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Iomedae in the Eastern Empire!
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"Did you think of any and leave them out?"

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"I continued thinking of them after I started saying 'I can probably think of more', so yes. Excluding those, no, they seem fairly comprehensive."

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"Have you lied to me? Do you have plans to lie to me?"

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"The two falsehoods my double pointed out are indeed false, and no."

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"Is there some question I'd be very glad I asked you?"

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"I am confident the answer is yes but I don't know what it is yet because my model of you isn't good enough." He's going to stretch. And pace. He misses pacing.

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"Is there anything you've done that I will predictably be angry or horrified to learn, if I learn it?"

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"Once again the answer is yes but I can't tell what because you're from another world. You will almost certainly be unhappy either about my former service to the Empire or about my order to refuse surrenders before a major battle, I think everyone gets angry or horrified about one of those."

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" - curious, definitely. But not really angry, or horrified.

I think at this point, most of the possibility that you are trying to deceive me about something stupidly important is from the chance that this spell does not work, and - if you want to do something else, take a break, go for a walk - we can perhaps start trying to understand each other better as well in an hour as right now."

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"I plan on marching east with my army tomorrow. The Empire had twenty thousand troops in Oris and they divided them to watch every pass and cover every farm and there's six thousand men with horse and mage and siege train between here and Holy Ithik; if we march fast enough we can smash them against the border and shatter them before they can join up with the governor marching south. I plan to end this war with a free Oris and that means I need to know what your terms are before I adjust my plans more than I already have."

(His last statement is technically false because he's misusing need.)

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" - all right. The most important thing is that I am a paladin. That is a specific category, at home, all of whose members benefit from having things known to be true of us universally; it's enforced in part by the gods, who will strip a paladin of their powers for misconduct, and in part by our orders, which will respond to - near occasions of misconduct, or tendencies in that direction. With that said, if you imagine that I want to go on wild murder sprees and am constrained by how Aroden would strip me of my powers you are misimagining me. 

I won't break my word, if I give it, even if the person I gave it to is planning to break theirs, even if I thought of a clever justification, even if my life is at stake, even if the world is at stake. One's enemies - hostile gods, especially - can fence you in to some very stupid and dangerous decisions, right, if they can make you do anything just by putting enough on the scales. They won't put those things on the scales if you won't bend to them.

I won't torture people. I won't deliberately send them to Hell. I won't threaten things I wouldn't follow through on, and I won't make things worse just to hurt someone who wronged me. There are circumstances under which I'd decide not to accept surrenders, but none under which I'd accept and then betray them. I will not participate in a war without trying to negotiate a peace, and if terms are arrived at for peace talks I am the enemy of anyone who breaks them.

I am not incompetent to work with normal human beings. Law as Golarion conceives of it is a skill, and one people don't possess if they aren't taught it, and I don't need my allies to possess it perfectly. And a lot of Good is things I can have because I am more powerful than you, safer than you, with backing you cannot conceive of. I know that. You don't have to follow my rules. But where it is cheap for you to do so, I will pay you to; where it is nearly free for you to do so, and you don't only because you're incompetent, I will be annoyed with you, and less inclined to help you, and where it is very costly because you happen to really enjoy torturing people or whatever, we will probably ultimately find ourselves at odds. My only actual condition is that you let me try to communicate to the Empire that if they leave Oris I won't follow them, and not undermine any negotiations I do manage to set up, but we'll get along better, if you're mostly only making things worse where it'd at least be really difficult not to."

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"Right. I can work with that."

"Will you break your word if it's extracted under compulsion? People can do that, as well as various more subtle mental effects."

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"I am quite confident they cannot do it to me. Though in the general case the Knights of Ozem wouldn't count a compelled oath except under some very specific and unusual circumstances where the person sufficiently-obviously benefitted from the option to have their compelled oath be meaningful."

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"Understood. How do you plan to check if the Empire is willing to surrender, and will we have you for the battle?"

 

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"You know more about the Empire than me. If we take a prisoner, show them some of the terrifying magic items, tell them that Oris is lost but if they go home we are happy to be good neighbors and negotiate a peace, and send them off, will that news make it to anyone important?"

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"If they don't get bushwhacked along the way it would go up the chain of command to reach the governor, who will laugh it off, but not until after the next battle or three."

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"Do they have a courier system, is there a way to send letters faster to anyone in the Imperial Court who might be sympathetic to them?"

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"We are doing our absolute best to sever it out in our territory, but yes, from one imperial city to another news travels fast. The problem is getting news out of Oris, not getting it to the Emperor, who I'd like to persuade that he has bigger problems until we have troops in all the passes."

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"That's fair - where's the governor, can I walk in on him and explain my stance personally."

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"Tatanka, probably, that's his 'acting capital', but he might have left with his army by now or been replaced by the emperor, my news isn't up-to-date."

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" - all right. I will be with you for the battle. I will, on your word, not try before the battle to avert it by communicating to the Empire that they are going to lose this and it's just a matter of time, but if it later transpires that this actually could've worked somehow and you didn't see fit to mention it I'll be very annoyed. After the battle we should be more credible about how we're going to win, and will have lost most of the advantage we presently gain from their ignorance of me, and so I'll try again. 

 

I think I may still be underemphasizing the degree to which you may want to mostly not have a battle and just let me kill everybody. You may not want to do that, there is reason to do other things, but you may want to do that and could do that if you wanted."

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" - What."

He pauses. "The Empire would not agree to release Oris in its full territory unless we win overwhelming victories, control the full territory, or more likely both. I... please explain what you mean."

(This reads as a true statement if the spell is still ongoing.)

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"They might be able to stop me with their most powerful casters who know what they are facing and how to counter it. They also might be able to stop me with four hundred well coordinated mages who are only moderately competent. I want to avoid getting forced into either of those situations just in case they could hurt me then. Nothing short of that is going to slow me down. I am very dangerous."

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" - If I ask one of my soldiers to shoot you or one of my mages to throw a levinbolt at you, you mean you'd shrug it off?"

And, light dancing in his eyes -

"If you aren't suddenly struck mad - or missing something obvious being from another world, it's a fool's plot -"

"- Right now their army's in three parts, not counting the one I just wrecked. One all the way north in the Faun Kars to watch the northern passes, one east, and one in the capital. If we take the eastern army, can you take the capital? It would give you your chance to talk to the governor, and no one there knows what you can do. We'd be weeks behind - can't spare any real force for you, but -"

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"If one of your soldiers tries to shoot me it'll bounce off the armor." The armor shapeshifts, but 'resistant to piercing' is how she usually keeps it.  "If enough of them try to shoot me they can't all miss, it'll probably bounce off my skin. If it doesn't do that, it just - won't hurt that much. A levinbolt will sting a little if I don't dodge it, and it overpowers my spell resistance, and if I don't have magical protection up, which I will for a fight. I was worried at first I might be missing something, but if so it's something none of the patrols have displayed. I would be very grateful if you have your people try as hard as possible, but I think that they'll fail.

Everything has worked precisely the way I'd expect if I went someplace without epic heroes forged in the Shining Crusade and they inexplicably tried to kill me instead of running away or surrendering immediately. 

I could go to the capital. It might be nice to travel with at least one person; I do need to sleep sometimes, and I'm not a wizard, I have almost no utility magic. But the killing I can do alone."

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