"If you think we stand a better shot at getting all of Dis then that settles it to my mind. At some amount of destruction external to Hell, it's - probably worth at least asking if Aroden can promise us confidentiality, despite the small risk He'll notice when considering the question, and then having more comprehensive harm-reduction in place. And under weaker assumptions than that it's worth, at the last minute, notifying Him, when He can only stop us by communicating that Asmodeus has offered something better to us conditional on our not doing it."

Gods can promise confidentiality? Urtho is very surprised about this! 

"What kind of harm reduction would Aroden be able to help with, if He had more warning to set it up?" Ma'ar asks. 

" - if we're going to damage Axis then with warning the Lawful Neutral gods could probably shore it up, cut off their forms of transit with Hell, evacuate affected segments, etcetera, and will be justifiably very angry with us if we don't let them. If we're going to damage the Elemental Planes - people live there, I don't know if they could be feasibly evacuated or if divine intervention could protect them, but it's more likely if the gods had time to plan. If we're going to damage Abaddon or the Abyss I don't really care, if we're going to damage the Boneyard I - expect there to be a bunch of weird complicated considerations, but also the Boneyard's probably hard to damage..."

Urtho has no context on the afterlife planes! He wants to know everything about their magical properties. Are they easier or harder to access from the elemental planes than the material plane is? For example, does summoning elementals work in afterlives, and if so is it easier or harder? 

Harder! It's still possible, but around Golarion the elemental planes are clustered fairly close to the Material, whereas the afterlife planes are farther. The afterlife planes are all similarly distant from each other, Axis or Abbadon wouldn't be in meaningfully more danger than Elysium - The Boneyard and the Abyss would be the non-Hell non-Astral planes at the greatest risk, the Boneyard because it links to all the others for distributing judged souls and the Abyss because it's in the nature of the Abyss to just kind of get everywhere - she can restate that more formally, actually, that might be important even if Iomedae and Ma'ar are probably not going to follow the formal statement very well -

Urtho finds this helpful! He would lend the headband back to Ma'ar to make it easier to follow, but Ma'ar still looks exhausted. (Ma'ar should arguably not be sitting through this whole conversation at all, but Urtho-with-headband-perceptiveness can pick up that he very much doesn't want to leave.) Urtho can catch him up later. 

...His tentative conclusion is that, in the absence of Gates - either open ones, or permanent termini even if they aren't at that moment active - the complete destruction of everything in Dis would cause ripples in other planes, maybe quite disruptive ripples, but probably not propagate the chain-reaction there? The Abyss is going to be the most at-risk of the non-Hell afterlife planes but it sounds like they aren't as bothered by that. 

It sounds like there are installations vaguely like permanent Gates between Dis and Avernus, though, so Avernus will be at higher risk, though if it's not magically dense enough the chain reaction would die out before hitting all of it. Is Dis going to have any other permanent-Gate-like links to different planes? Especially the elemental planes, which he thinks are otherwise at relatively lower risk? 

Well, Erebus. But other than that, no, Efreeti wanting to deal with Hell have to go through the gates in Avernus like everyone else. (Well, they go through the nice gates for foreign dignitaries rather than the petitioner gates) Avernus might have some permanent or semipermanent gates to other planes, that might be inconveniently close to gates to Dis.

It wouldn't be surprising if the gates between Avernus and Axis were convenient to the gates between Avernus and Dis, and it's really quite important not to let the chain reaction spread to Axis.

Ma'ar drags himself to more alertness. 

"We are going to have to invade via Avernus anyway, right? At which point it will already be - not especially discreet. Can we bring enough people to shut down the permanent Gates between Avernus and Axis? ...Ours can be destroyed without magic, just by smashing the archway, I am not sure how your kind works." 

"We're going to invade via Avernus but we're going to have to try to do that very very fast, so Hell doesn't have time to react, anything that adds two rounds probably isn't worth it. Anything simultaneous might be."

"If they are magically distinctive enough to target with scrying, I may be able to destroy them without actually being there. Assuming that Avernus does not categorically block attempts at scrying or something." 

"Some powerful beings can reach back through a scry and crush your mind, you should be careful about it, but Barbatos might not be one of them and most of Avernus is more than forty feet from Barbatos at any given time so it should be possible."

"I've been hanging out with them while they scry with a Magic Circle Against Evil up, except for the interval where I was in Golarion."

"...If we get unlucky and Barbatos - is that a god? - is in range, and your protections are not enough, then - is it fixable? If it is not then - I think Urtho should not be the one doing this. I am not sure if it is something where...others might volunteer." 

"That would stop someone as powerful as me, though I wouldn't trust it against Dispater if you happened to scry him. It is fixable, though."

"- Then I am willing to risk it. It seems - very important to get right - and I am much more confident that I can figure out how to destroy the thresholds from a different plane, than I am that I could teach someone else how." 

Is there anything else that Alfirin thinks they need to go over now? 

No, she thinks they've covered all the most important points - obviously they should be collaborating more and checking each other on the details but there's no reason that has to happen now even if she would prefer to spend more time talking about magic instead of having feelings or thinking about things.

Iomedae was worried about her and

She should figure out what's up with that, Iomedae never worries about her anymo-

She's kind of worried about Iomedae too, what with how a god tried to shred her -

Clearly something is wrong, because -

She's fine, really, but -

She's kind of worried about Iomedae too -

She should talk with Iomedae about that, it seems -

She's kind of worried about Iomedae -

- maybe she could use a couple hours of sleep and a hot bath and some privacy. Are those things that exist here?

Yes, of course! They should probably all sleep on this, and come back to it tomorrow to go over everything again and make sure they're not missing anything, before they make any decisions. 

He'll summon the hertasi staff to escort Alfirin to a nice guest room. ...Ma'ar has usually been Gating home at the end of the day but does not seem incredibly up for that right now, do he and Iomedae want a guest room as well? 

...Yeah that's probably a good idea, Ma'ar does not feel like Gating anywhere right now. 

(The guest rooms are very nice. Alfirin's is ten storeys up, with a floor-to-ceiling window that can be made opaque with magic but by default shows a gorgeous view. It has a large sitting-room area, a kitchen with magical refrigeration and a magical stove available, a bathroom with an enormous tub and both hot and cold running water, and a bedroom with an enormous curtained four-poster bed. The hertasi will be on hand to bring her anything else she might need.) 

('A guest room for Iomedae and Ma'ar' probably does not convey to Alfirin anything she hadn't already inferred; Alfirin's very perceptive and Iomedae was not hiding anything and Ma'ar is not particularly given to subtlety. Iomedae nonetheless wishes she'd, uh, told Alfirin, in words, first, except that they wanted to get out of Golarion as quickly as possible and the stakes were too high for things like that to feel like the right tradeoff for either of them.)

If there was anything new to her in those words she gives no indication of it.

She follows the hertasi to get room and asks them to bring her something to eat - something grounding, bread and butter and bean stew and cold water - and then to go away and stop trying to be helpful.

(Ma'ar is not generally inclined to subtlety, no, but he might have attempted it if he knew some background facts that he does not in fact know, or if he had the headband and enough energy to try to read more of the subtext. He's picked up that Alfirin is not incredibly okay, but there are so many reasons for that, it doesn't exactly feel like a mystery. He goes with Iomedae. ...He does want to ask her for more background on Alfirin and their work together, he feels like he's missing something, but - maybe after he's slept.) 

The hertasi bring Alfirin the food requested and make sure she knows how to call for one of them if she needs anything else, and then leave her alone.