She nods. This seems appropriate to happen, that the gods take vengeance on people who destroy their temples by sending their champions. It's the sort of thing that would happen in the story. The Empire is very bad, she tries to send, with no actual supernatural ability whatsoever.

:Yes. I am sorry that I could not come sooner.:

Well, now everything will be fine. What should she do, if she's not supposed to come closer? (She has heard adults tell LOTS OF STORIES about people who don't obey supernatural warnings and end up dead or turned into statues because of it.)

:If you know anyone who would want to know that I am here, maybe because they are angry at the Empire, and who doesn't know, you could tell them.:

Well, everyone is angry at the Empire. She'll go tell some adults.

Iomedae waits and prays.

This will make it first back to an adult, and then to some kind of community-leader type, who will verify that her sword is indeed glowing and approach cautiously before bowing.

"You are a servant of the gods?" he offers.

She stands up, and bows in return. :I am a paladin of Aroden, god of civilization.:

It is apparent that he does not have a very good translation of "paladin" (other than 'divine agent claimed to be benevolent') or "Aroden," and that he is trying to figure out if there's a gap somewhere.

"That is not a god we know."

:I know. I am from very far away, and I am here to fight the Empire. I can tell you of Aroden, if you want me to, but I can't stay here forever, and I believe they will kill you, if they find out that you know of Him. I am looking for others who oppose the Empire.:

There is a very important distinction between "people who oppose the Empire" and "people who would oppose the Empire if there was the slightest chance of success," and he is, to even her most friendly Detect Thoughts, in the latter category. He knows there are loyalist bands out in the woods and mountains, he knows imperial patrols sometimes go missing; a patrol has passed through his village, and executed two people, and left with stern warnings that resisting the Empire would be punished, and he's heard rumors of more organization.

"There are people who would oppose the Empire, but we do not know who does." He knows there's some travelers who come through sometimes bringing word of victories by the loyalists and inviting people to come join them, whose names he doesn't know but whose faces he does, and he's pretty sure they work for the rebels, but, see, if he knew their names the Empire could make him tell them the names.

As is eminently sensible of everyone involved but very inconvenient when she's in a desperate hurry. :I understand.: And maybe he'll tell those people who work for the rebels, when next they come, that she was here, but she's not going to ask it of him.

'Out in the woods and mountains' is such an astonishing amount of space to search. 

:If there is anyone who wants to come with me, they may.:

All the people who wanted to leave already left except the kids who they do not, in fact, intend to let run off to die alongside a magic sword wielding champion of the gods.

"I will pass your message on."

She keeps moving. She's not in fact sure it's safer than staying in one place and hoping the rebels come visit it, but it doesn't seem worse and it's more in keeping with her mood. She doesn't like accepting the hospitality of people she can't protect, even if they'd offer it, and she wants the word to spread widely, that she exists, that she's looking for others.

And there's the chance, as long as she's dropping in on villages, that she'll find one where there are rebels currently, and as long as she's on the road, as long as she's making a point of riding through good places to ambush someone, that she'll find the rebels at their work.

She does start winding her way back to her original village. She did not intend to stay away long; once the patrol is determined to be missing by local commanders, another might be sent, and they're not remotely ready for it.

The word spreads, as she travels. None of the places she visits have rebels in them when she stays there, but by the time she makes it back she's started a trickle of rumors.

Her village has not been burned to the ground, has not gotten very far on drilling (they have, obviously, started on her training, but with nobody to show them how to do it right they aren't sure what mistakes they're making) and has not heard news of elsewhere yet.

She thinks that the most credible reports of her activity are now from a soldier who should be back at his command by now, a good distance from here. 

And they can get to drilling with proper instruction, now. Iomedae has trained a lot of people to be dangerous with swords and bows, and she has a lot of magic for it, and she's rationing the magic somewhat carefully what with how Aroden can't grant her requests here but with Pearls of Power she should still be able to stretch it out for a very long time. She uses the spell Burst of Glory every day to give them all temporary strength that doesn't last long but is on some theories an ingredient of how people get tougher over time in Golarion. (She has noticed the people here do not especially seem to get tougher over time, and the lack of magical healing seems potentially an explanation). She spends a lot of time patiently swordfighting at precisely the right skill level to challenge them.

She lends out her belt readily, for people to practice with; you don't want to entirely get used to a strength not your own, but it can be helpful when you're trying a skill for the first time to have a strength sufficient for it so that you can focus on other things. 

And also she'd like them to be stockpiling a lot of food, more than would be usual for winter. She's aware that's a lot to ask on top of the swordfighting practice, but it opens up a lot of strategic options. She is happy to help with the hunting; that's good combat practice for them anyway. 

No one scries and kills her the first night the Empire should have heard word of her, so that rules out one possible accounting of how easily they can deal with an interfering powerful paladin. 

They train, and they try to do their best to store what they can, and they warn her that when the harvest comes tax collectors will come to take it.

The first person to show up from outside the village (narrowly defined) is someone from an outlying farm who shoe repairs, because their village has someone who has being a cobbler as a side job, and the other villages nearby don't. What is Iomedae's reaction to this first traveler to come and visit her new state cult village?

Killing the tax collectors will invite retaliation but she is tentatively inclined to do it anyway; it won't invite retaliation specifically aimed at taking her down, and anything not aimed at that won't succeed at that.

She'll let the people of this village decide, though, if that's a risk they're ready to take.

She will tell anyone who asks (and isn't from the Empire) that she is a champion of Aroden, god of civilization, and that she is training the people here to defend themselves from the Empire. 

That will cause the news to spread to outlying villages, and some people there will express an interest in investigating! (Others will deliberately avoid investigating.)

She does sermons in the evenings. She cuts a lot of firewood and has a big warm fire and sings songs and tells stories, about Aroden, about Axis and about Heaven, about Golarion, about decisions she has had to make and how she made them, about poor farmers who had to decide whether or not to do the right thing and maybe die of it when horrors came to their homeland, about the grand project of civilization: better crops, better medicine, better roads, less death and terror and tragedy. 

She does not promise she can protect people in neighboring villages, but if they flee here when they see soldiers coming, she does intend to personally kill anyone who makes trouble for her people.

This "grand project of civilization" stuff sounds a lot like Imperial propaganda and so people are very slightly inoculated against it as a selling point, but Axis and Heaven remain pretty persuasive, and her training is very effective. She has a few immigrants, farmhands without strong ties, by the time the rebel rider arrives in her village.

He's riding a horse (to the careful eye, one similar to the imperial ones she's been liberating, though the brand is a shape inclusive of the Imperial one and the tack has all been changed) and looks like a pretty normal tinker and petty merchant, wandering the roads with his tools, buying here, selling there, but some of the villagers recognize him when he shows as one of the people who spreads the word of rebellion.

He will arrive in a village she has been diligently trying to turn into a fighting unit with the weapons she stole off several different detachments of soldiers.

She'll wait to see what he's here to say.

He's going to burst into a grin as soon as he sees her group, then - still with the biggest smile on his face - swing off his horse most of the way to her. "A militia! In Greyleaf!" A quick flash of it at Iomedae. "I bet my news is still more exciting than yours."

:If I were a betting person I would bet against you! But go on.:

And she's a mindspeaker! He might lose the bet! "We've broken the garrison!" he says. "General Half-Heart's fled and beaten - ten thousand men dead and the dragon banners are flying, every village is sending men - we're marching on Mahauna and there's nobody left to hold it" - and he'll rummage in his saddlebags and pull out a swath of bloodstained silk that in Golarion would be worth more than the village.