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Iomedae in the Eastern Empire!
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When Iomedae woke up yesterday - if yesterday she woke up - she was with an army in Ustalav, fighting the Shining Crusades against the arch-necromancer Tar-Baphon the Whispering Tyrant, who sought to create an unending empire of the undead. Right now, though, she's outside a small farming village! She can tell it's a small farming village because of all the farm and pasture land that surrounds the houses, though it's in fairly hilly, woody country that cuts line of sight to basically just the village.

The distinguishing feature of this small farming village, right now, is that there's a large wooden platform and a bunch of soldiers, and what looks like about the entire population of the village - men, women, children - is assembled in a crowd under guard by the soldiers watching the platform, on which the soldiers have lined up half-a-dozen people who look basically indistinguishable from the other peasants (well, more men than women, no children younger than twelve) who are kneeling, hands tied behind their backs, some of them crying, while one of the soldiers with a big two-handed sword prepares to start cutting their heads off.

Most of the people present don't have auras, peasants or soldiers, but three of the soldiers (none of them the executioner) have fancier armor and of those three, two detect as Evil.

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- bizarre? Plane Shift that dropped her in a random place, maybe? The soldiers are not in livery she recognizes but that doesn't even rule out that she's in Taldor and doesn't as much as she'd like rule out that she is thirty miles from where she grew up. Whether or not that's the case, this seems perhaps productive to intervene in, or at least look in on; the Evil is not a great sign about whether this is a functioning justice system here and neither is the prisoner who might be twelve. 

She walks towards them, inhumanly fast but not otherwise threatening, and gestures for the soldier with the sword to halt; if this is Taldor, her crest should be familiar, and hopefully even if she isn't someone Teleporting in is occasion to pause in - whatever this is.

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What???

The soldiers are alerted to someone in huge extremely magic armor carrying a huge extremely magic sword and honestly an absolutely ridiculous amount of other magic items moving with superhuman speed! Most of them can't see the magic, but the troop's wizard totally can.

They're going to go into Possibly Dangerous Threat mode, which involves some pointing of lethal-to-other-people weapons at her, but not their use, and orders to "Halt and identify yourself!" first in the imperial language and then in various other languages they speak, albeit followed by something that sounds like a desperate request for help from one of the crying execution-victims that is met with an order to shut up.

(The executions do seem to be at least briefly stalled, though.)

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She halts; she doesn't speak their language but she has a helm of Telepathy which is nearly as good. 

She is focusing the helmet's Detect Thoughts ability on whoever seems to be the leader, but she sends her response to all of them. :I am Iomedae, paladin of Aroden, commander of the Knights of Ozem. I arrived here by accident. I don't know what's happening here, and will hear an explanation.:

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There's three officers (assuming that's what the fancy armor tracks to), of which the leader (based on who the others defer to) is one of the two who reads as Evil. Inconveniently, however, a Helm of Telepathy doesn't use her magical power to overcome shields, and all three officers are carrying talismans that make them unreadable at the helm's strength.

She can get various of the soldiers and peasants, though, and some of them will repeat her obvious message up to the officers.

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She mostly doesn't use the helm for involuntary mindreading, but for battlefield coordination with people who are deliberately communicating with her (this is also why she has a variant that, like the spell Telepathy, can send to multiple targets). She doesn't have a considered rule against ever doing so, but it's rarely worth it; of course, when it is worth it it's probably worth having it be better at it.

One of the soldiers, then.

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He's thinking that this is REALLY WEIRD and probably one of the Emperor-cursed local gods is doing something horrible, great, just what they needed, this war was supposed to have been a cakewalk but holding the province has been a nightmare, at least where he's stationed.

He also thinks the lieutenant in charge of the troop just said to Iomedae "This is a province of the Eastern Empire,* and we are executing confessed rebels against the Emperor's authority," because he did.

(*: The Eastern Empire obviously does not call itself Eastern; the name I translate here into Taldane means something closer to "the second civilization" or "the area where law and order and civilization still exists" with connotations of "the geographical region that the most civilized country in the world can project military power and maintain the law in", rather suggesting Taldor or Kelesh's boastful claims to world domination.)

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She is pretty sure this isn't Taldor but still somewhat less sure than she'd like. 

 

Also, what a tragedy, she hardly needs any more thoughts than that to identify it as a tragedy. A war, she can intervene in; an ongoing pacification has many, many fewer places to which a sword can be usefully applied. If she's not going to get their province independent again, and she doesn't know if she can do that, it's hardly even a favor to them to inspire them to rebel against it. And also she cannot imagine this is justice and does not want to stand here and permit it while the local population tries not to glance hopefully at her. 

:Tell me more: she says, :about how this region came to be part of your Empire.:

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"Through the decree of the Emperor. Tell me more about yourself," the officer challenges through the mind-read trooper. "This is our domain, not yours." 

(The local population is trying not to glance hopefully at her. They very, very visibly want to be rescued, to her Sense Motive.)

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Uh huh. 

 

Actually for real almost certainly not Taldor, then, because even in its most backwards reaches 'paladin of Aroden, outfitted like this' would not call for much clarification.

:Aroden is the Lawful god of civilization, of the heights of human achievement, of invention and prosperity. He has vested in me the power to do good in the world as best I can, and the responsibility to seek justice and peace and cooperation and the better things which men are capable of. I know very little about this situation. It is my sincere desire to negotiate with your Empire some solution that honors the Emperor's will without looking like -: she gestures - :this, which could easily be mistaken for a cruel and meaningless tyranny.:

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"The gods and their servants are not welcome in the Empire," says the officer through the soldier, and his wizard (one of the officers, but at this point clearly a wizard) starts getting ready to cast hostile spells if she doesn't back off.

(The soldier cannot see that her armor is magic, cannot see that her sword is magic, and is mostly just going "oh shit, she looks like she thinks she can take us! Is she crazy or some kind of really powerful wizard?" but is still planning to follow orders and attack her if his commander orders it, because he's not going to leave his buddies in the lurch, now is he?)

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She nods politely. :I apologize for the unpermitted incursion, then; it was not known to me that this region bans all servants of the gods.: and she might well have come anyway but she would in fact have weighed it as a significant consideration. Unless it amounts to 'no gods, except Asmodeus who is totally different', which is in the range of things she's worried about and not one she feels remotely obliged to respect. :Perhaps we can negotiate an exception to the Empire's laws for Aroden's church, if we can demonstrate that we'll contribute to the strength and prosperity of the Empire.:

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"The Emperor does not make exceptions for gods," says the officer, "and I act only to enforce his decrees." Is she... not going to start a fight with an entire cavalry troop? Great!

(The peasants are much less happy about this than the soldiers.)

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Oh, she's not leaving, she just hasn't yet exhausted the conciliatory things to attempt. :I really think in this specific case the Emperor might consider an exception. Perhaps you can depart, and give your superiors notice of the unusual situation, and I can learn more about this situation and what it might be possible to offer him.: 

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"After the law is enforced," says the officer, who knows a power play when he sees one and is going to maintain his authority because if he doesn't the peasants might think they can rebel again.

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:I cannot permit you to kill half a dozen people who plainly pose no threat to you or your Emperor, and whose countrymen do not want to see them dead, without knowing far more about the broader situation here. I will of course support your men in maintaining order here while you go bring this important news to the right attention.:

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"They have been sentenced to death for the crime of treason, confessed out of their own mouths. Leave or we will consider this an act of war by the Knights of Ozem against the Eastern Empire," and also kick your ass.

(At this point the soldiers are - barring a few people on crowd control - basically all looking at her in an armed-and-dangerous manner, sort of as if she was a new fourth level, not the most powerful paladin in the world.)

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:As you wish.: Her sword starts glowing. :I do not know us to be enemies, and will spare any who surrender.:

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One light cavalry troop of the Eastern Empire, largely dismounted, consisting of of soldiers well-trained and well-equipped, bearing defensive talismans and swords enchanted to cut through these aforesaid talismans and with helmets and breastplates and with a single mage to provide fire support and compulsions, is going to try to kill or incapacitate Iomedae.

They have no idea what they're getting into.

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A Brilliant Energy weapon ignores armor, magical or mundane; there isn't actually that much skill involved from there, but also she's very skilled, and every blow lands precisely where she means it to, which is generally the shoulder of their sword arm.

She mostly expects to be able to avoid killing them. The sword, with its current qualities, is a Merciful Brilliant Energy maximally deadly magic sword, with the 'maximally deadly' and 'merciful' admittedly cutting in different directions, there, but still, if she's not trying to hit people hard (and she's not) a single blow should, hitting a fighter of a few years' experience, do something between 'make it clear to him he won't survive the next one', 'knock him unconscious', or 'leave him bleeding to death but slowly enough that any priest present could fix that'. The cost of this approach is that if they have any truly senior fighters in the mix she might need to hit them twice.

 

Compulsions do not work; her mind is very well shielded. At the first Fireball she throws a dagger at the mage, not because he's going to kill her with that but because he might well accidentally kill one of his comrades.  She throws the dagger with her off hand and it goes right through the mage's heart which was in fact not where she meant to hit, though if he has Fireball he's probably a powerful enough mage to still be fine. 

 

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To what will not be her surprise at all, the merciful sword results in them mostly ending up unconscious on the ground! One really tough guy who's also quite lucky is still up, but the sort of still up where he's dazed and really not feeling it and having trouble focusing, and one of them had only a partially charged talisman and got really unlucky and died of shock when he lost his arm, but he's the only currently dead person - the mage is unconscious and bleeding out, since he had a shield spell up that mitigated the hit a good deal.

The peasants are just... kind of... staring. 

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She may have just made their lives a lot worse! She is genuinely unsure! The possibilities here range from 'she will help them make their province independent' to 'she will convince the Empire's senior leadership they are better allies than enemies' to 'she will advise them all to flee the Empire and half of them will die along the way'.


But they must have known that. And they wanted her to save them.

:I need you to drag them all closer to me and restrain them - sitting on them is adequate - and everyone who wants magical healing should come close as well. I'm going to channel.: Do they know what that means.

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There are a lot of tearful reunions as they stop staring and rush to untie and embrace their about-to-be-executed family and friends!

They do not know what that means! The person she's currently reading thinks they should just slit the soldiers' throats, assuming they don't want to pay them back more than that, but will do what Iomedae says since she's the avatar of a god or something.

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She will repeat the instructions and also start dragging the soldiers into range herself. Possibly, with the gods being banned here, they do not in fact know what a channel is. :Any person with any injuries, new or old, should be within six paces of me. I am going to use Aroden's power to magically heal everyone within that range.:

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Okay yes that's a reason!!! Everyone with injuries, new or old, will be within six paces of her pretty fast! They are not used to gods granting miracles that much on-demand here!

... Does she object if some of them slit the soldiers' throats first?

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:Don't. I don't like letting people die before I know what's going on. They'll be healed, and you'll sit on them, and then we'll figure things out from there.:

 

And she channels. No one present will be able to see it, just the results, which will mean the instantaneous perfect healing of every injury anyone has. 

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