Pelias thinks that if they could arrange for Oris to pay them tribute, that would do a lot for public welfare; 'converted the province into an autonomous client state' is much less politically dreadful than 'it beat us and so got free.'

Klemath has negotiation-with-barbarians plans for if worst comes to worst, as it may.

Bastran will hear out everyone's plans for managing the withdrawal movements, preventing riots, and negotiating with foreign parties. 

He's...not necessarily opposed to Oris paying the Empire tribute; it seems strictly better for them than eventually and messily being conquered, and actually also better for the Empire than spending years messily conquering them. It's a second or third step, though, once they have plans hammered out for the withdrawal itself, and a letter to send to the rebel leader. 

- he does point out that they have the rebel leader's apparently-very-talented body double in custody, and that's a bargaining card. It can perhaps be included in their initial communications that they will of course return him alive – after the rebels have formally agreed to and signed the terms where they give up Havau Bar. 

Seems like a good idea to him! Possibly for an exchange, if there's any Imperial prisoners the rebels haven't slaughtered.

As good as any idea that involves giving up provinces.

But there's two legions in Oris and they might need more for pacification, and two legions back here would be very helpful...

... Financial crisis still about to land on them like a ton of bricks?

Bastran will hear suggestions again for ways to improve the state of the treasury.

He's still really not enamored of the idea of granting tax reforms in exchange for current favors; it loses them future revenue, and Altarrin has spent decades undoing past such reforms. He's...not tabling it for sure, but it's not his first resort. 

He's slightly more willing to consider relaxing the laws on hiring foreign sailors. He would heavily want to discourage them settling in port cities and bringing their families there, which ends up giving their inevitable underground religious cults a lot more momentum. Maximum contract lengths, maybe, allowing foreign sailors to fill short term seasonal needs but not to be hired on for longer than six months? Unfavorable tax policies if they do settle, to discourage it? 

(He doesn't like it either. The Empire should be a beacon of civilization, a place where everyone wants to live. But it's been tried, and it doesn't work.) 

He does want to point out one reason to worry less, or at least worry differently, about borrowing at high interest rates at this particular moment in time: there's another world. Either there's going to be a war with it - in which case the Empire has much bigger and much more urgent problems than owing interest on loans - or, if they manage to thread that needle, there's going to be trade. And the Empire is going to be the first place in Velgarth that can move people and goods back and forth, and may for a long time be the only place. If they can sell diamonds at the price diamonds are worth over there, they shouldn't have an issue paying back their debts. 

The Empire can move reasonably fast when it has to, but they're not going to finish the arrangements for Oris tonight. Bastran wants to dismiss the meeting and send the various ministers off to delegate the tasks that need to happen. He wants a finalized proposal for Oris, complete with an initial draft letter to send the rebel leader, on his desk for tomorrow morning. 

Before the meeting ends, he'll listen through the inevitable lists of recommended names up for promotion in the various departments, submitted for Imperial approval. Everyone has plans to fill the available places in their departments with people loyal to them, or who owe them favors, and under many conditions Bastran would review them more thoroughly. But he's tired, and he has a headache, and Altarrin isn't here. He'll go ahead and sign off on nearly everyone, so that this meeting can be over. 

They'll take Urgir not the next dawn, but the dawn after that.

Some of the churches have reservations, probably because their gods have conveyed some Concerns, but Iomedae is broadly able to reassure them, once she's sworn them to secrecy. (If you've sworn four people to secrecy, you should no longer be sure you have a secret, as a general rule of thumb, but your odds are a bit better when they're all ninth circle clerics.)

Iomedae had recently been exploring other worlds, as Aroden did before her. She feared Tar-Baphon intervening dangerously, and had a contingency which triggered unpredictably-from-the-perspective-of-the-gods because it triggered as a result of an event in another world, and that made it hard for the gods to see. Aroden explained the problem and has requested she not use any Wishes for the time being and in the future she'll work harder to geographically constrain noise resulting from world-exploring, as Aroden himself once did. 

And she did, as she'd intended, come back with a supply of diamonds, which she means to use to take Urgir.

("No," says the High Priestess of Sarenrae, Emine Etciena, flatly.

"- without bloodshed."

" - no Miracle will do that."

"I know. I plan six.")

The High Priest of Nethys, who calls himself Syhten which is obviously just Nethys backwards but you're not allowed to call him on it, tells her no. "I think you're not ambitious enough. Where you're blowing up an entire plane of Hell, sure, I'll throw some Miracles your way over there. If you pay me for them here."

" - sorry," says Iomedae, "you are proposing that I give you the diamonds, you don't give me a Miracle, but you blow up a plane of Hell?"

"I do a Miracle for you when you're blowing up a plane of Hell."

"....a helpful Miracle?"

"I am enthusiastically in favor of blowing up Hell," he says, quite seriously.

Iomedae relays this conversation very rapidly to the smartest person she knows. :I should...give him the diamond, right? Even if there's only, like, a ten percent chance that he's serious - and a much smaller chance that it impacts the success of my plan to blow up a plane of Hell, when I have one - it feels very exploitable, but - it's not as if I'd do it on the word of most people, and -:

:...Hold on, I need to think about this for a minute.:

It actually takes her two. Nethys can do that sometimes.

:I…think you should? Probably? It - I think he is saying that there are other worlds - not other planets like Velgarth, not other planes - whole copies of all of Creation, probably? And that in some of them you are trying to blow up a plane of hell. Probably worlds where we need an unambitious Nethysian miracle are much more common than ones where we’re trying to blow up a plane of Hell, but not so much so that it’s not the right trade. And we have diamonds to spare. Do it.:

“I am not extending this offer to worlds where Alfirin without you is blowing up Hell,” the High Priest of Nethys says conversationally. “She would exploit that to the point where it wasn’t even fun anymore.”

“- right,” says Iomedae. And hands him a Miracle diamond. 

And passes that along to Alfirin because - she’ll want to hear it, that there are worlds where she’s blowing up Hell all by herself.

Sarenrae, Erastil, Shelyn, for the Hymn. Pharasma, for the Heal. It doesn’t leave a lot of churches with known ninth circle priests, and she worries that Gorum, invited to a battlefield, will make it into a battlefield, which isn’t what she wants. Asmodeus is obviously out of the question. 

             “We don’t do war,” Archbanker Tilbun Vakkad says. 

“ I am trying to - set a precedent for something completely different, because I think your Church is right to abhor the sacks of cities, because I think - once people know it’s possible for something better - then it’ll be easier to demand it more often. And I’m trying to make a prosperous lawful city out of a nightmarish anarchy seething around the edges of a nightmarish slave state ruled by Tar Baphon. 

The core of what I’m reaching for, here, is - to trade instead of fighting, to make each other stronger rather than weaker, to build a world where I can rejoice when my enemies prosper.

 And - we were previously negotiating a deal for trade with Velgarth. I no longer want diamonds. I want this Miracle. …two Miracles, probably, for two gates. I want to trade, with you and with Abadar, so that we will both be vastly better off, and so will almost everyone in Urgir and almost everyone in Velgarth.”

“Setting pricing aside a moment - I don’t think Abadar can force down the gates of a dwarven sky-citadel. I don’t think it’s the right kind of thing to ask him for even with a Miracle.”

“...can He make new ones?”

“Can Aroden grant me a Miracle tomorrow?”

NO

“When I’m more powerful?”

YES

“Can I through the use of Miracles become more powerful such that Aroden could then grant me a Miracle -”

YES

“Could I, with a single Miracle, become powerful enough that Aroden could grant me a Miracle -”

YES

“Would the state of being powerful enough Aroden can grant me miracles be temporary, if I used a Miracle to ask for it?”

YES

“So we could do it, though I think we shouldn’t. It adds the cost of an additional two miracles, and I also gave the High Priest of Nethys a diamond for complicated reasons, so that’d leave us only three. And it’d be - mostly pure public relations, the additional two Miracles. Well, public relations and confusing Tar-Baphon as much as possible.”

             “That does not sound like a good use of two Miracles,” Marit agrees. “- it’s good to know that Aroden will be able to grant you miracles when you’re more powerful. Since at some point at the end of all this we do have to seal Tar-Baphon.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

The sun rises on Urgir, and the soldiers of the crusade are assembled in the field, and Iomedae strides out from her tent, armored, holding her sword which went missing for a little while in there. It’s glowing, now, unmistakeable. 

She casts the spell Oath of Peace, and she spreads angelic wings and flies, and she activates a magic item of Mage’s Decree and speaks to all within nine miles, crusaders and orcs alike.

(Well, actually, Alfirin hits the orcs, with the same message at the same time spoken in Iomedae’s voice but in a language they’ll understand. Mage’s Decree doesn’t do translation. This is the kind of detail that is important to get right but the logistics make for a less good story.)

“The living people of Urgir are not my enemy,” Iomedae says. “They have endured Tar-Baphon’s oppression. I have come to end it.”