...He'll hold the scry for the full 45 seconds, just because he - wants to watch - but this is not in fact a good time to gather information on anything other than 'how well Iomedae can fight' (which is mostly something he already knew) and 'how strong her enemies are', which is straightforwardly inferable from the fact that she hasn't already won. 

(Also he's trying to get as good a look as he can at the magic items Iomedae currently is wearing, if there are any, so he can target her more directly on future attempts.) 

He drops it before he's tired enough that he won't be recovered in a candlemark, and before he's drawn on the artifact power-reserves at all. 

He writes a report to the Emperor. The gist is the same as the last one. The war that Iomedae's religious order is fighting seems to include...enemies capable of summoning something like Abyssal demons? They're not exactly the same but you wouldn't expect them to be on another planet. 

He rests for a candlemark and then tries again. For Iomedae first, if he has enough to target her, but if not she probably isn't far from the banner. 

Iomedae is on the ground and killing things instead of in the air and killing things; that's the only difference. 

...Still not a good place to Gate into. 

He's getting better at efficiency, with practice, he can hold this one for over a minute and not come that close to exhaustion. 

He focuses on picking up as much as he can about who, exactly, she's killing. Anything magically distinctive about them? Any enemy warriors who look like leaders, who he might target on a later scry?

They have no life energy! It's very distinctive! Some of them are animated corpses and some of them are skeletons and some of them are various kinds of monsters but all of them are distinctive in that they are already dead.

They're not disorganized, but they have no visible leadership, presumably because Iomedae would swoop over and murder it; none of them seem to be individually a match for her, though they collectively are holding up a lot better than the Empire's armies did, perhaps again because the soldiers are all already dead and their nerve cannot break.

There are a lot of things he doesn't like about this world but - other priorities - 

He drops the scry, again. Writes a report, again, and he's actually less exhausted this time and can spend the next candlemark - two candlemarks, maybe - trying to form any kind of model about the animated corpses and various other not-actually-alive monsters Iomedae is fighting. 

...He doesn't get very far. But his reserves are in good shape, he can scry again - 

- is that the best thing to do, here, will it teach him anything he doesn't already know...? 

This is hard to think about for some reason and so he's just going to try another scry. 

Walking through camp talking with Marit for the handoff. He's read her proposal, by now. He's not going to say anything about it while they're in the field and scryable, but she can tell from his tightly-held body language that he doesn't like the plans in which Alfirin and Iomedae are unreachable inside the fortress while he commands the army. She doesn't like it either, really, but it still might be the best move they have; especially if they go through the darklands, Alfirin won't be possible to spare.

"Twenty one dead overnight," she says. "Mostly in one rush, just past midnight. The rest of the time I got the sense their instructions were to make sure the front was never quite calm enough it didn't need you or me."

      "Uachdaran's just trying to make sure you don't prance out on him again. You probably hurt his feelings."

She laughs. They don't acknowledge aloud that it was an accident, or where she went, or that she had not chosen to return. "I have to say, an endless stream of summoned nabasu really isn't the thing I'd try to keep a girl around."

      "Oh, what would you try?"

"Now, that's not a fair question. You know my track record -"

      "And it's precisely why I'm curious!"

"...I'd try a string of summoned lantern archons Polymorphed into various colors of dragon. Now, that's some good sport and a demonstration of, you know, resourcefulness. Commitment."

       "Can I tell her that?"

"Don't you dare."

He's grinning, as he heads off to command the rearguard, so that's a success. She's grinning too.

Altarrin doesn't speak the language and can't understand what they're saying, or even pick out which parts of the speech are names save by wildly guessing off nonverbal cues, which even with the headband he's not confident in. 

...The headband means he can pick up an awful lot from about a minute of watching a conversation where he can't directly follow the content at all.

The sword-bearing-mage from his first scry is...tense, worried. About something they're planning in the near term, he thinks. Something Iomedae is involved in. Something where...probably...Iomedae is risking herself, and the Knights of Ozem are risking - well, things going very badly. 

(And meanwhile they're - close and trusting, bantering, teasing each other, because they've been doing this for a long, long time, because Iomedae's Knights of Ozem are an order where people who share a vision can trust each other and because the only way to deal with the horrors is to darkly joke about them - Altarrin isn't sure where that thought came from, it's not a way he's ever felt, but then again the horrors he's faced are so much more nebulous than animated corpses and summoned Abyssal demons– not productive he shoves that line of thought away.) 

It's clear that their position is desperate. It's - also clear that this isn't the first time, they've been through this before, but...

(...but this time it's - not Altarrin's fault, exactly, if anything the fact that he killed her meant she was back at all in time to help, but it is in some sense arguably the Empire's fault that she stayed, to fight for Oris, instead of trying to return to...whatever this war is... that is also not a productive line of thought -) 

Altarrin's ability to read subtle cues from body language is very enhanced, right now, and he hasn't met Iomedae but he has spent quite a lot of enhanced-thinking-time trying to make sense of her, and he can hold this scry another thirty seconds if he has to. 

How does Iomedae feel, about the prospects for whatever risky high-variance plan they're maybe about to attempt? 

It's going to be awful. She expects to win at a price she can only barely afford. She's going to do it anyway, because it is better in expectation than the alternatives.

Altarrin is missing a lot of context here, obviously, but - he's pretty sure he knows who he would prefer to win this war. 

(It might be a harder call if Iomedae's enemies were less horrifying, but - maybe not. It feels like he gathered a lot, from that brief less-than-90-seconds peek into Iomedae's life, even if most of what he's noticing is things he can't look or think directly about)

He definitely cannot justify Gating in to help, but he could he's not going to do it against the Emperor's orders, including orders he doesn't actually have but can predict perfectly. 

...he can, however, justify a lesser offer of aid, one less risky to him personally, but - still an overture that might, maybe, lead to future openings for trade with the Empire. 

(There are emotions under that thought. It's not a good time for having emotions and so he doesn't look at them.) 

He drops the scry. He retreats to his office, and sits down to write a proposal. 

His proposal is this: 

Iomedae’s Knights of Ozem are, quite clearly, fighting a desperate war, against enemies that are really obviously not a faction the Empire would want to ally with. Aroden’s followers might also not be a faction the Empire can work with, of course, they are after all the followers of a god, but Altarrin doesn’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility. It’s a different world. Aroden is (if His teachings are true, which should of course be verified separately) a formerly human god. And His followers, at least the ones under Iomedae, are - Altarrin thinks - genuine believers in the cause of Civilization and its principles. A different flavor of it, of course, but you would expect that of people from another world whose main enemies are animated corpses and summoned Abyssal demons. 

(And one way or another, the Empire definitely cannot afford to have Iomedae and her Knights as an enemy.)

They know more now, they’ve narrowed down the possibilities. Iomedae’s claim that Aroden could and would retrieve her soul and restore her to life has been borne out. The reason she didn’t return to Oris is almost certainly not because it’s impossible - since Altarrin has just confirmed the possibility of it from their side, and the magic of Iomedae’s world is definitely not less powerful - and there is another very obvious explanation, which is that she - and probably Aroden as well - are too busy, and not that she doesn't still see the Empire as her enemy. Currently her beliefs about the Empire are - likely just wrong, definitely strongly biased, the gods steered everything she saw. 

Probably, at some point, she and her Knights will either lose (which would be a tragedy for the broader cause of Civilization, whether or not it impacted the Empire directly) or she will stop being too busy, and the Empire will have to face her and her god-steered beliefs, and at the point when they're at war and she's in a position to make the first offensive push, it's going to be much harder to correct that. 

Altarrin proposes that the Empire instead act proactively. It might not achieve anything, but - in Altarrin's opinion, and he has some arguments to make his case - it's not risking all that much. 

One: they have Iomedae's sword. It's among the artifacts they studied. It's...not useless to them...but the artifact itself doesn't give its wielder the skill that Iomedae has, and they haven't figured out how to make it glow and move impossibly fast, that's probably a repeatable-miracle granted by Aroden. They're learning less from it than the others, and even if they could replicate it - which they probably already have enough notes to do, if Aritha masters the trick of it - they mostly can't take advantage of its full powers. Iomedae can. 

Two: he's noticed something about the magic of Iomedae's world. He had half noticed it already, just scrying her during the war in Oris, but it came fully clear to him when he was observing her fighting the animated-corpse army (and also wearing her headband.) Their spells are absurdly powerful, but - apart from the ones that are ongoing effects - they take time. Multiple seconds. (Usually the same multiple, which is bizarre in itself.) 

Three: Gates are a lot faster than that, at least if Altarrin is the one casting them and has no intention of personally crossing. And he is quite sure that Iomedae, and her Knights, and even Aroden, have no idea that he can do this at all. 

Altarrin's proposal is that, the next time he manages to scry Iomedae at her camp - and he would rather try to fit this before she's left, since they've already observed that she can spar for twenty candlemarks a day straight and it looks like the animated corpses don't require sleep, but of course Bastran should take the time he needs to decide - 

- that he raise a Gate to a hundred yards above her, and drop through the sword.

With a letter tied to it. They know Iomedae has translation-magic, even if she can't speak the language, and - the Empire should make it clear that this is their doing, an offer that they're extending to help if Iomedae agrees to leave Oris alone. That they'll consider offering more than that - not just her remaining artifacts, but perhaps even lending some mages - if Iomedae is willing to offer more in return. 

(...They could maybe also attach a bag with the artifacts that are so far useless to them? The ring that doesn't seem to do anything and the stones that orbit a person's head and may or may not need to be instead embedded in their ribcage to work seem like two options that will minimally cost the Empire to give up.) 

Altarrin is fully aware that this is a gamble that might not pay off. He might even be wrong (though he doesn't think so) about it being enough to bribe Iomedae not to help the rebels in Oris again. But it's not that expensive and he thinks it's worth trying. 

Bastran hates getting reports like this. 

He reads it in detail anyway, of course, even though he's so tired and arguably can't justify the time it takes at all that is what Altarrin would call "short term thinking." Probably. 

...He thinks Altarrin is probably right about all of the arguments here, but he is also pretty sure Altarrin wrote this while wearing the creepy headband, so, uh, probably someone on-site should do a Thoughtsensing check? 

(He sends this directly to the supervising site as well as the on-site research leads, and not to Altarrin, because he isn't stupid.) 

Altarrin was expecting this, because he knows Bastran isn't stupid, and under normal circumstances he would be grateful for the caution. 

He's in his office, catching up on actually writing down the notes on his interplanar-search-spell research. He'll be very easy to find for a surprise Thoughtsensing check. 

What is he thinking? Has he become loyal to the insane priestess woman? Is he trying to get resources back to her because he's defecting to her side??

He's thinking that he very much wants this offer to work, at least as far as convincing Iomedae to leave Oris alone, though of course he's hoping for far more than that (the Empire could benefit so much from even one 'cleric' with area-affect healing powers).

He's thinking that Iomedae was already a terrifying enemy even before they knew for sure that her claims were true and her god would bring her back to life.

He thinks it's quite likely that they can come to some kind of mutually beneficial agreement here, if the Empire initiates a negotiation. ...He believes this mostly because of his character assessment of Iomedae, which he is aware has been done mostly while wearing this headband and so is not entirely trustworthy. Though he does think he noticed some of the - commitment to principles - earlier. It'll be in his notes. 

He's thinking that she would be an incredibly valuable ally to the Empire and its cause, if his most optimistic hopes about her order's ideology turn out to be true.

He's aware that they may not turn out to be true. Probably won't turn out to be true, even. He is much more confident that her order and its ideology will keep any deals that they agree to, if the Empire can offer a sufficiently agreeable deal. 

(There are a lot of emotions behind that but they are dominated by weariness and heaviness and a vague pointless-and-aware-that-it's-pointless desire for something different instead of this.) 

Great. Can he take off the headband, please, and think through it again while the headband is far away.

(This too was not unexpected.)

Yes, of course. She can keep reading him the whole time, too, if that would be more reassuring. Though she should keep in mind that taking the headband off is distressing even for him, he's done it a nearly a dozen times by now and he's pretty sure it isn't long-term destabilizing, but having one's entire mental capacity suddenly diminished is....disruptive. 

He takes the headband off. 

and his thoughts collapse into -

- confusion, mostly, there were things he was trying to understand that were important and now those paths are gone, walls falling (back) into place - 

and a deeper confusion that hurts that he can't even look at   (This is deep enough that it's not going to be especially visible.)

...Orient. Focus. 

(His thoughts are quite noticeably simpler, now, and correspondingly easy to follow.) 

He thinks it's worth trying. Even leaving aside the weirdly confident social intuitions that his enhanced-self had about Iomedae's character, he still thinks it's worth making this offer. It's not very risky, for one, and also - well, most people - even pretty ruthless people - end up feeling friendlier toward someone who offers them aid in a moment of desperate need, and this is a moment in which Iomedae and her forces are in desperate need, and thus it will be cheaper to buy her goodwill, right now.

(...She would be a spectacularly valuable ally. This feels undeniably true, having seen her in battle.)

He doesn't think his current plan will buy her alliance to the Empire, but it might at least buy not having her as an enemy, and - they don't actually need to buy time to think, she's clearly going to be occupied for a while and if her god was going to intervene independently then He would have already - but it's somewhere to start. 

- how about they also take aside and do a Thoughtsensing read of the other mage who has been wearing the headband, to see if it reliably causes the desire to help Aroden's followers for perfectly good reasons.

It doesn't especially. She would personally, if someone had asked her for geopolitical opinions which why would they, have favored sending spies through a Gate, but the spies would be operating in the territory of a very powerful interventionist foreign god so plausibly it wouldn't have even worked. She's pretty sure Aroden doesn't really favor civilization and progress because everyone says that and how many of them actually mean it. 

- she is very grateful to the Empire for all of the opportunities it has generously provided her etcetera etcetera. The opinion that no one really means it is not a new, headband-induced opinion, it'll be in her file if Kottras bothered keeping it up to date. She mostly just thinks about magic, with the headband, though it was also useful for deciding she'd rather be Altarrin's and so should not avoid impressing him.

This report will go to the Emperor, then.

The Emperor hates receiving this kind of report EVEN MORE. 

He knows that paranoia doesn't come naturally to him, and he has a lot of mental habits built up around sanity-checking his reasoning, but Altarrin is one of his foundations there. Kastil is another but - he's increasingly realizing that he doesn't trust Kastil for this, Kastil - reasons in one direction only - damn it Altarrin would have better words to describe whatever he's trying to think of and it's not fair that Altarrin isn't here and is maybe compromised.... 

Ughhhhh. He....is going to stare very hard at all of the reports he's gotten from Altarrin over this entire past (miserable) month, and try to gauge whether the recent post-headband reports are uncharacteristic.