei Empire and the other coastal states. They are also not a very literate culture, or one that encourages education for women. Shayeen does not actually know how to read.) 

Urtho's Tower is a real place! It's not - or at least wasn't, the last Need heard - a good place to learn how to go to war or become a queen. Need was last in the kingdom two bearers ago; it's a peaceful place, one where women are rarely in desperate need that goes unanswered by other rescuers. 

Or it used to be, at least. There is definitely someone in trouble and, given the intensity of the pull (it's actually quite painful, both for Need herself and Shayeen) it's important and urgent. 

Shayeen doesn't know how to Gate. Need can help her, but not with the techniques she would require to Gate somewhere she's never even been. So they have to urgently find someone who can Gate them there.

Fortunately, mercenary mages tend to have been to all sorts of places. Maybe not Tantara, which hasn't hired mercenary companies in living memory, but the Ceej Empire, which does engage in trade with Tantara. 

And they have gold. 

Not that much gold! And Shayeen was saving it! Why should she spend her gold that she was saving for her homeland on saving someone four kingdoms away– 

...all right, FINE, there's a woman in trouble in an archmage's tower out of ballads. It's not what Shayeen was planning to do with her life but you can't just refuse that call. 

Indeed you cannot.