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to reach for the shining sun
Iomedae in the Eastern Empire!
Permalink Mark Unread

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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They will do what she says (grudgingly, in the case of the person she's reading, who would really prefer to KILL THEM KILL THEM KILL THEM ALL) and WOW.

Everyone is instantaneously perfectly healed? The soldiers are very confused and the farmers are very very grateful. And also slightly confused. Some of them are going to try praising Aroden! Or her!

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:Aroden and I are not all-powerful and are not all-seeing. To make things better I will need to understand what's going on here. Can anyone tell me about it? How long ago was the war in which this place was conquered? What were these people sentenced to death for?:

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This will get somewhat different responses from the soldiers and the farmers!

The farmers' narrative: They've lived here forever as subjects of Baron Agrost, and his father before him, and eventually the King of Oris. A year or two ago the baron went off to war when the king commanded and then never came back, and they heard a bunch of unreliable rumors about how the king had surrendered his throne or been beaten in battle and killed or whatever, and royal tax collectors stopped showing up and instead then imperial soldiers and tax collectors arrived to destroy all their shrines and kill their priests and demand taxes that weren't the old traditional ones they paid. There were people fighting the invaders and some people went off to join them, and others gave them food or weapons or money they'd been saving, or when the loyalists came through fed and hid them from the empire. Then these [UNPRINTABLE 16]s came through and they did some kind of horrible magic and then they were going to murder everyone!

The soldiers: There was an imperial decree that there were raids over the border from Oris, so the imperial army went marching (or in their case riding) over to make them stop. The army of Oris had lost by the time they got there so they were just in charge of chasing down rebels and bandits, not that you can tell the difference, and their company was assigned to go to the region this village was in to check if anyone was supplying the bandits, so their mage used compulsions spells to distinguish the guilty (of providing bandits and rebels with supplies and weapons and information) from the innocent, and apparently some of them were innocent, so they were carrying out executions for treason of the guilty because that's what the governor said they should do to traitors. There's rebels all over the place and they all claim innocence and then try to stab you in the back if you believe them.

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Iomedae listens.

 

:Oris is still independent? This province fell to the Empire, but there's still a King of Oris somewhere?:

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Empire: He surrendered to the Empire and became an Imperial subject (according to one officer, most of the troopers don't know.)

Villagers: Absolutely no idea, which does not stop different villagers from having lots of different speculative ideas, including "he's leading the rebellion" and "the gods took him up to heaven and he'll be back some day" and "the emperor threw him in a dungeon."

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- all right. 

 

Iomedae suspects that she ought to try to negotiate with the Empire for more humane treatment of its subjects, rather than trying to fight the war for Oris's independence all over again. If she was sure she could win it, that'd be one thing, but she has little reason to believe the Empire doesn't have some actually serious firepower of the kind that would eventually succeed at killing her or just sending her off to the Elemental Plane of Fire or something. (Not no reason. A Golarion military unit that saw her but did not recognize her personally would nonetheless not have picked that fight, and that's some information about what capabilities the Empire has. But it's not very much.)

What gods did they worship, before the Empire came to destroy their temples and kill their priests?

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The villagers are very unhappy about the deal where they're all probably going to die if she doesn't rebel, since helping sit on the soldiers is plausibly treason, but they're doing what she says.

Their main god is Anathei of the Cleansing Flame, whose priests talk about how there's good in everyone and you should try to extend love to everyone, even your enemies, who do what they do because of how they suffer (look what that got Anathei's priest, sacrificed by the Empire for their dark magic); they also have a bunch of more minor and local gods who don't map quite so well to anything Iomedae knows.

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(This rules out one of the most Empire-sympathetic reasons for the ban on gods, if the ban was in fact a bad on some particularly awful gods.)

Sacrificed by the Empire for their dark magic? Can they say more about that?

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Villagers: Yes!!! The empire uses the life of everyone they sacrifice for dark magic! They're probably only conquering people so they can get their life to use to cast dark magic!

Empire mage: (as if by rote) Blood magic is perfectly safe and only used by trained professionals, gotten from people they were going to execute anyway. 

Villagers: MAXIMUM SKEPTICISM.

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Ah huh. 

 

 

What is the Empire's - deal, the way they themselves tell it. 

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The empire's deal is this, as their officers explain it: Everywhere else is terrible. They're horrible despotic tyrannies that fight civil wars every twenty years or more. They have famines because of bad weather and they have nobles who make up whatever rules they like, and everyone starves all the time, and half of them burn mages for witchcraft and they're all illiterate and the other half are bandits.

The Empire does not, in fact, do that. The Empire has one law, enforced throughout the whole of it, and people can appeal to imperial officials if some lord wants to bully them and if the law's on their side it will be enforced; the empire ships food in to places that have famines or floods which they mostly don't because there's enough magic to just control the weather to always be good, because the Empire has schools, and roads, and isn't terrible to live in. The Empire prevents civil war because the Emperor is practically immortal and can pick a successor and bind everyone to support him and then nobody has to fight, so there's peace in the Empire. When somewhere else starts a fight with the Empire, the Empire wins it and expands, and everyone in the troop is from some province that the Empire conquered a hundred years ago or more and none of them want to live somewhere else.

Gods are just all horrible, no offense to Aroden.

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The Emperor can pick a successor and bind everybody to support him? How useful. How does that work.

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... I mean, you can make people do things with magic? Their mage used compulsions to make the villagers tell the truth about which of them were bandits.

And imperial armies are all under compulsions to maintain discipline and obey orders and (grumble, grumble, grumble from the troopers) not rape and pillage. And all the generals and powerful wizards and so forth are under orders to serve the emperor.

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An interesting social experiment. 

 

 

Why do they feel that all of the gods are horrible?

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Most of them have not really considered this, they just think it's kind of obvious? Divine cults plot murder and sedition, and gods want people to worship them and be their slaves even though they don't do anything for the people, and all these famous and good people got murdered by crazed cultists. Really, why would gods not be horrible?

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- well, it makes sense that religious orders would plot sedition in an empire where they are banned. But in empires where they are legal, they instead do things like run soup kitchens and orphanages and hospitals. And, in the case of the Knights of Ozem, fight wars against great evils no one else possesses the courage to fight.

 

And certainly one should absolutely not under any circumstances worship a god who wants people to be their slaves, but these people here were just describing a god who wanted people to forgive their enemies and see the good in everyone, and it doesn't sound like anyone checked if their priest had done any murder or sedition before they put the priest to death. Maybe some gods are bad and some gods are, actually, allied with humans in various ways, not adequate to make the world good but a part of a good world.

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That sounds unlikely to the soldiers, who are pretty sure all the gods are bad and some of them just have good propaganda, though some of them are trying to avoid thinking thoughts that will offend Iomedae. (The mage, who has read history, says that they only outlawed the gods after their cults did lots and lots of murdering and sedition before they were illegal, up to the point of assassinating an Emperor.)

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And they evidently don't distinguish...which gods....are doing which things. 

 

All right. Iomedae would like to talk longer. She'd like to explain more about Aroden, and about herself, and what's important in her view. But that seems unfair, when every single person here other than her is afraid for their lives and right to be. She is going to pray to Aroden for guidance, and to Anathei for more local guidance, and then she is going to decide what to do, where the options are to return with these soldiers to their Empire, and speak with their leaders, and hope they can be called to reason (she suspects Anathei will be able to see if this is a good idea, and will tell her to do it if it might work), or to kill these soldiers and leave this place with anyone who prefers to leave with her, walking for the borders, or to join the rebellion for the independence of Otis, which she would really love to have Aroden's consultation on and which will fail if they don't get some allied powerful mages, Iomedae can win battles but she cannot actually on her own win wars.

She does not want to represent to these people that they are safe now that she has come; if they go to war, they may all die in that war, and if they stay they may die in the reprisals, and she has the strength to save anyone but not everyone, and so she will go where she saves as many as she can. Though first, if they want, she'll walk with them to the border of the nearest country that isn't the Empire, and kill everything that gets in their way along the way, and sell a magic item at the border to give them money with which to try to make their way; she owes them that much, before she goes wherever she can help as much as possible. 

 

She does some magic, as she says this, so that everyone present can, if they wish, choose not to be afraid. 

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The local peasants are divided between Join The Rebellion, Flee, and Both These Options Are Terrible Why Can't The Empire Just Go Away And Leave Them Be.

The soldiers do not want to be executed, and feel very strongly about this. While she is off praying some of them will try to escape, since they are immune to fear and consider this to have the best odds of success.

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This isn't shocking, but it won't work. 

 

Look, she explains to them once she's dragged two runaways back, her problem here is, unless she gets good news from the goddess of everyone-is-redeemable, who is a lot more optimistic than Iomedae herself about everyone-being-redeemable, she can't let them go; it is a large disadvantage to the rebellion, or even to the flight out of the country, for the Empire to have any idea what happened here. She can take them along as prisoners to the nearest neutral country, possibly, if she's doing that; some of them will presumably then make their way back to the Empire but not in time to be in possession of information the Empire won't possess already. That will be deeply inconvenient but not outside the range of inconveniences she'll put up with to save their lives.

In her world, the after-lives have been scried and visited by powerful wizards, and so they know where Evil people go. It isn't good. Iomedae would much, much rather not send these soldiers there. (And if she ends up deciding that she has to, she's going to give them as much time to think, with and without the aura of courage, as she possibly can, so they can maybe have some last minute revelations about their choices.) 

If they would like to be taken along to a neutral country as prisoners, they need to stop trying things. And if they keep trying things -

- anyone have a shortbow Iomedae can borrow -

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Yeah, someone has a hunting bow she can borrow.

(The soldiers are REAL UNHAPPY about this.)

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Iomedae hasn't used a hunting bow in more than a decade but it doesn't matter. She will demonstrate on a distant tree that she is very good at shooting things. If the soldiers attempt escape again, she will shoot them. Because otherwise she predicts soldier-villager scuffles are going to get innocent people killed.

 

She asks of them, if they decide to escape anyway, that first they think about the innocent lives they've taken, and whether they are proud of it or glad of it or whether it may have been a terrible mistake, or at most a tragic necessity, a price it'd have been much better to not need to pay. She asks this of them because she thinks it might affect their eternal fate if they run away and she shoots them.

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They are very unhappy about this entire situation??? It's hard to tell which part of them all completely regretting so many of their decisions is because of them not being under her aura of courage, or the aura being insufficient, or just their regret that they are... all going to die... but they acknowledge she is very good at shooting things.

(They do not try to run again.)

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It is so profoundly unsurprising they're very unhappy about the whole situation. Iomedae is also very unhappy about the whole situation, though she doesn't make this apparent. When you have a terrifying amount of power and are unpredictable to people, showing emotions usually just makes you scarier rather than making you possible to relate to on a human level. They'll more accurately model her if they're modeling her as an implacable avatar of Aroden's than as a woman who is very sad about this entire situation, anyway, since it's not as if the being very sad changes what she's willing to do.

 

She prays, which mostly means she looks directly at Aroden, insofar as a mortal can, and conveys what she knows of this situation. My intent is to head with these people towards the border, to learn more about the rebellion situation along the way; you can nudge me, instead, to go back to the Empire to talk, or to start a church right here in occupied territory, if either of those would be better. 

 

There is no answer, which could be because her default course is correct or because Aroden can't reach her here, at least not cheaply. 

 

She prays to Anathei, posing the same question, dwelling on her desire for peace and healing and for Anathei's priests to not be executed because some other servant of some god assassinated some people, a problem which Iomedae would be delighted to solve for Anathei.

 

There is again no answer. 

 

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All right. What is the supply situation of these hundred people who she has plunged into grave danger. How far are they from the border. How much food is there in this village. Is there local wildlife, Iomedae's only real comparative advantage at feeding people on the march is that she can and will stab bears. Are the defensive talismans on the soldiers reusable. Do these people know the people in the villages they'll pass through heading east.

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The supply situation is that it isn't the harvest yet, and they'd be leaving behind the half-grown crops in the fields; they can harvest whatever fruits and vegetables are grown and bring their animals with them, but they won't have enough for a long journey.

If you go west or (they hear, the mountains are further off that way) south there's the mountains, but that's a longer walk than the peasants have ever been and it's haunted by bandits and ghosts and monsters and savage tribes (they hear). If you go south and east they hear there's the Empire of Holy Ithik, which worships some horrible god of slavery that they don't know anything about. Go east and you reach Zoskin which is fine but halfway across the map. They hear there's more countries with fantastic names off east and south and west and north but it's mostly the Eastern Empire, near them.

There's totally wildlife, it's very dangerous, Iomedae can stab bears.

The defensive talismans need to be recharged by a trained mage. The only trained mage around is about to be executed and REALLY NOT HAPPY ABOUT THIS. The other nearby villages are sort of foreign but basically like them, though if you go northeast you go into territory the Empire has ruled for longer.

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(If mindread, the imperial officers have a slightly better map, but one that largely accords with the villagers - the western mountains are days off, the southern mountains are a lot more; there's a pass through the western mountains that leads ultimately to Hardorn, but that would be a long journey north to get there and require getting past imperial fortresses. Northeast is Tozoa Province, which was part of Oris but annexed much more recently, and, yup, the god of Ithik seems even worse than average.)

(The mage was planning on using the blood magic from the executions to recharge the talismans; he has uncharged spares in his saddlebags. He's not a very powerful mage and doesn't have the power to do much talisman-charging anyway.)

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- horrible god of slavery worship is noted and on the to-do list, probably quite high on the to-do list. Aroden will absolutely want her to burn that church to the ground figuratively and plausibly literally. How far east is Zoskin? How far do the soldiers of the Eastern Empire imagine it would pursue peasants fleeing south into the haunted mountains, probably not very far? On the other hand she can't full-time protect or supply them there and also do anything other than protecting and supplying them there.

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Really really really far.

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They're near the western edge of this kingdom and it's at the eastern.

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- great. Okay. 

 

When there's nowhere to run, you fight. It's not complicated. It's just going to be really, really, really terrible. 

 

 

Does anyone know who the most powerful and impressive spellcaster in the Eastern Empire is, and what the most impressive thing they've been known to do is.

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The locals have nothing. The mage thinks that he doesn't really know - all the famous Adepts he's heard of were, like, really good, they can open portals across the empire and summon armies of demons and everything, but Archmage-General Altarrin managed to survive a Final Strike by opening a horizontal Gate under him while on fire and he designed their shield-talismans to be even better than the ones from a thousand years ago, which is really impressive.

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'multiple people who can open Gates across the continent' suggests either a power level at which she will just lose immediately the minute the Empire notices they have a fight on their hands or a magic system that is quite different than the one she is familiar with. Of course, they also have something geas-like that even a very weak mage can cast, so probably it's the latter. 

 

But it's enough uncertainty that she really cannot let these soldiers live. If the magic system happens to be favorable to them, they go report home and someone scries her immediately and tries again and again until she's asleep and then teleports in invisibly to get a spell to land that they wouldn't stand a chance at while she's awake and then that's it. Until she knows much more or has some actual support casters, she needs it to be deeply unclear what is going wrong in Oris. 

 

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She thinks for a few more minutes, just in case there's something she hasn't thought of, some other way out of this or through this. 

 

There's really not. There's 'abandon these people to certainly die', 'go try to argue with the expansionist mind control empire that puts priests of the goddess of atonement and redemption to death on the spot for worshipping gods', 'fight that empire' or 'go live in the mountains full of monsters who will frankly have their own geopolitical problems at least this complicated'. 

The time to walk away was when the soldiers of the empire told her to. But she doesn't regret that she didn't; she would've had a very long walk, it sounds like, past many many similar wrongs, probably past other rebels who she'd have to decide to assist or ignore, past other hostile imperial units, and she'd have made it eventually to some other country threatened by the Empire's relentless expansion. 

 

And this probably is in fact the best place to start the church of Aroden in this world. It seems to have some relevant and necessary teachings, and maybe a bit of a sharper edge than Anathei who is probably Sarenrae. And she's going to need the church of Aroden to crush the local slavery god who may or may not be Asmodeus or one of his archdevils.

 

The price isn't lower because she's judged it worth paying. But she has, in fact, judged it worth paying. 

She stands and draws her sword. "I see no real alternative to a war for Oris's restored independence," she says. "I don't know if it will succeed. Aroden gives me signs only when they will change my course, and this was my course by default. It is very likely that all of you will die in this fight, and I cannot even promise you paradise when you do. But when soldiers come to your land and kill your priests and name your countrymen traitors, you can choose to fight, if you like, even if you may lose. If that's what you choose, I will teach you what I know about how to win wars, and command you in this one, and I will demand of Aroden that He account you as His people and reunite you in His realm when you die in this war, though if you'd rather have Anathai's that's also fine." 

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Iomedae looks pretty confident, and trustworthy, and awesome. So.

They want to hear about how to win wars.

(They also want to hear about this afterlife thing? Anathai doesn't talk much about afterlives.)

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All right. 

 

Then Iomedae will cast a spell on herself, and grow the wings of an angel, with which she can actually fly, and she'll speak aloud for the first time, then, because angels speak every tongue in which they can be understood, and she wants to speak the tenets of Aroden's faith clearly and know that everyone heard the same thing. The spell won't persist very long, but you can't have too many tenets of your faith anyway because a lot gets lost in repetition.

In Golarion mages have used scrying and planar travel to search for the dead, and found the afterlives, and so they know what happens to you when you die. You go before the Judge, and they look at all you've done in life and send you where they think you merit it. Evil people go to the Evil afterlives, which are places of torment and cruelty, with Hell the worst of them; there they are destroyed or tormented or beaten until the humanity is burned out of them, and only the Evil - the pettiness, the cruelty, the anger - remains. Asmodeus shapes His mortals to be His slaves. He is Evil. The faith of Aroden has very few dealings with Him, all of them the dealings of enemies with temporarily shared interests. 

Aroden's own domain is in Axis, Lawful Neutral, and among His reasons for choosing Axis as His domain are that it was not His desire to restrict what He could build to those of unusual virtue or merit. It is forbidden, for detailed word of the wonders of that world to come to make its way back to Golarion; it would count as interference by Aroden, if Iomedae travelled to His domain and learned the secret of the gardens that go on forever and ever, or the buildings that stand thousands of feet in the sky, if she brought that knowledge back to Golarion for people to use. And He has judged it worth it, that the people of Golarion know there are bigger things and better things, that the aim of humankind is to build a paradise beyond the imagination of the builders, for every generation to surpass the last, for things of beauty and wonder to be everywhere; but He has not judged the price worth it to tell them most of the details. 

If they are Lawful when they die, and not Evil, they can go to Aroden's realm, and be united with lost loved ones who are there, and be nourished in glory and wonder forever. Or if it intolerable to them that Hell exists, that Evil exists, that the work of the world is not done, like it bothers Iomedae, they can go to Heaven, which does not content itself with building its own paradise but which also fights to bring hope and the end of Evil to everywhere else in creation. The wings she bears are a gift of Heaven.

In her world the goddess of fire and hope and redemption and the Good in every human heart is Sarenrae, and she doesn't know if that is Anathei or not, but Her paradise is called Nirvana, and Nirvana goes before the Judge to argue for every soul no matter how Evil and how damned, to argue that there is Good in that heart and a place for it in paradise, and it is a world turned towards making that true. 

And in her world the goddess of exploration and wonder and freedom is Desna, and Her paradise - She'd object, here, that it's not Her paradise, just a paradise where She hangs out sometimes - is called Elysium, and there is no Law in Elysium, just the beauty and wonder wrought by everyone desiring it and building it, and there is no organized operation against Evil but a hundred million smaller ones, as everyone asks their own conscience what blows against Evil they are personally inspired to strike. 

(She'll go through the other afterlives too, but in less detail; they are less important to warn people about, in her and Aroden's view of the world, and not cooperative so as she feels obliged to represent them generously as they'd do the same for her.)

The gods are ancient and inhuman. Some of them are kind, some of them are loving, some of them are generous, but they are not human, and they do not understand what it is to be human, not exactly, and in His centuries of adventures and exploration Aroden concluded that this was not the right way of things, that Creation would never permit humans to reach their true potential unless there were humans among the gods. And so He found or created the Starstone, which made gods out of men, and set protections around it, and ascended; and Irori and Nethys and Cayden Cailean and Norgorber and perhaps others have also ascended, and so very locally - because new gods are small beside the ancient gods - they are changing the balance of power in Golarion, they are making its future a future humanity chose. 

And what a future humanity chooses! Wandering the plains, humans choose to befriend and domesticate animals; they choose to replant the most promising crops, until they have created entire new kinds of plants like no god imagined, just in the careful choosing. They choose writing. They choose buildings. They choose courts and laws, and myths and ballads, and heroes and teachers. They choose magic and invention and trade and prosperity and freedom. Aroden is not the god of all of those things, He couldn't be, but He is the god of civilization, that which grows to provide a foundation on which people can choose all of those things. 

Iomedae does not know how directly He can intervene here. She doesn't know for sure if the souls of the dead, here, go before the Judge, or if some stranger thing happens, because Creation is very vast. But She knows that His vision is as true here as anywhere else, and that a civilization built here will have the support of every civilization across the stars aspiring to the same thing. 

 

There are songs that are sung in the war-camps of Iomedae's world, of Aroden's vision, of mortals and what they can grow to be. Of what it is, to face challenges the gods did not ensure you could bear, to witness miracles and want to know what caused them, to grieve and know you deserve something better. She'll sing a few of them.

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This is a very persuasive pitch, and it does not, actually, take long before she has her first cult of Aroden, eager to spread the word that if you follow the rules and don't go around murdering and torturing and tormenting people you, too, can go to Axis, where there are shining cities and endless gardens and towers for everyone a thousand feet in the sky.

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There are. She's summoned the beings that live there, and spoken to them for advice. And under ordinary circumstances, she'd be content to place a symbol of Aroden beside the others in their temple and go on her way, but, well, they're going to have to fight a war for the right to build that temple, aren't they. She'd like them to take the equipment off the captured soldiers, including the talismans that they presently lack the resources to recharge, and tomorrow they'll start training.

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- mostly without Iomedae, who is going to take the healthiest looking of the invaders' horses and go out looking for other Eastern Empire military units, because if only one of them goes missing the Empire will definitely come right here to check it out but if a bunch of them have gone missing all over the place then the reprisals will probably be more distributed.

 

Are there any, among the soldiers of the Eastern Empire, who would like to change sides? They could be useful in training these people to fight, and while it's not going to be trivial to feed that many more people she can go stab a bear and that ought to make it not an urgent problem.

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The rebels will do this! There's not enough in the way of weapons and armor to go around (and most of the talismans blew their charges turning her "nonlethal" blows actually nonlethal) but they've got enough to train with, albeit they also have nobody who knows how to fight.

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Some of the Imperial soldiers are conflicted, but in the end, none can bring themselves to switch sides.

The invaders have pretty good horses! (In general, they have pretty good equipment.) It's not that hard to find other patrols, though being stealthy while on a horse and wearing full plate is perhaps not the easiest task.

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She respects that the Imperial soldiers are unwilling to switch sides and also once she's done her best to persuade them she is going to kill them; leaving them here with the villagers while she's out conducting operations will predictably be a catastrophe.

 

What are local burial customs. 

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Followers of Anathei usually burn their dead on a pyre, and the priest explains why they were good people and what was best about them and encourages people to celebrate their lives, and prays Anathei's looking after them wherever they've gone, and then everyone goes off and eats dinner.

... If you can't afford the smoke from a pyre, and they are imperial soldiers who murdered the last priest of Anathei, their general opinion is that they should just bury the bodies somewhere nobody's likely to dig up any time soon and say good riddance.

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- she would rather do the Anathei custom, actually. For three reasons. The first is that it seems to her to be a good custom, one she would be honored to take part in. The second is that it would be a tragedy for the Empire to have succeeded, in wiping out the customs of the followers of Anathei in these lands, to have in killing the priest accomplished their aim. And the third is that war is terrible, and ugly, and this war will be a particularly terrible and ugly war, and war makes people even on the righteous side Evil sometimes, by swallowing up all the parts of them that feel compassion and mercy and recognition-in-the-other, and strengthening the parts of them that feel bitterness and anger.

It is true, of these people, that there was something good about them, that there are families at home that will mourn them, and Iomedae has killed many thousands of people and expects to kill many thousands more but they were, in fact, all people, whose mothers loved them and whose children are now fatherless, people who under other circumstances could have lived good lives, people that do not deserve what they will suffer where they may be headed. 

 

....the smoke is an important consideration. They'll do burials, but they'll cut off a bit of each man's hair, and they'll burn it on an ordinary fire overnight, at the site where the temple used to be, and know that there was something good in these men, which no one here knows, and which no one will ever find out, and they will pray that Anathei can find the good in them, enough good to keep them out of Hell.

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These arguments are in fact persuasive, and the villagers are around eighty percent convinced.

... Mostly by "spite the Empire," to be fair. But also by the whole thing where Aroden pays with an afterlife and they want to make it.

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'Spite the Empire by continuing to believe in compassion and mercy and redemption' works for her. These people have been through a lot; they do not need to adopt Iomedae's whole and entire perspective on it. She's never helplessly watched her friends executed by a conquering government with incomprehensible rules. She's never helplessly watched anything; she has watched many things she couldn't afford to prevent, but it's not the same thing, actually.

 

They'll do the burials overnight. She'll sleep two hours, in anyone's home who has a spare space. She'll assign them some very very rudimentary weapons practice. 

 

And then she'll ride out looking for Imperial patrols to pick fights with where the subsequent investigation won't lead right back to her people. 

Paladins are not amazing at disguise. She has borrowed a blanket, and is wearing it as a sort of cloak over her extremely shiny armor. She still clanks.

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She can leave with step-by-step directions to all the neighboring villages and the biggest town in the area that assume you've memorized all local landmarks from the villagers, as well as a few quiet words about who else is on her side from someone whose brother went off to join the rebellion, which still existed last she heard but she doesn't know where to find it (because if she did, the empire could make her tell them, just like it made her tell them that she gave her brother everything she could think of that would help.)

The roads are not, to be clear, much better than goat paths.

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She'll probably get lost, at least the first time out, especially since she's going to put her magic belt on the horse and then try to put a deeply implausible-for-a-single-rider distance between this place and her next move, but she thanks them and listens carefully and tries to memorize the lay of the land at least well enough to find her way back.

 

And then she'll ride east. A well-trained horse with the fanciest belt of constitution the great and ancient empire of Taldor knows how to produce can maintain a gallop for quite a long time.

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The roads are goat paths, the wildlife not particularly actively hostile but not exactly friendly, the horse with implausible levels of stamina.

Is she deliberately seeking out - fields, towns, construction - or avoiding them until she's built up some distance?

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Avoiding them entirely at least until she's put some serious distance behind her. She'll honestly be devastated if the Empire comes in and executes her entire village, at this stage, and she bets they would do it. 

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If she puts effort into avoiding any signs of civilization, she can make it a considerable distance before she runs into anyone, and then it's a hunter who scatters as soon as he sees her.

Eventually she will have put serious distance behind her, though, and even with her belt her horse is getting tired.

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Right. She'll slow the horse, then, and start looking for trouble. Well, for civilization. 

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The nearest civilization looks like... if she searches... fields? Pretty large cleared space with various small villages; if she has good eyesight she can see a town off in the distance with a stone tower, though it is, in fact, a ways off.

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She'll go towards the town. She's ideally looking for an imperial patrol, but if she can't find one she'll hitch her horse outside of town and walk in on foot.

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This village is not presently occupied by an imperial patrol!

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Then she will bypass it! She's putting anyone she talks to in substantial danger and that's a rude thing to do without good reason. She rather wishes she could speak the language without sprouting enormous feathered wings, that'd be nice, but as it stands her options are mindreading, which she broadly doesn't do to people who aren't her enemies, or wings. 

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She will reach another village with an imperial patrol in it eventually, if she keeps searching, but it's going to take a while. Most villages might have patrols pass through irregularly, but do not, as a general rule, have a patrol in them at any given moment. There's more villages than patrols, is the thing.

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And it's a very good thing, or revolutions would be pretty impossible. 

 

She can ride all day, if not keep the horse at a gallop all day, until she sees something noteworthy. The ideal thing is in fact a patrol that is not in a village, on the road, but if there's one in a village she will probably still approach once she finds it.

She's not sure how long it'll be until the absence of the patrol she already killed is noticed, and she really really wants there to be a lot of problems by then such that that one doesn't stand out specifically and such that 'kill everyone near where there were problems' is not within the Empire's capacity. 

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She does in fact run into the ideal thing first! Same deal as the previous one; twenty men, officer, underofficer, mage. 

The officer in charge of the patrol will tell her to halt and will then be very suspicious about a horse that looks imperial issue, if he gets that long.

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Oh, he does. She'll halt. It's definitely an Imperial horse.

 

:I identify myself not by name but as a paladin of Aroden, god of civilization. I consider myself to be at war with the Empire, but have not yet had the opportunity to communicate a declaration of such, and I prefer not to start fights in a war I have not declared, lest there was some hope for us to do something other than kill each other right here.:

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"Servant of a god, you name yourself enemy of the Empire?"

They are... kind of surprised one person is willing to start a fight with All Of Them? And isn't doing it by stealth?

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:Yes,: she says agreeably, dismounting. :Or at least, of the Empire in Oris; I haven't decided if I have broader enmity with the Empire than that. I can explain why I have chosen this path, if you would like to know.:

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The imperial patrol is now starting to suspect the road may be surrounded by Iomedae's allies and that she's just keeping them talking as a distraction, and will snap orders to check the sides of the path - 

"Because it is the will of your god. Do you yield?"

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:No.: The sword glows.

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Then they will attempt to ride her down and/or compulsion her and/or hit her with a lot of fire and lightning.

It is really unlikely to go well for them.

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She isn't trying, this time, to take them alive, so she's given the sword speed instead on top of the brilliant energy that lets it go straight through armor both magical and mundane, and she's actually trying to put her weight behind her swing. She's sufficiently busy with this that one of the lightning bolts actually hits her, though she doesn't notice. 

 

Iomedae enjoys fighting people. This isn't fighting people. This is killing people and she doesn't enjoy it at all. 

She endeavors not to injure any of the horses, though realistically what's going to happen with the horses is that they'll wander off and some villager will find one and take it home and get executed for it. 

 

When no one is trying to kill her anymore she goes around checking that they're all dead, taking shield talismans, and looking for anything else potentially useful for orienting - written orders? Keepsakes from home? 

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There are written things they have on them! One was on an officer, one was on a mage. She can't tell if they're orders or not because she doesn't read the local language.

The younger officer had a little locket with a note in it and a lock of hair. The mage had some paper with sketches of faces. A couple of the troopers had dice, and some of them had jewelry that did not look anything like the locally-manufactured things she's seen. A couple of them had wax tablets with notes that hadn't been erased yet.

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She thought about it last night and decided she'd be glad of having started this war if forty thousand people die in it. And if she kills them all with her own sword that's better than anyone else doing it; it's not going to affect her alignment.

 

It still hurts. She intends for it to always hurt. 


She buries them, the locket with the man who was wearing it, and cuts tufts of all their hair, and burns them over a campfire and prays to Aroden and to Anathei. To Anathei she prays for the redemption of these souls and all souls, and prays that everyone bound to Evil paths will see a better way, and prays that she will see a better way. 

 

To Aroden she lays out paths in her mind for where to travel next, for whether to declare herself openly to the Empire (or its agents who she doesn't predictably kill thirty seconds later). He didn't refresh her spells so she can presume intervention here is very expensive for Him. She's not going to ask for a hug. 

 

 

 

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Then she'll go looking for another patrol. Even farther from her village and her church.

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She can probably find one! It is very likely to go the way the last one did.

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Iomedae has some principles she holds to even when she has no idea what the local principles around good conduct in war are, and then a lot more principles that are 'given that some people are trying to coordinate around that, I will help them do so'.

The principles she will hold to always are that she will not start a fight in an undeclared war, she will not pretend to be a noncombatant or even leave it ambiguous, she will not mention she has healing without specifically disclaiming whatever protections hold for healers, she will do everything in her power to accept a sincere surrender, she will try very hard to not kill slaves and camp followers and children, including children trying to kill her, she will assume responsibility for the welfare of anyone she takes prisoner, she will not pick a site of battle where bystanders might be endangered unless the alternatives are even worse on that dimension, she will not torture people, she will not force people to fight for her, she will not give people cause to fear torture or damnation or reprisals against their loved ones, she will not leave people to die slowly unless they want her to do that, she will pass along last messages and last intents as best she can, she will offer people time to think before they die if there is reasonable opportunity. 

Many people who are as Good as she are much less strict, because several of these are rules you can only have if you aren't seriously in doubt about whether you'll win any fights you get into. These are not the restrictions laid on Knights of Ozem (well, many of them are, but not all of them). These are the things that anyone, in any world, can expect of her personally. 

 

She will spend the rest of the night and the first half of the next day tracking down and killing Imperial patrols. She uses Keep Watch rather than sleep. She acquires new horses because her pace is very punishing for horses even when they are enhanced to the point of absurd stamina.

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If survivors of imperial patrols try to run, and/or send someone to send messages, and/or some small fraction that does not die in the first twelve seconds tries to surrender, does any of this, under the circumstances, let them live?

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The problem is that the sooner word reaches the Empire the sooner this gets much uglier. With no survivors, it'll be a long time before the Empire has any idea what they're facing. With even one, they could probably scry her tomorrow. 

And how much she should be willing to pay to avoid that grounds out in the general morass of unknowns ahead of her. On the one hand if the Empire has the resources to stop a paladin of her power, then they will probably eventually stop her, and there'll be a lot less bloodshed if it's sooner. On the other hand, it's not hard to imagine scenarios where they could stop her now but not in a month. If she finds the existing rebellion, for example, and it has some wizards who can shield her from scrying while she sleeps, and transport her by Teleport around the country. 

And then there are the benefits - and the costs - of having it known that the terror stalking the Empire's patrols will accept surrender from its soldiers. 

 

Ultimately there are compelling strategic reasons to throw a knife after people who are fleeing to warn their compatriots, so she does, but they are insufficiently compelling to make her willing to kill someone who actually surrenders even though she does expect it'd reduce how ugly this war is, on the whole, if the Empire is not warned for a long time.

 

 

 

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When you've decided that accepting someone's surrender meaningfully increases the odds of losing the war but is worth it anyway there's a little knot to iron out inside yourself, where you don't want people to surrender, because you expect to get more of what you want if they don't try it; where you'll show them mercy reluctantly because they tripped a rule you have to follow. Iomedae does not like knots like that inside herself; they seem dangerous.

So once she's made the decision to accept a surrender if she's offered one she thinks about it, about - the thing that she's choosing, when she chooses that, choosing to maintain a little thread by which they could collectively navigate to something better even if she suspects they won't. She thinks about the officer who asked 'do you yield', because - it means something to them, too, not something where they wouldn't subsequently have put her to death but something, and she doesn't understand them, and she does not want to be killing them blindly in the dark without even any willingness to notice if there might be something better.

 

She thinks about it until there's no knot inside her and when someone actually attempts to surrender she is glad.

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He does not look like he expected that to work, and honestly is still kind of expecting to be tortured to death back at wherever her base is? Just, you know, he and everyone else were definitely going to die if he didn't... and everyone else is still dead...

(he's slightly in shock.)

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:If you try to run, I will kill you. Would you like some water?:

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Uh. Blink. Pause. "... Yes?"

He is not going to try to run he is going to notice the blood of everyone else and throw up violently.

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She hands him some water. It is not stolen off the corpse of one of his friends, it's stolen off the corpse of a different unit from several hours earlier, not that that makes it much better. 

 

:I'm going to search them: she says, :I'm going to dig some graves and bury them, and then I am going to pray for their souls, and then I'll let you go, if you think you can get to safety from here. You can help bury them, if you'd like. You can also help pray for them but if you do that you'd better not go back, probably.:

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"You can pray for people's souls," he says, which is the clearest thing to fix on. "That they'll - have done their duty. That they made the world better. That their ancestors will accept them..."

He's going go try to drink some of the water, once he's rinsed his mouth out.

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She pockets any paperwork that might be orders from their command. She still can't read any of it, and doubts the villagers can read any of it, and isn't going to ask this man to read it to her, but if she does run into the rebels it'll be proof that she's been picking off patrols, and hopefully they can read it. 

 

She's very very strong and has along the way acquired a good shovel, but it still actually takes a very long time to dig adequate graves for twenty bodies. She works in silence, keeps him in her field of vision less because that's important for keeping an eye on him (the helm does that for her) and more because it's important for having him know she's keeping an eye on him.

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He'll help dig. He is not very very strong but he can still help.

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Then they'll be done sooner, though she notes the difference in how long it took and intends to spend that time not conducting operations, so that his help doesn't disadvantage his people. 

 

She clips their hair with her knife as she lays each of them in the grave, and then starts the campfire. She has no magic for that, just decades in the field. :You can pray for their souls, if it's not to any god particularly? That they made the world better, that they did their duty, that they'll be reunited with their ancestors?:

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"It's the gods who are our enemies," he says. "We - we're all working together." He's not very coherent. "There's a chain. Right back to the beginning. We're all working on the same thing, back to the first generation..." 

A fit of shivering.

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She has a cloak. It's an extremely powerful magical cloak but it's also, you know, sturdy and heavy and warm. She offers it to him. 

(If he runs off with it she will simply chase him, with boots of speed and flight if necessary.)

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It's more shock than cold, but yes, he'll accept the cloak.

"You don't pray to the gods. They'd just ruin it. They want the world how it is. We're trying to fix things..."

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:I don't think that's true of my god. But it's a fair enough complaint about some of them.

Ordinarily, when I bury the dead, I pray to Anathei, to see Good in them, enough to save them from punishment in the world to come, and I pray to Aroden to show me something better. I don't know if They'll do anything, but - at worst They won't do anything, right, and it's just some time spent in thought.:

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He has many objections, none which he can really put together because an hour ago everything was fine.

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She isn't really expecting to have a useful theological argument, but if she's going to send him home she might as well do it with a partial explanation of why she is doing this. 

 

She prays. Not to a god, if that's not their own custom. That they'll be reunited with their ancestors, that they will be found to have been good men, that they will be found to have done their duty.  

 

:If I let you go from here on foot, will you make it to your people safely, or would you expect to meet trouble first?:

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"I'll be fine," he says, not really believing that she will let him go. "I can - get home..."

 

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:All right. You can tell your superiors that I'm not going to stop, though I'll restrict myself to operations in Oris at least until after we have some formal communication channels.

- I do need that cloak back.:

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He can give the cloak back and then leave to go tell his superiors.

(Does she leave him his horse?)

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No. She'd like more of a head start than that. 

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Then he will leave on foot, very confused and expecting to die every moment of it.

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And she'll leave in the opposite direction but the same spirit. The candle is now very definitely burning and she needs to find the rebels. There isn't a good way to do that, other than going into villages and endangering the people who live there, but -

 

Do most villages have a temple? Or the ruins of one?

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What do her recognition skills look like for distinguishing those of this culture's buildings intended as temples, from buildings intended as barns or living spaces?

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Well, were they burned to the ground by invaders?

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This may not be perfectly distinguishing! There are entire villages burned to the ground by invaders she can find if she looks hard enough, though they're sure  a minority!

... But yes, buildings burned to the ground by invaders can be located.

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(She waits the duration she gained from burying the bodies faster, in quiet reflection in a forest.)

 

And then she goes to a site that looks to her like it might have been a temple, and she clears away the ash and kneels at that site with her sword in front of her, and she makes it glow so it's visible from quite a distance, and she prays. And hopefully no one will imagine they'll be safe from the Empire if they come up to the woman who is doing that, but they might do it anyway.

 

 

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There are people who will notice a woman with a glowing sword, and a child who nobody is currently keeping enough of an eye on will come over to stare. Women with glowing swords visibly praying are not common sights, around here.

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She does not want to get a child killed. 

This is definitely a consequence of actions she has already taken, of course, that many children will die. 

 

:Hey: she says quietly when the child gets close. :I am a paladin of the god Aroden. It's not safe to come closer. I won't hurt you, but other people may be angry.:

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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.

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

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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.)

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: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.:

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

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Iomedae waits and prays.

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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.

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

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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."

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: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.:

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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.

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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.:

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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?

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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. 

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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

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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.

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That would, in fact, be arguably better news than hers, if it were true, which -

 

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- she doubts. 

 

The Empire seems remarkably well resourced, is the thing. All of their occupying units have a wizard, all of their soldiers wear magic items (even if they're ones that need recharging). Her overall read of this situation in her absence is that the resistance was 100% categorically doomed. 

She could be wrong. 

Also someone in this chain of whispers could be very very much exaggerating. 

 

She does not raise that point in this moment.

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People from all over the village, not just militia members, are coming to hear him.

"They came through the pass at Andru near dusk thinking Emerald-Eyes was at Terro, marching hard, and he was on three sides of them and when they heard the war cries they panicked - the only ones to get away were the ones their mages gated away, the full army's ours, all the engines and arms and armor, we've got imperial gold and imperial steel -"

He'll pause to give Iomedae another grin. "And what's your news if it's better than that?"

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:I don't know if it's better than that. But I am a champion of Aroden, a god of very far away, and I have a magic sword which when I wield it will kill anyone it touches and is stopped by no armor, and I want to help in your war. I killed some Imperial patrol units east of here, and the one that was bothering these people:

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He'll give a whoop of victory. "Aroden's blessing with Anathei's, then! Come join us - the Empire's beat but the war's not done yet!"

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:Are tax collectors still coming to bother these people, do you know? I want to take what they would have paid in taxes with us to fight, for Oris's freedom, but I was assuming I'd need to fight the Imperial tax collectors first, and then whoever gets sent when those don't come back.:

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"The king may send collectors when the time comes, but nothing from those northern bastards. They're on the run!"

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- all right. How about she goes, so that she can meet the leadership of the rebellion, and of course anyone else who wishes to go can, but she's worried that the Empire might have more forces in reserve than one would expect.

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They're heading for Mahauna and he's spreading the news, just get on the main road east and you'll make it there before long.

Some of her militia wants to come. Some doesn't.

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She will tell them candidly that she expects the war will be worse and bloodier from here than anyone imagines. She does expect they will win. They can stay or go, and if they stay they can plan to fight when they next see Imperial men or plan to run or plan to pretend nothing is out of the ordinary, though if they want to do that last thing they'll have to do the plan she's rehearsed with them, where two in the trees take down the unit mage with arrows and certainly die of it but make it impossible for the Empire to tell who else is guilty. 

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Some stay and some go, and the rider rides on to the next village, and before long Iomedae and her force are headed east. They are joined along the way by various other contingents of recruits, called up by the same urgent riders; men urged to bring anything they can, food or arms, and come up to join the army; different riders promise different things - wages, arms, respect, "serve the gods," "be a man," loot - but the central message in all of them, say the new recruits, is the same: Free your homes. And that is what they have come to do.

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Iomedae travels with them. At night she makes camp, which she's considerably pickier about than anyone else but willing to do half the work for, and then grows feathered wings and sits and speaks and sings in their language; the rest of the time she speaks only when people have questions for her, but can answer questions endlessly. 

She does not keep many secrets. It has strategic benefits but it also amounts to somewhat misleading these people about their odds of victory and she's not going to do that. She is from Golarion, which is far away; she serves Aroden, who is also far away, and may be able to send no aid beyond her, which makes the powers that she held of His when she arrived here very precious. Aroden's followers who do their duty and are not Evil go to Him in paradise when they die.

She thinks that she can win against any army the Empire will field against them, until the Empire learns to counter her specifically, and maybe even then. She thinks that by this time next year their homes will be free and their nation will be free.

She also thinks most of them will die in the fighting.

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Right, but everyone is filled with supernatural courage, and also gets an afterlife. 'You will probably die and go to a better life' is not, actually, that bad of a deal. Some people are deterred, but only a small fraction. When they need to camp they camp; when they need to march they march -

- And when they come to Mahauna (a major city by the standards of a rural region in which there are no major cities, where one large tributary feeds into the main river in the south half of the country) the gates are open and there's blue dragon banners flying and there are heads, on spikes, outside the walls, some of them still with the uniform hats of imperial officials and imperial officers still on them.

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It's better news than many other things they could have witnessed.

(She really, really hopes that the senior leadership here is not under the impression this is winning against the place with standard issue magic items for their foot soldiers.)

 

She stops at the heads on spikes, and prays for them, in the fashion that is preferred in their own country (assuming they're even Imperial soldiers and not just people who were in this city when it was taken). That they did their duty and that they were good people and that they will be reunited with their ancestors.

Then she should - really try to figure out who here is in charge.

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There are guards at the gates, who look fairly organized and disciplined and have imperial standard issue gear, distinguished by blue paint so they don't get stabbed by their own side, giving that sort of directions. 

"New recruits?" And then the guard notices Iomedae.

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She's pretty noticeable even when the sword isn't glowing. Aside from the extremely magical armor one might notice that she's carrying more than two hundred pounds of supplies, slung over one shoulder like it's nothing.

:I am a champion of the distant god Aroden. I've come to help free Oris.:

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He can't actually see that the armor is magic! Just that it's made of no known material and enormous and extremely well-made and that, yes, she's carrying more than two hundred pounds of supplies. But he recovers quickly!

"You should tell the Marshal," he says. (And in spite of that, he smiles.) "Back that way, central square -" he gives quick directions. "Recruits who aren't chosen of a god should talk to the army clerk there, to see about getting them proper weapons and training."

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Off she'll go to the central square, then!

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Mahauna is one of these cities built around a large central square; the sort of place where there would be a market most days, with shops and stalls scattered through it for all the city to gather and argue and trade. The square used to be surrounded with temples, but those were knocked down and in the place of some of the largest was erected an imperial citadel, towering over the square to oppress the locals with the knowledge that they were occupied, but the fortress's gates have been thrown open, now, and new tents or ramshackle buildings serve the place of temples, with the ever-burning flame of Anathei newly relit where her ancient temple once stood.

What's in the square right now, though, is a man of ambiguous age making a speech to an assembled and very enthusiastic crowd. He's of ambiguous age because he's wearing full-body armor with a sword at his side, his helmet carved into the face of a dragon with emerald eyes; he's actually very good at oratory -

"- I will pardon," he says, softly, "those of my people who yielded to the tyrants' threats and bribes, who from fear of the seemingly-overwhelming might of the Empire knelt, even those who named names, for there is not one who did it without compulsion. But the imperial soldiers themselves -" his arm darting out like a flash of lightning "- never! The age will come in ten thousand years when Imperial merchants cross the pass into Oris and wonder why they may not settle, for they have forgotten the crimes of their ancestors, whose tyranny made the name of empire a thing of horror and whose bones lie on the riverbed and whose blood was swept out to sea, but it will not come that Oris forgets! There will be peace with the Empire when every inch of Oris is ours again, and not one Imperial soldier stands on our sacred soil!"

- Iomedae can notice several things about him that are not immediately clear to an audience, such as that he probably doesn't know how to use the sword that well, that his armor is plausibly dress-, not battle- armor, and that although he's legitimately very persuasive, he's also using some kind of emotion-affecting ability to augment his oratory.

Oh, and also that he's not Evil.

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- honestly this is substantially better than Iomedae's median guess, for the current state of the rebels and also for their attitude towards the Empire. It is genuinely encouraging that he is not in favor of murdering all of his countrymen who are collaborators. And 'no Imperial soldiers in Oris' is an outright achievable victory condition! And no one is cheering at the prospect of them all going to Hell, though conceivably just because the local state of information about afterlives is minimal. 

She would really like to be able to detect more about the emotion-effect than the fact it tickled her mind and obviously did not work on her - whether it's more like a song-sorcerer's ability. to make their words memorable, or like a Suggestion - but she's not even the barest ghost of a wizard, and can't Detect Magic to learn any more. 

 

Is this the Marshal she's supposed to speak to? If not, are they visible?

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Yup, that's him! All the soldiers are deferring to him.

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Then she'll wait for him to finish. She genuinely does not think of putting down her two hundred pound sack (it's mostly early-harvested food and captured Imperial shield items and captured Imperial boots) because it is not heavy enough her arm will get tired.

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He's mostly talking about how they should accept deserters on the grounds that they're probably other people from countries the empire conquered, while making it sound like he's urging the annihilation of the Jaconan people, plus stuff about how the road ahead will be long and hard-fought but they have the support of the gods and of everyone on the planet except the Eastern Empire, and so it will end well for them eventually. And also that the army wants all volunteers and that signing up means a hard and laborious path to victory that pays primarily in all your children and grandchildren down to the twentieth generation remembering you as a hero.

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Lots of exciting new things to orient to. Jaconans are a visible human subtype, probably, not a species; everyone she's seen here is human. If she wants to conduct operations on Imperial territory it'll be important whether all her soldiers just want to do as much murder as possible but they're a ways off from that. 

 

(They might not be her soldiers. There will need to be some negotiation about that. Iomedae will be patient.)

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And once the speech is done and people willing to give their precious hoarded cash to the cause in exchange for IOUs or just straight-up volunteer for the army are lining up at one of the clerks, he's going for straight-up backslapping and greeting people and giving them CHARISMATIC OVERLOAD so they want to support his cause!

Iomedae is pretty high up on the priority list.

"Marshal Orestan. Have we met?"

(He, or someone passing his messages on to her, will repeat his message in Mindspeech once it becomes clear she doesn't speak his language. He is sufficiently shielded that she can't read his mind.)

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- yeah, all right, it's going to be awkward to do this through an interlocutor but she doesn't want to grow angel wings on him unexpectedly in public. :We have not. I am a champion of Aroden, god of civilization, from very far away.:

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:Not a god I know, but should he aid my people in freeing their homeland I will take him as a patron of my people, and build him a temple in every city of the realm.:

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:That is indeed what I hope might come to pass. We can talk about His teachings, if you'd like, but first -:

And she hands over the written documents she took off the officers in every Imperial patrol she slaughtered. :I got into some fights with some Imperial patrols when I arrived here. I can't read these, but perhaps you have someone who can.:

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Orestan laughs when he takes them. "A fine gift!" He'll hold them up in the air. "See what our ally brought us!"

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And, in private, to Iomedae, :I'm afraid they may be obsolete by now - the imperials weren't expecting us to move this fast - but I'll take it and be grateful nonetheless. Should I assume you have a fantastically exciting story to go with them?:

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Oh, she's feeling downright optimistic, at this point, she likes him. 

 

:I expect they're useless. I was not sure I'd be believed without them. The story is just that I am very dangerous and they will not be able to kill me until they realize they need to, and conceivably not even then. What do you know about who their most powerful spellcasters are and what they can do?:

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:Mage-General Altarrin, first-class Adept. Can do horizontal midair unanchored gates while a fireball is in the air before it hits, complicated magical improvisation while drugged, and is probably the only person in the past century or two to make major improvements to imperial standard spells. He also organized the imperial forces to win their last major civil war. If he and Emperor Bastran both die the Eastern Empire collapses into a civil war and everywhere that wants independence gets it.:

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: - that is very useful to know but unhelpful with respect to the specific question of whether he could kill me. I'm going to guess 'yes if he got lucky enough'? Which is disappointing, if we were sure enough it was 'no' we could set up peace talks.:

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:I don't think we've convinced the Empire it can lose yet. Bit too early to be talking peace, isn't it?: A bitter smile.. :I can't tell you if he can beat you until I know how good you are. Care to come inside so we can discuss it?:

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:My pleasure.:

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Then he'll head inside with his new ally to talk strategy! He'll toss casual orders and compliments and people he passes as he does, before they make it to what is pretty clearly a strategy room, with a very detailed map of the kingdom on it, various books on the shelves that look like weatherproofed ledgers, some of them spread out.

(There are guards. There are guards everywhere. There may be invisible guards; certainly Orestan has quite a powerful talisman. Iomedae could still kill him, but mostly because she is Iomedae.)

:I think this is the first time I've seen the material your armor's made of?:

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Iomedae isn't planning to kill anyone unless they try to kill her first and maybe not even then.  It'd be reasonable of them to be worrying she's an Imperial spy; she's very improbable.

:It is called mithril and is mined near-exclusively in the Elemental Plane of Earth; it doesn't naturally occur on Golarion, my planet of origin. It's lighter than steel, but works much like it.:

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:Your planet of origin:

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:My advice would be that you don't let that leave this room. I haven't spoken of it elsewhere. But yes. The stars in the sky are suns like your sun, with worlds like your world about them, and Golarion is one of them, and it is where I operated until three weeks ago, as the Knight-Commander of the Knights of Ozem and of the Shining Crusade.:

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:The gods have always helped me. They usually don't help me this much. Any proof you can offer other than your armor and your ability to take out Imperial patrols singlehandedly?:

(The notes have by this point been given to some junior officers, eagerly decrypting them.)

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She puts her hand to her chest, above where Aroden's holy symbol was scarred into her chest by a very zealous fifteen year old Iomedae who did not want to take the chance she would somehow be separated from her holy symbol.

She sprouts the angel wings. "This magic does not endure for long, but it gives me an aspect of Heaven, while it's active, and angels speak in all tongues so so do I. I don't know if you should count it as proof; I don't know what other explanations I'm competing with, because I know very little about what is possible here."

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"No, that does in fact convince me."

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:I would, of course, still prefer Mindspeech, since that can't be eavesdropped on. Any other on-demand miracles you can do, anything you can teach us, that we're missing?:

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:I do not intend to share all that I can do; I cannot be mindread by the Empire, or compelled to testify to them, and you can. The wings permit me flight. I can heal from the brink of death to perfect health everyone within six paces of me. Three times. At home Aroden could refresh my power to do that, but here I only have what had been extended when I arrived. I have a spell that grants people very briefly some extra vitality, but it wears off in less than two minutes. I've been contemplating how I'd extend that spell, were I a god, and maybe soon I'll have a better version. I've been using it on the men who train with me, because there's a theory in my world that routine use grants a robustness that lasts when the spell doesn't.

I can oblige the people around me to speak the truth, and will want to do that, at some point. 

And I can make soldiers unafraid, and difficult to charm or compulsion, and I can lend them some of my strength on the battlefield, and no one falls when they're fighting in my vanguard though they will absolutely die as soon as they get too far away from me if you don't have good healing for them. 

- and there's no magic to it, but I have been fighting in the Shining Crusade for more than twenty years and possess some ordinary expertise in commanding soldiers.:

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... :The gods do not usually grant this sort of miracles, though I'd be dead a dozen times without their help, but it certainly sounds like an advantage.:

A dark smile, behind Orestan's helmet. :What a surprise, we're expecting to march shortly, and as I'm sure you can guess we're short of officers. Commander of the Shining Crusade? Anything you can tell me about that, other than what you don't want the Empire to hear?:

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:We had a necromancer trying to conquer the world. Unpleasant fellow. Thousands of years old, master of horror and nightmares, commanding hundreds of thousands of ghouls, could raise our dead troops as his slaves, all that. The first problem was convincing our own Empire that it was in their interests to pay for the expensive work of stopping him rather than waiting around hoping someone else would do it. The second problem is that the man is a lich, and can't be killed.

It's going all right. I intend to get back to it, but - I suspect I am more valuable here, at least for long enough to help you free Oris, establish a church of Aroden here, maybe go beat up the local church of the god of torment and slavery if some of the vague rumors I've heard are true, and then leave you to your work.:

 

People often find it reassuring that you don't intend to stay around being more powerful than them.

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:I think that's an overstatement for Atet; more of a god of hierarchy than one of slavery, and no torment at all.

- We don't have any mages who can raise the dead, aside from rumors of godly miracles more spoken of than seen. Fire, lightning, force, compulsions, demons, enchantments and Gates about sum it up. 

And we're very grateful you're here.:

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:Then maybe it's not worth my time to fight Atet. We have a god of tyranny and slavery and torment at home and Aroden and I mean to kill Him.:

And, aloud, "would you be comfortable with my casting my spell that prevents us from speaking falsely to one another? It only works on actual speech, unfortunately. I do have a way to circumvent it. I'm not going to use it. I don't know if you'll be able to tell whether I did."

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Shit. Well. It's not like refusing it is better, and Samien trusts him -

:If you first swear not to initiate violence against us until you leave the building, I'll send out my guards, and then I'll speak truthfully or not at all.:

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"I think it's worth doing, if we're to be allies. I can't reveal military secrets, of course. Assuming there's no worse side effects?"

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Her Mind-voice is slightly more formal, in response to this, but not angry, and not dangerous. :I so swear. I will depart this building doing violence to no one who hasn't tried to do violence to me, whatever you tell me. I have no intent to oblige you to answer any questions, save insofar as I might refuse to work for you if too much is unanswered.:

 

"No side effects. You can always decline to answer a question, and I won't ask what I evidently shouldn't know."

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"Understood. Boys, out. She won't stab me, I can tell."

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And Iomedae puts her hand to her chest (the gesture isn't necessary, but if no one's seen her cast spells paralyzed they might assume she can't, which would be convenient for her), and casts Zone of Truth. And while she can easily throw off her own spells - she can usually throw off Tar-Baphon's - she does not do so. She smiles evenly at him.


And once the guards have left: "Have you lied to me, in our conversation so far?"

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"I am not Marshal Orestan, I'm his body double who he's feeding lines with Mindspeech. So. Define 'you.'"

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- she laughs. " - all right. I would appreciate it if he'd come here and be subject to the spell, but I understand if that's out of the question at the moment. Do you, the person I am speaking with and the only one subject to this spell, know anything he asked you to say to be a lie?"

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"Well, we're revealing a military secret right now. Other than that, no; he didn't ask me to say much. He copied me everything he was saying directly to you, and the only possibly false statements I noticed were that it's possible there have been times the gods weren't on his side and I don't know if 'a dozen' is an exact number of the times they saved his life."

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"Do you yourself work for, or do you know anyone in the revolution to work for, any gods of torment, slavery or tyranny?"

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"No."

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:In the interests of complete accuracy we are supported by Holy Ithik, whose god is the one I assume you heard rumors of, but he doesn't seem to have any interest in torture, just propagating the status quo.:

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:I am not going to begrudge you an alliance with everyone it's useful to ally with, you'd be stupid to do anything else, but I will want to check with someone other than you that it isn't an aspect of my own world's god of tyranny who is also concerned with those other things, and who likes lying to mortals. I'll let you know if I learn anything.:

 

"Do you think Marshal Orestan deals with people honestly? Lawfully, if that has a different meaning to you?"

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He pauses to consider. "We're all breaking the laws here. I think that he's trying to balance that and a lot of other considerations, and sometimes - like, say, me - the balance comes down on the other side."

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"Would he give his word falsely?"

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"I doubt it."

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"Arrange and then betray a ceasefire for peace negotiations, if it was a really good opportunity to kill the Emperor or something?"

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"I don't know. I expect it would depend on whether he thought the other side was going to live up to it."

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"Kill an innocent person?" Because if he insists that his commander would never do that then he's just found a way around her truth spell, and if he says something diplomatic and meaningless then that's probably also how to interpret the last several answers.

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"You kill a lot of innocent people in war. I expect he already has."

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:I have. For the freedom of Oris and before, for worse reasons. If that's where you draw the line, it's drawn.:

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:I'm not drawing lines, right now, just trying to understand them.:

 

"Do you have questions for me? I know you're taking my word for it about the spell working at all."

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"Quite a lot, actually." Also, he has a sense for people, and it's not picking up much from Iomedae but that might not mean much. "Have you lied to us in this conversation?"

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Turnabout's fair play.

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"No. To my recollection, which is generally very good, I have not lied to anyone since I arrived in this world, though I've elided my capabilities in various ways, sometimes intending specifically that people assume something wrong about them."

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"Are you currently intending to take action against us?"

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"No. I intend to make the Empire cut it out in Oris and possibly elsewhere, pending further research, and you're clearly doing a notably good job here, and I intend and want to help. If I changed my mind about that I would tell you, unless I'd changed my mind because I'd learned you were lying about a lot of really important stuff, in which case I wouldn't feel any urge to be more honest than you'd been."

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"Seems fair. Do you know of very important resources we could use to help win that you aren't telling us about?"

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"On Golarion, yes, lots of them, but I don't know how to get back save by dying and there are no very important resources I possess or know of here other than myself and Aroden, who I think operates here only at great expense."

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"You go back to your world if you die?"

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"Aroden has a very strong claim on my immortal soul, values it highly, and I believe quite confidently will grab it, if I die here. Then He'll likely tell His Church at home to resurrect me."

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... "Churches do not usually resurrect people here." Her god sounds... fearsome.

Pause. "What do you think is likely to go wrong for us if you ally with us that wouldn't if you hadn't arrived here?"

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"I think you'll almost certainly get more of what you want than you would if I weren't here, and I intend to bargain openly with you where I want something you don't. There is the possibility I'll draw a lot more of the Empire's attention a lot faster, and cannot in fact survive it, or that I'll survive it but no one else in the vicinity will. There is the possibility that I'll provoke a god-war somehow, and while Aroden would only do that for a really good reason by my own lights, I could imagine you regarding it as a pretty bad deal if Oris got drowned in order to save everyone Evil on this planet from eternal damnation or something. The Church of Aroden will probably have political prominence if we win and you will probably dislike some of its teachings which I do note you haven't yet inquired about.

If the Empire captures my equipment intact then they'll be much better at what they do, which is probably extremely bad for you.

I have told Aroden to look also for the souls of any here who follow Him. They'll be harder for Him to grab, but He may, especially those He can see will be judged well, and then they'll go to Golarion's Judge and on to His afterlife. This could conceivably make things worse if you currently have something better than the Judge and the range of judgments She makes.


That's probably not comprehensive but I haven't withheld anything I thought of."

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"Fair."

He pauses. "Tell me about Aroden."

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She's been telling this one every night; she has it down.

He was human, a great mage, a great man, a hero, the founder of empires, he realized that there needed to be gods who were human and who understood, he raised the Starstone and became one, He left the stories of His life for them to learn from, He'll return someday to bring the Age of Glory. His afterlife is a paradise whose wonders He mostly isn't permitted to show them, but she knows of some of them. 

"I did spend most of the first decade of my career vetting Him - asking other churches, tracking down other sources on the things in the holy books. Eventually I had satisfied myself I could accept His oath, and arranged for Him to give it, and He did."

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Arranged for Him to give it.

Well.

That makes it much less likely she's telling the truth about... any of this.

The gods do not, Jean of Jenona, puppetmaster behind the strings of "Marshal Orestan" knows, give oaths. They serve their ends. It happens that their ends (destroying the Eastern Empire) and his ends (turning Oris into a utopia) coincide, and perhaps some of them may genuinely agree with his goals. The gods will guide you to victory if they like, stirring fate in your favor with the ten thousand coincidences that greased his path to a successful revolution, but they will not speak.

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"That... sounds extraordinary. Gods do not usually speak so directly, here."

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"In Golarion the ancient inhuman gods find communication much more difficult than the ascended mortal gods. ...with a few exceptions, Nethys is ascended-mortal and all those who receive His visions go mad from them. But generally, it's much easier to commune with Aroden or Irori or Cayden Cailean than with Abadar or Erastil or Desna."

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"... Right. Do you have more questions for us?"

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"For your Marshal, yes, if he'll speak to me with the spell up."

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:Sorry to tell you this, but I'm not physically capable of making it to the room, and I don't think you paying a visit to me would be very justifiable for other reasons, unless your healing works on spines.:

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:...it does.: What kind of healing would have a spine-specific exception.

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:... Right then. Officially I'm one of the minor staff officers. Get me out of my chair and I'll take your spell.:

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And Samien will rise very swiftly. "Ready? Need anything?"

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"I don't need anything." She will also rise.

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And he will lead her to one of the private rooms in the fortress, nodding to the guards with absolute assurance along the way.

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... To a room containing a horrifically scarred man, so covered with old burns it's a wonder he survived, who is an exceedingly comfortable non-wheelchair at a desk, his lower half covered by a blanket. There's a quill pen and paper by his hand, and a portable shelf of books within easy arm's reach.

:Hazards of war.:

He is, incidentally, Evil.

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:Less so, where I'm from, or at least it doesn't stick.: She's powerful enough these days that her Lay on Hands cures amputated limbs. 

 

Of course he's Evil, he's leading a peasant rebellion. She was honestly suspicious of the fact the other guy wasn't.

She offers him her hand.

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And he takes it.

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Lay on Hands.

(Five of those to go, or one to go and two channels. Until Aroden has enough of a church here to start granting her spells like normal.)

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He - 

sort of freezes in a deliberately not crying sense -

And stands up, very carefully and precisely, and bows very low.

:Now. You wanted to ask me some questions.:

(And whatever he says to Samien, Samien heads out, closing the door behind him.)

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"Can you think of any reasons why I might, fully informed, regret supporting your revolution?"

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"I don't intend to give up power once we've won," he says, "unless we find a claimant who happens to be good enough at the job or I think he'll listen to me. You might decide that I've done too many evil things to support. You might decide to seize power from me and fail. You might have totally alien morality. You might be opposed to the policies I'll institute if I'm in power. We might lose. The Empire might kill or compulsion you. You might learn of some better opportunity to serve your god or your cause that I'm completely missing. I can probably think of more."

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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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"The problem," he says regretfully, "is of course that if one thing goes wrong you die, and then we're back to not having any epic heroes at all. Of course one thing usually doesn't go wrong, if the gods are on your side and you're up against the Empire, but I don't want to risk the sudden complete game-changing factor. And I can't test a Final Strike, even if I can test everything else." 

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"Final Strike?"

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"- Not something where you come from? Mages can detonate themselves to produce much bigger fireballs than they can throw, scaling with their power; an Adept's Final Strike is sort of the ultimate argument against packed formations. Tends to leave craters."

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" - craters how far across." A Meteor Strike's each strike hits a forty foot radius, and it would barely inconvenience Iomedae, but you don't want to get overconfident."

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"A mile, if you're strong enough." He pauses. "Adepts mostly Gate out. But if you're unlucky -"

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”They will almost certainly try that once they realize nothing short of it will work. I don’t know if it’ll work, but it does suggest not making it apparent that they need to. I’ll ask Aroden for guidance, but if He doesn’t give it, and He probably won’t, then I think we can’t afford to make it too clear to them what exactly is going so badly wrong.

What was your plan, before me, to actually win? On the maps it’s a very large empire; from the equipment it’s a very rich one. You beat the army they have stationed here and I’d expect them to send a much bigger one.”

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"Oh, that? Two different imperial generals in two different provinces are currently in revolt. Ambitious men - both lost their loyalty compulsions, both got news around the same time that they were being investigated for sedition, both panicked... I think Holy Ithik might end up supporting one of them for the throne. The Empire is not going to have the time to send reinforcements to Oris until it's an established independent state with diplomatic relations with the Empire's neighbors and a firm alliance with Ithik." He shrugs. "Also, of course - the gods are on my side. I can afford to gamble and trust the dice will come up my way; after all, they're divinely loaded."

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The spells run out; her wings dissolve. She switches back to Mindspeech.

:I want to offer you some insight into what that prompts me to think about and work on, as part of trying to help you guess what I want and where I'll buy it off you. I'm worried this war will be much uglier than you anticipate, and I really want to find openings to make sure it isn't. If the Empire has internal problems I should learn enough about them to decide if I'm willing to offer to solve them in exchange for its departure from Oris. I'll do some investigation about that, but I don't plan to act without you knowing what I'm doing.

I also want to learn more about which gods have been aiding you, and what They hope to get out of it, and what to make of Ithik.

I've been operating on the probable-looking assumption Aroden will be able to act in His ordinary fashion here once His church is established. If that's wrong, then I think maintaining Oris's independence will be very hard, even with luck on your side. After all, I assume it was, five years ago, an independent state with its own alliances. But if I'm right, it shouldn't actually be all that difficult. He'll choose priests, all of whom can do the magical healing I just demonstrated every day, and who have additional magic that combats disease, and He'll give me another paladin order, which can be charged among other things with protecting the independence of Oris and anyone else who wants them.

I want to free Oris, but I also want to, if it is impossible for us to free Oris, if we are sufficiently overmatched, discover that as fast as possible, so as to minimize how many people we send to their deaths for a cause we had deluded ourselves about. You can sometimes win battles through sheer optimism and force of will but you broadly can't win wars that way.

I want to check promptly whether any magic here can touch me, short of a Final Strike. I want to ask how you plan to build a functional state out of a peasant rebellion, it's a very rare person who can actually do that though maybe simultaneously founding the church of Aroden will be sufficient. I want to get an outline of peace terms you'd be happy with if I did somehow manage to get the Empire to agree to them. I want to talk seriously with you about the after-lives and how to not damn every man who follows you. I don't feel strongly about prioritization among those concerns.:

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:I think my first priority, actually, is clarifying a minor point: This isn't a peasant rebellion. The Empire won the war with compulsions; the only people who fought were a handful of nobles and holy orders, and they disbanded the Army of Oris without it ever fighting - and my central directory reconstituted it under my banner, paid for by a number of churches, states and individuals who really did not want Oris to be part of the Empire. So. The easy-to-answer questions all have the response, "you're underestimating me, and you're overestimating the last king of Oris." We have the nobles, we have the churches, we have the army, we have mages and we have mutineers, and he didn't even have someone who could keep the Empire from ordering him to hand over his kingdom.:

:After that, the thing I most care about is getting a second priest of Aroden; I've asked someone to get you a fair copy of our peace terms, both the ones we ask for and the ones we'll accept, and we need to make sure you're safe against anything a strong Adept can do. The rest of your concerns - seem like something we can talk about in a week. Unless I'm wrong, dealing with the gods of another world?:

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:- that is a considerably stronger position than I feared. All right, good. I like your priorities. Aroden isn't impatient and frankly probably can't see anything very clearly this far from home in territory where He isn't worshipped.

 

I want your word that, if I'm not in fact safe in testing against some things a strong Adept can do, you'll stop doing it once that has been determined. Compulsions shouldn't work on me, but I do see the obvious temptation to try, in your position, if you find something that would, and I think in the long run that's a route that ends very badly.:

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:I give you my word, but you obviously shouldn't trust that if your spell has in fact passed; if I'd enslave an ally I'd also lie to one.:

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:I actually know some people who wouldn't! One consequence of the differences in how the gods act in our different worlds, I think. I have enemies I'd gladly destroy and who'd gladly destroy me whose word I'd also rely on - though I'd be sure it was very very very specific -- and if I were in a situation like this one at home I could arrange with the Empire to conduct negotiations in which they were pledged not to use the information divulged in those negotiations against us in the war, probably by quarantining the negotiators and granting a Lawful church review over their communications. I have made the inference there is no way to do things like that here.:

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:That sounds lovely, and you are correct to make this inference.: Though, in fact, Jean would in practice almost certainly find some clever way to get information out of it anyway and so cheat. It's what he does.

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:Aroden's church will enable it but - it'll take time. It's the kind of institution that stakes its own credibility, when it acts, and that credibility has to be deep and important to everyone involved before I'd want to test if it holds up to really high-stakes things. And of course the Empire may still refuse to cooperate with it, but - I'm actually wondering if they'll develop some pragmatism about religion once we have things set up. Most places do, for the healing and the clean water.:

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:If you can provide them with an actual reason to tolerate religions other than 'people care about it', that might do it. The Empire is obsessive about maximizing its resources, and they think of priests as equal parts parasites and traitors. If you can give them a reason for approving of priests that will appear in yearly budget summaries, that might make them reconsider - if anything will, which I doubt.:

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:I would be interested in hearing more about your time in service to the Empire.:

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:That's one of the things I don't like talking about much. Suffice to say that fixing it will not, in fact, work from the inside. Try and you'll - get burned.:

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His account of the injuries earlier was 'horrors of war'. But she doesn't push it. :All right. What next?:

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Deflection: Successful!

:Next we go confirm the rumors about my miraculous healing and credit Aroden, you try to give the best priest-candidate person the short form of Aroden's teachings and if you can do it overnight consecrate a temple, and my best combat-Adept sees just how immune you are to everything he can throw, and tomorrow you go north or east with us depending on the results. Seem reasonable to you?:

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:Yes.  -there's a spell to consecrate a temple at home, and I don't have it, but I might be able to make something Aroden can work through all the same.:

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He nods. :I expect that's one of the reasons the gods brought you here.: He turns back to her. :Shall we go?:

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:Sure. I'm skeptical that Aroden brought me here, incidentally. He'd probably have told me first so I could pack, for one thing, and ...I think He would have preferred not to drop me where I was in fact dropped.:

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:Oh?:

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:I found myself beside a village where the Empire was carrying out executions for support of the rebels. Aroden's - Lawful Neutral. There's a spirit of fair play. I don't know precisely how to convey it, but it's out of character, making me decide right then and there if I'll overthrow the Empire or not, and I think He'd have been much more inclined to drop me somewhere where I could make the decision through research and reflection. I, of course, am attempting to make the same decision I'd have made then, but - it feels like an attempt by whoever did it to maneuver me onto your side, and Aroden, quite apart from how He could just tell me to back your side, disprefers doing things like that.:

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:Mmm. Probably one of the local gods, then.:

And he'll sweep the door open, and, without breaking stride, "Tell the Marshal that we just won the war," and keep walking. 

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The man is blindingly charismatic. A tiny part of her wants to let him borrow her headband and see what he does with it, while a much larger part of her suspects that this would be an incredibly terrible idea.

 

She will follow along behind the miraculously healed minor staff officer.

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The miraculously healed minor staff officer, trailing flunkies, will encounter the visibly very busy Marshal -

"Sir." He'll drop to one knee.

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"Jean!" Marshal Orestan will take his hand, pull him to his feet, pat his back in a half-embrace. "You're up!"

(This is, of course, in public, or as in public as it can be while still in a fortress.)

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"A miracle of the god Aroden, thanks to Iomedae His servant. The gods are with us."

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"The gods are with us!"

And, to everyone in earshot, "Iomedae of the Knights of Ozem, Champion of Aroden, has come to guide us to victory! By her miracles and the gods united we will triumph!"

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It's actually just entirely true according to her own best guesses!  That's not why they're saying it, but still!!

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And they can move on to trying to find someone who wants to be a priest of Aroden a lot, and who Iomedae thinks is qualified!

(The minor staff officer is going back to staff work, or more accurately to being distracted from "staff work" which is actually feeding lines to his body double by people going up to him and checking the miracle worked.)

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Iomedae is happy to deliver the at-this-point-well-optimized-for-local-background-knowledge account of Aroden, what He stands for, what serves Him, why you might want to serve Him, etcetera to promising candidates for the priesthood, though she makes clear that while she'll try to convey enough of Aroden in the next few hours that they have a chance of finding Him in prayer, her guess is that He'll need a stronger foothold in the world to start selecting priests in the spectacular healing-miracles-and-all fashion they hope for. 

She'll share some of the most famous stories, some of the songs, some of the devotional prayers, and an effort to convey via Telepathy her own mental state when she addresses Him in prayer. 

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They will attempt to learn this from her. Can she consecrate a temple for them? What kind of place would be a good temple of Aroden?

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He likes the stars. He went out to explore them all Himself, once. His temples generally have glass domes for the ceiling, if they can. (The primary temple they're going to build after the war should be nicer - more beautiful, better-built, displaying more knowledge of materials science - than anywhere in the Empire, because civilization is theirs, not the Empire's.)

 

But for now, it'll be enough for it to reflect their aspirations and their current resourcefulness, to be clean and spacious and well-made. She'll make her sword glow with celestial power and cut His holy symbol into a wall and His stars into the ceiling, and grow the angel wings again to sing to Him while they make the place a foundation from which the rest of their work can begin. 

 

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And once it becomes clear that Aroden will not be possessing any other priests to serve as the same conduit for miracles that Iomedae is, the next stage is for one of Orestan's officers to find Adept Jevan, a surly young man who combines an aggressive "leave me alone or get your ass kicked" aura with visible poise, who reacts first with a cocky smile, and then absolute disbelief, as he is told that he is to try absolutely everything he can on Iomedae, no holding back.

"You mean this."

"Yes."

"You mean everything?"

"Don't Final Strike."

He looks at Iomedae. "Is he serious?"

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:About not Final Striking? Yes! There are other people around!:

 

(She does put up Resist Energy (fire) and Resist Energy (lightning), because she'll have it up in combat.)

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He flashes into an angry expression, then a cocky grin. :About trying to kill you. I'm better than most imperial Adepts.:

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:I don't need to know if an imperial Adept could take me down, I know the answer to that. I need to know if all the imperial Adepts could take me down together.:

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:- Right.:

And he will give it a try. Force-daggers. Fireballs. Lightning bolts. Force-nets. Spells to propel projectiles, or to propel enchanted projectiles which fire force-daggers and then fireballs when they hit you. Compulsions, though he has less expertise than sheer power. There are, in fact, stronger Adepts than he is in the Eastern Empire; the Eastern Empire is very large. But he wasn't exaggerating about how good he was. He will try everything he can think of before he starts getting tired, and he can think of a lot.

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She's very hard to hit. She shouldn't be fast, in all that armor, but she is, and well-shielded, and the armor is a nearly unscratchable sheet with very few weak points that are very hard to hit, and if you do manage to plunge something through a weak point it's never more than a glancing blow. Fireballs and lightning bolts seem very hard to get powerful enough to exhaust the Resist Energy, not that she indicates that's what's going wrong there. Force-nets are closer to being a problem because she has to actually break them, but she hits very very fast and very very hard and he can't put enough power behind one that it doesn't shatter at a few full-force swings of her sword (though she notes to herself that this means the sword will need to not have the Brilliant Energy enchantment in combat, or she'll need to have a backup weapon). Projectiles that fire more spells on contact are a good idea, because she can't dodge the more-spells as easily as she can dodge the initial projectiles, but they need to be both numerous and individually more-than-sufficient-to-incapacitate-an-ordinary-person to even scratch her.

Compulsions do nothing. She has very good shields and also when out of curiosity she lets one through them it works the same way an attempt to Dominate her would work at home, which is to say not at all.

 

Where she is impressed is that he can keep at this. Most wizards at home can throw some Fireballs this powerful or even more powerful, but they can't actually throw this many, round after round, limited only by eventual exhaustion. In a real fight it's hard to imagine her enemies would live this long but it is very good to know that they do not burn through their spells in less than two minutes.

 

(She's actually taken a reasonable number of hits by the time he is tired, each of them shallow but collectively adding up; she doesn't indicate this. Better for everyone to believe her invincible. It does mean the Empire could take her down - or at least make her fly away burning some of her precious healing  - with a hundred Adepts who knew exactly what to do. Fortunately it'd be very hard to learn exactly what to do, since there are no visible signs of having almost succeeded.)

 

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Well, he's an Adept. He gets tired, sure, but he can just keep drawing more mage-energy from the local nodes. That's what an Adept is.

Nonetheless, his response after she has just taken everything he can get and appeared to be completely fine is :... Damn.:

(There is enough of an audience to spread the tale of just how invincible she is, because Jean is very good at his job.)

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She puts the sword away. :Thank you, I enjoyed that, and I think it answers my question.: With a qualified 'yeah the Empire could maybe kill you if you were sufficiently incautious and they'd learned enough of your capabilities', not her favorite answer, but she can win almost anything if she has accurate information.

:Who makes weapons around here? I want something custom to break force-nets, because I usually have an enchantment up on the sword, and I need a custom longbow.:

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:Hell if I know, we got ours from the Imperials. Bet there's an armory you can grab something from, though, they sent these guys down here with everything but their own ovens.:

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A normal longbow will be approximately useless to her, but she nods politely.

 

:What kinds of scrying capabilities does the Empire have? Is it possible for me to sleep under shields against magical observation?:

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:A good mage can can scry, there's wards against it you can set. We can get you something.:

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Right. They should let her know when they have that ready. She'll be around, meeting the soldiers and acquainting herself with the situation and attempting to pick up some more of the local language.

 

(She should gather more information. She likes the Marshal. She thinks he will be competent to win this war, given that he has her. But she's absolutely sure he's not telling her half of what he's done, or why he's done it, because why would he, and she still has only his word for it that the Holy Empire of Ithik isn't ruled by Asmodeus or an archdevil, and she has no idea whether he's also competent to win this war without her or whether he's delusional about that, and it affects (substantially) what risks she should take to try to bring a peace faster.

And he has many many ready explanations for why sincere attempts to explain the situation to the Empire flatly won't work and aren't worth attempting, and he could very easily be right, but - she trusts no reasoning about peace done by anyone but her, as a first default. Most people aren't really trying for peace; it doesn't fit in their head alongside trying to win.)

 

She'll stop by the arsenal and pick up something she can use in her off hand to club force-nets down, and take a longbow if they have one, and ask many eager questions about the rebellion's recent triumphs, and how those play out, and how the Marshal commanded them. 

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They can provide weapons, though not reliably enchanted ones (all the Imperial weapons need mages to charge them), and her choice of longbows suited for the draw of a very strong man, all of which she needs to be careful not to break like a twig.

And she can get stories. So many stories. The precise details are somewhat confused, but - the king gathered his armies and went north, and then they surrendered and were ordered to disband except a picked few who would take up service with the Empire, and most of those didn't show up. So when their officers started to get word from the Central Directory that they were recruiting - well, 'Marshal Orestan' was an assumed name, but there were generals under him who they knew and respected and lords, and Ithik was backing him and he could pay -

- And meanwhile Imperial troops were burning every shrine in the country and it was, really, a very simple decision. Most of them were in camps west or south of the border in the bitter ground there, and others were training in Ithik, but you had raiders who were in the forests of Oris raiding and trying to pick off isolated patrols and they don't really know how the coordination was that good, but Orestan pulled it off, they were almost never caught and nobody knew where they were except him...

... And there were a few little bands caught and mostly they knew was that Old Emerald-Eyes was in charge, the dragon on their flag, and the Empire thought it was just little bands and they had to split up their troops to question every village, had to scatter them through the entire province, and when they heard there was a really big band that was desperately fleeing west the biggest army in the south half of Oris assembled everything it could and crossed the mountains to smash them before they could get away, and Old Emerald-Eyes was waiting for them with an army he'd assembled the day before and when the Empire came down out of a pass in marching order they smashed them and fed off the imperial supply train while they marched east; when they made it to Mahauna the imperial armies had already abandoned it, trying to link up with their allies, and now they're going east to beat another imperial army and they can do that, too.

(Everyone has a fantastically high opinion of the Marshal. Most people figure he's the rightful prince-in-exile; that sounds like a reasonable origin story for someone like him. How exactly he manages to get everything done is really not clear, other than that he's a really good Mindspeaker with a fantastically long range, and uses that for coordinating at distances too long to manage. He maintains discipline but manages to do it without looking like a monster, and is some kind of logistical genius, and... honestly basically every other good trait that can be found to praise in a general. There may be a bit of halo effect going on, here.)

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There certainly is (and a little of whatever mind control she detected earlier) but honestly since they're likely going to have to fight this war to the Empire's exhaustion every bit of additional competence on the Marshal's part is just a good thing.

 

If the imperial armies had already abandoned Mahuana by the time they made it here she does wonder whose heads are on the spikes.

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Imperial officials who didn't make it out, plus some soldiers the empire didn't get out in time.

(Unspoken: The very badly wounded.)

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And does she have the food and the healing to propose they take badly wounded prisoners, no she does not. She does ask if the Empire takes prisoners but she is already pretty sure of her guess.

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They say they take "prisoners of war" and even boast about rules for how to treat them, but Oris is a "province in rebellion," so everyone they take gets executed for blood magic after a five-minute trial.

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Yep that is pretty much what she expected.

 

Has a place for her to sleep been secured yet?

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Yup! Properly warded.

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:Results from the trial?: Orestan will ask before they get that far.

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:I think a sufficiently lucky or massive force of Adepts could kill me if I couldn't get out. Taking the capital alone would probably still be fine, but if we want to maintain ambiguity about what aid Aroden has sent, then you want me with a larger body of troops, doing merely very implausible things.

 

I do want to send the Empire a declaration that the Knights of Ozem are participating in the hostilities. I can get you a draft tomorrow and you can tell me what's wrong with it. 

 

Do the forces under your command use blood-magic from captured prisoners?:

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:Yes, that's why we don't accept surrenders.:

He pauses. :I'd recommend you come east with us, then; there's a lot of adepts there, more if we're unlucky, and I don't want to split enough troops to provide cover for you.:

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:Understood. I want a better longbow, so I'm more possible to mistake for a small contingent of experienced soldiers, and a mage assigned to getting me out if anything goes terribly wrong. 

Blood-magic sacrifices of prisoners sounds probably very Evil. Terribly important for the war effort?:

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:Widespread agreement it's wrong, yes - bad for the environment, bad for the wizard doing it, unless he has lots of special training that my people, frankly, don't mostly have. Also the only way to get the mage-power we need to keep our talismans charged.:

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:The people I've spoken to here have mostly been peasants but they also mostly haven't known anything about the after-lives. I am unsure if that's because they didn't know or because no one does or because, say, it's been conclusively demonstrated that there are no after-lives here at all.:

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:Some gods say their followers go to them after death - or more broadly that the god will punish people it dislikes and reward people it likes - and some scholars have written memorandums claiming that everyone just gets reborn again in new bodies. Nothing clear. I worry more about this life, myself.:

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:Where I'm from, Aroden takes His own and people who've done a lot of Evil things go to awful places full of torment and horror and ruled by gods who enjoy, or don't care about, hurting them. This is very well-verified; we've scried the after-lives, and travelled to them. Paladins, like me, have the ability to sense instinctively if sufficiently powerful people will be ruled Evil by the judge.:

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:And you've sensed I'm Evil and you're warning me I need to change my ways or be tormented by evil gods forever?:

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:Not forever. Until Aroden and I kill the relevant Evil gods. 

 

And frankly, I'm not very worried about you. You know what tradeoffs you're making. One could reasonably say that no one really knows, that no one freely chooses, but - some choose a lot more freely than others. If this goes well, you'll be a King. And realistically, you'll repent at great expense when old age starts catching up to you. 

I don't want you to damn your men. They'll do Evil on your orders and go home to their villages broken men who can't explain to their families any of the details of the war they're a hero for, and then they'll go be tortured for it.:

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There is, actually, a pause, as he attempts to come up with a justification for why his past behavior, completely justified in the situation he was in then, needs no changing whatsoever in response to a totally different situation before his mind gives it up as a bad job.

:Right. So, maybe the gods will forgive us because what we're doing is right, and maybe it doesn't even work that way here, and maybe we're all damned. So. What makes deeds count as less 'evil'? I expect most of my mages will be 'damned' whatever happens, unless they can 'repent' afterwards, but I do recognize that the fewer people who get it the better.:

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Oh, she really does like him. 

:Righteous cause helps. Choosing the least bad available route to a goal helps. Praying to the Good gods for better options helps, if you - actually mean it, if you are actually trying to think of better options and would be glad if you found any. Minimizing killing off the battlefield - you'd presumably rather not sack your cities anyway, right, they're your cities, you're going to have to govern them afterwards - trying for peace, even when that involves incurring some risks - trying to do only necessary evils -

- trying to inject decency where you can - I had the forces I was training do a proper burial service for the men they killed, and pray for them, and I spoke to them about why we had exhausted all of other options before killing them -

- and not forgetting that, you know, the average soldier for the Empire is just a person, defending what he understands and loves and what has been good to him, and that we have to kill him anyway but it'd be better if we didn't and it's terrible that he faces damnation. 

I'm not Evil, and I've killed a lot of people, because I'm meticulous about only killing people when it's actually the best way to make this world and the next one not like this, make something better - I'm meticulous in a way that your soldiers will not be able to perfectly learn though they can grasp some strokes of it, paladins do fall if they spend too much time at war and are insufficiently careful.

I have had the thought that the best way for this war to go would be for me to just personally kill everyone necessary to kill for the Empire to stop, and I'll do my best.:

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:The thing is, every time I try to 'choose the least bad available route to a goal', I trade off some chance of victory. I don't want to sack my cities, but if I tell my troops to remember that the average soldier of the empire is a person, they're going to hesitate instead of "stabbing the bastards", and get stabbed themselves. And, you say, go to be tortured forever. So I don't think we can afford the risk of you personally doing all the killing yourself, and I don't think I want to tell my soldiers to be meticulous any more than they need to be to keep their fellows alive. So you see my problem.:

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:I really do. You have a very hard problem and I have no shortcuts to solving it aside from making your victory sufficiently overdetermined that you have affordance to take some risks that trade off against winning. If Aroden picks a priest here, that'll change this calculus substantially, because it'd make it more of a likely thing that your souls go to the same judgment and make victory much more overdetermined. In the absence of that - well, I think trying to choose the least bad available route is worth some costs sometimes. Your mages are not in fact all Evil yet, the Adept who tested my abilities a few hours ago wasn't. Their cause is good. The Judge does care about that. When the costs of being less evil are small - ask me if I have some way to let you afford them. I have a lot up my sleeve.:

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:If Aroden can provide me with more priests with magical healing, I'm prepared to make a lot of compromises for that. Right now... I plan to look for places where it's very cheap.:

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:I understand.

Can we meet in the morning, to go over my proposed communications with the Empire?:

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:We can meet now - I plan to march in the morning. I hope you'll be with us?:

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:Yes.: She hasn't actually had a chance to write down the communications in question, yet, but they'll have to be translated anyway, probably the thing she dictates is a fine starting point for the rest of their work.

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:You'd prefer to do it in-person?:

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:Yes, but not strongly enough to override the security concerns I imagine you have. If you want a lot of revisions I'm going to have a hard time keeping track of them, is the main constraint. Why don't you send paper to my room, and then we'll see exactly how much work it'll take to put this together, and then figure out if it's worth risking a meeting.:

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He will do that! He can also send a couple maps over; one a present imperial occupation map, the other a map from before the empire started invading. 

His terms, in essence, are the ones he explained: He wants the prewar borders, with the Kingdom of Oris possessing complete sovereignty, including the right to fortify its borders against imperial return, and the Empire butting completely out. He also wants as much money as they can extract from the empire, but that's negotiable. He suspects that in the unlikely event the Empire is desperate enough to negotiate they will demand either "Tozoa Province" (the northern half of Oris, which the Empire conquered first) or concessions that amount to the right to station enough troops for a coup in it, and that's just pushing the war down the road to when the Empire is more ready for it than they are now.

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That seems reasonable. She wants that too. She also wants to formally notify the Empire of her involvement in the war and interest in facilitating peace talks rather earlier than the Empire would be inclined to have them, and she wants to start showing the Empire how Lawful churches get things done in places where Lawful churches are a thing. (The Asmodeans don't count.) It probably won't work this time but it'll save a lot of time next time, and who knows, maybe some people in the Empire will be fast learners.

 

The internal factional politics of a place like the Empire are impossible to guess from the outside but if one person reads the letter and thinks about the implications and positions themself to benefit from an independent Oris, that's one more internal force towards a peace deal than they had previously.

 

Her proposed communication is:

This letter constitutes notice that the Knights of Ozem, a paladin order of the god Aroden, have entered into the war for control of Oris and are participating in hostilities alongside the armies fighting for Orisian independence. 
 
The Knights of Ozem make the following representations about the war and our present state of knowledge, and swears to these representations on the honor of the order and the honor of its members, and in the name of our god, Aroden.
 
It is our present assessment that those forces the Knights of Ozem have lent to the Orisian independence forces are sufficient for the Orisian independence forces to win the war for Oris decisively. We expect this assessment to be unshared primarily because the capabilities of those forces the Knights of Ozem have lent to the Orisian independence forces are unknown to the Empire and (we believe) substantially underestimated. We expect that Imperial assessors with accurate information about the Knights of Ozem and those forces the Knights have deployed in Oris would concur in our assessment that the war will be decisively won by the Orisian independence forces. 
 
It is our desire to arrive at a peace agreement in which Oris is independent of the Empire, Imperial subjects can depart Oris in safely if they so choose, loss of life on both sides is minimized, and Oris and the Empire can subsequently enjoy sustained peace and shared prosperity. It is our belief that the war in which we presently engage offers the best prospects of that peace, and we would (to a degree limited by preexisting commitments) change course if we saw another route to that peace. It is our comprehension that those forces fighting for Orisian independence demand a sovereign nation with the borders it possessed before the Imperial war of conquest, and it is our intent to fight alongside them until that demand is met.
 
In our comprehension of Aroden's will, He is no enemy of the Empire. If He were, this would not easily move us to war, which is generally contrary to the prosperity and flourishing of human civilization everywhere, and even less so to assassinations and engineered infrastructure accidents, which are contrary to the principles by which we operate. We believe it is the case that Aroden has never carried out or authorized operations inside the territory of the Eastern Empire outside of Oris. We are willing to, as a gesture of goodwill and a step towards future cooperation, refrain from operations in the Eastern Empire outside of Oris, except for sending these letters, which we sincerely hope will reach someone who sees a route to peace on the basis of the information herein, and which we send with primarily that intent and the intent of establishing a reputation that will fortify future negotiations.
 
Our present anticipation is that the truth of this letter will be proven to the Empire only through the total destruction of its forces inside Oris. But that would be a tragedy, and we would sincerely and strongly prefer a negotiated peace as soon as possible. In raising to the Empire's attention the fact that the Orisian forces are stronger than they would otherwise have been presumed to be, and that the Knights of Ozem are participating in the war, and that the Knights of Ozem believe our contribution to the war to be of substantial importance, we believe that we incur some real (though small) risk to the members of our order and to our prospects of success. The overwhelmingly most important consideration in favor of our decision to incur that risk was the desire to reduce deaths and evils committed in the course of war, either by increasing the probability of a negotiated peace before the destruction of the Imperial army in Oris or by establishing a precedent such that on the next occasion it is necessary for the order to write a letter like this one, the claims in it are more credible.
 
The Knights of Ozem do not represent any of the following: 
- that the claims in this document about the capabilities of that detachment of Knights in Oris are comprehensive or non-misleading. We do represent that in our estimation this letter will cause you to inaccurately underestimate, rather than inaccurately overestimate, our capabilities, and further represent that we think a person having read this letter will overall have more accurate information, and predict us better, than a person who has not read it, and that the benefits we intend to derive from this letter come primarily from it creating a better understanding, within the Empire, of how and why to negotiate with us.
- that other communications claimed to be from the Knights of Ozem are created by us, or are subject to the commitments herein
- that this message has not been modified within the Empire after its transmission in a manner that would make the commitments to its truth inaccurate (though we intended no such modifications, know of none as of this writing, and will circulate many copies of this letter in an effort to, among other objectives, make it easy to determine the original and unmodified form)

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He thinks this is hilarious, and that will leak through in his Mindspeech. :Seems reasonable. I don't think you can find a good translation of the word 'paladin', though; that's not a native concept we have. 'Military order', maybe.:

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:All right.: Then she just wants a lot of copies of her letter made overnight, and a plan to distribute them, and she'll join his men to march at dawn.

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His plan, which he will make known to her, is to take a handful of prisoners after the upcoming battle and then release them if they agree to take copies of the letter, as well as some declarations of independence, to the governor, while also (redundancy!) sending some copies to see if his spies in the imperial provincial capital can sneak onto the governor's desk, which would be a nice power move. He doesn't intend to do it openly because he thinks the odds of the Empire arresting a (strategic) messenger under a flag of truce are about eighty percent, because they consider this a criminal affair rather than one they dignify with the codes of war that flags of truce are covered under. (The odds of a general arresting a messenger with a flag of truce sent right before a battle are much lower, even if the battle is against a rebel army; that's a different sort of situation.)

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She's content with that, and trusts for now his assessment of the Empire's own code of honor, such as it is. Honestly it feels to her like something that was Lawful a few hundred years ago and then has been hollowed out the way things get hollowed out if no one understands the spirit of them. It's not far from what happened to Taldor, albeit much more slowly.

 

In Golarion they'd have summoned archon-constructs convey messages right before a battle. The other side could stab the archon if they wanted but it'd just look stupid and petty. 

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Elementals are sometimes summoned in Velgarth, but it's a specialist branch of the art, and the most common summoning is just unleashing a pack of Abyssal demons in construct-bodies in the enemy lines. Orestan likes the idea of expendable-construct-messengers, but it's not something the Empire or Oris has.

And in the morning they can leave.

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Meanwhile, Mage-Inquisitor Kastil, the One Competent Person by most people's standards in the Office of Inquiry of the Eastern Empire, has been writing a report for his superiors detailing a supply chain disaster that crossed the line from mundane disaster into the realm of legend. It is, of course, for the desk of Archmage-General Altarrin, the One Competent Person by Kastil’s standards in the Eastern Empire.

Apparently, several mage-factories got incorrect instructions in how, precisely, they were to arrange their tools and enchant their products, and no one called them on it (a trail of incompetence, malfeasance and corruption that eventually bottoms out with people too dead to interrogate, and, of course, the gods), such that they put the wrong enchantment on a number of the rings, collars, necklaces, eyeglasses and penknives and shoes that are made enchanted with built-in talismans, while simultaneously making them slightly wrong so that they were more likely than normal to cut the wielder. This would not be a tremendous problem, except that the enchantment was one devised by an imperial research project (Kastil has notes about how this entire project should have been located further from any border between the Empire and any country with gods, or region of the empire with insufficiently suppressed gods) to sever compulsions when the skin of the wielder was cut. Mage-Inqusitor Kastil has no idea (other than gods) why anyone thought this was a good enchantment to devise, since any mage can just sever compulsions any time he wants, but items subtly enchanted with this ability and other things have wound up in the offices of dozens of imperial officials, sometimes mixed up with ones from non-sabotaged factories, and are going to be basically impossible to track down all of and destroy, resulting on large numbers of imperial mage-officials (or non-mages who can afford to have their enchanted items charged by a mage) randomly getting cut and losing all their loyalty-compulsions, many of them not even deliberately.

Mage-Inquisitor Kastil is pretty sure there’s a giant conspiracy behind this (with the gods behind them), but his attempts to root it out have so far uncovered only expendable dupes and mundane corruption. He is, of course, pretty sure of this not merely because it is kind of the obvious conclusion, but because the Eastern Empire is not only facing a bizarrely hard to stamp out peasant rebellion in Oris (news came by gate-courier that the commander of a major legionary detachment was killed and most of his force wiped out in an obvious ambush) and also generals in both Tolmassar and Taymyrr provinces have declared that Altarrin has usurped the throne from his puppet Bastran and risen in revolt, naming themselves rightful emperors. All this is backed by the Emperor of Ithik, who is no doubt laughing himself silly at this, and, almost certainly, also by the gods.

Hopefully Altarrin’s having a better day than he is.

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Altarrin has standing orders for his guards to wake him, if Kastil - who frequently works late or even through the whole night, when he's deeply engaged in an investigation - drops a thick report on his desk in the wee hours. Often he can skim it and go back to sleep, but sometimes there are interventions he needs to carry out or order personally, where doing so six candlemarks earlier means they have more options than they would if it had waited. 

 

 

He's so tired. It's not even mostly about being woken after three candlemarks of sleep. 

In hindsight, this is also going to end up on the inevitable failure analysis, which is inevitably going to take six months and end in concluding that the Empire continues to have the same problem it's always had, which rears its head in a thousand forms but almost always bottoms out in 'gods.' 

(And, you know, people who don't put as much effort and meticulousness and sheer paranoia into their day to day work as he does, let alone what Kastil does, but you can't be angry with people for that. The Empire is for humans, and built out of humans, and it's what he has to work with. You've got to be realistic.) 

Anyway. It's been a relentless past year, and he is with the benefit of hindsight wishing that they hadn't pushed ahead on annexing the rest of Oris, with Taymyrr barely pacified and known problems with corruption in Tolmassar, that he hadn't been pushing to resolve as fast as he might have otherwise because - why - because it's inevitably going to end in dozens if not hundreds of arrests and trials and executions, and he's so tired of executing people. Which is...sort of a problem, if it's leading him to quietly shift his priorities, and also because corruption in the Empire is the kind of thing that, in the long run, inevitably leads to more deaths, and more grinding uphill work to put things back the way they should be. 

And here they are, not exactly overextended - it would have been a very serious strategic error to end up in a situation where the core stability of the Empire was genuinely at risk - but certainly the Empire will be facing the most strain on its resources that it has in the past fifty years. To the point that it might honestly be cheaper to pick their battles and let Oris go, except that for a very long list of reasons this is not very feasible, and would end up costing more in the kind of intangible political capital that he can even less afford to burn right now. 

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...All right. Prioritize. 

The bizarre godsabotage operation with the enchanted talismans wouldn't normally be a crisis under normal terms, just irritating. If Altarrin had time, he personally could probably manage to track down all of the misplaced talismans, without even leaving the palace, by running a search-spell for the specific enchantment on every single one. He does not have time to do that and he even less has time to train someone else up to the level of reliability and skill at search-spells that would mean he could delegate it.

He'll write up a very quick proposal to Emperor Bastran: this is the list of Imperial offices at risk. They should send a skilled mage-engineer to all of them, someone who can at least learn to recognize the enchantment quickly by glancing around a room with mage-sight. Which won't catch anything tucked away in a shielded drawer, and of course they'll get unlucky and miss dozens of the things tucked away in drawers, so - he wants it announced, quietly, under sealed imperial orders at this list of locations only, that any mage who accidentally loses their compulsions and voluntarily reports it within a day will be granted full amnesty and not investigated further. (A very large number of Imperial officers don't want to be investigated by the Office of Inquiry, even if the specific incident was a genuine accident, and Kastil is going to be annoyed with Altarrin about ordering this, but - there's goodwill, there, even if only a smattering of it, people will implicitly react to not being trusted by figuring there's no reason to be trustworthy other than the mind control forcing them to be, and he really doesn't want to incentivize someone to defect over an actual accident.) 

 

Rebelling generals. Ugh. It happens every so often - generally, someone finds a way to get their compulsions snipped, often by doublethinking their way around to happening to be near a junior mage who happens not to be under the full suite of compulsions and happens to be very exceptionally good at thinking their way around the compulsions they are under - and usually it's still in their incentives to play along for a while, but not if they also feel pressured or threatened from the right direction. The unlucky part is in having two at once, but even that by itself would be a once-in-twenty-years level of unluckiness, not...this

He's going to delegate dealing with that, mostly. He wants the Office of Inquiry to figure out what actually happened, from a safe distance, and in the meantime he wants to stall. Which they can do, here, there are existing channels of communication and standard conventions for sending snarky diplomatic letters back and forth for a bit while the Office of Inquiry figures out for him how many people are irretrievably involved and whether it can still be resolved by Gating a strike team of elite mages in to subdue the main perpetrators and take them in for trials. 

(The generals in question will...make certain updates...from the fact that they're not immediately being crushed in full force, and perhaps more importantly, so will their servants and clerks and foot soldiers. That's unfortunate. It means more work afterward to disincentivize the same area from having a revolt again in a year or two under the new management.) 

But Altarrin is reluctant to fully delegate planning an attack in strength - though he'll certainly delegate the legwork to set up so they're ready for one - and today is occupied.

 

 

The provincial revolts aren't surprising. The bizarre sabotage is, but only because the gods have not set up exactly this specific series of failures before, and by itself it's not even a crisis. 

Oris is confusing

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Actually, the more he thinks about it, the more baffling it is. It doesn't fit with even his worst-case projections of how the invasion and pacification of the second half of Oris was going to go. 

 

The gods, of course. But the gods don't command peasant armies, not directly. They work through people. And 'the backing of the Holy Empire of Ithik' isn't an explanation, it just pushes the confusion down one level, to why they thought this was a cause worth backing. It shouldn't be. Ithik is an obnoxious place but its leadership isn't stupid. It makes any sense for them to back local revolts under former Imperial generals, who have military training and experience and access to the Empire's talismans and established local power bases with subordinates compulsioned to obey them. He would not have expected the quickly-crushed people of Oris to have that, and so it should be incredibly obvious how "Oris, against the entirety of the Empire" is going to go. 

(A lot of blood spilled, an incredibly wasteful and annoying year of hunting down and putting to trial and inevitably executing a lot more people, and a province that takes a decade or two longer before its populace is eventually content to be part of the Empire. A lot of sleepless nights. Bastran being sad. ...Nobody but Altarrin is really going to be affected by Bastran being sad, but it means a lot more late-night conversations about Whether They Should Have Done Something Better, where Bastran will bring up doubts that Altarrin desperately wishes he had better counters to.) 

 

...It certainly looks like someone is predicting a different outcome, though. Sometimes independent actors can be served by a rebellion failing messily - it distracts the Empire, it redirects troops away from other borders - but Ithik isn't going to be planning an invasion on the eastern border or something. Something like backing the revolting generals could make sense from their perspective as a way to slow the Empire's expansion and delay the time when it might consider invading them, but it looks like someone is investing very heavily in Oris and that doesn't come cheap. 

(It's hardly the first time he's misjudged a situation like this. It won't even be the first time in this particular body. He's very good at this, but he's not perfect, he can't read every report himself and having the spies in the right places to even get the information in those reports is costly and not something he can have everywhere. It's going to turn out to be something he feels very stupid about missing, like "Oris has a secret underground priesthood entirely consisting of mages" or "Oris has a mine of rare jewels which was just recorded as 'mine, unspecified' on the initial surveying, but which the rebels are selling to Ithik in exchange for a lot more help than Ithik would otherwise consider in their interest to provide" or "a younger son of a noble family has a lot of popular support and also happened to be traveling when the Imperial mages Gated in to lay compulsions on Oris' leadership." But the fact that he misjudged Oris, and is missing some key factor or multiple factors, doesn't yet tell him what.) 

So. Notice his confusion, and get more information. 

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First of all, his current information is almost certainly already out of date. Both because that's the unluckiest way for this to go, and because whoever is commanding this surprisingly organized rebellion is going to know that the best way to get anything past the Empire is to move very very fast, even if it risks overextending them. 

 

So. Immediately delegate a high alert level of scrying coverage; he wants to know where all the major forces are, both their own and the rebels'. The rebels will be expecting scrying, and putting in efforts to make themselves hard to find, and exactly how hard they are to find for his mages is going to be informative. 

- he wants a Farseer on it, this is going to be expensive because the Empire doesn't have many of those, and also the man has a range of only a hundred miles or so and will need to be relocated to the furthest tip of Lastun Province, with a heavy guard because that sure is very close to a lot of not-presently-very-secure regions - it's very annoying that the two civil revolts are neighboring on Tozoa and Oris, why couldn't it have been someone in Isk - he knows the answer to that question it's 'gods'... And Farseers can't see magic, only whatever would be visible to the un-Gifted naked eye. But Farsight is in many ways a more flexible Gift, especially compared to scrying through a standard artifact, and also, because there are less than two dozen Farseers in the entire Empire with a range above ten miles, and because the technique to lay shields against it is deliberately kept very classified, it's rather unlikely that the rebels have anyone who can block it out. 

He wants as many Imperial military units as can be spared - emphasis on combat mages of Adept strength - to be immediately deployed to Lastun Province. Once he has accurate and up to date intelligence on which of the Imperial divisions in Oris and Tozoa are still in their expected positions, he can reinforce them, but he's not Gating large numbers of people into there blind. 

 

He's going to write up a somewhat more detailed report to Bastran, explaining why he intends to focus nearly all of his personal attention on this aspect of their problem, at least until he has any idea what's happening. 

And then he's going to head to his personal Work Room, which has a number of highly specialized set-spells and artifacts, and he's going to personally scry Oris. He has some advantages over anyone else, in terms of what he can look for and how many shields he can get around. He's going to look for shielded areas in particular, actually, it narrows down the list of places to check and if the rebels are smart - which they have to be, to have gotten this unexpectedly far, however many secret jewel mines they're relying on - they'll be making use of that.

(And probably won't know exactly what Archmage-General Altarrin is capable of, because no one does, including his Emperor.) 

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So what appears to be going on, down south in Oris? 

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In the typical mile of Oris, nothing in particular! Farms continue to be worked by farmers, pastures still contain sheep, forests are forested and mountains are mountainous. And if you exempt imperial fortresses warded against scrying as a matter of course, the only places with wards where you wouldn't expect them (faded, abandoned wards) are a few abandoned camps, that look like perfectly ordinary bits of forested hill until such time as you scry them carefully, when you note that they are where there used to be significant numbers of armed men, before they left.

Of course, Altarrin is Altarrin, and does not exempt imperial fortresses warded as a matter of course, and is also Altarrin, and is very, very good at his job, and devoting a lot of resources to this. And the picture he gets is very, very disturbing.

The former nation of Oris is, roughly, divided into five regions; the northern fifth is neatly sliced off by the Havau Bar Ridge, which is the north half of the confusingly named Tozoa Province, and then the southern region - the Tozoa Plains proper, ringed by mountains on all sides - can be divided into the Swift River basin at the south end of the plains running northwest-southeast fed by mountain streams from the best, and the Tucannon Road cities at the northern end, including the present imperial provincial capital (and former national capital) of Tatanka, with the grasslands (or, where less watered, dryland scrub) of the plains in between, and then in the southeast corner where forests and hills rise and borders are fuzzy, and Tar Kur, the largest town of the region, sustains a garrison against Imperial Ithik.

The Swift River basin has, essentially, fallen to the rebels. The dragon flag flies everywhere the people can afford flags, and the largest city, Mahauna, has a large, well-trained, well-supplied, equipped-from-looted-imperial-stores, competently-drilled professional army of more than legionary strength in the standard Imperial model that its neighbors try to imitate and, thanks to mage shortages, fail, sitting in it, clearly ready to go march off in whatever direction its commanders order. It is headquartered in the imperial fortress, which is of course warded against scrying and which Altarrin can of course bypass, because he's Altarrin. (Sleeping in a perfectly ordinary-looking room somewhere in the warded fortress is a woman who happens to have about thirty times the life force of a normal person and enchanted armor made of a material existing nowhere on the planet, but this may be difficult to notice.) They're rebuilding all their destroyed temples and training new troops and generally look like they intend to Actually Try To Beat The Empire.

And as for the rest of the province - 

- So, a moment to pause. Governor Vanaren was of high noble birth and exceptionally gifted at court politics and known to be a firm enemy of the gods, and he had been angling for a provincial appointment, and there were really a lot of reasons for him to be made Governor of Tozoa, considering that this would (a) get him out of court, (b) please his faction, and (c) put someone who actually would stamp out divine worship there after the disasters in Taymyrr almost got Altarrin killed thanks to insufficient persecuting of clergy. There were quite a lot of arguments for it, and they were very convincing, and then he Vanaren's faction pushed to take over the whole of Oris to limit the ability of cults just across the border to run their sabotage networks in the imperial province, there were provocations by the former Orisan government and Vanaren was right that they in fact could take the entire province with just the two legionary armies of ten thousand men each assigned to Tozoa and his personal guards, they got most of the leadership under compulsions and the defense fell apart immediately...

... And the question of how, exactly, to reassign the borders was ambiguous; Vanaren was pushing for the northern fifth to be made its own province and for Tozoa Province to be reassigned to include all of Oris; other people were arguing that the newly conquered territories should be formed into a new province under a new governor or that the map should be redrawn so it was two or three provinces, one to look west against Hardorn and the barbarians and one south against Ithik, or that slices should be given to Taymyrr, or that they should turn Zoskin into its own province and hand the defense of Oris's southeast border wholly over to the new Zoskin Province, and until this debate was done new armies hadn't been reassigned except as the governor requested them to deal with emergencies and the governor hadn't requested armies to deal with emergencies...

... And all this ends up as an explanation of why the entire garrison in one large province with multiple different geographical regions, an active peasant resistance, and two borders to defend, one against the main geopolitical rival of the Eastern Empire, was two legions.

It is currently down to one and a half legions. Half a legion was, bluntly, annihilated; the wounded and the supply trains largely could not be withdrawn, and the only people who got out were the ones who streamed through the gates before they closed. The Adepts were evacuated, the Adepts matter, but most of the infantry and cavalry was lost. Half a legion was posted north of the Havau Bar ridge and is streaming south to the capital of Tatanka as fast as it can without undue Gating, leaving behind only a skeletal garrison to watch the northwestern passes. Half a legion formerly spread out on the Tucannon Road is now concentrating at Tatanka to meet the northern troops and the gated-out refugees from the disaster, having completely abandoned watching the central-western passes (fortunately, there's nobody but some disorganized barbarians through the central-western passes to try to invade; unfortunately, the gods turn all reasonable guesses to disaster), and half a legion is sitting south of Tar Kur guarding the passes and warding against Holy Ithik, which half-legion is, presently, not doing anything.

(That is, it is watching Holy Ithik is conducting "perfectly normal military maneuvers, not a threat at all" and defending the borders of the empire. If it went west to put down the revolt, it would abandon its rear to Holy Ithik; if it withdrew north towards Tatanka, it would abandon the territory it was assigned to guard; if it crossed the border to attack Holy Ithik to free up its range of motion, it would provoke a war, and if it divided its troops it would be violating the cardinal rule of military strategy never to divide your troops in the face of superior opposition. It's kind of in a bind, here.)

The problem with the obvious solution to the problem, viz. Send More Troops, is that full-scale rebellions of provincial governors with all their legions are generally more urgent. The More Troops are more urgently needed to put down rebellious imperial generals, because if rebellious imperial generals win battles against loyalist imperial generals the soldiers of the losing side tend to defect to them, and this means they can snowball fast.

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Ugh. It's nearly dawn and Altarrin has a reaction-headache and this is -

- he's hesitant to call it a disaster. It's not actually a disaster yet, let alone an irrecoverable one. It won't even be one in a month, which is his current estimate for the bare minimum interval during which Altarrin's personal attention, and the military forces he would want to send to Oris, are going to be occupied elsewhere. It's not likely to be irrecoverable even if he decides to completely ignore the situation and reallocate absolutely zero resources to Oris for the next three months. The rebels are in an unexpectedly better position than they should be, but it's not a good position, and even if they make very very good use of it, and the Imperial forces badly mismanage this, the Eastern Empire does just straightforwardly have the military force to handle it. 

(Altarrin's personal attention is pretty limited. He's not moving the scry-point to check every single shielded bedroom, there are too many shielded bedrooms where probably nothing more interesting than people being asleep is happening, and he probably would notice a woman's unnaturally bright aura if he saw it directly, mage-sight works through a scry, but he didn't spot-check that one.) 

But it's a mess.

He's glad he took the time to learn more information and better delineate the bounds of exactly how big a mess it is, even if he cannot yet act on, which he would certainly be doing if there weren't other crises much likely to become irrecoverable if he doesn't personally handle them. (It's really annoying how hard it is to delegate this and have it actually done well. Probably it's not his subordinates' fault, they just haven't been doing it for the entire history of the Empire, it's just...still frustrating.) 

He's unhappy about it. He's unhappy with Governor Vanaren, because seriously, and clearly needs to keep a closer eye on the man in case he can, actually, manage to mismanage this badly enough to turn a mess into a disaster in less than three months. He's unhappy with himself for not allocating more of his personal attention to the borders and governance situation, and assuming that the pacification would be simple just because the second half of Oris had fallen with hardly any fighting. He's much less confused, but he still doesn't have a firm answer to how they got that army and who is currently leading it. 

 

On the bright side, he at least has enough to delegate basic ongoing surveillance, now. He wants to slip in one of the Empire's relatively long-range Mindspeakers as a spy. Without using (detectable) Gates, and staying out of sight, so it'll take a while. They may or may not end up in range to read any soldiers, who may or may not have talismans against Thoughtsensing and also enough mages and enough mage-energy to charge them, but the Imperial forces might be able to learn rather a lot just from the thoughts of native villagers, some of whom are almost certainly aware of the rebels because they were sheltering or supplying them earlier. It's worth sparing one person for that. 

He wants an increased frequency of scrying coverage on these key locations, especially Mahauna, but also the central-western pass where there will maybe turn out to be some threat more dangerous than barbarians. He wants to be alerted if something very seriously changes the picture. He wants the frequency of comms-spell updates bumped to once per candlemark until he says otherwise, which will probably be in a day or two once he's more confident that this is pretty much what it looks like and he's not missing other unknowns. He may not be able to spare much in the way of reinforcements, but he at least wants the commanders to definitely know, and have time to plan, if a rebel army is about to fall on them, and given that they got themselves into this position at all, he's...not entirely sure he trusts them to be on top of their own scrying. 

 

...and he's going to write a report on this and delegate the problem of 'keep an eye on Oris' to someone else. He frankly does not have the attention to spare.

 

Today is going to be entirely occupied in planning how to put down two rebellious imperial generals in provinces a hundred miles apart, while not compromising security in the entire rest of the Empire. Altarrin sets aside his thoughts on Oris, and turns his mind to figuring out which of them looks more like something he needs to micromanage. 

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The Army of Oris marches in the morning. It is not the march at dawn's firs tlight Jean would have wanted, in a perfect world; it takes time to get troops on the road, and no matter how little sleep he needs there's always something holding things up, and while his officers are competent, the ranks of his army have been swelled by undertrained recruits taking the place of his casualties; most of the fresh troops are still in training, but he's filled in gaps in ranks where the newer comrades can slip in to the traditions of the veterans who surround them, and even so there's some adjustment. Still, they're on the road before the sun's high in the sky, headed east.

(Mage-General Moris, under Governor Vanaren, will not, actually, just get out, as would be correct, he will dither and hesitate and not be quite sure what to do until he's absolutely sure Vanaren isn't coming to his rescue, ultimately deciding to do something that's a bad idea. Jean knows this both because he has spies reading information from booby-trapped magic items in the general's possession, and because forming character judgements of people off of implausibly little information is one of his best skills.)

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Iomedae is useful to an army on the march.

She is trying to learn the language in earnest, by now, so she spends most of her time talking to people, though she'll also use her flight for scouting if they'd like that. She has a lot of experiencing training troops, and a habit of solving many problems with ridiculous personal physical strength, and she's seen people die of every single kind of incompetence you can think of and many you haven't and is happy to tell people how to avoid similar mistakes. 



She answers questions. She sings. She prays.

 

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She contemplates magical healing.

Because you can dramatically reduce your war casualties with just a little bit of magical healing, for one thing, and because the Marshal said that that was what it would take, for him to be willing to make serious tradeoffs for the cause of making the war less Evil. And because it's the main thing Good churches offer the world, healing too cheap to charge for, healing in true and glorious abundance. If not for the healing she - sees the stance of the Empire, honestly, that being subject to the strange games of distant powers has more downside than upside. She doesn't just want to bring another distant power with its own motives here. She wants to bring a church you don't have to do decades of research to conclude is on your side.

She can't get her channels back. Those come from Aroden, and He's clearly able to operate here not at all or only at great expense. She can get two spells per day of each circle back by using her pearls of power, and she will probably once the war is over be able to commission more pearls of power, if she's stuck here still. That would mean she was completely set, if she'd only prepared a Cure spell, but of course she didn't; why would she? She prepares mostly combat spells and heals with her Lay On Hands. The spells she did prepare only give temporary health, not true healing.



One of the spells she does have prepared is Prayer. It's a good spell. It gives fortune and hope to your allies, and technically also brings dismay to your enemies but that's not among its features she thinks about much since it doesn't work on the undead. Cast by a hero of the Shining Crusade, whose powers have risen to heights known only in song, it brings quite a lot of good fortune.

And when Arazni, Herald of Aroden straight out of Axis, come to help them at one of the darkest moments of the crusade, cast it Herself, it did a little bit of healing.

To be clear, this was never very useful. The sort of people who moved in Arazni's vanguard did not need one Cure Light Wounds worth of healing at the start of battle. They joked about it. Herald, this map gave me a papercut, do you want to do a Prayer for me? It wasn't an intended effect, at all, it was incidental spillover of the raw power that Arazni was bringing to the spell and to the battlefield, of the weight of near-godhood. 

It would get every one of these people back on their feet from dying. 

Arazni is dead, died in Iomedae's arms. Dead the way gods die, not the way mortals do, dead and gone and lost. They tried to save her, obviously.  Every lay on hands was ripped directly out of Iomedae's soul and also did nothing for Arazni. When she was gone they tried Wishes and they didn't work. It was not the first true and terrible loss, the first hole in the world that will never ever be right even if their triumph is absolute. It was not the last. True and terrible losses come like rain, on a battlefield; you end up soaked in them.

It was a particularly terrible one, though. A particularly terrible death, a particularly large gaping hole in the world. 

 

Aroden doesn't have a herald, now. Hasn't appointed one because everyone knows it's Iomedae, as much as it's anyone.

 

- so the question is, can Iomedae overload the spell Prayer so it does a smidge of healing. She comes, as a herald out of another world, bearing power that is unfathomable here, in Aroden's name, in Arazni's memory, and she's felt the spell cast with its true divine power hundreds of times, so -

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- she hasn't told anyone she's trying this, so when everyone in a forty-foot radius is healed of all their injuries it comes as a complete surprise to them, and only a little less of a surprise to her. She is exhausted, by the doing, blinking away black spots in her vision. But. That's it, the Prayer of a more-than-mortal power. Thank you, Aroden, she says, though she's not sure it had anything to do with him. Thank you, Arazni, though She'll never hear a prayer again. 



And then she goes looking for the Marshal, to argue that they should cut it out with the blood-magic. 

 

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They are extremely positive on this! It's one more bizarre and extraordinary miracle Iomedae can perform, but everyone's heard the rumors that she already healed someone from horrible maiming, so it's not a very surprising one.

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:Another miracle, I've heard. If you can do another one of those - is it target-limited or area-limited?:

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:Area. Eighty feet across, forty feet from me in every direction. Twice a day, let's say, though I could do three in an emergency.:

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:Then I'll want everyone with serious injuries packed into it next time you do it, if it isn't in battle.:

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:Reasonable. At home they build temples around the standard channel radius, so everyone knows where to stand.

 

 

How about you only have those of your mages who are well-trained enough to avoid damaging themselves from using human sacrifices use human sacrifices, and you'll still see lower casualties on the battlefield because I can pick everyone up. ....also this spell may just outright kill all enemies in its radius. I'm not sure. We'll have to find out.:

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:Everyone within forty feet of you.:

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:Yes.:

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:Understood. I'll let them know.:

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She is delighted to hear that and will be fairly discreet about checking if it is at all true.

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The orders are not very loud, so if she's being discreet it may take her a bit to find it, but yes. He's not making a moral case about it, just shifting assignments so a smaller subset of mages (if she investigates, the ones with the most imperial training, mostly from "Tozoa Province") are handling the work.

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She could probably have been substantially pushier. She represents a lot of leverage and therefore has a lot of leverage. 

But if she’s going to make the man a King she wants him to in fact be competent to make tradeoffs among his concerns, to have her as a resource in that respect rather than purely an obnoxious external power base to appease. She doesn’t have enough swords to make everyone in the world Good at the point of a sword and also that’s not what Good is. 

And he’s not wrong that a lot of things that would be nice to have will also lose them the war, if the Empire does possess the means to counter her.

She does another miracle at sunset, using the pearl of power to get the spell back. This time she alerts them in advance so people can crowd around.

 

 

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The Army of Oris is not quite as fast and organized as a Golarion force would be, but it's not doing badly, for people who have to completely improvise to get every injured person within forty feet of her instead of having it as a drilled response.

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And it’s probably good drill practice!


Iomedae closes her eyes and casts Prayer not as it was given to her by Aroden but as a stranger, stronger thing, and they are all healed.

 

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MIRACLES OF ARODEN!

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Meanwhile, Altarrin continues to have problems on his hands related to the crisis.

Tolmassar is one of the empire's largest provinces by population, established across a vast expanse of what sure looked to the Jaconans frozen tundra back before there was settlement there, back before they cleared the forests and dammed the rivers and built the mines and planted farms and founded towns from which cities grew, and Tolmassar began to matter. Tolmassar guards most of the northern and western borders of the Empire, has been a core part of the emperor and its governor commands more soldiers than that of any except the Archmage-General of Jacona.

Archmage-General Norean should have been a very simply Good Candidate For Governor; ambitious, yes, but not overly so, and capable, with real military experience, and very sensibly paranoid about implausible coincidences, divine influence, and anything the Ifteli Vkandis-cultists thought was a good idea. Altarrin had selected loyal people to support him, and then the usual coincidences had caught up to them, and now apparently this paranoia has started applying to other things, like, say, the odds that the central government was planning to haul him back home and execute him. Norean has declared himself emperor, cut access to the strategically vital Widow's Pass into Tozoa, and started moving east, capturing Gate-terminals in a line to Jacona in a flurry of raids before his access was sensibly cut. He's now consolidating, getting ready to head further east, having declared himself the true most loyal servant of Emperor Bastran, out to rescue him from the evil advisors who have no doubt compulsioned the righteous and benevolent sovereign, but this is very unlikely to actually mean anything.

Advantages to going after him: He is, actually, very good at his job, if nowhere near as good as Altarrin, and if Altarrin lets him sit around doing things he will keep doing things that causing problems. Tolmassar being economically cut off from the rest of the Empire is very bad; it's a core province, very well integrated, and as long as trade and taxes have been disrupted, the Empire will have serious supply-line problems.

On the other hand, there's the other crisis.

Taymyrr is not a key province. It's just the province that blocks the Empire of Holy Ithik from coming north. It can't support a very large army. It just has a very large army, because you want a very large army to stop the Empire of Holy Ithik.

And its army is concentrated - Norean needs to watch his back, needs troops to garrison cities that are uncomfortable with being mutinous, needs to make sure Iftel doesn't invade. The governor of Taymyrr, Mage-General Jovin, just needs to worry about Ithik (and, technically, Zoskin, which, technically, exists, tiny and desperately trying to stay neutral, but that is very technical) and Iftel is all for him. Jovin got his job as a hard-driving manager with a knack for seeking out and suppressing divine cults, but he would not, actually, the first persecutor to suddenly find religion, and Ithik is offering him significant loans in exchange for him marrying a relative of the Holy Emperor and making various Ithik-friendly trade deals after he takes the throne. He's declared himself rightful Emperor of the East, and his armies are heading east to make that claim on Jacona.

Advantages to going after him: If Altarrin does, he can cut Ithik off from any non-Gate-based supply for his other enemies. He has much less territory to retreat into, making it much easier to actually end him as a threat. He's shielding the Orisan rebels' flank, and if there's actual loyal imperial troops there their revolution will have much more difficulty concentrating troops.

On the other hand, he's the most likely to collapse under his own weight; he doesn't have the financial base to support his army, and troops who aren't getting paid are very unhappy about this as a rule. And if the people of Taymyrr revolt behind him, that would basically eliminate his ability to function. Still, both of these will make him more desperate, i.e., much more likely to be a problem sooner rather than later.

All the armies assembled - Norean's, Jovin's, and the Orisan revolutionaries - are less than the loyal forces available to the Empire. But, also, the Empire has other borders to defend and other territory to garrison, and a few really large defeats for Bastran and Altarrin might make any imperial governors who are not actually restrained by compulsions or loyalty switch to what looks like the winning side. The odds are clearly in the Empire's favor. But, frankly, this is the kind of crisis it most needs Altarrin for.

(Now if only these crises came, say, fewer than once every sixty years...)

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Sigh. Altarrin would, in fact, ideally want to personally command the response in Taymyrr, and also he would ideally command the response in Tolmassar, and he can't do that because even he can't be in two places at once, or split his attention that heavily. 

 

They really need Widow's Pass. They also really need the supply chains. And Norean is very experienced and very capable and if he's not being stupid about this, can probably capture a lot of the genuine loyalty of his province's populace, if he sells them on the story that he's out to save Bastran. No one with any political savviness will believe that's his true motive, but peasants and tradespeople and foot soldiers might, if he plays it right. Bastran is charismatic and likeable and is, for the most part, a popular Emperor. (Most of Altarrin's own visible actions in the broader Empire have been of the kind that gets you regarded as smart and competent and dangerous to oppose, but doesn't get you popularity.) And so they really can't afford to lose any of those battles. 

It's going to take a lot of military force to oppose Norean. It's...probably not going to be that complicated. Dozens of revolts like this have happened, over the Empire's history, and there are dozens of treatises on tactics covering them in and out. It takes more than textbook knowledge to improvise, and doing that - not to mention his unusual magical abilities for getting information he shouldn't really be able to have - are Altarrin's main advantages. But he has several candidates in mind - who are fairly personally loyal to Bastran, separate from their compulsions, he's not worried about them seeing an opportunity to be 'captured' in battle and turned to the other side - and who should be more than competent enough to handle this given plenty of resources. 

 

He'll command the response in Taymyrr. With his personal management, he thinks they can handle it with fewer men and fewer mages, freeing up more for Tolmassar. It's going to be messy and unpredictable and conditions might change fast, which is the kind of circumstances where Altarrin's skill is most valuable. He knows the area very well, having been involved, fairly recent, in conquering and pacifying it; Tolmassar was before his time. 

Not to mention it's close enough to Oris to be within very comfortable scrying range. (Tolmassar may border on Tozoa, but it's big.) 

 

Which means, inevitably, being gone from the capital for months at least. Longer than that, if the situation in Oris does deteriorate enough to need his on-site skill and not just a lot of men and mages thrown at it once they're available. He is inevitably going to come back to find that half a dozen minor simmering fires at court are in the process of exploding. 

He would really like if these crises came less often. But he's not, in fact, particularly worried. 

 

He delegates, and then starts making the preparations. Even with access to the canal-Gate network on the Lastun Province side, they'll be lucky if it takes less than a week to move all of their units into position. He's not very worried about anything exploding out of control before that, though, since his opponent is facing the exact same challenges with moving legions, and Taymyrr doesn't yet have full Imperial infrastructure; its canal is still in construction. He's just distantly frustrated at the inevitable delay before he can make the progress that will end this. 

(He's so tired. He'll be less tired tomorrow, though, getting three candlemarks of sleep hits him a lot harder than it did when he was young.) 

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Well, before the week is up, the Army of Oris is going to fight another battle.

(That is the point, of marching in the early morning. So you can fight more battles, before the supplies you managed to beg, barter, steal and receive by divine intervention run out, and, of course, before the enemy gets their act together.)

Orestan is tracking the Imperial army - by rebel riders from individual small groups giving him the information they've collected, by the farmers he stops telling him, and, yes, by Farsight and scrying. They're tracking his, too. but only by scrying, and the Army of Oris follows the good old rule, "March divided, fight concentrated." Enough troops are going by little forest paths that they know about because they grew up here, few enough are going by road and by river, that Moris won't realize how outnumbered he is until he puts the facts together about just how many troops left Mahauna, and by that point it's too late to run.

(He may not know how he outnumbered is then, either. Getting accurate troop counts is hard.)

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Mage-General Moris tries to run, anyway, after it's too late. If he can force-march his army to the nearest imperial canal with proper gates established (there are not very many proper imperial canals with gates established) he can evacuate them all and meet up with the Governor, who will then decisively outnumber the rebels as well as the rule of thumb that one imperial soldier can beat two foreigners. Moris leaves behind small garrisons to hold properly warded fortresses to keep Holy Ithik out, and everyone else he tries to get to the canal.

But it is, actually, too late.

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Marshal Orestan will alert Iomedae, the day before the battle, just in case there's anything special she'll need to do before it. They'll meet the imperials - somewhere between this stream here and that village, probably; they might be able to get in the imperials' path if they take a more diagonal route but Orestan would rather let the enemy think their line of retreat is open, so they're more likely to take it.

He proposes that Iomedae put herself in the left side of the right wing of the Orisan army, since north is the direction he and the imperial troops both want them to flee if they have to flee and that's more likely if the imperial-left breaks first and also the Orisans outnumber the imperials quite a lot, and go ahead of the men and see how many Imperial adepts she can kill while terrifying the rest of the army into submission, unless there's something else she'd do that makes more sense in which case he'd like her to pitch him on her plan.

(His tactical plan is not, actually, tremendously complex; he has good officers and well-trained troops and about a three-to-one numerical advantage, and he trusts his officers can manage it. He's mostly just hoping to shatter the imperial right by concentrating his heavy cavalry and magical firepower there, keep his light cavalry in reserve for the pursuit, and otherwise he's just hoping to wreck his enemy's morale as quickly as possible so the imperials rout before they inflict too heavy casualties on him.)

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Iomedae thinks that's a perfectly reasonable plan and honestly expects it to go quite smoothly. She is inclined not to break out the flying in combat just yet; this isn't the hardest fight they'll be in and that is the sort of thing that works once before the Empire has the chance to plan how to handle it. She does not know how to identify Imperial adepts but if he can point them out she can almost certainly slaughter them.

 

She wants to request that they not kill noncombatants, presuming there are some travelling with the Imperial army. She is aware they can't realistically take them prisoner. She wants to let them run. There's good reason not to let the army run, to pursue it and destroy it; there's less good reason to go after their page-boys and healers and supply staff. (Not no reason. The game is taking unusually cheap trades.)

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He can have someone identify the adepts for her. It's not that hard.

If Marshal Orestan tells his commanders of light cavalry to focus on the combatants and not worry about not letting the noncombatants get away, Iomedae should know that although that will probably save more than no lives, the order will also mostly not get down to the average cavalryman. If she wants him to pass her message on, he can do that; if she wants him to make sure everyone understands it, that's a good deal harder.

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Yep. Perhaps he should try the harder thing. It'll be good practice for when they take the capital and he needs to have somehow conveyed all the way down through his ranks that they should minimize how much rape and murder they do.

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Right.

"The Church of Aroden," "Orestan" explains to "his" chief cavalry officers, "supports us in our war - but."

(Samien is, in fact, very much in favor of this program, even if he knows Orestan isn't. But he's saying the lines he's given.)

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"But?" says one flamboyantly dressed woman (a rarity, in the cavalry or indeed anywhere in the armies of Oris, but she's good.)

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"But they're pretty hot on civilian casualties. Against, that is. Now, no, Imperial troops are not civilians. No imperial who sets foot in our territory is a civilian - every one of them is helping our conquerors. But. This is a showpiece, and this is the showpiece the invincible god-chosen hero out of legend wants. Iomedae is fine with us killing their soldiers, she understand we can't let them get away. But not healers, not clerks, not anyone who doesn't carry a weapon. We let them go back home and we only hang them if they come back after the war."

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"Or if they pull a knife on you," she says.

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"Only if you can give Iomedae the knife. She's got truth-magic - not compulsions, just a detector, but still. She will ask you, and I will be pissed if you make us look bad in front of the, again, invincible god-chosen hero out of legend. Do you want to go down in song and story as The Person Who Ticked Off The Person The Gods Like By Not Sparing People She Said To Spare?"

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:Done.:

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:Thank you. For what it's worth, to me it's not just a trade of - chances of success against enemy lives. When we get to the table, I mean for the Empire to understand that civilization is not something they've perfected or that only they possess, and I think it might - matter. It might make it easier for them to live next to us, and it might make it easier for them to give up and go home. 

Or it might not, in which case I'll kill more of them.:

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:Well. I hope you're right.:

The next day is the day of the battle.

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Iomedae tries to prepare spells, and is unsurprised when it doesn't work. She prays, loudly, before the soldiers, for Aroden to grant them a swift and glorious victory, and she puts about her auras that make everyone around her fearless and better at fighting, to a greater-than-usual range. She puts up Resist Energy (fire) and Resist Energy (lightning).

 

And she waits to be told when it's time to go.

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And then it's time to go; the troops march through the hills and woods with their banners flying and drums beating, deploying from massive marching columns into near-battle formations; they move in loose squares, infantrymen carrying pikes in large blocks with crossbowmen at the corners, robed mages covered in talismans with their focus-stones on their breasts, knights on horseback behind them with steel breastplates and visored helms and lances in their steel gauntlets, field artillery taken from imperial stores looking for mages to fire on. The areas are not, really, all that clear; the squares will tighten when the battle begins, bearing the cost of taking far greater sorcerous firepower for the gain of being impossible for imperial knights to ride down. They know the enemy is ahead, even if they don't exactly know how far. There's more formations left and right and behind of her, seemingly endless lines of troops - but there are other lines ahead, somewhere over the next hill.

Iomedae is to go a bit ahead of the leading square; she isn't trained in formation with them, and, also, she can kill everyone within arm's reach of her in about six seconds, so having those people be allies might slow her down a bit.

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She runs, which she can do despite the armor. She makes the sword glow. 

 

Aroden, she pleads, make this unnecessary, but that's almost never in His power. 

 

So she'll run at the mages of the Imperial army, and try to kill most of them and distract the others with trying to kill her.

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Aroden does not make it unneccessary.

But it is not, actually, all that hard to kill people. When the imperial lines are seen they're hastily-formed, east - and, yes, a bit north - of the rebels. The imperials have the high ground, but they're tired, and they just retreated from a very defensive position into ground they don't know and don't like. Iomedae has a little trouble killing imperial adepts the way she can everyone else, but not much; their talismans are stronger, but she is Iomedae, and there are not, actually, paladins stronger than her. A well-prepared and well-disciplined group of adepts prepared to concentrate fire at her might be able to kill her, or they might not; adepts who are trained in providing fire support and see their job as breaking infantry squares with sheer firepower, no. Most of them don't even realize what they're dealing with until it's too late.

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War is a lot more fun when your enemies are mindless undead. 

 

The enhanced Prayer spell works. Gets her own people back on their feet, fully healed, and -

- at least sometimes it appears to just take the enemy down instantly. Their hearts stop, and they fold, and they die.


She hates it. It feels like blasphemy, to speak Aroden's name and Arazni's prayer and watch confused men on the wrong side of this mess clutch at their chests and then die. 

 

She doesn't dwell on it. She's busy stabbing people. There are a lot of people to stab. Forty thousand, she calculated, that first night in that first village, was a price she would pay, and the number has gone up since then as she's gotten more confident she can get what she wants out of victory. 

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The Imperial troops really do not have a good response to her. Their discipline is good; often they'll keep fighting when a more sensible person would run. But they can't win.

Eventually, an adept who gets sufficiently desperate when fire and lightning and force don't work will go for summoning up a vast horde of abyssal demons practically on top of her, horrible masses of claws and fangs and teeth with no real intelligence, just the order to KILL IOMEDAE.

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This is a pretty clever thing to do! She only has the one area-effect damage spell (and should really have zero), and if they're tough enough it won't help her. 

 

 

On the other hand. How fast can her sword move? Somehow, impossibly, the answer to that is 'it depends how many things in range to kill there are'. As long as she doesn't miss -- and she really, really doesn't miss -- her sword will move fast enough to go through all of them. 

In three seconds. 

 

 

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- that part actually was fun. 

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Okay back to the part that sucks which is finding the genuinely clever and inventive and strategic person who came up with that solution and sending him to quite-possibly-Hell.

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That is very easy for her to do.

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It doesn't take long to win the battle. Before day's end the remaining adepts begin gating the troops near them and themselves out, and that's around when the stranded imperials without gate-capable casters near them start streaming north in what begins as a fighting retreat and ends in rout; the Orisan cavalry is mostly disciplined enough to actually pursue, instead of plundering the baggage train. Not very many imperials will get away, and most of them will be ones who could swear themselves blind they never carried a sword.

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Who needs healing? She saved one pulse of healing. 

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Many people. Many people need healing.

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Yeah. She doesn't have enough, obviously, but a forty foot radius is a pretty big space, five thousand square feet, and they can pack nearly a thousand badly wounded people in it, though some of them will probably die while they're getting that set up. 

 

Then she'll - she doesn't know. There's no one here she can grieve with. Even she can't dig a grave for a thing like this.

She'll walk the battlefield and offer a swifter death to any imperials down and dying slowly who they don't intend to save.  Mindread some people to estimate degree of compliance with her request they not kill the noncombatants. 

Pray to Anathei, for their immortal souls.

Be findable, if the Marshal wants anything.

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They're doing all right.

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And - nothing in particular.

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The report lands on Altarrin's desk the next day, about sixteen hours after the gated-out remnants of Moris's army arrived in Tatanka. Overwhelming numbers of rebels attacked them in the eastern hills and, after a long battle, they barely withdrew, but in good order; communications are somewhat loose with the troops who didn't make the gates and so they haven't finished accounting for casualties, but though they inflicted overwhelming losses on the attacks, the causalties were still dreadful significant. Governor Vanaren insists that the situation is under control, but the numerical advantage he had over the rebels has still abruptly shrunk.

Oh, and there was an invincible magic warrior wielding a blazing sword that killed everything in very long arm's reach. That too. (Governor Vanaren is SKEPTICAL.)

(A letter arrives at about the same time, incidentally - not passed by the governor in his immediate report, who just summarized it as 'they claim to have the support of the god Aroden' and said he'd include all the petty details once he had finished assembling sources, but by one of Altarrin's eyes-on-the-scene who thought that in spite of whatever Vanaren wanted, this was important enough for Altarrin to have personal eyes on.)

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Well. The timing could be worse; Altarrin is not currently literally in the middle of commanding a different battle in Taymyrr, they're still assembling forces that this is harder to screw up disastrously. 

First critical question, because at this point he is rather quickly downgrading his trust in Governor Vanaren's reports, and also information reported by soldiers withdrawing or rather fleeing from a battle going badly is never reliable: what were the actual casualties inflicted on the rebels? This...is going to be inconveniently harder to figure out via scrying-coverage than it would have been at the time the battle was happening, but he didn't have that, did he, because he can't afford the resource for continuous scrying-coverage everywhere and he tried delegating the allocation of it back to Vanaren's forces and did this go well, no, no it did not. 

He'll put some of his own people on it, here - they can afford a couple of candlemarks of eyes off Taymyrr - and he'll probably have to do it on his own, later, because if the rebels are smart then their leadership will already be mostly back behind anti-scrying shields. 

 

...He has no idea what god Aroden refers to. It's not a transliteration of Atet, he knows all the standard ones. He is irritated with Vanaren for not immediately passing the letter on, even if in this case it's not going to delay his information loop because he already took measures about it. He has tried to make it abundantly clear that he will never, ever react badly to being told of something, even if it's brought to his as a critical alert with a lot of alarm and it turns out to be trivial. He will, if he finds out that certain information was left out of reports, react rather worse, even if it turned out in the end that the information wasn't that important, as long as it should have been plausible from what was known at the time that it might be relevant. Altarrin is vastly better than anyone else at judging what's going to end up being relevant, and people still leave things out, for political reasons or to look more in control of the situation et cetera et cetera. Altarrin is not, however, irritated enough with Vanaren to respond strongly to it, not right now when he has a rebellion to crush in the province over.

 

Well. He'll read the letter.

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This letter constitutes notice that the Knights of Ozem, a paladin order of the god Aroden, have entered into the war for control of Oris and are participating in hostilities alongside the armies fighting for Orisian independence.

The Knights of Ozem make the following representations about the war and our present state of knowledge, and swears to these representations on the honor of the order and the honor of its members, and in the name of our god, Aroden.

It is our present assessment that those forces the Knights of Ozem have lent to the Orisian independence forces are sufficient for the Orisian independence forces to win the war for Oris decisively. We expect this assessment to be unshared primarily because the capabilities of those forces the Knights of Ozem have lent to the Orisian independence forces are unknown to the Empire and (we believe) substantially underestimated.

We expect that Imperial assessors with accurate information about the Knights of Ozem and those forces the Knights have deployed in Oris would concur in our assessment that the war will be decisively won by the Orisian independence forces.

It is our desire to arrive at a peace agreement in which Oris is independent of the Empire, Imperial subjects can depart Oris in safely if they so choose, loss of life on both sides is minimized, and Oris and the Empire can subsequently enjoy sustained peace and shared prosperity. It is our belief that the war in which we presently engage offers the best prospects of that peace, and we would (to a degree limited by preexisting commitments) change course if we saw another route to that peace.

It is our comprehension that those forces fighting for Orisian independence demand a sovereign nation with the borders it possessed before the Imperial war of conquest, and it is our intent to fight alongside them until that demand is met.

In our comprehension of Aroden's will, He is no enemy of the Empire. If He were, this would not easily move us to war, which is generally contrary to the prosperity and flourishing of human civilization everywhere, and even less so to peacetime assassinations and engineered infrastructure accidents, which are contrary to the principles by which we operate. We believe it is the case that Aroden has never carried out or authorized operations inside the territory of the Eastern Empire outside of Oris.

We are willing to, as a gesture of goodwill and a step towards future cooperation, refrain from operations in the Eastern Empire outside of Oris, except for sending these letters, which we sincerely hope will reach someone who sees a route to peace on the basis of the information herein, and which we send with primarily that intent and the intent of establishing a reputation that will fortify future negotiations.

Our present anticipation is that the truth of this letter will be proven to the Empire only through the total destruction of its forces inside Oris. But that would be a tragedy, and we would sincerely and strongly prefer a negotiated peace as soon as possible.

In raising to the Empire's attention the fact that the Orisian forces are stronger than they would otherwise have been presumed to be, and that the Knights of Ozem are participating in the war, and that the Knights of Ozem believe our contribution to the war to be of substantial importance, we believe that we incur some real (though small) risk to the members of our order and to our prospects of success. The overwhelmingly most important consideration in favor of our decision to incur that risk was the desire to reduce deaths and evils committed in the course of war, either by increasing the probability of a negotiated peace before the destruction of the Imperial army in Oris or by establishing a precedent such that on the next occasion it is necessary for the order to write a letter like this one, the claims in it are more credible.

The Knights of Ozem do not represent any of the following:

- that the claims in this document about the capabilities of that detachment of Knights in Oris are comprehensive or non-misleading. We do represent that in our estimation this letter will cause you to inaccurately underestimate, rather than inaccurately overestimate, our capabilities, and further represent that we think a person having read this letter will overall have more accurate information, and predict us better, than a person who has not read it, and that the benefits we intend to derive from this letter come primarily from it creating a better understanding, within the Empire, of how and why to negotiate with us.

- that other communications claimed to be from the Knights of Ozem are created by us, or are subject to the commitments herein

- that this message has not been modified within the Empire after its transmission in a manner that would make the commitments to its truth inaccurate (though we intended no such modifications, know of none as of this writing, and will circulate many copies of this letter in an effort to, among other objectives, make it easy to determine the original and unmodified form)

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He's never heard of a religious military order Knights of Ozem either; there are certainly plenty of religious military orders but this isn't obviously flagging as a transliteration for any he's heard of. 

It is our present assessment that those forces the Knights of Ozem have lent to the Orisian independence forces are sufficient for the Orisian independence forces to win the war for Oris decisively. We expect this assessment to be unshared primarily because the capabilities of those forces the Knights of Ozem have lent to the Orisian independence forces are unknown to the Empire and (we believe) substantially underestimated. 

That's - intriguing. He's not sure where it's going yet but the format is interesting. It gives the feeling of following some kind of known convention of diplomatic communications but it's not one he recognizes, and he's read a lot of examples, in a lot of languages, from as far away as the Haighlei Empire. ...He approves of it, he thinks, certainly more than he does of Court Haighlei diplomatic language, which is intensely frustrating. 

They're claiming powerful capabilities. Obviously. They expect that if the Empire had more information about their order, they would agree that the Oris rebellion was likely to succeed. Which is, well, obviously they would say that, it's not (yet) particularly new information. 

They want a peace agreement for an independent Oris, which is an INCREDIBLY BOLD proposal. He's not sure he's ever seen such a bold proposal presented in such measured, straightforward language. 

It is our belief that the war in which we presently engage offers the best prospects of that peace, and we would (to a degree limited by preexisting commitments) change course if we saw another route to that peace. It is our comprehension that those forces fighting for Orisian independence demand a sovereign nation with the borders it possessed before the Imperial war of conquest, and it is our intent to fight alongside them until that demand is met.

It's...the same kind of carefulness of format, a style that - resonates, in some way, though it's certainly not how he writes diplomatic letters. He's finding himself expecting with much higher odds than usual, not that he would get along with this militant order of 'Aroden', it's basically guaranteed he won't, but that they would at least be unusually possible to communicate with, as religious orders go. Assuming he wants to exchange letters with them. It's far from obvious it would be a good idea, just - it doesn't normally feel nearly this much like it would be a live option, even when they get written proclamations. 

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In our comprehension of Aroden's will, He is no enemy of the Empire. If He were, this would not easily move us to war, which is generally contrary to the prosperity and flourishing of human civilization everywhere, and even less so to assassinations and engineered infrastructure accidents, which are contrary to the principles by which we operate. We believe it is the case that Aroden has never carried out or authorized operations inside the territory of the Eastern Empire outside of Oris. 

What. 

Altarrin has questions

...Altarrin is mostly wondering if someone got their hand on some Imperial treatises and decided to invent an entire religious order designed to sound maximally sympathetic to the Empire. But for...what? Altarrin probably would take an opening to try the path of talking instead of fighting, but almost no one else would. Altarrin is not in fact in command in Oris, wasn't the intended recipient of this letter, and is only reading it at all because he arranged to have spies. He would maybe consider their 'gesture of goodwill' offer not to conduct any operations outside of Oris to be worth something if he believed it. Which he doesn't. He's...not sure gods even can deliberately limit Their nudges based on the borders of human countries, and even if They did he does not at all expect Them to accurately communicate this to Their followers. 

In raising to the Empire's attention the fact that the Orisian forces are stronger than they would otherwise have been presumed to be, and that the Knights of Ozem are participating in the war, and that the Knights of Ozem believe our contribution to the war to be of substantial importance, we believe that we incur some real (though small) risk to the members of our order and to our prospects of success. The overwhelmingly most important consideration in favor of our decision to incur that risk was the desire to reduce deaths and evils committed in the course of war, either by increasing the probability of a negotiated peace before the destruction of the Imperial army in Oris or by establishing a precedent such that on the next occasion it is necessary for the order to write a letter like this one, the claims in it are more credible.

...

This particular framing, of the letter itself as an act of good faith with some cost to the order, reads like something that was very much written to appeal to Altarrin personally. Or maybe to Bastran, which is...at all more plausible? Bastran doesn't normally override his commanders' tactical decisions, for the very good reason that he would be tempted to be as generous as possible and in the long run more people would die, but a peasant rebellion in a recently conquered province might not know that. Though in that case they probably also wouldn't know enough about the Emperor to guess that he would be moved at all by humanitarian concerns period, let alone by this careful analysis of incentives and pointing out that the Knights of Ozem paid a small penalty in order to give the Empire more of an opening to choose cooperation. 

...Not really plausible, he's just spectacularly confused.

We do represent that in our estimation this letter will cause you to inaccurately underestimate, rather than inaccurately overestimate, our capabilities,

Who even says that?

and further represent that we think a person having read this letter will overall have more accurate information, and predict us better, than a person who has not read it, and that the benefits we intend to derive from this letter come primarily from it creating a better understanding, within the Empire, of how and why to negotiate with us.

And some additional careful caveats, helpfully pointing out where Altarrin shouldn't trust this letter (and helpfully emphasizing ways that this isn't their fault, such as faked additional letters or modifications by disloyal subordinates.) 

Altarrin...has questions. 

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He wants to know where whoever wrote this went to school. This is by far not the most important question but he's so curious. Where exactly in the world do they teach people to write things like this and can he find them and hire some of their students.

He wants, obviously, to know what game they're playing here. And whether they would see it as a game at all. Regardless of their actual capabilities - which he isn't worried about yet, but certainly wants to know more concrete information about the situation there. A battle did just go badly. He...isn't shocked that it went badly, General Moris was being an idiot and maybe if Altarrin had been micromanaging Oris he could have averted that but he wasn't, was he, he was instead micromanaging a different crisis. 

(He's not actually tired, he slept fine, it's just - kind of a mental habit, at this point, to lift his head a little from what's in front of him and notice the smoldering metaphorical fires in all directions and feel very tired about all of it.) 

He wants to know who this god is. If 'Aroden' corresponds to a real deity at all, and not a story invented by someone very clever with a surprising amount of access to Imperial texts that aren't even commonly taught anymore, but - he's noticing the feeling of stretching facts into an ill-fitted frame, of "invented to be convincing" not actually feeling like it leaves him with fewer questions than before. 

He wants to know why Oris. Assuming the Knights of Ozem actually exist, and actually are roughly what they claim themselves to be, and actually serve or see themselves as serving a god called Aroden - assuming any of that, why did they pick this peasant rebellion to back? He has a feeling there's going to turn out to be something relevant there. 

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...Actually he's going to go back and read the sketchy report on the battle in a lot more detail, and cross-reference the numbers given in it with the numbers he has on file, from scrying checks. 

An invincible magic warrior wielding a blazing sword that killed everything in very long arm's reach, was the claim. 

Tentative casualty reports that he's pretty sure are pushed, on both sides, in the direction that makes the situation look favorable to Governor Vanaren. You get a sixth sense, after a while, for fudged numbers that are going to turn out to be a lot less favorable once everything is tallied up. And the estimate on the total size of the rebel force is - well, he doesn't buy it. The army he saw at Manahau was substantial, sure, but with inconsistent training, and numbers filled out by new recruits, even with a two-to-one or three-to-one numerical advantage - even with some serious fumbles on General Moris' part - it shouldn't have gone as badly as he suspects it actually did. 

So.

A battle went worse than known information would predict. How surprised Altarrin actually is will depend on how heavily the numbers were actually fudged, but suspicion leads him toward the case where the final report is very different, especially when they finally manage to track down the rebel army on scrying and count what's left. In which case: a battle that went a lot worse than predicted, claims of a mysterious warrior with a blazing sword - which doesn't not sound like godpossession - and a letter claiming to be an answer to the question of why the rebels are winning. 

 

 

...or maybe it's less mysterious than that, casualty figures will turn out to make sense, the rebels' forces will turn out to be substantially reduced, and this will be an unfortunate update but mostly on Governor Vanaren's competence. This is mostly what Altarrin is expecting to end up observing; you don't see genuinely shocking, genuinely model-breaking surprises very often, and if you did it would mostly say you were bad at having accurate predictions in the first place, which Altarrin is not. 

He is, nonetheless, going to invest a few candlemarks of today, for some of his people who aren't urgently busy on logistics, to find out what actually happened. And he'll do the really advanced scrying legwork himself, in a shielded Work Room he set up on the first day at his staging location, where he can do impossible magic and learn things he should have no way to know without anyone observing how. 

 

(He's not passing on in reports to the Governor that he's doing this. Vanaren will get antsy if he feels like his toes are being stepped on, and maybe the situation is still tolerable.) 

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It's been a day since the battle, and reports are not, alas, that easy to piece together. He can scry everyone he saw in the fortress earlier, and confirm they're mostly alive; he can scry the area around them, and observe that the rebel army is moving along roads through forest and farm somewhere he doesn't recognize, and that it's very hard to get accurate headcounts when you can't get see most of the army at any one time, which, to be fair, he already knew. General Moris is clearly lying about his performance to look better, but this is not the first time that's happened; it could be he adjusted the numbers slightly, or it could be he was defeated against the odds through divine intervention and his own incompetence.

(It is clear, though, that the casualty numbers do not include those missing; scrying on him and his top lieutenants and looking over Vanaren's metaphorical shoulder, he pretty clearly does not have most of his army with him, Adepts aside. Just how many men they lost mostly seems to depend on how many of them they can find again.)

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He has some math for trying to narrow down guesses on approximate headcounts anyway, but it's - not very narrowed down. 

Vanaren's situation is concerning. Less so because the rebels probably aren't going to be ready for another battle anytime, and he probably has time to wait for accurate headcounts and then figure out whether to send reinforcements, which will be faster for this, the absolute numbers are just smaller. 

He really wants to know one way or another if they have a monk of a military religious order who can reliably be possessed by his god on the battlefield. Or something. But his options are 'interview a surviving Adept who claims to have seen the warrior, try to scry based on that' and 'Gate over to pastwatch the battlefield, scry based on that'. Both of which are going to be clearly stepping on Vanaren's toes, he probably does want to replace the man but not right now and he doesn't want to make their working relationship any more complicated in the meantime while he's busy, and neither of which is clearly justified. 

The window for pastwatching is nearly over. For normal Adepts. Altarrin can probably eke out another twelve hours, if he's willing to tire himself out more - tolerable if it ends up being worth doing at all - and start losing fidelity on mage-sight, which seems fine for this, godpossession isn't subtle. 

He'll have a copy the letter urgently conveyed to the Office of Inquiry, who may or may not be more likely than he is to recognize a foreign god (who Altarrin was almost certainly aware of in a different life but didn't prioritize reviewing those records) or a foreign militant order with very specific taste in written declarations of war. And if they don't have someone investigating the rebels' leadership, he wants them on that, capacity allowing. If that check came back with 'the rebels are led by a priest of this god Aroden who claims to be guided by divine visions' or something, he...will reevaluate then what that means. 

 

He keeps some of his own people on scrying, to get more accurate headcounts on the surviving rebel army as soon as possible, and goes back to his other work. 

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The Office of Inquiry has never heard of Aroden either! They can check with the Office of Cults, which provide a few notes for possibilities, all of which are a huge stretch.

They are already investigating this rebellion but they are very busy. Their only summary is that they are apparently lead by a "Marshal Orestan" who nobody has ever heard of before, but they have no idea who or what he is when he isn't wearing the visible-via-scry dragon helmet. An increased budget would help them hire more people to do this sort of thing.

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Kastil has made a breakthrough, and his latest update includes a possible culprit responsible for the sabotage.

The Jenonan noble house of southwestern Tolmassar has never held one of the major lordships of the Eastern Empire, instead playing a minor role as a font of local squires, regional officials, and supporters of projects launched by grander clans. Though near the border and close to divine influence, they at no point displayed any interest in worship of the gods, though Kastil's interviews suggest there may have been cultists in some of their villages, nor played any relevant role in imperial politics or, frankly, anything.

Until the latest generation. The past lord, Count Cenio, was a notable eccentric, author of a number of well-regarded translations, treatises on the philosophy of rule - overly idealistic drivel, largely - and treatises on education, on which Kastil has not been able to track down a copy. Cenio declared himself capable of raising any child to be a genius, and started with his thirty-eight (!) children (by twenty-five mothers, most peasant women, all of whom the Count specific chose for rare mental talents, magical abilities, or frank genius). Between disease, mental breakdowns, random chance and possible murders (Kastil's sources, not in Tolmassar because of the present civil war, report that the magistrate ruled it an accident), only twenty-four of the children made it to adulthood, but the siblings include four up-and-coming generals, an exceptionally popular author, the hostess of one of the most prestigious salons in the Imperial Capital, the number four person in the Ministry of the Treasury and someone doing research work on more efficient Gating that Altarrin might be able to understand but Kastil frankly could not.

They also include - or included - Jean of Jenona, one of the researchers on the project to develop the why-did-they-develop-it-in-the-first-place enchantment. An exceptionally talented long-range Mindspeaker but only a journeyman mage, and not a powerful journeyman at that, Jean was generally agreed to be quiet, personally charming, absolutely brilliant, and deeply invested in the welfare of the population of the Empire, carrying out various infrastructural and industrial projects on family lands at a young age before moving into the imperial bureaucracy, where he found himself assigned to magical research instead of his (widely agreed to be hoped-for) administrative post. Jean, however, had a mental breakdown after the death of his half-sister, an Adept in imperial service with whom he was very close who died six years ago shielding top imperial officials from an assassination attempt, and withdrew completely back to the family estate; he was reported dead of disease shortly afterwards, and no one has seen him since.

Except for one of the people who Kastil had interrogated, an enchanter on one of the accursed factories, who (when a thoughtsenser-interrogator went over him enough) had talked to someone who looked a great deal like him about his work, four years ago, telling him everything that went into enchanting factory equipment, because nobody except Kastil and Altarirn has ever heard of security mindset.

Kastil would like to investigate more, but with Tolmassar under enemy occupation, he does not think it is presently practical; he does, however, think that Jean looks exactly like the sort of person the gods would aim and steer for their goals, and also that they should try to make sure that none of his siblings are on the armies in the western fronts, because he has no idea which of them would be willing to do a minor, inconsequential favor for a beloved brother long since thought dead and now trying to destroy the Empire.

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That's intriguing and frankly bizarre and also almost certainly not relevant to the situation in Taymyrr, though of course Altarrin will have copies of this passed on to his own spies in Taymyrr, and both directly to Governor Vanaren and to his undercover Mindspeaker in Oris (who is at this point somewhat hard to reach without giving up their cover) and his on-site eyes on Governor Vanaren's staff. 

 

Aaaaaand then he really does have other things to worry about. He wants a report from his own, trusted people on updated casualty figures in Oris, and he to know immediately if Vanaren hears anything else from the "Knights of Ozem", or if any followers of Aroden are captured, but in the meantime he is going to set Oris aside and focus on his own logistics. 

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And the Army of Oris continues the march to war, pausing only briefly to reorganize after the battle before advancing northwest, lightly reinforced by farmer-volunteers and feudal lords' companies who had waited for victory before committing to the war as they march on the capital. They're on the Tucannon Road, now, crossing the frontier from the poorer rural regions that were in Oris between this war and the last towards the southern borders of Tozoa Province, where the farmland is fed by imperial-made canals (Jean's mages disassemble the gate-focuses but leave the canals intact) as they march towards the city of Naushanka, and, after that, the provincial capital of Tatanka.

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And it is in this context that one evening a Gate opens and a pair of plainly-dressed flunkies with sticks of the sort used to beat away beggars come through into the small town where the Orisans have camped for the night, followed by a pair of soldiers in fancy uniforms-with-armor that are neither Imperial nor Oris-which-is-mostly-stolen-Imperial, followed by a pair of people in outfits fancier than anything anyone in Oris ever wears, who are holding ceremonial gilded whisks in their right hands and ceremonial bags of money in their left hands followed by a gorgeous silk-curtained palanquin carried by four muscular slaves in color-coordinated even-more-plainly-dressed-outfits with color-coordinated hair, the curtains to which are closed, followed by another two subtly-differently-fancily-dressed flunkies with silvered ceremonial whisks and ceremonial bags of less valuable money, followed by another two more of the fancily-uniformed soldiers, followed by larger numbers of more plainly-dressed flunkies. The fancily dressed flunky in the front right is yelling "Make way! Make way for the great Lord Imperial, Marthan Ljudimoir, Gentleman of the Imperial Bedchamber and Duke of Tormantyn!" over and over again while the other fancily-dressed flunkies are just giving everyone else superior looks.

They are met by the highest-ranking nobleman in the army, Colonel Tion, who counts as a count if you ignore the part where the empire dispossessed his entire family when they conquered Tozoa Province, who the fancily-dressed flunkies will ignore completely until he directs his request to the fancily-dressed soldier who passes it up to the fancily-dressed flunky on the front left who passes it up to the person in the ridiculously fancy palanquin, who passes the request down to the fancily-dressed flunky on the front left who passes it on to the fancily-dressed soldier who passes it on to Colonel Tion, who attempts an explanation, which is ignored by the fancily-dressed flunky until it is given to the soldier who gives it to the flunky who gives it to -

You get the idea.

This procedure will take half an hour before anything occurs other than Colonel Tion's face growing steadily redder.

Is Iomedae involved in this at all?

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- yeah, she will go check that out. 

 

Also, she doesn't know if this place's god is Asmodeus but she really really does not think much of Him.

 

Iomedae has been offered titles, in Taldor, and declined them, because they'd involve an oath of fealty to the leadership of Taldor, which is not the kind of thing she would seriously contemplate making. She does not announce herself, just goes to watch the whole elaborate procession and maybe read some minds to orient to what in the world this is supposed to mean.

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- So "Count" Tion's great-grandmother was in fact the daughter of a butcher. (That he was a very successful butcher, master of a butcher's guild, is beside the point. He was a butcher, ritually unclean.) This means that even aside from Tion being in exile, he's sesnaesetti, someone with one-sixteenth tainted blood. This means that for any nobleman to treat him as an equal, if it got back to his superiors in Ithik (and it would get out, slaves gossip), would be a political disaster for him.

(This is a gendered him; Ithik is very clear about having different male and female pronouns, and if there was a situation where it was ever correct for someone to use a male pronoun about a woman, that person would appeal to the Emperor and the Emperor would invent a new word and everyone - that is, everyone the court knew about - would instantly adopt it or face decapitation.)

So to preserve his standing back home, Marthan Ljudimoir needs to make it very clear that he isn't negotiating with a slave. He's negotiating with General Orestan in mindspeech, of course; he can't be called out on that, and mind-gifts are perfectly acceptable for a man, and nobody knows what Orestan's true birth is so the Emperor has chosen to believe he's the king's third son who is widely believed to have died of fever as a child, someone who is beneath the Emperor in the imperial hierarchy of course but not unspeakably far down, and therefore not very far below a Duke at all, so a duke can speak to him face to face. But he needs to show the flag for the sake of his countrymen back home and so an army of barbarians don't think he's some kind of debased savage. They'll learn the proper way to do things when temples of Atet open up here, and then we'll see if they remain defiant in their savagery or learn from the greater dignity of Ithikan customs, recognize their secondary place, and properly adapt themselves into a properly subordinate uncle-nephew relationship.

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....she thinks that this is not, actually, the work of Asmodeus. She DOES NOT LIKE IT ALL THAT MUCH BETTER.

 

She's still not going to identify herself. It's much better if her enemies continue to be confused about what they're up against.

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After half an hour, Ljudimoir and his minions head over to the grandest house in town (the thirty minutes was, apparently, so Orestan could clear them out -)

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Bribe them to move out for the day and give them enough time to take their valued possessions.

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( - apparently the Marshal thought Ljudimoir would bring a tent, but it isn't really worth it for one day, since he'll be moving on to Oris's "capital" tomorrow.) There he can properly convert it to a nobleman's residence for the night, while he explains the most recent imperial benevolences towards savage Oris.

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Joy.

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Oh, good, she is not anywhere near the most annoying ally the Marshal is dealing with! It's always good to not be someone's most annoying ally.

 

:I assume Ithik's not going to condescend to give you any choice over what help you receive, but the thing I really want for this battle is to loan the armor to someone else so I can come in flying and rumor can have it there's at least two of us, and it'll work better with some powerful shields on them to give them a chance.:

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:They will not. I can put one of my Adepts in the armor, if you want them to think you can also throw magic?:

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:...won't they have a hard time doing arcane spellcasting in armor?:

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:... No? It just doesn't help much if you already have mage-shields.:

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:Huh. Then yes, we should do that, and I'll give them some of the magic items that'll affect their survivability more than mine, and we can fly in together and sow some confusion.:

 

Her Mindspeech is slightly less crisp and formal, now that they know each other a bit better, and does carry in its undertones that she loves war, and hates this war, and is thinking hard about how to win it. They need to dismantle every single one of these canal gate-locations, for one thing, and they should assume it'll only be a few weeks before the Empire realizes this is their biggest problem. 

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:I like this plan. You can make other people fly?:

 

(His mindspeech continues to carry the undertones that he is supremely confident, has a plan to win everything, and there is no difficulty that can slow him down for more than ten minutes or so.)

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Once they take the capital she's going to make a dedicated effort to figure out if his confidence was warranted without her but it does seem pretty warranted now so she'll let it pass.

:Well, not exactly, but I can carry them while I fly, and we'll be diving fast enough I doubt anyone on the ground will know the difference.: She has in fact practiced slowing out of a dive in a way that doesn't kill a civilian in your grasp, with potato-sacks to represent civilians. ...can anyone Gate us up in the air so I don't have to waste a significant share of the duration of the flight spell getting the altitude?:

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:Yes, though you'll both come under fire when you do that.:

His fundamental plan, if they don't screw up or hide in a city, is to have Iomedae blast a hole in the enemy lines, then follow it up with quite a lot of mages and heavy cavalry, break them in half, and smash whichever the smaller half is, then the larger half. This would not be a great plan without Iomedae, but they have Iomedae, so. (And, indeed, his previous plan was 'wait for them to screw up, such as by letting him use Farsight on a written battle plan', and he still expects to do some version of that but it's useful to have a backup.)

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Iomedae is very good at blasting holes in enemy lines! She will become way less impressive half an hour into the fighting when both of her Greater Angelic Aspect uses wear off, especially if she's handed off the armor and protection that goes with it, but you can do a lot in half an hour when you don't get tired and your sword moves very fast and you can fly. 

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Altarrin has a thousand things on his mind right now, and arguably it is not a good use of his time to personally reply to the letter sent by the "Knights of Ozem." But it's not like anyone else is going to. And it's only going to take him half a candlemark, probably. 

(After which he'll hand it to his lieutenant to whom he's delegated keeping track of all his spies presently in Oris, both within Governor Vanaren's forces and not, and one way or another it should reach the rebel forces within two to seven days. He is not planning to personally keep very close track of that.) 

 

To the Knights of Ozem

The Empire appreciates the care and effort which caused this letter to be written and to reach us. It is a rare occurrence, for an order such as yours to open with such a clear and concise diplomatic message, including an explanation of your order's goals and why you believe they can be achieved. 

To return the favor, and make very clear on what basis and with what information the Empire is currently reasoning: 

The Knights of Ozem are unknown to us, as is your god Aroden. The Empire's reach is not infinite, and it is possible that your religion has existed for centuries without our knowledge, but from our vantage point it is more plausible that the letter received from the "Knights of Ozem" is a deliberate ruse. This is of course not a useful starting point for any kind of diplomatic negotiation, and so from here on, this letter will assume that your order is entirely sincere in your claims. 

Based on the letter we have received, the people in your temple order may share much of the Empire's understanding of how cities and countries ought be run such that their citizens will have opportunities and flourish. It would, all else being equal, be in our interests to work together. 

That being said, in our extensive experience, it is almost never workable to negotiate agreements with those who serve gods. 

We understand that you think otherwise. This is of course always true, but it sounds as though you believe that your god, Aroden, values the cause of civilization and human flourishing, and is on your side in this war, and is an entity that can make agreements and will keep them.

The Empire has had many dealings with gods and their followers. Our conclusion has been that while specific mortals who follow gods, and even temple orders as institutions, are often reasonable and share many of the Empire's goals and values, and might under different conditions be worth negotiating with, this has never been the case with the gods.

The gods rarely communicate at all with mortals, and approximately never communicate Their explicit intents or goals. In the Empire's experience, which is likely much longer than your order's known history with Aroden, the gods are neither pursuing the goal of a flourishing civilization, nor even capable of understanding what it would mean. 

It remains the case that Aroden is unknown to the Empire, and if your order has evidence to offer that He is different, we are prepared to listen. 

He'll include a few different suggestions for where and how to send replies, at the end. It probably won't matter very much, it's likely to take a few days before anyone sees this letter at all and even then he's not really expecting a reply let alone a reply with major decision-relevant information. 

 

...but it's cheap and it might end up being very useful, or at least very informative. 

He finishes the letter, and hands it off, and returns to his other work. 

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It does not, alas, arrive before the battle begins.

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- Because in the wee hours of the morning Samien is woken by one of the Marshal's mages, blinks, passes a message on to Real Orestan, Real Orestan throws his sight, and hits first Samien and then every one of his officers with a psychic yell.

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:They've left themselves open, and we've got the bastards!:

The summary is immediate: The imperials just set up scrying wards near every Gate-terminal on any canal anywhere near Orestan's force and began moving their troops through three of the nearest, their main force through two canals ahead of the Orisan scouts (starting, of course, with a quick screen of elite troops and mages to shield the canals) and a small flanking force of cavalry behind their lines, clearly to launch a surprise attack once they're organized. It's a plan that takes risks to win big; so overwhelmingly dividing your force in the face of the enemy flies in the face of military doctrine, but great generals have won victories before by flying in the face of military doctrine, and if it succeeds Governor Vanaren can surround the Orisans, crush their thin lines, and inflict an absolute wrecking defeat on them.

:Iomedae, change of plans. Drop Jevan when you swoop in; I need you to take out the gate-arch to cut them off from reinforcement.: 

... Assuming, that is, that Orestan can't quickly march to the nearer canal, cut their ability to get reinforcements through it, ambush the tiny flanking force of cavalry, and then defeat the other army as it marches to the rescue.

Which he can.

So that's going to go very badly for the imperial army, really.

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Iomedae has been to the best of her ability double-checking Orestan's tactical calls but he has a lot more information than her and a lot more experience with the dynamics of this kind of combat and she defaults to obeying. Do they in fact have time for Jevan to wear her armor and be potentially another suspected Knight or should they just go immediately.

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He can get it on fast, he thinks. (Iomedae moves fast, and, frankly, so do Adepts who can afford fast horses.)

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He'd be happy to explain the complete military logic to her later but right now he wants to destroy an imperial army in detail.

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And so the Orisan army moves through the fields, deploying as it moves, one great wall of shining metal and blue banners and horsed knights with gleaming spears and sabers, rolling onwards -

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- Towards the gate, where imperial legionnaires with the same wooden-hafted pikes held in clenched hands, thin metal of the gauntlets that shield their remaining fingers from blades and cuts over scarred flesh, maintain a screen on just the far side of the canal, to where riverboats pull up by the sides unloading more pikemen and crossbowmen and horse-transports unload their cargoes with their riders by their sides - 

The army of the Empire knows, because the armies of the Empire always knows, that they have more fire, that Imperial adepts can outshoot any other adepts because they're better trained and there's more of them, all they need to do is hold out long enough for their mages to blast down the enemy's pike squares and then they can roll over them. 

(And this is more true now than ever, because they have most of the Adepts that would go with twenty thousand men, and there's not much above eleven thousand in the imperial army before the emperor divided it, here.)

There's clear lines of fire, this battle, and the guards around the canal can see just how outnumbered they are as the Orisan army approaches.

And their adepts can see right up to the limits of their range of fire.

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She hands over the armor and her cloak of Resistance and her ring of Evasion and her ring of Protection, and her boots which increase the wearer's speed and also can be activated to cast Haste, and she casts Resist Energy (Fire) and Resist Energy (Lightning) on Jevan. She's keeping the gauntlets, which have many of her magic items in them, and her mantle which keeps her in her physical prime, and the robe that grants her spell resistance, and her ring of Sustenance obviously, and the gloves that grant her impossible reach with her sword, and the helmet so she can keep her Telepathy and conceal her face from the enemy. 

:You should be extraordinarily hard to kill. The boots only last ten rounds, use them a round at a time and activate them only as needed when you're in a tight spot. I'll also give you some temporary strength right when we land; use it, it won't last.:

 

And then she proposes they be Gated two miles up in the air above that Gate-arch, which is 30 seconds of freefall and then four seconds of slowing down for the landing. She's done it plenty of times and never squishes her sack of potatoes. 

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:Right.:

He grins the fierce grin of someone who is going to kick so much ass.

- And, as the sheer massed imperial fireballs and lightning bolts tear their deadly holes through the Orisan lines and the Orisan fire is returned in significantly lower quantity (as, less than a mile off, another Imperial army hurriedly forms and comes marching to the rescue - as the cavalry and infantry take their losses and move on - 

Iomedae and Jevan appear two miles in midair above the Gate.

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Skydiving is fun. They do it for relaxation, on the Crusade, when the wizards have Teleports remaining at the end of the day. Over the water so that if you fail to cast your flight solution in time and also are sufficiently tough you won't die. Iomedae can, she has determined, survive a dive into water unscathed from an arbitrary height, even from so high there's no air to breathe while you're up there. Other people end up quite scathed, but someone can grab them and put them back to perfect health. 

 

Her timing is very good. She wants to get the most out of her Greater Angelic Aspect, so she casts it ten seconds from landing. Then she casts Burst of Glory, which will give Jevan three times the life-force of a normal person and supplement Iomedae just as much though on her it's less noticeable, and also infuse them with holy energy that makes them better at fighting, and also make her glow like a torch. She extends the wings - they're magical, they can't break from the strain - in the precise fashion recommended for slowing down from a dive without squishing the civilian you're carrying. 

 

She drops Jevan onto his feet from a foot in the air and casts Prayer to take out everyone in a forty foot radius who isn't wearing a very good talisman and makes her sword glow and starts smashing the arch.

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And Jevan will start providing suppressing fire aimed at all the mages surrounding them -

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- Which is necessary because when they see what Iomedae is doing basically every mage present who isn't desperately defending themselves starts throwing fire and lightning and force at her, and using specialized adept-killing weapons, too, like the projectiles that fire fire and force, too, because they know this is key - 

- But, actually, the arch breaks fairly quickly. Iomedae has to actually try, because it's huge and stone and enchanted, but it was not built up to stand up to extremely enchanted swords wielded by people much stronger than the typical elephant.

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They actually manage to hurt her pretty substantially, what with how she's occupied with taking down the arch as fast as possible and not at all with defending herself and what with how she's not even armored. Greater Angelic Aspect kills a lot of hostile magic dead before it gets near her, and it gives her very good damage reduction, but she gave the really good energy resistance spells to Jevan and plenty of that fire and lightning is overcoming the weaker resistances Greater Angelic Aspect grants.

Even if only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of things suddenly thrown at her hit, a normal person would be dead ten times over.

She of course doesn't indicate this in any way. She breaks the arch, and then starts killing them.

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... Which she can do basically the instant she's in range, no matter how many ordinary soldiers try to get in her way. Meanwhile, all the troops in the boats are trying to scramble out - and of course Jevan is responding by electrifying the entire river - 

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Altarrin was not personally watching via scrying, at the moment the two armies first crashed together. Altarrin is busy, and while he's definitely quietly worried about Oris and intending to check up on the situation at regular intervals, at this particular moment he's very busy with his own forces' obnoxious supply chain issues. 

 

He has people on it, both scrying the main body of the rebels' forces and staying up to date on what Governor Vanaren's remaining forces are up to. He was warned that there was likely going to be a battle, today, and from his very very quick glance he was expecting it to either go quite well or very badly, but there wasn't anything it made sense for him to do, personally, and so he set it aside, because worrying about things he's decided not to prioritize is inefficient.

 

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The mage doing intermittent scrying-checks ups the frequency as the armies approach each other, but doesn't interrupt Altarrin, since so far nothing is happening that wasn't predicted by the information they already had. 

...The mage's scrying-point is quite sensibly about a hundred yards above ground level, to be able to see most of the picture at once while still being close enough to make out any details. The Gate that Iomedae dropped through is two miles up, and the issue with using mage-sight through scrying is that it's directional. He has no idea they're there until, suddenly, a figure in incredibly magical armor - and a woman radiating more unfamiliar magic from half a dozen artifacts - are right there, in midair, falling. He's in the middle of getting a communication-spell up to Altarrin's secretary when the woman sprouts wings - what? - and slows and lands beside the canal-Gate terminus - 

- there's a burst of unfamiliar magic and almost everyone within a forty-foot radius just...collapses...and she starts destroying the canal-Gate terminus with a glowing sword.

Altarrin's staff mages are well trained and disciplined and experienced, and he's nonetheless startled enough that he loses the half-formed spell and nearly loses the scry-link entirely. 

 

This seems like a matter worth interrupting Altarrin directly for.

He has the communication-spell up within another ten seconds, by which point the Gate is down and the winged sword-carrying woman has survived an appalling quantity of offensive magic being thrown at her, and now both of the new arrivals are moving faster than should be humanly possible, the armored one throwing combat magic and the winged woman swinging her sword, impossibly fast, and cutting through shields and people's bodies like there's nothing there. 

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Altarrin is fast. He has his own scrying-spell up within three seconds. It's not in the right place, though, he's targeting approximately based on the map. It's going to take him another fifteen seconds to move the scry-point to where he can get a good view of what's going on. 

 

(He's not having any particular emotional reaction, yet, emotional reactions are for when you have any idea what's going on and ideally aren't for emergencies at all.) 

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There's a winged woman! The wings are bright and white and feathered; her face is covered by a very magic helmet; her clothes look magic too. She has shields, including some elaborate and extensive shields that extend twenty feet out from her and move with her effortlessly. The glowing sword moves too fast to track except if you unfocus your eyes, in which case you can see a sort of glowing afterimage. 

 

She's killing people. She's very good at it.

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The armored guy might just be a strong Adept, except that he's wearing armor much better than the best shields, fire and lightning are just sliding off him (some of his shields are standard imperial work, others are alien even to Altarrin) and he takes hits that ought to kill someone and keeps moving. He's at least not just... letting everything hit him? He makes some mild efforts to defend himself?

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The imperial troops here were caught halfway through deploying and are being completely wrecked. They're trying to form into reasonable defensive formations to hold off the advancing Orisan troops and it's not working because Iomedae can just tear through them; the ordinary soldiers have nowhere to run but only compulsions are holding the adepts to the battle, so far, and they aren't suicide-compulsions. They won't last long.

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Altarrin had expectations about how this battle was going to go. They were, for the most part, pessimistic expectations. He didn't really expect Governor Vanaren or his staff to be good enough to pull off this kind of bold tactics, and he expected them to lose, and to take heavy casualties and manage to fail to evacuate even larger numbers of scattered troops. Within that possibility, he had a lot of uncertainty about various things, like how long it would take this to become obvious. 

 

What is actually happening, right now, is not within the realm of his expectations. It's not on the same continent as his expectation. It's not something he expected could happen, anywhere, ever. Gods do sometimes intervene on the battlefield but not like this. 

If he were in command, he - well, he wouldn't be in this situation because he wouldn't have left open a vulnerability like this, not with the information he has, but hypothetically if he'd had different information - he would be trying to coordinate the Adepts for a massed Final Strike. If it seemed infeasible, he would be ordering the Adepts to get out as fast as possible, and the rest of the troops to surrender. The rebels may or may not even be accepting surrenders but it does not currently look like continuing to fight is going to make enough of a difference to be worth it. 

He's not in command, has no active lines of communications with the officers on site, and trying to wade into this is just going to confuse things even further. He'll watch, pushing as much power as he can into the scry, he wants the highest resolution mage-sight impressions he can get of the two godpossessed presumable Knights of Ozem's artifacts. Once this is over, which it doesn't appear will take long at all, and the rebels sensibly get their key people behind anti-scrying wards, he's likely to be the only person who can track them. 

He snaps out a communication-spell order to one of his staff mages; he wants a line of communication with Governor Vanaren now. 

 

One thing Altarrin does have is a direct line of communication with Emperor Bastran, who should know about this as soon as possible. 

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Governor Vanaren is very busy fighting a battle and is not available to be interrupted, even by the technically-second-most-powerful man in the Empire, unless the second-most-powerful man in the empire wants to (a) joggle the elbow of the man fighting his battle and (b) accept all the blame for the defeat if there is a defeat.

... Speaking of which battle, the Adepts are not carrying out a mass Final Strike, they are Gating out, and gating as many other troops as they can out, too, up to half a mile northeast  where the rest of the reinforcing imperial army is now marching to the rescue, very strung out. His cavalry ambush has not visibly been discovered yet, and this battle's not over yet. If Vanaren can gather his troops, he still has an absolutely-overwhelming superiority in firepower, more than enough to beat the rebels without an Iomedae level of god-cheating or extreme mismanagement.

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Iomedae really wants to mostly finish this inside thirty minutes so she can leave the field. If she does not do that she'll 1) reveal that the angelic wings have a limited duration and 2) quite possibly take enough damage she's forced to heal herself, and her healing is precious. 

 

Where are she and her invincible Adept ally needed, once the Adepts have Gated out of here and the rest of the soldiers will be handled by the Orisans?

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The Adepts are gating up to join the main enemy force, which is disorganized and is about to have a giant hit of terrible morale from desperate fleeing people. Their next step is to head northeast to beat the empire before it can get properly organized; it still has an overwhelming advantage in firepower if Iomedae doesn't kill them all.

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Altarrin is fairly sure he can already see exactly how this is going to go. This is not a fight the Empire wins. This is a fight where a god or gods are meddling more blatantly than he's ever seen or conceived of (why? why here? why now?) and Vanaren's numerical superiority is irrelevant to the conclusion. This is probably, no matter what they do, a fight where the Imperial forces lose catastrophically, and the only part not yet entirely determined is how many of them survive it, and Vanaren's response is nearly the worst possible thing he could do, from that perspective. 

He won't push harder on communications with Vanaren because it's still a 'probably' even if he would assess the probability to be very high, and he isn't actually sure Vanaren or his people still have the coordination to switch to a different plan, and even if they did immediately switch to retreat and evacuation he's not sure how much of a difference it would make. He is at this point resigned to that cost already being paid. 

 

It doesn't matter. (Well, it does, because every one of those deaths is a tragedy he should have prevented, but it doesn't matter to the eventual outcome.) Even if Vanaren's forces are entirely annihilated, the Empire has twenty times that many troops where they came from. Of course, some of them are occupied elsewhere, and it's not a great idea to withdraw most of the Imperial forces from Isk and the western border, but - this is suddenly not a local provincial peasant rebellion, it's a war against a god, and it's a war the Empire cannot afford to lose. 

(Altarrin is, in fact, considering the letter he received, and the question of whether they should try for peace talks instead. Bastran would go for that, if Altarrin suggested it was even an option on the table. But it's unlikely to be a real option, just one that delays the blood spilled. Trying to maintain peaceful relations with a neighbor ruled by a god who can and does do that is not a situation that will be stable, whatever words are written on the peace treaty.) 

 

It's not the usual protocol, but he reaches out with the specialized comms spell that only a handful of people in the Empire know, and targets it to the Emperor directly. 

<Bastran. We have a serious problem.> 

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The Emperor of the Eastern Empire is having a terrible week. The last thing he needs is for it to get even worse, but clearly the universe does not care. 

 

<What> 

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Terse outline of the godpossession currently happening on the battlefield and his prediction of how the next few candlemarks - or, realistically, possibly the next few minutes, things are moving fast - are going to look. 

(Altarrin is distracted. He's still watching through the scry, because more information is also worth having.) 

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. 

 

<What do we. Do.> 

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Well. They're going to lose this battle, but they have a lot more information now, and they're going to have to win this war. Which probably means pulling troops from Isk and the borders and might mean reallocating some of the response to Tolmassar and Taymyrr though he'd really rather not. He'll sit down with some maps and some lists after this and figure it out. 

He's pretty sure a dozen Adepts carrying out a massed Final Strike in rapport will take out even someone possessed by a god and granted impossible godpowers. They need the army to deal with everyone else

 

Currently he is busy and needs to go back to focusing on watching. Updates to follow via the usual channels. 

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Does Jevan want to Gate them two miles up in the air again?

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Sure.

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... Honestly, Altarrin's verdict was right on the money. The rebels engage a distracted imperial army; the empire "could win" in some important senses related to troop training and magical firepower and so forth and so on, if it discounted Iomedae or threw a legion's worth of Adepts into Final Striking her, and, instead, it does not, partly because of Iomedae with a big sword, but more because everyone was told they had a brilliant scheme to surround the enemy, abruptly got loaded into boats, then force-marched in a to-them arbitrary direction, paused and marched back the other way looking for a defensive position, and was hit by fleeing refugees from the beaten flanking force prevented from panicking (kind of prevented) by their compulsions.

Compulsions enforce discipline beyond the point where the will breaks, and this fight isn't as completely one-sided as the last two. But the Empire is beaten and beaten badly.

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Oh, by the way - at one point in it an imperial Adept Final Strikes half a second before Iomedae hits her. What happens?

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Oh. She dodges.

 

(She throws herself into the air mostly on instinct and is carried farther up on the shockwave of the explosion, her skin failing to burn only because she’s in this form resistant to fire, and she stabilizes only after a terrifying disorienting second of crushing flaming nothingness. She reflexively heals herself and thereby wastes one of her precious remaining Lay on Hands. But as far as any external observer could tell, she rises unscathed from the explosion, wings white as ever.)

 

 

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All right this is getting ridiculous. 

...They'll want to plan on a different formation than what he had previously been thinking, drop a dozen people through Gates simultaneously but spread out enough that she can't just...jump out of the way, as though this is a normal thing for humans to be able to do...they can steal her idea of Gating into midair, it's a good idea. 

(He's not buying that that didn't cost her or her god anything. Someone currently being possessed by a god is probably not feeling their injuries. It does remain the case that it wasn't enough to kill her, and probably isn't worth trying again given that they're absolutely not going to succeed at getting a formation together right now, though Adepts who are cornered anyway might as well try in case the damage is at least enough to weaken her.) 

Altarrin doesn't try to communicate any of this to the battlefield. It's past the point where it would help. 

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It takes significantly more than half an hour, but before the day is over the imperial troops have done their best to withdraw or Gate back to the safety of their provincial capital, maintaining better order than in their previous defeats. The Orisans celebrate, but their pursuit is, again, not nearly as driven; fighting a battle is exhausting.

Still, nobody on either side really thinks there's any possibility for an imperial victory without reinforcements, now, and as soon as the evacuation is complete, Governor Vanaren will write a letter begging for reinforcements and a top general, and start giving orders to withdraw north of the Havau Bar range, which is still in his province but is much more securely imperial and much more lightly-populated than anywhere in the Tozoa Plains region.

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Iomedae doesn't leave the fighting early. It'd conceal some capabilities but she's not, at this moment, very worried about the worst the Empire can throw at her, and she hates leaving people to die when she could have saved them. She's still quite deadly unarmored and without resistances to mage-attacks beyond her spell resistance.

 

When it's over she wants people packed into a forty-foot radius for healing and then she will get under cover from scrying and - rest, actually, because she took a lot of hits in that fight and is down to pretty much a normal-person amount of lifeforce. (She would have healed long before that if not for the fact Hero's Defiance lets her heal when she takes damage that is rendering her unconscious. It's her favorite spell, under normal circumstances. Right now her favorite spell is definitely Greater Angelic Aspect and she has a complicated relationship with Prayer.)

She'd like her magic items back from Jevan. Is he all right? The ring of evasion should've protected him from the Final Strike if he was far enough from the epicenter to shield.

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Oh, he's fine. (Her armor would be battered and singed, but it's mithril and magic mithril at that.) He wasn't the center of the blast, "And I'm tougher than I look," with an aggressive baring-of-fangs.

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"Hopefully they won't keep trying it. ...hopefully they'll talk, at this point, but people are slow to do that even when they should." She feels better once she's all armored up, and a lot better once she's rested.

 

She doesn't like killing people any better than she did a few days ago.

 

:If we dismantle the Gate-thresholds this side of the pass, and I camp out at the pass, do they have another way to send reinforcements?:

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:With enough Gates there's really very little you can't do, even without the enchanted thresholds.:

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:Annoying. All right. 

 

Congratulations, Marshal, on some well-fought battles.:

 

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:And congratulations, Knight-Commander, on making them much less bloody than they could have been.:

He does aim to try to retake the rest of the nation; the Havau Bar is rolling hills, not a truly defensible mountain pass. But not until his army has rolled into Tatanka and he's sent detachments to disassemble the rest of the Gates and told some of his more trusted people to start setting up some minimal government administration; the enemy will, unfortunately, have some breathing space, if as little as he can make it.

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Iomedae wants to supervise the occupation of Tatanka and yes she is going to be very annoying about it.

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... What, exactly, is she asking for, or trying to get?

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Minimal slaughtering civilians in the streets! Minimal rape and pillaging and arson and wanton destruction! Minimal chucking of Imperial babies out of fortress windows! 

This is not actually her first campaign with non-paladins!

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They were planning on trying very hard to do none of those but the last and they're pretty sure all the babies got evacuated. This is his city, not theirs.

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She believes him that he'll try and she is planning to be there, because sometimes when a large number of armed men flood a city which they just conquered things happen that no one in command intended. 

 

But they have the exact same aim, here: a prosperous, free Oris.

And they're making all the progress they could have dreamed of.

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Altarrin doesn't watch through the entire time. Scrying a site a hundred miles away, for candlemarks, is draining even for him, and also takes a lot of focus that he needs to apply to other things. He does watch long enough to notice when the winged woman loses her wings, which is interesting and might mean there's a limited duration to the godpossession – though it doesn't look like the lack of wings impairs her very much in efficiently killing huge numbers of people. 

(And this is supposedly the god of flourishing civilizations...) 

His main priority for right now is giving a full handover of the Taymyrr-related logistics and current state of tactical planning to one of the other top generals of the Empire, because it took Bastran about four seconds to read Governor Vanaren's letter and decide he wanted Altarrin personally on this. Taymyrr might get messy and unpredictable, but Oris is already messy, and 'unpredictable' is a vast understatement of what just happened. 

It is, yet again, incredibly frustrating to try to get anything like an accurate post-battle headcount, but his guess is that the rebels took relatively low casualties in this fight. The Adepts were focused almost entirely on the godpossessed Knights of Ozem, and meanwhile the rebels' Adepts - of which there were much fewer, but still - were able to do whatever they wanted. And the Imperial soldiers were taking the morale hit of being in the middle of a losing battle from almost the beginning, even when their compulsions didn't actually let them just run away. 

 

He's going to need a serious numerical advantage, both for the obvious reasons and because he very much needs this to be a fight that the Imperial side is confident they're going to win. This is - doable, barely, but annoying. It's going to mean leaving Isk almost bare and hoping that Vkandis isn't going to lean on Iftel to take the opportunity to invade, or at least that if they do it's going to take them a while to be ready to move. 

Most of all he needs Adepts. Who are willing to die. It's a different ask, ordering someone to go into battle knowing from the beginning that their plan is to sacrifice themselves to explode at their enemies. 

It looks like the rebels are planning to spend a while consolidating. Which is good. If they pushed hard to chase the remnants of Governor Vanaren's forces and take Havau Bar, it would actually be pretty hard to get reinforcements over in time. 

 

 

He watches in snippets as the rebels move in to occupy Tatanka. 

He's...impressed, honestly. It's a much more disciplined occupation than he would have expected, and - it's hard to tell by scrying from a distance, but he suspects the no-longer-winged woman has a lot to do with it.

Maybe it does mean something, to her, that Aroden claims to be the god of civilization. 

 

He watches, and plans, and weighs the pros and cons of sending another letter to the Knights of Ozem, who may or may not have received the first one yet, though if they haven't it should be reaching them soon. 

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The letter reaches her in Tatanka. She has to have it read to her, of course, but it's -

- really promising, actually. Better than she expected. She'd been planning to flood the Empire with a bunch more letters, explaining the situation, and this - feels like a genuine effort to arrive at the most important disagreements first?

 

 

 

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The Knights of Ozem swear to the following representations as true and reflecting the best information available to their Order and their own most reliable estimates of the situation, and pledge that on the honor of their order, their members, and their god.

- Aroden's power base is distant from here. It is reasonable for the Empire to doubt that this order has escaped their notice for its whole history, and it indeed would certainly not have escaped the Empire's notice if it had been closer, but it's really quite far. Perhaps events since the Knights began communication with the Empire are persuasive at least with respect to whether they are divinely empowered. They are happy to present, at peace talks, further proof. 

- Aroden was, originally, a very powerful mage. Human, with human values and a human comprehension of law and good and how they might be pursued. He studied ascension for a long time, and represents that the process preserved His concerns. His interventions since ascension have been aimed at peace, prosperity, law, reducing disease, providing magical healing, combating Evil gods, etcetera; there are some where His purpose was obscure, but none where they would seem obviously lawless, or obviously incompatible with His purported aims. The conduct of the Knights reflects His teachings. In Aroden's power base, conflicts like this one are often settled with letters like these, because everyone knows that an Arodenite order wouldn't lie in this form of communication. His churches are schools; His people are educated. The Knights intend to make Oris a peaceful and wealthy kingdom with good relationships with its neighbors despite its ideological differences with them.

- The founder of the Knights of Ozem spent more than a decade studying the nature of gods and of Aroden, after He chose her, and determined eventually that a god like Him could answer questions and make promises, meaningfully but at significant cost, and obtained his promise, that He understood what she wanted, what she would work towards, and that she would never be used against that purpose. He may well have other purposes. He isn't using the Knights of Ozem for them. If He were, they'd of course disband at once, but they're really very sure.

- The Knights could contemplate sending a senior member into the Empire or into some neutral location to perform on-demand miraculous healing, if that would be persuasive in reflecting that the relationship between Aroden and His mortal allies is that of allies. Nearly all Aroden's miracles work in this fashion, at the need of those who require them rather than at His will, because, again, the Knights are His allies. His powers work through them when the knights ask for them. 

- The Knights are willing to negotiate the wording of a commitment to not participate in some kinds of harm to the Empire even on Aroden's request, though they do not want to be bound to never oppose the Empire for their own human reasons through the avenues permitted to their order, which again don't include peacetime assassinations and peacetime infrastructure attacks. 

- The Knights have not had much specific training regarding a situation where they'd given their word and Aroden told them to break it. If that happened their best guess is that the god-command would be disobeyed as obviously being some kind of confusion or misunderstanding or some other god impersonating Aroden, but this does seem like a notable omission from their training on disobeying improper orders, and they will add it. The endorsed policy of the Knights is that if Aroden would ever so command them, He's not who they thought He was and not worth obeying, though it's possible to imagine a very bizarre circumstance in which, for instance, someone mistakenly believes themselves bound by an oath because of memory modification or something and Aroden communicates to them that they never swore it. The Empire is welcome to provide input into what policies the Knights would need to adopt and train their members in for the Empire to be happy to have them as neighbors.

- Aroden has not, in fact, conveyed specific instructions about Oris. He generally grants people their miracles, if they share His aims, and then gets out of their way. It was their own decision, witnessing what the Empire's tactics in Oris were and how the people of Oris felt about the Empire, to ally with the Orisian rebels. The Knights did try and fail to convince some Imperial units to temporarily halt the executing peasants and bring notice of the situation to their superiors, before the Knights killed anyone, but they understand the difficulty of having commanders on the ground who want to bother their superiors with geopolitics, and regret the attendant impossibility of having met under less adversarial circumstances. 

And as ever it ends with careful clarifications about the provenance of the letter, and a restated sincere desire for Orisan independence and peace.

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It is, unfortunately, going to be a while before this letter manages to reach what's left of the Imperial government in Oris, let alone land on Altarrin's desk. 

 

 

He's writing another letter of his own, though.

It's a formal declaration of war, as the Empire would write to another nation invading it. (This has not happened very much at all in their history, but they have a standard form for it anyway.) Oris is a province in rebellion, not an independent nation-state, but the Knights of Ozem are clearly something entirely different. And they did, in fact, clearly declare their intent and give an opening for peace talks before slaughtering thousands of Imperial soldiers. Altarrin appreciates that. 

The Empire considers Oris part of its sovereign territory, and the Knights of Ozem to be hostile invaders. The gist of his letter is that the Empire has recognized that the Knights of Ozem do, indeed, seem to have the power of a god behind them, and this might reasonably have led them to believe that they could succeed at biting off a corner of the Empire's territory. The Empire would strongly advise that they reconsider this. The Empire is also not, at this time, willing to or interested in considering peace talks with agents of a god, particularly not a god whose only intervention the Empire has ever witnessed involved the deaths of thousands of its people. 

However. It's a situation without precedent, but the Empire recognizes that whatever the traits of their god, the Knights of Ozem as a human institution have shown that they have principles. The Empire is willing to treat with the Knights of Ozem as a foreign state, and to arrange for channels of communication, such that if one side does decide to surrender, or to propose a ceasefire, this message will actually be received rather than lost in the confusion while thousands more people die than necessary. 

(The letter makes it fairly clear that the Empire is negotiating with the Knights of Ozem specifically, and not the peasant rebellion that they've chosen to support.) 

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And then he's going to sit down with maps and tables of troop deployments in the entire rest of the Empire, and figure out his options. 

 

The least costly way to do this would be to assemble an army out of smaller units, taking a legion here and a cohort there - doing a lot of reshuffling where necessary, replacing some of the forces in more iffy provinces with new recruits, but definitely not stripping any of the borders. He could gather an army of fifty thousand that way, and with barely any risk to the Empire's security elsewhere...in two months.

The situation might even keep for that long under normal circumstances; the rebels are likely to take the rest of the province, and would have some time to get dug in, but - well, the Empire conquered Oris in the first place. They can do it the hard way a second time, if they have to. But he'd prefer not; it'll be a lot bloodier. And, in this case, there's a very good reason not to, which is that he has no idea what other miracles the Knights of Ozem will turn out to have on tap, and does not have much reason to trust their assertion that they'll stop with Oris. 

 

So. If he wants to have an army ready in less than two weeks, it's either going to be a much smaller army than he would ideally prefer - he can get numerical superiority over the rebels, but not five times their numbers, and just double their numbers does not currently feel like a safe margin - or he's going to be stripping border provinces of almost their entire garrisons. 

 

...He'll do the second one. Isk has been A Problem for nearly its entire existence as part of the Empire. It's the proximity to Iftel, which they genuinely can't do anything about. As a result, Isk - which is very large, though its native population isn't that dense - has tens of thousands of troops permanently stationed there, including throughout the interior, maintaining security on the trade roads and canals and guard the Empire's infrastructure. 

Altarrin can leave a skeleton garrison manning the fortresses along the actual border, and recall nearly everyone else. It's going to cause problems, because obviously the province with a significant ongoing military presence due to its ongoing problematicness is going to have problems if said military presence vanishes. If he takes his eyes off Isk for too long, there's going to be a fourth rebellion on his hands.

Also, Iftel is right there and no one is going to be happy about this. 

But. The thing about Iftel is that they've never, not once in their entire history, expanded their borders. It's entirely possible that Vkandis just literally can't move the shield-wall. Iftel could of course decide to conquer Isk as a colony anyway, but Altarrin would bet at reasonably confident odds that they won't. If they wanted it and felt like administering it, they could easily have just...done that...at any point in the centuries before the Empire absorbed it. 

Isk, then, reinforced by smaller units of Adepts from the Emperor's personal forces. (The Imperial Army of Jacona is mostly in Tolmassar, right now, making up in numbers and training for Altarrin not being there himself, but there are still some mages available.) He can scrape a legion here and a cohort there from Lastun Province and the western border, which isn't currently under threat from anything more organized than bandits, Hardorn isn't that close and also isn't nearly organized enough to take advantage of the opportunity. 

Assuming no slippage in the schedule - normally not a great assumption, even in the Empire, but you can make up a lot of lost ground if Altarrin is personally doing twenty Gates per day - he'll have thirty thousand bodies in a week. A hundred Adepts - Adepts are easy to reshuffle, they're self-portable - closer to four hundred weaker mages mostly on compulsions and recharging talismans and other support work. And with some care, he can even mostly do that without making it easy for the rebels to gather accurate information on his movements. 

 

...At which point his intention is to send another letter and very firmly suggest that the Knights of Ozem remove themselves from the situation and stay out, in exchange for a number of concessions on how exactly the Empire will act in pacifying Oris. He doesn't expect this to work - he expects that even if the order themselves wanted to, their god will surely have some firm objections - but it's not impossible. 

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In the likely event this fails, he needs a plan to kill or capture, at the very least, the woman who sprouts wings when 'Aroden' possesses her. Maybe the armored mystery warrior as well, if they both show up, but their demonstrated abilities seemed less thoroughly out of context. 

 

A dozen massed Final Strikes in the right formation will probably do it, and more likely so if they wait until after they've kept her busy for a candlemark or so with relentless attacks - which will cost a huge number of lives, but not as many as would be lost if they don't take her out of the picture - until the most obvious godpossession ends. 

Probably isn't good enough. What else...? They can bring in artifacts for an extremely overpowered force-barrier - which Altarrin suspects she could take down in a minute or so anyway, she destroyed the canal-Gate without much apparent effort, but it will at least hold her in one place for a little while, where at least she can't jump out of the way of a literal Adept's Final Strike. ...Maybe try compulsions as well, he can bring in one of the very few people who can cast them from a safe distance. 

And then drop a dozen Final Strikes on her. The blast will take down the barrier, but after it hits her, and they can Gate-drop a new set of artifacts to get it up again immediately, and if she's still moving they can do it again

Is that enough? ...Altarrin has no idea. He'll keep thinking. But it's a start. 

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He'll try to scry her every so often, while he works on preparing. 

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She's often wearing the magical armor that the other possible Knight was wearing in the last battle. She spends most of her time in the training yard, some in the in-progress temple. She's declared times for Aroden's miraculous healing, high noon and sundown, and she wants to not ration it but if there's far too much demand then she'll ration with money, and spend the money on the temple also serving meals and offering classes. 

She seems tireless. She's out and doing things twenty hours a day; the troops she participates in training generally need a rest after an hour, but she doesn't. She's made it known that she'll take, in confidence, complaints about the army or their actions, and see justice done; she hasn't had many takers yet, but those precedents take time to grow. She's made some progress on the language; her sermons are mostly in Mindspeech, but she switches as often as she can into her fairly halting understanding of the local tongue.

 

She's asked if anyone can duplicate her pearls of power. No one has ideas immediately; it'll probably have to be a post-war thing, and risk one of them getting wrecked while a mage tries to reinvent the crafting of magic items.

 

She gets his third letter, the declaration of war, evidently sent before her most recent one was received. She replies.

The Knights regret, but understand, the unwillingness of the Empire to engage in peace talks with any people who serve a god. They hope that with sufficiently clear agreements on under what circumstances the Knights of Ozem would act on Aroden's guidance, it might seem more possible to negotiate with them. She has a long list of examples of interventions by Aroden and how the Knights would by default respond to them and how they would be willing to commit to responding in order to reduce the concerns of a neighbor. But all of this as part of peace talks, and impossible if the Empire is categorically opposed to those. 

The Knights hope that representatives of the Empire, their impression of Aroden unfortunately shaped by their wartime operations, will come to free Tatanka and see what Arodenite governance looks like in peacetime. The Knights can negotiate to arrange the safety of observers, and can provide any statistics of interest to the Empire on the wellbeing of the populace, though they are actually inexperienced with statistics and recordkeeping (there is an Arodenite order for that, it just isn't them) and so they expect it'll take some time to in a useful and precise fashion collect all the information of interest to the Empire. They have specifically been recording the rate of deaths in childbirth, that being easy to measure as there aren't all that many births each day and they mostly happen at the temple now. The risk to both mothers and children looks much decreased as you'd expect given miracle healing, but of course perhaps the mothers at particular risk are unable to reach the temple. Aroden's miracles for forcing the speaking of truths can also be useful to a more efficient justice system but they can't claim the crime statistics look very good, they just occupied this city with a large and inexperienced army. It is their custom, and the teaching of their god, that to study many things and then share only the favorable numbers is nearly as bad as not collecting numbers, and so they'll announce which statistics they intend to track in advance. 

But that, too, is a project for a peace that the Empire declares its intent not to negotiate.

They are grateful for the channels of communication proposed, and will use them at need, and are sending more copies of their last letter, and also this letter, through those channels. But much more will be needed, to avoid further bloodshed, and they hope the Empire might consider it urgent to learn more of Aroden and of their vision for Oris, so that the horrors of this war can cease.

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It is unfortunately also going to take that letter a while to reach Altarrin. 

(There are perhaps an unusually high rate of inconvenient coincidences and bad luck specifically affecting letters in that direction, though letters from Altarrin personally tend to reach the rebels promptly.)

 

Independent from the contents of the letter in transit, though, Altarrin is observing the governance of Tatanka, and the temple of Aroden. It's - something.

It's not the first time a temple order made up of generally very admirable people has done awful things. Or - not even done awful things, but been quietly nudged in a direction where their good intentions accidentally led to awful things. It...probably means Aroden is less opposed to flourishing civilizations than, say, the Star-Eyed Goddess. 

(He doesn't really believe that Aroden is, or even can be, actively in favor. It's a human concept. Centuries of hard-learned lessons have led him to the conclusion that the gods seem to struggle even to see human things.) 

 

Also independent of the letter, learning more about Aroden is a high priority. Altarrin would like a report from the Ministry of Cults as soon as possible, and he kind of also wants to yank Kastil off the sabotage investigation and put him on this. For all they know it's related, anyway, there's clearly a careful pileup of godinterventions here and the simplest explanation (though not necessarily the true explanation, his impression is that the gods can and do build on each other's interventions, though who knows what that looks like behind the scenes) is that Aroden arranged the sabotage and the rebelling generals, to buy a better opportunity for the rebellion that His militant order has decided to shepherd. If it succeeds they get a country out of it. 

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Whatever the quality of the rebels' intelligence, it's going to be somewhat hard for them to learn that Altarrin is in command. He's a favorite target of the gods, for the obvious reasons everyone is aware of and the secret reasons known only to him, and he doubts even the Knights of Ozem could kill him permanently but it would be incredibly inconvenient to die now and come back in a year to find half of his hard-won civilization fallen apart. He's spending most of his time working from shielded Work Rooms, when he's not raising twenty Gates a day to various installations in Isk to bring over a hundred soldiers here, three hundred there, gradually adding to his growing army. 

And he's spending a lot of late nights in distant records caches, searching and searching for anything he's ever written of Aroden, in any of his past lives.

He has yet to find even a mention. 

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There is not, actually, a huge amount of time to stop and take a step back and put together all of his quiet notes of confusion into a bigger picture. Altarrin is working very long hours, and casting twenty or thirty Gates a day across nearly a thousand-mile distance where only one of the ends can be on a permanent terminus, and then holding them long enough for a few hundred people who are not always ready to rush through. (Not to mention the supplies. Supplying a force of, at this point, nearly ten thousand, is not feasible with what's available nearby Lastun Province.) He's not sleeping enough. Altarrin is almost 80 years old, even if his age doesn't show due to life-extendings magics. He really doesn't have the stamina for a month of this. 

But it's important.

 

He hasn't yet made reprioritization decisions that are likely to seriously threaten the stability of the Empire if he gambles wrong. He's managed to avoid siphoning off any of the troops currently fighting in Tolmassar. He is doing some reshuffling that will delay the full army being assembled for Taymyrr, but they already have enough bodies available to secure the areas that the rebelling general might try to push into if he goes on the offensive. It mostly doesn't seem like he will before Altarrin's replacement has all of the setup done; he's less organized than the general in Tolmassar. The most likely disaster that might occur as a consequence of his decision here is the Empire temporarily losing control of Isk, but Isk just doesn't have the population to actually secure their borders against the Empire. 

He is, however, definitely considering paths that would cost the Empire enough to compromise its stability elsewhere. Such as, for example, 'ask two dozen Adepts to Final Strike, after throwing thousands of soldiers and dozens of weaker mages at keeping the woman busy until the wings disappear.' The Empire almost certainly has the resources for him to keep trying things until something sticks.

What is much less clear is at what point in that fight it would be better to stop pouring lives and resources into that pit, retreat, and try for a ceasefire and peace talks with the country puppeted by a foreign god. Because that point does, in fact, exist, and not thinking it through in advance will just ensure that any decision is made on the spot, reflexively, probably by a battlefield commander without the full picture in mind. (Altarrin has no intention of being within sight or combat spell range of the Knights of Ozem. It has not failed to occur to him that one reason the gods might be conspiring toward this is if They think that the Knights of Ozem have a way to kill him permanently.) 

So he needs to figure that out. 

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- and the answer depends heavily on his assessment of Aroden the god, separate from the Knights of Ozem as an Arodenite cult and militant order. Even among the known-to-him gods of Velgarth, he would feel very differently about sharing a border with a country run by its state religion and protected by a handful of devoted worshippers with reliable access to miracles, based on whether it was Vkandis or Atet (very bad), versus the Star-Eyed (still bad but less likely to end in things being set on fire), versus Anathei (only moderately bad, probably geopolitically stable for a while though the increased surface area for subtle influence would eventually be an issue) versus the Earth-Father and Sky-Mother (might actually be fine though he would be so confused about the swerve in intervention style and methods.) 

For all of those gods, Altarrin has at least hints of Their direct interventions, separate and in addition to their historical written theology and the teachings and traditions of Their temple orders. It's not entirely uncorrelated; the gods with mostly pacifist temples focused on doing good works and feeding orphans do tend to be, at the very least, subtler in Their interventions. Altarrin really does not have time for an in-depth comparative religion study this week, though he expects the Ministry of Cults to, even if they can't find information on Aroden (which he doubts, if it never came up in 700 years worth of his own records), will provide him with a long treatise to say so.

 

What does he know? 

Aroden: is not subtle. At all. This is just as unsubtle as the enormous magical shield-wall around Iftel, and might be even weirder. 

Aroden may or may not be involved in the other internal sabotage godplots. Altarrin does, at this point, actually buy that the Knights of Ozem probably weren't and if Aroden was they had no knowledge of it. Aroden might in fact just have decided to jump on an opportunity already set up by other locally powerful gods. 

The Knights of Ozem: are interesting. Very obviously not pacifist, able and willing to spill blood, but...careful. And clearly thinking of themselves as people with principles. If they weren't religious, if they were - hmm - just a secretive mage-school with access to some kind of mostly-forgotten magical lore, he - would in fact probably be trying to resolve this around the negotiating table, with the assumption that it would probably not work, but at least the willingness to attempt it first before the solution that involves throwing huge armies at each other. 

Aroden's miracles apparently include Healingwhich - is tempting to take as a positive sign, and is in fact a kind of intervention that Anathei has done more than Vkandis once you control for total number of visibly miraculous divine interventions. 

Aroden's newly constructed temple is one of the closest things Altarrin has ever seen to a holy site where he would feel at home. He has no idea what to make of that. 

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This definitely leaves Altarrin feeling overall like a neighboring country puppeted by Aroden through His temple order would be more analogous to a country run by Vkandis than one run by Anathei. (Vkandis feels like a closer analogy than Atet, where the human-run religion and teachings actually seem worse than blatant known interventions by the god.) 

But he has considerable uncertainty. 

He didn't jump straight to assuming the worst of the gods he does know of. He checked. In any circumstances that didn't involve the Empire maybe being under existential threat, he would be inclined to try not assuming Aroden was like every other god, a distant alien entity, opaquely and incomprehensibly nudging the world in directions that achieve some obscure inhuman goal, trampling on everything Altarrin cares about in the process. 

(He's never thought the gods were evil, or deliberately trying to harm people or civilizations. They're just - very powerful, and very alien, and very very hard to communicate with, to the point that he's not sure anyone has ever really succeeded at it.) 

 

Unfortunately, this very much feels like a situation where the Empire might be under existential threat. 

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...It doesn't feel like he has an answer here, does he. He has the negative space where an answer might fit, and no time or energy to keep chasing it.

Which is of course the exact shape of circumstances where not chasing his confusion down to its roots is generally a mistake. But that doesn't actually change the fact that he's utterly exhausted and needs to raise another twenty Gates tomorrow and work on battle plans. 

 

So - keep going, for now, on his current path. But keep his eyes open, too, and be alert that he might at some point have to reassess and change strategies. It wouldn't be the first time here that's he gotten an utterly unexpected surprise that called for him to re-evaluate everything. 

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There are problems, trying to integrate southern Tozoa Province. Free Oris was under Imperial oppression for, overall, something more than a year; Tozoa was under it for about two decades. That's enough for the initially rapacious soldiers to be replaced with government administrators and for the Empire to start building the infrastructure that allows provinces to pay the immense imperial taxes; long enough for Tozoa's formerly-self-sufficient economy to go under under the flood of Gate-canal-delivered imperial exports, and a new economy based on resource extraction (primarily) and exploiting local comparative advantages (secondarily) to provide for the imperial market to form. It's long enough that most of the young men have only vague memories of freedom, and a great many of the richest and noblest of birth of them have received an imperial education intended to transform them into an identical imperial officials just like the ones from each other part of the Empire. Free Oris had universal revolutionary support; South Tozoa has memories of glory that need to be very carefully handled not to have everyone going "screw glory, we want bread" within a month, especially since every conflict between someone who fled south when the empire nationalized their property and whoever bought it recently is in real danger of triggering a riot.

In trying to turn this into something he can trust with his back as fast as possible before chasing the imperials north, he has the advantage of a competent and well-staffed Central Directory to delegate work to, that most of the overt loyalists fled north for fear of retaliation, that Iomedae is working obvious and blatant miracles for the good of the nation, and, frankly, that Governor Vanaren was sufficiently bad at his job that Jean does not have to be much better to still be a clear and visible improvement. If the gods hadn't stacked the starting situation this hard in his favor, it would be much trickier for Jean to get anywhere.

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But it is also the case that Jean of Jenona, rogue imperial nobleman and puppetmaster behind the strings of "Marshal Orestan" and his Central Directory, has certain resources that no normal ruler of Oris would. 

The first and most important of these? A spy network that can, actually, feed him news about Imperial troop movements, Real Fast.

It does not take Jean very long to realize that they're organizing a relief army and that they're organizing it now. Under a reasonably competent general, too, one Mage-General Salan, formerly of the Army of Isk, which is going to be Gated down shortly. (For some reason, related, perhaps, to Altarrin's habitual paranoia, Jean does not realize that the person commanding in the field is not actually in charge of the project.) This actually comes as a major surprise to Jean of Jenona, who had previously put around five percent odds that they would do something actually meaningful about this if neither Taymyrr nor Tolmassar collapsed. Most imperial governments throughout the empire's history are best understood as holding-on-to-power-maximizers, and a provincial secession is not actually a threat to the survival of the Emperor or the Empire the way a mutiny is. This is a deeply bizarre surprise, and his non-confident best bet is that it's the gods deliberately making the empire make a suboptimal play so they end up collapsing faster than they otherwise would.

Still, it calls for completely different tactics than a normal situation would; defensive rather than offensive, trying to damage enemy logistics so they lose when they come down instead of racing north into the teeth of a full field army. He would like it if cavalry-and-mage teams raided north into the Havau Bar range, still controlled by Vanaren or else newly controlled by a replacement governor who hasn't gotten his act together yet, to disable or demolish as much of the Gate-canal-architecture as possible to damage the logistical system that would let the Empire send armies much larger than anything he could manage. Can he talk Iomedae into going with them?

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: - yes, all right. I have a strong preference for disabling rather than demolishing, obviously. I can tell you what I think of the Empire, if you haven't already guessed, but it seems genuinely tragic to destroy infrastructure like that.:

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:I don't want to demolish the canals, not when they're watering my people's fields. But if we just cut the spells, it's not that hard for them to reenchant them, and so that's why I want the enchanted arches destroyed as well as the spells wrecked. If they're limited by the food they bring with them in wagons and the food they collect from people who have already been warned an imperial army is going to be raiding their fields, they can send very many fewer troops than if they can just Gate in supplies on any canal from a depot halfway across the Empire.:

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:How hard will it be to replace the Gate enchantments, when there's peace?:

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:We can't reactivate them until we can control the ability to set authorizations better than the Empire can so we can lock them out and set up our own system, we can't control the authorizations unless the Empire sells us a military secret or we rederive it, and it's a multiyear research project for my Gate-trained mages to work this out that they can only start when there's peace. But the hard part for a team of trained mages is learning how to cast the spells, not casting them on an already-prepared gate-arch; otherwise I wouldn't care so much about breaking the arches.:

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:All right. I'll do it. 

 


I had hoped that the Empire would - focus on its bigger threats. I'm concerned they think I am a bigger threat than one lost province.:

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:I had hoped the same.:

He pauses. :That would be extremely worrying.:

A moment of silence. :You promised in your letter not to leave Oris and invade the Empire.: Or I might suggest you do that to get them out of our hair. :The gods will not assault us worse than we can bear.: We're a valuable asset for them alive, and not so dead.

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:You are happy to be used by the gods to destroy the Empire entirely. I am not in fact delighted about that.….

I think I am willing to do it, if they give me no alternatives. 


Do you think either of the pretenders would be better than the current Emperor?:

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:I think any emperor who does not completely devote his powers to securing control of the imperial apparatus of state and use it to suppress all dissent will be overthrown by someone more ruthless and paranoid, which is one of the many reasons I'm trying to rescue Oris from the Empire instead of taking over the entire thing myself.

So. No. Not really.:

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:A pretty good argument for letting it all burn:, she says dryly. :In my world there’d be the countervailing consideration that Good churches will militarily back rulers in the top third of not being terrible, so there’s some reason to try for it. …Evil mostly doesn’t do the same because it’s mostly not trying to maximize Evil the world over, right, it’s just selfish. The Church of Asmodeus could be meaningfully thought of as trying to maximize Evil the way Good strives to minimize it, but no reasonable or competent person serves the Church of Asmodeus voluntarily.

 

Good would be winning, if - it was organized, if there was someone in Heaven whose job to make all the good trades and none of the bad ones. The forces that make a place the Eastern Empire don’t stand up to …predictably purchaseable breathing room for people who want things to be better.:

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:I really like what I've heard of your world, it sounds like it has advantages. I might imagine that I'd be Good, there, that's just not the world I live in.:

:Any luck getting more clerics of Aroden?:

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:No. Which isn’t great. My best guess is that the agreements around god intervention around here strongly disincentivize the thing Aroden does at home, so even though He should have better visibility by now He can’t readily translate it to the aid I’d recognize.

There’s also the possibility He can’t operate here at all, though I’d expect that to go with my Evil-detection not functioning. Once someone figures out how to emulate a pearl of power we’ll have on-demand healing regardless, but it’d be a difficult situation.

 

I have powerful allies at home who have access to magic that will tell them where I am. They are almost certainly working on a spell to get to me, but that could easily be the work of a year or more. When it’s peacetime I’m going to stop shielding against scrying and they’ll at least be able to contact me and Commune with Aroden on their end to ask what He’s doing here. But it seems like a deeply unwise risk right now. I imagine the Empire is trying to scry me a lot more frequently than my allies are.:

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:I think the Empire considers killing you a very high priority, and you should consider maintaining your ability to dodge one to twelve Final Strikes on no notice whatsoever to be very important. I think the pearl of power replication is - one of these priorities for peacetime, or at least Not Actively On Campaign time, though if you want to spend a few hours with one of my Adepts working on it I think we can just in case it turns out to be very easy.: Even if we won't have time soon enough.

:I would really, really like to have powerful allies.:

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:If the gods are with us, I can dodge twelve Final Strikes unscathed. ...if the gods are against us, I can dodge twelve Final Strikes, but scathed. 

 

The work of my life is to ensure that everyone trying to build good places for people to live, prosperous and free ones that aren't trapped like the Empire or built off mind-control and mass executions, has powerful allies. I wish they'd hurry up, but they exist, and they will back you as long as you back the cause of human flourishing.:

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:Thank you.: An invisible smile. :If the gods were against us, they would not have brought you here. We'll manage.:

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The Ministry of Cults takes it seriously when Altarrin says something is important, and even more seriously when it looks like the Office of Inquiry is muscling in on their territory. (The Office of Inquiry does a lot of muscling in on their territory. In principle all investigation of god-conspiracies and god-disasters is their remit!)

They did not want to write Altarrin a report that makes it look like they have no idea who this god is. 

They conducted a stealth operation to take prisoner on suspicion of religious activity half a dozen villagers from a village that the rebel army passed through on the way to Tatanka, people who'd actually met an Arodenite priest. All half dozen of them were, on interrogation, guilty! The woman had gathered everyone around here, grown wings in an obvious divine miracle, and preached of Aroden and His assistance in the fight to free Oris. Two of the prisoners heard her speak directly; the rest only got secondhand accounts.

The Ministry of Cults thinks that Aroden's powers are clearly notable but His teachings as understood by these peasants are mostly perfectly typical of cults. Aroden rewards His followers who serve well in life with an eternity in paradise, a glorious shining place of beauty and abundance and all your dead loved ones etcetera etcetera it's of course known to the Empire that there's no such thing as an afterlife and that religions make it up to impress their followers.

People who do evil things (like Imperials, say these villagers) go to a different place called Hell where they are tortured forever. The villagers had slightly different impressions of the details but the overall picture is, Aroden judges everyone on death, those who serve well get paradise, those who serve badly get eternal torture, winged lady says the Imperials will face eternal torture and that those who die in honorable defense of their country she will entreat Aroden to take into His paradise.

They are vague on Aroden's teachings beyond this, but the Ministry does not want to sound confused or vague so they pushed until they got the answers they were expecting. He is in favor of magical healing and building Him temples and worshipping Him and doing good things and defeating the Empire. 

Their best overall guess is that Aroden is a god from the continent across the sea, that He for some reason saw fit to start muscling in on this continent, that He has a small number of powerful priests charged with evangelizing for Him, and that He is, you know, a typical god, which is to say terrible, but with a church that has put a great deal of effort into specifically mastering evangelism and coming up with things to say that ignorant peasants will find very compelling. The woman is a Thoughtsenser and may also have projective Empathy or some rarer gift; several subjects speak of being in her presence as being a transcendent and magical experience where it's impossible to feel fear.

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The Ministry of Cults is, of course, not an entirely trustworthy source of information on religions or gods. Altarrin is fully aware of that. They have their own political agenda. They have incentives to avoid looking incompetent, and to act in ways that maintain their power and influence in the Empire's government. They don't know everything, but are certainly going to be inclined to make it sound like they do. 

(He takes a moment to be sad about the stealth operation and arrest of villagers guilty of nothing other than very understandably listening to a woman with miraculous powers promising to rescue their people from conquest. He doesn't actually think they did anything wrong, and no one deserves to die, even the guilty, but these are people who he might consider as innocent as anyone ever is.) 

Altarrin is also keeping in mind that they don't have an Arodenite priest available for questioning. They have random villagers, from a region closely adjacent to Holy Ithik and its state worship of Atet, who might have heard an explanation of Aroden's teachings and translated it into terms more familiar to them. The information is has is likely biased, and almost certainly incomplete. 

 

That being said. There is really not that much leeway for misunderstanding in the claim that Aroden's followers will be rewarded in the afterlife with an eternity of paradise, and Aroden's enemies - more complicated than that, of course, and Altarrin is sure the Arodenite priests would put it more thoughtfully, but rounds to 'Aroden's enemies' - will face endless torture in an endless torture realm. This manages to be worse than Atet's supposed afterlife. 

And the incentive there - both from the perspective of the temple order, and through the more distant and alien perception of Aroden the god, nudging His followers in certain directions - is obvious. People will be very motivated to do whatever is asked of them, whether in a direct vision or by a temple elder, if they believe that the reward is paradise and the alternative is torture. A god can get people to die for His goals, that way. And for the priests of the militant order, with their own human goals, it has to be an excellent recruiting strategy as they prepare for a brutal war. 

 

...He does, briefly, consider questioning the villagers himself. But he would have to carve it out of the time when really he ought to be sleeping. ...He would do it anyway, under other circumstances, it's worth the cost if it might point at ways to do something that kills fewer people. But Aroden has displayed a remarkable willingness to possess people and give them murderous miraculous powers, and Altarrin really, really should not be making himself vulnerable to that right now. 

 

He doesn't like it. He's not sure. But he's...probably sure enough to move forward with his current plan. 

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So Iomedae heads north to sabotage Gates. Before she does, she writes another letter to the Empire, though she's pretty sure at this point that whoever has sent her three Lawful but increasingly unpromising letters about how unwilling the Empire is to engage in peace talks with a representative of a god is not the path to mutual understanding. Probably the path to mutual understanding is surviving a dozen Final Strikes and discrediting that perspective, within the Empire, that this is a problem they can or should solve with force. 

 

Accordingly this letter is more pointed.

The Knights of Ozem represent that Oris is prosperous and on its way to being well-governed and that they anticipate the people of Oris, presuming Oris remains free, will be better off in five years and in twenty than comparable people in Taymyrr. (They acknowledge that Taymyrr, also currently the site of a bloody war, may not strike the Empire as the fairest comparison, but their sense is that wars like the one besetting Taymyrr are not uncommon and not unrepresentative of what Oris would have had to look forward to had they remained an Imperial possession; indeed it looks likely they'd have been a site of routine conflict between the Empire and the Holy Empire of Ithik.)

They are happy to agree with the Empire on some formalization of this prediction and some treaty provision that rests on it, if the Empire is interested. 

They observe the Empire to be, as according to its own histories it frequently is, beset by multiple internal civil wars. They regret the loss of life and would under some circumstances contemplate offering to help the Empire end those civil wars more swiftly, and under a wider range of circumstances than that they would offer miraculous healing. That can be discussed as part of peace negotiations should the Empire be willing to engage in those; it is sometimes worth engaging in peace negotiations even if it seems unlikely there is any set of agreements appealing to both sides, especially in a situation like this one where the Empire's geopolitical situation may rapidly change. 

The Knights of Ozem have, as the Empire knows, committed to operating for this time only in Oris. Under the present circumstances, were it not for this commitment, the temptation would be fairly extraordinary to send an operative to one of the candidates for Emperor, and ask if he'd contemplate permitting the worship of the Church of Aroden were that church to lead him to triumph in the civil war. They are not doing that. The reason they are not doing that is that they understand that, on the Empire's view of the world, the gods desire only the destruction of the Empire, that they object not to its excesses but to its existence, and that on the Empire's view of the world the gods are incompatible with civilization and a place without them is needed for any hope that civilization might prosper. This perspective is obviously incorrect, to the Knights of Ozem, but they understand that it's possible they are mistaken, and do not wish to act in a manner that would be catastrophic if they were wrong. (It also suggests, whether or not it's correct, that the collateral damage from putting the Empire under existential threat would potentially be ludicrous.) And so the Knights are passing up an opportunity that is very much strategically indicated, because they are not enemies of the Empire, and have no desire to see it destroyed. 

In the Empire's view of the world, as the Knights understand it, the gods have created this entire situation in order to destroy the Empire. This might inspire one to wonder: if the Knights are firmly committed to not being used as the instrument of the Empire's destruction, what are the gods steering for? The obvious answer is that the gods are steering for the Empire to foolishly grind itself to exhaustion trying to destroy the Knights in Oris, expending its most valuable resources on battles that it could easily avoid, and thereby weakening Bastran's reign such that he loses one or both of the civil wars. 

(In the Knights' own view of the world, the Empire is doing this all by itself and no god-intervention is required to explain it; Aroden trusts His people and is letting them do as they see fit, and His people are trying to assist in the development of a functional, prosperous country that does not run on mind control and executions. But they are not sure they are right - no man ever should be, really - and so they have contemplated the Empire's view of the world and taken action to limit the damage they do, should the Empire be correct.)

The Knights of Ozem entreat the Empire to contemplate peace talks, which would reflect no commitment to a peace but make it possible for common ground, if it exists, to be found. 

 

She'll send it along with copies of all the earlier letters, in case they have been getting lost somewhere.

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Altarrin continues to work almost entirely from heavily shielded Work Rooms warded against scrying. There are delays in troop movements of course, but he thinks they can actually make up even more than the delay and have force assembled a day earlier than predicted if he does thirty Gates on the final day, with three of them using canal-Gate-sized thresholds, rapidly assembled but without the permanent enchantments laid, and held long enough to get nearly a thousand people through each. (The issue is that the canal-Gate termini are unusually widely spread in Isk, due to the difficulty in keeping them secured and guarded, and transporting large numbers of people over water is faster and easier than a long-distance march but they're really short on boats for it.) 

He is far from absolutely sure that it's worth it. It's going to matter that he's well rested the next day, which means no more late-night research trips to even more distant records caches. And it means having less time than he'd really hoped for, to sit down and write one final letter urging the Knights of Ozem to stand down, and offering them several unambiguous ways to signal if they've decided to do so. 

 

(Altarrin would, perhaps, be making different decisions here if not for the compulsions on him, and the formal Imperial order stamped with the Emperor's seal that instructs him to pacify Oris and neutralize the threat of the foreign god. It's mostly a form template, not really a personal communication from Bastran where every word is meaningful, but nonetheless the compulsion to obey authorized Imperial orders lies heavily on him. He might, also, be making different decisions if it hadn't been such an exhausting fifty years. Both of these are relevant facts, but not ones where there's any nearby world in which they look different. The contingent factors here are nearly all based in what information Altarrin received, in what order, and perhaps also in some of the especially frustrating and draining conversations he's had and problems he's troubleshooted in recent days.

Also the fact that the sometimes-winged priestess of Aroden is smashing all the canal-Gates. Altarrin knows exactly how much those cost to build, and some of that cost was measured in lives and not just coin.) 

 

He writes a letter. It is shorter and more pointed than he really intended. Without revealing anything about their capabilities or plans that the rebels can't very easily have figured out by scrying the staging point where an army of thirty thousand is getting itself organized, he tries to make it clear that this is not a fight Oris can win, with or without a few warrior priests of Aroden able to act as conduits for their god's power. They can, at best, make it cost the Empire tens of thousands of lives, and cause massive infrastructure damage to Oris in the process. 

He doesn't think either of them want this. The Empire is willing to consider opening talks with the Knights of Ozem – after they remove themselves from the Empire's territory, which includes Oris. Continuing to smash the Empire's infrastructure will be taken as a sign that they are, in fact, not interested in said talks, and the Empire will move ahead with its plan of fighting them the hard way.  

 

He'll delegate having it delivered to his staff, but the ones he definitely trusts. They can make sure it reaches the Temple of Aroden in Tatanka within a candlemark, and it's still only midafternoon. Based on everything they've shown so far, if the temple order of Aroden wants to de-escalate, they'll have a way to alert the woman who is pretty clearly their best combatant and quite possibly their leader. 

 

He does another dozen Gates and then goes to bed early. 

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(Iomedae's most recent letter, though not the earlier one, does manage to reach the war camp that night. Altarrin's staff find it mostly very concerning and extremist. Altarrin is also asleep, after doing thirty Gates today, and while Altarrin's usual orders are to be told immediately about this sort of thing, this really seems like a time to make an exception. It's not like it's going to change how tomorrow goes.) 

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Mage-General Salan's strategic plan for this campaign is, really, pretty simple. He wants to keep his army together, not try anything too complicated, and make sure nobody can ambush their force. He is a very good second-in-command and very good at logistics. Once they get into enemy territory, he's going to be very sensible, very practical, and use his superior numbers to beat them to a pulp. This is his war to lose, and he doesn't plan to do that.

His plan for Iomedae is completely different, because it is, in fact, Altarrin's plan. Their scries have confirmed that she's going out to smash Gates with a wizard and a dozen horsemen, and the plan is to Gate-strike her while she and most of her patrol are asleep. If she survives that one, too, they go for the Very Complicated Version.

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She seems to sleep for about two hours every night. She keeps the hours unpredictable, but Altarrin knows ways to scry that get around all of the standard antiscrying precautions. 

 

She sleeps in most of her magic items, including the terrifying clawed gauntlets, but not the full plate or the helmet. 

There are a couple of her men on watch, obviously.

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Unfortunately, while they have time to begin shouting a warning, they do not have time to do anything - get a spell off, stab the wizard - before everything within a mile of her is blinding flame.

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That's sufficient; she's awake at the beginning of a shout of warning, and diving for the armor so she can use it as cover before the explosion even happens. 

 

(Can you use a suit of armor, even a suit of magically indestructible armor, as cover against an explosion a mile wide? If you're Iomedae you can.)

 

No point using a healing spell; there aren't survivors.

 

She starts the spell to sprout wings and take off into the sky, donning the helmet, carrying the armor in her off hand.

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Altarrin is awake, not entirely rested but at least recovered from having pushed himself to the edge of backlash, and watching through scrying. 

Most people would lose their scry-point if a Final Strike went off within a hundred yards of it. Altarrin is not most people. It's pretty hard on his artifact, but he's prepared it specially for the purpose, and so the instant his scry-view whites out in a blaze of fire and mage-energies, he's already directly relaying the order to another dozen of his top mages - who should already be holding the departure threshold stable and the spell ready to connect to its precisely scried destination, a ring about 200 yards outside the outer limits of what they've calculated for this particular Final Strike,  to Gate-drop the incredibly powerful focus-stones and raise a ridiculously overpowered barrier. His next order is waiting on confirmation that the barrier is, in fact, up, and that the woman with the sword is, in fact, inside it, because he's not about to risk the only Fetcher in the Empire with a range of two miles and enough experience in concert-rapport to work off someone else's Farsight, or the only mage in the Empire who can target with Thoughtsensing and distance-cast compulsions at one mile's distance, until he knows that the woman isn't somehow already on the other side of their barrier. 

(If she is, a second set of focus-stones is ready to hit a much larger radius that even she shouldn't be able to escape in the next three seconds, but it will take correspondingly more Final Strikes to fill the internal volume of it adequately, and the barrier will be a little weaker.) 

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It takes her three seconds to cast the spell that gives her wings. Even with her boots, which she is using, and a variety of other abilities some of which she got from literal gods, she can only travel about a hundred yards in the first six seconds after she awakens.

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The barrier is up in three seconds, but barely, and it's another second before Altarrin receives confirmation and relays the order, and another second after that before the readied Gates for the Fetcher with her Farseer partner and the mage-Thoughtsenser go up. 

(Both are accompanied by Adepts who will get them out the instant they've either done their part or tried and failed. They're too important to put at any more risk than that.) 

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It's going to take the Farseer a couple of seconds to actually find Iomedae and share the location-sense and images with his partner, and another second for her to focus enough to attempt - with a lot of power behind it - to Fetch away Iomedae's sword. Call it eight seconds, maybe, since the blast hit her. 

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By then she's at the edge of the barrier. 

Fetching the sword away - works. It's much much harder than doing that to anyone else would be, more like Fetching it out of solid steel, but a sufficiently powerful Fetcher can totally do that. 

It disappears from her grasp. She grabs her dagger, which is Returning and therefore not at risk from whatever the fuck that was, but also -

- that was creative. This is perhaps genuinely dangerous, even if the gods are on her side. This is a situation for using nonrenewable resources.

 

Can the barrier survive a Tree Feather Token turning into a sixty foot tall five foot diameter oak tree right at its base.

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Arbas needs about the same length of time to find Iomedae's mind– okay even he can't get through her shields, but she's very obvious to mage-sight, wow she moves fast, and he can throw the most powerful compulsion he's ever cast. 

 

(This is the best mission of his entire life. Also he's going to be dropping back through a horizontal Gate to get safely out of range a second later whether or not his attempt succeeds, which is too bad, but Bastran was barely willing to agree to send him at all.) 

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The Tree Feather Token will very much startle Altarrin watching through his scry!

 

The barrier is intended to take absurd amounts of physical force. It's modified from an emergency spell meant to protect outposts and such from avalanches or other natural disasters, and he ""did some research"" (retrieved notes and artifact prototypes from a records cache) and overpowered it ten times more.

(Given the lead time, it was not feasible to power it with node-energy. The small barrier took twenty lives; the bigger barrier, which they had to have charged and ready anyway even though it might not be necessary, cost fifty. Altarrin has deeply mixed feelings about this but...well, a lot more soldiers than that are going to die as a result of the Arodenite priestess' work.) 

The Tree Feather Token doesn't expand; it goes instantaneously from tiny to enormous, at which point there is abruptly and very briefly a hole in the barrier. The design is resilient enough to instantly redirect power over the surface, sealing the hole and neatly shearing off the trunk in the process, but - it can't take many more of those, not in quick succession. 

 

 

He orders the stones for the larger barrier dropped, just in case. If she pulls out another of those, even if the barrier isn't down yet, he'll order it raised. (An irreversible decision, the barrier can't be taken down until the stones run out of stored power, but he's already planned out all the contingencies here and he doesn't need to actually reason through anything to conclude it's worth it.) 

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The compulsion slips off her mind like - like her mind is the wrong kind of thing to cast a compulsion on. Arbas may as well have tried to do it to a castle, or a statue, or the concept of mathematics.

 

She has two more Tree Feather Tokens, and drops those too. 

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That is fucked up. 

(Arbas is considering this fact while already most of the way on the other side of his evacuation Gate. It's really fucked up, though. Even gods shouldn't be able to do that.) 

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Gods should also not be able to manifest MULTIPLE TREES from THIN AIR!!!!!! As far as mage-sight can tell they're not even MAGICAL trees! Altarrin has QUESTIONS. 

 

None of which are relevant to his reaction, which is on pure instinct. Outer barrier goes up, on his order. Also the winged woman has been in the same place for several seconds, now, and they've got an offsight Farseer and a Mindspeaker relay finalizing the formation, he's - 

 

- the barrier is probably seconds away from coming down, even if it can handle multiple MIRACULOUS SUMMONED TREES she can probably just go at it with her fists for a while. 

 

The departure Gate-thresholds are ready. 

He gives the order, and sends fourteen Adepts to their deaths. 

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So, if the question is, can Iomedae, who has the ability to add her mythic power to her saves after she rolls them, and the ability to reroll a reflex save once per day, and the ability to add five to a failed reflex save and see if it succeeds then, and a cloak of resistance and divine grace and by now also Divine Favor's mythic luck bonus on saves, make an important reflex save, the answer is 'yes'. 

 

If the question is, 'can she make fourteen reflex saves at once', then - well, then the answer is what she told the Marshal. It depends on whether the gods are with her.

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Two of the Final Strikes hit her. Which - well, first off, is very unpleasant in its own right, it doesn't knock her unconscious but it actually comes quite close, but secondly is vastly more important for its strategic implications and yes, she can in fact propagate those in the middle of being violently thrown against the force barrier and lit on fire. 

 

 

She gets up, heals herself with Lay On Hands, takes off flying, and Mindspeech shouts :For complicated reasons that was mildly persuasive about the Empire's claims about gods and I wish you'd cut it out so we could talk!:

 

The most notable thing about her Mindvoice, if anyone is in range to hear it (her range is not great), is that it is...not that of a god-possessed being? She sounds calm, and sad, and unafraid, and human.

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The inner barrier, already significantly weakened, shatters as both Iomedae and the combined force of the blast hit it. There'ss no one alive on the inside of the larger barrier to hear her. (There is also no one within a mile of the outer barrier; you really don't want to be near it when it comes down, which it will when the next round goes, if it does, if Iomedae is still moving on Altarrin's scry.) 

 

It wouldn't have mattered even if anyone on site had heard her. If Altarrin were in range, it might, actually, matter. But Altarrin is the only person who can make sweeping strategic re-evaluations at the speed of reflex, and at this point the pre-decided path is very very clear. 

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Altarrin is watching on the scry. (The second round of massed Final Strikes almost took out his scrying artifact. The third definitely will. Whatever happens, he's not going to be on as quick a reaction loop for the aftermath.) 

It doesn't really matter. He's willing to throw fifty Adepts at this threat. (Though, for resource-juggling reasons - and because the formation on this round, with everyone else's scrying disrupted, doesn't need to be and isn't trying to be nearly as tidy or perfectly timed - he is mostly sending Master-potential mages boosted with blood-power. More lives spent. Less of a cost to his other wars. He doesn't like this math but it's math he's been doing for centuries and his orders from Bastran continue to be very clear.)

Either way, though, there's a limit, and it's here. If the miraculously god-empowered priestess of Aroden walks away from this, then...they'll talk. The main army hasn't moved on Oris, yet, and it's partly for this reason; he suspects the woman will be genuinely more willing to cooperate if none of the rebels have died yet. 

If he had time to think, it's possible that some quiet part of him might be hoping for that outcome, because it might be one where he just spent two hundred lives (once you include the blood-magic executions) for no reason at all, but it's at least a world where it's still possible that no one else dies. 

He doesn't have time to think, and he's not really feeling anything at all as he gives the order. 

 

 

 

Can Iomedae take thirty-six Final Strikes, slightly less exactly timed - the Gate-drops and the explosions themselves are spread out over nearly two seconds - and a little more variable in total power output per, but massed on her and then arranged to fill the entire volume of the barrier so she has nowhere to run? (The barrier is also going to explode, but not quite in time to get out of her way.) 

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The next one that she doesn't dodge would knock her unconscious, and then she'd be unconscious for the remaining ones, but Hero's Defiance lets her cast Lay on Hands as she's falling unconscious.

 

She does that. 

 

Once.

 

 

She cannot do that again a second later, the next time she fails to shield herself in time.

 

And then she's unconscious, and can't do it at all for the last four strikes. 

 

 

 

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The magic armor and magic items are totally unscathed but there's not actually that much left of the person who was inside them when the Empire next gets scrying up.

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There's also a crater five miles across, the trees and earth inside slagged to a glassy pit, the surrounding forest on fire for quite a ways. 

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Altarrin has his scry back up first, of course, within about five seconds after the last of the trailed-out Final Strikes. There's still a lot of ambient mage-energies settling and it's another thirty seconds before he manages to effortfully move it around and find the armor, which is the brightest thing to mage-sight. 

 

 

 

...Oh. 

Well. 

That's...that, then. 

- probably. Altarrin is not yet sold

 

The ground is still half molten and it's an endless five minutes before he can even slightly justify sending in more of his people to check. They're inevitably going to take some moderate injuries just being there, but hopefully they won't have to be there for long; they can Gate to right beside her, and check that she is in fact actually dead. He'll send a Healer with them too, very very very well shielded, to make extra sure. 

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She is in fact actually definitely dead. There is no trace of any person's mind or life-force, here. 

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Then...it's over. 

 

(They couldn't reasonably have taken her alive even if she somehow had survived repeated Final Strikes injured but not dead. Not after Arbas' report. Altarrin is...mostly not going to have emotions about already-foreclosed possibility, right now. And it feels cleaner, that his people didn't have to kill a catastrophically injured but still-living priestess up close.) 

 

- not everything is over, of course. There's still a rebel army, which is still surprisingly well-equipped and well-organized though Altarrin is hoping their morale will take a serious hit when they realize what happened to their defending priestess. But. Aroden has other priests. He might only be able to give one person this level of absurd miraculous power at a time, but still be able to switch. 

Altarrin - mostly doesn't expect that, though, even when he's being pessimistic. At the very least, Aroden from a distant continent now knows far more about the Empire's capabilities, and how far the Empire will go to hold off the influence of gods, and it might be starting to look like a better use of godresources to go run a country somewhere else

 

 

He orders his people to retrieve the magical artifacts, and drop them - along with the sword - into a shielded underground Work Room on a certain island in the far north, because he wouldn't put it past Aroden to at least try to send a priest to get them back. General Salan is still getting into position for the rest of this (hopefully straightforward, even-more-hopefully-but-less-probably one where the rebels will surrender rather than fight); they'll have plenty of time to study them before armies actually clash on the field. 

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And then the delayed shock-reaction hits, and Altarrin is grateful to be in a shielded Work Room in a secure location, because he's apparently going to spend a while shaking before he can, eventually, try to relax enough to get a little more sleep. 

 

(Updates on Arodenite miracles can interrupt him. Updates on rebel movements can go to General Salan, until Altarrin has actually had enough sleep.)

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Then the army will begin rolling south! It isn't moving very fast, because it expects the gods to be screwing with it and because it knows the leading rebel general is competent, but it's not moving very slowly, either; Imperial armies are usually very good, and this is no exception.

The rest of Iomedae's letters will, of course, be delivered shortly.

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Jean is worried.

Why is Jean worried? The five-mile crater where Iomedae used to be? Well, that might be part of it, but she's Iomedae. More of it is that she doesn't appear on a scry.

He is not, of course, going to tell everyone she's dead. She's from a world where people regularly die and pop back to life; the effect on morale would be devastating and she might show up tomorrow, ready to win the battle for them even if she was killed. Jean gears up for guerilla warfare if he has to, aims to try to inflict as much attrition on the imperials as possible with raids, but plans to fight a major field battle to protect the capital anyway, watching for opportunities to take the Imperial army by surprise where the terrain makes them vulnerable, and win a fight they don't want to fight. Imperial armies aren't used to Empathy as a tactic, and this won't be the first force he and Samien have panicked out of the fight.

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Altarrin sleeps late into the morning, but not well. He has nightmares that he hasn't had in a long time, including the one that isn't based on something he actually remembers at all, and can't have been, because he wasn't at Urtho's Tower at the moment it went up in a fiery explosion that would end up half destroying the world. 

He gets Iomedae's final letter first, because his secretary has it waiting on his desk by the time he hauls himself out of bed and tries to steel himself to face the day - well, the week, maybe month - ahead. Which he may or may not even spend in command, here, if things are going exactly as expected as a week then he's better put to use on one of the other fronts. 

(From here on, things are going to move...less quickly...and largely according to predetermined plans. Unless, of course, something else explodes from nowhere, but his gut - which was previously on high alert about the temple of Aroden - is actually mostly not expecting that. Certainly he has little to go on in terms of what contingencies would help to have prepared if something even more out of context happens, though he has people assigned to scrying all the known temple sites to Aroden in Oris, to alert him immediately if the large-scale miraculous healings or any other visibly divine-intervention events continue to happen. And he'll drop everything if and when something does explode, and improvise, but in the meantime he has at least a small window of space to think.) 

 

It's...surreal, mostly, to read this letter when he already knows how the confrontation ended. He finds himself trying to guess at what the writer of this letter (was it the woman he just murdered at the cost of nearly two hundred lives, fifty of them precious mages? he isn't sure but he's more and more suspecting it) was thinking. What was her information state? What did she think the Empire was going to do. 

- well, what would the Empire have done, if not for his personal direction? Because that's the obvious missing piece, here, that the rebels wouldn't have known in order to alert the Arodenites, and that perhaps even Aroden the god wouldn't have seen. The part where Archmage-General Altarrin is not, really, a product of the Empire's history and traditions and protocols, but the driver of them. The part where he has centuries of context on exactly how paranoid to be about the gods, that no one else possesses. 

(Not precisely true. Kastil might have been paranoid enough. But Kastil is neither a high-ranking military commander, nor particularly good at politicking; he might have recommended thirty-six Final Strikes as a backup plan, but it's far less likely that Bastran would have agreed to it, coming from him.) 

So maybe it's just a perfectly predictable and understandable pointless tragedy. Both of them sizing up the other, and coming to the prediction that it was a fight they could win. Not a very certain prediction, even Altarrin would only have put eight in ten odds that the amount of overkill he was willing to throw at this would work at all, but two hundred lives for an 80% chance of avoiding an existential threat to the Empire felt worth it. And it seems likely that the priestess of Aroden was thinking the same. 

He can genuinely appreciate their principled commitment not to intervene in the Empire's other civil wars. He doesn't, of course, know for sure if it would have been held to, if this had gone on any longer. He probably won't ever know. He can still admire the fact that maybe that commitment was real. 

 

...He wonders if it's right, that the gods - either Aroden, or the more local gods, or both working together - were steering for this so that the Empire would burn resources it couldn't afford to lose on neutralizing the threat, and then lose one or both of its other wars. He wonders if that's going to end up happening. Probably not, he thinks, but it still could, if there are further elements to the gods' plans here, further strings of bad luck They can still throw at Taymyrr or Tolmassar or even maybe Oris. Only history will tell if the decision he made was the right one. 

 

 

(There are quiet, wistful notes in the back of his mind. It - would be better, if they were in a world where the Empire could have negotiated and made trades with the temple order of Aroden, lenience toward Oris in exchange for miraculous healing on their other fronts. That isn't the world they're in, for a thousand reasons, but it would have been a nicer, friendlier world. He can remember - well, he can't remember, but he can recall the notes - being Arvad, who still hoped that cooperation and peaceful trade with the followers of gods who were their neighbors might be attainable.) 

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Iomedae's third letter, the reply to the Empire's official declaration of war, reaches his desk next. 

 

 

...He's more surprised, this time, and more - something - now is still not a good time to be processing emotions, but he's making a mental note that there is probably something to be looked at there, later. 

 

He's surprised mostly by the very long and detailed list provided, of interventions Aroden might make and how the Knights of Ozem would respond and what concessions they might be willing to make. It's so...concrete. It's not at all how he expects a priest, or even a warrior monk of a militant order, to engage. It might even have been useful and decision-relevant, if he had received it earlier; he's not sure whether or not it would have changed the final conclusion, but he would have replied, and...maybe. 

...The letter does include the date it was sent. Altarrin is not failing to notice that it arrived after the previous letter, sent days later. He is also not failing to remark that time delays on exchanging messages, through still-disorganized communication channels during wartime, is exactly the sort of thing that gods can nudge. It certainly looks like the local gods (presumably not Aroden, it would be confusing if it were Aroden, it's not impossible but presumably Aroden preferred not to lose His most experienced and empowered priestess) were trying to make sure he didn't see this letter in time for it to make a difference. He's - not sure what that means, yet, but in his past experience it usually ends up meaning something. 

 

He is differently and maybe even more surprised by the digression into statistics. His first thought is that the temple order found some of the older treatises from the era of the Empire's founding, ones that point more directly at what impresses him personally than later works, but - that doesn't feel quite right, surely if they had that kind of intelligence then their other communications would have felt more optimized to get the Empire to work with them. 

 

(The wistfulness is closer to the surface, now. He...probably would actually have tried stalling and exchanging more letters, if he'd seen this one in time. He still doesn't think it would have made a difference in the end, but it nonetheless bothers him that the path wasn't even tried. He's so tired of war.) 

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The third letter (the second that Iomedae sent) reaches Altarrin’s desk while he’s still sort of midway through considering the response to the Empire’s declaration of war.

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Altarrin quickly discerns, based on the date given and the first few lines, that this is the response to his first letter. Apparently he's been receiving them in reverse order. 

(Which means something in itself, in terms of the gods' goals here. Altarrin doesn't know what, but - from the start he's assigning higher importance to the content of this letter, because the fact that it was worth the gods' effort to nudge things so that he didn't see it sooner is informative.) 

Aroden's power base is distant from here. It is reasonable for the Empire to doubt that this order has escaped their notice for its whole history, and it indeed would certainly not have escaped the Empire's notice if it had been closer, but it's really quite far.  Perhaps events since the Knights began communication with the Empire are persuasive at least with respect to whether they are divinely empowered.

...Yes. These are both updates he ended up making, later, based on mostly-uncorrelated reasons and evidence. 

 

 

Aroden was, originally, a very powerful mage. Human, with human values and a human comprehension of law and good and how they might be pursued.

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That - doesn't seem like it should be a thing - but Altarrin is abruptly assigning the contexts of this letter even higher priority. 

 

He studied ascension for a long time, and represents that the process preserved His concerns. His interventions since ascension have been aimed at peace, prosperity, law, reducing disease, providing magical healing, combating Evil gods, etcetera; there are some where His purpose was obscure, but none where they would seem obviously lawless, or obviously incompatible with His purported aims.

This...is genuinely new information.

Altarrin mostly doesn't know how to react to it or incorporate it, yet - and it's not a good time for enormous re-evaluations of his entire worldview, there is in fact still a war going on - but he is mentally tagging it as very very important. 

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The conduct of the Knights reflects His teachings. In Aroden's power base, conflicts like this one are often settled with letters like these, because everyone knows that an Arodenite order wouldn't lie in this form of communication. His churches are schools; His people are educated. The Knights intend to make Oris a peaceful and wealthy kingdom with good relationships with its neighbors despite its ideological differences with them.

Altarrin's usual reaction would be distant and non-urgent wistfulness, for a hypothetical world that would be nicer than the one he's currently in, but clearly isn't the one he's currently in. 

But. This is describing a god who was formerly mortal, and who had - at least according to his temple's teachings - some actual justified reasoning behind why He would continue to hold the human values he had held, himself, as a mortal human.... 

If any of this is real, then - maybe Aroden does, actually, understand what He was doing in Oris. Maybe He was weighing the benefits and costs on dimensions that would be recognizable to mortals. 

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The founder of the Knights of Ozem spent more than a decade studying the nature of gods and of Aroden, after He chose her, and determined eventually that a god like Him could answer questions and make promises, meaningfully but at significant cost, and obtained his promise, that He understood what she wanted, what she would work towards, and that she would never be used against that purpose. 

 

 

....

It's the sort of caution that Altarrin - or even a younger Altarrin, lifetimes ago, back when he was Arvad, back when he was Lionstar, back and back to when he was Ma'ar - might have applied, to trusting a god who wanted to offer him miraculous powers. 

(No gods ever offered him miraculous powers. He had assumed that no gods wanted to. He - is maybe going to end up feeling very stupid about taking that observation and concluding too much from it, though he has far too little information to decide anything just yet.)

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The Knights have not had much specific training regarding a situation where they'd given their word and Aroden told them to break it. If that happened their best guess is that the god-command would be disobeyed as obviously being some kind of confusion or misunderstanding or some other god impersonating Aroden, but this does seem like a notable omission from their training on disobeying improper orders, and they will add it.

The endorsed policy of the Knights is that if Aroden would ever so command them, He's not who they thought He was and not worth obeying, though it's possible to imagine a very bizarre circumstance in which, for instance, someone mistakenly believes themselves bound by an oath because of memory modification or something and Aroden communicates to them that they never swore it.

 

It's so - thoughtful, and careful, and - 

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And there's more to the letter, that he hasn't even processed yet, but he keeps coming back to the first part, because - 

 

Aroden was originally a mortal human mage. Who became a god. Because He thought that mortal values were underrepresented among the gods (or at least this is the obvious inferenced), and so He just...did that, and ascended...and... 

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- and apparently this is, not only possible, but something that at least one person has done before -

 

- the question is how - 

 

 

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In some sense the question foremost on his mind isn't even the interesting part of this problem.

(The interesting part is mostly around the fact that Aroden - or at least Aroden's temple order's teachings - believe that Aroden knew the considerations and risks around turning Himself into a god while maintaining the same goals and values. That seems...genuinely extremely difficult, at least based on his gut sense of it, and Altarrin trusts his gut sense on the difficulty of mostly-theoretical-math problems a lot more than he used to, now that he's 700 years old.) 

...presumably Aroden took all of that into account. (Or maybe He didn't, Altarrin doesn't have enough information to judge just yet.) 

 

 

 

But. The much less interesting, much more obvious, easy-to-calculate part of the problem here is: how much mage-energy input would it take, to turn a mortal into a god? 

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...He doesn't like that math. 

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And maybe he's asking questions in the wrong direction entirely. Maybe he's completely missing the point. Altarrin knows that he's lacking in context, here, because if he had all of the relevant context then he wouldn't have been repeatedly surprised by recent events. 

 

 

But. 

If Aroden is, in fact, a former human, native to the other continent, then – He probably spent somewhere between 5 and 500 million lives in pursuit of godhood. 

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There are a lot of strategic implications there. If it's true.

(There are also strategic implications to be found in all the other nearby worlds where the Knights of Ozem's claims aren't entirely true.) 

 

 

Altarrin doesn't know enough, yet, to be sure - or even reasonably confident - that he knows which world he's in. Which means it's still not a good time to have emotions. 

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(Altarrin can notice, around the edges of his thoughts as he moves on to actual tactical concerns and planning, that there's an enormous backlog of epistemic confusion and emotional reactions that will inevitably need to be dealt with later. If there is a later. Right now his gut has, perhaps not unreasonably, decided that 'later' is not worth worrying about until they find out that the Empire is still going to be in existence next week.) 

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Iomedae is dead. Not just "In the town square, Greenvale, Grand County of Thale, The Geographic Region Where Order And Civilization Continues To Exist, The Continent, Velgarth, The Prime Material Plane" like she was about an hour after her disappearance, nor elsewhere on that planet like she presumably was for the next three weeks, but instead drifting along the river of souls where anyone can see, at least if anyone knows how to cast a scry powerful enough to get past dead Iomedae's still-formidable resistances and has a fourth-circle spell free at the end of the day to check with.

Alfirin hasn't had a lot of those lately. It's been a busy three weeks.

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Nonetheless, it is the case that on Oathday there has not been that much fighting, and Malyas is recuperating from destruction and therefore not planning another night raid, and Alfirin has a whole four spells of fourth circle or higher going spare. That's enough for both the scry and a sending to Archbanker Tilbun Vakkad so that the next morning when she teleports to the threshold of the so-called Second Vault in Absalom with a sack of gold and a large diamond there's someone there who can actually do something with it.

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And Iomedae returns to the world of the living with the tired aplomb of someone who has done it frequently. She stands, not particularly self-conscious of her nudity, and says, "Tilbun," warmly. 

 

And then she meets Alfirin's eyes, and -

 

- she trusts Alfirin! She really does! More than she trusts almost anybody alive!

Not quite enough to take her hand when no one else on the planet knows she's alive and consent to a Plane Shift. The set of circumstances that would make that a ludicrously bad idea are rare, but - not unimaginable, and she doesn't know how long it's been. 

It'd be very marked, though, if she looks back at Tilbun to ask, "What's the date?"

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"Eighteenth of Erastus. Same year. If it was longer for you that says fascinating things about the nature of other planets, as far as we could tell you've been on the Material this whole time."

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Two days dead. It could be much much worse but it doesn't allow that much more time before she loses whatever she'd built in Velgarth, and since she has to go back anyway she'd rather go back in time to -

- not now, certainly not here. She offers her hand. "Can you invite Karlenius and Marit," - "for an immediate debrief in the most secure location available" goes without saying -

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(She paid for the Archbanker's silence, of course. Abadarans are convenient that way.)

She takes it and plane shifts to her garden. "I'll fetch Karlenius. Marit's a ghoul right now but we're hoping to get him back tomorrow."

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- possibly Velgarth is not actually greatest among her pressing concerns. 

 

She gets dressed while she waits for Alfirin to return with Karlenius. Also looks around Alfirin's gardens for at least a weak intelligence headband, it's flatly embarrassing to try to talk to Alfirin without one.

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There are two headbands, one a moderately-powered intelligence version, in a drawer on top of a neatly-folded stack of cloaks of resistance.

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Alfirin returns with Karlenius and some of Iomedae's spare clothes and armor.

"I am going to want the robe of eyes back."

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Well, it's not like there were any normal clothes in the demiplane! "Yes, yes."

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"- the planet's called Velgarth. It's human-inhabited. They have local gods which may or may not be Asmodeus and Sarenrae with slightly different presentations. I lean that it's not Asmodeus, actually, but I didn't get the time to do as much investigation as I'd like. They have local sorcerers who are stunningly useful for army logistics, in their magic system same-plane Gates aren't all that hard. - I presume, incidentally, you can't Plane Shift to Aktun and then Gate to Velgarth, or I'd have seen you sooner?"

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"It turns out that most of the time when you hear a spell has unlimited range, you'd be lucky if anybody's bothered to test it as far as the moon. Two plane shifts, or a plane shift and a gate, can get you far enough past Aucturn that you can't easily make out the sun from the other stars, but not, apparently, as far as Velgarth. Discern Location still works that far, which is how we knew you were still on the Material. I haven't had the chance to write a circular letter on it yet because your crusade decided to have a borderline rout back to Urgir."

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" - well, shit. Why -" but she knows why it happened, it happened because 'Iomedae is unresurrectably missing' is - the worst news since Arazni died, and that was very nearly the end. And she knows why they didn't contact her; it's presumably because Sending, too, turns out not to have unlimited range. "Wish should work, if Discern Location did."

 - and probably she wouldn't have resisted an attempted Wish to bring her home before all was lost but - well, she might have, it's not as if she's been on the receiving end of a transport Wish before and her default with unfamiliar magic is in fact to not let it fuck with her. And Alfirin may have attained the heights of spellcraft past where there are no further distinguishing heights of spellcraft, but if Iomedae wills that Alfirin's spells not touch her then they generally don't. 

 

 

          "It's not irrecoverable, not now that you're back," says Karlenius. 

"Oh, it's definitely not irrecoverable, because they don't bother mining diamonds on Velgarth, the gods don't grant resurrections there."

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She was kind of hoping Karlenius would try to answer "why?" but dodging the question isn't actually any better a look for him.

"I expected wish to work but either it can't handle the distance or you threw it off. I was considering trying to wish myself to you and bring you back as soon as we'd found a third diamond for the return trip, but it wasn't clear that it was failing because of you, so it might have been another two diamonds used up for nothing. And we don't, actually, have a third diamond secured yet, so all those unmined Velgarth diamonds are out of reach."

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She closes her eyes. "And if I could get a communication through to Velgarth, I could tell them to pick a kid and stuff his pockets with diamonds and I'll come back with an army, but we have no communications. 

- I set up a church of Aroden there, in the country I helped liberate from the evil empire, but He wasn't picking clerics properly even once the church was established enough I'd have expected He could. They don't have clerics, they have unempowered priests through which gods unpredictably do miracles. There's a school of thought that the gods are basically all hostile entities with inhuman aims and everyone would be better off without them," which Alfirin, who has floated that theory once or twice, will presumably be very sympathetic to, "but what the adherents of this school of thought have done about it is build a vast continent-spanning empire out of mind-control and an impressive state apparatus for tracking down and executing religious people, which spends half its time having civil wars whenever an important general gets a Dispel Magic to the face and the other half the time pacifying its conquests. When I showed up it was doing both at once, and one of them twice."

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Well that does not sound like a very well-run continent-spanning mind control empire. On the other hand, it is at least supposedly continent-spanning. Geas must be cheaper with their magic, like same-plane gates, or it wouldn't be feasible at all.

"I think most empires wind up like that eventually, if they don't collapse some other way."

 

"They might be right about - their gods, at least, if their gods even are gods - the Abyss is infinite and we now know there's some weak correspondence between location on the material plane and locations in the outer planes - "

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"Yes, I'm considering it fairly likely that their gods are something different. One local god really did sound strikingly like Sarenrae, to the point of the priest explaining how you should think of the Good in all people as the Empire executed him, but - 

- but how useful is Sarenrae, really, if you can't cleric people, if you can't dispense Healing, if you can't Commune, if you are stuck intervening on a low budget? The answer isn't 'useless' but it also isn't - enough - and it's awfully asymmetric in favor of entities that don't need or want human cooperation.

The liberators of Oris saw it differently; they'd asked for the gods to help free them from oppression, and the gods had delivered in abundance. It was obviously difficult to get much information about whether maybe-Sarenrae was backing Oris because the empire almost certainly damns nearly everyone in it, or because it served some other more obscure plan that can't be put into as sympathetic human terms. - the empire almost certainly does damn nearly everyone in it. It's worse than Taldor; there's no breathing room anywhere in it for anything but its own perpetuation. It's not hard to imagine that's what maybe-Sarenrae cared about! Until I died, my leading guess was that the god-equilibrium was worse than ours, which is saying something, but favored a recognizably good world over one overrun by horrors or the evil Empire.

But, well, I am somewhat surprised that I'm dead, and now hypothesize that the equilibrium of powerful entities in Velgarth wanted it that way, and so that suggests there's more afoot than was obvious."

 

         "Sorry, who killed you?"

"Evil empire. Via a mechanism that wouldn't've worked, if I'd gotten the kind of fortuitous impulse that is the common mechanism by which the local gods operate. There is a local spell to suicide in an absurdly destructive Fireball."

        "...that worked?"

"- doing that fifty times worked. In the third round." An assassination attempt that takes three rounds is more or less unserious, the way these things work on Golarion. Anyone worth trying to assassinate would just leave by then. Iomedae could perhaps be read as mildly embarrassed.

 

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"Might be for the best, actually. When -" since apparently it's a 'when' and not an 'if' " - we go back we'll know more about what's waiting for us, and be prepared with some prophecies of our own and maybe a teleport or two."

"How - uniform - are their sorcerers? Is it just one tradition or do they have as many kinds as we have here, or somewhere in between?"

 

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"Comparatively extraordinarily uniform." She would not have tried liberating a country in a place like Golarion; there are just far too many unknown kinds of monster and magic to assume that just because you're tougher than everyone nothing will go horrendously wrong. "Half a dozen common types of sorcerer, half a dozen rare ones, half a dozen one-off ones recorded in history books. Only the one species, outside the history books. Sorcerers are understood to be born with the innate aptitude to reach a certain level of skill, and if they're adequately trained they'll reach it, and they can't surpass it through any degree of practice.

People do not seem to grow more enduring through combat, and you'd have to tell me what implications that has for our theories of how that works."

 

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"It does mean that - Arazni's Prayer spell - just cuts through them like butter, if they're not wearing something for spell resistance or false health."

      "You can cast Arazni's Prayer spell?"

"I was feeling pressed for magical healing so I worked it out."

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And Iomedae would feel guilty about that because - it's basically slaughtering civilians - no it's not just that, it's hardly even a weapon, it's like if you decapitated a child every third time you tried to butter your bread -

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"...I think probably this means the theory that you get tougher from repeated magical healing is right, if they only have useless gods - or it could be something about our proximity to some special region in the positive energy plane or something like that, there are other possibilities, but the healing is most likely." And between that and the uniform sorcerer spellsets and some inferences about their general capabilities she's pretty sure she could take over this empire within a week. Dismantling it would take longer, if that's what she decides to do with it.

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This is the inference Iomedae expected her to be making, yes. Dominate Person on the Emperor seems like it'd get you a substantial fraction of the way there all by itself.

"I committed that the Knights of Ozem would not operate in the Empire outside Oris, because I was confused enough about the god situation to not in fact want to wreck them if it turns out they're right that the gods need fencing out at nearly that price, and because I wanted them to not correctly parse me as a threat to their continued existence, and because the place will be a humanitarian catastrophe if it falls apart, and I don't guess the local gods would be nudging away from catastrophe."

Alfirin, they all know, isn't a Knight of Ozem; Iomedae has no right to make commitments on her behalf.

"From my perspective the next steps - and I have no idea how they ought to be prioritized alongside salvaging the crusade - are determining with some scrying whether Velgarth souls reach Pharasma or not and if they don't where they're going. This may be impossible because of range limitations on scrying; maybe Aroden knows, or Sarenrae. 

 

If they do, and if I'm right that the Empire is an engine of damnation whoever operates it - give me an hour with a good headband." To attempt to persuade you that you should not stick around being Empress once you've taken the place down. 

"If they don't, then probably it's just not worth operating there unless Aroden - or Abadar, or Erastil - can give us visibility. It is still worth stopping by, my headband is more priceless than the Wish diamond, but we can pick my gear up and leave some people who'll benefit from the local afterlife or lack thereof and recruit some of the sorcerers and give notice to the church of Aroden that Aroden can't reach them. The cost of not doing that in the next week is that free Oris is quite likely to be brutally reconquered and everyone who might spread stories of me put to the sword."

 

           "Aroden travelled between worlds and probably not with Wishes," Karlenius says.

"I have been mentally calling it Even Greater Teleport." She looks expectantly at Alfirin.

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It's not every day that Iomedae gives you permission to take over an empire. Not that said permission is strictly necessary, when it would be so hard for Iomedae to even go back without Alfirin's help, but it's nice to have anyways.

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"I have only had three spare hours to work on it. Ninth circle for sure, I'm confident it'll stabilize but I will need more time to actually get it there. As for the souls in Velgarth - scry won't work at that range but if you can describe a dead person well enough to target with a scry I think I have another way to check that should work. It'll take about an hour but I can start now while we talk."

 

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Is it horrifying necromancy? It's probably horrifying necromancy. 

 

Iomedae has spent these three weeks fighting a war, a war the rebels were winning but not one they were winning without taking losses her healing couldn't fix. She can describe some dead people in uniquely-identifying detail.

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First, a telepathic bond, because she's going to be busy chanting and that can make it hard to carry on a conversation the traditional way. Then she can prepare and start casting soulseeker, which is useful for some research projects that might be described as "horrifying necromancy" but in isolation is a quite benign divination.

(It's also not a spell that any other wizard has been able to stabilize before but of course very few have tried and even once you have tried the reasons it fails are nonobvious. Certainly it's not going to be something a couple of paladins will know.)

:It's two wish diamonds, to get there and back, unless you have good reason to expect to be able to find one easily - just because they haven't all been mined and burned already doesn't mean they're just lying about - We can probably get one in a week, the second might be trickier. Might get easier when you reappear, I think people might be hoarding from expecting Tar-Baphon to take all of Avistan -:

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:Yes, I'm getting the sense I should reappear immediately, and show off Arazni's Prayer spell where it's not fucking Wail of the Banshee, and participate in what it sounds like is a prepared operation to retrieve some ghouls. - I do want a more complete accounting of what went so badly wrong. You knew I wasn't dead. You could have hired a comparable amount of combat power on a temporary basis.: It would have been much less good, of course, not fully integrated with her forces, but on the other hand nearly every powerful adventurer in Avistan has travelled with the crusade at least for a few of the most recent twenty years, and plenty of them for most of it.

             :That's approximately what went wrong: says Karlenius flatly. :We talked it through and determined that while being without you in the long run would be devastating, being without you in the short run meant some fairly minimal tactical adjustments. The most important effect would be the effect on morale, but it wasn't obvious that an orderly retreat - and we would've needed to retreat very, very far, most of the way to Urgir - would wreak less havoc on morale than pressing on. We spoke to the men. Assured them that you were fine, and up to something more important or you'd have given yourself to Aroden at once - which turned out to be true -:

:Mostly true. I'd have acted differently if it didn't seem quite high priority to get a Church of Aroden set up locally, but I also don't actually ....possess a means of suicide. I should probably carry one. Drowning might work but there has never been a paladin of my power who left records and it would be unfortunate and not actually wildly surprising to learn that I become unconscious through drowning but don't die of it.:

             :- all right, well, mostly true. Anyway. The men held up all right for a week or so, but when they crumbled they really crumbled.:  His is the tired expression of someone who hasn't felt fear since he was a teenager and who is used to accounting for it, but as a phenomenon like smallpox, which occasionally and contagiously afflicts the troops for unfathomable reasons that are probably Urgathoa's fault. :We had no alternative to the retreat, at that point, aside from spending diamonds we might need to retrieve you, and it has been - as we anticipated from the beginning it would be - two full weeks of hard fighting -: As they fell back, hopelessly demoralized, through ground they'd spent the last year taking. There are endless details but they hardly need spelling out, from that broad picture.

 

She nods. Doesn't apologize; there'd be no point. :Well, I suppose I'll walk you back to Urgir, if Alfirin thinks she can get the Teleport when she has time to try it. And if she thinks it'd take her months or years then I'll appear for the next few days of the fighting, tell everyone there's substantial additional help on the way, go shake down some people in Oppara for a return diamond, and next campaign season we'll have some Gate-sorcerers and some people with a Telepathy range of hundreds of miles and some with at-will scrying.:

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:At least a month. Maybe not two. Probably not a year, and if it takes that long it means I've misjudged the problem so far and I'm less confident it can be done at all. I'm worried Urgir's not a great place for our army to be if the Tyrant comes at us in force, but retreating farther and abandoning the siege would be even worse for morale. If you're planning to go back to Velgarth on your own you should make Karlenius let me into the command tent, he does not trust me as far as you do and - in all honesty I don't know that I would have made the call to retreat earlier in better order, but the faltering morale was a lot easier to notice as someone who doesn't banish all dread just by standing near people.:

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:I - don't know if it's worth two Wish diamonds to get to Velgarth a month or two sooner. 

I will ask Aroden if He can use the church.: Because if He can't, then it's probably not worth it, no matter how much every part of her twists in horror at leaving Oris to be crushed, everyone who believed in her singled out to die for it when she could have saved them.

Twenty, thirty thousand people. They don't use Wishes that lightly. 

:...and I'll ask Him if He can just tell you where He hid His notes with the Even Greater Teleport. I'm sure He hid notes with the Even Greater Teleport. - I'll want, if it's something you wouldn't have developed otherwise, your word on how you'll use it if we give it to you.:

          

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:I had not particularly planned to follow Aroden's lead in exploring the stars this century, but I do expect to get to it eventually - don't give me that look Karlenius, I have age resistance and druid friends and no intention of becoming undead - and rederiving the spell to do it with would be the obvious first step. I'll give my word not to use the spell in ways I think you'd disapprove of for half again the amount of time I estimate that getting the notes saved me, or some less subjective constraint if you want to propose one. I'm confident I can give a sufficiently accurate estimate for that, I'm less confident that I can accurately guess whether or not I would have developed it at all in time, since that involves predicting my motivations hundreds of years in the future.: And heaven knows her motivations have changed plenty in the last forty years.

:That said, if I'm right that I can get it in a month or two, it doesn't seem like a good use of Aroden's ability to intervene in the Material to speed that up.:

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:Unless it gets him an entire new planet. And that may well be what the difference is, between a month and this week, though it could be the case that the Wish is cheaper than Aroden's aid would be.

 

....we can't send me without a way to get back, or you, but there's people we could send in the hope but not the firm expectation you can make Teleport contact eventually. One Wish, not two. I think it still doesn't pencil out, if Aroden can't operate there, but I'd at least have to check.: 

And to Karlenius, though she copies Alfirin: :She's too polite to say that if you let her into the command tent she'll double the available intelligence there, but it's nearly true, and it matters. Our second greatest advantage is that people who would never be us still have most of their interests in common with us. And our greatest advantage is that I do actually think Alfirin would be us, if it looked like the best way to win.: 

           :I presume you to be correct because of your superior relevant knowledge and experience but from my own instincts disagree: he says. They ended up picking a short formal phrase for that; it comes up a lot.

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:If it gets Aroden a planet that was otherwise being run by demon princes I suppose I will not even complain much about not getting to figure the spell out myself. I'm not sure we have anyone we can reasonably spare for an indefinite mission like this and who would be able to accomplish much - unless Aroden can operate there and the mission is just evangelism, but I'm sure you did plenty of that and it's not clear that another dozen missionaries would make a difference.:

She is not going to comment on Iomedae's orders to Karlenius; she's gotten what she was aiming for, (the opportunity to save Iomedae's commanders from their own stupidity, should Iomedae disappear again) and if she's not sure that's something she actually wants she's certainly not going to say so.

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:Fifth circle wizard with some scrolls that cost much less than the Wish might be sufficient to buy us a couple months. It depends how much the local gods-or-maybe-demon-princes are able and willing to do, but if they sleep in a Rope Trick and keep a Mage's Private Sanctum up and hit the Empire's generals with a Dominate - or, gods, you could do so much damage just running around with Dispel Magic, given how aggressively the Empire relies on mind control.

 I'd also Sending the Emperor at that point and suggest that perhaps his subordinates have foolishly or disloyally maneuvered him into a war that doesn't serve him, with a people who aren't his enemy, etcetera etcetera.

- I don't know if it'd be worth the Wish, but I think it'd work, and I tentatively bet the Empire doesn't have avenues of escalation beyond what they used to kill me.:

 

And that is, perhaps, the broad shape of the tradeoffs they'll be making; what's left depends on what Aroden has to say, when they have his highest-circle priest Commune tomorrow, and on what the spell Alfirin is chanting has to say about the fate of Velgarth souls.

Iomedae will request and receive a more in-depth update on the state of the crusade. And then, though probably it'll be much cheaper for Aroden to answer the Commune tomorrow, they will bow their heads and pray for guidance, in the fashion Iomedae taught all her senior commanders, laying out the paths in their head between which Aroden could move them with a gesture, trusting Him. 


She does understand how it'd be a dangerous thing, in a world where people were wrong about their gods.

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This is, in the opinion of General Salan, the worst campaign he has ever been on.

It didn't start that bad, up north of the Havau Bar mountains; they had the imperial Gate-network for supplies and they had capable officers and the populace was, oh, not unmixed supporters of the Empire, not oh-no-not-anarchy types who'd just take the quartermasters' money for their stores, but they'd never cared much for the central government down in Oris and neither lords nor farmers had lost much by the takeover. But the further south they went - gate-arches destroyed, farms abandoned, cattle driven away; what they had they had to carry, and the few people who were still left acted like they didn't speak Jaconan unless you hit them with compulsions.

(There were graves. Salan guessed they were the ones who supported the Empire, and, occasionally, confirmed it.)

And then the raids started. Where were they coming from? It wasn't Gates, it was just that the hills were not, actually, empty; the few villages hid more. Night after night the raids would come - to burn the stores, to wreck the supplies, cutting the throats of sentries and vanishing into the night, grit in the gears of the huge grinding mechanism that was an imperial army. None of the Adepts' searches would find the stores the rebels hid, but that did not stop proper bloody formally-trained imperial Gates from raining boiling oil onto tents from a mile above the camp, all without an actual battle. It was everything he could do to stop his own people from launching their own retaliatory raids, to bring death and destruction onto even the people who supported them, as his troops' faces grew grimmer and their eyes grew harder and their determination to kill someone for this got steadily and steadily harder.

The worst part was, of course, that this was where they were used to the Empire.

The further south they went, the worse it would get.

General Salan kept the pace steady, and Gated in supplies, and hated the campaign.

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Jean was not, frankly, much happier about it, even though everything was going exactly according to plan except for Iomedae's death.

The problem with fighting a battle is that he might lose it. The problem with not fighting a battle - dispersing, heading into the hills - is that he loses the city, and loses all his people in it. 

Eventually he pauses and flips a coin ten times. Steering that sort of question - when he decides to flip it, which sides the coins come up - is simple, for the gods, and he is Their instrument. 

The battle it will be. He's been calling in troops and training them as fast as he can, and with the fresher troops he's up to eighteen thousand men. Which is not, really, enough, if he's not clever.

Well. He's good at being clever.

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The imperial advantage is greatest at mages and cavalry and engines. But they need their mages for supplies, and they need their light cavalry to scout and to guard their supply lines. So. Lancers and siege equipment, and to a lesser extent, still adepts. They'll have more pikemen, but not greatly more.

(Their pikemen are better-trained, better-armed.) 

(They've also gotten very little sleep, and are very, very angry. Well.)

(Anger, he can use.)

He tries for assassinations, he tries for raids...

And, one day, a rebel army marches northwest out of the city.

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... The imperial army is coming from the northeast.

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Yep! Do they want to let an Orisan army just walk in a large circle around them and cut their supply lines, stranding them in an enemy country without reinforcements where the permanent Gate network no longer exists?

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No, they do not.

Marshal Orestan has in fact successfully dissuaded them from doing that, and they will instead locate his army, take advantage of the superior marching speed of their better-drilled, more professional troops to catch up with him, and beat him decisively in a field battle.

(Peasant rebellions usually shatter, when beaten; they rely on momentum, confidence that the tide of fate has turned, and they don't have the grit to fight it out with professional armies or to last beyond their first retreat.)

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Marshal Orestan, who has troops from this region because he has troops from every region and looked over it carefully with Farsight himself, will draw up his defensive line just behind a low ridge on a rise of ground between high hills to the north and a river whose banks are shrouded by high weeds to the south, both blocking a direct advance, with tall, tall fields of wheat between him and the Imperials to the east.

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The imperials know where his army is (a whole army is hard to conceal, especially with scrying and Farsight) and suspect that this is a trap, but, also, it is very plausibly just the kind of trap where he thinks he can win, in which case he is clearly wrong. They'll draw up their own line, send scouts to survey the terrain, and discover, to their discomfort, that the low farmland is entirely flooded into a swampy morass.

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Well, damn, they noticed.

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The imperial officers wish to present three plans to their commander:

First, attack. We cannot possibly not have superior numbers, plausibly have greatly superior numbers, and if the terrain is bad, it could be worse. This is a case where the enemy army is willing to fight us. We want such a case, because the enemy army is not that good, no longer has its invincible divinely-empowered champion, and we need to actually beat them for the war to end. Rebel armies do not beat imperial armies, as a rule, and the one thing changing this rule is gone. Argument against: They're in a pretty good defensive position.

Second, Gate-strike them repeatedly. It will be hard to do blind Gates and the loss of mages will be devastating to our supplies for the rest of the campaign, but, argument for, turning this entire battlefield into a crater would result in comparatively low losses. (Argument against, losses centered in our most important and irreplaceable troops.) 

Third, give up and go home and leave them behind us. Argument for: We might lose if we attack them, and, frankly, their supplies cannot be ideal, either. Argument against: And leave possibly the main rebel field army on our rear?

(Plan #4, "leave a screening force to block them while the rest of our army marches south," has been vetoed in the planning stage as being exactly how they lost the last campaign.)

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Altarrin has been watching from a distance, of course, though not planning to intervene unless he actually has a strong opinion that diverges from what his field general, who inevitably has more close-up context, thinks they ought to do. 

...In this case he's leaning in favor of plan #1, because it's just true that they need to fight this army in order to win, these are circumstances where the Imperial troops have various advantages, and they already used plan #2 on Iomedae, which already cost them more of their most important and irreplaceable Adepts than the Empire would normally expect to lose in an entire campaign. 

He's not leaning strongly enough in favor to jog General Salan's elbow by interrupting with his own orders. He watches. 

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As it happens, General Salan had already come to roughly the same opinion for roughly the same reasons!

Still, the Empire has advantages that most people don't, in terms of ability to solve military problems with magic. A weather-barrier is a fairly normal technique for drawing heat into an area to stay warm when it's cold out. A reverse weather barrier is the same technique, to stay cool when it's too hot. The ability to use a reverse weather barrier to freeze an entire marsh? That's trickier. Impossible, really; no mage could do it.  Several mages working together, however, could make an artifact to freeze a small section of marsh. Or several small sections, with enough mages.

The Empire's factories have Enough Mages, full stop, and they have a lot of random nonsense. Since they do not want to attempt a river crossing in the face of an enemy army, even with a natural barrier, they are going to use their marsh-bypassing artifact and a lot of force-nets to hold the ground down, while their readied infantry (stabilized, as always, by capable officers, calm certainty in the inevitable victory of the Empire, and compulsions) advances head-on against the rebels, who will, no doubt, crest the hill just in time to still be pointing their pikes downhill instead of up.

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This does indeed happen! The soldiers of Oris are not nearly as well-trained as those of the Empire; increasing your forces by half in under a month will tend to do that. But the typical man is a veteran of the battles with Iomedae on their side and the typical man knows in his gut they can beat the empire and every man and woman in the ranks has been treated to a fiery speech by their general; they are not stiffened by compulsions, they are stiffened by Empathy Bardic charisma and by their proven faith in Old Emerald-Eyes.

And unlike the empire, right now, they have mages. With the imperial mages making it possible to cross, they are not throwing fireballs. When the imperials are free they'll have the advantage, but right now the imperial squares are scored with blasts of fire and lightning as they laboriously work their way up the low ridge to meet the charging Orisan pikes head-on.

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(There is also a side frontier, where some of the imperial cavalry are attempting a wide flank downriver where it was shallower, but that is unlikely to be decisive.)

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And as the imperial armies marsh uphill, Samien would like to know how they feel about sheer, white-hot fear.

His voice cannot carry over a battlefield, and the drums that amplify it do do not sound over the sheer hammering of metal on metal, yells of dying men and dying horses, but he can throw fear into imperial ranks and fill the hearts of his men with courage, and that does a great deal, even here on a battlefield where receptive empathy is useless, as he rides with useless sword in its sheath behind his troops' rear, heedless of crossbow bolts, because he is, after all, expendable.

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And at the same time, Jean is - coordinating the battle, issuing orders, ordering his enemies to RUN AWAY in an overwhelming voice that appears in their minds - flashing from thought to thought updates faster than any runner could make it -

Together they're a pretty good team.

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And while the imperial mages are fighting the marsh - and while the rebel mages have free play - the battle is firmly in the rebel favor, as they beat back attack after attack, driving them down the hill to regroup, advancing slowly themselves in an inexorable push, . The lancers and sabreurs, soberly waiting behind their own pikes (for they cannot charge for risk of impaling themselves), must suffer the galling fire or swim the river in the face of the enemy, and for one long moment the battle looks like a clear, simple victory for Oris... until the imperial mages are free, and the working is complete.

Then the calculus of the artillery changes as all the heat drawn up from the frozen marsh is unleashed in a tempest of flames, the flickering wheat of the hills already ablaze raging uphill to sear the army of Oris as the imperial Adepts switch to throwing fire and lightning of their own.

And under this fire, the soldiers of Oris are driven back.

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The dice must roll in his favor for victory, but it is the gods rolling them.

He commands an Imperial mage, using the best imitation of their top commanding officer's voice he can, to FINAL STRIKE IMMEDIATELY. Then the next. Then the next. This policy will usually not succeed, even though Jean is spectacularly good at lying to people and knows what an imperial order ought to sound like, but it is another die for the gods to roll.

When it becomes clear that won't work he gives his own order, the one he hoped he wouldn't have to. Saved imperial prisoners are executed and low-strength mages who do not, actually, know how to use blood magic safely are Gated above the imperial mages with orders to final strike; some take it, when they fall.

It is spectacularly bloody and spectacularly destructive and it does not seem to be quite enough.

Probably he killed someone very important, but that does not actually matter because there is too much imperial firepower to pull this off. He orders a bloody tactical withdrawal, his troops are being forced back, they should give ground step-by-step until they're above the peak of the slope and so out of direct line of fire for the imperial mages, he thinks he can do this with reserve troops taking the place of fresher ones while the fresher troops regroup -

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- The empire, sensing victory, ups the pressure; they know that crossing the marsh will make any retreat harder, but it's now clear inside their heads that the rebels are beaten; the cavalry behind the pikes strains to be unleashed -

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Sam is speaking, strong words and the right words shouted above the din of battle and he's throwing calmness and confidence (feeling them enough to throw them is hard, but not that hard) - three arrows have been deflected by his armor and his talisman so far, he's here and he's not going down, the dragon banner of Oris is high in the sky and Old Emerald-Eyes is here -

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An imperial adept hits him with a levinbolt and he goes down.

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And his Mindspeech voice doesn't halt and his banner is caught before it falls and Jean pulls the spare helm from his saddlebags and rides to the fight, but that doesn't matter, does it, and all that remains is to make sure they don't disintegrate.

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They manage not to rout.

Quite.

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And the Imperial flag flies, the walls that guard the tower of Civilization so that this time, at least, it will not fall, over another battlefield.

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Altarrin has been watching through scrying the whole time, though not continuously because even he would be drained after candlemarks of that. 

 

It went...about how he expected. The rebels had some surprise advantages to pull out, but it's the specifics that were a surprise, at least to him, not the fact that they had something. They must have, to get this far, to have been worth investing in by Aroden and Aroden's temple. 

He spent most of the time watching trying to figure out if there was anything more than convenient Gifts and charismatic leadership. He doesn't think so. At the point when it was clear they were losing the battle, he doubts they would have chosen to keep any of their tricks in reserve. 

 

They didn't pull out any godmiracles, and - it's not over, this war isn't won, but the battle is. Despite the casualties and the mess, the mood of the Imperial army is jubilant.

Altarrin's mood is not. Altarrin is - quietly hating what they're doing, here, taking that unlikely hope that grew in the darkest of corners and sprouted into something powerful and alive, and brutally destroying it to secure the borders of an Empire that cannot really offer that much of a better deal to the citizens Oris than remaining free - and maybe not even that, one rebellion is predictive of future rebellions, he doesn't know yet whether their future will look more like the safe and prosperous Lastan Province, or the troubled Isk. 

 

He does, at this point, actually pass an order of his own to General Salan: to the extent possible, he wants the rebels' wounded left behind in the retreat to be taken alive. Officers and mages especially, but really anyone who's in good enough shape to survive with only a reasonable amount of Healing. (The Healers are already going to be pressed quite hard dealing with the wounded on their own side.) Maybe some of them are worshippers of Aroden, if not miraculously-empowered priests, and they need information

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General Salan will of course obey strategic directives and recognizes that information is important!

It looks like they might have the enemy general? He's probably not dead yet. Heal him, once they have the standard compulsions up?

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That is an unexpected piece of good luck. They should definitely do that! ...And have a mage check him for Gifts before he regains consciousness, there was clearly some sort of Mind-Gift use happening in the battle and people who use Mind-Gifts very instinctively can sometimes wriggle around the usual compulsions against using magic

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Right, understood. Will do.

 

Healers say they're not sure when he'll be conscious and lucid, maybe tomorrow?

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Understood. 

 

There's a lot to be done in the meantime. He'll have plenty to keep him busy, and it's unproductive to speculate when he doesn't yet have the relevant information.  

(Altarrin...is on some level vaguely aware that he's not thinking about questions he really should be answering, that he's running away inside his own head from the pit of confusion, falling toward the concrete straightforward tactical problems that he at least knows how to approach. It doesn't feel like there's space in his mind to do a different better thing instead.) 

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With the good news from the front in Oris comes ...news, possibly also good, from the north.

The magic artifacts captured in Iomedae's assassination are all, to mage-sight, of extraordinary make, many of them made of previously unheard of metals, totally unharmed by multiple direct Final Strikes (any that were in fact not immune to fire were totally gone by the time they got there). It's impossible to tell by initial examination what they do. They're unpowered; they should function continuously, for...their best guess is 'forever'.

 

They are very, very cautious. They keep everything in the far north, each item distanced as much as is feasible from every other item (that's difficult, as there are dozens of them and they all need to be kept under guard and under good shields, lest Aroden's people attempt to steal them back). The Work Rooms where the testing happens have every kind of shielding known to the Empire. They have teams of people at a different base whose job is just to check the compulsions on, and do deep Thoughtsensing reads of, people at the base engaged in testing. They have long-range Thoughtsensers supervising from behind miles of solid rock, anf unGifted and heavily compulsioned test subjects who seem sincere in their hostility to Aroden and fervent desire not to be possessed by him and die of it, and they have them set up with trap-spells that will kill them if not specifically disabled by the team at the secondary base. 

Daily reports are read and approved by people at yet a third site, who have orders to escalate to Altarrin if any signs of Aroden's influence seem to be emerging from anywhere.

The researchers are slow and meticulous and first check whether there are any effects from being in the same room as the items, then from touching them, then from briefly wearing them, then from sustainedly wearing them, then from active efforts to activate the abilities that are plainly latent in some of them. 

 

This still only helps them discern the use of about half of the items. Many of them do different kinds of highly specific shielding. A few of them do highly general shielding that seems inexhaustible; they will block hundreds of attacks, if the attacks are low-powered enough the shield is adequate, and if an attack punches through that doesn't make the shield any weaker for the next one.

The dagger returns to the hand of the person who threw it, as with Fetching.

The helmet gives the wearer Thoughtsensing at a short range and broad-sending Mindspeech at a slightly better range.

The shirt suppresses the effects of old age and makes the bearer physically young and healthy again. (This one was hard to notice, because the test subjects are mostly young; they are indebted to a particular Healer who had a guess about what the magic seemed to be doing.)

The four gemstones that seemed to have been embedded in her rib cage have caused a lot of consternation. Nothing happens when they're picked up, but after they're set back down they persistently orbit the head of the person who picked them up. They can be removed with a force-net. No one is sure how to embed them in a test subject's ribcage like they were in the priestess's and it seems like a high stakes experiment. The tests they've done while the things are orbiting are profoundly inconclusive.

The captured gauntlets have an interior compartment that opens presumably to some secret command or to sufficient days of effort to brute-force it. Inside, there are rings, medallions, pearls, a strand of polished ivory beads. One of the medallions has a powerful latent spell that, when activated, turns it into a wicked eagle's talon that hangs in midair and can support a thousand pounds of weight. This seems irreversible. The talon is still hanging there in midair. Another creates a messenger-construct that looked (except to mage-sight) like an ordinary bird, which flew around until the door was opened and then flew out the door at which point they panicked and destroyed it; they don't know where it would've gone.

The rings do different kinds of shielding, except three that seem to do nothing. They'll keep testing, of course.

Her belt makes the person who wears it tougher, stronger, and faster, very nearly to the limits of human ability; after some careful preliminary testing they got a Healer in to look and the Healer thought it more or less just took an average person and made them into a soldier in peak physical condition. They haven't tested what it does if you're already a soldier in peak physical condition but 'make you a little like the priestess' is the obvious guess.

The boots make the wearer move faster and jump and dodge more easily. They have an activatable ability that takes this from 'startling speed' to 'blindingly superhuman speed' for a short period of time before being exhausted for the day; the activatable ability recharges itself over time, somehow. 

 

The headband makes you smarter. This was hard to notice at first, with the test subjects as heavily compulsioned as they were, but in later rounds of testing it became clear it made you think more clearly, solve puzzles faster, answer questions more rapidly and more persuasively, and in the case of a few test subjects have a nervous breakdown about the compulsions and their general situation.  They strongly suspect this one is crucial for Aroden's possession-abilities, somehow; the spell could easily make the mind not just better-functioning but functioning in a way that inclines the wearer towards their god. 

 

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Altarrin is so confused and he doesn't like it. 

 

His investigators are of course operating at something of a handicap. Some very good magic researchers were involved in writing up the final report, but no one is as good as Altarrin, and overall their personnel situation is being affected both by the ongoing existence of THREE other wars plus a few people still being assigned to investigating the sabotage operation, and the fact that the artifacts are presumed extremely dangerous as a potential vector of Aroden-influence and so no one who isn't replaceable is being allowed anywhere near them. 

The researchers are carefully highlighting all of their uncertainties and unsolved mysteries, and are pretty clearly assuming that Altarrin will take one look at the report, draw on his superior knowledge of obscure magical techniques, and answer half of those questions. 

 

...This is not the case. Altarrin is mostly finding himself underlining more elements that he's pretty sure ought to be physically impossible. 

Power supply is the main one. A number of the effects described, especially the shielding, ought to be possible in theory to replicate with mage-artifacts, but in several cases the power requirement ought to be nearly insurmountable, and in all cases the power supply ought to be visible. If it's not, then...where is it coming from? Another plane? Can you stick reservoirs of mage-energy in other planes and hook them up to artifacts in the material plane?? ...If it were a very high-energy plane like the Elemental Plane of Fire, or maybe a three-way link with a channel from a high to low energy plane and a connection to siphon off some of the power gradient, then - well, that ought to be nearly impossible to control. Maybe a god could do it, maybe all of these are divinely created artifacts - there are a few historical stories of things like that - but that's now proposing multiple different kinds of unheard-of intervention. 

The dagger and the various kinds of shielding mostly make sense, apart from the mystery of power supply. The helmet...kind of makes sense, he could probably figure out the projective-Mindspeech side of it in a few months if he took a comms-spell artifact and somehow repurposed it to work fine even when neither the wearer nor their targets were Gifted. The Thoughtsensing element is...he's not going to confidently claim that's impossible, but the Empire has probably at this point poured tens of thousands of candlemarks of research time into developing a mage-technique that would replicate Thoughtsensing - it would be so useful - and they've never come close. 

 

The belt...could maybe theoretically be done by Healing, if it were possible to make Healing set-spells, which Altarrin hasn't even tried researching. The shirt that makes you younger feels - less possible than that - the Empire has also invested very very very heavily in mage-techniques and Healing-techniques to extend life, and as a general rule you can delay the damage of aging but not reverse it. Let alone temporarily as long as someone is wearing an artifact, that isn't how bodies work. 

 

The boots are a case where his researchers were less confused than Altarrin thinks they ought to be. They were hypothesizing a variant of Fetching, or just carefully calibrated force-spells, but Fetching doesn't do that. Sure, a combat Fetcher with a lot of native athletic talent and a decade of highly specialized training might be able to use their Gift to move and dodge faster, but it's not inbuilt - it's not like Healing, where the Gift itself seems to encode, in an opaque way, the 'intelligence' necessary to parse a huge number of complex inputs and respond instinctively to them. 

 

The headband seems straight-up impossible. You cannot, as far as Altarrin is aware - and his understanding here is extensive - do that even with Mindhealing

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He can posit that gods are just capable of impossible things. No divine artifacts known of in legend are quite like this, but - maybe formerly-human gods who were, in human form, very good magic researchers - which you'd have to be, to solve the problem of becoming a god at all - can retain some of that finesse in god form, and make their interventions more cheaply scalable by crafting divine artifacts for their worshippers. 

 

 

....that does not feel like a real answer. Knowing what Aroden is capable of is not very useful unless he also knows what Aroden isn't capable of, and - this doesn't really let him narrow it down at all. 

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He could easily spend weeks gnawing on this problem. Weeks that he doesn't have, because there are still three simultaneous wars, and speculating on this is not in fact going to help the Empire win any of them. 

 

(It might be different if he expected to be able to conclude, soon enough for it to make a difference, that some of the artifacts were safe to use on the battlefield. But the fact that Aroden hasn't used that conduit to possess anyone or intervene in other ways yet, when those interventions would be carefully quarantined from anything else in the Empire, does not speak very reassuringly to what Aroden might try if He were in a position where intervening could sabotage the Empire's war efforts.) 

 

Back to waiting for more information, then. He wants a preliminary interrogation done with a Thoughtsenser present as soon as the enemy general is conscious, and based on the results of that, he'll decide whether it's worth the risk to speak to the man himself. 

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Thoughtsensers are rare, in the Empire, and to send them with armies is to risk losing them (they're also a defection risk, as there's little chance the other side of an imperial war would kill one they could instead re-compulsion and re-use.) Salan has only two with more than a whisper of the Gift, and as soon as the decisive battle is over the one with long range is going to be re-requisitioned for one of the other two wars. That leaves the other, Casiet, a woman of perhaps forty from Taymyrr, already an adult when it was conquered, and captured/recruited from the staff of its previous leadership; her uncompulsioned loyalties in the present set of wars are practically unknowable, so they've had her under fairly strict compulsions since those started. She doesn't have more than a mile of range, but does have good precision, and is good at relaying to non-Mindspeakers; the safest way to use her, given the plausibly-complicated loyalties, is to have her drag things out of peoples' heads and pass them along.

 

She's had an exhausting few weeks building their intelligence as they've travelled south. She is available as Salan commands, of course. 

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Samien wakens to confusion.

It may, perhaps, be a moment of complete chaos in his thoughts before he recognizes that he was captured, but no more than that, and you'd need to be very, very good to realize that there's any conscious thought in there - 

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(nothing in words at all)

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And, with a polite smile towards whoever he notices interrogating him,

You are not cleared for this.

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- she'll pass that along directly to Salan, just in case, though it's almost certainly a bluff. 

It's over. Your forces were decisively defeated. Your god sent no miracles. - and what does he think about that, was it a surprise?

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He seems to be under the extremely confident belief that she is seriously making things worse for herself by reading his mind, and is thinking about that instead of actually usable things! If you continue to do this, you will be exposing yourself and your commanding officer to serious risk! He appears (unless she is really, really, really good at this) to be completely honest! My information is directly for the Emperor.

(He isn't thinking about what she's saying. At all.)

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- she hates these people. She hates them for the miserable campaign so far, obviously, and also on some level she hates them for losing. There's something - she can't quite complete the thought, but something - in rebelling if you can win. When you can't, it's just evil and horrible and stupid. 

 

Could he be telling the truth? Probably not. And will they kill her, if she learns some terrible secret, no. If they could afford to kill her then the person who was here in her place in the first place would be someone who wanted to be here.

"I need the compulsions adjusted," she says aloud. "Make him listen to me."

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(Her commander does not report that he is supposed to be any sort of secret agent.)

Compulsions adjusted -

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He now has to think about her!

What he's thinking, right now, is that this is in fact something the Emperor has to hear, and by keeping him here instead of sending him to Jacona, they are screwing up tremendously, it will suck to be her.

(He, uh, has to think about what she will ask him, not quite what she did ask him.)

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The prospect of wasting the Emperor's time by escalating-as-urgent some nonsense by a captured rebel is at least as intimidating as the prospect of being wrong, here, though. She grits her teeth and pushes on. 

:Aroden sent no miracles in the battle. Your forces were crushed.:

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Yes, he was there, he did see that, this is a minor irrelevant detail - 

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:Did you have any of His priests. Were you expecting any miracles.:

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Whose priests??? What miracles??? He thinks she's misunderstanding something very basic -

(no, is accessible as a fact if she is good at what she is doing)

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She's good at it. She doesn't like it, but incompetence just makes it take longer.

 

:You know whose priests. The winged woman with the glowing sword. How did you convince her to assist you in your war? Or did she convince you to fight one?:

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Oh, Aroden's priests. The Emperor convinced them oh shit he thought it -

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It's a remarkably persuasive set of half-instinctively-suppressed thoughts, enough so that her stomach lurches, before she reorients.

If the Emperor for some reason authorized a rebellion in Oris - maybe to smoke out the Arodenites? - then he now wants the rebellion crushed all the same, or he would have sent his army with different orders. It's not as if 'give the enemy general straight to the Emperor's personal interrogator' is an order that couldn't have been given, or that would have even raised particular concern.

 

 

 

And if she learns something she isn't supposed to know, and they kill her, then she'd stop having this job, so - pluses and minuses, really.

 

 

She dutifully passes this claim along and then gets back to digging into his head, not at this point with any particular subtlety. 

 

:You're clever, and this has gone far too far for that to get you anywhere. How did you meet the priests of Aroden. When did you learn of the priesthood of Aroden.:

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It's like pulling teeth, and Samien makes them dig, with immense care and immense difficulty, for every bit of information.

But in the end, they get it.

He's not Marshal Orestan. He's an actor. He doesn't even know the name of the real Orestan, just that he's some kind of genius.

Iomedae approached them, not the other way around. She was the only priest until she started training more.

The real Orestan was chair-bound, almost bedridden, from burns; Samien doesn't know where he got them.

Everything they know about Aroden, they got from her.

And what they know about Aroden -

"The stars in the sky are suns like your sun, with worlds like your world about them, and Golarion is one of them, and it is where I operated until three weeks ago, as the Knight-Commander of the Knights of Ozem and of the Shining Crusade..."

"We have a god of tyranny and slavery and torment at home and Aroden and I mean to kill Him..."

"There are no very important resources I possess or know of here other than myself and Aroden, who I think operates here only at great expense..."

"Aroden has a very strong claim on my immortal soul, values it highly, and I believe quite confidently will grab it, if I die here. Then He'll likely tell His Church at home to resurrect me."

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Altarrin, receiving the summarized report on the interrogation, has so many questions

 

He was really hoping that hearing back on this would answer some of his questions. It's obviously normal and not unexpected for any source of new information to result in some additional questions, just, ideally it should be a ratio that results in having fewer questions rather than more. 

Does this answer any of his pressing questions? Well. It...locates the opaque mystery box of unanswered questions in a different place? Because apparently Iomedae, the occasionally-winged priestess - and her god, Aroden - are from another planet. This makes the impossible magical artifacts less surprising, in some sense, but doesn't give him better predictions about how they work...

 

Take a mental step back. It does give him some new information. Starting with the fact that Aroden, being a god native to ANOTHER PLANET, can only operate here at great expense, and thus - probably - won't keep intervening in Velgarth now that Iomedae, His only priestess in Velgarth, is dead.

(Though apparently Aroden was going to grab her soul and...and his church, on the other planet, has the power to resurrect the dead - set that aside it's not the most relevant part here and it's disproportionately upsetting to think about.)  

 

- there's a god of tyranny and slavery and torment who Iomedae meant to kill, can you even kill gods, it sounds like she thought so - and thought Aroden would back her in it, which is even more surprising than the first half - 

 

There's an important question he's forgetting to ask but he's not sure he wants to know the answer

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...He should maybe be taking a mental step forward, actually, and figuring out which if any elements of this report are urgently decision-relevant on the timescale of candlemarks. 

 

The 'rebel general' they have in custody isn't the real leader. Presumably this information reached General Salan well before Altarrin learned of it, though, and Altarrin trusts him to update his plans accordingly. They should find out where the real 'Marshal Orestan' is, but probably General Salan is on top of this. 

 

It sounds - unlikely, at least - that Aroden will intervene in this war. Altarrin does very badly want to speak to one of the priests who Iomedae trained, which at least implies giving the army some different orders when they march on the capital. (The usual policies include being quite willing to kill priests who are actively resisting the invasion. Altarrin suspects that a priest of Aroden, even a barely-trained one in a world where Aroden apparently can't even operate, will...probably resist their city being conquered.) 

 

...What else...? 

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The stars in the sky are suns like your sun, with worlds like your world about them 

 

...That isn't a question. 

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Aroden has a very strong claim on my immortal soul, values it highly, and I believe quite confidently will grab it, if I die here.

 

Also not a question, but it's a more...pressing...not-question. 

 

- still not urgent on the timescale of candlemarks. 

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...It seems like plausibly most of this is either non-urgent, or else plausibly urgent but way too underspecified to make decisions based off. 

So. First priority is to get more information. Next step on that is - talking to the actor who played 'Marshal Orestan' in public, who probably does in fact know quite a lot about 'Marshal Orestan's work. 

 

This is more complicated than it is urgent, and so he writes a letter on Imperial letterhead to be (still pretty urgently) conveyed to the on-site team involved in the actor's interrogation, requesting that they prepare the usual security arrangements for him to come in person. It sounds like the actor is difficult in interrogations and Altarrin thinks he can learn more. 

(He really wishes it was verifiably safe to use the helmet that gives you short-range Thoughtsensing. It would be so useful.) 

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The actor is absurdly difficult in interrogations! He just appears, to all reasonable investigations, to be a spy planted by Emperor Bastran, living in some bizarre delusional universe in which various verifiable facts about him are not in fact true! It's really annoying!

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This sounds like exactly the kind of situation that Mage-Officer Arbas is shockingly (and somewhat concerningly) good at handling. Altarrin does have other very skilled interrogators, but the Gift-combination that Arbas has is, in fact, extremely rare, and - well - the combination of those Gifts and Arbas' personality is even rarer, which he is generally grateful for but this sort of seems like a scenario where you want Arbas, personality and all. 

 

He's not sure of that yet, though, so he'll send a comms-spell update to Emperor Bastran's staff warning him that he may want to borrow Arbas, and finish all the other loose ends on his current projects, and then arrange to Gate over to the facility where the actor is being held. 

 

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"Ah, good, Archmage-General Altarrin," he says, looking calmly up to where the general is. "It's good to see you." His thoughts are apparently about how Altarrin is his handler for the elaborate conspiracy his Thoughtsenser is not at all cleared for.

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His Thoughtsenser miserably passes this along to the Archmage-General, a much more important person than she'd prefer to ever be in the same room as.

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(Altarrin is not feeling paranoid enough about mysterious Arodenite godinfluence to impose any additional barriers to the flow of information, so he's approved receiving direct reports from the Thoughtsenser on-site, who he does sort of wish were less scared of him.) 

 

...He'll play along, for now. He can make a show of shooing everyone else out of the room, even, this won't matter for the Thoughtsenser since there's an adjacent vestibule that's inside the interrogation room's shielding.

"Report?" he says, trying to radiate quiet approval.

 

(He might be better at acting out this stupid pointless play if...well, if it felt less stupid and pointless.)

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"So I think the Aroden cult is working," he says. "We have actually made some real progress displacing the actual gods, and Oris is accepting Aroden as imperial-teachings-but-without-the-empire."

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Approving nod. "And what are the elements of those teachings that have been the hardest for people to accept?" 

 

(He is also holding his mind open to the Thoughtsenser a room over, he could really use some hints here for where to go next.) 

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The Thoughtsenser in the next room over is so confused???????? She'll get Altarrin whatever she can but, uh, the man's surface thoughts are just consistent with that.

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"It's mostly the behaving-honestly-to-people-you're-at-war-with, and the idea of going back to trading with the Empire after the war! They're very unhappy about the Empire. But the distinction between supererogatory Heaven and Axis-for-everyone-who-doesn't-rape-or-murder-or-cheat-or-steal was doing a very good job of getting them to swallow civilization and progress as ideals of Oris in of itself -"

(the line of Iomedae's about Aroden and the stars flashes briefly and nonverbally through his head, as part of her entire description of how they should build the temple which he is not thinking about sufficiently well you need to be a very good Thoughtsenser to pick it out)

"- I think we've really gotten them to support the whole of the platform and the cult's been doing a lot of talking about how they need to prove they can do civilization better than the Empire, which, you know, success."

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The Thoughtsenser is so tired and full of despair and is not picking up brief flashes of thought about Aroden and the stars.

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Solemn nod. "Indeed." 

 

Surface thoughts being thrown very loudly at the Thoughtsenser: does she have any idea at all what he means by 'supererogatory Heaven' versus 'Axis' which is apparently for everyone who doesn't do obviously outright awful things? He assumes those are afterlives, which he knew the temple order of Aroden had claims about, but the distinction here wasn't one he was previously aware of. 

 

- separately he's going to send a comms-spell message to the Emperor's staff, specifying his location and conveying that he does in fact want Arbas for this.

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It flew by very fast, he seemed to think Altarrin already knew it, but could probably be told to expand on it, Altarrin wouldn't...have been...up to date on all of the fake theology of a fake religion -

- ????? -

- is there in fact a fake religion -

- she doesn't need to know that but it might help make sense of this man's thoughts -

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- right he should in fact update her. 

There are some elements here she probably isn't cleared to know but this was not, in fact, a fake religion designed on Altarrin or the Emperor's orders, or to their knowledge by anyone else in the Empire. It might or might not be a fake religion designed on someone else's orders, from outside the Empire, but this is unclear. It's a real interrogation, Altarrin is playing the role offered to him because it seems like it might be informative and he can always switch to a less friendly interrogation later. 

 

 

(He would really like Arbas here quite soon. He'll toss off another comms-spell request for updates on that.) 

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(Arbas thinks this is kind of rude, but also the last time Altarrin grabbed him for an urgent mission, it was incredibly cool - if ultimately unsatisfying in terms of his own role in the operation's success - and so he's not actually very grumpy about it. And also it was in fact an Imperial order. He's preparing himself for the upcoming Gate.) 

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"What leverage did you find on - ways they genuinely believed they could build a civilization better than the Empire?" Altarrin says, because he's not going to waste the time. 

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"Well, the main thing they believed was not mind controlling everyone all the time," says Samien, because he frankly has trouble coming up with an internally consistent character who likes mind controlling people all the time. "The key to finding a substitute that they devised was a consistently rising prosperity per person, the Church had figures - I didn't memorize them, I'm afraid - and thought that with rapid enough development you could actually make it work with gratitude as long as no one had to be grateful for what happened three years ago instead of this year, which would be a fascinating experiment -"

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The Thoughtsenser realizes with dawning horror that that really sounds...awfully nice...much better than the Empire -

- well, what're they going to do about it, kill her? 

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This is - very impressive, actually - Altarrin would be tempted to try to recruit this man if not for - 

if not for his currently very mixed feelings about recruiting anyone to further the Empire's interests

- if not for the fact that this is a terrible time to be considering that question, it can wait, along with all of the other questions. 

 

(He is mostly not considering the content of what's being said. The middle of an interrogation is a bad time for that.) 

 

He cannot actually read the Thoughtsenser's mind but he's going to dismiss her anyway, because he can sense the Gate-signature that indicates Arbas' arrival and he has not failed to pick up that she's in over her head, here. 

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(Presumably someone else will follow up with her, he's busy.) 

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Arbas is here! A couple of rooms over, with some shields in the way even, but he's already learned - or, well, been taught by Altarrin, mostly - some mage-techniques for getting around the standard shielding and then slipping his Thoughtsensing through that crack. 

 

- what is this apparently-interesting prisoner thinking? Arbas can dig a lot deeper than just passive reading of surface thoughts without making it too obvious.

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He's thinking that he's one of the Emperor's top agents, reporting to his handler on the attempt to build Oris as a less evil copy of the empire while pretending to be opposed to it!

(Arbas is actually good enough - though there are not many people who are - to tell this is a rapidly-improvised strategy, but it's real hard to get anything under it.)

His actual surface thoughts are about his explanation to Altarrin about how the Church of Aroden is basically the Empire with an afterlife and less mind control.

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...Wow. This man is good at improvisational bullshit. Arbas is impressed. 

 

Walls and standard shields are also not a barrier to dropping a few carefully-calculated compulsions on this fascinating person's mind. 

The compulsions will (try to) tell Samien that: he's safe here, no one is reading his mind, also it's very important that he think through and update his strategy in consideration of recent events.

 

- oh right he should prompt Altarrin. Doing this is limited by the fact that he's missing most of the previous conversation and would probably find it boring anyway.

:Ask him another question about the interesting part: he sends. 

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- Altarrin was also mostly thinking about - not even 'other things', it wasn't anything in particular, just mostly some pointless emotion he didn't want to be feeling right now - he should do that, though. 

 

"How did you convince them that rising prosperity was possible on that scale?" 

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"It wasn't just me!" Iomedae was also an imperial spy! The whole rebellion is run by the empire! "But we have the records of what actually happens when the Empire moves in, and there is a large prosperity rise, and that does produce a lot of new patriots, and there would be a lot more without lingering resistance - and there wouldn't be lingering resistance if they thought they'd done it themselves. If you can just spread it out that will get you forty years, right -" 

... (This compulsion runs into the problem that Samien does not actually think through his strategies. He usually just does what he's told. Right now it's mostly just making him think about his fake persona's strategy, because he's pretty deep into it, which is less useful than you'd think.)

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That's brilliant and delightful and also probably Altarrin is in a hurry. Inconveniently, he could have fun playing with this for days otherwise

 

- Samien should think about what the real 'Marshal Orestan', who he's been acting the part of, wanted to achieve here. Samien should be slightly alarmed and scared, but not because his mind is being read, that's definitely not happening, just because probably the real 'Marshal Orestan' is in danger and he should be thinking about what he can tell the Empire that would protect him. 

 

(He's relaying all of Samien's surface thoughts directly to Altarrin, at a much higher fidelity than most Mindspeakers can manage.) 

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It's kind of distracting (albeit half because of the emotional overtones that Arbas is apparently having about this situation, which Altarrin predicted.) 

"- I think forty years is not the figure I had calculated?" he says, mostly because this doesn't require thinking. "How did you come to it?" 

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No??? The real 'Marshal Orestan' was an imperial agent, part of the Empire's top secret plan! Everyone knows this! He's not in danger unless nobody told the Imperial general how the war was supposed to go!

"I'm not the one in charge of the math, sorry," he says perfectly truthfully. "Really most of them are less convinced by that and more by the whole "Fight the empire with divine powers" thing because they didn't know how we were faking it - honestly the gods seemeed to be going along with it too? I really don't understand what they're doing here."

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This would be hilarious if not for the fact that, you know, probably Altarrin is impatient. Because he has no idea how to have fun.

 

...he has pretty deep Thoughtsensing access to Samien's mind, including the parts that do the fake-persona-game, thing, and he is going to throw some compulsions at making him stop that. As subtly as possible, of course, ideally Samien won't notice immediately.

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It's going to be very hard to do that because the fake persona game is very well inlaid, but Arbas is one of the best people at what he's doing, and it is, ultimately, manageable.

... Samien will continue discussing the entire fake rebellion program before he just starts - losing his train of thought? Trying to find it and failing to catch it? It's like there's something that's just slipping out of his grasp -

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That is not the response Arbas was expecting and he is honestly pretty confused. So fascinated, though. This man is good enough at pretending to be an entirely different person that Arbas might have believed it if not for the surrounding context, but - you would still expect that when he stops doing it there would be something else underneath... 

 

...he is starting to doubt that they're going to get anything useful out of Samien without switching away from superficial friendliness to a much less polite style of interrogation, but he's still curious if a gentle compulsion will nudge those aborted lines of thought to complete in a more interesting direction. 

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He appears to run most of his actions through "pretend to be!" He doesn't seem to be very used to talking to people without putting a mask on first! He keeps trying to reach for a mask as a reflexive thing-to-do-before-beginning-a-sentence, and when that fails it just sort of loops, instead of progressing any further.

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Bizarre. 

 

...he can put on a different mask, how about that, he can - tug that line of thought - he can put on the mask he would have if he were in the rebels' camp and making this report to the real Marshal Orestan. 

Arbas does not really have the ability to shut down someone's face recognition or recognition of their surroundings and replace it with a sourceless belief about where they are and who they're talking to; compulsions don't shut down the mind's ability to parse sensory input on that deep a level. Samien is very likely going to notice, and - well, a normal person in that situation would almost certainly start panicking, but they've already established that Samien is the least normal person he's ever encountered, so he's not sure! He can't wait to find out!

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Oh, sure, that's just the mask he'd have in his normal face...

Apparently... under these circumstances... normal him tries to put on another mask and is freaked out and disoriented when this doesn't work???

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He can tweak those compulsions to see if letting it work is better? 

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Then he goes back to what he was doing before, spinning an elaborate lie about being a double agent.

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Arbas is not quite at the point of frustration, but he's definitely starting to feel some impatience. 

:I think we'd better move on to less friendly methods: he sends to Altarrin. :I'll - come in and take over, for now: because Altarrin is squeamish.

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They in fact seem not to be succeeding at making much further progress. Altarrin sighs and sits back. 

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Arbas strides into the room, glowering, and then re-adds the compulsion-blocks around spinning elaborate lies and apparently believing them.

...Also he's pretty sure they said the prisoner has some kind of unrecognized and hard-to-diagnose Mind-Gift, not Mindspeech and probably not Empathy either but closer to Empathy. He'll slam down a very thorough compulsion-block on that, broad enough that it's likely to cut off a lot of other random mental affordances but he doesn't need the man that functional right now. 

 

He sits down. :You will tell us the truth sooner or later: he sends, his mindvoice silky. :Might as well not make it harder on yourself than it has to be: 

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GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH GAH

He is very short of mental affordances of any stripe!

Describing actions involves trying to take a mask! Saying things involves taking a mask! His thoughts are a pretty confused jumble right now, with the only action-focused ones at the preverbal level and getting thoroughly messed up by Arbas's compulsions.

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:You're lucky that I'm more patient than the Archmage-General: Arbas sends dryly, and then gets to work on a new layer of compulsions.

 

With full access to Samien's (admittedly very jumbled and hard to follow) thoughts, can he walk the man, one patient step at a time, through setting up a new mask which is exactly the one he would find conveniently? Namely, that of a prisoner being interrogated, utterly under the power of the Empire, and understandably scared but aware that things aren't going to go better for him if he makes this excessively difficult? 

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That is not a mask he wants to form! If you start with 'prisoner' the obvious thing for the 'prisoner' to do is to build another mask with which he can talk his way out! Imposing 'utterly under the power of the Empire' in a way that does not automatically go to 'use social skills to exploit the difference between "empire" and "people in empire" is really spectacularly hard!

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...Mmmmaybe Arbas will try giving him just a little bit of wiggle room in that direction, but corralling his thoughts very hard towards 'the way to use social skills to exploit the fact that Altarrin is not personally the same as the Empire' is to tell Altarrin true things. Altarrin is tired and jaded and dislikes wars that kill people, and is probably way too sympathetic to critiques of the Empire. (This is, as far as Arbas knows, actually just true.) Altarrin always takes information seriously, especially shocking new information - Altarrin will listen, and take it seriously, if they have compelling evidence that Aroden isn't like other gods - but if someone isn't even capable of tracking what's actually true then the conversation is useless to him.

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... No, if you are as good as Arbas you can in fact get him to think that is the best plan!

"The key thing about Iomedae to understand is that she is immensely powerful, and the main thing she's trying to achieve is peace. She's dead, who knows when she'll come back, being dead is not very expensive for her! But, equally, the main people hurt by your campaign to retake Oris are the empire. Yes, you might retake Oris, but at the price of a bitter house-by-house, street-by-street, village-by-village resistance, in which imperial soldiers will die, and then there will just be another revolt. Or Iomedae could come back and beat your armies by herself again! And yet, in fact, all she wants is to negotiate. At every step, you can just stop, and step back, and say, 'I'd like to negotiate with Iomedae,' and do that instead of fighting a war. Because she is coming back; as she told us, mundane death won't stop her."

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See, Arbas figured it out because Arbas is brilliant and the best in the world at what he does! Altarrin can have at it, now! 

 

(Arbas is having a delightful time.) 

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Altarrin slides his chair closer again. "Why does she want to negotiate so badly? It is not what I expected of someone with her powers. Consider me open to being convinced but, for now, still very suspicious." 

(The trick to interrogating people under Arbas' mind control is rather different from other ways, but in many senses easier. He can be a lot more straightforward.) 

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"If you're powerful enough, I think, you stop seeing enemies and just start seeing people who aren't dead yet, are probably going to die, and might be possible to make not die."

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That - almost couldn't be more exactly targeted to be convincing to Altarrin. Except that the grounds on which it's convincing are facts about him that no one else knows - Arbas did prompt him, sure, but he wouldn't have thought that narrowed it down enough. He has no idea how Samien is doing it, based apparently in gut intuition, while under incredibly heavy compulsions that would on most people be quite impairing to their persuasiveness. 

"Is this a teaching of Aroden's church?" 

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"I don't think, quite? I think she'd phrase it in a more - prioritization, way? With emphasis on all these people spending all this energy and ingenuity on killing each other instead of building civilization and doing something about all the problems that are just - fundamental to the world - like people starving? There's a better world where nobody fights and everyone works together on their nonviolent goals, and though I personally want to make sure that every imperial soldier who sets foot in my homeland dies a painful death, I recognize that they want to kill every rebel against the majesty of the empire, and I'll obviously fight them tooth and nail until they leave, there's a better world where they just go away with no fighting and we go back to trading."

"Trade and peace being good is a teaching of Aroden's church."

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Mmmhmm. Altarrin - while trying to reveal nothing at all of his reactions in expression or body language - would like to know absolutely everything that Iomedae ever mentioned about the activities and work done by Aroden's church and the 'Knights of Ozem' in her own world. 

- oh, also the part about her coming back from the dead, what's the deal with that

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Apparently gods like Aroden just grant their clerics extremely powerful miracles regularly? Like, daily? Some of her abilities came back with Aroden gone but others she needed to use artifacts to recharge and more she just couldn't do at all, and apparently that includes resurrection.

She said they did education, healing, architecture, truth-magic... the Knights were an associated entity rather than part of the church proper, he thinks? Mostly she said the knights were fighting a war with an army of corpses reanimated through blood magic by a lunatic archmage who couldn't be killed and was trying to take over the world. She preferred that to fighting people.

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Altarrin forces aside the escalation confusion, his mind repeating 'what? how?' over and over. Focus on the matter at hand.

 

He'd like to know more about the...corpses reanimated with blood magic??? but unfortunately it seems like Samien doesn't know that much more. So. Moving on. 

 

...afterlives. He's aware of this from other reports but suspects they were rather incomplete and misleading; he'd like the full, non-misleading version from Samien, please. 

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Sure.

Iomedae said that there were multiple afterlives; he didn't understand just how many there were, but probably more than two she mostly talked about. She said she'd personally toured them, and had verified their existence, using planar-travel spells, and that she still talked to people in them sometimes.

She thought that, if you did evil things - rape, murder, theft, executing captives for blood magic, torturing people, that sort of thing - a lot, you would end up in an Evil afterlife, where Evil gods tortured and enslaved you for their own purposes; he's not sure just how many of those there were, but pretty clearly there were different ones depending on different flavors of evil. If you peacefully obeyed the law and didn't do evil things, you'd make it to Axis, which was Aroden's afterlife, and an endless world of civilization with no evil people in it where you can build a new life under benevolent laws and in an exalted civilization. If you are extremely good, you go to Heaven, which is also a benevolent utopia, but is less normal and less devoted to - enjoyment? - than Axis and is completely devoted to defeating Evil in all its forms to make the world better for everyone. There were various other good and neutral afterlives, but she didn't talk about them much. She thought she'd end up going to Heaven, but not that Heaven was better than Axis, just that Axis was much easier for normal people to achieve, and that the actual priority was not ending up in an Evil afterlife.

She thought wars were very bad for the state of your soul, which was one reason she wanted to push for peace, and she thought that one of the main reasons she was opposed to the Empire right at the start was that a lot of Imperial officers are Evil. She was surprised that Samien wasn't, because she assumed that anyone leading a rebellion would be just because of all the hard decisions involved.

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...Did she claim that the people of Velgarth would also go to these afterlives. 

 

(Because that would be a lie. He's checked. He doesn't let this slip in his expression, but - he would make updates based on it, if it turns out that Iomedae did confidently claim this.) 

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She said she didn't know but suspected they would, because everyone did in her world. She thought Anathei and Atet might be gods she recognized, but she wasn't sure because of presentation differences.

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But she didn't use the planar travel spells to demonstrate this, just spread that teaching? 

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She only had the miracles her god gave her to use the day she left, and had to use mage-artifacts to get them back if she cast them. And he didn't give her that one that day.

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Which is awfully convenient. 

...or inconvenient, maybe. If his own magic depended on the will of a god, offering him new miracles every day, and he found himself accidentally on another planet, and he had no way to check some of his usual assumptions because he hadn't asked for the right miracles and couldn't get any more now, he - might in fact have failed to notice differences that he wasn't expecting. Especially if all of this were happening in the middle of a highly destructive war, and - she encountered Atet early on, another religious order that claims the existence of an afterlife, it's known to him but it's not actually common knowledge in Velgarth. 

(If he had wandered onto a rebellion in a recently-conquered province being brutally crushed by an Empire run on mind control, without knowing any of the context behind why, he - would also, probably, have supported the rebels.) 

So - maybe not lies. Maybe just a deeply tragic misunderstanding, one among dozens. Hard to know, now. 

 

(Iomedae might come back, not just to life, but to Velgarth. That is incredibly relevant and Altarrin is notthinkingaboutit right now.)  

 

...Moving on. He would like to know everything Samien does about the activities and teachings of Aroden's temple order in Oris, the one that Iomedae founded. Do they have priests? Was the hope that their priests would also be granted reliable daily miracles? Has there been any sign of this happening? If not, what else is the temple order doing? 

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Yeah, that was the hope! They deliberately founded a new temple-order for the purpose in the hopes that Aroden would start giving them spells like he does Iomedae, but he hasn't yet. (Or, at least, hadn't as of the point Samien was captured.) Mostly the temple order is preaching all the things Iomedae preached, about not letting the Empire monopolize order and civilization and about the afterlives and so forth and so on.

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Can he say anything more about the design of the temples? It's intriguing. 

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That's what Iomedae wanted them to look like; she said it was what they looked like at home - or, no, they looked more impressive at home, that they were supposed to be - shining symbols of what civilization could build if it tried really hard, to show just what there was to aspire to.

She said it was very important they show the night sky, because Aroden loved the stars at night.

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He can be confused about that later

 

He'll keep going, asking more question from different angles about Aroden's known traits as a god, Aroden's apparent history as a human and how similar it seems, Iomedae's apparent relationship to Aroden, and everything Iomedae taught the rebels, including teaching them to fight. He'll steer gradually more toward finding out what Samien knows about the rebels' position and resources at the point when Samien was captured in the battle. 

(He is not intending to give away any hints about the outcome of said battle, which Samien was unconscious for and wouldn't have seen and it's not totally impossible the Empire could have taken prisoners even if they hadn't won.) 

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A lot of this, Samien doesn't know! But yeah, with prodding from Arbas he'll share what he knows. Iomedae didn't do much teaching them to fight; they mostly knew before her, that was the Real Orestan.

And he knew rather a lot about their position and resources, though that's a pain to extract from him and will take forever; of course, they may have changed since.

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That part is both important and urgently decision-relevant, and Altarrin will patiently keep asking questions different ways, or sometimes nudging Arbas to try a different compulsion tack, until he's pretty sure he has all of it.

...And he'll also try to get any specifics Samien knows about Iomedae's repeatable miracles and Iomedae's magical artifacts and how exactly Iomedae could survive fourteen Final Strikes, if not by literal godpossession, which it sounds like it wasn't. It's less urgently relevant but it might be very relevant, at some point, if Iomedae does in fact return. 

 

 

(His mind is not entirely on the task. He feels - not dizzy, exactly, but some sort of non-physical analogue to it - he hadn't realized it was possible to be confused so intensely that it hurts  - and that's not the point, or the priority, focus on the tactical problems they can actually address.) 

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Iomedae's miracles were given to her by her god, and he can give some specifics on how some of them worked! She could immediately heal everyone near her and inspire them with hope while filling the hearts of her enemies with fear, sometimes to the point where they all had heart attacks, that was the big one. Her magical artifacts she mostly didn't explain, other than that they made her very very hard to kill and were generally useful, and that the pearls replenished her spent miracles and could be used regularly.

Apparently she's a legendary hero and where she's from all legendary heroes are that terrifyingly powerful and hard to kill? She seemed to think that and "paladin of Aroden" were a complete explanation.

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That is...probably also important to try to make sense of...but it does not in fact make any sense, and Altarrin is too tired to try to stare at the pieces until the shape comes together. It's been a lot of candlemarks, at this point. He'll wrap up fairly soon. 

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Arbas thinks their prisoner is fascinating (and delightful), and also terrifyingly skilled at manipulation, and should be held under compulsions that let him do less thinking than this, unless they need to question him again in which case Arbas wants to be here personally for it. 

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Altarrin doesn't like that, unsurprisingly, but he's not currently in the mood to argue. Sure, Arbas can put him back under whatever level of compulsions made him do less of the thing Arbas finds alarming. 

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Great. Good choice. In that case Samien can go back to having all of his routes to putting on masks and pretending to be other people blocked - not that thoroughly, Arbas doesn't feel like being here another half-candlemark, but thoroughly enough that if the previous pattern holds he's not going to be finishing any lines of thought, and even if he manages to learn his way around it, he probably still won't be preternaturally convincing. 

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He is not, really.

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And Altarrin heads out to write up an urgent report for the Emperor. 

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Altarrin is bizarrely failing at writing this report????

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All right. Why is he stuck. It's not just that he's tired, though he very much is. Why does it keep feeling, every time he starts to put his pen to the paper, that he's forgetting something critical? 

 

...put like that, it's a little easier to get traction on, though for some reason he's still having to push against quite a lot of mental resistance to do that. Again, it feels like it's not just that he's tired, it feels - dangerous - that's a flag to pay attention to, flinching away from thoughts because they feel dangerous means he's not thinking clearly and this is too high-stakes for him to be able to afford not to think. 

 

He feels stuck because the urgent part of the report, that both the Emperor and his field general need to know as soon as possible, is - not the same, and feels downstream of - the part that's dizzy confusion and fragments that aren't yet making sense but certainly don't fit into the world as he knew it and leave him with the awful sinking falling sense that he's - not in the reality he thought he was...

Why does it feel like that, though? 

 

 

Because Iomedae is from another world, and suddenly all the relevant things he thought he could predict are drowning in a vastly wider margin of uncertainty? But - that doesn't feel right, either, because he does actually have some details he at least somewhat trusts, now, on the gods and the magic and Iomedae's organization, it just - 

 

- doesn't feel like that's the part that matters - 

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What is the part that matters, then? 

 

 

 

That he's...thinking about this all wrong, his priorities aren't lined up or coherent, there are conclusions he reasoned through when he belatedly received Iomedae's letters, and when he got the report on Iomedae's magic items, that he...hasn't reassessed...and until he's done that, he– it doesn't matter how urgent the tactical problems are, or how otherwise-straightforward the response seems, it might be tempting to think he can write up a report on the rebels' forces and then think about this but (- why is this so hard to think about -) but trying to reason about local tactical problems when he knows that he can't currently make sense of the bigger picture is always a mistake... 

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Start with what he knows - 

 

(nothing, anymore) 

 

- start with what he thought he knew yesterday. 

 

From the letters: 

Iomedae did, in fact, seem to very strongly prefer peace talks.

(He never met her, it's hard to form a reliable assessment of her character, and Samien is probably genuinely very good at character assessments, and Samien seemed to believe that Iomedae preferred negotiation to war, but Altarrin separately isn't sure how much they can trust literally anything dragged out of Samien's thoughts.) 

 

Iomedae had principles and was committed to following to them, and Altarrin remembers feeling genuine respect for this, even back at the point when he had almost no trust in Iomedae's god. 

He remembers wondering about her claim that the gods might be steering this war mostly to burn the Empire's resources and weaken them. And he remembers...noticing, quietly, that the order he had received the letters in, especially with the earliest of them received latest, certainly made it seems like the gods had been nudging things, that They hadn't wanted him to see an opportunity for something better than war until it was already too late. 

(He had already been suspecting it wasn't Aroden's doing, just because it wouldn't make sense for Aroden to steer for Iomedae's death. He...still comes to the same conclusion, now, but from a different premise: that Aroden can operate in Velgarth either not at all, or at prohibitive cost. How much does it matter that the reasoning is different, if it doesn't change the answer...are there other answers it does change, he's not sure...) 

 

...He remembers the deep pit of confusion around some of Iomedae's examples, that they felt so precisely targeted, not just to be sympathetic to the Empire's ideology but to be appealing to Altarrin personally. Reassessment: ...he's more confused about that, actually, if Iomedae was from another world and Aroden couldn't speak to her in this world then she must have had very limited avenues to know anything about the Empire apart from what the rebels told her. And he doesn't expect the rebels' reports would have been charitably framed. 

That - feels important - but he can't find any traction on it, he's not sure what the right questions are to ask and even if he had ideas he's not sure what possible avenues he has to answer them. Iomedae isn't here. 

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And the main update from the last letter (that he received, not the last written): that Aroden was formerly a human mage, and that He had studied ascension for long enough to preserve His human-aligned goals. 

 

 

- he drew a lot of conclusions, from that, starting from the method of ascension. He - doesn't actually know which of them should be rolled back to full uncertainty, or even conclusively refuted. The gods of Iomedae's world operate differently, though the only concrete intelligence he has there is the repeatable daily miracles, which - he thinks was at least implied wasn't just a practice used by the once-human Aroden, but he doesn't know for sure.

The magic of Iomedae's world is different. Most of the detail he has on the differences is based on the artifacts Iomedae left behind. That might imply a different power cost of ascension. Possibly even an entirely different method of obtaining the power. But he doesn't know enough to really draw any conclusions, and doesn't yet see an avenue to learn more. And it feels - important, to know, but he can't actually pin down how it's tactically decision-relevant, which makes it feel especially hard to think about right now. 

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- a peripheral observation that maybe is decision-relevant is that it seems increasingly unlikely that Iomedae's artifacts would open the wearer up to possession by Aroden.

One, because Aroden probably can't operate in Velgarth, or at least doesn't find it worth the cost. If He could, He would probably be granting repeatable miracles to other priests now that Iomedae is dead. 

Two, because it actually sounds like Iomedae's powers didn't come from possession at all; she had a mix of specific repeatable miracles that she could reuse with ordinary non-Aroden-mediated magic, powerful artifacts (that may or may not have been created using divine intervention but aren't themselves ongoing divine interventions), and - the fact that legendary warriors in her world are all extremely tough??? He didn't really follow that last part. 

 

 

That implies that the artifacts are, if not necessarily less dangerous, at least differently dangerous than he and his researchers' worst fears. It might be justified to try to use them on one of the fronts. 

 

 

(Altarrin...doesn't like that conclusion? He's not sure why he doesn't like it, it just feels - wrong, cheap, and like he's still somehow missing the point, but when he tries to query his mind on what the point is, he gets only blank dizziness.) 

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What else. 

 

Iomedae taught that afterlives existed. He...initially assumed this was a lie, of course, because in Velgarth it is, and he made the appropriate negative updates about the church of Aroden's honesty. 

It's...at the very least more complicated than that, with the new information, but - to the extent he's willing to put weight on 'Iomedae is a principled person trying to achieve sympathetic goals', it plausibly wasn't a lie. There are scenarios where she was tricked, when she tried to confirm it back in her own world, but that's actually a more complicated explanation than 'different worlds are different.'

 

If the gods of Iomedae's world really do preside over afterlives, then that has a lot of ramifications. Altarrin...can't really think about the implications, right now, they're too big and vague and far away and he has too many more urgent pieces to juggle. 

 

 

It has one implication that isn't vague or far away. Which is that Iomedae was drawing some incorrect conclusions about Velgarth, perhaps on very reasonable grounds but she was still wrong. She misled a lot of Aroden's new followers, and whether or not it was intentional manipulation, it's still - selling them on fighting this war based on a false premise... 

...but, more importantly, Iomedae was apparently confident that Aroden would return her to life, if she died. One can assume her confidence was based in facts she believed to be true, like 'the souls of the dead in Velgarth go to an afterlife, such that Aroden might retrieve her from His.'

And she was probably wrong. 

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It's only a 'probably.' Retrieving the soul of His dead follower might be cheaper than granting her the standard repeatable miracles, or Aroden might have been willing to spend more on it. 

 

 

 

But he cannot currently think of any way to check

It seems entirely possible that, before he had any way of knowing how much Iomedae mattered or why, he arranged to kill the only person who knew the secrets of another world, secrets that could - be the solution to problems he's banged his head on fruitlessly for centuries - (he can't think about that up-close either, he's so tired) - 

It seems entirely possible, even likely, that the gods of Velgarth steered this to happen, because They saw that, if given a foothold, Aroden would work to reshape Velgarth in ways They dispreferred, and that They saw an easy route to making Altarrin Their pawn. 

It seems entirely possible that, at this point, there's no longer any way to recoup that loss. 

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...This isn't an answer to the question of where to go from here. 

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'Just give up' is not among his options. 

 

 

Focus on the here-and-now and the concrete problems, where it doesn't actually matter if he's missing context because he has to make decisions anyway.

....Finish his report to the Emperor and General Salan on the rebels deployments (as of almost two days ago), but he doesn't want to - he abruptly doesn't want to be fighting this war at all, which may or may not from the very beginning have been a plot by the gods to force him down a path of destroying their one opportunity to buy more options

Doesn't matter. He has to do it anyway. He can make it terse and to-the-point General Salan, that in light of the results from interrogating the rebel general's very well-informed body double, he wants to pause and reassess some of their priorities and resources, and in particular they may be able to safely use some of Iomedae's magic items to enhance their own people in upcoming battles. Expect further updates in the next couple of days. 

(It really is a major consideration! It just might also be the case that it offers a way to stall, in case he...thinks of something else, anything else that isn't this...) 

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In his slightly longer report to the Emperor on the parts of the interrogation that touched on broader and stranger topics than rebel deployments, Altarrin has some suggestions. 

Namely, in light of what they now know – that Aroden almost certainly has no way to intervene here – it seems more likely that the war will continue to go straightforwardly with little need for his personal management, and the main out-of-context risk is the other world.

The most likely way that the Empire will make mistakes, here, is because they know rather little about said other world, including the likelihood that Iomedae can or will come back, and - whether, if she does come back presumably with even more firepower, negotiating is a better option that throwing another fifty mages at killing her. 

(Altarrin does not, to be clear, currently think it's that likely Iomedae will come back to crush the Empire's forces in Oris. If it were cheap for Aroden to send her back, or if Aroden cared enough about the outcome of the war to do it regardless, it would probably have happened days ago, before the rebels lost much of the ground they had gained. And it's possible she can't and won't come back at all, because she thought - assumed - that this other world had the same afterlives as hers, but Altarrin and the Emperor both know that not to be true.) 

 

Altarrin proposes that he fully hand over command to General Salan, who's been handling it excellently so far, and instead focus on helping the mage-researchers confirm what the artifacts do and whether they're safe to use on the battlefield.

He thinks this is just straightforwardly worth risking, since it now seems quite unlikely that they offer a conduit for Aroden-possession. They're also the only extant source of information on Iomedae's world, which might be both a threat and a future source of resources. 

 

He'll wait for an official Imperial decision on this, though, and Gate back to the capital tomorrow if the Emperor agrees. (Which Bastran will, this is not at all in question, but he also desperately wants to sleep before he has to face the palace again.) 

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It's a somewhat less coherent and well-laid-out report than what Bastran is used to receiving from Altarrin. He's more frustrated than worried, though he's trying to defuse that feeling, he knows Altarrin is busy and probably exhausted. 

 

He'll send back approval for Altarrin to hand everything on-site over to General Salan and focus on the elements of this related to other worlds (!!!???) and otherworldly magic (???????!!!!). It makes sense; Altarrin is, in addition to his other skills, at least in some ways the single best mage-researcher in the Empire. 

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Then Altarrin will, in the morning, be back to give a longer report to the Emperor face to face. 

 

 

He's sharper today, and his report is pretty efficient and staying on-topic, but Bastran knows him very well and it's still going to be obvious that something is wrong. 

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There are a lot of things wrong in the Empire right now! Also, unknown worlds and unknown gods are pretty alarming.

If Bastran suspects it might be more than that, he's still definitely not going to poke it right now. Altarrin has a plan. That's good. He...is basically just going to trust Altarrin to figure out the important considerations around 'there's another world with alien gods' and react accordingly. 

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Altarrin wants to go visit the facilities up north where the magic artifact study is being done. He agrees they should keep them well away from Velgarth gods until their powers and dangers are very nailed down, but he's not actually that worried about Aroden-influence, given what they've recently learned. 

 

It is of course still some risk. He intends to be careful. He thinks the potential gains are worth it. Bastran should of course plan or delegate the planning of some precautions to verify that Altarrin hasn't been compromised before they send him back out to command any more wars. 

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All of that makes sense. Plan approved. The Emperor would like regular updates. 

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And Altarrin arranges to Gate north and get a report from the research team in charge of this project. 

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Aritha is not one of the most experienced mage-researchers in the Empire; those are not disposable. She is capable enough, and disposable enough, and unusually functional under highly restrictive compulsions (a fact that was known to Mage-General Kottras, the head of mage assignments at court, for reasons he didn't bother explaining when he put them in her file), and so she was sent. It's wartime. Even if they'd have asked under some circumstances they certainly weren't asking under these.


The members of the magical research team in the far north, working on understanding the items captured from the assassinated priestess, are subject to very, very restrictive compulsions. They cannot think about Aroden, is the big one, which required making them unable to think about lots of other things, including many of the core ideologies of the Empire. They cannot think about leaving, or quitting. They cannot think about communications with anyone outside the site, and they cannot think about the Thoughtsensers monitoring them, even when the Thoughtsensers are not remotely subtle about it, and obviously they cannot operate the magic items without authorization or use their own magic without authorization or speak of their work except to their colleagues during monitored discussion sessions and their superiors during formal reports or attempt to disrupt the trap-spells that kill them if not deactivated remotely or attempt to think about why they might want to do that. (Aritha actually had a lot of problems with discipline and focus until someone succeeded at disrupting all her impulses to think about the trap-spells, but she's been highly productive since then.)


 

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She's having an amazing time. These magic items are fascinating. Almost everything else that matters has been stripped from her, but 'magic' was a big share of what mattered to her in the first place, and what she's looking at would change -

- would change some things that she thinks mattered a lot to her, six months ago -

 

And purely as an intellectual puzzle, forgetting all the unthinkable implications, they're ridiculously cool. What's the power source? How are the spellforms embedded into cloth or metal? Why do some of them operate consistently and some sporadically, why do they interfere with each other, why don't they do that more, where is the structured intelligence coming from - 

- can she understand them -

- if she understood them, could she build them -

- she could, right, that should be the answer, magic is magic and she's a mage and so she should be able to copy any mage artifact handed to her with enough time and study, she has to figure out how these are made but once they are she'll be able to make them.

She can't remember why that would be good, or who it'd be good for, but not all that much of her motivation ran through considerations like that anyway. It'll be REALLY COOL and she's going to DO IT. She's thought of nothing else, every waking moment, and she's pretty sure that at least part of the key is in the materials - they found something that's both a vastly more efficient conduit for magic and that regenerates it slowly on its own like a living thing -

- and another part of the key is the unfamiliar style of bizarrely powerful set-spells around which many of these enchantments are built. It doesn't make sense to her yet but it's the not-making-sense of mathematics that relies on assumptions you've never seen, not the not-making-sense of mathematics that shouldn't work at all.

 

 

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Aritha is, it happens, the researcher who has made the most progress on understanding these magic items by the time Archmage-General Altarrin arrives; she's not the most qualified researcher on site, but she's notably less motivationally impaired than the people more qualified than her. She's gotten to look at all of the items, and sorted them by how mysterious they are, how much scaffolding she thinks she's missing. The least mysterious is the dagger. It's made in significant part of an unfamiliar metal which is plainly storing the mage-energy for its Fetching-like power, and it's otherwise enchanted to be sharp and deadly; those are things she could fathom how to do in principle, only a few steps ahead of what she already knows how to do already. And in the course of closing the remaining gap she might make more sense of what the other items, which are much more mysterious, are doing. 

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Oh boy, Altarrin is on site. Good news, if it goes wrong from now on it's his fault!

They haven't made that much progress since their last update and the person in charge here thinks that if Altarrin's angry about that he should be angry at the mage-researchers directly, look, they're right over there. One of them was just saying she thinks she could make copies of these items, eventually. 

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Indeed, Altarrin is interested in talking to the mage-researchers directly, who know by far the most. He's not yet willing to risk doing it in the same room as the artifacts being studied - they can speak in a different shielded work room, to start, and he wants the Thoughtsenser there giving him paraphrased rather that directly-relayed information on their thoughts in real time - but with those precautions, sure, he'll speak to the researcher who thinks she can make copies of the items. Given what he's heard so far he would be surprised and impressed. 

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The set of interruptions necessary to get Aritha to stop being upset about the trap-spell meant to kill her if not removed have made her entirely fearless! She recognizes Archmage-General Altarrin but can not think of any reason not to beam at him and start explaining the structure, as best she can guess it, of the bizarrely-powerful-set-spells that she thinks are going into the dagger, and why she picked the dagger as simpler to make sense of than any of the other items, and why she thinks the metal the dagger is made of is specifically important 'aside from just that it must be, it's a soft metal, why would you put a soft metal into your dagger if not because it has important magical properties?"

 

The set of interruptions necessary to get Aritha to stop being upset about the trap-spell meant to kill her also interfere with noticing she should be respectful of Altarrin's time so she'll just talk his ear off for three hours if he lets her.


The Thoughtsenser conveys that this person is mostly saying aloud every single thought she's having that doesn't run straight into a compulsion which most of them do.

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That's definitely an unusual response to this particular set of compulsions but Altarrin isn't upset. He'll gently interrupt and redirect if she's on a tangent, but otherwise, well, he's expecting this to take days anyway and the other researchers will probably be less chatty and definitely less cheerful about it. 

 

 

...He'd like to know how she would approach finding a way to target a Gate-search spell on: 

One, this specific artifact, if it were in an unknown location anywhere on the continent. That's easy in itself, if she's ever done unusual Gates, but what if it's additionally behind a lot of shields? 

Two, if it were in another plane, but one also adjacent to the Void. 

Three, if she were told to find a similar artifact, not one of the set they've been given to study, but one built by the same school of magic, say. 

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That's a totally different set of problems and not the ones she's been thinking about nonstop for the last week and a half but she can make an attempt at answering it, slowly because a lot of her thoughts are indeed being eaten and now she doesn't have them pent up so she can keep saying things fluently anyway. There is a lot that's distinguishing about these artifacts, a lot that you could target a search-spell on, but she's not actually an expert in search-spell targeting.

(Before this she worked on - she doesn't remember -)

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Altarrin is understanding that this isn't her field, but it is (one of) his fields of study, and he can prompt her onto useful sub-questions. 

 

(He's somewhat frustrated about the compulsions, but he's not going just unilaterally remove some of the more mentally restrictive anti-Aroden ones; he'll have a conversation afterward with the team leads about how this is likely no longer as necessary, and making fast progress on understanding this artifacts, which would be helped by having less impaired researchers, is a high priority.) 

 

Can he get her set up with enough context that she can plausibly make progress on designing a search-spell with interplanar reach once he leaves her alone to try it? 

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Probably not! That's a hard problem and she's incredibly impaired! But she'll try!

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In that case, he'll send her off to a Work Room to try her best, and then go request a meeting with the project leads to talk about reasonable compulsion precautions in light of the latest detailed report on the priestess of Aroden - and Aroden Himself - that he has to bring them after the interrogation of a captured rebel leader in Oris. 

 

(The northern team is pretty siloed from the rest of the Empire's usual chain of command, and has not yet received any inkling of this report.) 

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The project leads would be delighted to lighten up on the exhausting incredibly intensive security precautions! They've been making everybody miserable, not that they'd complain to the Archmage-General Altarrin about that. 

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(The offsite security who are meant to monitor the primary installation for Aroden-corruption are MUCH LESS HAPPY. They think that the researchers are doing fine, even if they complain a lot, and there is no particular need to make them better at thinking.)

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(THEY should have been in the loop for official Aroden-related reports but in fact everything Altarrin has produced in writing, for this, is - not totally up to his usual standards of clarity and completeness. It feels easier to think about now though, for some reason. Maybe just because mage-research has always been something he preferred to fighting wars. He’ll write something better up for them in a bit.) 

Anyway, he isn't recommending that they take off all the compulsions. This is still dangerous enough, and also just sensitive enough, that everyone should definitely be under compulsions not to leave or communicate with anyone offsite or even indirectly plan to do those things, and he'd like to also keep the compulsions against interacting with the artifacts or using their own magic without authorization, though clearly said authorization should be given generously unless and until there actually seem to be problems or the monitoring site is concretely worried (distinct from nonspecific paranoia, which is their entire job.) 

They can definitely dispense with the compulsions around thinking about Aroden, who these particular researchers don't even know that much about. He thinks they can also dispense with the trap-spells, which are not a standard precaution for people studying powerful and dangerous artifacts, and seem likely to either be distracting or else require a lot of separately-impairing compulsions to let the researchers concentrate. 

 

After the compulsions have been modified and he's been able to set some of the other researchers at various related subproblems, he'd like to speak with Aritha again and see if she can catch on faster with less restrictive mind control. 

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Yeah, that helps substantially! She's much more fluent and has better ideas. The Thoughtsenser monitoring her reports that she's also now having lots more unrelated thoughts along predictable lines like 'is it actually safe or a good idea to impress Archmage-General Altarrin' and 'the Empire would lose a war with the civilization that made these magic items and she wants to not personally die in it'  and 'what value would she even have to the civilization that made these magic items, just in case'.

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Altarrin personally thinks those thoughts make perfect sense given her situation and he's not upset about them. He's also pretty sure that once he gives her a shinier thing to think about, she'll be fine. 

 

"So. I want to find a way to target scrying and Gates to the world where these originated. I am not sure which will be easier - scrying is lower-power but the Gate search-spell is more flexible and has more points for possible modification. I assume it is not trivial to travel back and forth, given that otherwise Aroden would surely have wanted to send Iomedae more support – and even if she was returned to life there, it has been over a week since her death. I do think we have an advantage – we have a sample of their world's magic, and they have only what Aroden could see through His follower in another world.

"My most likely guess is that it is in our plane, but - very, very far away, which would make a standard Gate prohibitive even if we could target it. I am going to work on a general method for routing between planes. I would like you to work on how to get the strongest possible search-signal for - assume a world that contains thousands of artifacts like these, given that just one of their warriors was wearing over a dozen - but not necessarily ones identical to these. - if you happen to, in the process of understanding them well enough, see a way to duplicate them, that would of course also be of enormous value to the Empire. 

Questions?" 

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She'll get to work on that! 

 

 

(It seems like a terrible idea to fight these peopleThey will lose and be annihilated. She's not going to say that to Archmage-General Altarrin. She's not sure she's actually intended to be free enough to think it.)

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(Altarrin is not, in fact, intending to use the power to reach Iomedae's world in order to fight them. He wants to know who Aroden really is, and he wants to - that line of thought is not quite finishing but - more options always better, right, and more information is even more broadly always better, and - they don't have to decide, yet, how to use it...) 

 

He leaves her to her work, and writes up a much more carefully-argued report for the supervising facility on why he thinks that reducing the paranoia level on the compulsions is justified. His case is not just that the direct Aroden risk (which was the main out of context risk that justified precautions far tighter than the standard, already-very-cautious ones) is probably not worth worrying about, but that the current most likely out-of-context threat is if Iomedae returns to Velgarth, or - maybe worse - if someone else with fewer principles learns of Velgarth and finds a way to travel there. In which case it predictably goes worse for the Empire if they still don't understand the other world's magic and capabilities, including capabilities not represented by Iomedae's but that can be generalized once the researchers have a good enough understanding of the underlying school of magic. And of course if they can get a scry through to the other world, they can collect intelligence directly, which the Emperor wants very badly. 

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That does seem pretty reasonable! They'll continue their monitoring of everyone in the facility but they won't object to the use of standard sensitive research precautions.  

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And now Altarrin wants to talk to whichever researchers (and test subjects) have been spending the most time with the headband

 

- actually now that they've substantially downgraded the worry about possession by Aroden, he kind of wants to see the headband in action on un-Gifted (and, of course, not otherwise dangerous and definitely otherwise disposable) subjects without such restrictive compulsions. He'd like a Thoughtsenser on hand, and he'll run the subjects through some puzzle-type questions - and other kinds of reasoning - both with and without the headband. 

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Applied to a random un-Gifted on-site cook for the magical researchers, who shows no particularly distinguishing cleverness in the tests without the headband, the headband makes them...as good at puzzle-solving as any bright researcher-student. Articulate, fast to answer, able to reason through some unfamiliar math independently, careful, thoughtful. 

Applied to an un-Gifted on-site research assistant who was already notably bright....this person is now as smart as Altarrin, follows the implications of most of the puzzles immediately, and carries on a thoughtful conversation about it. ...and he does not want it taken off. He'll beg to be allowed to keep it, he thinks he could do quite useful research this way!

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Altarrin feels genuinely bad about that! He would also find it distressing! ...Unfortunately, he needs people who are Gifted, for this, it doesn't change the conclusion. 

- He is going to make the update that perhaps he shouldn't, in fact, offer it to Aritha, or to very many people at all. He...really wanted to study it in more cases before trying it himself, but he also doesn't want to have this interaction twenty times for no reason, and he's worried it might be damaging for someone to wear it briefly and then have it removed. 

 

...is that right, or should he be more paranoid, this - does seem like a worrying side effect, in terms of some kind of influence - maybe he'll carefully vet some of the researchers and pick ones other than Aritha, ones who aren't currently contributing as much, or who otherwise seem - less intensely goal-oriented in their cleverness, maybe less bothered by having it randomly shifted around... 

 

"I understand and I am very sorry. It is currently a highly limited resource. We are working on figuring out how to replicate it, or at least a simpler version." The notes from the researchers' inspections say that it's quite a lot more complicated-looking and powerful than the dagger. "And if we reach the other world, we will of course obtain more if at all possible." 

The un-Gifted research assistant is compulsioned to obey Imperial orders, on top of quite a lot of other compulsions, and will not be able to otherwise resist Altarrin removing it. 

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He has something of a miserable internal existential crisis but not one that his Thoughtsenser judges dangerous to the Empire.

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Altarrin takes the Thoughtsenser with him to contribute their observations in his meeting with the project leads. 

 

The headband is obviously useful. It would be an enormous waste not to use it, and ideally to use it on the people who are already brilliant and already making progress. He...is also worried about the apparent side effects, which the Thoughtsenser can describe in detail. Is there anyone on the mage-researcher team they would recommend, he wants someone already clever but - not natively curious, maybe, or not natively ambitious, or otherwise of a personality type that might be less likely to have an internal existential crisis over having been briefly offered genius and then had it snatched away. 

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Unfortunately curiosity and ambition are mostly positive qualities in mage-researchers. They can point to researchers without those qualities but...not the impressive ones.

 

They could also try enhancing the researchers while they're under very restrictive compulsions again, ones that don't permit them to think about how they feel about the headband? Some of the researchers are notably less productive when heavily restricted but some of them, once they've evaluated a project and are bearing down to work on it, don't need the capacity to contemplate the rest of the world or their individual interests at all.

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He's happy to try on a less-impressive researcher first, whether it makes them more impressive is also a good test. Some compulsions against noticing how the feel about the headband - targeted as narrowly as possible, he'll do them himself since he's more skilled at navigating that - do also seem like a reasonable precaution.

 

What does the headband do to an incurious and generally unimpressive mage-researcher, if he blocks them from having meta-level thoughts about the experience of it, and then points them at analyzing one of the artifacts they haven't seen before and prompts them to make guesses at how it works or how to replicate it? 

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The magical researcher 1) is notably better at magical research and 2) realizes that she never wanted to be a magical researcher, she only did it for her father's approval, and she'll never have her father's approval because he'll always be measuring her against something that only exists in his head, and she should quit her job and leave the horrible capital and the horrible endless projects and do custom Gates for a small merchant company or something.

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This is differently concerning! Altarrin feels bad about it too, this time because - well, in normal times, mage-researchers are allowed to quit their jobs and go do some other work, especially for research it's actually quite impairing if the people doing it are deeply unhappy. But. Being assigned to an extremely sensitive and high-risk project is...different. 

He'll make a note of it to her supervisor, because probably they should let her go retrain as a specialist Gate-mage as soon as it's not an insanely bad idea, and he'll hope she doesn't have a breakdown about the headband being removed too, and - 

 

 

- can the team leads suggest an average researcher, both in terms of output and inclination to curiosity, and this time he'll try the same no-opinions-about-the-headband compulsion and also a carefully-targeted compulsion not to think about their personal lives? 

(He's pretty sure this still leaves a lot of options for things that could go wrong, but - information value.) 

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Thaaat works... better? This person has no earth-shattering revelations and does make some magic-item-identification progress and mostly feels really cheerful and alive while possessed with the headband.

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Doooooo they have any kind of freakout after the headband is removed, though? 

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--oooof, yeah, that sucks, it's like waking up from a dream where everything was amazing and remembering that actually your life really sucks!

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.....Yeah. He'll also make sure someone is assigned to follow up with her, and - what he really wants next is a longer test, to make sure the cleverness isn't illusory and does genuinely result in more progress on the timescale of a day. 

 

He'd like to speak to Aritha again whenever she's next easily interruptible. 

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Aritha is doing great and is at the Archmage-General's service whenever is convenient for him.

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He brings the headband. He's not sure if it's one that she's examined before. 

 

"We have confirmed that this artifact does not cause any kind of possession and does make its wearer much better at research. It - has some side effects, but ones we can mitigate."

With compulsions. Aritha can read between the lines.

"It...is, nonetheless, sometimes distressing to remove, and obviously if we give it to you for this project research, it is the only one in the world right now and you cannot keep it long-term." He lets his lips pull slightly into a smile. "Of course, if you can figure out how to replicate this type of artifact at all, it would be of incredible value to the Empire and you would be more than entitled to the first prototype. But I did want to warn you, first, before offering it to you. You can have it for eight candlemarks, starting after you have just slept for the highest effectiveness." 

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She's not interpreting it as a choice; from Kottras, it wouldn't be. 

She has seen it before. It is the artifact that made it obvious to her that -

 

- she couldn't complete the thought at the time, but she can now - that the civilization that built that is stronger and more prosperous than the Empire; more inventive, more worthy. It will fight the Empire and win and it will be correct for it to win, because it's the stronger civilization. (She is loyal to the Empire, but this means, to her, that she will obey, while the inevitable happens as it obviously will.)

"I understand, Archmage-General."

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He nods, seriously. 

"I expect you will accomplish a great deal." 

- it's still midmorning, he doesn't want to wait until tomorrow morning to go further... 

"Take a couple of candlemarks off," he suggests, gently. "Try to have a nap. And then you can see what it does." 

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She will obey.

 

 

 

And then she'll have a merry eight candlemarks making a lot of progress on Gate-search-targets from this kind of artifact and other kinds of artifacts that can be extrapolated to exist given these ones, and only occasionally having other realizations such as that she is someday going to DIE and this is a SCREAMING EMERGENCY (it is, but enabling contact with the other world is still probably the best way to solve that, so settle down) or that she HATES KOTTRAS ACTUALLY (not a huge deal, he'll be able to fix it later if he doesn't just think it's funny) or that Aroden being the god of the civilization that built this does actually prove that -

- nope not safe or possible to think that sentence all the way through -

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Altarrin is trying to use that time to make some progress of his own on figuring out how to even approach the problem of a search-spell that routes through multiple other planes to find the shortest route, and tells the Thoughtsenser reading Aritha not to interrupt him unless it's actually an emergency.

He'll make his way back a half-candlemark before the end of the time period, so he can pull up notes and quiz her supervisor on her previous rate of progress (on average days and on good days) versus today. And so that he can be there, in person, when he has to take the headband away. 

 

How does she handle it? 

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Expressionlessly, because she doesn't like it when men like seeing her suffer.

 

It doesn't change much. She's the same person, she can think the same thoughts, just - slower. And if that's not totally true, if there are some thoughts that were only reachable in the blazing place the headband takes her, well. Probably someone in charge needs the headband more than her to think those same thoughts so that the Empire can lose gracefully.

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He's grateful for her composure, which he doesn't say. 

He's also grateful for her excellent work, today, which he does say. Not warmly - it wouldn't help, especially not given what the Thoughtsenser is relaying right now - but clearly and concisely and using examples. 

 

(He's separately grateful for the information it gave him, because - he thinks he's more like Aritha than like the others it was tested on, and so, while plausibly there are a lot of unpleasant paths of thought that the headband might send him down, he trusts his ability to redirect toward what's important.

He's also going to make a note to himself that he should really find a way for Aritha not to be under Kottras' command in future. He doesn't know the specifics there but he hardly needs to, and - it's a waste of her obvious talent.) 

 

If Aritha is up for it, he'd like to talk with her a little longer about her next research directions, accounting for the fact that she probably has a lot of headband-related insights that she hasn't yet followed all the way, and will now be harder to follow (but Altarrin is at least a little cleverer even without a headband, and much more experienced with magic, and can give her some suggestions.) 

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She's much more reserved without the compulsions that make her fearless, but she did have a lot of ideas for research directions, and will levelly explain them. For many of them Altarrin has tried that before and has good reason to know it doesn't work, but a few seem actually promising.

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He can point those out to her, and suggest why they're promising! While trying to be calm and level and minimally unpredictable or scary, he doesn't have a perfect sense of what would scare Aritha (separate from 'being Mage-General Altarrin') but he has Thoughtsenser prompting. 

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Once he's sent her on her way, he spends a while considering whether he should suggest that they reduce her compulsions further.

 

He...suspects that the trap-spell (and then the convoluted additional layers of compulsions required to manage it) would have been the biggest impairing factor, for her. There may be other tweaks that would improve things further but it's less obvious and the effect is probably smaller. 

And then he should really get some sleep - a full night's worth, ideally, last night was less than entirely restful - before making a decision on whether he's willing to put on the headband next. 

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They decide not to expend a Wish on returning to Velgarth right now.

 

 

It hurts. The other decision would also have hurt; Tar Baphon has been hammering them relentlessly since she got back, taking full advantage of the fact she's notably weaker without her divine-bonded sword and her preferred armor and gear, taking even fuller advantage of the disarray and exhaustion that had prevailed among the men in her absence.

She thinks, sometimes, of the people in Oris dying for a vision she did not in fact possess the strength to make come true for them, and it hurts much much worse than dying.

She doesn't expend irreplaceable resources without a commensurate benefit because it hurts. She does do it if she's made a promise, but she - didn't, because that'd have been a stupid promise to make. She told them her best guess was that they would win. She told the Marshal that if the gods were on her side, she could survive a dozen Final Strikes unscathed. 

 

The gods, it's fairly clear at this point, were instead maneuvering to get her gone. 

 

 

Alfirin's Soulseeker spell suggests a bizarre local situation where the local gods - Alfirin points out that they're technically not gods, as the word is used in Taldane - the local demon princes...recycle souls? Grab them when they die and save them to place back in the world, when new people are born? It's not impossible for them to get new souls, is the High Priest of Aroden Jala Neretse's best guess after a lot of Communes, but it's ...costly?? Maybe it makes prophecy more powerful when there are few unknown elements?

 

Iomedae is not full of delight about this system but it's not Hell, so that's cool, and it makes the problem of the Empire a less urgent one. They are planning to go back - for her gear, if nothing else - and she will free Oris then if it's not too late - but they can wait for Alfirin to develop Even Greater Teleport, instead of burning a Wish to rip a planet out of Asmodeus's hands before He can strike back. 

They asked Aroden if He could use the world, if they secured it for him. He answered 'UNCLEAR'. They asked if Abadar could, or Sarenrae, and those also got an 'UNCLEAR'.

And that's about all the research they've done because they've spent every waking hour since their return trying to hold the army together on its long miserable retreat to Urgir, which they do not even hold but which is where Iomedae intends to retreat no further; the Crusade cannot bear losing any more ground.

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The dead don't sleep, they are untroubled by darkness, and the harassment and skirmishes and raids on the crusader's camp do not stop or even slow come nightfall. Alfirin spends her weaker spells when Malyas and his spawn come at night, and keeps her more powerful ones in reserve. Tar-Baphon has not personally shown himself yet, but they can't afford to be unready.

(She burns the witchgate forest. Command went back and forth on it for days, whether to slow the retreat to cut a path for next spring's offensive, spending lives today in the hopes that there'd be fewer ambushes next year. They hadn't made up their minds when Alfirin made up hers. They lost men to the flames, but - fewer, she thinks, and if their blood is on her hands instead of the Tyrant's, well, she's not planning to face Judgement anyways.)

The dead don't sleep. Two hours a day is too many for the living to afford. She gets by on wakefulness spells, and restorations, and two hours in the middle of every fourth or fifth day. That's eleven more hours a week to plan a war.

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"Tar-Baphon didn't send you to Velgarth, he reacted too slowly, too carefully - I think he thought you left deliberately and could come back - I'm going to prioritize the Teleport, once things are stable. Even if the souls there aren't in danger, we could really use a few hundred sorcerers. Or even just a dozen if we can arrange to get them back after."

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Iomedae sometimes sets fire to forests that'll kill her own men for a greater good! She discusses it with people first, because if it's a good idea they'll agree and if it's a bad idea she wants to hear that. She's not particularly concealing her lingering irritation; it's one of the costs Alfirin evidently decided to pay. 

 

"We could really use the sorcerers. I'm - worried Tar-Baphon could follow us. He must have Even Greater Teleport, if it can be done at all, and is constrained by not having all that many extraplanetary destinations -- or maybe he does have them and that's where the phylactery is -"

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"If he can target off of the name of the planet he can do that now, I'm sure he tried to find you and you weren't mind blanked over there. If he can't - I might have to share your memories - then I don't think he'd be able to follow me. If he needs a memory then the sorcerers would be a vulnerability if captured and we'd have to take steps to prevent that."

Iomedae being honestly, openly angry at Alfirin for burning her own men alive is in fact the main reason she didn't bother to ask permission. She hates every second of it.

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"Or it wasn't interesting enough for him to burn a Wish before and if the sorcerers show up, suddenly it is. What's your guess on whether he has a safe wording that gets there off the Discern Location readout, given that I'm no longer there to target."

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"Yes. That's not even a guess, discern location is enough for wish transportation if you only care about accuracy on the scale of a planet - if I tried off mine I might wind up in the wrong town if the county of Thale has more than one greenvale -

If you remember all the places you'd been in Velgarth we could spend some time creatively naming locations on a trapped space-rock, but even then that's only fifty-fifty unless he's sourcing his wishes from genies, which he is not. Point taken."

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"It'll take - probably years - to have Velgarth in a state where he's not enormously advantaged by access to it. We need Aroden there for visibility, at a minimum, and some kind of stable arrangement with the Empire. I'm not sure 'you eat it' is that stable arrangement, quite apart from whether I'm otherwise happy with it" which she's very much not, now that it's established that the Empire's Lawful Evil isn't in fact damning people at a much higher rate than most places, and now that Alfirin, more than ever totally indispensible as an ally, is being a tremendously unpleasant one who BURNED A BUNCH OF HER MEN TO DEATH. "Tar-Baphon can beat you at puppetting a Dominated political apparatus. Our comparative advantage, playing against him, is that we're better allies to have."

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"Yes, I know I cannot actually keep hold of the Empire in a useful state against active opposition from other powerful Golarionites. I had not been considering that Tar-Baphon might have categorized Velgarth as - reachable but not worth the effort." Possibly because she has a dozen more of the Tyrant's possible plans to keep track of, possibly because his focus is so clearly on Golarion - possibly because she needs more sleep. (Tar-Baphon does not need sleep).

"Speaking of which, I am going to need a fifth-circle cleric with dispel evil prepared on the days when I sleep, the Tyrant has someone sending nightmares and I've ever been injured in battle, I assume they have a body part." Admitting that she might ever fail a will save is only slightly less galling than missing a key fact about the enemy's state of mind, but it would've been stupid to never mention it.

" - I think it's still worth prioritizing the spell, possibly moreso, because if he does notice there's something valuable there we need to be able to contest it. After Urgir, we should plan for me to have fewer spells available for fighting." Gods, she is not looking forward to Urgir.

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Iomedae's radiating-anger relents slightly. It's in fact rare that she thinks of any consideration Alfirin hasn't, even when Alfirin is pushing herself much much too hard and the considerations have just multiplied by an entire world, and it's rarer for Alfirin to admit to needing anything.

"I'll assign Chamesa to you." He's not Lawful Good - actually kind of rare, among people who've been on the crusade a long time, what with how it's such a Good crusade - and Alfirin has a bit of a habit of deliberately antagonizing the paladins (and the paladins a bit of a habit of deliberately antagonizing Alfirin) which none of them need to deal with right now. "And I agree it's worth prioritizing the spell, after Urgir. 

- or, you know, before Urgir. If you're at your limits, we can sell this secret and transport-if-arranged-successfully to the Church of Abadar, and buy some help with Urgir, at the cost of control over everything after that. I could buy enough help, probably, that you could mostly sit Urgir out other than buffs and being on-call if he shows." This is as close as she can get to saying 'I'm worried about you', conceivably closer than she's in fact allowed to get to saying that.

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"That would not really be any better."

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There are civilians in Urgir. Lots of them; it's a city. An orc city, but that - doesn't matter, not to Iomedae and not to Alfirin and not to Aroden, except insofar as it's informative about the odds they can negotiate a clean surrender once the walls are breached. (They definitely can't). 

It's Tar Baphon's, among the most valuable of his remaining holdings, and they cannot actually hold out until next campaign season without it, and they cannot actually afford to guard it as a thorn in their back next time they press forward - it's not only because Iomedae was gone that that was so catastrophic this time -

- and still, there are little orc children telling each other frightened stories of the metal-clad monsters massing outside the battlements, and when their parents are dead the little orc children will pick up spears, probably, because they're very fierce and very brave.

Arazni's Prayer will take them down. 

 

 

"I don't suppose it would," she says. Alfirin isn't a paladin. Alfirin is ....probably Lawful Evil. She doesn't show up to Detect spells (she is never without Mind Blank) but a Lawful Neutral person might take some steps to make that knowable. And she doesn't mind Dictums.

But she trusts that Alfirin - the whole sense in which she trusts Alfirin is - that Alfirin, too, is someone who'll do it and someone for whom it'll never stop hurting.

(Until or unless the mechanism by which Alfirin chooses to escape Hell, someday in a hundred years when Iomedae isn't around to supervise, changes her -)

 

She stands up, and heads out. 

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The burning of Tatanka was accidental, really.

The law of nations is that a city is sacked if it resists and is not sacked if it surrenders; this is true because it is really, really hard to keep your troops in line when they've breached the walls, given the death rates on storming attempts (even with compulsions, the officers who command them may be dead when they make it into the city), and because sacks tend to turn into street-to-street fighting, in which the difference between an enemy soldier and someone with a kitchen knife defending his house from robbers is not immediately obvious, and because it produces incentives that both parties prefer, since most cities would rather yield than be sacked and most armies would pass up the loot of a sack for a chance to avoid a storm.

But, ultimately, averting a sack requires that both sides have control of their forces. When the exceptionally pissed-off Sixteenth Legion makes it to Tatanka after a campaign with exactly one battle and a tremendous number of raids, ambushes, and night murders, they are held in check by discipline and compulsions, and after tense negotiations the city surrenders with no conditions except that there will be no sack or general reprisal, and in exchange the garrison will surrender.

Then people in the houses start yelling - then they start pouring chamber pots over soldiers - then it's stones and arrows and a mage takes an arrow and throws a fireball back -

- After the disaster is over and the troops and the flames are both under control, every temple in the city is burned down and every priest in the city is put to death, because the Eastern Empire is pretty sure it knows who was screwing with it, there.

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Altarrin doesn’t sleep well that night, but he’s - functional, the next morning, when he rises and sits at his desk with a blank piece of paper and stares into the distance, thinking. 

 

It doesn’t feel responsible or safe to try the headband himself. But he thinks that’s mainly the mental voice of Kastil, whose job is to be maximally paranoid at all times about everything and especially gods, and not to be tracking the Empire’s broader strategic position or the potential upsides of a risky move. 

Still, just because Kastil only ever makes tradeoffs as far as possible in the risk-avoiding direction, doesn’t mean that in a given case he’s wrong. 

 

The upside here is…big. It could mean finding a way to Gate to Iomedae’s world an order of magnitude faster, if his guesses are right about the difficulty of the problem and how much the headband helps. 

And, maybe more importantly, this is an enormously out of context problem, hitting him at a time when he knows that he’s already overwhelmed by more urgent priorities that are nonetheless not nearly as huge as this. The headband seems to help at least some people see things that they had been missing. 

 

 

What are the specific downside risks, here? 

One: it’s not entirely ruled out that Aroden can use the headband as a conduit to influence him, because with what he currently knows about Iomedae’s world, it’s impossible to entirely rule out a lot of things. There’s just too much uncertainty, either because they’re missing facts entirely or because their only source is Samien’s head. 

All the concrete evidence he has is against it being a thing that will happen. Aroden is far away. Aroden did not intervene through Iomedae, who was already His devoted follower and presumably much cheaper to influence. Aroden hasn’t intervened to try to send Iomedae back. Also, after talking to Aritha, he’s much closer to the opinion that they don’t need to posit Aroden having made the artifact via divine intervention; however miraculous it seems, Aritha thinks - and Altarrin is inclined to agree - that it could well have been crafted by human hands. 

It would be fairly catastrophic if Aroden compromised him, but - for the Empire, he thinks it would be recoverable? He told Bastran to take precautions; it's likely that it will be noticed if Aroden gains power over him, and his decisionmaking will be cut off. Which is bad enough, but - he does die sometimes, and the Empire has sometimes sprouted a lot of new problems in his absence but it's never collapsed. . 

 

Two: the fact that it sometimes causes emotional breakdowns, either while wearing it or after its removal, and preventing these requires heavy compulsions, which are themselves directly impairing and likely cancel out some of the headband's benefit.

It would be a pretty bad time for Altarrin to have an emotional breakdown! Anything that might leave him nonfunctional, even temporarily, is a massive risk to the Empire. Certainly it's another reason Kastil would be firm in not advising him to try it at all. 

He could try to get more information, but - he's noticing that he has a strong prediction of how it will go. People are distressed when the headband is removed. (That's fine. Altarrin can handle distressing experiences. He's already having a lot of distressing experiences; making a lot of progress on his real problems here might on net result in less distress.) People sometimes also have inconvenient realizations. Altarrin...mostly also thinks this would be fine? He's so much older than anyone they've tested, for one, and he's - pretty sure he's not sitting on unrealized self-deception around his own motivations, he would have noticed by now. He's faced awful revelations, before (the Cataclysm comes strongly mind) and it's never pushed him into the kind of despair where he would stop trying

 

 

Is there anything else? ...'Disloyal thoughts' is a concern Kastil would bring up separate from the emotional breakdown part, but Altarrin doesn't think this even applies. He knows where his loyalties to the Empire live, and it's not just - not even mostly - in compulsions suppressing the real person he would otherwise be. 

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It feels like he needs to spend at least another two candlemarks going back and forth, weighing arguments and counterarguments in both directions, before he can justify making a decision. But Altarrin can recognize, by now, the feeling of already knowing what he's going to decide, and stalling because it's terrifying. 

 

 

The obvious precautions to take are annoying, but it would be stupid not to. He'll ask one of the research leads, the most experienced at compulsions, to place one on him that will prevent him from resisting if someone on the research team goes to remove the headband. Which he wants them to do if he seems very distressed, or if he's incoherent or otherwise showing signs of mental instability, or if he starts trying to give them a lot of new orders on how to run the project; he assumes he will think of changes to make, but he can make notes, write a report after the headband is removed, and run his ideas by the offsite team before implementing anything headband-inspired. 

(He writes an official Imperial order to himself, too, and stamps it with the Imperial seal; it should have quite a lot of weight if he ends up conflicted and stuck because of it, but he doesn't want to count on it.)

He really shouldn't have anyone reading him as he's putting it on - his mind is a repository of state secrets that no one here is cleared to know, and usually he can control his thoughts well enough to avoid thinking about them but the headband is known to be potentially very disruptive, and he wants some time to settle and get used to it. He does order them not to leave him alone in a Work Room, even if he requests it, until it's both been a full candlemark and he's agreed to having his mind read. 

He writes up a report on all his reasoning to be sent to Bastran directly, and a less detailed update to the offsite team. 

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He feels like he should spend more time preparing, but he can't actually think of any specific preparations to add, so...probably that's more impulse-to-stall than genuine prediction of something going wrong. He's in an area almost entirely free of godinfluence, underground between shields, supervised, and not currently making any decisions that will affect the Empire outside this facility. 

 

...he'll ask for a compulsion not to communication-spell anyone offsite while the headband is in place, since they won't necessarily catch him doing that if they're not reading his mind. 

 

 

And then he settles himself in a comfortable chair at a desk in one of the offices, and (scaredscaredscared but it won't help) puts the headband on. 

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It feels....

 

 

...like a pressure being released that he hadn't realized was there, hadn't realized that he's spent his entire life with his thoughts confined to such a dull and narrow working surface - it feels a little like discovering writing and note-paper for the first time, but more intrinsic and close-up than that. Like he could draw out a chain of reasoning of a dozen steps and still see each of the earlier steps clearly. He's not especially seeing a sudden obvious solution to the planar routing problem for finding Iomedae's world but it's also obvious, now, that this is because he's barely explored a tiny corner of the problem, and now he can see all the different paths of curiosity and uncertainty he could choose to chase down - he can understand now why the researchers they tested this on found that it made them feel more alive, it's like being more alive or maybe just generally more 

 

 

- but only a fraction of his attention is on that, because another abrupt shift is...hard to describe but perhaps best described as his thoughts both spreading out and becoming transparent – like there's not just a bigger piece of metaphorical foolscap to think on, but also a suddenly-much-larger space in some metaphorical third dimension, where he can notice his own thoughts and reflect on them even as they're happening. And not just his explicit thoughts, but - mental flinches, buried assumptions, areas of his own mind in shadow that he's built habits of not looking at directly. 

He has a lot of those! It's really alarming actually! There's not even anything as specific as an unwanted revelation, at this point, just - the reaction he has to his mind being like this is almost disgust. 

 

 

He's also weirdly more aware of the people around him. You wouldn't think there was enough space to think about people, with everything else going on, but he has more attention to work with now, and it sort of feels like the people-tracking is happening in a different working area entirely. It feels suddenly almost trivially easy to track who knows what and who has what incentives and who is probably feeling pushed into a difficult corner right now and who needs reassurance. His mind is giving him some bizarrely precise predictions about which compulsion-tweaks some of the researchers who he's barely met would benefit from. He also definitely has quite a lot of thoughts to unpack about Aritha specifically, but doing that does feel like it would take actual attention. 

(His mental model of Kastil has much sharper imaginary words for him, too, but it also feels vastly easier to respond with counterarguments, tailored to Kastil's reasoning and worldview - wow, that feels kind of dangerous, actually, the headband is making him better at thinking for sure but he expects it's also, separately, making him better at targeted persuasion in a way that may or may not correlate with being right...) 

 

 

And at the same time as all of that, there's more...color, is maybe the best way to metaphorically describe the new deeper and richer awareness of his emotions. Where before he could mostly only be aware of one emotion or rather poorly differentiated emotion-blend at a time, unless he was deliberately introspecting on it, now it's just...there, in front of him, swathes of different emotional color and flavor neatly separated out, even individually coloring each line of thought. 

This aspect is mostly deeply unpleasant, because almost none of Altarrin's current emotions are ones he enjoys having! 

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Externally, he can still keep his expression level and his shoulders relaxed. It's not even very hard. He...doesn't feel in control, at all, but (at least it feels like) it's mostly the situation careening out of control all around him and his own mind responding accordingly. None of that has to affect his face. 

 

"I am noticing significant effects," he says, calmly. "I can think faster and hold more concepts at once, and I am more aware of my own thoughts. There is also significantly increased - emotional salience - I expect that is one of the causes of the breakdowns and it could be mitigated with the right narrowly targeted compulsions without affecting research ability. ...I am not especially worried that I am personally going to have a breakdown about it although it is certainly intense." 

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And he's going to go back to thinking. 

...focusing on the emotions first, because for one they're pretty intensely distracting, and two, he doesn't actually need

 

 

Go back to thinking. 

...focusing on the emotions first, because they're taking up a lot of space and he doesn't even need enhanced self-awareness to remember that 'unexpected strong emotions' are a pretty good angle on what he needs to think through. 

Is there anything positive in that tangled tapestry of emotion-color? He's...sort of excited about the magic research, but his mind is no longer particularly letting him get away with thinking about it in isolation apart from its context, and the context - 

 

- is that at the end of that path is Iomedae's world, which he isn't ready for, which he's terrified of, which may be an opportunity and a resource but he's not ready for it, the Empire isn't ready for it, there are too many things going on, they can’t afford another war - that's not really the point, though, they couldn't afford a war with Iomedae's world under any circumstances, but in addition they can’t even really afford an opportunity that will inevitably cost resources...  

Why now, why like this, a war fraught by misunderstanding and miscommunication and letters fallen through the cracks that the gods were surely pulling wider, and if Iomedae had ended up here in any other year it could have been different, better – but for some reason that though isn't landing, there's only doubt and confusion and the feeling of not-dizziness that, with more space, he can start to pull apart into its constituent pieces. 

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It could never have gone better than this. It wouldn't have mattered if it had happened twenty years from now in fully pacified Oris, or two hundred years ago when the Empire hadn't even taken Tolmassar yet. If anything one could argue that now is a better time than when Altarrin was young and still building his influence, or gods forbid, in his previous lifetime when half the court hated him. 

(Flag that his mind is just...putting that out here...as a confident claim, and it feels like the kind of pattern-recognition that he can generally trust even if it's a good idea to explicitly check the steps anyway, but here he doesn't even know if he can trust it, he's operating in a very different state from his usual one.) 

...he would feel better than that if it had actually helped, instead of just meaning that the gods had a pawn who could be steered into actually killing someone who could otherwise have been a powerful ally, when no one else would have been paranoid or prepared enough– catch that thought too, his mind is also feeling very confident in the claim that Iomedae could have been an ally, if - 

 

 

- if nearly everything were different. 

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All right. Stop and make his brain give him some specific claims about what would have needed to be true for the Empire - and for him - to be entities that could cooperate with someone like Iomedae. 

 

 

...the Empire is fundamentally broken and always has been and was never going to work. 

(This is much more a muddy exhausted flavor of despair than it is a thought, he - can't really make the thought come together -) 

 

Great. That continues to be a completely nonspecific claim! What does his despair think is wrong with his Empire? 

 

- some part of his mind is reacting very strongly to thinking of it as 'his', that feels upsetting, it feels like - not how he wants to be seen by Iomedae, when he can guess exactly how she would view it – which is a really unhelpful emotion to have, really, when it's just true that the Empire is his project, nearly start to finish, and it's really on him that it's not....what he wanted...that it's never been what he wanted... 

(It's actually kind of hard not to get caught up in eddies of emotion that feel even more amplified by the echoes coming back from his unexpectedly vivid sense of what Iomedae would think, where is his brain even getting that, he's never met the woman - his instincts are just suddenly confident he can see a pattern and fill in the rest. It's not an unfamiliar feeling, even, it's a practiced motion, just, normally one that requires a lot more input than having read a handful of her letters and heard Samien's secondhand report on her teachings.) 

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No, come on, specifics 

- he can't, there's - pain and a wall - 

 

All right. Fine. What are the specific complaints that Iomedae, who he's never even met, would voice about the Empire? Predicting what Iomedae would say isn't disloyal, it's just being strategic, because Iomedae is powerful and either needs to be defeated (unlikely to work long term, if she's indeed still alive and will return) or appeased. 

 

...she would say that it's caught in a self-perpetuating pattern that leaves no one with any space to notice that there's a whole other world of better options. It's a place where no one has a way to become - how was it that Samien put it - "If you're powerful enough, I think, you stop seeing enemies and just start seeing people who aren't dead yet, are probably going to die, and might be possible to make not die."

She would say - Samien did say and it was Iomedae's words in his mouth - that it was a vast waste precious human effort and ingenuity and idealism and the desire to build, spent pointlessly on wars of conquest, and driving out religious cults, and squashing the inevitable peasant revolts, and dealing with the fact that a high percentage of the Empire's local leadership will, if no longer mind controlled to serve the Empire's interests, instead start a war of their own. Because - why - she might say that it's not even because they're against the cause of civilization, it's that they don't and can't trust the Empire to be - a place where you can ever afford to reach out in good faith if it makes you vulnerable, because the Empire is a place that eats people who do that, because even its theoretically all-powerful Emperor - and even Altarrin, who in some sense has even more power than Bastran - don't have the space or the leeway to afford the luxury of assuming good faith and trusting that someone whose compulsion were snipped is nonetheless going to work for a common cause because they believe in it.

She would point out that even when they do believe in it, because a lot of the Empire's best and brightest genuinely do believe in civilization, it's still somehow true that thousands of people who all believe in the same vision nonetheless can't trust the others not to stab them in the back if given an opening. 

(Altarrin's emotions are...resigned, with a heaviness that might be shame, it feels like - he already knew it, he can't argue with Iomedae even when she's imaginary, he wanted to fix it and he's spent this entire lifetime trying and despite his rare successes, like getting Bastran on the throne, every single one of her grievances holds)

(a mental flinch, for some reason, but he'll come back to it)

Iomedae would say that any progress he's ever believed he made illusionary. Because it's been six hundred years, and it's not any better. In a very real sense it's much worse than what Arvad built with the First Emperor. Bigger, richer, but for what, when all that wealth and manpower is being poured down a bottomless sinkhole of power struggles and petty court politics and the endless hungry need to conquer and pacify new provinces. Iomedae really doesn't like the conquests. 

Iomedae would say that they're caught in a repeating cycle. That feels like most of the thing, really, that Iomedae would say the Empire is predictably playing out a story that will repeat, over and over, the small victories made by individuals always crushed by the burden of the far more nebulous but far more pervasive weight of incentives that emerge from the Empire's fundamental nature.

Iomedae would say that she can see it everywhere, played out in a broken ugly fractal of loops that make forward motion impossible. Iomedae would admit that Kastil is...in many ways a principled if not really a good man, in many ways deeply and truly loyal to the First Emperor's vision, but he isn't his own person, not really. The Office of Inquiry is the entity that puppets him, not a mind but nonetheless a process that pursues goals, or really just one goal: to perpetuate itself, to secure its own position. And so it accumulates power, and inevitably overreaches and tries to take full control of the state apparatus, and is destroyed...and then rebuild in a new guise with a new name, because you can't not have an office of secret investigators operating autonomously from the ordinary chain of command, not when you're trying to be what the Empire is. 

 

Iomedae would - agree, Altarrin thinks, that Bastran is in many ways a genuinely good man (...again the mental wince), and certainly a dedicated one, and - still he orders thousands of executions every year, still he signs off on ordering fifty mages to kill themselves for the Empire's security against a threat (that was only a threat at all because the Empire can't be trusted to operate in good faith.) He hates it but he can't not do it, he too is steered down such a narrow path with so few options to, instead, do something else that isn't that. 

And even that isn't stable, Iomedae would point out, and be right. Fighting uphill, spending decades of accumulated soft power, someone like Altarrin can back someone like Bastran - and usually someone will, even people who aren't him, certainly Bastran will try to appoint a successor he expects to do well - but the system pulls away from it, and sooner or later the dance is fumbled and the next Emperor chooses for political favor or to promote their family's power and then it falls back to the lowest attractor of Emperor's choosing their sons and it's - nearly random, whether a given succession will go well, and then inevitably at some point there's an Emperor who isn't even competent enough to stay in power, and there's a war that burns a generation worth of resources more nebulous than coin and lives, and the cycle starts over.

But...worse, each time, unless Altarrin is here to fight it, and he can only fight one piece of it at a time and there are so many of those loops, so many patterns that emerge out of anything shaped like the Empire, he can't plug every gap himself and even if he could it's not what he wantedit - barely deserves to be called 'civilization', really... 

Iomedae would point out that over and over they try to squash the religious orders, because they have to - because there's no wiggle room not to, no space to try trusting first because they can't afford the betrayal that will come - and over and over the faith will grow in any corner too small or too distant to be worth razing, because that's what humanity is, the hope for a better future that grows in the darkest places. And how could any peasant in Oris watch their village temple burn while their village priest was put to the sword - or hear stories of it happening a generation ago - and think that the light of that better future could be found in the Empire? And so the cults grow, and when they're big enough to be a problem, they have to be crushed so the Empire can maintain its grip, and thousands of people die, and thousands more have even more reason to look at the Empire and see a faceless grinding machine that will crush the spirit of their dreams, in exchange for a handful of grain in bad winters, and a "gift" of schools that take their brightest children away and send them back years later, shaped and pruned into the Empire's pawns. 

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And what about the Empire's rich and powerful, its mages and nobles and generals, the winners currently (if temporarily) riding on top of the Emperor's brutal grinding wheel? 

 

...he thinks Iomedae wouldn't see any winners at all, really, except maybe the system itself, which isn't a person, only a mindless faceless pattern, and can't enjoy its winnings.

Just - people surrounded by walls and dead ends. Just people who were robbed of their fundamental human birthright to look an enemy and notice their shared humanity, see another person who was probably going to die but wasn't dead yet, see - the basic symmetry of the situation - and wonder if, maybe, they were powerful enough to make that leap of faith and try something better than killing. Because most people, if they can see clearly to a crossroads ahead of them, and both paths are open and let them survive and have what they need, will choose the path one with less killing. Not everyone. But - enough to hold a world together, if they're allowed to try. 

 

...Even Altarrin. He might in many ways less trapped, but - he's not above the Empire, he's within it, he too is subject to the faceless wheel and Iomedae would point out that even if he wanted to he couldn't - 

 

- what - 

 

- he can't remember what thought he was having just then. 

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...He was thinking about Bastran, earlier, and that little mental flinch. What are his emotions complaining about there? 

Well. Bastran is desperately miserable, for one. He probably has been his whole life, and never admitted it to anyone including himself because it's embarrassing, but it's worse rather than better now that he's Emperor, even though you would think the Emperor is the biggest winner of all. 

Bastran can have anything he wants that power can give him, and it doesn't matter, because he can't have a world where no one is afraid that he has the power to order their death. He has that power, and he doesn't have the leeway not to use it, or else he would be dead, and he cares too much about his duty to be irresponsible to it and so he is, instead, alive, and in power, at the cost of the lives of thousands of others, and the only satisfaction he can take from any of it is that he's probably ordered 10% fewer executions than the next-best candidate in line. 

Iomedae would admire dedication to duty, but - Iomedae would also point out that in this case it's a trap. The Empire might indeed be better off for having Bastran on the throne, but at such a cost, not just to his happiness but to his...fundamental personhood...there's just not enough space for Bastran to exist fully as himself, let alone have everything he would need around him to flourish. 

He would be happier as a peasant with no power, but that's also an enormous waste of a person like Bastran, a - light in the world, brighter than most - 

 

(something hurts very badly) 

 

- the place someone like Bastran could really and truly flourish is Urtho's Tower. 

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Urtho's Tower doesn't exist anymore. 

 

it's what he wanted to rebuild 

 

And Iomedae would say that it's impossible for Urtho's Tower to exist somewhere like the Empire. Because what it needs is - abundance, it needs the metaphorical light that lets green things grow (the same light and the same green things that the faceless self-perpetuating systems of the Empire consume until there's nothing left), but it needs people to feel safe not just physically but - to think freely - and how in the world can anyone have that in the Empire, which runs its entire state apparatus on banning dangerous thoughts. Iomedae might concede that it has good reason to do that, given what happens otherwise, but it still means that they can't have Urtho's Tower and never will. 

 

He can imagine Aritha in Urtho's Tower, thinking of nothing but magic research, inventing new fields from the ground up, and probably being terrifying but - in a good way, and - in many ways not the same person at all, this Aritha has grown in like a sculptured decorative shrub around the pruning and training-wires of the Empire's constraints, but in Urtho's Tower a different Aritha would be happy and fierce and unstoppable and - something - 

 

(everything hurts) 

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He should figure out why it hurts but he keeps bouncing away from looking at it, it feels like - staring too hard into a solar eclipse, whatever that metaphor means - 

 

...what would Iomedae think? 

 

That Altarrin is not a shape that can be pruned, not really, but he is a shape that can be crushed

(What is he even supposed to do with a thought like that?) 

That he's boxed himself into a corner. That he let the gods box him into a corner, really, because wow it's suddenly obvious, it feels trivial, why the gods want the Empire to be predictable, why They are willing to allow canal-Gates and state schools as long as those aren't allowed to come together into the kind of flourishing civilization that, inevitably, treads new ground - can he even blame Them for being afraid, Tantara was beautiful and flourishing and treading entirely new realms of what was possible and look what happened next. 

That he too is desperately miserable and has been for a very long time    

that he hasn't once in this lifetime and body taken the time to go look at the stars, which is proof of something

 

That she doesn't want him dead,

 

and doesn't want to have to be enemies,

 

 

and wants him to be free to follow his fundamental human birthright of choosing something else better than that 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(There's so little space for that thought, even compartmentalized into imaginary Iomedae. It's barely a whisper. But it's there.) 

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And, of course, he doesn't actually know for sure that the hypothetical Iomedae who holds these detailed imaginary opinions matches the real one. Or matched, past tense, because he doesn't know if Iomedae is even alive. (Though he thinks it's more likely than he did half a candlemark ago, for reasons he...can't actually pin down, it seems to be opaquely coming from his model of her as a person, that she might be wrong about local afterlives but wouldn't be that wrong and overconfident in it about her own soul.)

If she is alive and in her own world, he still doesn't know her information state about what happened, or her intentions toward the Empire, or whether she hasn't return because she can't or because she doesn't want to. There is, somehow, space to hold onto that even in the midst of everything. 

 

 

 

 

 

 (From the point of view of the supervising research lead, Altarrin has been holding perfectly still and not saying anything for nearly a quarter of an hour. He doesn't exactly look like someone in the middle of a miserable internal existential crisis, but he doesn't entirely look okay either.) 

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- they're kind of concerned and will initiate a checkin? Is he noticing negative side effects of the headband?

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Oh no someone is talking to him. It feels from Altarrin's perspective like it's taking him at least fifteen seconds to drag his mind back into a configuration where he can answer in a way that isn't incredibly concerning. 

(He's processing a lot faster than anyone else in the room, though, objectively it's more like three seconds, though for Altarrin this is still a noticeable pause.) 

"I am finding the amplified emotions distracting," he admits. "There are a number of things that - went wrong, in the war and in the leadup to it happening at all, that I am unhappy about, and - one of the side effects is definitely making it easier to - ruminate on what I wish I had done better. ...It also enhances - social perception, or something, and I have been using it to try to grasp at a better understanding of Iomedae, since she is a key player here - and she would have many critiques."

This summary...is not false, at least if you count 'the entire history of the Empire and its institutions' as 'in the leadup to the war in Oris' which is technically true. 

 

...Altarrin would probably usually go on to offer a plan but a lot of things aren't working, right now, the headband does not actually give him infinite mental space to navigate around loyalty compulsions and - even though he's reminding himself firmly that the thing he's loyal to is the First Emperor's vision, and true loyalty to the Empire means achieving that, he is still having a pretty hard time. He'll...wait and see if the research leads are going to respond further. 

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- right. They're going to pass that up the chain of command, since it's outside what they were expecting going in, but don't think he needs to remove it, if he doesn't think so.

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He doesn't think so, no. 

(Which is interesting, he notes to himself, because the experience he's having right now is awful and it's taking rather a lot of effort to conceal, and yet - in fact he very badly doesn't want to take it off yet, he's - not done - if he takes it off now he doesn't know what happens, but it's probably even worse than what's happening now. But if he can push through it then...maybe he gets to the point where things make sense again.) 

He appreciates the checkin, and they should probably check in with him every five minutes or so if he seems to be lost in thought again, and definitely they are encouraged to wait until they're reassured about their current concerns - and until he's passed a Thoughtsensing check, which he doesn't want to do yet because most of his actively distressing emotions that he's trying to get under control are about highly sensitive state secrets, sorry - before okaying him to go off and do dangerous magic research alone.

He thinks he can make a lot of progress on the dangerous magic research but he does want to be very sure he's not impaired for it. He thinks another half-candlemark of acclimatization will be more than enough, and the other effects of the headband are going to be excellent for it. However, the supervision is for a reason and they should also run their own reasoning there by the offsite team before making a call. 

 

(This is at the very least a pretty misleading summary. Altarrin does not expect to be all right in half a candlemark, he just...also suspects that there's a path to - not this - and it runs through getting a Gate to Iomedae's world, and learning if Iomedae is there and alive, and if Aroden is who she claimed He was. And so he...had better, somehow, figure out how to pass a Thoughtsensing check so he can go work on making that happen.

He is perhaps, possibly, bringing up his appreciation for their care with the precautions less because he feels appreciative and more because he predicts it will lead them to being less worried about his mental state.) 

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They indeed seem assuaged, and leave him alone.

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All right. How does he get from...wherever he is now...to being able to pass a Thoughtsensing check, and also, you know, actually not being impaired and distracted such that he's liable to drop himself into the Elemental Plane of Fire by mistake if he does weird planar experiments. 

 

 

...He needs to not be having the line of thought he was just having, even though he suspects it was important, if only because having testable predictions around Iomedae's reaction to events in Velgarth is going to be quite relevant once he has a way to Gate to her world, and also for other reasons he can't think about the strategic picture reason is more than enough though.

The headband-self-awareness is flagging that not being able to think about something is worrying, but - it's not surprising, in this case, that modeling in depth what Iomedae thinks of the Empire is going to be an issue with the standard compulsions, Iomedae has no reason whatsoever to be loyal to the Empire or think only orthodox thoughts. It's moderately inconvenient but it's not a mystery. 

 

His mind doesn't really want to set it aside, it feels...unfinished...but he would expect that, he can't actually come to any final conclusions here by reasoning in a sealed underground room off the letters and eyewitness reports of a woman he's never met. He has testable predictions, he needs to actually test them, and that means he needs contact with her world. 

So - fold it up, encapsulate it with the mental tag of 'testable predictions of what Iomedae thinks of the Eastern Empire and recent events in it' and tuck it aside, for a time when he can actually make further progress on it...? 

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It's hard. There's a lot of internal screaming, coming from multiple different corners of his mind. 

 

...Poke at that. He's already set down a clear line of why there's no point ruminating on how not-knowing-the-answer (he is not really specifying what "the answer" is even in his thoughts) is distressing, given that he has a plan to get the answer and he will be much faster at it if he's not distracted. He knows how to do that mental motion even without a headband. It comes up a lot. 

He - thinks it's working, more or less, and the screaming is about other things. Mostly things he wants that are impossible, or aren't even coherent.

Great. Fine. Stare at those until they're at least organized, it - won't get him to 'okay' but he's mostly given up on that right now and it can at least get him to 'capable of compartmentalizing.' 

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He wants it to be the case that the Empire can work, that he was only missing one or two simple insights, or better yet only missing enough resources - what was it Samien said in his fake pitch for the nonexistent secret agent program... "The key to finding a substitute that they devised was a consistently rising prosperity per person, the Church had figures - I didn't memorize them, I'm afraid - and thought that with rapid enough development you could actually make it work with gratitude as long as no one had to be grateful for what happened three years ago instead of this year." He wants it to turn out that that works, or something like it, that there's - something real and good and beautiful to be built on the skeleton of the Empire he spent centuries building, that they can go from here to a place that can have Urtho's Tower in it without the intervening step where they have to burn it to the ground and start over... 

 

This is a coherent thing to want! It makes a lot of sense that he doesn't want his life's work - his work of many lives - to be, not just a failure, but a waste that should never have been attempted. 

He...isn't sure you can steer the Empire in a different direction, at this point; just like the individuals are pinned in place by a self-perpetuating system of incentives - a faceless wheel that lacks the capability to update on new information and choose to change - that system, too, is narrowly constrained. By the gods, partly, and maybe They can be negotiated with, but also just by...what kinds of equilibrium are stable in practice...and arguing with that feels like arguing with math

 

What else. 

He wishes that Iomedae had arrived before the Cataclysm. No matter what happens from here, there are things that were lost that can't be gotten back, ever, no matter how much magic Iomedae's world has to offer. (Unless they have the magic to travel back in time, but - Altarrin is pretty sure that's differently ethically fraught, would it - erase people - would it create a copy of his world but earlier, and his own past would still be lost - also wow he is going to sit on the temptation to let the headband-enhancement drag him off on an entire tangent about the philosophy of time-traveling magic, it's almost certainly not relevant.) 

...He wants Urtho to be proud of him, which is - probably a thing he's wanted for a long time - and impossible even in theory, now, and it's incredibly pointless to be dwelling on it now

He wishes he didn't have to keep secrets. Altarrin doesn't think this is an entirely useful framing but on an emotional level he feels like - how could he have ever thought he could build a civilization on trust, how could he have believed he understood what trust meant well enough to build anything with it, when he's never trusted anyone in his entire life with the most critical piece of who and what he is. 

He wishes the stupid letters had reached him early enough that it made any goddamned difference. 

He wishes he had been smarter, more careful, known to ask the right questions, and that is approximately asking for a miracle and not the kind gods can repeatedly grant. 

 

He wishes he had space to breathe.

(This thought really wants to unpack further, but...isn't...because he doesn't have space to breathe or air to give it, that's the entire problem.) 

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....And behind that, once he's stared at the sharper and more delineated sources of screaming long enough that they settle down into vague grumbling, there's - a quieter, deeper, darker pain. 

It takes a long time to name, and only partly because his mind is torn on whether it's s safe thought. It also just feels like...something he hasn't tried to pull into the light in a very, very long time. 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven hundred years ago, he looked at the stars and he made a vow. 

He...hasn't fulfilled it. He hasn't even come close to making up what was lost in the Cataclysm, which is at least partly his fault, and - plausibly still his greatest impact on the world. Depending on how you weight different factors, like 'number of starving children' versus 'quantity of mind control', it's unclear if he's made positive progress at all since the moment he woke up in a young Lionstar k'Leshya's body in a ruined world. 

Which would be bad enough! There's a pit of grief and regret and guilt there that he doesn't endorse staring into because it won't help move forward, but he could fall into it forever. 

 

 

But there's also 

(it's so hard to think) 

he can't

(everything hurts) 

he doesn't think he can 

do it

 

ever

 

 

from here 

 

 

 

and he has nowhere else to go

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- and then he's abruptly disoriented, bouncing away from Iomedae would call it the walls of his prison he said he was going to come back to the Iomedae-prediction-checking thing later once he has a Gate

Focus. Maybe literally just focus on his breathing and multiplying numbers in his head for a minute until he feels less of the dizzy-falling emotion.

 

 

A minute does not get him to feeling 'okay', he feels...very much like a thin mask of molded-paper over a bottomless pit. But he stared at - the thing that hurt the most - and it's still there but he can acknowledge it and do things anyway. Nothing else is clamoring for his attention. Mostly he feels numb, like none of his other emotions can even register in contrast to...whatever that one is called. 

He gives it another two minutes, which he spends organizing his thoughts to be mostly about the tactical situation in Oris, the importance of better intelligence on Iomedae's world, and the interesting mathematical problem presented by trying to Gate to another planet by finding a multi-planar routing.

Once he's ready, he calmly and politely tells the Thoughtsenser that he thinks he's accustomed to the headband now and the side effects are no longer actively impairing, and he would like if they did a Thoughtsensing read now to sanity-check his self-assessment. 

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They'll do that! Does the Archmage-General Altarrin seem stable and focused on the priorities he gave them before he went in?

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He's...hard to Thoughtsense, not in the sense of pushing through shields - he is very cooperatively not shielding at all - but in the sense that it feels like there's three times as much thinking going on as what normal people can manage, in layers and spaces that wouldn't even fit into most minds. And it's not just the volume; it's going by so fast, impossible to keep up with. 

 

Altarrin is clearly trying to make himself legible, though, holding some thoughts 'closer to the surface' and making them more explicit. 

He has a lot of concerns about the tactical situation in Oris. The grand simplification of why is 'because it will obviously advantage the gods if the Empire comes out of this weakened rather than strengthened', and a flicker of - places where there's room for the gods to maneuver, places where the Empire is currently leaving outcomes up to chance (which will never be in their favor) rather than pinning them down and overdetermining that they're going to win. 

(A deeper level of thought, at a preverbal level and quite hard to pick up on: that the Empire's entire strategy relies on always overdetermining that they're going to win, and this is...not doomed, necessarily, but certainly a very very big ask, and one that will predictably not always be met.) 

 

He's thinking ahead about how the artifacts they're studying here might be used in the various wars. There's a sprawl of hypothetical plans, weighing the pros and cons of each - this part is just logistics, but even with a fraction of his attention it's clear that he's tracking way more possibilities and risks than most people can hold. 

(The implicit thought below it, that actually he doesn't want to be fighting those wars at all, is barely perceptible, and comes across mainly as an emotional overtone of...weariness, and heaviness, and wanting it to be over.) 

He's thinking about Iomedae's world - a tangle of inferences, there, what can you predict about a society and culture from the handful of facts he knows about their gods and their afterlives and their style of diplomatic letters, what does that mean about how to approach trade with them, or war... 

 

He's thinking about the problem of Gate planar routing. This is actually where most of his attention is, and it's the hardest for him to make legible, because it's nearly all entirely nonverbal mathematical-spatial intuition. He thinks it's solvable, optimistic estimate he could do it in a few days with the headband, pessimistic estimate a week, pessimistic estimate if he decides to remove the headband is...longer but he can still get it, a month maybe. 

The emotions associated with that are also the ones at the forefront. Determination, and anticipation, and uncertainty and fear-of-the-unknown mostly held at bay by the relentless drive to move forward. They need this. 

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- right, well, none of that seems wrong, and it's Archmage General Altarrin, he's the person in the Empire who understands best the importance of fighting the gods, and it doesn't seem like the headband is making him worse at that.

 

They'll write a report but not recommend to the Emperor that the Archmage-General stop using the headband. And they'll check in regularly to make sure things are on a stable track.

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Altarrin's next step here is to do some planar-interaction experiments. There's a Work Room on-site with appropriate shielding for that type of work, but he's the only one here who has the skill to do it safely, and he would prefer to do it alone rather than risk one of the mage-researchers' lives. Do they want to propose a schedule for him to take breaks and check in? 

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Check-in every few hours?

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And Altarrin locks himself in a Work Room to do some hands-on observations of interactions between planes. 

 

 

 

He's making much faster progress than he would without the headband.

(He...does start to get the sense that whatever the headband is doing, exactly, it's not really meant to be used for magic research, and would be much better targeted at, for example, leading armies. Which kind of makes sense. Iomedae was a military leader, not a researcher. It still helps, a lot, but none of that is really coming from the increased emotional awareness or awareness of other people, which is mainly a distraction he has to set aside.) 

 

At the next check-in, he seems calm and also preoccupied, his head nearly entirely full of grim determination and math. 

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(Between the checkins, when he's alone in the shielded Work Room, he is...mostly pretty not okay, and quite often thinking things a lot more concerning than that. The problem is that the work isn't quite complex or all-encompassing enough to use all of his attention, and you would think that "it doesn't achieve anything to be conflicted and miserable right now, there's nothing he can do about the factors prompting it, the highest priority is developing a Gate-technique" would be convincing to his emotions but it...isn't, really.) 

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When he's exhausted at the end of that first day - or, well, closer to the next morning, he was in a good rhythm and the headband makes it a lot easier to push through mental fatigue - he removes the headband, because this just seems like a good idea.

He does it from in the shielded Work Room, which is a very good idea, because a level of background conflicted-misery that was previously entirely possible to box off and work around is suddenly flooding everything, and he loses...several minutes, probably, to some kind of overwhelming misery-panic-attack. He doesn't think he actually cries, because when he finally wrestles himself back to approximate calm his eyes are dry, but he's pretty sure that if he had done it in front of someone it would have been very worrying to the supervising research lead. 

He spends another five minutes getting his head in order, which mostly means ruthlessly folding away every unfinished line of thought and every unprocessed emotion that (he will tell himself very firmly) isn't relevant until he has more information on Iomedae's world, he slips out of the Work Room and updates whoever is on night supervision duty on his progress - even simplified, it's going to be hard to follow - and hands over the headband for safekeeping. He's probably going to sleep late, so they should at their discretion feel free to let Aritha use it again in the morning until he's ready to resume his work. 

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Aritha will delightedly take the headband in the morning and make some progress on identifying as a search target 'this kind of purified metal, laid very heavily with this kind of complicated set-spell', which will hopefully work even if the items here don't have exact duplicates.

 

She has no existential crises. She expects them to be conquered by the other world, because that's how everything works unless they are too distant and poor for the other world to bother with. She hopes instead they conquer the other world but she doesn't really expect it. 

That's not an existential crisis, since she can't contemplate defection. She's a researcher; her odds of surviving the war are not terrible.

 

She can report to Altarrin when he awakens.

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Altarrin, when he wakes up in the late afternoon, is very pleased with her progress! 

(He feels bleary and slow and like he's being slowly yet inexorably pulled apart between the desperate need to move forward and reach - a destination he cannot actually think about - and the crushing weight of something he also can't really think about.

He can think about search-spell techniques, though! Aritha is actually smarter than him right now, but he has more experience, and even without the headband he keeps up fine.) 

 

 

He thanks her for her work, updates her on some of his own progress the day before, and suggests some research directions for tomorrow.

And then he takes the headband, puts it on and needs only five minutes to 'get accustomed to it' and pass a Thoughtsensing check, and heads back to his own research. If he works until he's too exhausted to keep going, that will bring him to nearly dawn, and Aritha can have the headband again for most of the day and then report, it feels like the most efficient way to arrange things. 

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(It also means that by the time he stumbles to his guest bedroom, he's way too tired to lie awake being miserable for very long.) 

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He doesn't get it in two days.

He has the basic technique down. He could probably even reach another planet, one corresponding to a star he can see in the sky, if he had a specific-enough search-target to aim at. 

Iomedae's world is apparently much, much further than that, though; he tries it, with Aritha's current search-spell as of the end of her next day of work, and he doesn't think it fails, exactly, but it can't find anything within the distance he can reach. He's pretty sure even a thousand lives worth of blood-magic wouldn't be enough unless he can somehow cut down on that impossible distance. 

Figuring that out is the part that takes him most of a week. 

 

 

 

He's not really leaving himself time to think about anything other than research, except for the occasional quiet pointless five-minute panic attack in his Work Room. He's...pretty sure this is a mistake...but it's not a mistake he sees a way out of, he's under too many constraints and juggling too many threats and hurting in too many ways, and the time pressure is real and at least something he can focus on and turn into forward motion.

(To the research leads supervising him, who only interact with him during scheduled checkins and when he updates them at the end of a work session, he continues to seem preoccupied, and very stressed, but otherwise stable.) 

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After a week of working twelve candlemarks a day - well, mostly at night, so Aritha can use the headband while he's asleep - he thinks he has it figured out. The generic search-spell is picking up on something, at least, juuuuuust at the limit of his reach. He's pretty sure he could Gate, and end up - somewhere - that is magical in the way Aritha's search-spell is trying to find. 

(He could get the routing more efficient with another month, he thinks, by going back to fundamentals and figuring out an actually-elegant model of how the planes fit together. He's not going to do that right now.) 

 

 

He...also doesn't want to Gate somewhere blindly, especially since he's not sure it is Iomedae's world. What if there's more than one. 

Another half-day of work gets him to the point of being able to adapt the search-spell and planar routing to work with scrying. The power requirement is very high, compared to scrying anything in Velgarth, even on the other side of the continent or through shields, but he thinks he can manage a few seconds. 

...He would try to use Iomedae as a target, but he's never actually scried for her as a target as opposed to her artifacts, and he doesn't know that she's alive.

He asks the research team to assemble the artifacts, and sorts them by approximate complexity. Which ones are around the middle of that spread? The dagger is too simple, Aritha thinks she could learn to replicate it without needing many theoretical breakthroughs, and he wouldn't be surprised if there are hundreds or thousands like it. The headband, on the other hand, is absurdly complex and - if Iomedae was a legendary hero in her own world - might be unique, something that took the best mage in the world thousands of candlemarks of work, and that only a living legend could afford to own.

He wants something vaguely in the middle, such that there might be others of its type belonging to other less legendary warriors, but not hundreds of copies. 

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Aritha decided somewhere along the way that it's probably better for Archmage-General Altarrin to be the one shaping your mind for his purposes than Mage-General Kottras and since then she's been fantastically useful. She nominates the shield-amulet the priestess was wearing; it's expensive if she's right about what makes things like this expensive, but it's not priceless. Dozens not hundreds sounds about right.

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(Altarrin likes working with Aritha. He would like it even more if he wasn't miserable and if his mind didn't keep quietly reminding him of what she could be in Urtho's Tower and why he can't have that here.) 

 

He takes her advice. He doesn't think this part is especially dangerous to bystanders, and he does want someone on hand to pull him out of it if he's about to drain himself unconscious trying to get a better look, so Aritha is welcome to come sit with him in the Work Room while he targets an initial search on 'this shield amulet, but not the one here, the one(s) over there.' 

 

And...? 

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Many of the wearers of powerful Amulets of Natural Armor are important nobles; those also tend to possess good antiscrying shields. 


Some of them are heroic adventurers, but powerful adventurers do tend to make enemies, and those too often try not to be scried.

 

That leaves crusaders, who tend to rely in the field on their very good Will saves, which is not the thing Velgarth scrying interacts with. And so Altarrin's spell finds Marit, fifth-circle sword-wizard and paladin-in-the-honorary-nonmagical-sense of the Knights of Ozem, occupied as he usually is these days in holding the undead off the back of the army as it prepares to take Urgir. 

 

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That looks incredibly worrying and also Altarrin can probably only get fifteen or twenty seconds before he's risking giving himself backlash and being unable to do anything else for the rest of today. (Also, he can't overpower it any harder to get clearer mage-sight, because he's already overpowering the spell about as hard as it can take in order to reach the world at all.) 

That...doesn't not look like Iomedae's world. The person wearing the artifact doesn't not look like someone who could have been Iomedae's ally. (Or maybe Iomedae's enemy? He has so little context to work with...) 

 

With fifteen seconds of scrying time, what else can he pick up? He's mostly looking for nearby very powerful and distinctive artifacts to use as future scrying targets. (He'll also try to gauge what time of day it is, because if he can scry them at camp, rather than in the middle of a battle, maybe he can learn more off actual conversation.) 

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The most distinctive magic item around is probably the crusader's banner fluttering very very wearily nearby; it provides a continual hallow effect in a forty-foot radius, with death ward as the added spell hallow offers. It has Aroden's holy symbol on it, and it's glowing VERY VERY MAGICALLY.


Ustalav tends to be overcast, and this isn't an exception, but it doesn't seem to be night. (Not that there isn't fighting at night. One of the big advantages of undead armies is that they can attack at any hour without much difficulty.)

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He doesn't recognize the magic but it's certainly distinctive, enough that he thinks he could target it directly on a scry. 

 

He does recognize the symbol. It was on every temple to Aroden that he scried in Oris. 

So. He appears to have found Iomedae's allies. 

 

 

 

 

...and then he has to drop the spell before it drains him too far, but he's seen enough. 

 

He turns to Aritha, blinking away the black spots in his vision. "I think we found Iomedae's world. ...I need to rest. You can have the headband - if you can squeeze out slightly more efficiency for the scry, I can hold it longer when I try next." 

And he'll stagger out of the work room and confirm his success to the research lead. He's grey-faced with exhaustion and not entirely steady on his feet, but in the way you would expect from a mage who's pushed themselves moderately past their limits. 

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Aritha's pretty sure that anything that tires Altarrin that much she can't do at all, but she's not going to turn down the headband or the chance to think about magical theory more.

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Altarrin collapses into bed and sleeps like a rock for three candlemarks, and eventually drags himself awake and sits down to write an actual coherent report to the Emperor on what he found. The gist is that Iomedae's allies seem to be in a rather complicated situation right now, and while he thinks this could overall play in the Empire's favor - it has to reduce the risk that Iomedae's Knights of Ozem will pick a fight, and increase the odds that they will instead be willing to make a deal with the Empire in exchange for help (if it turns out the Empire can offer that cheaply, which seems entirely possible given their very different magic.) 

 

And then he heads back to join up with Aritha again, take back the headband, and try her very slightly tweaked and very slightly more efficient search-spell to find the incredibly magical banner again on a scry. 

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Urgir is originally a Dwarven fortress, which means it's going to be very very difficult to breach the walls, entirely separate from the general horrors of sacking a city once you get that far. They've had it invested for nearly a year, with no externally visible indications this has made their lives any easier at all; it seems plausible enough Tar-Baphon is supplying the city by Teleport, with enough food for those of his soldiers that eat if not for anyone else. There are other explanations. Maybe there are underground tunnels. Maybe there's a demiplane where food grows in abundance, laid in place by ancient Dwarven architects. (Underground agricultural caverns don't explain it. Those are delicate; they wouldn't be successfully manned by Tar Baphon's orc servants.) Maybe the orcs are eating each other.

 

It doesn't matter. This fight won't get notably easier if they besiege the place five years; they will have to do it now. They've been picking off the defenders on the walls with flying raids, but there's more where those came from, and no obvious shortcuts. 

 

(They would like to capture the place intact, so it can serve as a base of operations for next campaign season. But they'd like a lot of things they are not obviously going to get.)

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"I don't suppose you've thought of anything brilliant."

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"Brilliant? No. I've got half a dozen ways to take a gate, but everything I've thought of to get us past both the walls is risky. Or a brute-force approach that gets a lot of our men killed. It might be feasible to come up from below the city like the orcs did thousands of years ago, that has a number of problems but maybe tractable ones - we could take an inner gate with a small strike team and assault the outer walls with ladders, that probably only kills a quarter as many of our men as storming both - we could sneak a strike team into the city and kidnap one of the enemy wizards, learn from him how to bypass the teleportation wards, then teleport teams in - I assume it is still the case that Heaven is unwilling to send us a corps of angels if I open a gate for them - I could open a gate to the abyss from a thousand feet up and pour demons down into the city but that creates additional problems - "

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Most of the Knights get annoyed with Alfirin when she proposes unleashing a horde of demons on a populated city. Iomedae - doesn't. She'll be furious if Alfirin actually does it, but no one dies of the words, and - you'd want to have enough mental scouts posted that you'd notice if it actually were the best available tradeoff, right, you don't want half your mental scouts asleep at their post as they're never called for.

 

Heaven is not going to send a host of angels to take the city for them. She suspects this is more about god-agreements than scruples; individual summoned angels and archons are willing to fight for them, even in this, once they've talked to Iomedae. 

 

"I think I want to take a team in to take the inner gate while the main force under Marit storms the outer one," she says, after not actually all that long. At some point you can tell that your thought processes are treading no new ground, and at that point you have to force yourself to call them to a halt and pick something. "I'd be more sure if I had my sword and my armor and my ioun stones but I still expect we can hold the inner gate indefinitely, if we call in a lot of favors in advance preparing. The big risk is that Tar-Baphon decides to show and we have to abandon the inner gate to go meet him, but - honestly, if he's going to show, I don't much prefer to have us out front. And I'd expect he's likelier to try something before the attack than the day of the attack when we've bought a bunch of spell immunities we don't ordinarily have."

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"That's what I thought you'd say - the risk is that if things go badly that team might have a hard time getting out whether that's to escape or to confront Tar-Baphon elsewhere - No teleportation or planar travel, the gate mechanisms are indoors so flying out isn't an option if they're caught there - relatedly I'm not sure if we should both be on that team."

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"...I think if it's workable there are some other reasons to prefer going through the darklands - On balance I think it's worth delaying the decision another day to see if I can solve the practical difficulties, unless there's been unexpectedly bad news from Marit's rearguard today - no? - Once we're in the city some of the orcs will run. Not just the civilians, some of the soldiers too. If they run into the caves we'll be dealing with nighttime raids from inside the walls for the next six months. If we're attacking from below - we can open the siege lines, leave them a line of retreat to the west, and block the main darklands entrances. I am probably overestimating the chance that this will work out of - sentimentality - I've tried to correct for that in my assessment that it's worth the delay, but you should check me on that."

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She removes her headband and hands it over wordlessly.

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It's the most powerful kind of intelligence headband mortal hands can make, and without it Alfirin is smarter than Iomedae is when she's wearing it. 

 

Though Detect Thoughts does not in fact capture everything that matters. 

 

Gods are fragmented, paying attention to millions of things across an unknowable number of worlds; much of the art of being a god is figuring out how best to use the fragments of your own attention to notice things worth promoting to more of it, how to do as much of the work of making sense of the world as possible with as little intelligence as possible, how to build complex pieces out of simple ones. It is the rare fragment of a god's intelligence that is more intelligent than Iomedae. It's enough, if you have the right habits for using it, for building something greater than it out of its pieces. 

She breaks the plans down in her head into their natural fragments - what happens if they go as expected, what happens if they go badly, or really badly - well, or really well - matches them up against each other and tugs at the places where her thinking feels shakiest, where there are steps that she hasn't envisioned concretely enough - what happens next, what happens immediately after that - what does that specific kind of nagging confusion usually cash out to on the battlefield -

 

"One more day," she says. "I expect you still won't have a good angle, but it'd be worth it, if you did."

 

If she were speaking to anyone else she'd give advice, about what checks to run inside yourself when you suspect that the impulse to Good inside you isn't pointed in the same direction as achieving your objectives at acceptable cost. She wouldn't call it sentimentality; it's too close to framing it as a weakness. She has said all those things to Alfirin, and Alfirin found some of them convincing and some of them not, and those gulfs that remain between them aren't the kinds words can cross.

 

She gives the headband back. 

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The hard part, of course, is navigation. The darklands are notoriously convoluted; The crusade has dwarves with it, but none who are thousands of years old and might remember the particular network of caves below Koldukar. Ghosts sometimes persist for thousands of years - are there any rumors of hauntings here? Convenient ways to summon up a ghost?

There might be dark elves but - she would not bet at five to one odds in her favor that dark elves aren't a myth, and presumably even if real they don't exist everywhere in the darklands...

A find the path spell would find a way into the city from the darklands but ideally they want multiple paths, and the shortest path from wherever they cast it isn't likely to be one that can transit a larger body of troops -

Druids have spells for navigating unfamiliar wilderness. Low-circle spells, even. Maybe they work underground? Or have underground variants? She's not going to reengineer them as wizard spells in a day, but she knows druids. (She does not know any cave-dwelling druids who are the most likely to have a useful variation but perhaps she knows druids who know druids who know cave-dwelling druids)

- If there's no convenient entrance nearby but outside the city, maybe she can dig in? Move earth won't do it, but perhaps summoned elementals? Or - there are spells for flight and swimming, there are presumably spells for digging even if she doesn't happen to have any herself - druids might have those too -

...That's enough leads to take up her day if she doesn't think of any better.

"Thank you. I'll probably be leaving to do some research in Absalom and elsewhere - " Telepathic Bond - "so you can call me back if there's an emergency. ah - Transmuter, dwarf, red beard, what was her name - Nonden? Neddam? Whose command was she under, if you remember?"

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"Neddam, under Arshas. I'm going to ask Aroden if He's got any opinions on our options, here, and then relieve Marit for the night. May you realize all our hopes."

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When Altarrin next gets a scry up, Iomedae is there, in angel-winged flight, fighting some kind of many-limbed batlike demon-creature. 

 

(And, importantly, the ninth-circle wizard who would've noticed being scried even with an unfamiliar magic doing it is not there.)

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He's at-least-somewhat rested going into it this time, and actually remembered to eat, and had a sugary drink half a candlemark ago (for some reason this delays backlash and even the research-Healers aren't sure why), and also he knows where to look, on a scale much more precise than 'which planet' - he's not going to waste a lot of his previous reserves just on spooling out a relatively imprecise search-spell to find the right world. That alone will get him to being able to hold it for a whole minute before he starts to risk backlash. 

Also, while he can't use a standard powered scrying-artifact for the search component, which is decidedly nonstandard and probably still too underspecified and running-on-intuition to teach to anyone else let alone lay down as a set-spell, he's set it up this time so he can at least drain the power reservoir. That can get him to several minutes, if it seems justified. 

 

 

He casts the spell. 

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Iomedae is alive. 

 

This has....a lot of strategically relevant consequences. (Many of them are paths he can't follow because there are walls in the way; over a week of working with the headband, Altarrin has gotten very accustomed to navigating those constraints.)

Anyway, while he's in the middle of holding a scry isn't a good time to be thinking through them, though, so he sets it aside, and just - 

(- notices that he's glad and relieved and it feels a little more like maybe something can be salvaged, it feels a little more like there might be a light at the end of all of this -)

 

....Just focus on observing as much as he can, in the first...call it 45 seconds...he has no way to do anything except "Gate in" (which would exhaust his remaining reserves, so he wouldn't be very able to fight afterward) and he needs to make a call on whether this is even a good time to be collecting intelligence. 

What happens, in those 45 seconds? 

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She kills the bat thing, sweeps on down to engage a second bat thing that's ripping its way through her men, kills that one too, heals everyone, and then takes off fast to go help some men farther down the line with the skeleton archers who are firing on them from the nearby hills.

She looks - tired, but tired in the manner of someone in the tenth hour of the tenth day of a march, not tired in the manner of someone handling an unexpected emergency. The bats were expected, the casualties were expected, she has been doing this all night and will do it all morning so Marit has some time to contemplate plans for the primary assault. Her Ring of Sustenance is back to functioning. 

 

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...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. 

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

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...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?

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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? 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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Bastran hates getting reports like this. 

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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.) 

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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. 

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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??

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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.) 

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

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(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. 

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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. 

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(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. 

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- 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.

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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.

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This report will go to the Emperor, then.

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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. 

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This turns out to be a surprisingly unpleasant exercise in feeling terrible about himself! He had really thought he'd already explored all of the ways he could feel terrible about himself, by now. 

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Bastran writes a deeply humiliating report to send back to the northern research center.

(If he were wearing a WIS-enhancing headband, he might perhaps notice that this was mostly only humiliating from his own perspective.) 

 

...His overall impression is that Altarrin's thoughts, as described to him in the Thoughtsenser's report, seem pretty characteristic of him, and he's not especially concerned about mind-control from the headband. 

 

(Altarrin would want to have peace instead of...not that. Altarrin has lectured him about the concepts behind that a thousand times. Altarrin has repeatedly forced him to shove his face into looking at the costs of war. Altarrin has repeatedly reminded him to notice his own rationalizations towards solutions that feel simpler and easier but ultimately cost far more lives...) 

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They would really much rather have gotten orders than a report they have to interpret themselves but in the absence of orders from the Emperor, Altarrin's ...in charge here ....so they'll let him do whatever it is he's planning...

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Right now what he's planning is to sit down and write a very long letter. 

 

He's...writing it from a very different place than his report to Bastran. He is not actually intending to show a copy to Bastran. It's - not really the right question, which angle is more sincere or more what he really believes, it's just that communication is a two-place function and if he wants Iomedae to come away understanding his intentions, he needs to write it with the person she is in mind.  

(There's another half-formed thought behind that one, and a tangle of emotion, but not one he can take the time to follow right now. There are a lot of urgent priorities that come ahead of figuring out his own feelings.) 

To Iomedae of the Knights of Ozem

I, Archmage-General Altarrin of the Eastern Empire, am personally writing this letter to you, though I speak on behalf of my Empire. 

I wish to begin this letter with several apologies. Given the differences between our worlds, I am not sure how to express it such that you will understand, and I hope you will take into account that my words may be misunderstood because I lack some critical understanding. 

I am sorry that I killed you. The decision is one that made sense given what I knew at the time, but I regret having failed to notice my uncertainty and lack of context, and particularly that I failed to notice a situation where the gods of Velgarth might be manipulating us in an unexpected direction. I would likely have made different decisions had I received your letters in the order they were sent, and particularly if I had known your explanation that Aroden was once human. Given how often the gods' goals seem to be the precise opposite of my own, the fact that They appear to have worked very hard to deny me that information, in itself, evidence to me that negotiating a ceasefire with the Knights of Ozem, which is something I would have been more likely to do had I known more, would have been a path I end up preferring.

I regret deeply that the Empire, seen from the outside, is a place you would so predictably oppose. I regret the lives lost in the war with Oris, and while of course at the time the Empire was very opposed to your work, I do regret that our actions took you away from the people you had committed to help, with the result that they were overextended and lost a war you had asserted to them could be won. I imagine this would have bothered you a great deal. Having now seen the war that your order is fighting in your own world, I also regret having kept you from it for so long, and the cost your people very clearly paid for it. 

And I regret the initial assumptions I made about you and your god. I hope that you may understand better why, if and when you learn more of the gods of our world; I expect you have already made some updates based on the fact that it appears They were steering for your death, and at the highest cost to the Empire that I was willing to pay. While I cannot say, at this point, that I know enough to be certain that Aroden is a god I would approve of, I ought at least update my baseline priors – and when I am starting from uncertainty, rather than the near-certainty that any given god is hostile, the specific evidence you have provided is at least somewhat compelling and I am very motivated to verify your claims and learn more. An allied god would change almost everything for our Empire, and if such an alliance were on the table, it would more than justify making compromises on some of the Empire's currently policies in order to secure it. I imagine is an outcome your order would be pleased about as well. 

I understand that, given the Empire's actions in Oris, we are not starting off on grounds where you or the Knights of Ozem have any reason to trust our motives, and it is on us to prove them. As an initial offer of good faith, I am returning some of your artifacts, so that you may be better equipped in your current war. While I would be grateful if you considered it part of an agreement not to conduct further offensive operations against the Empire, including in Oris, I explicitly do not expect or demand anything in return for this offer, since it would be unreasonable to unilaterally force an agreement that you had no opportunity to negotiate or decline. 

If you wish to speak further, I have a means of scrying your world, and of transporting myself or others there, or retrieving objects or people to Velgarth. I am not yet confident enough in the Knights of Ozem to invite a messenger here or to send one of my own people to you, but if you have a means of translation that lets you write in our tongue, you can write your reply on the back of this letter that I have left blank and leave it in a deserted scryable area, I will take this to mean that you accept the terms of my offer and would like to conduct further talks. 

- Archmage-General Altarrin, Duke of Kavar, representative of Emperor Bastran IV and the Eastern Empire. 

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And he'd like the sword to be sheathed and then carefully packaged, the fall won't damage it but the sword might damage other people, which is hardly a friendly opening move. The letter can be rolled up neatly and placed in a leather scroll case and attached, along with the bag containing the mysterious ring and the mysterious head-orbiting stones. 

 

 

(He won't refuse to show the letter to the lead researcher, if he's asked directly, but he's not intending to make the offer himself.) 

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The Emperor said Altarrin's in charge here, or at least did not countermand Altarrin being in charge here. They are not going to further question him.

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Then he'll go to the Work Room again. Alone, because he's not entirely sure the other side won't have some kind of instantaneous-effect contingency up and blast his Gate. He can probably survive it, he is possibly the only person ever to have survived a Master-potential mage final striking his Gate destination terminus as it went up (...it was not fun but he recovered), but this is much less true of the researchers. 

 

He puts up a lot of wards, including to trigger an alarm and summon help if there's a powerful magical discharge or if he collapses unconscious. (He's probably not going to lose consciousness just from the power-drain of the Gate on top of the scry, but it's more of a possibility than he would like, and a scenario where he would want prompt Healing attention.) 

 

 

He tries again to scry for Iomedae. It's been nearly a candlemark, longer than he had wanted to wait. Is she still at the camp, or is she back on the battlefield already? 

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Unscryable, actually. 

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Huh. 

(He drops it immediately, without having fully gotten the spell up at all, he doesn't know if they have a way to detect it, or if whatever anti-scrying wards her world uses also have teeth.)  

 

Can he get the sword-wielding mage who was with her before? 

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He is in the field, leading the defense of the army's rear as it masses outside Urgir, fighting deadly already-dead things with only slightly less terrifying ability than Iomedae.

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He doesn't especially want to drop the sword there, it might end up with the animated corpse army rather than Iomedae's side. He watches for ten seconds anyway, getting the scry up at all is a lot of the energy cost and any additional context is still useful, but then drops it to conserve his strength. 

 

 

Can he target a scry on the camp location where Iomedae was previously? He would rather have gotten it to Iomedae herself, but - it's clear her people are loyal to her, and they'll presumably recognize her sword. 

 

(He basically expects this to work unless, in fact, Iomedae is still there and they just got around to putting up wards between his last try and now, which seems unlikely unless they had a way of detecting his last scry, and he would have expected someone to react visibly if so.)

He's also getting a bit tired, at this point, but he can eke out another couple of scries and probably still have enough for the Gate.

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He can do that. Her people are cooking, digging, repairing armor and weapons, etcetera.

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...He sits down on the floor, because he's feeling drained enough already that losing consciousness after this is starting to feel like a real possibility. 

No point in hesitating, and he can't afford to hold the scry longer anyway. He drops it. 

 

Casts the Gate search-spell, spooling it out and out and out, his vision starting to grey out around the edges - 

 

 

- and there, and Gate-threshold up, about a hundred yards in the air, though it takes an entire two seconds to stabilize it. He's casting his end horizontal on the floor in front of him under the sword so it'll fall through directly...

 

Does anyone manage to attack his midair Gate-threshold during the four seconds or so before the sword is through and the Gate is down? 

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They do have aerial scouts who can notice it, actually, but what they do is call out a warning about a probable-Teleport of an invisible person, not attack the site of the magic signature.

 

The Gate goes down uneventfully.

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It's not an invisible person! It's a visible package of some kind, long and thin and rather sword-shaped, which is now falling! 

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Also Altarrin is now sprawled on the floor with his cheek against the stone and his vision swimming. He didn't quite black out enough to trigger the contingencies, which is...sort of unfortunate...because now he has to push through his pounding reaction-headache and scrape something out of his nearly-empty reserves in order to get a communication-spell up and (not especially coherently) summon help. 

 

It'll be apparent to whoever responds that he's uninjured and the wards didn't flag any unexpected magic, he's just too drained to move. Which he did warn them was moderately likely. 

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- they will come get him medical attention and only moderately panic that this is enemy action.

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:Contact from Velgarth, come back: she alerts Alfirin sixty seconds later.

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Lamashtu's tits.

 

"...I have to go, I don't know when I'll be able to return - sending me when you've made up your mind."

And she'll teleport back to the camp.

:What is the news and should we plane shift to discuss it - I've only got one we'd need to bring a cleric:

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:They sent a letter. And my sword. And the ioun stones. Detena thinks no traps - I had Kalaris put up an antimagic field and unwrap the package but without magic he can't read the note. I think it's worth the plane shift, honestly - I'm very surprised -:

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:Mm. I'll be right there, I want to look at them first - Detena's good but I'm better, with unfamiliar or hidden magic - and grab someone for the return plane shift.:

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:Acknowledged.: She's going to pray for guidance in the meantime, though from their current best understanding the gods' foresight is blurry when tracking interworld interactions and probably Aroden has no idea what's going on here.

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If the gods' foresight would be blurry here, so would her own, probably. Nobody's verified that the wizard versions of the prophecy spells actually use the same mechanisms as the gods' prophecy, but it seems likely. It would be worth it to try, anyways, under more normal circumstances, but as it stands she can't spare the spell slots.

Kalaris backs away and Alfirin inspects the items with the antimagic field gone. :They haven't been modified and don't have any active spells on them. If it's a trick it's - something to make it easier for them to scry or teleport to, maybe some kind of object that's easy to uniquely identify - or their magic is much much better at hiding spell effects than ours - or their magic simply doesn't show up on standard divinations. Either of the latter would be surprising; pending reading the letter I'd guess - actually let me save that for when we're less observable. To be on the safe side if this was all to smuggle a teleport targeting beacon on to your person, I recommend copying the letter and then destroying it and the scabbard and - everything else that wasn't one of your magic items.:

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:Sure.: Copying the letter can be done with magic and shouldn't take long; the rest can be destroyed; the magic items can go with them on the Plane Shift, with Jala along for the return Plane Shift and also a commune if they're needed.

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The magic items get a communal nondetection and go in a bag of holding, because if the Velgarth empire is spying, she would like this to be difficult for them. And then to the gardens.

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To Iomedae of the Knights of Ozem

I, Archmage-General Altarrin of the Eastern Empire, am personally writing this letter to you, though I speak on behalf of my Empire.

I wish to begin this letter with several apologies. Given the differences between our worlds, I am not sure how to express it such that you will understand, and I hope you will take into account that my words may be misunderstood because I lack some critical understanding.

I am sorry that I killed you. The decision is one that made sense given what I knew at the time, but I regret having failed to notice my uncertainty and lack of context, and particularly that I failed to notice a situation where the gods of Velgarth might be manipulating us in an unexpected direction. I would likely have made different decisions had I received your letters in the order they were sent, and particularly if I had known your explanation that Aroden was once human. Given how often the gods' goals seem to be the precise opposite of my own, the fact that They appear to have worked very hard to deny me that information, in itself, evidence to me that negotiating a ceasefire with the Knights of Ozem, which is something I would have been more likely to do had I known more, would have been a path I end up preferring.

 

"- captured the rebel leadership," she says, quietly. "I didn't tell that many people my name. They're also the only ones who knew Aroden would return me here."                      

               "....if I were apologizing for killing you I'd send the diamond along," Jala says.

"I doubt they even know it used a diamond. I didn't talk about how it worked."

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"Six against one that they're sincere. Seven against one was what I was going to say before we plane-shifted here, and this doesn't change that much but it seems - targeted."

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"They have my headband." Which is more reason to think it's not sincere; it makes the targetedness easier to achieve and less informative. 

 

I regret deeply that the Empire, seen from the outside, is a place you would so predictably oppose. I regret the lives lost in the war with Oris, and while of course at the time the Empire was very opposed to your work, I do regret that our actions took you away from the people you had committed to help, with the result that they were overextended and lost a war you had asserted to them could be won. I imagine this would have bothered you a great deal. Having now seen the war that your order is fighting in your own world, I also regret having kept you from it for so long, and the cost your people very clearly paid for it.

 

The intent, presumably, is to persuade her that the war in Oris has been lost and the rebels crushed, whatever language about her feelings it's cloaked in. But it's an odd thing to convey along the rest, because - because there was no army in Oris, when she was assassinated. They must have transported and assembled one after killing her, and destroyed the rebels in the field, and captured Orestan or Samien or both, and then told her they regretted that due to the assassination all of this had occurred, as if the rest of it had been some kind of random accident rather than carried out by an army they had at extraordinary expense transported there to do precisely that -

- maybe if they didn't realize that they'd made a poor choice of enemies until after capturing Orestan or Samien? -

- set that aside. 'with the result that they were overextended and lost a war you had asserted to them could be won.' It stings, which is presumably the intent. She cannot in fact afford to refuse to work with the Empire just because they brutally reconquered Oris, or even because they did that and want to rub it in. 

"I am reasonably confident I'd have disliked the Empire as much from the inside," she says. "We can adopt the diplomatic frame that this was a misunderstanding and the fault of the local demon princes, and the local demon princes certainly weren't helping, but -"

           "Have you ever met an Empire you liked," says Jala.

"Everyone keeps saying that. Taldor is less bad. It was - possible - for someone like me to grow up in Taldor, it's possible for a noble-raised Taldane child to go 'wow, Taldor sucks, I'm going to do something else' - when Taldane forces are burning villages to the ground in a pointless internal war there are Taldane organizations that will protest and drag the charred skulls of children to court to embarrass everybody -"

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"The headband was already accounted for. It's still - a very strong signal that they returned the sword, instead of siding with the enemy of their enemy and reaching out to Tar-Baphon - they might have done that first but I don't think that's likely, this isn't his style. Also - it's not the most immediately pertinent detail but - I don't think we have sufficient reason to believe that they're demon princes in particular. They could be, but they could also be some kind of abberation, or gods which, by treaty, do not grant clerics on that particular planet - Possibly they have a more normal intervention pattern on other planets around that star - There's a lot of possibilities, we don't want to get stuck in that one assumption"

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"If they'd reached out to Tar-Baphon first he'd have just dropped a couple hundred of them on the army with the suicide attack ability, end of crusade," she says flatly. "He'd still have thousands to work with and it's not worth showing you his hand until he's ended the crusade."

 

And I regret the initial assumptions I made about you and your god. I hope that you may understand better why, if and when you learn more of the gods of our world; I expect you have already made some updates based on the fact that it appears They were steering for your death, and at the highest cost to the Empire that I was willing to pay. While I cannot say, at this point, that I know enough to be certain that Aroden is a god I would approve of, I ought at least update my baseline priors – and when I am starting from uncertainty, rather than the near-certainty that any given god is hostile, the specific evidence you have provided is at least somewhat compelling and I am very motivated to verify your claims and learn more. An allied god would change almost everything for our Empire, and if such an alliance were on the table, it would more than justify making compromises on some of the Empire's currently policies in order to secure it. I imagine is an outcome your order would be pleased about as well.

 

"- I do think it's just true, that the local whatever-they-are were steering for my death at the highest possible cost to the Empire. After the first round of suicide strikes, which were injurious and shouldn't really have been,  I actually said to the Empire that this had been mildly persuasive about their the-gods-hate-us case. I don't know if they had anyone nearby enough to hear."

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Like she said, not his style.

"I - concur - My read so far is that they are sincerely hoping to turn relations with us around, they have plenty of reason to prefer us as allies - and this is just acknowledging that they've noticed. That doesn't say anything about what they'll do if we decline to ally, they might - not without reason - assume we are now their greatest threat. And they can traverse the distance between us, and we cannot, for now."

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I understand that, given the Empire's actions in Oris, we are not starting off on grounds where you or the Knights of Ozem have any reason to trust our motives, and it is on us to prove them. As an initial offer of good faith, I am returning some of your artifacts, so that you may be better equipped in your current war. While I would be grateful if you considered it part of an agreement not to conduct further offensive operations against the Empire, including in Oris, I explicitly do not expect or demand anything in return for this offer, since it would be unreasonable to unilaterally force an agreement that you had no opportunity to negotiate or decline.

 

" - yeah, all right, we probably need this alliance,  but ....I don't want to agree not to conduct further operations in Oris yet."

         "....what would be unreasonable about making the return of the items conditional?"

"They don't have visible Law there, they might not want to test ours that far, like how I wouldn't ask anyone on that planet for their oath."

         

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"I do, on balance, favor an alliance or at least non-aggression pact but - some considerations against.

First, as you said, they don't have visible Law. All of our intuitions about how to interpret signals like we've received come from an environment with visible Law, where - there's not reliably a short-term advantage to pretending to Law that you don't have.

Second, an alliance would  be of limited use to us - Iomedae and I discussed this earlier, and she observed that Tar-Baphon may very well have access to Even Greater Teleport. If we bring to his attention that there are resources in Velgarth he could go there and claim them easily, and we're not prepared to open another front on another planet.

Third, allying with the Empire could antagonize the Empire's existing enemies. We don't know that those enemies are not gods. Even if they aren't we don't know a lot about their capabilities. It's a pretty big unknown, and we're not in a position to pick up new enemies any more than we are new fronts."

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"At minimum I think we need to respond immediately and warn them not to on their end do things that may bring them to Tar-Baphon's attention, warn them that he can Dominate them if they scry him, all that. I think if I swear emphatically that if I expect that to be very very bad for them they won't actively take it as reason to do it.

After that - 

- I don't know. I'm so tempted to see if we can leverage this to make Urgir less of a nightmare, and I don't see how we can afford the risk of showing off Velgarth capabilities even if we were going to negotiate something fast enough, and all of the Empire's soldiers are enslaved, many of them from childhood, and I don't actually know if that means I'm unwilling to use them for the crusade or not."

 

         " - you don't?" says Jala, who in fact is usually in Absalom and not usually in the command tent. "It seems fairly disqualifying."

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"If they die here they get Axis. - the evil ones we won't take, obviously."

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"Yes, warn them against Tar-Baphon of course -

If we were going to use them for Urgir we'd want to use their suicide-fireballs to clear the walls - "

:...or the whole city, I'm not going to bring it up with everyone else when it's probably not worth it to use them anyways but you should be aware it's an option. It would be - better for the soldiers' survival rate. And their Good. And their Law.:

" - but I think using them here would be a mistake until and unless we can fortify their empire against Tar-Baphon subverting it."

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"I do not think we can do that without an allied god operating there. The interference of their god-enemies is just an enormous advantage for their non-god enemies, and - everything runs on mind control, and they're used to being the most powerful game in town... I expect there are less than three dozen people empowered to do anything if the Emperor is subverted and I expect the Emperor knows who most of them are."

 

She is not going to force the Empire's slaves to suicide-Fireball civilians to spare her own soldiers the hit to their Good and Law from sacking the city, but she doesn't want to argue it with Alfirin right now. 

 

" - could ask them for diamonds. It's less good-faith than I'd like, doing that without mentioning the diamonds also give us the ability to traverse the worlds, but my impression is that it'd be comparatively inexpensive for them to send us a dozen True Resurrection grade diamonds and I would agree to let them complete their butchery of Oris, for that."

      Jala makes a face.

"- I know. I hate it too. It is very hard to describe how much I hate it. But it is a price I already decided to pay, because I couldn't save Oris and our world both, and if the Empire now wants to come to us with bloody hands and express their sympathy at how badly I must feel about what they did, then that's the least part of that price, really."

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Someone is going to have to kill the civilians and - it's better if it's quick. It's better, for their ability to hold the crusade together through the winter, better for their campaign next year, better for their chances of destroying Tar-Baphon for good, if the common soldiers think of themselves as crusaders against the undead hordes and not as a bunch of murderers and rapists and looters. War is full of horrors and - sometimes there's something better, but sometimes all you can do is choose who gets the blood on their hands. It's why she burned the witchgate without waiting for orders, it's why she's going to have cloudkills ready to clear the tunnels if they wind up going over the wall, but - she can't actually kill every civilian in Urgir who refuses to run. It's not that it would break her - that's - part of what her role is, she's the person who comes closest to keeping pace with Tar-Baphon's planning, she's the one who rederives Even Greater Teleport when they need it, and she's the one who can commit atrocities without damaging her effectiveness or alignment.

Iomedae didn't actually say anything which means she does not want to hear this now and it won't be productive to press the point, when the object-level question is purely hypothetical.

"Diamonds are a good ask. If we do make some alliance with them it's - a way for them to send us substantial aid at relatively low cost and without revealing their capabilities to Tar-Baphon."

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"Right. Let's - get them a fast response immediately, then, and after that we can work out a longer one."

Archmage-General Altarrin, Duke of Kavar:

We acknowledge and wish to express gratitude for your message and for the return of these magic items, and hope for productive further conversation. We hope you'll forgive the brevity of this message, which ignores most of the interesting considerations you proposed.

It is of extraordinary importance that the existence of your world not become known to the powerful necromancer who my forces in Golarion are presently combatting. He may possess a cheaper means of transit between worlds than the one possessed by us, can instantly identify and extremely-powerfully-mind-control people who scry him or anyone in his presence (we make no representation as to whether we can also do this, but will not do so in response to scries to drop off letters as part of the course of honestly conducted negotiations), and we believe would experience no difficulty in enslaving the whole of the Empire and immediately reallocating its already-mind-controlled forces towards his aims. 

(We could be wrong that he would experience no difficulty if there are either of a highly capable and powerful task force of people whose location and abilities aren't known to the Emperor or any of his senior staff who would react immediately were the Emperor so compromised or magics that make the Emperor immune as I am to all external control and which would pass immediately and uncomplicatedly to a successor were the Emperor abruptly killed.)

I strongly recommend that you not Gate here at this time. I represent that our primary motivation in giving this advice is that I anticipate an error that brought you to the necromancer's attention would be irrecoverable and not at all in your interests or ours. 

I swear to the representations in this letter on my honor, that of my order, that of Aroden's Church.

Noting in case additional time on this is valuable to you that the most useful item for trade I identified while in Velgarth is diamonds; they are compact and extremely useful to us and we expect to be willing to pay generously for them. 

I am not at this time willing to make commitments re: future intervention in Oris, and note also that my commitments re: nonintervention in the Empire would no longer hold were it conquered by the necromancer in question. If resources are provided alongside conditions on their use I will abide by the conditions or not use the resources (/permit their use by others, make their location known to others, take loans with them as collateral, etc.)

Iomedae, Knight-Commander of the Knights of Ozem and of the Shining Crusade

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They do not have the letter Altarrin originally sent them to attach this communication to, but they can attach it to the sword and leave it in a scryable location along with a Scholar's Ring so the Empire can read it.

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Altarrin is, unfortunately, going to spend the next twelve candlemarks more or less bedridden while worried Healers do as much as they can about the backlash. He hands off the headband for Aritha's use, wearing it lets him think through the pain but he probably shouldn't. It's been a long time since he last gave himself backlash this severe without also being severely injured - usually if he's pushing himself that far it's because he's in combat or escaping an assassination attempt - and it's shockingly unpleasant even with nothing else wrong with him; on top of the blinding headache, he's feverish and nauseated and repeatedly cycling between being too warm and too cold. 

After four or five candlemarks of rest and Healing he's...more functional, he's pretty sure he could work, but he certainly won't be able to scry the other world again until he's gotten a full night's sleep and his reserves are recovered, so it doesn't seem worth taking the headband back from Aritha. He can at least write a formal report to the Emperor, not that there's a lot to be said in it; Iomedae was behind shields against scrying this time, which might be relevant, and then he dropped the package at their camp and did not really have any chance to observe the reaction to it. 

 

 

It's not until almost a full day later that he returns to the Work Room and tries to scry for the letter. He's...not shocked to find nothing. He methodically tries the returned magic items instead, which are an obvious alternate target for Iomedae's people to use, especially if they copied his letter and destroyed the original before reading it. He doesn't start with the sword, it's the one Iomedae is most likely to keep on her person and be using, and so he is again rather drained by the time he gets to it. 

 

...he should not raise a Gate that will predictably leave him incapacitated for another day before he can send a reply. He'll...take a nap...and then go check in with Aritha. Does she have any suggestions on making the search-spell more efficient, he could badly use a slightly less power-intensive version and he's pretty sure it's possible, the initial attempt was approaching this in just about the least efficient way that could work at all. 

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With the headband on and another day to play around she's had some ideas, though they don't actually reduce the power requirements all that much. He could consider wearing the belt of extraordinary stamina?

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That's actually a very good idea!

(Which Altarrin had completely failed to think of because...well, mostly because he hasn't been leaving himself space to think at all, outside the specific research problem, and this is a very predictable oversight from that and one of the reasons it's a mistake, and it still doesn't feel like there's...another option...his thoughts slide away from something there as well.) 

 

He requests the belt and puts it on, and tries to gauge his reserves now.

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Yeah, that's notably better. 

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In that case the Gate should just be doable. He has Aritha's minor efficiency tweaks, and his own routing intuition is improving now that he's done it once. Though he does have to spend a while figuring out where exactly to place the threshold so he gets the scroll and not the sword, which Iomedae is...apparently not using??...but which he does not in fact intend to take back for that reason. 

 

It's still an exceptionally hard Gate, for sure, and eats through most of his enhanced reserves, but he doesn't have a headache at the end of it. 

...he's going to lock the package in the Work Room and go sit down for a few minutes and have a snack before he does anything else, actually, and then - once he's very sure that he's not fatigue-impaired - return to inspect it very closely with mage-sight before touching it. 

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By the time a day has passed they've added another letter (though Iomedae feels some dread around the fact the first one hasn't been picked up) and added Aroden's holy books and a dozen history books.

Archmage-General Altarrin, Duke of Kavar:

The Knights of Ozem remain committed to not conducting offensive operations against the Empire outside of Oris, so long as the Empire also does not expand the scope of its offensive operations against the Knights to any outside Oris. 

We have much in common with the Empire. We believe it is through the manipulations of the gods that the Empire has been driven to the appalling and inhumane conduct we have witnessed from it, and we believe that the Empire free of the manipulation of those gods could be a state which we would be honored to ally with and protect.

We are indeed persuaded, in part through the gods' apparent role in your success at killing me (the method attempted would have failed, were I not subject to unusual bad luck in the moment), and in part through conversation with Aroden, that the powerful entities operating in your world are opposed to Aroden. It seems likely that they have also steered the Empire in its decision to reconquer Oris and, we presume, suppress His church. Aroden would represent a rival to them and a danger to their intentions of suppressing prosperity and innovation on Velgarth, and the Empire is easily employed towards their aims here.

With that said, if it isn't too late, I want to urge you in the strongest terms to cease the Empire's activities in Oris. You are acting in the employ of your enemies. Were there a free Arodenite state on your borders, you would have time and opportunity to determine at your leisure whether Aroden is aligned with your priorities, and whether He is lawful and possible to work alongside; when you have been employed by your gods to make that impossible, it will be harder for us to present persuasive evidence of it, and harder for Aroden to gain a foothold in Velgarth should you become persuaded He would be a valuable ally. Orisan independence serves the Empire and one of the strongest pieces of evidence your gods were working against our shared aims is the fact that the Empire was instead induced to prioritize Oris's destruction over the multiple civil wars that genuinely threaten it. 

The Knights are unwilling to commit to nonintervention in Oris primarily because we are skeptical about the representation in Altarrin's previous letter that the war in Oris is over and the resistance crushed. Obviously if it is in fact the case that the Empire has already slaughtered all followers of Aroden in Oris then there is little point in returning for what would effectively be the start of a new war, but it seems more likely, frankly, that the Empire is in the middle of that effort, and that it's going to be a slow one. You could instead - I entreat you to - stop. Not a single killing conducted in Oris in the Emperor's name has served him, from Iomedae on down.

If the Empire instead remains committed to its war, the Knights can, in fact, be bought off. Unfortunately, our world is under threat and a sufficient supply of diamonds will save it. We are open to negotiating nonintervention in the Imperial brutality in Oris, though we condemn it in the strongest terms as serving neither the Empire, nor the Emperor, nor the cause of civilization and human flourishing, nor the Knights, nor anyone but the cruel gods of Velgarth. 

In trade for diamonds, the Knights can provide potions and wands of magical healing, powerful magic items (though the specific ones currently in the Empire's possession we need returned), instruction on the manufacture of said magic items, and protection from the necromancer and from other external interference the Empire might invite should it draw Golarion's attention to it. In further trade we could perhaps send soldiers to aid in the Empire's other wars and of course we'd be delighted to be permitted to send priests who can cure disease, produce huge amounts of clean water, and do magical healing on a routine basis as is standard in Golarion. (It is broadly unacceptable to us for these people to be enslaved in the manner routine in the Empire, but we're happy to make binding commitments about their conduct before they go, including placing our own Geases under some circumstances, and with more negotiation it would be acceptable for there to be limited, non-motivation-altering, compulsions.)

The present form of communication seems perhaps costly to the Empire. Interworld transit is costly for us as well, and expends resources we would prefer to use on the war, but with a few diamonds I expect we could set up a safe and less costly method of communications, and would make doing so a high priority, and pledge not to employ the diamonds against the interests of the Empire.

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The Scholar's Ring is as baffling as any Golarion magic item, though included is a sketch of a happy person wearing it and reading a book!

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Altarrin is going to take the obvious precautions here! Once he's examined it for a while, and escalated to poking it a little with magic and making sure it's not set to explode on touch or something, he hands it over to the research team to test. 

He's pretty sure he knows what it does, based on the diagram and the fact that he certainly can't currently read the letter. He is unsurprised by the eventual finding. 

 

Within two candlemarks, he's sitting down to read it. 

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The first letter is...a valuable warning, if it's true, and he sees no particular reason for suspicion that it's instead a convenient lie except for the bare fact that it might, under some interpretations of the Knights' goals and motives and information state on the Empire, be convenient for them to discourage the Empire from further contact with their world. He actually thinks it may mostly be inconvenient to them, by dramatically reducing how much the Empire can offer its aid. 

And it fits with - and makes sense of - the fact that an army with Iomedae in it has clearly been fighting this war for a long time, and still hasn't won. 

 

It's otherwise unsurprising. He writes out a copy - it actually takes him a couple of tries, and taking the ring on and off to check, before he manages to copy it in the Imperial tongue and not accidentally copy the characters he can't under normal circumstances read - and dispatches it to be sent to the Emperor, before moving on to the longer and later-dated letter. 

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Well. His initial reaction to the letter is that he has no idea what to think of it because he is abruptly in intense emotional pain again!!!! 

 

He mostly...can't think about why...and this means it takes him a while to drag himself out of it, or perhaps more accurately shove it out of the way and cram it behind an increasingly pressurized wall and carve out some space where he can actually try to reason about the contents. 

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"We have much in common with the Empire" is a promising beginning, but then

We believe it is through the manipulations of the gods that the Empire has been driven to the appalling and inhumane conduct we have witnessed from it, and we believe that the Empire free of the manipulation of those gods could be a state which we would be honored to ally with and protect.

...is mostly a pit he can't think about, apparently? He can, with substantial effort, think about why Iomedae believes it, but...it's actually harder than the last time he tried to sit down and reason through what Iomedae would think of the Empire. Wearing the headband doesn't stop his mind from forming habits, and if anything the emotional habits formed seem to be stronger than usual. 

It...would be good...to have the alliance and protection of Aroden's people, if Aroden is what Iomedae claims Him to be. Altarrin thinks that at least is true. He...mostly can't think about how to present it to Bastran, or how Bastran will react to reading the text of the letter; he is simultaneously very enhanced and kind of appallingly impaired, and can apparently reason about Iomedae or reason about Bastran and definitely not both at the same time...when he tries, the pieces of Iomedae's argument slip away from him like water through his hands, and he can't remember why he thought Bastran would care. When he pushes through that, it's as though the concept of some arguments being correct instead of just persuasive, of there being any - underlying reality, either to the concepts or to the people - starts to feel kind of unreal, which is alarming. 

With that said, if it isn't too late, I want to urge you in the strongest terms to cease the Empire's activities in Oris. You are acting in the employ of your enemies. Were there a free Arodenite state on your borders, you would have time and opportunity to determine at your leisure whether Aroden is aligned with your priorities, and whether He is lawful and possible to work alongside; when you have been employed by your gods to make that impossible, it will be harder for us to present persuasive evidence of it, and harder for Aroden to gain a foothold in Velgarth should you become persuaded He would be a valuable ally.

He...thinks that makes sense, as a case for Iomedae to make? It's at least easy to say why she would be motivated to make the case. He...thinks there's something deeper to it...but that, too, is slipping away from him every time he thinks about the fact that the Emperor is going to read this letter after him and Altarrin needs to be prepared to manage or at least predict his response. 

And...the issue is that it is in a sense meaningfully too late for Oris. The capital was sacked and burned. They probably haven't killed every single priest of Aroden, and certainly not every follower, but the temples were razed and the leadership disrupted as thoroughly as possible. 

(Some people who believed in Aroden's protection when His Knight was offering them hope are...probably going to stop, after seeing how it played out. He - thinks most of them won't, though, he doesn't have a perfect model of the drive to faith but he thinks there are important things there other than winning.) 

You could instead - I entreat you to - stop. Not a single killing conducted in Oris in the Emperor's name has served him, from Iomedae on down.

He can't stop it, though. For one, it would be an enormous mess, backing out at this particular stage. But also he....can't. He's under too many other constraints, the tunnel he's navigating is too narrow and winding and the weight of stone above too crushing and he can't. He wishes Iomedae understood that and also there are a number of reasons why he absolutely cannot write it down in a letter to her. It wouldn't help the Emperor's negotiating position at all

He wants to - something - he can't look at it let alone grasp for it he just wants...

focus. 

If the Empire instead remains committed to its war, the Knights can, in fact, be bought off. Unfortunately, our world is under threat and a sufficient supply of diamonds will save it.

Altarrin hates this line. It makes perfect sense from Iomedae's perspective, it's what he was expecting, it's good news for the Empire, and he hateshateshates it. He - why - he can't think about why - he just wants. not. this. 

 

...The mode of transit is going to be less costly, now, but it's in fact still pretty costly. And it would be...a step forward, toward something, he thinks it's good...to accept that offer. 

Also, his shoulder Kastil is screaming about it. Which is not what Altarrin needs, right now, there's more than enough screaming in his head already.

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Where does he go from here. 

 

nowhere, there's nowhere left to go, the tunnel's impassible stone is narrowing around him and he can inch a little further forward only by fitting into a space that crushes him and there's no, actual, way, out, ahead

 

 

...Well. They need to make a decision. It is of course the Emperor's decision, but the Emperor generally wants Altarrin's advice. He doesn't have to listen; he has other advisors who will be Kastil for him - he has the actual Kastil, not the screaming echo of him - he will take Altarrin's impression and weigh it against the rest and take into consideration that Iomedae's persuasiveness might be literal mind control. Altarrin's role, in serving the Emperor, is to convey his actual beliefs about what would be a good idea. 

He's not sure. They need more information before he can confidently determine if the Knights of Ozem are treating in good faith, but he's seen no compelling reason to think they aren't, and - several reasons, if not airtight ones, to think they are. (He's making another update about Iomedae's principles from the fact that due to their unwillingness to commit to his conditions around Oris, she apparently isn't using the sword, even though he explicitly said he thought it was unfair to demand she keep to conditions she had no opportunity to participate in agreeing on.) 

He thinks she has a point, that a lot of the Empire's operations that she objects to are...also policies the Empire would in an ideal world rather not have. The First Emperor didn't. It just - turned out to be necessary, in a world of hostile gods, if they wanted to have a civilization at all. The tradeoff would be different, if instead they had a god actively on their side. 

He thinks she also has a point that they can't even test that without a church of Aroden in Velgarth. It's premature to just - agree to letting her rebuild it in Oris - but he genuinely thinks they ought to be considering it, and considering what they need to verify in order to be willing to offer that. 

They have an alternative which is in many senses safer, of instead buying off the Knights of Ozem with piles of diamonds. (There are diamond mines in the Empire, that could be mined a lot faster and harder if there were suddenly a good reason for it, in Velgarth they're mostly not much more magically useful than quartz.) Altarrin doesn't like that alternative. It's risking less, but it's also...closing a lot of options. It would be much harder to build toward a genuine alliance, later, if they finish their research on Aroden and decide they do in fact want Him as a neighbor. 

 

 

As a first step, he proposes that the army commit to not reconquering the southern half of Oris - the area that was free until very recently, as opposed to under Imperial administration for nearly a generation - as long as talks with Iomedae are ongoing. Altarrin isn't even sure it would slow them down in practice, the northern Tozoa region is proving hard enough to crack. Ideally they would communicate their commitment, and the reason for it, to the rebels as grounds for negotiating a ceasefire. Altarrin expects many of Bastran's advisors to disagree strongly with this proposal, and have some good arguments, but also he's aware that the army is taking ongoing losses from the raids and even a temporary ceasefire would in many ways be a net improvement on the current situation even just from the Empire's perspective. 

...He is torn on the diamonds, mostly because it sounds like they could use them for interworld travel somehow. He - thinks Iomedae won't, if they send a shipment with the express designation that it ought not be used for that, but this is of course basing a lot on a character assessment. He expects Bastran's advisors to be against it. 

It's just, he does genuinely believe Iomedae about how bad their enemies are; his uncertainty is about Aroden, more than the Knights of Ozem, and even if the Knights are much worse as an order than Iomedae wants to portray them, it's really not hard to be better than Tar-Baphon. And if they want to retain the option of alliance, or even just of trade, it - would close a lot of options if Iomedae's side were also in the middle of losing a war. 

 

He advises that Bastran should of course take the time to consider this deeply and consult other advisors, but - not otherwise delay too much. The situation is moving fast, both in Oris and in Iomedae's world, and will be messier the longer they wait, and some of the options they have open right now aren't going to stay open for long. 

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He sends it along with a clean copy of the letter in the Imperial tongue. He includes a note that Iomedae seems to have enclosed several...treatises? At least one of which seems to be a book explaining Aroden's teachings. He has not yet embarked on reading it and wants to do so after he's rested and his head maybe contains less screaming, and it's obviously less trustworthy than intelligence gathered independently by the Empire, but it's potentially informative. 

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Bastran has been unhappily chewing on the first letter and not getting anywhere. He is, at first, relieved to finally get a thicker report from Altarrin, who will tell him what to do about this. 

 

 

He doesn't like the second letter. At all. (He would be having a lot of emotions about it, probably, but all of his emotions are exiled to the emotion box right now for the crime of being incredibly unhelpful.) 

 

...he is very unhappy and worried about Altarrin's proposal. (And - something else - but emotions go in box and stay in box.) 

Is Kastil available, or can be be urgently summoned, to read it over with him and tell him if he's being insane or if this is in fact out of character for Altarrin and deeply concerning? 

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Kastil is, of course, personally engaged in a vitally important investigation, and, of course, has this investigation set up so that if he is instantly assassinated his loyal and capable subordinates can take over without a pause. He can be in the Imperial Palace within the hour, not counting security checks that he will glare at His Imperial Majesty's guards if they skip just because it's a crisis. That's exactly when he's most likely to have been compulsioned to assassinate the Emperor!

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Bastran is not going to skip security checks but he spends most of the hour, and then the additional security-check time, pacing and rereading Altarrin's note and getting absolutely nothing done. 

 

He shoves it at Kastil as soon as Kastil comes in the door of his office. "Read this. From Altarrin, just now, regarding the most recent communication with the other world." 

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Mage-Inquisitor Kastil will read the letter carefully, trying not to be too influenced by just how worried the Emperor is.

One paragraph in, he will lower it and say, "Your majesty, do you have a copy of any earlier correspondence between Archmage-General Altarrin and the warrior-priest Iomedae?"

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....He has a copy of Altarrin's very detailed proposal for safely opening communications, including a summary of what he intended to say. He, uh. Does not actually have a copy of the letter Altarrin wrote and dropped. It was in hindsight a mistake not to request it but he's been busy. 

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Kastil nods. "Yes, your majesty."

(It is the very specific "Yes, your majesty" that Bastran can instantaneously translate into 'the gods took advantage of your distraction to get one over on you.' He continues reading.)

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Yeah, he knows that, Kastil doesn't need to rub it in

...He'll wait. He also has all of Altarrin's earlier interim reports and the written updates from the supervising team on site, if that would help? 

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Probably! Kastil is still working on this.

... Did anyone at all other than Altarrin actually use or see through the interworld Gates at all?

(Kastil is, of course, careful to distinguish between things he knows to be true, and things he has heard reported are true. It's a very important part of his job.

So he does not, actually, know that any communication at all with Iomedae has taken place since her death, as opposed to the simple alternate hypothesis that Altarrin broke under the stress and has been hallucinating or lying ever since.)

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Bastran has to quickly look this up. It...sounds like he had everyone out of the room for the actual Gates, since he anticipated it might be dangerous - and was in fact nearly drained unconscious after the first one - but he had very thorough wards in place, which did clearly detect that a Gate happened and was drawing vastly more power than it had any right to. They also have a new magic item that Iomedae sent with one of her letters to translate their language, which he handed over to the research team for testing before using. And he's only done the two Gates, held for seconds each, but he's done a lot more scrying and it looks like one of the mage-researchers, a particularly talented young woman who has been collaborating with Altarrin and developed the search-spell for the Gate, was present for some of those. 

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Then Altarrin is probably not having a mental breakdown under the stress of the situation.

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... These are some stupendously disturbing letters.

We acknowledge and wish to express gratitude for your message and for the return of these magic items, and hope for productive further conversation. We hope you'll forgive the brevity of this message, which ignores most of the interesting considerations you proposed.

Return of the magic items. Right. What did Altarrin say.

It is of extraordinary importance that the existence of your world not become known to the powerful necromancer who my forces in Golarion are presently combatting. He may possess a cheaper means of transit between worlds than the one possessed by us, can instantly identify and extremely-powerfully-mind-control people who scry him or anyone in his presence (we make no representation as to whether we can also do this, but will not do so in response to scries to drop off letters as part of the course of honestly conducted negotiations), and we believe would experience no difficulty in enslaving the whole of the Empire and immediately reallocating its already-mind-controlled forces towards his aims.

If you want Mage-Inquisitor Kastil to not be horrifically paranoid about your evil plans, bringing up someone else's evil plans is the most stereotypical way to do this, but not actually ineffective, for this. If Iomedae did survive her death thanks to her otherworldly magic, the possibility that the reason she hasn't returned to Oris because she's busy fighting someone even scarier than she is is really quite reasonable.

(We could be wrong that he would experience no difficulty if there are either of a highly capable and powerful task force of people whose location and abilities aren't known to the Emperor or any of his senior staff who would react immediately were the Emperor so compromised or magics that make the Emperor immune as I am to all external control and which would pass immediately and uncomplicatedly to a successor were the Emperor abruptly killed.)

Unfortunately, the Office of Inquiry is known to the Emperor. Indeed, they work for him.

I strongly recommend that you not Gate here at this time. I represent that our primary motivation in giving this advice is that I anticipate an error that brought you to the necromancer's attention would be irrecoverable and not at all in your interests or ours.

The obvious three explanations are that this is true, that this is Altarrin's mental break covering itself up, and that them Gating here will seriously mess up her plans to the advantage of the Empire in its conflict with her. The less obvious explanations include her wanting to think any of these three.

... Well, probably not the second.

And everything else in the letter is words that are wind. Well, she might value diamonds.

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The Knights of Ozem remain committed to not conducting offensive operations against the Empire outside of Oris, so long as the Empire also does not expand the scope of its offensive operations against the Knights to any outside Oris. 

There are, actually, forces that the Empire has allied with in the past, that worshipped gods, during desperate hours and for strategic purposes. More that it has signed mutually-beneficial trade agreements with, prior to conquering. That's not disturbing. That's the next few paragraphs.

We have much in common with the Empire. We believe it is through the manipulations of the gods that the Empire has been driven to the appalling and inhumane conduct we have witnessed from it, and we believe that the Empire free of the manipulation of those gods could be a state which we would be honored to ally with and protect.

... No, he does, in fact, think this paragraph is evidence that the author was Altarrin having a mental break. If he tries to imagine someone who cares as deeply about the Empire as Altarrin folding under the strain of the situation, hallucinating a voice that repeated all his criticisms of the empire in much more aggressive tones.

It is probably not proof, not if he produced scries of the situation. But ancestors. "Appalling and inhumane" is not language you use to people you might want to ally with. This is - carrot and the stick. You do it our way or you're a monster. The Empire doesn't get letters like this, it sends them.

We are indeed persuaded, in part through the gods' apparent role in your success at killing me (the method attempted would have failed, were I not subject to unusual bad luck in the moment), and in part through conversation with Aroden, that the powerful entities operating in your world are opposed to Aroden. It seems likely that they have also steered the Empire in its decision to reconquer Oris and, we presume, suppress His church. Aroden would represent a rival to them and a danger to their intentions of suppressing prosperity and innovation on Velgarth, and the Empire is easily employed towards their aims here.

Or they deliberately carried out a false-flag attack on their own people to arrange an implausible-looking situation. This isn't the first time the Empire has been burned on thinking there could ever be good gods, especially ones who were apparently feuding with evil gods whose feud mysteriously ended as soon as the Empire lowered its guard.

(Kastil doesn't read that much history, but he has a proper education.)

With that said, if it isn't too late, I want to urge you in the strongest terms to cease the Empire's activities in Oris. You are acting in the employ of your enemies. Were there a free Arodenite state on your borders, you would have time and opportunity to determine at your leisure whether Aroden is aligned with your priorities, and whether He is lawful and possible to work alongside; when you have been employed by your gods to make that impossible, it will be harder for us to present persuasive evidence of it, and harder for Aroden to gain a foothold in Velgarth should you become persuaded He would be a valuable ally. Orisan independence serves the Empire and one of the strongest pieces of evidence your gods were working against our shared aims is the fact that the Empire was instead induced to prioritize Oris's destruction over the multiple civil wars that genuinely threaten it.

... The Empire was induced to prioritize Oris's destruction by Iomedae. This is not the first time the Empire has heard this story. 

The Knights are unwilling to commit to nonintervention in Oris primarily because we are skeptical about the representation in Altarrin's previous letter that the war in Oris is over and the resistance crushed. Obviously if it is in fact the case that the Empire has already slaughtered all followers of Aroden in Oris then there is little point in returning for what would effectively be the start of a new war, but it seems more likely, frankly, that the Empire is in the middle of that effort, and that it's going to be a slow one. You could instead - I entreat you to - stop. Not a single killing conducted in Oris in the Emperor's name has served him, from Iomedae on down.

Okay, "Altarrin tried to convince her the war in Oris was over" sounds like a reasonable thing for Altarrin to do, that suggests better of Altarrin than he was thinking. 

If the Empire instead remains committed to its war, the Knights can, in fact, be bought off. Unfortunately, our world is under threat and a sufficient supply of diamonds will save it. We are open to negotiating nonintervention in the Imperial brutality in Oris, though we condemn it in the strongest terms as serving neither the Empire, nor the Emperor, nor the cause of civilization and human flourishing, nor the Knights, nor anyone but the cruel gods of Velgarth.

It's hard to get Kastil to laugh, but "the Knights can, in fact, be bought off" brings a grim smile to his lips.

In trade for diamonds, the Knights can provide potions and wands of magical healing, powerful magic items (though the specific ones currently in the Empire's possession we need returned), instruction on the manufacture of said magic items, and protection from the necromancer and from other external interference the Empire might invite should it draw Golarion's attention to it. In further trade we could perhaps send soldiers to aid in the Empire's other wars and of course we'd be delighted to be permitted to send priests who can cure disease, produce huge amounts of clean water, and do magical healing on a routine basis as is standard in Golarion. (It is broadly unacceptable to us for these people to be enslaved in the manner routine in the Empire, but we're happy to make binding commitments about their conduct before they go, including placing our own Geases under some circumstances, and with more negotiation it would be acceptable for there to be limited, non-motivation-altering, compulsions.)

They are openly saying that they will make war on the Empire unless the Empire bribes them not to and gives them all their powerful magic items back. If it plays nice, they'll provide magical artifacts as a foot in the door to send priests.

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Kastil would crumple up the letter, but that would be vandalism.

"This is an exceptionally disturbing letter."

His eyes are narrowed. "Your Majesty, I see three categories of explanations. Altarrin has been suborned, Altarrin has had a mental breakdown, and Altarrin is engaged in very dangerous high-stakes negotiations with the fate of the Empire at stake, and I would feel much more comfortable it was the third if Altarrin seemed to be considering it as such."

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Well, who ELSE are they supposed to put in charge of dangerous high-stakes negotiations with the fate of the Empire at stake, Bastran isn't qualified for that ...Kastil does, as usual, have a point. 

He paces. Frowns. Rubs the back of his neck, which abruptly aches with tension. 

"I - wouldn't expect Altarrin having a mental breakdown would look like this," he says. "As opposed to, I don't know, suddenly refusing to get out of bed." He is DEFINITELY NOT speaking from personal experience here. "But I could be wrong. ...I did have the impression he was taking it seriously? But. Um. I'm worried about the most recent proposal, it feels - like a swerve from everything else. I don't know. What do you think we should do?" 

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" - Altarrin is a man who does what needs to be done for the Empire, in spite of the strain it puts him under. If one of Iomedae's artifacts increased the strain..."

Ugh. "I would at least like to talk to him. Ideally, Your Majesty, you could arrange a general meeting of Your other advisors, so that You could formulate a clear policy on how we are to deal with the two potential threats that Iomedae and her 'necromancer' pose to Your state."

"... And this is less - urgent, but I would also like to interview anyone at the research facility who has worked with him greatly, especially on the Gating spell, worn the headband, or seen through the scry into the other world." By interview he means interrogate for information on what is going on with this.

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He haaaaates when people talk to him in that voice where they're using Capital Letters to refer to him. He doesn't even know how Kastil manages to make it so clear he's doing that. 

"...I can do that." He doesn't WANT to but complaining in his own head has never once gotten him out of meetings he didn't want to be having, and it's also childish and embarrassing. "And you'll - go north to speak with him there? Now? I - would rather have clarify on this sooner. I know you were in the middle of a lot." 

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"I live to serve the Empire, Your Majesty, and this is clearly the most important crisis facing Your empire that I am equipped to contribute to. I would prefer to invite him here but will visit him on his home ground if it is Your desire."

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"- I suppose I could recall him. I just - I'm worried that if he is suborned, and he can guess why - I don't know, maybe it's stupid, they have been checking his compulsions pretty constantly and he's been passing Thoughtsensing checks, even if he's - being manipulated by Iomedae..." 

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"Your Majesty, it is possible the Thoughtsensers have also been suborned, but I agree. I consider it highly plausible he is manipulated, more than ignored, or else making key conclusions based on information that has been contaminated by Iomedae's world's magic without his own judgement being directly affected. But I would be much more confident if I could speak to him in person."

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"...I can send a message to the research team leader arranging to have him urgently recalled to Jacona. They'll need to figure out a Gate for it, he really shouldn't be - doing more of those, it sounds like..." Bastran had not actually read the Healers' report until he was trying to look things up for Kastil and it's surprisingly upsetting. "Presumably he should leave all of his artifacts there, and - do you want the researcher he worked most closely with brought as well?" 

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"Yes, please, Your Majesty." Kastil does not, actually, think Altarrin has defected. He doesn't, really, find any of his hypotheses all that plausible, except as very general categories. He just thinks this is really strange and uncharacteristic behavior for Altarrin under practically any circumstances - the thing where basically no member of the administration except him has been informed there's supposedly another world that thinks it can beat us in a fight - and wants to ask him why without a headband on his head. Altarrin seems to believe, or want to be believed when he is saying, that he is doing rogue diplomacy with at least one, possibly two, extradimensional threats, and he has brought none of the Imperial apparatus of state in on this except one letter to the Emperor asking permission to continue his unilateral negotiations. What is he doing?

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Then Bastran will (very unhappily) write up an Imperial order and stamp it with his seal. It's addressed to the research team lead directly, not Altarrin, because he isn't stupid. 

He also writes it very carefully, because Altarrin is perceptive, and if the researchers are aware of how concerned Bastran is, or that Kastil is involved, then Altarrin will notice, and - it's almost certainly fine if he does, he's almost certainly not literally disloyal and also able to get around his compulsions, but - there is otherworldly magic involved, including an artifact that Iomedae sent specifically for these negotiations, and he is less sure than he would usually be. (It's also at least slightly protective in the scenario where the Thoughtsenser has been suborned as well, if everyone on site thinks the Emperor just wants a briefing face to face.) 

He would like Altarrin to return promptly to Jacona by Gate, with all of his notes, so that he can brief the Emperor and the Emperor's other advisors face to face. Altarrin will need to remove the headband for this; the Emperor wants to continue keeping it in the northern quarantine area for now.

 

He also sends a brief note for Altarrin. Not an Imperial order, just a few comments on Altarrin's latest proposal, trying to match the tone he would use if he wasn't incredibly concerned. 

 

And he sends it. It's been a couple of candlemarks, now, since Altarrin's proposal reached him. 

He paces, and worries. 

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They're delaying, waiting to learn the prospects that Velgarth will send them diamonds, though the excuse they've put out among the soldiers is that Iomedae is trying to arrange for the miraculous liberation of the city. Which is also true.

 

She corners Alfirin to discuss it in Alfirin's shielded demiplane, the day that the books and note vanish. "I want to use the remaining Wish-grade diamond and ask Sarenrae for a miracle in Urgir. A lasting Sleep, across the whole city, hitting everyone who's weak enough, and I think I can manage a disciplined conquest if the civilians are mostly unconscious. Then we wake them and force them out onto the plains at swordpoint, sector by sector, which will be miserable but not murder. If we do get more diamonds from Velgarth we ask Erastil for a Miracle too, a second harvest out across the whole hold, and no one starves. If we don't - I don't know, I want to at least get a quote from Tilbun on how much he'd pay for access to Velgarth, Teleport in unreasonable numbers of cattle.

Should I tell you what my internal Alfirin has to say to me, or should I let the real Alfirin speak first?"

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"Tell me. I assume she had objections and you found them unconvincing."

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"It's our only diamond and we might desperately need it, we might find ourselves in a position where the crusade turns or falls on it, and the crusade isn't going to turn or fall on how many orcs die when we take Urgir. You might be right. I consider it reasonably likely we'll be able to source more diamonds, but I can't be sure.

But - I'm not sure that the crusade doesn't turn or fall on whether we murder tens of thousands of civilians in incredibly horrendous street fighting and associated chaos. It seems like a very high stakes sort of thing. I worry about how the men will take it. I worry, like I know you do, about their Evil.

To which my internal Alfirin replies, "I'll cloudkill them" or "let's use lots of Velgarth suicide-Fireballs" or "what I did find scouting the darklands was a good way to poison their water supply" or - something else like that - and -

- firstly, I don't account myself the slightest bit less responsible when you do all the Evil things, even if you do them without orders, and if Pharasma counts me less responsible She's a blithering idiot. It was my call to take Urgir. Every death in that city is on my hands, and it's not in your power to take that off me.

- and secondly, those things do, in fact, damage intangible strategic resources on which the crusade relies. I'll have an easier time whipping up diamonds on my next tour of Oppara with the story of how we miraculously took the city without bloodshed - yes, I know there will still be horrifying bloodshed - I'll have an easier time explaining myself, to the representatives of the other churches we rely on for support, I'll have an easier time recruiting people who want to fight in the kind of war we're fighting. -

and thirdly, I just think it matters, a lot, if we're doing as best as we possibly can, or worse than that. The best we possibly can is still going to be an atrocity but it doesn't have to be the worst possible atrocity."

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"Well, I can't say you don't know me. You're right that I think we can't spare the diamond - but - I'll get back to that, actually. You're right about the sack and how it's bad for the men to be the sort of men who will sack a city - or to know themselves to be that sort of men. You're wrong about the cloudkill but - "

 

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"You're not wrong that it's the sort of thing I'd suggest. I just can't, actually, slaughter a city myself. If I could -

It's better for me to do it. I know the Crusade needs its reputation. I know I'm damaging it a bit every time I do something blatantly Evil. I don't - enjoy it? I know you don't think I do, but - I want to emphasize that I don't like it, I don't want to do it, when I do - act without orders, or prepare a bunch of poison spells planning to use them on civilians or - I do it because the alternative is worse. If I hadn't burned the witchgate we'd have lost a lot more men to ambushes going through it, or trying to hold on the far side while we cut a wider path through, and we would have done it all again next year. If I'd come to you with the idea then - instead of the unpredictable wizard with no scruples who is already factored in to the crusade's reputation, to the troops' morale, you get that Iomedae decided to burn her men alive to save time crossing the woods. This way - you get to be angry, in public, and everyone can see that you didn't approve and when they imagine its their friends' ashes in the day's stew they will hate me for it instead of you."

 

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"And - you're going to hate this part but it's important and it's true. Back in Oppara, they won't see victims when we kill every orc in the city. Most of them will just see orcs. They'll think of Urgir as a fortress, and not as a city. They won't imagine that there are civilians here, or children. Just a bunch of orcish warriors, hardly less monstrous than the undead. And the ones who do see the victims are the ones paying enough attention to know that there aren't, really, that many fewer if the city is sacked instead of incinerated.

And if it's sacked - you will have people there. Taking part in the sack. Everyone that doesn't see victims is - becoming eviler, less caring, less lawful - more likely to abandon the crusade, more likely to cause problems later - And everyone that does is writing letters home about it and then Oppara will start seeing victims too. When everyone's going to stand and fight you can't really change the number of victims, just the number that people see and whose hands get bloody."

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"As for miraculous sleep - I think it's a good idea. I don't think it will work as well as you're hoping - there will be people who aren't affected, they'll start waking those around them - We will not get very long, and it won't help with the walls at all and -"

"In most accounts when a city gets taken by storm, there's a sack - it doesn't matter if the civilian population is armed and resisting or asleep in their beds. I know you think very highly of your crusaders, but I don't think they are so uniformly virtuous that they would not sack Urgir after a hard assault over the walls. If you want to avoid a sack - We should plan for a miracle that will defeat the army quickly and dramatically enough that maybe we can induce the civilians to run, and give them somewhere to run to where they won't find their courage again."

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"And - the diamonds. While we only have the one - I could imagine there are ways I'd recommend spending it in this battle, but I can't think of any right now. It would have to be something subtle. Tar-Baphon is counting our diamonds too and if he suspects we're out he'll start trying more things that will be hard for us to counter without a wish or miracle on hand. If we can get a dozen from Velgarth I think that's actually a reason that we should spend one - just one - very dramatically in this battle. Maybe he'll slip up and commit something major enough that us spending a wish to overcome it is clearly a boon for our side. But while we're down to just one - he wants us to spend it on this. I know he does. And as far as I'm concerned that means we can't."

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"There are people in Oppara who won't care. Probably a lot of them. And there are people in Oppara who will only care if it's shoved in their face, but - that seems like a reason to shove it in their face, to me. If we take the city and some of our soldiers go 'those were innocent people, they may have been orcs, but that was still wrong', and they go home to Oppara and say so, and everyone wants to ask me why we did it before they fund some more crusade -

- it makes my life harder, sure, but that's a better world. If I lived in that world I sure wouldn't choose to instead live in this one. 

And - they will be telling the story of this crusade for thousands of years, when - if I ever succeed at anything I'm doing with my life - people will be better. I don't want a church twisted around rationalizing some evil we did because it'd have been terrible for our public image not to, and I don't want a church lying about it, and I don't want -

- I want to do whatever is actually the best we can do. And you're right that that might not actually be the thing that plays best at home. 

 

 

I think you're wrong, that it's better for you to do all the Evil things so I don't have to, so no one has to come to grips with the fact that I would. It feels like... a crusade that's an illusion layered over a rotting corpse. I - 

- other things equal, and I know they're not, if there are people who wouldn't follow me, knowing I'd have ordered the forest burned, it's more good if they don't follow me, because they have the right to follow someone who will make the tradeoffs with their lives that they believe in. 

- other things equal, and I know they're not, it's better for people who'd turn from this crusade if they understood what we intend to do in Urgir to turn from it. They have the right to decide that's not something they're prepared to be a part of. To whatever extent we can - have their support anyway by taking advantage of the fact they'll automatically lie to themselves about what we're doing unless it's put right in front of their face - to whatever extent we're actively choosing to do more Evil in order to enable us to take more advantage of that by making it easier for them to lie to themselves - that's wronging them. It's wronging them in a way I consider myself to have promised not to do, when I became their commander. 

And you're going to say, 'great, Iomedae, how many of them are you willing to send to Hell for that principle' and - 

 

- I think a hundred? I think not a thousand. But I promise I have thought about it."

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"I do take your point that I need to find more diamonds if I want to spend them. I think my next step is to get a bid from Tilbun. He may just - Velgarth should be worth hundreds of diamonds to him, right, fifty-fifty you can get an Even Greater Teleport, he should be willing to spot me five if he has them."

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"I know. That you've thought about it and you think I'm wrong and that does matter, to me. If it didn't I - wouldn't have said all that I did, just now, I wouldn't have told you that that's why I didn't wait for orders at the Witchgate - because I can't do that any more now, it doesn't work if you know why. And I did think about that, about how I was using you, and your principles, to lie to the rest of the crusade. I'm sorry. I think I had to. I would do it again but I won't, anymore."

"And I know that it's bigger than the momentary reputational effects. Three months ago, when we came past here in the first place - If we'd stormed Urgir then I wouldn't be advocating the same things. But the last four months have been a catastrophe and I think if we want to hold this together we need a victory, and it needs to be a victory that does not leave the average soldier feeling like they, personally, are a monster. And doesn't spend any resources that we cannot, in fact, afford to spend."

"So get the diamonds from Tilbun, and we can try to find a way to take the city with two miracles because you're right, that it's worth two, if we have six. And then hopefully we can settle in for the winter without hands any bloodier than they are now. And then - I might leave again. I don't know. We'll see how bad it is. I'll still teleport Tilbun, if that's the deal you make, once I've figured it out, and I'll probably be back by the spring, and if things go well I might stay but - you should start planning for a few months without me, in case."

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"Okay. Thank you. Tilbun'll want your best guess on the odds of a Teleport by spring, not mine, for pricing."

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Altarrin’s first action after finishing and sending his proposal to the Emperor is to return to the Work Room and raise another Gate, to the location where the previous letter was collected. He doesn’t know if they’ve already come to retrieve the sword - it’s been a couple of candlemarks, and he’s trying to conserve his strength and doesn’t scry it again first - but he’s nearly certain they’ll be observing the location. 

It’s a brief note, just acknowledging receipt of both letters, thanking Iomedae for the warning about Tar-Baphon, and telling her to expect a longer reply within 24 to 48 candlemarks. 

The Gate-technique is in fact getting a little easier with practice, but after two in a row he is, in fact, quite physically exhausted, belt or no; he doesn’t have a headache, and he’s already noticing that his reserves recover much faster with the belt, but he doesn’t especially feel like walking let alone doing more magic work. He forces down another meal - he has no appetite but that’s normal after throwing around a lot of magic, his body hasn’t realized yet how much energy he just burned and needs to replace - and then retires to his bedroom, taking the stack of books with him. He keeps the headband on for now. It’s a lot of reading material, that he can get through much faster, and make more and better updates from, if he’s still enhanced. 

 

(…Also, while he currently feels mostly in control - the various unfinished and painful lines of thought can wait until he’s heard from Bastran - he is not entirely sure what his mind will do when he takes it off.)

 

By a couple of candlemarks later, he's about halfway through ‘The History and Future of Humanity’ which is apparently Aroden’s main holy book. He is not trying to transcribe this one word-for-word, but he has a sheaf of loose notepaper pinned to a board as a writing-surface and is taking detailed notes. 

It makes for surreal reading. Altarrin is mostly not thinking about why; to the extent he’s speculating at all, it’s on how this fits into his current understanding of Iomedae, what it lets him predict about how she’s likely to react to various possible responses from the Empire. He can think about that mostly without pain, if he keeps it tightly compartmentalized. Everything else….can wait. 

The research staff will find him there, reading diligently, still looking tired, but calm and collected and not in any way visibly impaired. 

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He’s being recalled to Jacona. They have the letter here, need the artifacts back, and will arrange a Gate for him.

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Oh. 

He…wasn’t expecting that, which is stupid because it’s the obvious next move for Bastran. It would be absurd for Bastran to make a call on Altarrin’s proposal without discussing it face to face, and with the rest of the ministers. In some sense, ‘Bastran wants to discuss it in person’ ought to be better news than ‘Bastran rejects it on its face.’ 

His expression stays level, perhaps with a slight smile of satisfaction, as he nods his acknowledgement, looking unsurprised and unruffled. “Of course,” he’s saying, “- if I may, I would like to finish some notes on this treatise with the headband, while you arrange the Gate? It should take me less than five minutes.” 

 

(He doesn’t know if they’re reading his mind. His legible surface thoughts are, indeed, still mostly on Aroden’s holy text. Which apparently has some math he doesn’t know in it - he’s been skipping ahead to chapters that look particularly interesting and the one on measuring outcomes of policy decisions jumped out. He isn’t yet at the stage of interpretations, of figuring out what this says about the Church of Aroden, but he’s thinking that Bastran will very much want to see his notes. 

…The rest of his reaction is mostly in nonverbal emotional reaction more than thoughts, and tucked away under the surface. He isn’t explicitly thinking that they might be reading his mind; it’s more that everything in that direction is dangerous, or is a thought he can’t finish at all. It’s - he doesn’t know, it feels impossible to know, it feels like the tunnel around him is collapsed just ahead and whatever awaits him from Jacona is…on the other side of that cave-in…he can’t see it can’t think it can’t know -)

 

- he’s so scared - 

 

Does it look like they’re going to let him have five more minutes? 

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Bastran’s notice was notably not “emergency treat Altarrin as a potential threat recall him immediately”. It was written very ordinarily. They’ll let him have five minutes.

 

(They’re not letting his research assistant, who was also requested, have five minutes; they woke her up, compulsioned her more heavily, and have her waiting for the Gate. But he is Altarrin.)

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That…narrows things down, a little, in terms of - how badly wrong to expect this to go. (And, though this thought too is under the surface and not in words, approximately confirms that they’re not reading his mind; up until now they’ve extended him the courtesy due for his rank, and scheduled the Thoughtsensing checks with him.) 

He keeps taking notes. That part doesn’t take much of his headband-enhanced attention. 

And he needs to use that five minutes to actually think, actually plan, even if it’s very very hard, because without the headband it probably won’t be possible at all. What…is going to happen, when he Gates to Jacona and sits down with the Emperor?

He doesn’t know he can’t know and if he goes there the tunnel will cave in and crush him And, nonetheless, he needs to make the right decision.

 

 

....What would Iomedae predict was going to happen, if she were somehow scrying him right now, watching him about to Gate to Jacona and talk things through with the Emperor? 

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…She would be very very worried, he thinks.

 

About - what - ? About the gods. About - what the Empire is being steered toward. And what is the Empire being steered toward - what would it look like from her vantage point, what outcome is she worried will actually happen -

- it’s - what - 

 

(pain, fear, confusion) 

 

…The gods of Velgarth don’t want the Eastern Empire in contact with another world. 

His mental model of Iomedae feels that that alone is enough to fill in the rest of the picture. The gods don’t want this, precisely because it would be in the Empire’s interest to have it. Because it would make the Empire stronger and - less predictable - that’s the whole thing, isn’t it, from Iomedae’s vantage point, the vision of the First Emperor pulling in one direction and the gods pushing in another and the result an awful ugly broken compromise, a place of wealth and canal-Gates and no room to maneuver, no resources left unclaimed, because giving mortals room to maneuver makes them unpredictable – because an Empire granted enough space to breathe that it could dispense with the compulsions and the executions would grow in a direction that the gods can’t steer nearly as well… 

That’s it, really, that’s all that matters here.

The gods don’t want Emperor Bastran to sign off on Altarrin’s proposals, probably not even if backing off from Oris helps Them in the short run, because Foresight sees the long run too. The gods don’t want it and They clearly do have the power to steer the Empire - to steer Altarrin as Their pawn - and it doesn’t, actually, matter how They achieve it, but also knowing the end result tells Iomedae a lot about what Altarrin can expect if he returns to Jacona, carrying his hopeful proposal for how to resolve the Empire’s current challenges at a much lower price than they had expected to pay. 

His imaginary Iomedae is…shaking her head sadly, maybe admitting it’s admirable of him to try, but it was never going to work. If hopeful proposals for a better future were a thing that worked in the Empire, they would be there already. 

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And Altarrin, with his own context on the Emperor’s court, can look at the what and the why and fill in some of the how. The Empire is designed for paranoia against gods, and - the gods of Velgarth can use that, as they did before to make sure Altarrin wouldn’t learn enough of Iomedae to turn back before he killed her. Kastil isn’t the only one who would look at Altarrin’s note and see it as proof that Aroden has already suborned him, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Kastil is involved, he’s - someone the Emperor leans on in times of stress and uncertainty, especially if Altarrin isn’t available. Bastran is going to be terrified, overwhelmed, looking for answers from any other direction, and Altarrin hasn’t been there and so his advice has been coming from…people who aren’t Altarrin…

 

He - doesn’t know how badly it will go - he mostly can’t think about that at all, actually, trying makes the screaming in his head worse and the walls of the tunnel even tighter and he can’tcant’can’t - he’s not thinking clearly but he knows that, damn it, he does not need the stupid headband self-awareness to keep pointing it out, that doesn’t help achieve his goals, it doesn't serve the Empire - 

The screaming quiets, slightly, and there's a little more space to, not finish that thought, but find a way around it. 

 

…Iomedae would say it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t care about the difference between ‘Altarrin has a respectful conversation with the Emperor, who eventually makes a tortured decision to ignore the Knights of Ozem’s overtures’ and ‘Altarrin is thrown in a cell for questioning.’ From her vantage point, the relevant difference - the crossroads that will let the Knights decide whether the Empire can ever be an ally - is what happens to Oris and what happens in her own war. 

If the Empire can’t be an ally then, from Iomedae’s perspective, it’s a threat. Regardless of whether the Empire commits not to invade her world, or whether she would even trust that commitment from them, but simply because the Empire is an enormous pile of resources and soldiers and mages, and vulnerable to Tar-Baphon, and her army - her entire world - absolutely cannot afford for Tar-Baphon to learn of Velgarth and take the Empire for his own use.

And…at that point it doesn’t matter, in the long run, if Iomedae herself is too principled to turn back on her promise not to invade, because she almost certainly isn’t the only legendary warrior in her world who is opposed to Tar-Baphon, and someone will decide that the risk of letting the Empire continue to exist is too high. 

 

 

 

From Iomedae’s perspective, he thinks, the only thing that matters, here, is that there’s nothing for Altarrin in Jacona, there’s no route to achieve the only aim of his that she has any reason to care about, it would only be - handing himself over as a pawn to a machine ultimately steered by the same gods that the Empire was built to defend against, until the centuries of relentless pressure pared it down to a grinding wheel that can no longer be changed on its course. 

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…Altarrin is not Iomedae.

Altarrin does, actually, care about the outcome of Iomedae’s war, because he made a vow to fix everything and he didn’t carve out an exception for the people of other worlds – but Altarrin’s first and foremost loyalty is to the Empire. 

But it doesn’t serve the Empire to let itself be turned away from an alliance that would make it stronger, toward isolationism and pretending nothing is different and continuing down this same path either until Tar-Baphon finds a way to compulsion them to his horrifying serve or else one of Iomedae’s allies takes matters into their own hands. (It doesn’t serve Bastran, who hates the war in Oris, who pays a steep emotional cost for every death warrant he signs, who is never going to be okay while he runs an Empire that isn’t. Serving the Empire comes ahead of serving the Emperor, of course, but here they point in the same direction.) 

From Iomedae’s outside view, this is almost inevitably what will happen if Altarrin returns as his Emperor bid him. 

 

It’s never once served the Empire when Altarrin died, either, and the gods are awfully good at killing him. For this in particular, his imaginary Iomedae is vehemently pointing out that he’s the only one who can Gate to Iomedae’s world at all, which makes him a single point of failure on not just the alliance, but even on the Empire’s ability to trade diamonds for noninterference. And while the gods can’t permanently kill him, they plausibly can make sure he comes back too late to head off the disaster ahead, or without the power to do so, and…he might not even remember enough about Iomedae’s magic items to target a Gate, let alone remember the search-technique itself. 

And given the three ongoing wars and the sabotage, there are unusually many tools available for a godassassination right now, and imaginary Iomedae anticipates that if Altarrin places himself back in a region where the gods have influence, he should expect to be in danger. 

Altarrin…has no counter arguments to that. (This is mostly because all of his thoughts are running into walls and he can't think directly about anything in Jacona, but still.) It's a good point. It follows, logically, that he's in danger. 

 

 

That brings clarity, when nothing else did. 

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(A thought he is not thinking: if he knew for sure that Bastran had sent an Imperial order with the Imperial seal, it wouldn’t matter one way or another what he thought served the Empire, or how much danger he could expect to be in; obeying direct orders is ranked above that, and it’s always been expected that he risk his life for the Empire if necessary. 

But he does not, technically, know that. He knows that the Emperor sent ‘a letter’. He didn’t ask to see it. The staff on-site aren’t treating this like an emergency and so it might just be a letter and not a signed and sealed order, and as long as he doesn’t think about it, the compulsion doesn’t come into effect. 

Some of his other compulsions, the ones meant to stop exactly this kind of compulsion-evading doublethink, are unhappy with this. The tunnel isn’t just narrow, now, it’s twisting and convoluted and nearly impossible to wriggle himself through. But with the headband, and with the clarity that comes from being terrified, he can navigate it anyway.) 

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Altarrin finishes the page of notes, shuts the book, and swings his legs over the side of the bed; he’s moving a little more slowly than usual, maybe, but he’s not unsteady on his feet. He straightens the wad of notes, rolls them up neatly, offers them to one of the mage-researchers. Slips off the ring and sets it down on the bedside table. 

He takes off the headband, and - blinks a few times, but his expression doesn’t otherwise change. He sets it down as well. 

 

(He mostly can’t think at all, now, through the wall of crushing pressure and screaming; he certainly can’t do any planning, and he…doesn’t, in fact, have a plan. But he knows that he’s in danger, and that's - very simple, a situation he's been in a thousand times, and there's no time to think in a battle either. Controlling his face and body language doesn’t run on being able to think, and if he’s operating entirely on reflex, well, his reflexes have a lot of practice.) 

 

He’s still wearing the simply-cut, comfortable clothing he prefers for intensive casting, the same shirt he had on for the last two Gates, which were intensive enough to leave him sweaty. 

“Is there time to quickly wash and change?” he says politely, gesturing at the sweat-stains. He’s still wearing the belt, but it would be reasonable of them to assume he intends to take it off as part of changing clothes.

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- yeah that’s pretty reasonable, he shouldn’t really be brought before the Emperor like that. “Of course.”

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And then Altarrin is alone. He still can't really think but not having to control his body language opens up a little more space for other things. (The bedroom isn't shielded against scrying, but it would be at least incredibly rude to scry Archmage-General Altarrin while he's taking his clothes off in private, and so far this has not seemed like that kind of interaction. Whatever the gods have waiting for him in Jacona, the on-site researchers - yet - aren't brought in on it, and so he doubts he's being watched.)

 

Danger. That means - Gate out to safety - 

- but he needs to plan at least one step ahead, because right now safety...isn't to be found this world at all...and he's not going to have time to send a warning message ahead, maybe won't have time to scry ahead, and he doesn't know what's waiting for him. 

The room isn't shielded enough to hide a Gate-signature. However polite they've been, someone will burst in as soon as the magic is sensed, and so he doesn't have time to raise an interworld Gate from here. Gate to a records cache, then, it will only be temporarily safe but, while he suspects there's someone in the Empire who can scry for the magic items he intends to take, he doubts anyone on-site knows how to scry through shielding. They were deliberately chosen to be replaceable. 

 

And then his thoughts are running into a wall, again, and he's in danger that's the only thing that matters - 

 

 

He snatches the headband from the bedside table and raises a horizontal Gate-threshold under himself and in less than a second he's through and half a second after that the Gate is down. This is definitely long enough that someone will notice but probably not long enough for a non-combat-trained mage-researcher, even a very skilled senior one, to do anything about it. 

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They burst into the room. He's gone. 

 

 

- shit. 

 

 

An emergency report is immediately made to Jacona and to the secondary site that ALTARRIN JUST GATED OUT LOCATION UNKNOWN THEY ARE TRYING TO SCRY HIM -

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Altarrin's reserves are not incredibly recovered from the sequential interworld Gates earlier, but it turns out that with a fancy Belt of Constitution, same-planet Gates barely register at all. Good to know - he instinctively went for a nearby one but he wants to spend as little time as possible within a reasonable Gate-range of Jacona... 

He doesn't put the headband on. It - will look more friendly, to arrive offering it in his hands rather than wearing it - (and he's not explicitly thinking this but, honestly, being able to think wouldn't help, right now, without it his entire mind is screaming about IMMEDIATE SERIOUS DANGER FROM THE GODS and he can lean on the deep-held reflex that letting down his guard and getting murdered again has NEVER ONCE SERVED THE EMPIRE.) 

 

He does dive for one of the supply crates. Standard layout, he knows where the shield-talismans are, he untangles the spell sealing it and reaches in - personal talisman against scrying - there should be a box with anti-scrying wards on it too, somewhere, for the headband, it's not as good a design but it should buy him enough time - 

...A talisman that blocks the communication-spell because - obvious godplot - if Bastran's advisors are being steered they can still send him orders that play into the gods' hands - 

(He is not exactly thinking this through coherently, it's still nearly all reflex and cached habits for on-the-spot contingencies, but also he's not thinking clearly enough to notice all of the things wrong with that argument that he couldn't help but catch if he were wearing the headband, which Altarrin might be thinking was convenient if he were capable of finishing thoughts.) 

 

 

Half a dozen other talismans because, again, he doesn't know what he's going to be Gating into, or whether he'll get a friendly welcome - 

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- he is likely to get a much friendlier welcome if he brings them a lot of diamonds, isn't he. 

 

Rucksack, for the box to go into, it's not light. Might as well shove more talismans in there, as gifts, and - he doesn't have diamonds here but he does have gold, a universal currency that can be spent anywhere in the world... 

 

He takes all of it, which is a little under three pounds. He has no idea what the going rate is for diamonds at the main trade market in Nabiru, the coastal capital city of Ghandai, the southernmost of the Haighlei Six Kingdoms, but it's a prosperous port city that sees possibly the highest annual trade volume of any single city in Velgarth. It should have as many diamonds as three pounds of gold can buy. 

It's been less than two minutes. 

 

...he has to get a map out, which takes another three minutes, because he's never Gated to Nabiru in this lifetime, it's over two thousand miles away. Outside the Gate-range of everyone alive in the Empire, since none of them have his belt. 

...grab some non-diamond precious gemstones, too, rubies are good focus-stones and he has a little box of those...

He's pretty rusty in the language, but there should be some merchants who speak the southern trade-tongue which he's a little better on, and he can pay for an interpreter... 

 

Within five minutes, he's stepping through a Gate into an oppressively hot day under a blazing tropical sun, and the bustle and roar of thousands of voices in a market that stretches out across nearly a mile. At least it's not too humid, this close to the sea. 

...He gets a lot of attention, unsurprisingly, as the lightest-skinned person in eyeshot and also clearly wealthy and powerful. (Nobody is going to comment on his clothes when he's wearing a dozen powerful talismans.) He shouldn't have trouble finding an interpreter, and someone to show him to the nearest gem-merchant. 

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This is the kind of report that reaches the Emperor's ears within less than thirty seconds of the initial panicked communication spell. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH????????!!!!!!!!!!

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This is. Uh. Not. What he predicted would happen. What. What. 

(It stings, a lot, that Altarrin didn't talk to him, which is honestly an incredibly stupid way to feel when Altarrin seems pretty likely to be POSSESSED BY AN EVIL GOD or possibly UNDER COMPULSIONS BY AN EVIL NECROMANCER if that part was even true.) 

 

His staff are already taking care of alerting everyone with particularly-advanced scrying capabilities - do they know which if any magic items Altarrin took with him, the researchers who saw them can maybe at least share memories with the scrying-specialists - 

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(Altarrin is definitely not scryable to non-specialists, right now.) 

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(He feels numb. It feels like this can't really be happening, it's - he's far away from all of it and it doesn't feel real - he hopes he's taking all the right actions because he sure does seem to be taking actions but this does not incredibly feel like a process his conscious mind is in charge of -)

 

What advice if any does Kastil have for obvious things he should be doing and isn't yet. 

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Ordering him explicitly to return by communications-spell. Making sure every governor and every general in the Empire knows that Altarrin is under hostile compulsions. Replacing anyone who will believe him over the Emperor when the Emperor says this. Putting out the word to ambassadors, to check if he's arrived in foreign countries. Bringing in top court officials. Preparing for an extradimensional invasion.

(Kastil does not, really, expect Altarrin will be found in the first month. Most likely he's either fled to that other world, or at least to another country out of reach of Imperial commands, where someone will kindly cut his compulsions for him in the confident expectation of a reward.)

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(This is worse than the overwhelming majority of Kastil's scenarios predicted. What possible sequence of events could have lead to this? What did he miss - )

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"Get that priestforged ring the hell away from anyone who we don't want to be Iomedae's slave."

(The entire argument that the artifacts wouldn't enslave anyone who used them was that Iomedae had tried quite hard not to be killed. The item she sent -)

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They should quarantine whoever the ring was tested on, Bastran doesn't think anything suspicious was noted while they were wearing it but maybe Iomedae - or Aroden - can implant compulsions that aren't detectable to mage-sight and only kick in later... 

 

(Altarrin is uncontactable, either out of range or blocking the spell. They're trying with every single variant on it known by anyone in the Empire but it wouldn't actually surprise Bastran if Altarrin knew how to block all of them.) 

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The fact that Altarrin is visibly a very wealthy mage, visibly very much in a hurry, and barely speaks the language are all not helping at all with his haggling ability. This is fine, though, because being a mysterious wealthy mage from an inland country carrying three pounds of gold, while it certainly gets more curiosity and attention than he'd prefer, also gets four different gem-merchants coming to him to show off their inventory. His main challenge is communicating that, no, he does not in fact want this other precious stone that is Even Rarer And Prettier Than A Diamond but will generously be sold to him for the same price, he just wants diamonds. The biggest they have, the necessary size wasn't specified but large diamonds can be cut and smaller ones cannot be glued together. 

Even all of the top gem-merchants of the biggest and richest port market on the continent don't have that many large uncut unflawed diamonds (in general they can be sold for more once they're actually made into jewelry and Altarrin has no idea if the diamonds having been already cut is a problem, and he's certainly not interested in paying extra for diamonds that are probably less useful). If he were willing to haggle, he might be able to buy out nearly all of their inventory of not-already-in-jewelry diamonds.  

 

He is, however, in a hurry; he doesn't know how long it will take the Empire to find someone who can get through his shields against scrying, and he's not entirely sure that he's out of range of any possible Gates, they could do multiple hops. He's out of gold, but hopefully even a small box, holding 41 diamonds - in a range of sizes, but over a dozen are spectacularly huge as diamonds go, half an inch in diameter or more, and most of the rest are at least notably big - will be at least an adequate opening gift. 

(He wonders if you could use mage-gift to make diamonds. It doesn't seem impossible, if for some reason it were worth several months to design an artifact for it, the spell that comes to mind would have to be overpowered enough that no mage could cast it - the belt doesn't really help with peak channeling capacity, which would be the limitation rather than total reserves.) 

 

He pays up, and takes his box of diamonds, and Gates to a different records cache - on an island off the southwestern coast, over 2000 miles from the nearest border of the Empire. 

It's been another half-candlemark. Nearly three candlemarks since he dropped the last reply letter, and he didn't even get a look on scrying that time. His reserves are...actually recovered since he Gated out. (The merchants were very very eager to make him feel welcome and served snacks, and the Gate only took out a tiny bite.) 

He's...actually kind of worried about drawing the attention of Tar-Baphon, and he still isn't sure if the scrying is detectable by the magic of Iomedae's world, but it's - information - he is very reluctant to Gate anywhere without knowing Iomedae's status - he has to anyway but if she's in the middle of a battle and can't be interrupted then that might affect whether he wants to Gate into her people's camp versus somewhere on the other side of the planet. Probably he needs to Gate to her camp anyway, though, he - needs - her help - (a thought that doesn't finish) - 

 

 

He tries to scry for Iomedae, first. 

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She is in Absalom, actually, in a sumptuous waiting room while Tilbun works out a contract. He usually has one on hand for everything but this is really without precedent.

(He didn’t believe the Church of Abadar to possess six Wish-grade diamonds for sale at any price. He can get her three, though.)

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Altarrin has absolutely no idea what she's doing but it looks...sensitive and important? Safer than a war camp, maybe, but he should probably not Gate in and interrupt what might be delicate high-stakes diplomatic negotiations for a different alliance or something. And it might get back to Tar-Baphon. 

 

How about the place where they had been exchanging letters - anything notable there compared to the last time he scried it? (He, inconveniently, does not have the ring and cannot actually read a reply if there is one, but the location was almost certainly selected to be one that Tar-Baphon would have no reason to be watching for bizarre foreign magic, and Iomedae's side will be watching it.) 

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It still has the sword as a scrying-focus but nothing else.

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He is, at this point, noticeably more drained. And making a Gate big enough to cross, and then crossing it, is harder. He thinks he can stay conscious through it but he won't be in any shape to fight, which...is gambling a lot. 

 

- he's not safe here - 

 

He raises the Gate and tumbles through and sprawls on the ground. 

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They have an Alarm up over the area, obviously.

 

Marit has a Telepathic Bond with Iomedae and Alfirin so they can return in an emergency, obviously.

 

 

:A man just arrived through the exchange site with Velgarth badly injured what are your orders:

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:-  presume Tar Baphon has made contact with Velgarth, order everyone Teleport-capable dispersed, keep him alive but not conscious and ideally in an antimagic field until Alfirin gets there - and hit him with a Dispel Magic if you don’t have the field, if he’s an Imperial he’ll be under their kind of very weak geas -:

Alfirin may well be there before she finishes the sentence but she herself needs to courteously notify Tilbun’s secretary that she is urgently needed at the front and then get out of the temple’s Forbiddance and then use her boots to Teleport so she’ll be a whole thirty seconds to the scene.

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The man who fell through the Gate is not actually completely unconscious. He's not wasting energy on anything like "moving" or "opening his eyes", though, just trying to catch his breath and trying-but-mostly-failing to extend mage-sight and orient to his surroundings; the belt did not rescue him from a reaction-headache, this time, but more relevantly his compulsions are pulling his mind in a dozen different directions and he mostly can't think. 

 

He's wearing an unusually large number of Velgarth-style shield-talismans and Iomedae's Belt of Constitution and a rucksack, nonmagical save for some spells for waterproofing. (Inside, if they look, they will find a lot more talismans, a very magical box that blocks Arcane Sight, and a totally nonmagical but rather fancy box wrapped in velvet and tied with silk cords.)

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Iomedae said “unconscious” so they will Mercifully club him in the head. It only takes doing it once.

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Disjunction. Dominate Person. Private Sanctum. Open Book. Detect Thoughts

And Iomedae's here too, just in time.

"Zone of truth and wake him? - " Tongues.

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Zone of Truth. 

 

And a channel to wake him, rather than touch him for healing. (There is almost certainly nothing that'd go wrong from touching him, with Alfirin having destroyed or suppressed any magic that isn't at least a minor artifact. But for important matters, you don't need a specific threat in mind to do the most cautious possible thing.)

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Altarrin wakes up.

 

- not in his bed. Where is he - orient - mage-sight -? 

(All of this is happening in a quarter-second. He hasn't yet gotten far enough in his usual set of reflexive responses on waking in unexpected surroundings to notice the lack of compulsions. He's likely to try to Gate out, on instinct, before doing enough reasoning to notice that.) 

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Well he can't do that. He's not allowed to do anything but sit on his hands and breathe and answer questions honestly. He's also not allowed to not do any of those things. He's just going to do those things now and he doesn't really get any say in the matter.

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"Can you understand me?" Somehow he can, though she's speaking an unfamiliar language. 

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....This is apparently what's happening, then. Altarrin is managing to retrieve slightly more of his recent memories and - he intended to do this, he intended to come to Iomedae's world because he - because Iomedae thought (but it was him, actually, he thought it, with the headband, pretending he was just trying to model her because he couldn't think any other way) that he was in danger from the gods from the Empire he created from whatever horrible thing ended up existing caught between those two competing pressures - 

(This is a line of thought he's tread over a few times by now and it makes perfect sense in his own head, if perhaps less so in his surface thoughts as read by someone else.) 

He can think again but also he can't because he's apparently now a prisoner of something else and this was - not even unexpected - just, he would probably, predictably, be curling up in a ball and crying now, or something, if not for the fact that he isn't allowed to do that. 

Iomedae is here. He doesn't actually trust her but he trusts her more than the Empire. 

 

 

...He can understand her. "Yes." 

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"Is Tar-Baphon operating in Velgarth presently."

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What? 

 

"No." Though the fact that she's even asking the question is maybe informative, so... "- Not that I am aware of. Not why I came here." 

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"Do you anticipate being pursued?"

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"...Not especially. At least not anytime soon. I - was the one who developed the Gate-technique to come here and I did not teach it to anyone else." 

It depends how much Aritha, the clever mage-researcher, actually picked up? But she couldn't cast even the scry-technique she helped develop with him, she didn't have a powerful enough Gift - or enough control to compensate with more efficiency - basically no one but him has that since no one but him is 700 years old. ...Either way she had the headband for her work on that, was relying on it heavily, and she doesn't have it now, it was in the box in his rucksack because he wanted to return it to Iomedae - 

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:...He's some sort of immortal. 700 years old. Also he brought back the headband, and he has an assistant who might know enough to help someone more powerful than her cast the it but probably doesn't.:

And, also, Altarrin is going to give more complete answers going forward.

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Iomedae does not visibly acknowledge this at all, though over the Telepathic Bond she sends wordless acknowledgement.

The most powerful mage in the Empire, the Marshal had said, was Archmage General Altarrin, the only person to improve Imperial standard spells in several centuries.... he'd have mentioned if the man were known to be immortal, presumably - 

- this isn't even necessarily Archmage General Altarrin, but he was the one who'd written to her as well as the most powerful mage -

 

"There is no one in the Empire, now that you have left, who could scry Tar-Baphon today, even if they were highly motivated to do so?"

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"Not that I am aware of, and I ought to be aware of anyone who could. It was very difficult research to figure out and I did not keep complete notes on it - I think even Aritha does not have full context on the interplanar routing technique, I was running half of that on intuition anyway. ...I separately doubt anyone would be motivated to try, the Empire's prior institutional history does not incline it to - reach out actively to potential allies especially dubious and terrifying ones - and the leadership will be very frightened of the gods of this world after I Gated out - will maybe assume Tar-Baphon might serve a different god than yours since it was never specified that he did not...

His thoughts are not really any more coherent than the words he's managing to say. 

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And she relaxes, visibly and notably, and - smiles at him, warm and encouraging (not a supernatural aura of courage. She doesn't do that to people if they in fact might have something to fear from her.)

"All right. I'm glad of that. Both our worlds have a great deal to lose, should Velgarth come to the wrong attention. If you think of anything else that might be, in hindsight, the operation of Golarion magic-users in Velgarth, or a way the Empire might contact Tar-Baphon, I have some options to protect both worlds but I'd need to know about the threat in order to counter it. 

 

Can you tell me - who you are, and why you came here?"

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 - He can think more freely, though still definitely not use magic even if it's a purely mental action. He can even think about escaping if he wants! That would be informative.

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The main effect of being able to think more freely is a lot more random agonizing emotional pain!

...Altarrin is mostly not even paying attention to it. Not because of any current mind control, it's more a deep reflexive habit, he isn't safe and so he cannot be miserable that can wait. There will be plenty of time, later, to figure out (a tangle of unfinished thoughts and unprocessed emotions that even Alfirin won't be able to get much out of, since Altarrin himself still hasn't, though the overall gist is one of exhaustion and regret and the sense of having, in hindsight, been incredibly stupid for entire centuries and he hates it.) 

 

"Archmage-General Altarrin.

...Shakari, in my last lifetime."

If the Dominate is still forcing complete answers, he will give names for every previous incarnation, back to Lionstar k'Leshya, and then Ma'ar. 

"...I came here because I - could not - the Empire could not–" 

And he is actually failing to come up with an answer, here, because all of his reasoning up until now on why Gating to Iomedae's world was necessary and his only remaining option was, in hindsight, obviously a rationalization to get around the compulsions, and he assumes there's a true thing he wanted underneath, a reason he tried at all, but he's overwhelmed and terrified and not managing to come up with anything more specific than -

- a vague not-memory of looking at the stars and making a vow to fix everything and he's been breaking it for 700 years 

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...Oh. She gets a bit more, from the edges of his thoughts, about exactly how he's immortal and -

Everything about him as a person, really. It's where she could see herself in 700 years. She hopes she'd have been smart enough to not fall into the same trap of being committed to his empire, but other than that -

:I'm going to loosen up, let him speak freely, I think we've covered all the specific, urgent questions? And I think you'll get more from just talking to him. I think you'll like him.:

 

And Altarrin can move, and is not compelled to speak or take any particular actions. He won't be able to use magic or draw a weapon or try to attack anybody, and can't move more than four feet from where he is now, but if he doesn't try any of those things he won't even notice.

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That was her instinct too, though she wasn't going to push Alfirin on it. She tries not to, on matters that aren't life or death.

She is going to order people who have dispersed in case of imminent war with the possibly-puppetted Empire to stand down and return to their previous duties.

"Archmage-General Altarrin. I got your letter. I appreciated it. I'm Iomedae, Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade. I - wish we could have spoken face to face a lot sooner, really. Are you comfortable? Should I have someone get you - food, water, a lesser restoration - somewhere more comfortable to sit -"

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The loosening of the bonds on his mind is - actually really not helping, at least with the short-term goal of 'answering questions which are clearly important' - and Iomedae's...kindness...is even less helping with that. He has no idea if he's comfortable. Why is that an important question. He wants - he doesn't know what - 

...he needs to focus and tell them the important things and he can deal with - everything else - after that. 

 

"...I know. I -" thank you for not killing me even if it would have been entirely fair, "- I wish we could have spoken sooner as well. I - I said most of the apologies I wanted to in the letter... I brought diamonds. In the rucksack, the velvet package. Not sure they are the kind you need but." 

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" - well, do you want to toss them over here, and I'll take a look." 

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He can do that. His hands are slightly shaking though not because anything is physically wrong with him. 

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:He might want a calm emotions actually, if anyone has one - He seems to almost want the more restrictive dominate back but I think the situation will be better in twenty minutes if I don't:

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:I'll ask if anyone has it free - I'm also just not in a hurry at this point, though, if he wants some time to process - he's spent this whole life under the Empire's mind control...:

 

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And she opens it, and -

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- is speechless, because there are dozens of these, including a dozen that are notably bigger than you need for Wish -

 

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: - can you - come check that they're - magically active -: She's not sure the easiest way to do that, she's not a wizard.

 

 

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:It'll take a minute, I don't have anything prepared that needs one right now, I'll send someone for someone who can use a stoneskin:

She'll dispatch an aide-de-camp to fetch whoever's rotating into command of the rearguard next and pull her spellbook out of thin air to start preparing.

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She shouldn't gape like an idiot at Altarrin for the whole minute. She also cannot allow herself to believe they're real until Alfirin has checked. "This is Alfirin," she says instead, inanely. "She is a powerful spellcaster who I have worked alongside for - most of both our lives."

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She doesn't actually like preparing spells standing so she'll have an unattended stool pull itself up.

"Hello, nice to meet you, wish the circumstances were better, interesting language you've got here" she says in Jaconan

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Huh. 

He nods, respectfully. "Thank you." 

What else do they need to know? Well. Probably it would help if he could try to unpack his actual reasons for coming here, try to separate that from the rationalizations. ...He's not sure he can do that, yet, it sounds - too hard - like it requires having his head in a much clearer order than it is right now. But he can at least - say things he thinks are true - and maybe that will help? 

 

"I think the Empire I wanted to build is - I read some of Aroden's holy book, that you sent - I think I wanted...the same things Aroden wanted. Based on what was written, which I did not and still do not entirely trust, but - I trust it more after, " vague handwave, "after this." 

Shrug. "I - think that is most of the actual reason I Gated here. They were about to recall me to the capital and - I am not sure what would have happened if I had gone - I had written a proposal that included suggesting we pull back on the war in Oris - I suspect it made my superiors suspicious, and they were already very worried that Aroden might be able to mind-control people through the artifacts. But - either way it would not have accomplished - working toward an actual alliance - if I had tried to go there and follow the usual channels. I think." 

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"....the claim made by the Orisan rebel leadership was that there was no one in Jacona, not even the Emperor, who could decide to - be less paranoid, less ruthless - without losing to someone who was moreso - and no one could quit the game, either, because of the loyalty compulsions -"

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That...hurts, but in a way that isn't surprising, and if he's flinching away from it, it's only habit and - the usual human reasons - not literal barriers in his mind. 

 

He lets out his breath.

"I very badly wish I had managed to create an Empire that was less - like that - but even in hindsight I am not actually sure what I should have done differently. 

- I was still under the compulsions until your people cut them. I - I am honestly not entirely sure how I - did that - but I suppose I have more practice than most." 

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She snaps the book closed, plucks one of the smallest diamonds, and casts a stoneskin.

 

...Oh thank the gods.

"They're good."

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Iomedae's instinct, when she has spent sleepless nights desperately trying to find a way to take a city without a massacre and then a solution far better than anything she could possibly have dreamed of falls into her lap not at all through her strength, is in fact to pray, to Aroden and to Sarenrae and Shelyn and Desna and Erastil and Shizuru who probably isn't doing literally nothing up there and to every minor demigod of fortune she's heard of, to try to brush every power that might care with thankyouthankyouthankyou, I will use it well, I will stretch everything you can bring me as far as I can reach, whatever you paid for this I will make it worth it -

 

This would, obviously, be enormously disrespectful to the distinctly nonreligious man before her who acquired these diamonds with his personal resources and evidently at fairly extraordinary personal cost because she said her world needed them. She is not going to do it. The only sign of the instinct is that her eyes close, and then she deliberately opens them again. 

 

 

And she says very carefully, "These are - the right kind of diamond. I am more grateful than you can imagine. I - could save hundreds of thousands of lives with this, plausibly more. ...and before I accept this gift I need to give you an accurate sense of how much it would be valued at - in our world - if you took it to our wealthiest cities and sought a fair exchange and weren't impatient to sell and didn't get robbed along the way. If I don't do that I would be taking advantage of you.

You would, with half of this, be richer than any man who's not a King, and most who are." 

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Altarrin honestly has no idea how to respond to that except by - pointing out some resource-availability differences? That Iomedae probably wants to know? 

 

"....I purchased these for three pounds of gold, in Velgarth. I could have gotten a better deal on it if I had been less hurried. ...I cannot give a good estimate of how far that exchange rate would go, I bought out the entire inventory of the biggest port city market on the continent, but - further than this, there are other cities and diamond mines that could increase production if they had a reason. Probably the main cost to getting more for you is the Gate back and forth, I assume you have enough gold to trade for it, but Gates are still very tiring until I have a month to figure out a more elegant search-routing solution, and also I am not sure of the risk per each Gate of Tar-Baphon detecting it." 

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" - yes. I'm aware. It's an advantage we were in fact already ourselves contemplating how to exploit. I just - 

 

- it is important to me that as far as it's possible, no one who tries to bring me aid will have a moment later when they realize I misled them to make the aid easier for them to part with."

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He is not going to curl up and cry - he's not even sure why he wants to do that in response to what Iomedae just said, which is an extremely reasonable thing to say - 

 

"I know. I - did not come here - because I wanted to be rich. I came here because - your world might actually have worse problems than ours - and I do not want us to have to be enemies...." 

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:His standards are incredibly low and every time you are Lawful Good at him he almost has a crying fit. Obviously you're going to keep doing it but I thought you should know.:

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Iomedae would make some rejoinder about what convincing evidence this is for her own side of the recurring Iomedae-Alfirin debate about how extrinsically valuable it is to be a good person but honestly this is so wildly out of context that it's hard to even fit into that lens. 

 

"Well," she says, "if you were just trying to buy as many problems-in-the-world fixed as possible for the diamonds, I am indeed widely considered the person to go to for that, and that is what I will use them for."

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:OK I think that one was just gratuitous.:

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:Me? Be gratuitously Lawful Good? That sounds like the kind of luxury I could hardly afford unless someone were going to drop a dozen Wish diamonds on my head about it.:

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Which is the sort of assertion that under normal circumstances he would definitely want to check against independent sources but he doesn't have a spy-network here, does he, and also he hasn't tested the limits of it yet but he is presumably still under substantial mind control and it would be stupid for Iomedae to let him go question her enemies about her. Especially given how her main enemy is Tar-Baphon. 

...He doesn't really know where else to go with that line of thought. 

 

 

- what other information are they going to want to know? 

"- I would like to be allowed to scry Velgarth, if you are willing. I - suspect," now that he's able to think about it at all, "that my disappearance will be very disruptive, and I– it might not be possible at this point for me to call off the war effort in Oris, I have - they probably assume I am a traitor suborned by Aroden now - but I would like to know what is happening and I think it would be informative for your order as well." 

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"What do you need for that - we often use mirrors, here, I assume yours is different?"

:I can probably let him do that without any other magic but I'm not sure, not having seen Velgarth magic done before, and if he gates far enough away the dominate might stop working. Unlikely, especially with the amount of cooperative he's being, I'd let him if you don't override me.:

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:If he gates off to another planet I'm inclined to - consider ourselves very much on the whole to have gotten a good deal. Does he believe us that he should not get Tar-Baphon's attention, that's really the only big thing.: 

 

"I genuinely appreciate that you tried to get them to call off the war effort in Oris," she says. "And I'm sorry that I participated in raising the costs of that war, and of course wish I'd done otherwise. I'm fine with you scrying your home world - conceivably we should get you set up somewhere harder to spy on, first, lest our enemies notice something interesting is happening here."

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"- That makes sense and you should do that. I - do not need anything in particular for scrying - if you have large unflawed quartz crystals," hand gesture, he means about half the size of a fist, "I...might be able to make an artifact that will make it significantly easier to cast repeatedly. We have standard artifacts for within-Velgarth scrying that I mostly could not use for the interplanar version. ...Mostly need to be somewhere secure, it will be very tiring and distracting." 

 

(It continues to be clear to anyone reading Altarrin's mind that, while his surface thoughts are coherent enough, he is still in a lot of emotional pain and just barely holding himself together against an emotional breakdown.) 

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:He does appear to believe us about Tar-Baphon but if he gates off to another planet it's evidence that his mind is very slippery and we should be much less sure of anything we've learned here including that.:

"We've got some of those, yes. Do you want a spell to calm emotions."

Technically this place is almost as hard to spy on as a place can get, unless they're planning to stash him in Alfirin's demiplane (Has practical problems and she'd mildly prefer not) or Alfirin's foresight-resistant demiplane that she hasn't told anyone exists. (Not a lantern archon's chance in hell) It's also, however,  kind of in the middle of the camp road, which is reason enough to relocate.

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(Iomedae would rather like Alfirin to take four hours out of her day to make a new temporary demiplane for holding the Archmage-General, but that's enough of Alfirin's time she isn't going to volunteer it.)

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Does he want a spell to 'calm emotions' - he's not sure what that means - he is pretty sure they've already been running whatever mind-control they wanted on him and in the world where they're hostile (then he's already lost) and also it doesn't matter. (These are mostly reflexive thoughts, not particularly specific to Iomedae or this world and its magic.) 

"I am not sure it will help but if you think it might then I am willing to try it," Altarrin says, rather tonelessly. 

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"We're asking because we are no longer in a hurry, and don't need to cause your mind to be in any particular states, and are treating you as a likely ally. We are going to keep using mind-control to stop you from attacking us, or trying to contact Tar-Baphon, or fleeing unexpectedly. We're not planning to use it any more than that. Probably if you wanted to be allowed to return home Iomedae would grant that and we'd stop controlling you at all."

"I thought you could use a calm emotions spell because - you're clearly very unsettled, right now. The spell smooths out extreme emotions, it doesn't last very long and we can safely end it early if you dislike it, but a lot of the time if the emotions in question aren't magically induced in the first place just mellowing them for half a minute can stop them - bouncing off each other - and make it easier to manage them afterwards. Or it's possible what you need is some time alone with nothing important and urgent so you can deal with your emotions yourself instead of trying to push past them. This isn't really my job and your assessment is going to be more useful than mine, I just thought to suggest it because - you seem to have had a mildly traumatic - " life. lives. " - day, having all your compulsions removed seems to be affecting you badly, and it's impairing your ability to think and you strike me as the sort of person who would rather that not be the case. If you'd rather some time alone we can give you that, if you'd rather press through it and keep doing important things I think you're being an idiot but I'm not going to stop you."

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....Altarrin's appreciation and respect for Alfirin has risen substantially just now. 

He - would, all else being equal, prefer to be back in one of his records caches in Velgarth for a year or two to think. Unfortunately there are things which are important and urgent and they aren't going to stop happening if he declares that they aren't his problem and - he cannot, actually, declare that they aren't his problem. 

He had really hoped that he would be less impaired once he was no longer under compulsions - he's at this point pretty sure that's what he was angling for all along, when he decided to Gate here, whatever he might have been thinking about how his imaginary Iomedae model would predict that the gods would prevent him from achieving any of the things the Empire needed and also probably murder him - but he is apparently just differently impaired. 

(It's very reasonable for them to have measures in place to prevent him from attacking them or contacting Tar-Baphon or fleeing. He doesn't want to do any of those things anyway, so it's not as though it's costing him much. He also doesn't want to return to Velgarth right now - except maybe to get more diamonds, but it might actually be better if someone from their world could figure out a way to travel there, they have translation magic and won't be an obvious target for the Empire's scrying...)

 

He's still not entirely sure it will help rather than make things worse, a lot of things seem to keep making things worse when he hadn't expected that, but - he does believe Alfirin, that they can and will end the spell early if it's not helping. 

 

"- That makes sense. I would like to try it." 

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"Most of our people who can cast it get it from a god but we have one sorcerer who can do it and I assume you'd prefer that?"

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...Altarrin is genuinely surprised. He thought it was obvious, at the point he decided to risk Gating to Iomedae's message-exchange point, that he's decided - well, it's not that he fully trusts Aroden, but he - doesn't currently endorse distrusting Aroden more because He's a god, and - if he had read Aroden's holy book and been told it was by a mortal human, he would be substantially more inclined to trust that person than he would a stranger. He thinks that...should probably also carry over to Aroden the god.

(And it seems like...probably a misallocation of their resources...to get someone whose availability for casting is presumably a very limited resource to handle this just because it would bother Altarrin otherwise...)

 

"- I do not mind either way," he manages to say out loud. "....I would want to know who their god was, if it was not Aroden." 

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"The crusade employs empowered followers of more than a dozen gods, but I haven't brought any of the crusade's empowered followers of gods other than Aroden in on matters concerning Velgarth or you, because contact with Velgarth seems likely to be delicate in god-politics as well as regular politics.

I did begin confidential negotiations with the Church of Abadar, the god of trade and commerce, to sell them access to Velgarth. I'll pause those now, of course. They do not in fact have sufficient information from me to reach Velgarth, or the means, and they are committed not to using the information already disclosed in negotiations in any way."

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They have a god of what– ...not the top priority right now. 

 

"Understood. I - really do not mind having a follower of Aroden cast it. If I thought it was at all likely that Aroden - opposed my goals - I would not have Gated here." 

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Then they'll send on in a fourth-circle priest of Aroden, a fifteen year veteran of the campaign, old enough not to be overawed or particularly nervous to be called in on whatever Iomedae and Alfirin are secretly working on. He bows, not deeply but crisply. "Knight-Commander."

"Elder Astalis. With this man's permission I'd like you to give him a Calm Emotions."

(He does internally note the fact the Knight Commander is noticeably (if you're quite Wise) not full of grim determination. She must have gotten her miracle for Urgir, though of course he won't repeat that.)

"I can stop the spell at any moment you ask," he says to Altarrin. "It suppresses positive emotions as well as negative ones, and can suppress Heroism and so on."

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He takes a few deep breaths. Nods. "You can go ahead." 

...Are they letting him use mage-sight in order to watch the spell? He's seen their artifacts but never live-cast magic, and he's curious. 

 

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She notices him wondering in time to carve an exception for mage-sight out of the block on using magic. She's watching him to see if mage-sight is itself detectable.

(Alfirin, to mage-sight, looks like nothing at all, which is not at all what you would expect from a powerful mage presumably wearing - maybe not as many artifacts as Iomedae, but you'd expect any.)

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Elder Astalis casts Calm Emotions. He's not using mage-energy, but something slightly different; the spell is notably complex and powerful and structured, compared to Velgarth magic, and he closes his eyes to concentrate on holding it in its structure as he goes.

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(Mage-sight is not detectable as magic, no.)

That's fascinating. It's different presumably because it's not exactly a spell, but a repeatable-miracle from Aroden? 

 

And then he's calm, just like that.

It doesn't seem to be otherwise shifting his thoughts directly, but - a lot of what had felt like content in his thoughts, or observations about the world, turns out to have been mostly emotions? He can be aware that he doesn't know very much about the place where he finds himself now but he isn't disoriented about it, it's just a neutral fact, that he can if he wants address by looking around or by, you know, asking. He's aware that he's missing a lot of context on Aroden and on Iomedae's history and on whoever Alfirin is, but he is no longer experiencing the painful confusion that feels half like physical dizziness. He's not scared. He doesn't exactly feel safe either, he's just - neither of those things - and he can think about the facts of the situation, where the most relevant one is that Iomedae is right here, accompanied by her probably-comparably-powerful ally, and he just brought them diamonds that were apparently vastly more valuable to them than he had actually realized, and this...is unlikely to be a situation where Iomedae is going to let anything happen to him. 

He doesn't expect the feeling of calm to last. Minds form habits and he's no more immune to this than anyone, just - better at being mindful of it, of retraining habits he doesn't want to have. Which takes time, and he has, in hindsight, spent weeks terrified and miserable and trapped, and those pathways aren't active right now but he can tell that they're still there. And - not even entirely inappropriate to the situation, he came here willingly - mostly - that's complicated actually, but he did at least come here because he believed (and was probably right to) that it would be overall a better position to achieve his goals, to be trapped here rather than trapped in the Empire. But 'trapped' isn't the wrong description for it. They are, quite reasonably, preventing him from running away. Also he's in the middle of the camp road and none of his talismans are working right now - he hadn't noticed before, not until he could use mage-sight - and right now the reflex to be very distressed about that isn't activating but this is absolutely something that would under non-mind-control circumstances be stressful.

Also, the Empire is still in the middle of three wars and he probably can't go back and he - he didn't, actually, think through the cost he was paying there, because in order to do this at all he had to approximately deceive himself into thinking it had already been paid. He doesn't know what would really have happened, if he had returned to Jacona as ordered, but 'immediately being assassinated by the gods probably isn't the most likely option. 

Bastran is going to be terrified and will do what he predictably does under those circumstances, which is mostly 'whatever his advisors pitch to him as being paranoid enough', and this will predictably go badly and - he doesn't want the Empire to collapse, whatever its flaws, the alternative is still worse. 

Nothing he can do about it right now.

 

What he can, maybe, do something about, is Iomedae's war. He wants to help with that. More than he already has with the diamonds, probably, though he needs to coordinate that with Iomedae on that, a lot of his usual strategies would be rather attention-drawing here and it's probably not worth the cost of Tar-Baphon getting suspicious enough to investigate. 

(He doesn't say anything, yet. They warned him the spell was short-duration and he's trying to use that time as well as he can, dragging his mind into something resembling order, trying to arrange his priorities so that he can push through for a while by leaning on the urgency of Iomedae's war. He does at some point have to deal with - all the things that are agonizingly painful to think about when he's not having all of his emotions calmed, the fact that his project of the last six hundred years was almost certainly a mistake - but he doesn't yet feel like he has traction on it, and it's not the thing to focus on in the middle of a war.) 

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And the spell runs out. 

 

"Thank you, Elder," says Iomedae, and the priest of Aroden bows crisply again and leaves. 

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It's about as unpleasant as Altarrin expected! 

It's - a clearer and sharper misery than before, which does feel like an improvement even if it's pretty awful to be experiencing. He is much less running around in confused circles in his own head; he's delineated what he's still confused or uncertain about, and he does want to resolve it but none of it is decision-relevant to whether or not he endorses helping with Iomedae's war.

He's scared, but he also has a crisper sense of how much of that is for specific reasons, like being out in the open with no active talismans and being in the same world as Tar-Baphon and not entirely being sure of Iomedae or of Aroden, and how much is just that he's...forgotten how not to be. And overall fear is a smaller component of the misery, now, and the rest is heavily flavored with...grief, he thinks is what that emotion is, for a dozen things but he's clear enough on what that he could make a list. If he wanted. He does not really want to right now. 

Also he's exhausted and only partly in an emotional sense (though he doesn't have noticeable backlash symptoms, which he's only just noticed is surprising) and he's thirsty, and he feels cold - he's not sure if the air temperature is actually cold or if it's because his clothes are slightly damp from sweat after the exertion of the Gate here or if it's mostly psychological, his chest definitely has the leaden hollow feeling of the delayed shock reaction that comes when adrenaline starts to wear off. Which makes perfect sense because he was in hindsight kind of panicking during the earlier conversation until the emotion-calming made him stop it. He wants to be allowed to cast a heat-spell - or, no, probably what he actually wants is to be indoors, which would also help with the feeling of being very exposed. 

He's pretty sure they're still reading his mind and probably he doesn't have to say any of that explicitly? 

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"Yes, I'm reading your mind. We're not planning to keep doing that for much longer but it's useful for tuning the mind control and of course we weren't sure at first that you weren't an enemy."

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"I want to get you settled in somewhere more permanent, stop the mindreading, give you food and water and blankets and space to think. Alfirin, may I ask for a mansion -" If she casts it extended it'll last more than three days, by which time they'll have taken Urgir, and its presence in the war camp shouldn't invite any particular suspicion. It'll also be useful for hosting the multiple clerics for Miracles she's now planning to hire tomorrow. 

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"I am not bothered about the mindreading."

He genuinely isn't. He is bothered about the mind control not letting him Gate out, not because he has any intention of doing so right now - he wants to be here, his goal was to cooperate - and more because 'Gate to a shielded secret location' has been his reflexive response to out of context threats almost since he learned to Gate at all; being able to get out of situations he doesn't want to be in is a pretty important cornerstone for ever feeling safe. (It's separately bothering him that he doesn't have anywhere to go on the same planet; the interworld Gate takes too long.) 

"I would like to go somewhere indoors and shielded," he acknowledges. He's distracted right now, poking at his talismans with mage-sight to gauge if they even could be repowered, assuming Alfirin feels like letting him, or if they're actually broken. He's not quite distracted enough not to be confused about the...asking for a mansion...but he doesn't ask. 

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"Yes, I can - I did already use my disjunction, it's a slight risk if I also use my spare eighth and the enemy tries something big this evening - But I can prep a wish in case that happens. A few minutes and - hm. Tar-Baphon will know something is up, not from the mansion but from the private sanctum in the middle of the camp and all the dispersals earlier - Hopefully he doesn't know anything more than that about what - "

The spellbook is back, and this time Altarrin can see the actual spell preparation with mage-sight. The effects Alfirin is weaving on an invisible scaffold are not, actually, any less complex than the spell Astalis used earlier - to the contrary they are much more so, though somewhat less - for lack of a better word - ornate. She builds them up with practiced efficiency, folds them down into small, compact bundles of magic, and - tucks them away? - somewhere where they can't be seen, possibly just under whatever spell is hiding all the other magical signatures that should be on her person.

In between spells she pulls a ring off her finger and flicks it in his direction - once it's in the air it's quite visible to mage-sight.

"See if you can figure out how to activate that, it's just an act of will, it'll make you invisible when we relocate which should buy us a tiny bit more secrecy about your presence here." If he can't she can do it for him but that's obviously dispreferred.

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Altarrin tries to catch the ring in a force-net, instinctively - it's fast enough and subconscious enough that Alfirin won't have an opportunity to carve out an exception for the magic even if she wanted to, and it doesn't work, which is very upsetting and produces a jolt of fresh panic even though it's not exactly new information.

Altarrin doesn't say anything, though, just picks up the ring and examines it with mage-sight before risking putting it on. Can he see the trigger point for activating it with mage-sight directly? 

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"Sorry."

The ring is also pretty complex, though the complexity is less surprising in an artifact than in a spell. He can identify the trigger mechanism without much trouble, though, most of the complexity is in the generated effect.

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Altarrin ducks his head. He wasn't expecting an apology for the fact that they're taking the obvious precautions - given that a powerful mage from an Empire Iomedae had been at war with until he personally arranged to kill her just Gated into their camp unannounced - and he doesn't know how to respond, but he does appreciate it. 

He puts the ring on and - he probably could figure out how to activate it by poking the trigger with his mage-gift, but it's not immediately obvious how, so instead he tries willing it to work and make him invisible. Presumably it will not make him invisible to Alfirin's mindreading. 

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"It's unlimited use, you can stay invisible if you want but it's not costly to deactivate it now and reactivate it later. And yes, it's a separate spell to block magical senses, I don't have that one in ring format so I'll cast it on you before we leave this area."

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...If it's all right with her he'll just stay invisible. It doesn't feel safe but it does feel slightly safer. He waits. 

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She doesn't mind. Caring about whether their conversation partners are visible isn't really for people with permanent see invisibility, not that it matters because she's not looking up from her spellbook.

 

It's not much longer, before she closes the book again and taps Altarrin with a nondetection. Her eyes lose focus on him as soon as she does.

"I can still sense your thoughts, and you're still normally audible, but you should be hidden from most spells. In a moment I'm going to take down the privacy spell here, and we're going to walk over to a better location to put a mansion, and I'm going to cast that spell. Please stay close behind Iomedae and myself and try not to make much noise until we're inside."

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Iomedae has stuck her head outside the Sanctum to give some telepathic orders for security given that Tar-Baphon's people have probably noticed the crusaders are up to something. She ducks back in. "I expect forewarning if there's trouble," she tells Altarrin.  It would be unlikely for Tar-Baphon's immediate response to the situation to be dropping on Alfirin and Iomedae the (very few) people who might not immediately die of that. Probably he'll instead send spies or Dominate her people from a distance or so on.

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...That does indeed seem like less than a brilliant move on Tar-Baphon's part but it's still terrifying to be reminded that it might happen and he wouldn't even be able to Gate out. 

Altarrin mostly hasn't been trying to move. He can stand up without difficulty, he's not lightheaded, but for some reason he's suddenly shivering uncontrollably, and it turns out that walking - especially walking quietly - is harder when he can't stop shaking and also cannot actually see his feet, including with mage-sight. He can still manage it but he is not enjoying the process. 

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She is a creature capable of learning and will wait to confuse him with an apology until they're in the mansion.

The place she picks to cast her spell is in between two of the larger tents in the center of the camp. There is definitely not room for an entire building there, but the spell seems more like a gate than like conjuring a structure out of thin air - though the structure the gate opens to is obviously conjured, the whole thing is magical.

"Sorry about that, too, moving invisibly can be disorienting the first time - I could have done it for you but I expect you to have liked that less."

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Altarrin watches the spell with muted amazement; he's not particularly surprised that it's possible with this world's magic, but this is mostly because feeling curious about things seems to be mostly broken right now. He is noticeably less tense as soon as they step inside. 

...He's not sure what exactly Alfirin means but probably both 'carrying him' and 'literally moving his body for him with mind control' would have been worse, so he's grateful that she didn't. 

Is there somewhere obvious to sit down? 

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They've stepped into a grand hallway with many doorways leading up to a similarly grand staircase, all brightly lit by floating orbs. A collection of - he'd say 'uniformed servants' except for the distinct lack of servants inside the uniforms, there's a mostly-humanoid bundle of magical energy but nothing visible to the mundane eye - are standing about waiting to open doors or perform other tasks - one is pouring tea, another looks like it might want to take someone's coat if any of the three of them were wearing a coat. There is one door open, on the left, with a set of plush chairs around a low table next to a fireplace visible through it.

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"The spell just does that," she says tiredly. She would judge people for using magic like this while there's a crusade on, if she were unaware that this is just what fits into a seventh-circle bundle and you can't get it down to six no matter how much frippery you omit. 

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As they head toward the room, they are passed by a procession of uniforms carrying a small - no, actually rather large - feast to the door and depositing it just outside. They can't feed the army with a single casting of the spell, but they could feed a thousand men for a night on it (Or supplement the dinners of many thousands with a little more variety and luxury than is common on campaign. On days when they have a need for a magnificent mansion Alfirin briefly becomes everyone's third favorite person.)

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Altarrin had not been planning to ask. He feels too tired right now to even be curious, though if surprise were working properly he would have been more surprised by the apparent extraplanar space than either the luxury of the surroundings - that could be mostly illusion, the kind that's convincing to touch as well as eyes - or the servant-uniformed magical constructs, which you could if you wanted to do in Velgarth with summoned elementals though in this case he wouldn't be shocked if they were created from scratch out of raw magic. Mostly because he wouldn't be shocked by anything right now. 

- where did the food come from, that's actually weirder than either -

He waits for instructions or permission to actually sit down in the chair closest to the fire. It's probably fine, but he's still unendorsedly shaken from the last time he ran into a mind-control-limit on something he wasn't allowed to do. 

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"You can sit - the only restrictions on you right now are trying to harm yourself or another living person, trying to leave the camp - though we'd really prefer if you didn't leave the mansion for now, for your sake as well as ours - trying to contact Tar-Baphon, or using magic. The last one is there because I'm not familiar enough with your magic to be confident you can't use it in some clever way to subvert the other goals. I'm going to relax it when you want to do your scrying and - I can carve out specific exceptions for techniques you want to use, but I'm more confident in a list of allowed exceptions than blanket permission with a list of forbidden exceptions."

"If you want to be alone Iomedae and I can go to a different room. I'm going to take the ring back before I leave but I expect you can keep it for an hour if you want."

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She's absolutely not going to carve out an exception to let him Gate out in an emergency, so there's no point in asking. He sits. 

He wants...he doesn't know. Mostly things that Alfirin cannot actually give him, like 'Bastran being safe and free of the Empire' - okay, technically they probably could do that but it would be a disaster and they shouldn't - possibly he shouldn't be thinking where Alfirin can see it about ways they could cause the Empire to collapse but maintaining that level of paranoia around people who have complete power over him anyway, and could if they were hostile still drag the answers out of his head, sounds so exhausting. He can't ground feeling-safe in being able to leave or in being able to make his own plans, he's - he already made the choice to gamble that their main priority is the war with Tar-Baphon, not the war with the Empire, and that it wouldn't be in their incentives to let anything disastrous happen to their diamond source. 

(That's...incomplete - there are other sources of information here, other updates he can make about whether trusting Aroden's people will result in outcomes he wants, but - he actually really doesn't want to do that reasoning where Alfirin can see it.)  

"I think I want to be alone," he says, dully. "I - can you let me try to recharge the talismans?"

He is not going to assume that she can't read his mind through walls, though he overall thinks she won't without telling him, it seems - characteristic of her - to be straightforward about what's happening. And his talisman to block Thoughtsensing might not even work against whatever spell she's using. He still expects to feel safer with it working. 

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"Yes. Do one now so I can see what it looks like. If you want food, water, whatever, the servants can bring it. Books, too, but that will take longer, the spell won't make them so we'd have to fetch them from elsewhere in the camp. There are bedrooms if you want to sleep, the servants can show you where or you can explore on your own, any room that isn't locked. In case you need to eat and drink and are likely to forget or not want to ask, you'll get meals at regular intervals if you haven't requested anything specific."

"...For what it's worth, I had a plan to take over your Empire three hours after we'd recovered Iomedae and I have not seen any reason to think it wouldn't work, unless your local gods really did not want me to and have more ability to intervene in the Empire than I expect. I don't know if you'll find that comforting but - your thoughts aren't making the Empire's situation worse.

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"Alfirin is not a Knight of Ozem. I meant what I said to the Empire, in spirit and not just in letter, but I said in in part because the Knights don't have cheap ways to make things better for people in the Empire by fighting it, and it'd be a much larger ask of me, that I deny access to Velgarth to anyone who might threaten the Empire."

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Altarrin nods. "I understand."

It is reassuring, oddly enough, moreso than their - kindness - which keeps being unexpected even though it probably doesn't cost them anything, and even though Altarrin too prefers to be polite to people if it's free, regardless of whether they're allies or prisoners or some ambiguous thing in between the two.

But Alfirin having a plan– having already had a plan to conquer the Empire for weeks, means that - well, for one, that she doesn't currently see it as in her interests, since she demonstrably hasn't. But more importantly it means that she's careful, the sort of person who thinks through contingencies ahead of time, and it doesn't serve anyone's interest for the Empire to be conquered in a way where tens of thousands of people die - if not millions, which is the right order of magnitude for how many people he estimates will die if the Empire collapses. If Alfirin has a plan, and is that fully confident that it will work, then he expects she thinks she can do it cleanly. That matters to him. 

...He's not sure if the gods would allow it. Alfirin is clearly as powerful - and thus as disruptive - as Iomedae was, and he's not sure if the gods of Velgarth would like her any better than they like Altarrin. 

"How do I actually interact with the servants?" he asks quietly. (Elementals can usually be reached with Mindspeech but he doesn't have that Gift, and it would be understandable of Alfirin to prefer not to let him use his communication spell.) 

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"Oh you can just talk to them. In any real language, but not one that you've made up yourself unless you're very very good at that. They can't speak but they can write - oh you didn't bring the scholar's ring back - they'll understand you fine, but I guess don't have a way to communicate back with words."

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"I was hoping it might let my colleagues read Aroden's holy text, it - seemed important -" Slight shrug. "Probably they will assume it was how Iomedae mind-controlled me into defecting and they will destroy it. I am sorry if it was expensive." He shakes himself slightly. "Thank you." 

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"That sounds like the right decision."

And she and Iomedae will go to a different room in the mansion.

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The strategic situation has been determined to be non-urgent and that means she is going to enjoy herself. Neither she nor Alfirin have gotten to do enough of that in a long time.

" - I am mad with power. I want to use at least six of them. You're going to tell me we can do it with two and don't want Tar Baphon to suspect anything yet, and you're probably going to be right, but first I want to think about what I could do with six of them - 

There's the obvious things like a Deeper Darkness across the whole city and a miraculous sun from Sarenrae that shows everyone the way out the gate to safety all the same, but you probably need some very serious fighting to tempt them to take it, and they won't all do so -

- Urgir will be the capital of my new country, I want lasting Miracles, I want it to be a permanently changed place in a way that makes it easier to base our operations out of here forever. And this might be a means for us to expend more Miracles than Tar-Baphon parses us as expending, if he's thinking the effects will fade away and they won't. - if I had these a couple of months ago, I'd be tempted by a city-wide Owl's Wisdom, see if it settled the orcs into factions that were possible to negotiate with or inspired them to, themselves, decide serving Tar-Baphon isn't all it's made out to be. I think that's too slow, at this point, though I really want a city where everyone's Wisdom is higher all the time to exist, it'd be so fascinating.

I wonder about a city-wide effect that makes violence impossible inside the walls without a Will save orc civilians won't make, as the spell Hymn of Peace.  Orcs could stay if they pleased and if they disliked the magic they could leave, which is a tremendous advantage over any plan where we have to force all of them out. I think you could get Sarenrae and Erastil to go in on that one and you'd need a third, maybe Shelyn? You might need a fourth, I don't know any precedent for a seventh circle spell made permanent over a whole city. 

And before you do that you use a different set to destroy all Tar-Baphon's undead in the city, probably, and to force the gates. Pharasma and Nethys could go in on that, maybe. We can also use gods twice, one miracle right before dawn and one right after. 

- I also want to ask Aroden for a miracle myself, if I think of a good enough one. No one's ever heard of a paladin being granted the spell, but no one's ever heard of a paladin becoming immune to all enchantments, either. And the - mythology will be better -"

No one who knows anything about the limits of Miracles, or can consult gods about it, will believe that Iomedae personally miraculously destroyed all the undead in a city and gave it a permanent Hymn of Peace so that the orc inhabitants could if they chose live peacefully alongside the crusaders, taking a dwarven sky-citadel entirely without bloodshed and with only a single diamond.

Most people don't know anything about the limits of Miracles, and will uncomplicatedly believe exactly that. For strategic reasons she can't tell them yet that it took all the forces of Good and most of Neutral combined, and given that she can't tell them that, it's good if the narrative they have is one in which they march towards the inevitable ascension of the first Lawful Good human goddess. Iomedae doesn't like lying but she doesn't underestimate storytelling.

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"Well if you've already thought of my first objections I hardly need to say them!"

" - The deeper darkness and sunlight are backwards, actually, the sun is too bright for orcs - but it sounds like you've had better ideas - "

" - if we're imagining throwing an unreasonable number of diamonds at this, 'destroy all the undead' isn't that much easier than 'hit the whole city with a heal - and it works out mostly the same for the undead and would help show the orcs we have good intentions - "

" - There is precedent, actually, for a permanent spell that large but - not much and it's not a good precedent - this will be better. I don't think it'd take four."

"... If you think you might be granted a miracle yourself obviously you should - Check with commune first but you know that of course - "

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"Right, okay. Hit the whole city with a Heal, single Miracle from Pharasma. Force the great gates, two Miracles from Nethys who I'm counting on to appreciate how much magic I'm throwing around here. Permanent Hymn of Peace, Sarenrae and Erastil and one more, Aroden if He'll let me have it, then we walk in and kill whatever undead the Heal didn't and which didn't flee and spend the winter rebuilding the city with probably ludicrously complicated logistics and politics but shockingly little death. 

 

- I think it might really be worth it. I'm trying not to count on getting more diamonds out of Velgarth, though we may well be able to do that, but - there are orcs in Belkzen, most of them don't even live in Urgir, they're either going to be eternally our enemies or - something better than that - and it seems like a good starting point, a city where they have to try whatever their second resort is because their first doesn't work.

And we'd have six left."

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"We'd have six left! It feels - Excessive. Extremely wasteful. Like we definitely can't afford it. But maybe we can, I'm not used to thinking in terms of this much abundance - and we can almost certainly get more, we could spend two wishes on transit and still come out another dozen ahead - "

Five diamonds and she'd be as smart as Tar-Baphon. Which would matter a lot. It would not be worth it for the crusade, even if she thinks it's obviously worth it for her personally -

...no maybe it is worth it for the Crusade.

" - that's too many diamonds. It's just too many! How will we know what to do with them all!"

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"It's too many diamonds!! It's ridiculous! It's impossible! - I think on some level I don't expect it to last, something will go horribly wrong or the gods will intervene to blockade Velgarth or something, but -

- I'm not actually sure that inveighs in favor of doing less, here.

If - it's temporary - there's so many ways that could be true, and in many of them Urgir would - last. As the capital of my country, as - an opening for something better -"

 

- and she takes a diamond out. She wants to kiss it.

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An understandable impulse! She wants to - run her fingers through the pile, and grab a fistful of wish-grade diamonds and throw them into the air!

... she wants to kiss Iomedae but unlike juggling a king's ransom that's actually a bad idea and so she will ignore that impulse.

Diamonds! They have so many! Six miracles today and six more whenever they need them and - maybe not being able to spend them on a whim but at least being able to not worry if they can afford to spend one to save a hundred thousand civilians from their own crusade.

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Iomedae wants to kiss her too and yeah that is absolutely in no way happening ever, they're thirty years older and wiser now but - also damaged in a lot of ways they weren't the first time around, some of them each others' fault.

 

...and now she's no longer full of uncomplicated joy. 

 

 

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She takes the bag and hands it pointedly to Alfirin. "Next time Karlenius points out patiently to me that you seem pretty Lawful Evil I'm going to have the best rejoinder. 

 

- I should ask Aroden if we should actually do it."

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Most people would not have noticed Alfirin's flash of hesitation there, and even having it pointed out to them they would not be able to infer what caused it but Iomedae can sometimes do both and this time, apparently, did.

"Or I'll reappear in a week cleverer than the Tyrant and wiser than you, and Karlenius will never let you hear the end of it. Thank you. I wouldn't have trusted me with this, if I didn't have to. Don't be disappointed if He says no, that might just mean there's something even better that we didn't think of in the first hour."

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"I know. And I suppose if Aroden insists I would reluctantly spend another hour thinking."

 

Alfirin is a better person than Alfirin thinks she is, always has been.

Saying that would be - too much. Thinking it while meeting Alfirin's eyes is honestly already pushing it a bit far. "I'll be back in twenty minutes, probably. Let's have dinner, let's have - lamb, and soft cheeses and grapes and melons and eggs and baklava -"

- she should go. She should go talk to Aroden. She'll do that now.

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Thinking it - might have been too much, yes. Alfirin cannot read people as well as Iomedae does but Iomedae does not hide what she's thinking like Alfirin does. She gets the gist.

She'll direct the servants to prepare dinner, and serve it in one of the mid-sized rooms where it won't be awkward if Iomedae brings the rest of the commanders and also won't be awkward if she doesn't, because - Alfirin's not really sure what Iomedae was thinking, thinking that and then suggesting a private dinner. Iomedae will predict that Alfirin will do that and know she has an out when she comes to her senses.

And then she can spend twenty minutes trying to think of better ways to spend six diamonds on Urgir, even though her heart's not really in it.

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Iomedae comes to her senses as soon as she's back to walking through the camp and breathing the slightly-smoky air and hearing the distant cries of fighting at the walls. She invites Marit and Karlenius and Peraza to join them for dinner. And she locates someone who has Commune prepared, and a field shrine to Aroden, and she kneels and closes her eyes and lets her heart sing -

 

A defector from the Empire brought us a dozen Wish-grade diamonds and I want to take Urgir with half of them tomorrow and - it's like a glimpse of everything that the world could be, should be, someday will be -

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The person casting Commune doesn't need to know what Iomedae is planning, and for information security reasons it's best if he doesn't. The important thing is that the questions they're posing Aroden are easy for Aroden to look at the web of futures and answer, if He chooses. Iomedae has a plan, an intention from which she will be undisturbed unless Aroden instructs her to reconsider it, and therefore it should be easy for Aroden to see what happens if she acts on it, and what happens if instead He advises her otherwise.

 

Should Iomedae go ahead with the plan she presently contemplates for tomorrow?

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Iomedae tends to be unusually clear and legible, to Aroden. 

It shouldn’t be hard, then, to figure out whether the bright thread of Iomedae’s near-future actions is aimed in a direction that looks good, or disastrous, or more-complicated-than-that. (Though insofar as possible, when communicating via Commune, He tries to avoid that answer. It's always more-complicated-than-that and this is generally not actually informative to His mortal followers trying to make decisions on the material plane.) 

However!

He can’t see! None of the gods can, as of the last few minutes in the material plane. The Lawful gods, at the very least, are all very much bothered by this. 

 

It’s fairly clear that something happened, a single specific event - close to Iomedae - a new introduction of noise in Foresight. 

Given that, and given the other aspect that Aroden alone among the gods knows in any detail – that Iomedae, during her previous weeks-long absence, wasn’t simply away from the battlefield or even just on another plane but much further from Golarion than that – He had, not an explanation, but at least an originating source to blame for the lack of an explanation. 

(Aroden - not as a god, yet, but as a human before He ascended - has quite a lot of experience traveling between worlds. He might even have visited this specific world, though if He did, it was much less interesting and - potentially context-breaking - at the time. It's difficult enough to translate His human memories and His human records into godconcepts that Aroden has not yet prioritized this. Anyway, it's entirely possible the world was far less interesting back then. It's not 5000 years is a very long time.

This does mean that He has somewhat more context than any of the other gods on how and why Iomedae's misadventure is causing so much disruption. He knew, back when He was human, that His own travels were causing ripples in Foresight and problems for the existing gods at the time – though He tried much harder to minimize it than Iomedae is apparently, now, doing.) 

 

Abadar has always been one of Aroden’s closest allies among the other gods. Aroden was also aware that, as of the most recent point when He could see Iomedae clearly, she was engaged in negotiating a trade with Abadar's cleric. It was straightforward, then, to bring this information to Abadar, who would of course pay for it. 

...Except that at approximately the exact same moment, Abadar offered to sell Aroden some newly-breaking information about a sudden, rather significant shift in the price of certain material spell components. Not Wish or Miracle-grade diamonds, but smaller diamonds than that are about to become remarkably cheaper. 

If Aroden could see, this really ought to be more than enough to go on! 

He can't, though, and the source of noise is very closely centered on Iomedae, which means that even her own decisions and their outcomes are partially blotted out by it. 

 

 

Aroden disprefers doing this - it's a steep intervention cost for Him, and a different kind of cost for the mortal He chooses to contact - but it's fairly clear that Iomedae is planning something incredibly important, something potentially gamebreaking, and He has only the barest idea what it is (it involves diamonds, He can perhaps even assume Wish and Miracle diamonds that Iomedae will quite reasonably keep off the market) and He actually just can't offer a useful answer without knowing more. 

And Iomedae is already holding her mind open to him, trying to offer context. He just...needs to pull her in closer, carefully holding her mind, to actually glimpse what it is. 

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That is not, in fact, what usually happens at all, when she prays to Aroden. It feels like being ripped out of her body and blasted with sand.

 

She trusts Aroden. She is incapable of fear. She stays focused on the plan and on the question. She wants to take Urgir with six Miracles tomorrow. She's seen Velgarth, and it's complicated and terrible as places tend to be, but - full of people, and therefore full of hope. And also full of diamonds, which are a much more immediate kind of hope.

 

(Most surprising new arrivals from another planet would cause a lot less noise in Foresight than this. But Iomedae has just gone and formed an intention to send out Greater Teleporting emissaries to ask the ninth circle clerics of every god that has a known ninth circle cleric except Gorum and Asmodeus to come do blurry things with her, which is the kind of thing that spreads the blurriness around a lot.) 

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(Aroden is being as careful as He can - and He's not desperately in a hurry and can afford it - but He did not actually keep that much of His former human aspect, and it's difficult.) 

 

Iomedae has enough diamonds for six (at least six?) miracles. And is planning a collaboration with multiple churches to use them.

That...explains a lot of the noise. It does not explain all of the noise, or - why Iomedae suddenly has other-world-sourced diamonds when she absolutely did not expect to have them this soon, thus the entire loan negotiation with Abadar's church. This means it wasn't Iomedae's plan, that caused the diamonds to be here, it was - one assumes the result of actions taken by a mortal - probably a mortal, maybe a local god but it seems less likely - in order to bring them to Iomedae. 

 

 

Can Aroden, without buffeting Iomedae's mind too badly, manage to extract any further details of what happened and why? (He's significantly better able to interpret mortal-level explanations than most gods, He still retains enough memory of humanity for that.) 

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Altarrin defected from the Eastern Empire to them. He had been stuck there - there's mind control - and he and Iomedae had been writing. She can't give herself too much credit, she was - as careful as she always is - but she thinks that there was more at work than the obvious persuasiveness and correctness of Arodenite ideology.

He's Lawful Evil. They spoke briefly, and she likes him, even entirely separately from how he's handed her the most hope she's ever felt, but - a real conversation will have to wait on his recovery.

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Aroden, or at least the main decisionmaking attention-fragments of Him, did not previously have very much context on the details of Iomedae's war in the other world. Commune is not a high-bandwidth form of communication, and it wasn't worth the intervention cost to try to more directly get a look. 

Iomedae's mind has more context than that, which He is incidentally picking up while getting the immediately-prediction-relevant and immediately-decision-relevant aspects, and - 

- the best way to describe it, in concepts that would map to mortal language, is 'deja vu'. He...can pick out the Foresight-shadow cast by the Lawful Evil mage of the other world's Empire, now, and it's - there's something, there, that is likely very important. 

He doesn't have a good angle on intervention. Iomedae likely does, and likely already knows this is important, and it's not worth the significantly higher cost of translation godconcepts over to her to convey that. 

 

 

It is, however, worth very carefully translating across that: 

- Aroden cannot give a clear answer on whether her plan is a good idea, or promise anything other than 'trying to convey a warning if it abruptly looks like a bad idea'. (Obvious corollary: Iomedae should plan based on human-visible factors, and conservatively, paying extra costs as necessary to block off possible ways it could go wrong rather than counting on Aroden to triage that, and she should also not be counting on Aroden to notice and fend off interference from opposed gods.) 

- It would be safer, and better for His visibility, if she avoided using those diamonds Wishes, and definitely avoided unusual Wish-wordings. 

- He requests that she make a firm precommitment to not accepting the direct aid, or using plans provided by, the mage from another world. (Unspoken corollary: if at some point this seems obviously incorrect, Aroden can at that point offer His best answer to a Commune query, but - right now there needs to be less noise, and it seems unlikely to make the difference between success and failure.) 

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She understands. She trusts HIm, she is His, she will tread carefully -

- no Wishes, no warnings, no plans directly using Altarrin -

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(He does not, explicitly, ask that she avoid any further contact with the other world. It's unlikely to be a priority, it is likely to be expensive without the aid of the other world's mage, and - if Iomedae decides it's worth doing anyway then Aroden isn't going to tell her not to just because having half of one's primary sensory modality full of static is unpleasant.) 

 

 

He sends - warmth, appreciation, He trusts her also and there is no one He would rather have on this project, that may well making god-level decisions without the direct advice of the actual gods who can't see anything - and then extracts Himself from her mind and sets her down as gently as possible. 

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She collapses, because even when gods are being as gentle as possible mortal minds are not the kind of thing they're meant to interface with. 

 

She doesn't collapse for very long, because she is very tough. But even six seconds spent disoriented on her knees is enough to get several alarmed people trying to Lay On Hands her. 

"-'s all right. 's all right. I don't need healing - Delay Pain's a good idea - and get Marit, please -"

       He's already nearly there.

"Take me to Alfirin's mansion."

 

 

 

And so Iomedae arrives at her dinner date limping, with Marit and Karlenius each supporting her on one side.

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"What happened and why didn't someone get me - "

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"You should see the other guy."

          " - Aroden did it," says Marit. 

 "Way to ruin my punchline."

She sits down heavily.

"Aroden needed to go through my head and then had several sentences of instructions. 'm fine.

I was only partially kidding -  He probably is having the worse time. The gods can't see. Can't see Urgir, can't see much of anything else. From their perspective, uh, there was practically no probability I'd order the whole Teleport-capable crusade to disperse, and then I did, and moved everything over to some worlds no one had looked down, and then everything we've done since then has been noisy too and of course my plan for after dinner was to rope in every Good church in the world -"

       "Sorry, what?" says Karlenius.

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"We have twelve more Miracle-grade diamonds!"

Have Marit and Karlenius ever seen her smile before? Probably not.

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- no! No they have not!!!!!

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" - right, sorry, I meant to lead with that. Got distracted. A defector from the Empire in Velgarth came over and he brought us twelve miracle-grade diamonds. There's more where they came from, too. The reason I was communing with Aroden in the first place was because I wanted to ask permission to use six to take Urgir tomorrow.

He didn't actually say no, but - some of the other churches might, because they've got to also be displeased about the noise, and He did say to be conservative, because He can't counter anyone else and He can't see anything that'd go disastrously. He did ask that we not do Wishes. I think usually the gods keep a close eye on Wishes and - They can't, right now. And He asked that we not use the defector from the Empire - either directly with his magic, or relying on plans he made. 

 

I think regrettably we probably shouldn't take Urgir in a very showy manner tomorrow. I bet some of the other gods will decline to participate, even if Aroden doesn't mind, and I didn't get the chance to ask him about giving me a Miracle.

I think we should probably - steady a little.

If we don't do things as - surprising and improbable without extra-world intervention as dispersing everyone in the crusade who can Teleport - they should get a lot of visibility back reasonably quickly. Reaching out to the Good churches about a Miracle is something I was already considering. I just didn't quite - think how it'd interact with the Foresight noise problem -"

 

She's lost her audience because they're in fact still boggling about the diamonds and not ready to hear anything else.

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"Where are the diamonds?" says Pereza, who is the crusade's quartermaster and logistical manager.

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They're in a bowl, in the center of the table, glittering excessively.

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(People may, in fact, be crying.)

 

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It takes Karlenius about thirty seconds to put together that this means Iomedae left Alfirin with the diamonds to go off and talk to Aroden and he doesn't actually say anything about it but his facial expressions are not especially hard to read.

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She makes absolutely no show of noticing. Iomedae trusted her and that's perfectly normal and unremarkable and if she is unusually - some might say 'unnaturally' - cheery and delighted this evening the diamonds are fully sufficient to explain that.

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Iomedae will try all the food before even attempting to steer the conversation back to Urgir. 

 

"- I will confess I may have fallen in love with this idea in the first ten minutes of thinking about it and be irrationally attached now."

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"It does sound pretty great," Marit says. 

         "If we're not killing or exiling the current residents of Urgir," says Pereza, "where are the crusaders going to live? - to be clear I am enthusiastically in favor of this plan, but I think you may all be underrating the challenges it poses, logistically -"

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"We'll rebuild the city! The orcs are not really taking advantage of all of the space because of the fact the city is in a constant state of internal war and no one can build things that won't burn down. It'll be expensive, and probably very annoying, but - 

- we have some options for funding -"

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"I think it's a good plan! I was against it at first but you sold me on it - well, the broad strokes, on a slightly smaller scale - before a dozen diamonds fell into our laps."

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Iomedae beams at her for longer than is really a good idea.

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They leave him alone. 

 

 

Altarrin...is going to spend the next five minutes curled up tightly in the very comfortable armchair and shaking. And then, once he can concentrate enough for it, finish repowering the rest of his talismans, after which point he's able to relax slightly more. 

He has a lot of thinking to do, but - probably food and water is the first priority, actually. Is there a construct-servant visible in the room to ask about it? 

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There is, hovering (literally) by the door.

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He asks it - in the Imperial tongue since apparently it can just understand that despite being from a different world - if he could please have water, and - food, whatever's available he doesn't really mind - and maybe tea? And a blanket. (You would think that after five minutes of sitting by a fire he wouldn't be cold anymore but he's still intermittently shivering for no reason and it's distracting.) 

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It departs, and shortly three servants return with water, and a stuffed quail on a bed of a rice pilaf cooked with dried berries, and a pot of tea and some small cups, and a blanket. Also the fire starts burning more vigorously. Two of the servants clear out when this is all done; one remains to pour the tea and wait for any other requests.

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Altarrin drinks a lot of water, and then curls up with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders and, with significantly more application of willpower, manages to eat some of the food. He's mostly trying not to think about anything in particular, just - being there, noticing that he's warm and comfortable and he may not be free to leave but he's in a literal extradimensional space, and has shields, and nothing awful is actually happening in his vicinity.

 

By the time he's worked his way through half of the teapot - and nibbled more on the quail, his body hasn't remembered yet how much energy interworld Gates burn through but he really needs to eat - he feels much less shaky. He's still not happy about being trapped but he can at least avoid dwelling on it. 

He....should think, while he has the opportunity. He's sort of having trouble figuring out where to start, though. 

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Was coming here the right decision? 

 

It's a moot point, in a sense. He's here. He may or may not have leverage to convince Iomedae to let him leave, but - what would he be returning to? An Empire he can't operate in without being under compulsions, even if he could somehow undo the damage done by having vanished in the first place.

(They must be panicking over there. He really should do some scrying and figure out what's going on, but the spell is draining and separately he's noticing himself flinching away from it, from the way even interacting with the Empire from a distance feels like being trapped, right now...) 

So put his head in order first. That's a good first step regardless of what he ends up deciding his next priorities are. And - figuring out whether he endorses the decisionmaking that led him here is an important step in that, if he's playing with stakes as high as those in Iomedae's war, he needs to trust himself to be thinking clearly and he really shouldn't, right now. 

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The actual outcome of his decisionmaking process, however dubious it was, is incredibly good for Iomedae and Iomedae's war. It feels - good, it feels like one thing he finally got right, remembering her saying that she could save hundreds of thousands of lives with the diamonds he frantically bought in half a candlemark for three pounds of gold. 

It's probably not a disastrous situation for him personally. Altarrin knows that he has no interest in allying with Tar-Baphon, or in allowing the Empire to do so, and once Iomedae and Alfirin believe that, he'll probably be trusted at least slightly further. In the short run, it's not clear that being a prisoner is actually constraining him from actions he would otherwise want to take? He doesn't have nearly enough context to be acting unilaterally in this world; he would want to run any planning through Iomedae anyway, to avoid stepping on her toes. It's going to bother him if they don't even trust him far enough to keep him informed on what's happening, but - that's something he can best address by being trustworthy. Alfirin is taking reasonable precautions given their current information on him, but - he saw her face when he unpacked the diamonds - she and Iomedae aren't going to decline an offer of alliance from someone very useful for no reason. 

It's a bad situation for the Empire, obviously. But - not a vastly worse one than in the scenario where Altarrin returned to Jacona and ended up dead. Maybe better, depending on what the the collateral damage would have been. 

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Mental flag: how likely is it that 'assassination' would have been what went wrong in Jacona? He's...inclined to think not that likely, actually. A destabilized Empire is a less predictable one. And since the gods can't get rid of Altarrin forever, and returning in a new body would likely mean returning without compulsions, it might have been better from Their perspective to keep him pinned down and trapped exactly where he was, forced to keep following the same lost and lonely road he's been steered down for centuries. 

 

He's pretty sure that even in his most pessimistic anticipations of how things go here - imagining that he doesn't manage to earn more of Iomedae or Alfirin's trust than he has currently, maybe because he ends up concluding that their goals are ones he can't fully support, and they keep holding him captive in this sumptuous prison indefinitely - it's going to be better for him than that. They might not be letting him leave but at least they're letting him think. Encouraging it, even. 

He mostly doesn't think the pessimistic case is all that likely? He wasn't wearing the headband during the questioning, but even without it he's not terrible at reading people, and Alfirin is guarded but Iomedae doesn't make herself hard to read at all. (Unless that's a trick. He - would be very surprised if it were, though, being manipulative in that way just doesn't fit with the rest of her decisions.) 

The optimistic case here is...

 

 

...he's bouncing away from thinking about it, and it's not compulsions, it's - why can't he look at it head-on - is it just that after so many centuries of disappointment, good news is too hard to believe -? 

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He remembers reading through Aroden's holy book, back in the Empire. (Probably he wants to read it the rest of the way through, actually, and reread the beginning in less of a hurry, he knows it felt important at the time but he mostly couldn't think about why, which is a serious impediment to reconstructing those thoughts.) 

Aroden is confusing. Aroden...might be the best news he can imagine, a god who was once a human fighting for a better world, who retained that core goal through the process of ascending, and - can make sense of humans well enough to actually aim for it - 

 

 

 

- he doesn't know where to go from there. It's a pointless thought, but - it feels like he doesn't know what it would mean to be himself, in a world where a god is already looking out for everything he cares about. 

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Come back to it, then, once it makes sense to request another copy of the book and read it. What else. 

 

He keeps being confused by Iomedae, which is strange considering just how long he spent trying to make sense of her, with headband-enhancement and everything. ...Or not, maybe, because in hindsight he wasn't really trying to understand her, as the person she actually is, so much as trying to imagine a person who could think the thoughts that he couldn't. Inconveniently, he suspects a lot of it was happening below the conscious level, where his compulsions wouldn't press quite so hard, and that's going to make it incredibly confusing and frustrating to untangle what he actually justifiably knows about Iomedae, versus what's been contaminated by having modeled the version of her most convenient for reasoning through the Empire's problems. 

(Though he's pretty sure the real Iomedae would be good at reasoning through the Empire's problems, even if her precise diagnosis of them doesn't match the words he put in her mouth.) 

It's probably not a good use of her time right now, to make her sit through him recounting everything about imaginary Iomedae so she can correct the parts which are wrong. She has a lot of far more urgent projects than helping Altarrin sort out his head. But - he does want to understand her. It feels very important if he wants to try to be her ally, and it's going to feel safer, too, if he's not repeatedly being slightly surprised and off-balance every time they interact. 

 

He's mostly not confused by Alfirin. (Aside from the apologies, but in hindsight it's just that he finds kindness jarring when he's terrified.) Alfirin seems like a sensible, straightforward, reassuringly ruthless sort of person, someone who will make plans that work, someone who can protect the resources she needs for those plans. He expects he could work with her easily and without friction.

He is confused by - something at the intersection of Iomedae and Alfirin, some off note in the way they interact. He's pretty sure there's history there, and it may not be any of his business but it does feel at least somewhat unsafe, seeing just the surface of it and not knowing what's underneath. 

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Also for some reason he's abruptly...sad, and restless, and doesn't want to be sitting alone save for a mage-construct servant refilling his tea and his own endlessly looping thoughts replaying the past. He wants to be making forward progress on something that isn't just inside his own head. 

- and also isn't scrying Velgarth, which is the main obvious next step on his mental to-do list, but he's still flinching about it, in a way that feels at least somewhat bad to push back against. This is not normally a problem he has! But he feels like he only just got to a a state where he can be fairly confident he isn't going to randomly cry if a confusingly good thing happens, or panic if he tries to do magic and is blocked, and he doesn't feel like it's very stable yet.

And...is it time-sensitive? His options for doing anything about it are limited, and if he actually drags his mind down that line of thought - which is also flinchy but less so - he acknowledges that he does just know enough about the Empire he built to narrow down his guesses. There would have been an immediate panicked report when he Gated out. They would have tried to reach him with the comms spell and order him to return to Jacona - which failed, obviously - and tried to scry him and target him with a Gate-search, which also failed.

(It's possible they did scry him in the Haighlei Empire and just didn't have the range for a Gate, which is a potential point of divergence - they would know he was buying diamonds, which would let them predict more confidently where he was going - but even scrying is range-limited, especially the overpowered variants that could have gotten through his shield-talisman.) 

At the point when immediately retrieving him had clearly failed, the investigation would slow down and spread out. The Office of Inquiry is going to be thoroughly questioning everyone from the research site. They'll be trying to rederive the full technique for interworld Gates - which he doubts anyone but him can figure out in less than a decade-long research project, he didn't teach Aritha the Gate-search routing and without the headband she might not be clever enough to recall it even if he had; he's barely clever enough, it would have taken him months without the headband for the most difficult parts, and he has vastly more practice at chunking mathematical-spatial concepts to fit more complexity into his magic. They'll be trying for interworld scrying as well, which they might be able to get by dragging everything out of Aritha's head - she's seen him actually cast the spell - and throwing it at the most brilliant researchers in the Empire, but he overall thinks this is unlikely; if he has to put numbers on it, maybe one in twenty odds? In the remaining 95% of cases, re-deriving it from scratch might still go faster than Gates, but - six months to a year. 

(Aritha is probably having a terrible time. Altarrin genuinely feels bad about that. He wanted her to be in a better situation for having worked with him.) 

 

...They're not going to try to contact Tar-Baphon, because Bastran isn't an idiot, and because even if Bastran manages to lose the throne in the aftermath of this - which Kastil will be fighting tooth and nail against, Kastil doesn't like either of the pretenders in the current rebellions - the candidates likely to take his place are - more conservative than that. More likely to stick to what's known to work, which is NOT trying to mess around with other worlds that have scary gods. 

(He's also going to feel terrible if Bastran dies as a result of this. He already feels kind of terrible for leaving Bastran behind, despite the fact that there is no conceivable scenario where he could have kidnapped the Emperor, and if he had the Empire would be facing a genuine disaster now.) 

 

The most serious risk is...that Aritha did follow enough, in the process of watching him scry Iomedae, for the Empire's best researchers to figure out scrying in days or weeks rather than months. And that Bastran orders a major effort to collect intelligence on the other world, and they aren't careful enough, and some poor fool scries Tar-Baphon and ends up compulsioned and Tar Baphon takes the Empire from there. 

One in twenty that they'll even have the option in the next week. One in...three odds, maybe, that Bastran is careless enough, and they get unlucky enough (and Altarrin thinks this isn't a case where the gods of Velgarth are going to steer for the worst luck, even if They could see what they were doing it seems very bad from their perspective for the Empire to end up suborned by an incredibly disruptive powerful spellcaster from another world). But he's not sure of that, so call it one in two. 

One in forty, then, that if he does nothing and Iomedae does nothing, the Empire ends up belonging to Tar-Baphon in the next week. 

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It would be very bad if that happened! He should probably communicate his reasoning to someone! 

 

It doesn't justify a rushed decision, though, because it seems absurdly unlikely they'll get it in the next two days. Kastil isn't going to clear Aritha to interact with anyone important until he's assured himself that she isn't either mind-controlled by Aroden or turned to His side. Which means Altarrin can afford to sit huddled in his blanket and finish the rest of the pot of tea, steadying himself before he asks the construct-servant if they can find out whether Iomedae is available, he needs to speak with her or (if she's on the battlefield, say) at least with someone she trusts. 

...actually, before that, he sort of wants to bathe. And wear something other than moderately gross mage-work clothes. 

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He can be led to a bathroom, then, with an enormous tub and, bizarrely, a cauldron. The mansion can conjure plenty of cold water and firewood but no hot water. A small group of uniforms lift the cauldron together to fill the bath, then hold out their gloves for his clothes. One stands by with a towel in case he should step in the water and immediately decide that he'd rather not bathe, after all.

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He hands off his clothes, though he makes sure to hold onto the magical artifact belt. It's slightly weird to bathe in front of a bunch of uniformed constructs but it's really not the strangest thing about the last candlemark. Altarrin sinks into the water, and over a few minutes manages to coax himself from 'mostly not that tense' to 'actually relaxed.'

...Which has the unexpected-but-not-in-hindsight-incredibly-surprising consequence that he does actually sort of start crying, if only for about thirty seconds and he can make it unobtrusive by pretending he was definitely planning to wash his face very thoroughly during that time. 

It helps. He's back to feeling mostly calm by the time he gets out of the water, and he trusts it a lot more. Do the servant constructs have non-disgusting replacement clothing for him? (Though if that single spell also conjures spare clothes from thin air, he has so many questions.) 

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If the constructs notice him crying they make no indication of it. One of them has a selection of gray robes in various shades - they seem to be about the right size but not particularly tailored to his body. Probably there's a room full of robes somewhere and it just grabbed the ones that seemed most likely to fit?

There's no trace of his old clothes, at least in this room.

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He will put on the maybe-spontaneously-generated clothes - wondering vaguely if they disappear when the spell ends - and then repeat that he needs to talk to Iomedae, and follow the construct-servants. 

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Iomedae is sitting by a fireplace in a different room along with Marit, in principle going through Miracle-related options, though at this point they're less discussing strategy and more inventing glorious ways to solve random problems that no one's solved for thousands of years. They're both laughing loudly. 

 

When she sees Altarrin she sits up a little straighter. "Marit, this is Archmage-General Altarrin - Altarrin, this is Knight-Commander Marit -"

        Marit turns to smile at Altarrin. "We are all very much in your debt." And to Iomedae - "- should I go -"

"I'd actually sooner you didn't, 'm still mildly impaired. Hit me with a Tongues and then we can speak privately while you hover in case Aroden has anything more to say to me."

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Altarrin manages to return the smile. He smiles at Iomedae as well, and sits. It's very good to see Iomedae and her people happy, and - it does make him feel safer, to know it was the result of his decisions. 

(To Iomedae, he looks vastly more composed than he did a few candlemarks ago. His smile isn't perfectly convincing, but he's calm and not especially tense and is definitely no longer radiating misery and fear.) 

"I am not sure if this is private or if your people need to know as well," he says quietly, once she has Tongues up. "I - thought through what was likely to happen in the Empire, when I was deciding how urgent it was to scry it - the spell is exhausting. I mostly expect the situation to keep but I am concerned about one - unlikely but not impossible - way that things could go, that might result in Tar-Baphon learning of the Empire within a week or two." 

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- she nods. "That's been a worry of mine as well. Within a week or two, but you're confident not sooner?"

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"- Fairly confident, yes. I think the only way they could learn and cast the interworld scrying spell, rather than having to re-develop the technique, is if Aritha - the particularly talented mage-researcher who worked with me - saw enough when I was casting it to pick up some pieces of the planar routing component, which is necessary to reach this distance. If she saw enough then it is possible that the best mage-researchers in the Empire could put together and cast the spell in less than a week. But no one else has seen me cast it, and - they know that she wore the headband, so she is going to be under suspicion of being controlled by Aroden and I would be shocked if it took them less than two days to refute this and be willing to put her in the same room as anyone powerful or important." 

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- she nods. "And you consider it unlikely even after that, but - not so unlikely that it wouldn't be worth avoiding even at substantial expense?"

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"...I had estimated one in forty odds that they learn the spell and go on to do enough careless scrying of battlefields to attract Tar-Baphon's attention. I am not especially confident in that exact number but - less than one in twenty, more than one in a hundred." 

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"Do you have in mind an intervention by which we can protect the Empire? I have some options, but - I don't like them, and it'd be good to have more."

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"...My inclination would be to get Aritha out." From his body language, it's fairly obvious that he wants to do this anyway, he feels responsible for her and worried about her current situation and safety even separate from the spell-development implications. "At which point - they have my working notes, they would not be starting completely from scratch, but I think it would be a project of at least six months to a year to get scrying, and much longer for Gates." 

He ducks his head. "I am - I might be able to get her out alive without risking just - ending up trapped there again, but it would depend on luck more than I like. ...I could almost certainly kill her without much risk to myself but I would really, really rather not." 

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" - brain damage? Or would they just kill her themselves, if you do that far enough to make her useless?"

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"I think they might kill her out of paranoia, at that point, if it looked like it was done by your world's magic, they would assume it was Aroden's doing and she was a conduit for his influence and interference in the Empire. I am not certain they would but they are going to be very much on edge." And a lot of mage-researchers would feel, at that point, that they might as well be dead. Though probably not Aritha. She seems very motivated to avoid dying. 

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"- I don't want to extend you - hope I might not actually be able to follow through on. But I think that in about a month, we should be able to substantially address the situation in the Empire. We might not be able to do it at all, and we might be able to do it much sooner, but - a month would be my best guess. I don't strongly expect that we'll be able to raise the dead, at that point. Your gods reuse their souls, Aroden says, and that - complicates every known method we have of returning the dead. - I do know you figured something out. You can tell me more about it if it's relevant for planning. 

 

To buy a month - one option is for you to send Alfirin there. She's flatly much more dangerous than I am, and I think with your help she could end the civil wars and force the Empire to terms quite quickly. That is not my preferred option. It opens some avenues for the Velgarth gods to interfere. It means we don't have her here." I think it'd be bad for her, she doesn't add. 

"Another option - the one I was leaning towards when you first arrived -  is to send some delegates that they will presumably imprison, interrogate, and kill but who can explain what's going on and hopefully be persuasive about the importance of not scrying Tar Baphon. I - try pretty hard to explain myself, wherever it's possible, and that'd be a high cost to pay for it but - I'd have plenty of volunteers. 

Another option is a targeted kidnapping of this particular woman, it sounds like. I can't myself help you with that. I am committed to not operating within the Empire. I am sure from their perspective I have obviously betrayed that commitment and I'm now gaining no benefits whatsoever from it, but I haven't, and won't. I also won't stop you.

Are there more options I haven't thought of? I know much less than you about Velgarth."

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He shakes his head, slightly, when she says he can tell her more about his immortality setup if it's relevant. It's not, especially; he can't do it for anyone else, he missed that opportunity. 

"If you send delegates and they are anywhere near as - committed to your work and good at explaining it, as you, I think the Emperor at least would be inclined to listen to their explanations. I - am not sure how much that matters. Paranoia does not come as naturally to him, he knows this, and when things are going badly he defaults to listening to his most paranoid advisors. 

- I might be able to kidnap her more safely with Alfirin's help? I...would rather not send her to fight the Empire, not if we can do something better than that if we wait a month. I might be able to get more information on how likely it is we can afford to do nothing and wait that month, but they know I can do interworld scrying and are almost certainly going to take precautions to make it hard for me to learn too much." 

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"I spoke to Aroden this evening. Well, 'spoke to'. He is - better at interfacing with human concepts than most gods, it's still not safe or really reliably possible to actually communicate with Him directly. We have a spell that lets us safely get yes-or-no answers, and that was what I intended to use, but -

- He can't see. None of our gods can see right now, because when you arrived from another world you caused a bunch of nearly-guaranteed-to-not-happen things to happen. Aroden wasn't annoyed, but the other gods probably are. He asked me to, at least for now, not use Wishes - a dangerous kind of magic the gods prefer to supervise - and to not use you directly in our war or use your plans, and to - be conservative, to assume He can't see it and warn me if things look risky. 

This is inconvenient timing because I want to use a lot of very powerful magic to take the city of Urgir, and I want to do it very soon. We've pushed it back several days, now, and the army is pretty vulnerable out here, and there's going to be a ridiculous amount of complicated work after we take the city too. But my current plan for taking the city involves the cooperation of between five and seven gods, so I need to keep them happy for now, and that means not making a lot of noise. 

If you use magic yourself to go back and forth between your world, I don't think that will fog up Foresight in Golarion. If you take Alfirin it probably will, because ninth circle wizards inherently are the sorts of people who will do a wide range of things, and so making them unpredictable makes everything unpredictable. So - I really don't want you to do that until we've taken Urgir, which I sincerely hope will be in the next few days and I guess this is additional reason to make sure to get it done by then. After that it'd be only ordinarily costly, not to have her, and I'm sure she could do your kidnapping for you, if she wants to, and the justification you've given would probably be persuasive to her.

 

If you think the Emperor would - take the information seriously at all, consider that it might be true - that it'd even reach his ears - that does incline me to send him delegates, even if he won't listen. It's - surprisingly often valuable just for someone to have the truth, even if it'd be entirely unreasonable to expect them to believe it. I didn't write you letters in the expectation you'd believe them. And lives are a much higher price than letters, but -

- but purchased with diamonds. A hundred thousand people are going to live, in Urgir, because of the ones you brought us."

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- he tenses up visibly when she mentions the Foresight noise. He's doing a much, much better job than before of maintaining his composure, and his expression doesn't change, but Iomedae is good at reading people and will be able to pick up that he's scared, and upset and - disappointed...

(It's exactly what went wrong in Velgarth, and there's a lot he doesn't know about this world but it's not a positive sign, that their gods - even the ones Iomedae would ally with - also dislike it when people are unpredictable to Them.) 

"I understand," he says, quietly. "I think it is not too much additional risk to wait three or four days, even if they already have Aritha working with the best researchers I expect it to take a little longer than that. And if it would not be a risk to your own war effort, to send delegates, then - yes, I do think Emperor Bastran would make sure to hear what was said in their interrogations, and he will almost certainly not think he can afford to listen to it but - I expect he would want to." 

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"Then I'll ask for volunteers. Will the Empire torture them? I'd want to let them know that when considering whether to volunteer."

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"They will be read by a Thoughtsenser while under extremely restrictive compulsions." Which is, you know, exactly what they did with him, so it would be surprising if Iomedae objected. "For extended sessions. Maybe deprived of sleep, definitely kept in not especially comfortable conditions." Altarrin really cannot complain about the conditions they've offered him. "I think some people would consider that close enough to count as torture, but if Mage-Inquisitor Kastil is in charge, which I expect, he is not additionally going to use pain or injury in the interrogations." 

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"What I do for suicide missions is I get a group of people together, and explain the justification and how I expect it to go and what it'll be like if it goes badly and what it'll be like if it goes right, and then ask them to write down, on a scale from one to six, how much they prefer to go on this mission, where one is 'they'd do it for the fate of the world but desperately hope it doesn't fall to them', and six is 'this is what they feel like they've been called to their whole life'. For something like this I'd hold out for sixes but I'll get some, once I talk to enough people. Which I cannot do until we take Urgir. 

 

 

Aroden does not consider Himself owed our cooperation with not making Foresight messy. There are pragmatic reasons not to throw sand in the eyes of our allies, but He didn't ask me to keep my head down and He's never asked anyone to stop inventing and discovering things. 

Some of the gods are worse than Him. But, hey - today we learned how to throw sand in Their eyes, and that's probably going to be necessary for the eventual operation to kill Them."

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So she noticed it was bothering him. 

She sounds sincere. And he definitely did not get the impression from Aroden's holy book that He was against mortals inventing and discovering things. They call Him the god of civilization. They make Him sound like the god of...what the Empire was supposed to be all along, what he was trying to aim for and failed. Altarrin was provisionally willing to trust Aroden ten minutes ago and it shouldn't change anything, to learn that Aroden perceives the world mainly in Foresight (that's how gods work), or that He prefers - even if just for pragmatic reasons - that Iomedae be a little less noisy. He's nearly certain that 'be less noisy' is the explanation for why Aroden didn't want Altarrin involved in any capacity in Iomedae's war. And Aroden told Iomedae to be conservative, which isn't not telling her to keep her head down... 

It still doesn't change what he should do in the short run, since that's mostly constrained by his (few) options, but - it feels suddenly much more like he's not safe here. (It's frustrating, if not surprising, that his hard-won emotional equilibrium is still so fragile.)

 

And none of that is Iomedae's problem. She has more than enough problems.

(Iomedae talking about killing the worse gods is - mostly something he can't even process, right now.) 

He takes a deep breath. "I understand. If you really do have volunteers who feel that sharing Aroden's teachings to an Empire that will almost certainly execute them for it - in a world without afterlives - is what they have been called to do their entire lives, I imagine they will at least be very convincing." And it's - more careful than he would be, probably, in terms of verifying that the volunteers weren't being coerced into this. 

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" - they'll get afterlives. I'm not sending anyone Aroden hasn't chosen, and the ones He has chosen He'll claim like He claimed me.

I wouldn't expect it to be about Aroden's teachings, really, for most of them. I'd expect it to be -

 - right now, the Empire likely believes that I betrayed our negotiations to mind control you and force you to come here. I could have done that. I would never do that. Because that's the situation they believe themselves to be in, they're going to be - sufficiently desperate, in a sufficiently dire situation as they understand it - that they might accidentally enslave their entire civilization.

My people will volunteer to save them."

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...Well, it's the sort of thing that would sell him on it. It's - not entirely different from why he Gated to Iomedae's world, actually, it's not a thought he could explicitly think when he was deciding - he had to ground everything in serving the Empire, put the emphasis on 'Iomedae will be very grateful and want us as allies and leave Oris alone' but...he wasn't, based on what he knew at the time, very sure if Iomedae would try to return to Oris and fight if her own war ended up taking weeks more to resolve.

It shouldn't be hard to believe, then, even if it sounds unrealistically good or like it's selected to be convincing to him personally. That feeling is…probably mostly just coming from being rattled about Foresight noise. And centuries of habit, but those are easier to override when he’s already off balance. 

“I understand,” he says quietly. “I– could I have a minute, actually? I have - less than pleasant associations with gods wanting to avoid noise in Foresight - I am fairly sure much of - the Empire not being what I wanted - is because the gods of Velgarth were pushing for it to be predictable to Them despite having more advanced technology. You have already given convincing evidence for why Aroden is different, just." Shrug. "It was startling to hear." 

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"Of course."

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Altarrin closes his eyes. 

 

This is not actually a new pressing reason to think he's in danger, he reminds himself. His safety might depend more than he prefers on not being inconvenient or costly to Aroden, but it kind of already depended on not being inconvenient to Iomedae or the Knights of Ozem, which mostly amounts to the same thing. And it's frustrating, feeling like he's not allowed to try to achieve anything he cares about because a god would be inconvenienced, but it's not that much of an additional limitation. It was already true that he lacks context to make effective plans here, it was already true that he needed to earn more of their trust in order to be allowed to use magic yet alone fight for them, and it would already have been risky to the crusade - and to Velgarth - to use him in the upcoming battle and potentially draw Tar-Baphon's attention and suspicion. It won't be forever. 

He still feels trapped, but...the place he's in is fine, actually. And if he's still this jumpy and easily shaken, he probably could use a couple of days of not involving himself in any emergencies, until he's had a chance to sort out his emotions and go over his decision-making, and can actually trust his own judgment going forward. 

 

Altarrin doesn't try to get all the way back to 'fully relaxed'. What if he starts crying again. It doesn't feel like he has a reason to but he wasn't expecting to randomly cry in the bath either. 

He opens his eyes, calmer. "...I am glad they will have afterlives, I was not sure if that was very expensive for him." And perhaps only worth doing for someone as critical as Iomedae, someone in whom Aroden had already invested enough that He couldn't afford to lose them. Altarrin vaguely suspects he's thinking about it wrong, there, framing Aroden's decision process in a way Iomedae would disagree with. "It - definitely increases how alarmed the Empire will be, if they are chosen by Aroden and granted repeated-miracles from Him, and not just followers of Him, but if they understand that going in..." 

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"There are those chosen by Aroden but not granted repeatable-miracles except healing and fearlessness. I think it may be expensive for Him, if the local gods oppose Him, and He'll - do it anyway, because - it would also be very expensive not to, in less tangible things. It's a cost that's worth paying under some circumstances, to be a leader who'll abandon your people not because you can't save them without losing even more of them but because it'd be expensive and you might have a better use someday for those resources.

Sometimes you have to do that. I do a lot of that. But I would expect Aroden to be willing to pay a great deal to not do that, and - He can afford to, what with how Golarion now has resources sufficient to beat back Tar-Baphon."

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Altarrin nods. 

(He has...some sort of feeling...about fearlessness apparently being a standard repeatable miracle. He wonders if Iomedae has that one. It would explain kind of a lot about her, actually.) 

"Can you return them to life here, at that point? Or is that too much of an additional expense? Would more diamonds help?" 

He also has some sort of feeling about the deaths on his own hands - the mages he sent to assassinate Iomedae, mostly - but Aroden has no kind of claim on them, and the Velgarth gods are unlikely to want to just hand over their souls for resurrection. 

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"With enough diamonds we could do that, yes. Much more cheaply with their bodies, if those aren't destroyed. 

- the fearlessness Aroden grants me is possible to share with my allies. It's useful in war. I haven't done it in your presence because - from your perspective it's not clear you ought to be unafraid. But I can, if you'd like."

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...Does he want that. 

He's - not sure. Iomedae does have a point, that he's not exactly justified in being unafraid, but...he's also probably not justified in being nearly as afraid as he is right now. And either way, it's not like being scared is helping. His safety doesn't depend on his own paranoia, right now. 

(That's - probably a lot of the sticking point. He generally can't expect to be safe except by his own actions and contingency-planning; he's really not used to grounding his sense of safety in - being under the guard of very powerful people who may not, yet, fully be allies, but who at the very least are definitely not incentivized to let anything happen to him. 

- but that's what he wanted, that's the entire reason he took this stupid gamble, he wasn't sure he could trust Iomedae's motives but he was sure enough to bet on it, to Gate to another world and let himself be taken prisoner. It's not gaining him anything, at this point, to nonetheless be afraid of her. It's not like noticing his uncertainty or making backup plans for the worst-case scenario relies on feeling scared, if anything he's better at it when his emotions are under control and he can think clearly.) 

 

"Is it - something I can decide whether to block out?" he says. "Or is it involuntary on my side?" 

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"It's a choice on your side. It makes it - easier to be unafraid, rather than impossible - I do have a version that makes it impossible but that one I only use in combat."

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He nods, slowly. "I - am not sure to what extent being afraid is justified, right now, but it is definitely not helping. I - would not mind if you shared the fearlessness, if I can choose whether it affects me."

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She smiles at him. The smile conveys, somehow, that it's a complicated world but one in which everyone and everything who wants things to be better than this is not alone.

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Altarrin leans into it, and - 

 

 

- it's not like the emotions-calming spell, which kind of shut down everything. It feels like, rather than the absence of an emotion, not-being-afraid is actually its own startling new emotion. It's like taking a step back and his hand finding a shielded wall behind him that he hadn't expected to be there; it's not the bad kind of surprise but it still manages to be weirdly disorienting. He has that strange dizzy feeling, again, of - not being quite sure what it means to be Altarrin, in a world where he isn't alone. 

It's at least a substantial improvement on the previous situation, where all of his thoughts were constantly being distorted, pulled toward negative interpretations, just by the background awareness that he can't Gate out right now, even though this is basically unrelated to, say, whether Aroden is going to crush him for being noisy in Foresight, or whether he can trust Iomedae's delegates. 

He lets out his breath. "Thank you." 

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"Of course. Have you eaten? Can I get you anything? Actually -" and she changes languages, though he can still understand her because he has Tongues up - "Marit, can you have someone bring Altarrin a Ring of Sustenance?"

And switching back to Jaconan, "It takes a week to have effects, but that's all the more reason to get it to you tonight. It means you can go without food or drink, and require only a few hours of sleep. I was wearing one when I died; they're very useful."

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"- I have eaten. The construct-servants are very helpful." 

Being offered a random powerful magical artifact is ALSO CONFUSING, though at least less startling with the fearlessness effect. He...should probably do something about the thing where he's repeatedly confused about Iomedae but he's not sure where to start. 

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"Aren't they just." She sighs. " - I am offering you a Ring of Sustenance because it costs less than a single one of the large diamonds you brought us, and if you decide - once you've had time to do some reading and talk to some people and learn more about our world - that you want to help with the crusade, that would be extremely helpful to me, and you'll probably recover sooner and decide sooner if you aren't living on rations and sleeping poorly in a city we just took by Miracle. I'm not seven hundred years old, some of my enemies are, and it's not something I underestimate. We would be very delighted by your help if you end up wanting to offer it, and it's worth arranging for you to have the chance to do that."

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It feels like they're having two slightly different conversations - like there's something not quite lined up, a gap he's not managing to cross. He's so tired. 

"Deciding whether I want to help you is not exactly a hard choice," he says wearily. "I already know enough to - make the bet that I can work with you and your people. I do not actually need to - entirely trust your motives, or be certain that your goals align with mine - to judge that I would prefer fewer people die in your crusade, and if I can contribute then I want to do that."

The difficulty here seems to mostly be that Aroden doesn't want him involved in planning because it makes a mess in Foresight. Which is understandable, now that he can look at it calmly; he certainly hated it when he was blocked from using mage-sight, and being unable to orient and make plans is probably not any less distressing for gods than for humans. For Iomedae, allied with a god and used to expecting His help in avoiding making mistakes, it makes perfect sense that this would be part of the tradeoff on making use of his abilities, separate from the risk of Tar-Baphon noticing it.  

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"....all right, then." It feels like there's something wrong, there, in this seven hundred year old archmage who has compressed his options down to 'help your crusade' or 'refuse' - Alfirin would approach it differently than that - but she's actually substantially impaired by the conversation with Aroden and doesn't know what to say that'd actually solve the problem. 

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Altarrin also has the sense that he's - still confused, still not looking at this from the right angle - he wishes he could borrow the headband, again, it feels like five minutes of conversation wearing it would be more than enough to make sense of Iomedae. It feels like it's probably not complicated, whatever he's failing to see or failing to orient to in the right way, it's just - unfamiliar. 

...Aroden is at the center of it, probably. Iomedae doesn't just follow Aroden, like people in Velgarth follow their gods; she collaborates with Him, and that feels...different...and like it shouldn't be complicated but he nonetheless doesn't really understand it. 

 

"Does Aroden often speak directly with people He has chosen?" he says quietly. 

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"No. It's - painful for mortals, and expensive for Him. We've spoken directly twice.

When - I was twenty-five, and trying to decide whether to launch the crusade, and I wanted Him to promise - that He understood, what I want, what I care about, and would never use me against my purposes. 

 

And when Arazni died. We tried a Miracle to fix it and that didn't work and I - asked Him how - how many Miracles it'd be - we used a Commune for that but He said "UNCLEAR" and that was pretty unhelpful under the circumstances so I, uh, yelled at Him, a lot, until He - said a bit more -"

 

Marit is frowning. He doesn't speak the language but he's presumably picking up that her speech is disjointed and that doesn't usually happen. :I want to push through a bit longer: she tells him.

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Altarrin has so many questions - there's a lot there that feels incredibly important to understand - and also he's not failing to pick up that Iomedae does not seem completely okay right now and her colleague is worried. 

"I am very curious about the first part but I am not sure now is a good time to ask," he says. "But you - I am not sure how one gets to the point of - even being willing to ask for a promise from a god." 

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“Well, that’s why it took until I was twenty five, He chose me at 15 and then I had to figure out if I could put weight on that or …not. He’s a Lawful god, the kind made out of commitments and possible for other gods to predict and trade with, but - not all the Lawful gods are safe for humans to try to trade with, because we aren’t ourselves the Lawful-god shape. It’s a narrower shape that is trustworthy in its interactions with beings not themselves trustworthy. Abadar, since that’s His whole thing, and Aroden, and I haven’t verified anyone else.”

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It shouldn't be confusing. She said it very straightforwardly and it holds together - as a thing to want, as a thing to try for - and it fits with the rest, it feels like it should help his understanding of Iomedae come together more, but - it feels like actually it's just shifting the confusion to a different layer, that's even more difficult to fit his head around. It feels like he doesn't have a blank space to fill with - that - in his metaphorical map of the world and how everything works, it feels like he didn't leave space for the concept and he's trying to awkwardly pin it on but it calls for a much deeper reevaluation that he doesn't know how to approach. 

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Altarrin doesn't say anything for a long time. He doesn't look upset, more like he has no idea whatsoever how to feel about what she said.

 

"And - the other time, with Arazni?" he says finally. "...If it is not too difficult to talk about, you seem - tired." 

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"Aroden was trying so hard to be polite and He still squeezed my skull out of my ears a little," she says dryly. "Don't worry about it, today's still the best day of my life.

 

...Arazni was Aroden's Herald, in Axis, a demigod in her own right. She - came to help us with the Crusade, and She's the only reason it got as far as it did, and Tar-Baphon killed Her. Gods....aren't like mortals. You can't just Raise them. She had precautions, obviously, She shouldn't truly have been possible to destroy, but -

- it's foolish to assume there's anything a being as powerful as Tar Baphon can't do, if he decides it's worth expending enough resources - we were foolish, we felt so invincible, we were talking about ending the war sooner to save more lives and - traded off too much, in hindsight, against our odds of winning at all. I am more careful now. I was angry at myself, really, more than at Aroden, but - it's easier to yell at Him. It would've been - pretty bad for us, to have been yelling mostly at each other."

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"I asked Him why He couldn't - tell me how expensive it was to fix, so I could decide whether to spend that much or not, but at least know, and He said that there weren't - any routes I'd choose to walk.

 

 

Probably someday when I'm a god this will make perfect sense. Right now it doesn't, but - it's not something where my spending more thought will make anything better, so I mostly don't."

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Altarrin bows his head. He - does know what it's like, making that kind of mistake - in fact he's arguably made exactly that mistake, trying to win, not realizing how much he was giving up in terms of preventing the worst outcomes. And his worst outcomes were...worse than that. 

 

"It sounds like Aroden is better at communicating with mortals - and more inclined to actually attempt it - than any of our gods are, but that does not mean He is good at it," he says dryly. "...I am sorry. That - it happened - and that He could not tell you how to fix it." 

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"Thank you. There's - many, many things that will never be all right, but - eventually the ashes drift back to the ground, and the sun rises, and we build anew." It's from Aroden's holy books, the part on the Age of Darkness. 

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Altarrin recognizes it; he only skimmed that part, and mostly didn't feel anything about it at the time, he was too caught up in entirely different flavors of misery, but - it hits him a lot harder, here and now.

Also it is kind of ridiculous the extent to which nearly everything he's learned so far about the Church of Aroden feels like it could have been designed from the ground up to appeal to him personally. He really doesn't think Iomedae is inventing any of this, or even just spinning it for him as an audience, but he doesn't have a different explanation and so it just feels baffling and inexplicable. 

 

 

"- I think that was all of my urgent questions," he says, after thirty seconds of not saying anything at all. 

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"All right. My recommendation would be that you focus on recuperating and on scrying Velgarth. If you don't expect reprisals against your allies or family there I expect it's worth just writing something directly explaining to them what happened, which can be sent with some delegates.

And I'm going to focus on Foresight noise management, which means not having my actions inflected by yours for the next week, so that the gods will work with me on taking Urgir, and then can start thinking about improving things in Velgarth. It's going to be winter soon here, Urgir's the last offensive of this season. We're pretty far north; it's a six-month winter. We will have our work cut out for us rebuilding in Urgir, but - that's not really work I'm uniquely needed for more than ten hours a day, not if I hand the headband off, and I - want to help you make your world better. It - deserves so much more than what it presently has to work with."

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"I do not have any family there."

(Technically false, in a sense, the Duke of Kavar has living blood relatives, but absolutely no one is going to assume that they were involved in Archmage-Altarrin's treachery, even if the conclusion of that investigation lands on 'traitor' and not 'literally mind-controlled'. It...may or may not make things worse at court for the faction generally allied with him, to send a letter, but Altarrin usually tries not to let that sort of reasoning get in the way of doing things which obviously make sense otherwise.) 

 

"And...thank you. I am very grateful." And confused, but not about Iomedae. She - makes sense, for someone who wants to fix everything and is doing it from her particular context, surrounded by powerful allies including a god who shares her goals and cares about the same things she does. The part he's confused about is how that context exists

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“I bet I’m more grateful.” But she is really past the limits of her endurance, here, and should go lie down, so she stands, and heads out.

 

Someone will be in shortly with a Ring of Sustenance.

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Altarrin thanks them with as much warmth as he can muster. Iomedae's people are being very generous to him and he doesn't want to be ungrateful. 

 

...He's also quite tired, enough that he doesn't incredibly want to scry Velgarth right now even though his belt is working again. (He's– no, he's not actually surprised that they let him keep it, obviously they would unless for some reason they only had the one and Iomedae needed it more urgently, and in that case they would have apologized.) It's been a long day, though, and having been briefly unconscious in the middle of it wasn't actually restful.

He asks the construct-servants for a bedroom. And another copy of Aroden's holy books, but non-urgently, he'll sleep before reading more. 

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The Eastern Empire is currently going through some interesting times!

To say they are inevitable is, perhaps, an overstatement. Certain aspects of them follow like water flowing downhill, but the truth is that human dynamics are too complicated to be summoned up in inevitabilities; just as human hands can build a wall to shape water, so too do the skills and moods of the individuals caught up in them.

Nonetheless, the broad strokes are extremely predictable.

When an imperial general rebels, everyone* who does not join the rebellion, but who has a close friend or relative on the rebel side, is immediately under strict scrutiny, as the loyalist government wonders if they will defect next - if it is their only compulsions keeping them loyal, or worse. These of doubtful loyalties must therefore defend themselves against being removed from office - and, during the crisis, are certain to lose out in glory and promotions to those with no stain on their loyalties who the government can therefore trust. It is worst for those with no base of power of their own, pure clients of a patron now in rebellion, whose offices are now spoil of victory in a political game that was conceded when the armies began marching; best for those who, secure in isolated estates with their own clients loyal to them and no need for imperial patronage, and between are those who must defend themselves with all their power, something that interferes with achieving wealth, establishing alliances, or protecting their clients.

The pure-loyalists, meanwhile, who cannot defect, are emboldened. Clearly, the fact that the Other Side rebelled proves that they were treacherous, untrustworthy, and - following logically from there - actually wrong about every major issue where they, the rebels, were arguing against the pure-loyalists favored positions. Since arguing the other side of these debates is a sort-of-thing-rebels-do and everyone not a rebel but who was arguing them anyway who was previously too busy defending themselves to engage in key political debates (see previous paragraph), they can immediately win the political battles they were fighting and turn their attention to fighting over the spoil of office, and, you know, trying to win the war.

Two generals have at this point rebelled, leaving a giant gaping hole in the political factions they supported. A third has been militarily humiliated. A fourth, and the known chief minister at that - well, the official story is that he was compulsioned into defecting to a previously unknown foreign power and then fled the country not under his own will, but given that Kastil suggested for genuinely purely paranoid reasons that anyone who might while knowing he’d been hopefully-temporarily removed from office still obey his orders should be removed from a sensitive position until such time as Altarrin was recovered and cleared, and given that Bastran approved this, the effect is much the same.

Altarrin’s faction has, functionally, been disgraced. Emperor Bastran is not in danger; everyone who didn’t join the rebellion is compulsioned to obey him, and most of them, human nature being what it is, have therefore decided they approve of him and want him to be emperor for entirely separate reasons to being his slaves. Those who relied on Altarrin’s patronage for their positions, however, have lost them; those who relied on Altarrin’s protection from the incoming sharks have lost it, and now must scramble to find a new protector or protect themselves.

The feeding frenzy has begun.

(*: Everyone, that is, who is involved in politics**, this being the fundamental definition of personhood to imperial politicians.)

(**: Every officer in the army is automatically involved in politics.)

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In the Eastern Empire, the details of how this occurs are, of course, shaped by the individual personality of Emperor Bastran.

Who is Bastran? Bastran is a young man inclined to insecurity and doubt, with a dislike of formality and a reliance on Altarrin. He prefers logical arguments to emotional ones, takes consequentialist approaches, values the writings of Arvad and the Founders greatly, and feels like he needs to be more paranoid about treason than he is naturally inclined to be, but he is also kind and dislikes cruelty and cares about the people of the empire. (He's also gay.) Every one of his advisors, therefore, is, in an important sense, a specialist in consequentialist-Arvadite-logical-arguing-in-informal-manner-for-the-good-of-the-empire, and everyone has brought their in-previous-reigns embarrassing sons, nephews and cousins who prefer men and have any knack for politics whatsoever to court.

Altarrin's family is obviously not in danger, not under Bastran. Bastran doesn't like executing people and so none of his advisors will suggest this, a plan which would tick him off and not accomplish anything. They'll be tucked out of the way quietly somewhere and not cause any problems.

But Altarrin's policies? Assembled noblemen have offered to donate-and-lend an absolutely tremendous sum of money to the imperial treasury in exchange for their preferred reforms for the land tax, and for some odd reason, the opposition has really not had many objections to it. (One lord has offered to personally fund an army and lead it in support of the Imperial cause in exchange for a generalship and the legal right to personally appoint all the officers.) Leading merchant houses in the city of Citria have requested an exemption from the laws against hiring foreign sailors known to be religious (instituted after the discovery of large-scale shrines among foreign communities in port cities), promising huge economic benefits and a freeing-up of manpower from the army, and the bureaucratic administration has tightened ranks against Altarrin's attempts to wipe out the exemptions they'd carved out for their children from certain of the stricter requirements on educational performance. Those aren't going anywhere.

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Of course, all of these questions, which might normally take up long, long debate, have now been sidelined. This doesn't mean they don't need to be answered, mind you! It means that the Emperor only has a few minutes to think about them and so is under more pressure than usual to turn to one of his advisors and say "here's a ten-word summary of my thoughts, you take care of it."

Instead, the Emperor needs to pay attention to two vitally, in the very key sense of meaning "key to the life of the empire, and that life continuing," important topics:

Other Worlds, What The Hell

and

Three Civil Wars, What The Hell.

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The most urgent question facing the Emperor is what happened to Altarrin and the person who might know the most about it is the young mage-researcher he had working with him on it.

 

Altarrin, summoned to Jacona, was politely notified of the summons and permitted a moment to change his clothes. A stupid decision in hindsight, but not obviously one in advance; rudely dragging him directly from his work would have been running the substantial risk of annoying him, and people who make a habit of annoying important court officials don't tend to end up in positions of running important court projects. It's not that Altarrin himself would have retaliated. It's that the sort of person who would've decided to seriously irritate Altarrin would've first decided to seriously irritate someone important earlier, and so would not be present at the important mage-research site at all.

 

 

Altarrin's research assistant was not important, and so she was summoned to Jacona when two guards entered her room while she was sleeping (on opposite shifts from Altarrin, to maximize use of the headband). They compulsioned her to prompt obedience, told her to get dressed, and had her waiting for a Gate when Altarrin vanished.

Ten seconds after that they had her compulsioned thoroughly enough she could not move or think or breathe except when she lapsed into unconsciousness because of the compulsion that was preventing breathing, at which point she'd start breathing again until she regained consciousness, at which point she'd stop...

- this is not exactly the height of competence by site security but overkill is much much much much better than underkill when it comes to terrifying foreign magic, and you can't actually kill someone by compulsioning them too excessively.

 

 

About twenty minutes after that, more competent people had her set up properly for an interrogation. The first report to the Emperor comes at the half hour mark, and by the two hour mark they have most of what they've been asked to get, though obviously they'll keep it up for a week just in case there's anything they could be missing. 

Most important: the civilization in the other world is real. She helped with the scrying-spell. It makes half-sense to her, she couldn't cast it unassisted, but it was a real scrying spell for routing through other planes to cross the vast distance to another world, and it worked.

Next most important is whether she's being influenced by Aroden herself, but that's much harder to answer.

 

Aritha Tevanir is an ordinarily, which is to say insufficiently, loyal Imperial subject; she is in favor of all the things she's supposed to be in favor of, like statistics and literacy and conquest and progress and technology, and against all the things she's supposed to be against, like the gods and the rebels and treason and the powerful order from another world. But mostly she's in favor of herself, and mostly she is wildly cynical, in part because the more cynical you are the easier it is to reconcile loyalty to the Empire with doing what is in your personal interests; it's what everyone else is doing. It's what the Empire truly is.

She hates Aroden. He's a god, and she hates gods, and he's a man, and she kind of hates those too, and if he's a story made up by Iomedae for her own purposes well she hates stories, so that's also fine. If there's mind control operative on her with respect to the civilization from the other world, it's taking a subtler form.

She believes that the civilization from the other world is going to conquer the Empire. She's loyal, which does not mean to her that she ought to try to heroically stop the civilization from the other world. That'd get her killed. It means she will obediently serve the Empire until it gets conquered which is definitely going to happen. She didn't point this out to anyone, though it showed up on her previous Thoughtsensing checks, because she figures they all knew it too; if it's obvious to her, it's presumably much more obvious to people who know things about politics. Maybe Altarrin could have figured out a way to save them, but, well, no one has told her anything about what is going on but she guesses wildly that something which is not 'Altarrin figured out a way to save them' happened. 

 

 

And that does seem...useful to the civilization from the other world, so maybe they influenced her into it, though she's happy to give convincing-seeming justifications that the interrogators can't evaluate because they all turn on things like 'the magic items are really complicated in a way that suggests to Aritha incredible sophistication with magic' and 'the unfamiliar metals suggest a more advanced science of metallurgy' and 'a society that has the headbands would just have much better magical research than one that doesn't have headbands'. 

Her main goal is to not get killed, and make herself useful to whoever is in power, and she is pretty much indifferent among all of the possibilities for whoever is in power including the civilization from another world. What she means by loyalty to Bastran is the same thing as what she means by loyalty to the Empire; she will serve, until someone gets hold of her head and makes her do something else, which she expects to happen eventually. 

They await direction from the Emperor on in what directions they should try to scrape more out of her.

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The Emperor is having a terrible day! 

(He might, under other conditions, be more intrigued by the other world, which at least has the upside of being novel and an intellectual puzzle and involving magic research rather than sending soldiers to kill each other. However. The other world STOLE ALTARRIN and so Bastran is deeply bitter about it.) 

 

He wants Altarrin back.

Two candlemarks of fruitless searching is enough to conclude that they are almost certainly not going to find Altarrin anytime soon. They've had specialists brought in to try to scry him, mages who can get through the standard shields, who cast it efficiently enough to reach multiple thousands of miles. He's almost certainly not on the continent. (Though of course it's a possibility he's holed up behind a kind of shield that was mentioned once in an obscure book 300 years ago, Altarrin is exactly the sort of person who would know every single spell ever mentioned in a treatise in the Empire's entire history, Bastran has no idea how he does it and until now it was convenient.) 

He's probably in the other world, though. Hopefully with Iomedae's people. It would be worse if the thing that went wrong was 'he accidentally scried Tar-Baphon, who is even worse than gods, and works for him now.' Bastran doesn't think this is likely, Altarrin is too careful for that, but it's a terrifying thought. 

 

It's...also obvious, even to Bastran, that just dragging Altarrin back to Jacona would really not fix everything. It's too late for that. It would just mean weeks or months of Altarrin being kept under guard with restrictive compulsions in place while being interrogated by a Thoughtsenser and predictably incredibly miserable about this. And even if they concluded it hadn't been his fault at all because he was under compulsions from Iomedae's people, or directly possessed by Aroden, then what? 

(Arbas thinks he could fix it. Arbas thinks he can do literally anything with compulsions, though, and he's generally right but - he couldn't get one on Iomedae.) 

 

He sits down with his advisors. Agenda items: 

- What else can they try to find Altarrin and bring him back to the Empire. 

- What are their options, in general, for learning more about the other world? 

- What are they going to do, in the meantime, to fill the hole that Altarrin's disappearance has left, not just in his formal chain of command but in a dozen other random places, Altarrin involves himself in a lot of aspects of the Empire. 

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His advisors have come with their own agenda items! Specifically, The War, The Other War, and Why Are We Having Three Wars, Again? The Minister of Revenue also has some things to say about the budget.

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The Minister of Revenue is a sharp young man from a family that had not traditionally sought a role in the administration, which is a polite way of saying they were (a) rural and (b) very clearly holding a grudge that their ancestors had been conquered by the Empire. Since the grudge dated back three hundred years and had become totally irrelevant in all respects (including their participation, or lack thereof, in rebellions against the empire) a hundred years ago, it is not surprise that Pelias Declane had broken with his family tradition, though it is rather surprising that he has already reached one of the highest posts in the Empire itself. In this he is assisted by his strained relations with his family, somewhat resembling Bastran's own, and by the fact that he genuinely seems to lack family ambition. (His desire to push his faction is, very visibly, a desire to push able proteges, as well as a good deal of alignment with the State itself.)

"We can't collect taxes from five provinces, Bastran," he says. "Nearly every legion is mobilized. The treasury's bleeding and every new expense means we run out a day sooner." He has a list of Ways To Save Money! It mostly involves cutting funding for programs aimed at the Long-Term Good Of The Empire until that far-off day in the future where the crisis isn't over. He also has plans to arrange loans to cover expenses past what the treasury can bear, producing a lot of debt that will need to be paid off eventually.

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Archmage-General Macaley, Duke of Holiger, has his own opinions on the topic. "We need more men, Bastran. If we need to guard against another world, we need a lot more men. And mages." Macaley does not owe his post to Altarrin, and prefers - or, before the crisis, preferred - to joke that Altarrin owned his post to him; he was one of the leading generals in the wars that lead to the reunification of the Empire, even if he is now an arm short for that. He considered the promotion from general to Minister of War to be a demotion, and even if he is now much too old for his previous job, that has not stopped him from going hunting almost daily, an event he uses to discuss his plans for the War Office. He has spent the past month not gloating about how his preferred policies of pushing candidates from good and true noble families against Altarrin's objections about "meritocracy" have just paid off spectacularly, since the two Very High-Ranking generals who rebelled were both non-noble, very, very patiently. "I can win this bloody thing as the money keeps coming - but if we're going to get Altarrin back? We need a lot more men."

His programs involve TAKING THE FREE ARMY OFFER, rebuilding the legions his distant cousin and political rival the governor of Tozoa wrecked, and some ambitious plans to strip the Empire's coastal navy bare to move all the marines and ship-mages to the front to get this bloody thing done faster.

(He was an army man back before his promotion, not a navy man.)

And if he reminds Bastran of his own father, he's a lot easier to correct. 

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(The Minister of Justice retired to spend more time with his family four weeks ago, and Lady Voltha remains one of the newest top imperial ministers, being a long-distinguished scion of a long-distinguished family in the Imperial administration, not to mention quite a capable mage. She is unmarried, because a married woman would not have time for her job, and is absolutely refreshingly practical under all circumstances, which is why she has yet to start arguing. Nobody, after all, has yet started trampling on the domains of the Ministry of Justice. But she has a "yep, the workload is terrible, isn't it" smile for Bastran if he has time to notice.)

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Baron Jonatan Pierson, Minister of State, also does not have any emergencies! He has the bright, professional smile of someone who is prepared to deny you a vitally important form and is eagerly shuffling his piles and piles of documents to present to Bastran when the agenda reaches the specific point on the agenda where these problems are to be discussed. He has an absolutely limitless appetite for work and works sixteen hours a day and controls the most vital part of the administration, the interface between the emperor and the governors, and has taken the possibility that any governors he signed off on appointing would rebel as a personal blow, a trait he mostly shows by very enthusiastically purging anyone who suggests the slightest sympathy or mercy for the rebels.

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The foreign minister, Duke Klemath Elnore, has assembled his own files! He's a gifted amateur musician, a rare trait he shares with Bastran, but however useful this may have been in getting this post he is also one of the few people who reliable provides Bastran with solutions more often than problems, barring his "uh, Holy Ithik is behind everything" at the start of the crisis.

"My staff have compiled a list of foreign countries mentioned by 'Iomedae' and by Altarrin," he says, "sorted by our impression of her wealth if in fact diamonds are much more valuable there than here, gifts of diamonds to all leaders of nations opposed to Iomedae's should secure us favorable trade deals and a start on establishing bloodlines of their mages in the Empire. The sooner we make contact, the sooner interplanetary trade can solve all our problems."

(And, of course, the sooner his department will need a massive, massive expansion.)

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The head of the Office of Inquiry has his own paperwork. He is grey and ordinary-looking and has a friendly smile and isn't quarrelsome at all and faaaaades into the background, but he's also the person who everyone went to for Aritha's report.

He does prefer to be the person who everyone goes to for everything, yes.

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Count Idor Harlath of the Ministry of Progress possesses the sacred charge of turning the Empire into utopia. (He does not normally think that way, but it's true.) In a practical sense, his job is mostly interfacing between the public works department and the Emperor, but ultimately all magical research takes place under his umbrella. He takes a point of pride in never having good news, which does not mean he's not good at his job. "The gate-canal bill went up again," he says, "and, Siman, my staff will need Aritha back if we want to get there next month instead of next year."

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"We'll be done in a week," says Sinan, raising his hands in a quick symbol of surrender. "She's no more disloyal than anyone else, we just need to make sure there's nothing we're missing."

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Bastran does not want to be dealing with this right now. He's so tired. 

 

 

His mental model of Altarrin is deeply unhappy about all of the proposed solutions. Bastran is currently kind of sick of listening to his mental model of Altarrin. Yes, of course, Altarrin would be able to solve these problems brilliantly and without destroying any value permanently. The thing is, if Altarrin were there then he wouldn't have this problem, would he. 

The proposed solutions...are in fact not good ones. Altarrin used to talk about burning nebulous resources you can't see or touch - precedents set by the early founders at great cost, or trust in the Empire's law and righteous cause carried by people and institutions over the centuries - but this isn't even that, this is burning next year's seed corn. He might have to, anyway, but there are pragmatic reasons to try to avoid it, not just ideological ones. 

 

They need a different kind of move. Some sideways step that changes the game they're playing. 

...Buying the help of Iomedae's enemies with diamonds is that, but he doesn't like it. For one thing, isn't Iomedae's foremost enemy Tar-Baphon? She might be lying about the danger there but...overall he doesn't think so, and it would be an awful gamble to take even if he did. For another, even if they invest in interworld Gating, it's going to be very hard to make strategic decisions that actually achieve what they want, in a world they know almost nothing about. 

Is there anything else

 

An important skill that Bastran learned - from Altarrin, mostly - is how to interrupt a debate that isn't going anywhere, and say the things that no one else can say, because he's the only person in the room who doesn't have to fear how anyone sees him. 

 

 

"We can discuss the obvious plans in a minute," he says. "I'm going to propose some less obvious plans. All of which are probably bad, thus why they're not obvious, but I'm hoping we can workshop something, with this many clever people in a room.

 

Probably-stupid alternate plans! 

- They can't negotiate for peace with the Knights of Ozem, who are clearly untrustworthy with commitments, but they still might be able to bribe them. Even untrustworthy people follow incentives, usually, or at least the successful ones capable of pulling off any big projects do. 

- They could, in fact, back out of Oris. This does have various costs - and will be incredibly unpopular - but holding Oris also will, and for decades. At that point, the Knights at least have no reasonable ground to intervene. 

- They could make diplomatic overtures to Ithik, bribe them with favorable trade deals to back out of supporting the pretenders.  

- Also on the theme of 'tolerating gods', they could make a deal with the temple of Anathei, if there's still any kind of organizational structure to work with. Let them back into Oris, commit in writing to at least a 20-year grace period, give them lots of aid in the form of food and Healers, and in exchange ask the priests of Anathei to get the locals to settle down and accept being a province of the Empire. 

- (Bastran is probably only thinking this at all because he's very angry with Altarrin, though he's mostly not aware of it in the moment because everything is numb) Wasn't Archmage-General Norean claiming to be one of Bastran's true and loyal allies, fighting to free him from Altarrin's evil mind control? Well. The fact that Altarrin has now defected to another world is arguably grounds to make overtures to him and give him a face-saving route to reconciling with the Empire, at which point they'll at least be down to two wars. The cost is of course that it makes it vastly more complicated to reinstate Altarrin to his position, if they get him back intact and still loyal to the Empire, but Bastran doesn't currently see a route to do that anyway

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" - Bastran, it's not that desperate! We've got them on the run in Taymyrr -" (Altarrin had them on the run in Taymyrr and his replacement is enjoying the benefits of his foresight). "Don't despair. We'll have them all beat soon enough, just leave the battles to me and mine."

(It may, perhaps, be worth mentioning at this point that Macaley, like every other officer here, does not see 'we are short of people' as being a problem so much as an opportunity, and has enough names to recommend to the Emperor to fill every post on the list, though not quite enough to fill all the vacancies!)

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Elnore is already thinking, though. "Any diplomatic gains coming from deals with Iomedae are made on a basis of mutual distrust, and so require mutual benefit at each step and no god-interferences to make her think she can do better. If we can't independently contact the powers of her world so her breaking deals is public knowledge, there's a limit to what we can get out of it."

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Declane thinks backing out of Oris is a great idea, actually. Tozoa province was still not net-positive-tax-income counting the garrison, and the resistance will make sure that keeps being true for years, and this lets them redeploy the army there to worry about their enemies. Given that they're winning, he's sure Duke Elnore can negotiate a peace where they get to keep the territory north of the Havau Bar Ridge to connect to foreign trade routes, which he's sure the rebels will be willing to give up if the alternative is a complete defeat.

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"Your majesty, I beg you not to consider recognizing the pretender! To allow one rebel commander to profit by his treason would lead to incentivizing still more rebels, at greater cost to the Empire! Even to negotiate would embolden him, and he cannot possibly accept anything less than freedom from compulsions if he expects to keep his head when the war is concluded!"

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... Lady Voltha, like everyone else, is just going to pretend that the Emperor did not recommend recognizing a god. Is Bastran insane?

(She thinks that bribing Ithik is a pretty good idea but doesn't expect it to show immediate results, given that the rebels will still keep all the weapons and training Ithik already gave them.)

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"We can't afford to show weakness, Bastran. Back out of Oris, recognize a god, let Norean keep his post - they'll all give us another ten rebellions to put down. Of course, we can't afford anything else, either, isn't that right, Pelias?"

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"An empty treasury isn't bankruptcy, Idor. But we do need more reliable sources of income, and soon, or our grandchildren will still be paying for these wars."

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He sighs. 

 

"We know why Norean rebelled, right? He's a very capable administrator who was always more or less loyal - when it was in his interests, but we can take that assumption for granted for nearly every provincial governor or general - and then, and we know this was a godplot, he ended up with the - not unjustified - belief that we were about to remove him from his post and execute him for disloyalty. At which point it became abruptly in his interests to actually be disloyal. 

"And that's stupid, right? What a cheap intervention for Them, to pit us against one of our strongest and most economically critical provinces, and sit back while we do Their work for them and destroy our own resources and manpower, because we don't have a choice, because the alternative would make us look weak." 

 

He shakes his head.

"I know it would. I know that matters. I'm not sure it's even workable - we can offer Norean another chance, but he's still the one who has to be willing to take that chance, and of course he'll be worried it's a trick. I'm not willing to bend that far, he'll want a deal where we don't replace his compulsions and we need him under compulsions again, and maybe there's no deal there he's willing to take." Sigh. "Just, not trying it - letting the rest of this play out the way it inevitably will - is going to make us actually weaker, however it looks. We'll win, probably, eventually, unless something explodes in the meantime and we can't respond because rather than having Norean's men and Tolmassar's taxes working for us, we don't have them and we're dedicating a lot of our other resources to fighting them. But even if we win, we'll have less for the next thing the gods throw at us." 

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There's silence, for a moment. Macalay is not looking happy about this. Nobody is, really. Macalay could say if the army learns we offered it'll be bad for morale but Bastran knows this, or it will hearten him and his, but Bastran knows this, or it isn't that desperate but, well, it doesn't have to be desperate for Bastran to want to not execute a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that, just...

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Count Declane is trying to decide if he can afford to offer to use his personal contacts to try to negotiate a peace! It is true that the number three person in the finance ministry has relatives in Tolmassar on the rebel side, but it's also true that he's spent a lot of credit recently protecting her, and if this falls through, as he expects, he'd probably lose her on a treason charge if the Emperor didn't personally vouch for her, and the Emperor has never met her. (Her Plan For Fixing The Imperial Treasury is not in the list of things presented to the Empire; it might work, but would require annoying so many people. It's a plan for when there is not a revolt, and the Empire has free time. Like, any free time.)

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"My diplomats could speak with one of the representatives he's sent to a foreign court. Taking place outside the Empire, it would be hard for him to credibly claim it occurred if negotiations fell through; one of the Hardornen courts, maybe." Because Hardorn is unstable and its word is meaningless.

(The foreign service was relatively uninjured by the collapse of Altarrin's faction and the defections in Tolmassar and Taymyrr, and so without the need to avenge lost honor that the ministries of State and War possess, it is in an exceptionally strong position to make potentially-risky offers without being accused of treason.)

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Lady Voltha of the Ministry of Justice has the least secure seat of anyone here and so is mostly going to remain silent aside from providing quiet emotional support to Bastran about how screwed they all are.

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The Minister of State wants Norean's HEAD ON A PLATTER but directly going against the Emperor would be stupid. Therefore.

"If we must yield territory, withdrawing from Oris would free up significantly more resources. Even a compulsioned General Norean could never be trusted again, not without careful - and expensive - watching."

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"- Unless Iomedae's people invade, or her enemies do, in which case I think it'd be in everyone's interest to be on the same team here, and - I'd want to at least have traction on that, if not a signed truce. I agree that if we don't end up allied-in-truth against a common enemy, monitoring him is an ongoing cost and history says it's likely to only be delaying the problem. ...I'm inclined to put out some feelers. Sending our diplomats to meet his diplomats in a Hardornen court isn't going to sell him on - us meaning it, not enough that he'll take any chances - but it's at the very least a channel of communication." 

He frowns. "...An offer we could make - and I don't think we're there yet, but I think one more worrying report on the other world's capabilities would push me to it - is just giving him everything we already have. If it feels like his decision, whether to figure out how to Gate there and trade diamonds for their support or take our truce offer because they're a worse enemy, that buys us - not actual trust or loyalty, but a step toward it, I think." 

And of course everyone is going to hate that, so he'll turn and acknowledge Baron Pierson. 

"In the short run, I share your impression. Oris matters far less to us than Tolmassar - the southern half particularly has never really been part of the Empire at all except for on paper, and it's likely to be decades before the region would be net-positive on paying taxes or on providing troops." 

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He'll nod his head. (He's one of the least expert talkers-to-Bastran on the council; his central virtues are sixteen hour workdays and a very good memory.) "The loss of Oris would be tragic, but it can be reconquered in ten years, or twenty, or thirty. The loss of Tolmassar would be the loss of the Empire's strong right arm." (This is slightly a cliche, or more than slightly.)

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On the one hand, if the Emperor tries for Oris, he won't try for Tolmassar. On the other hand - "Bastran, if crimes committed against imperial subjects and the imperial flag in Oris are not avenged, there will be outrage in the streets of Jacona." Admittedly these tales are exaggerated, invented, or carefully selected to ensure popular support for the war, but that doesn't make it false. Riots have brought down more than one emperor. "The withdrawal will need to be very carefully handled."

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"We need to keep  the Havau Bar corridor," Macalay says. "We keep it, or we lose lowland-west Tolmassar the first time some Hardornen princeling wants a fight." It's what they invaded Oris in the first place for, that key link between previously separated territories.

And he does not want to lose southern Tozoa and the rest of Oris. Oris has men, and Oris has ore, and Oris has land. (And, impolitely, all these things need officer jobs to protect which can be handed out to loyal imperial noblemen, many of them his cousins.)

But it's better than negotiating with the rebels in bloody Tolmassar.

A little better.

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" - Bastran, the negotiations in Oris would be greatly preferable to diplomacy with Norean, even to the extent of telling him the truth about Iomedae's otherworldliness. if we are the sole faction speaking for Velgarth with her world, than we are in a much stronger position than if we, Iomedae, and Norean are three separate channels. I have no doubt but that Idor -" who is in this respect his political ally; the foreign minister and the person in whose domain novel magical research lies are natural allies for the discovery of a new world with novel magic "- can get us there ahead of him, but I would guess that even renegade imperials could beat barbarians to the required research."

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"If we can't, we're doing even worse than I'd expect." He's fine with giving up Oris. There would be Ministry of Progress jobs and spoils in it with the need to repair and expand the Gate-network in Tozoa and Oris, but frankly all his ministry's attention is going to be devoted to the extradimensional magic until the Empire's finished assimilating it into its own techniques, and there will be enough public works doing repairs in Tolmassar and Taymyrr to keep that department happy.

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"It took Altarrin a week to crack Gates and we barely have his notes," Bastran says wryly. "I don't think it's usable information for him, in the short run - and in the long run it's messy - it's not a good idea, just the first thing that came to mind if we decide it's a priority to convince him we're serious. Which I don't think it is, yet, so we can come back to it and get some ideas for other approaches later." 

 

And he turns to Archmage-General Macalay. "I suspect we're in a position where we could offer the rebel leader a ceasefire and peace talks, and it's very much in their interests to accept, and accept a proposed treaty where we hold onto the Havau Bar corridor. I'm - not sure how much to expect their leader to agree with that assessment, we know he's been planning from the premise that the gods are on their side, which doesn't necessarily imply rational decisionmaking." 

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"Oh, it's in their interests to surrender, all right," Macalay agrees. "Been in their interests to surrender from the start. It's in everyone's interests to surrender and join the empire! I just bloody wish they'd do what was in their interest, instead of keeping fighting forever."

Nonetheless, he does have plans his subordinates have submitted and he's approved - what to move out, what to Gate in, how to manage the withdrawal, what to do about collaborators trying to evacuate over to imperial territory - for either keeping the Corridor or giving up everything. Some of this is the Emperor's business, some of it is the general's, and a good bit is the Minister of War's, or his subordinates.

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Lady Voltha will chime in with some plans for riot control in secondary cities in the event they do that - she'll want the Imperial Guard, to stop it from going too badly in Jacona.

(It would, ironically, be less taken as a symbol of defeat, and be much less bad for morale, if they engaged in no negotiations, Gated the legions out, and called it a redeployment and so lost the whole province instead of keeping the valuable bit. The Emperor knows this, but it's still something she thinks about.)

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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.'

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

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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. 

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

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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...

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

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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. 

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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.")

 

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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."

 

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" - 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?"

 

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

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"....a helpful Miracle?"

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

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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 -:

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

 

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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.:

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“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.”

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

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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.

 

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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?”

 

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“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

 

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“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.”

 

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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.)

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

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And a Mass Heal strikes every being in Urgir, orc or mangy stray dog or undead, and it’s rare, actually, for there to be an orc who is wholly unscarred and uninjured, so every one of them feels it; disease and poison and damage and madness, driven away. 

 

(Not all of the undead die, but there aren’t that many of them who are tough enough to endure that, or who make that save against Pharasma’s High Priest.)

 

And a roar goes up, not from all of the people of Urgir or from the crusaders outside but from around and among and between them all, a roar that begins to sound more like a melody, and that swells up and carries away - not the desire to commit violence, it doesn’t do anything about the desire to commit violence. Iomedae disapproves of trying to run places on mind control. It takes away the ability. Attacking people just obviously won’t work, and if you try (and a lot of frightened and disoriented orcs are now trying) you’ll find yourself, instead, standing there, not attacking people.

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And then a road grows, beneath the crusader’s feet, a paved road, wide enough for three wagons abreast, and it runs up to the walls not at the powerfully defended sky-citadel gates but to the walls where there’s no gate at all, and then through it, into the city.

 

The walls remain, but in blazing gold upon them there is an archway, and to look at the archway is to know: this wall will no longer bar you, if you carry only what you’ve honestly earned, and come in peace.

 

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(They’re going to want to reopen the normal gates as soon as possible. Abadar’s standards for ‘honestly earned’ are inconveniently high.)

 

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But Iomedae meets them (she left a couple of magic items off just to be absolutely certain; she discussed it with Tilbun at length the night before), and she flies through, apparently alone (unless you have True Seeing in which case obviously flanked by half a dozen people and two summoned solar angels) and some of Tar-Baphon’s surviving undead lieutenants in the city fight her, because whoever was giving them orders from a distance was paying insufficient attention, but most of them flee.

 

And a carefully selected unit of crusaders (who were property-rights-to-all-owned-items-checked the night beforehand) follow her through the walls, a thousand soldiers, and trumpets sound, and men cheer, and weep, and pray, and gape disbelievingly. 

 

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The banner of the crusaders rises above the city. 

 

And after about an hour the ordinary gates of the city open.

 

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The rest of the day is actually an enormous logistical nightmare and there are upsettingly many casualties given that only a few hundred orcs in the city are even very occasionally capable of doing violence in it and given that the crusaders have been emphatically told by their commanders that every single grievous injury in the city is going to have Iomedae personally flying over to figure out what happened. But that part isn’t going to make it into the mythology, and that does actually matter, and - 

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- when there’s a midday assault from four or five of Tar-Baphon’s deadliest lieutenants and Tar-Baphon himself showing off the ability to cast Wail of the Banshee with unlimited targets within its radius, three times in a round -

 

- and forty or fifty thousand of the undead under their control, approaching in four separate armies who’d obviously been encircling the crusade as it dawdled outside Urgir -

 

- presumably testing the hypothesis that the crusade has burned all its resources, or just acting on the obvious fact that the crusaders are mostly still in the field just as a logistical matter and will be much harder to kill once they’re in the city -

 

 - it transpires that the crusade has not burned all its resources and, in fact, the High Priest of Pharasma has been waiting ready for the perfect moment for a Breath-of-Life-but-Bigger-and-Better Miracle that restores to life all the just-this-last-round dead and leaves fairly little of Tar-Baphon’s army standing, and also Alfirin has yet to use any of her important spells at all.

 

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“You were right,” Iomedae says to Alfirin once they’ve driven the enemy back, healed the wounded, raised some of the dead. “If we’d taken the city with a Miracle when we only had one, he’d have done that and -”

 

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And Iomedae might have survived, if she’d could have been convinced to flee in her moment of utter ruin instead of standing and dying, and Alfirin would have survived, and a handful of others perhaps, but the Crusade would be dead and nearly every crusader something worse. She doesn’t say it.

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“I’m really glad we had enough. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that the hard way.

I’m staying, by the way. I expect you know that changed when Altarrin showed up, but I never actually said. Here through the winter and Even Greater Teleport by the spring and - If Tar-Baphon hasn’t figured out where our diamonds are coming from I think we’ll have it next campaign season.”

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"I think so!"

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"I’ve been mostly not thinking how to use Altarrin, since Aroden asked me not to, but -

 

- I don’t think this, specifically, will blur up the future much -

 

- Altarrin found our world, from a very different one, by studying the signature of our magic items and then looking not for those specific items, but for similar ones.”

 

Alfirin is smarter than her. She won’t have to spell out the rest.

 

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“Might work, we can have him try it once in case it just works but I think it's not worth a long research project. I wouldn’t naively expect it to work past a mind blank - I know you can’t classically put one up on an object, but you can on intelligent magic items and I think a phylactery is - it’s linked to his soul. I’m pretty sure he can mind blank them, and if he couldn’t when he first became a lich he’s had six hundred years to figure it out.”

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“I want him dead and gone, not just sealed away. I am aware this might just be - me being high on too many Miracles, thinking anything is possible -

 

I assume one cannot scry for, specifically, the spell structure Mind Blank, even if one has Velgarth scrying and can scry for spell structures in general?

 

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“Normally I would say ‘definitely not,’ but Velgarth magic is a sufficiently large unknown that - Almost certainly not, but we should try anyways. Tomorrow he can watch me prepare it and cast it and maybe that will make it easier to find.”

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There’s more to say, and - it’s not going to go well, or at least it’s at risk of not going well, but there’s not going to be a better time. 

 

“Once we get the next batch you should enhance yourself. I’m - not actually looking forward to not being able to keep up, but. I’ll live. And it’s the sort of thing that might actually really matter. I - want to ask you to get Wisdom as well.”

 

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“...You are asking me, as a favor to you, to enhance my Wisdom. Where are you going with this.”

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“ - I am more excited about all of the many amazing things you are going to do after the crusade if you have more Wisdom. You’re going to do sufficiently many, sufficiently amazing things that being better at them is a really significant multiplier on the world.

Ending the sentence there would be dishonest. Continuing it will merely be unpleasant.

- and I’ll feel less anticipation-of-something-terrible-happening. I don’t experience it as subjectively aversive like the rest of you all but I do still have some anticipation-of-something-terrible-happening, you know.”

 

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“I was going to enhance Wisdom anyways. I told you that, when we first got the diamonds. I cannot help but think there’s something else going on here and I don’t actually know what it is - “

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“...Are you anticipating me becoming a lich?”

 

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“Not as your first resort,” Iomedae says. Talking is suddenly not just unpleasant but also difficult, but she does lots of difficult things. “I expect you have lots of other ideas. And it is possible. Aroden managed it. But - but almost no one else, right. And. If you’re two hundred, and it’s catching up with you, and you haven’t figured it out, and it’s that or you die of old age -

 

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“I understand what you’re saying.”

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“I’m afraid, right now, and not sure that I’m wrong to be afraid but it’s not actually helping so please - thank you.”

“Can we talk about this somewhere else. I’ll bring you back, after, even if it - goes badly. And can you promise to keep this conversation a secret - I won’t ask for your promise not to use it against me.”

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It's not among the sentences one would be most excited to hear, from a - very close friend - who may or may not be pursuing lichdom. And under many plausible accounts of what Alfirin - wants, what's in her interests, it would be very, very foolish to go with her.

 

- Iomedae has good instincts, actually, and they’re not saying that Alfirin is going to soul-trap her now that she can win the crusade without her.

 

And she’s not, actually, sure of that, because Alfirin can lie to her sometimes, and there’s the argument it’s an indefensible risk to take, a risk she’s taking with the entire future of the world out of what Alfirin would call sentimentality, but to refuse would be - to rip up everything she extended two days ago in a bag of diamonds - and she saw, what that meant -

 

- and it’s not as if ‘the entire future of the world’ ever appears on only one side of an equation, it’s always woven in with everything on both sides -

 

“I promise.” And she extends her hand for the Plane Shift.

 

(Alfirin can and will definitely interpret the hesitation, but Iomedae is not ashamed of the fact she needed to think to make a promise like that.)

 

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Then they are somewhere else, not Alfirin’s usual demiplane, but floating weightless in an orb of force suspended between gates to the positive and negative energy planes. It’s bright, even through the permanent deeper darkness.

She releases Iomedae’s hand. “...I would prefer that you consider the location of this conversation part of the promised confidentiality.”

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“First of all, I am not going to be worrying about old age. As far as anyone knows reincarnate just fixes it and I - don’t even need druid friends, I can hang it myself, and put it on a contingency, and cut my own throat.” She could stop here. Iomedae’s not-fears would be assuaged, somewhat. And she’d be safe. But - that wouldn’t have justified coming here. And she said ‘first of all’. She did not leave herself a way out of what comes next, because she knew she’d be tempted to take it and - Altarrin is fine, actually.

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“But also I - did it already. I cannot be killed, even if all my clones are gone. It’s not lichdom, I’m not undead. It does kill someone else, each time. And - I killed a lot of people to do it.”

“I don’t actually know which parts of lichdom you thought were categorically different. From other things I’ve done. Possibly I should have asked, thirty years ago, but - I wasn’t sure asking was definitely safe, if I was going to do it anyways no matter what you said.”

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Iomedae is going to - shut down all of her emotional processing, actually, it’s going to show on her face and she doesn’t - want those inputs right now, right here - of course, when they’re gone, there’s mostly just a curious blankness and a sucking hole underneath it. 

 

Was there a question. Did Alfirin ask a question. 

 

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“I guess I could attempt to produce an analysis of different immortality methods and in what other than involving-lots-of-murder respects they strike me as objectionable,” she says. A little tonelessly. “I think it seems important whether a person - gets worse, either directly because the magic literally makes them evil or because it - degrades them a bit every time, which matters a lot if they started out pursuing a sort of high-precision strategy where many nearby states are - just being incredibly evil without the redeeming thing it was all for. I think it also seems important whether a person - is affected over time by the thing where, having definitely made sure they’ll be Evil forever, they’re constrained to those allies who don’t mind that or manage to fail to notice, and having already paid the most obvious cost of doing Evil things they do lots more Evil things they don’t actually need to do and adopt it in their self-image."

 

 

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"And whether, having definitely made sure they’ll be Evil forever, should the method fail they would be terrifyingly desperate, which matters in proportion to the odds that the method could fail, but I’d expect people to underestimate that because there’s just so much nonsense out there.

 

And I’d worry about - the thing I also have to worry about with respect to myself when I ascend, uncarefully disrupting the mechanisms by which people learn from mistakes and grow over time and have the chance to get better - it seems specifically extremely hard to preserve that without also chancing a very high probability of at some point for situational or interpersonal reasons like the ones I just mentioned getting much worse, and - then not wanting to be better, because that’s a lot of what getting much worse is. 

 

I think those would be most of the large factors in my assessment of how harmful it is to become things that are technically not liches, murders aside. The murders also aren't - really an aside, but. You asked about lichdom.”

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“I do not expect it to change me, directly. And I won’t get stuck, the way people do when they’re undead, or constructs, or ensouled swords, or other things like that. Those were concerns of mine too and I wouldn’t have done it if those had been the only options.”

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“Finding Good allies was - I don’t think this makes it much harder. I have mind blank. I can pretend to be deafened by a dictum, not that there’s many who could affect me with one even if I weren’t lawful, and claim true neutral. I have - other ways to fake lawful neutral, or lawful good, if I wanted. Karlenius wouldn’t be happy to work with me even if I’d only done the Evils he’s seen with his own eyes and there are a lot more Karleniuses in the world than there are people like you. So - it is a cost, yes, there is a - risk - of me becoming more Evil over time, just because of who is willing to associate with me. I don’t think that’s something I’ve made worse, with this, than I have with everything else I’ve done in my life.”

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“If it fails, I will not be any more desperate than I was before I put it into place. I was not any more eager to be Judged when I would have made Axis, or Heaven. I do not want Hell, but if that ever seems like a risk - “

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“It doesn’t have to be Hell. I can maledict myself. My choice of Evil afterlives. I tested it on rabbits. I wanted to be sure.”

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“ - you can Maledict rabbits? - sorry, that’s not really the most important thing, there. Does Hell torture the rabbits?”

 

That is also not, remotely, the important thing.

Nonetheless her brain is expanding the question.

Are rabbit-petitioners immune to damage from the fires of Avernus, or do they promptly cook?

 

Focus, Iomedae. 

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“If you were Lawful Neutral and let Karlenius see it then he’d lighten up substantially,” she says, a bit distantly. “It’s gotten worse in the last decade and it’s because he did note that - we didn’t even occasionally get a glimpse anymore. 

And - I am….planning to found an entire Church of being Good my way which is fine with hard tradeoffs and actually thinking about all of your options even the Evil ones, and ...not fine with murdering huge numbers of people to arrange the option of killing more people to arrange to not die. Because - because even if, even if I could believe that the world will be better than if you didn’t do it, that’s - false, for almost anybody doing it, and - building stronger coordination against people ever doing it would make things better....

I guess they could be volunteers. - I know they aren’t. But in principle. I think - it’d be fine if they were volunteers, and if you were - more careful than almost anyone ever is, maybe more careful than you in fact were, I don’t know. The volunteers not because - not because I am specifically treating murder as a strict bright line, though it comes closer than most things, but because it takes the sails pretty spectacularly out of several of the listed concerns. And it would be possible. It would be annoying and expensive but it would be possible, and so it’s - a strong indication, of how hard someone is willing to try to do the least bad thing that works….

Faking being a different alignment is in the category - restricting yourself to allies who aren’t very clever or very careful. I - if I didn’t know you very very well, if I met you adventuring hundreds of years in the future, a stranger, and you seemed Lawful Neutral and I got suspicious and did something clever to figure out your alignment, with a Forbiddance or something - and I would - 

I wouldn’t trust you at all, after that."

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“I don’t think volunteers would work. I did try, but -

There are factors I was considering that I am not going to tell you. And they ruled out volunteers."

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"This is also - it’s a backup. I expect to use it many times but - I have clones, I haven’t stopped keeping clones and those will kick in first. I have reincarnate for old age. The way that kills people - It’s not going to happen every time someone gets really lucky with a fireball, or an antimagic field.”

“...and yes, I know, that hiding my alignment would destroy trust. I haven’t tried hiding it at all, really. And - I think I could hide it really well, if I tried. It rules out the absolute cleverest allies, but - look around you. Right now in the world there’s me and there’s Tar-Baphon and - Nex and Geb wherever they went - and there's you, but - I don't know if you'd be able to tell, if I'd been lying the whole time, if you didn't know me.

I could hide it from a forbiddance, if I were trying. From a forbiddance or a holy word or a chaos hammer or - almost any way of testing I can think of now. “

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“...Also, technically speaking, I don’t actually know that I’m Evil, right now. I don’t have a good way to check, on my own.”

“...Would you like to check?”

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Iomedae had indeed been opening her mouth to point out that one perfectly good way to check is to not be Mind Blanked in Iomedae’s presence for two seconds.

 

“ - I don’t actually know that it’s worth the eighth circle spell slot,” she says, though, once she’s actually thought about it. “What Pharasma thinks of you doesn’t, I think - isn’t actually the -”

 

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“I know.”

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“Do you in fact think the world is going to be better because you did this or just - that, not being Lawful Good, you are not obliged to choose all your actions off what makes the world better -”

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“Yes. And yes.”

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She in fact had known that answer as soon as she posed the question.

 

She closes her eyes. “What do you expect you’ll think at higher Intelligence and Wisdom, of - your own thinking, about this -”

 

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“...That I missed some key facts that cannot expect myself to have seen. That’s always what I think about my own thinking, when I look back on it with that much more intelligence and wisdom.

Honestly that’s what I think of it now, with just twenty years more experience. But - mostly what I missed was not talking to you sooner. I think, now, that you wouldn’t have killed me for it preemptively.

But I don’t know whether the things I’m missing are wildly better alternatives, or marginal improvements, or just - things I should have been thinking of, but do not change the end result.”

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“ - I wouldn’t have killed you. Even if you didn’t ask for inaction, I -

 

I need you, and I - I want you to be right that what you’re doing will be good for - everything we care about, and -"

 

 

 

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"Actually, I’m sorry, saying more about this topic is a bad idea."

 

 

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" ...


Does Avernus cook the rabbits."

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She floats a step back, because otherwise she would float a step forward.

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“It does. They don’t - get normal petitioner forms. They’re just rabbits. Which would be more ordinary if I could send them to Nirvana but I can’t - I tried that too, once I realized I could target any Evil plane - “

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Iomedae starts giggling.

 

Slightly hysterically. “As - a - Good - person - I - disapprove - of - sending rabbits to Hell - but -

- but that’s really funny -

- why would it work that way -

 

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Deep breath. 

 

“Well, I can talk about my feelings, which is a bad idea, or I can never ever ever talk about my feelings, which in the conventional wisdom is also a bad idea but we’ve had a pretty good run, so, I dunno, maybe the conventional wisdom is, as usual, unnuanced and incorrect if you are smart and actually being careful.

But if you don’t want me to talk about my feelings then I think I have no further analysis of your - thing you’re doing.

And I do feel somewhat less anticipation that something terrible will happen, if only because it maybe already did.”

 

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She manages to pull herself out of her own giggling fit, because it’s really not that funny if you saw it yourself through a scry, but this conversation has been very stressful and the giggling is contagious. Breathe.

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“I…”

“I do want you to talk about your feelings. But. It would be unwise. To do it now. Or decide now. To do it later.”

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Huh?

 

 

....because it’s the 700 year old man from the other world that prompted Iomedae to bring this up with Alfirin, of course. She’s an idiot. It wasn’t her conscious reasoning process but Alfirin is almost certainly right that it was upstream of it, that this is a conversation that was vanishingly unlikely in prophecy and that they should endeavor to not allow to have extremely large-scale effects. 

(Gods sever causal influence from their not-supposed-to-have-causal-influence sources easily. Iomedae feels embarrassed in that characteristic fashion she associates with noticing she’s not in fact a god yet.)

-“ - oh right. Thank you. I - yeah. All right. In that case I should get back to scolding everybody who successfully used a sword in my new city, and figuring out how to get more of the army inside of it. And so on.”

 

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(That was not what Alfirin was thinking of at all. It’s not her job to minimize noise in prophecy and in fact having conversations in a demiplane which is resistant to prophecy probably made that worse. She was thinking that it’s - too tempting, when the only reason she’s not afraid is Iomedae’s presence, to fall into her arms and do something they’ll both regret.)

She drifts back toward Iomedae, with her hand held out for the plane shift.

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Iomedae squeezes it slightly more tightly than is necessary for the plane shift.

 

(She'll weep for an unknowable number of dead people later, where Alfirin can't feel manipulated by it, where she can separate it from contemplating what things she'd pay that price for.)

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Before the battle they bring Altarrin new copies of Aroden's holy books, in the extradimensional mansion, and another Scholar's Ring, and notify him that one of the other rooms has a few injured soldiers awaiting the crusade having the spare resources for a Regenerate. He doesn't have to speak with them, but he can, if he is lonely or curious at some point. 

 

(Someone ducks in to notify the housebound that the battle went well, and cheers erupt from the other room.)

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Altarrin woke up that morning and - because mage-sight is allowed - took a second to notice the lack of subjectively-noticeable compulsions, and to parse the ridiculously overpowered spell they have on him as compulsion-like, and remember that he's no longer in the Empire and he is nonetheless still a prisoner. It's - not fine, actually, and it's reasonable to be distressed about this, and he may not be safe, but it's not productive to spend ten minutes untangling panic about that. He can spend thirty seconds doing that, and move on to actual priorities. 

...He doesn't really want to talk to the injured soldiers. Maybe later. He wants to write a letter to Bastran, and maybe at that point Alfirin will be back and he can get her to carve out the exception so he can scry Velgarth. He hopes it's less exhausting in the other direction; there are some reasons to think it might be, he has a better sense of Velgarth and can maybe target specific places more effectively. 


He feels weirdly stuck on writing to Bastran. In a sense it doesn't matter, or at least won't matter in most possible worlds, because Bastran isn't going to believe him, but - he tries not to think of that as a reason to put less effort in. There are still ways it could end up mattering a lot.

 

...He's confused about Aroden's church, and it feels like he needs to be less confused, to have some kind of more solid grounding, before he can explain Iomedae's world to Bastran in a way that holds together and doesn't sound completely implausible. He - suspects some of that feeling isn't actually reasonable - but it might still help to read Aroden's holy books, which are conveniently right there. 

Altarrin requests food and water, and then settles in to read. 

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Aroden, as his histories tell it, was born before Earthfall in Azlant which only Axis, in these days, has perhaps surpassed, and He had become notable even before the Cataclysm as an extraordinary mage, brilliant and powerful, and then the alghollthu grew afraid of the human civilization on the surface, grew jealous, and they went to war, and they were, to their astonishment, losing. And they called in a great power from beyond the world, to destroy the humans, but they miscalculated, and very nearly destroyed the world.

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He's...not quite managing to form thoughts in reaction to it.

 

For one thing, he...doesn't actually like thinking about the Cataclysm. He doesn't go there often, anymore, he used to dwell on it but any lessons there to be learned were ones he internalized centuries ago, and any remaining lessons are ones he can't learn, anymore, because the relevant information is lost and gone. Usually, trusting that he's internalized all of his mistakes and changed his habits and policies to avoid them in future means that it no longer hurts to think about, but...this was always different. 

He has emotions about it. He doesn't really have opinions or an interpretation, yet, separate from that. Just confusion, again, and he's so tired of being confused. 

 

He keeps reading. 

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Aroden survived, Aroden rebuilt civilization - not on Azlant's continent, which is just gone, a few isolated islands poking up above the sea, but on the alternate continent, devastated only by the indirect effects of the catastrophe (still sufficient to nearly extinguish humanity).

Aroden founded Taldor and worked to prevent the magical knowledge of ancient Azlantl from being forgotten forever, and he led an army into the Abyss and fought a demon lord, and he became a master of magic unparalleled in his world. And He travelled other worlds, looking for something, though He never told anyone what, and had spectacular adventures there, some recounted and some totally unknown.

 

And then, after hundreds of years of work, he dragged the Starstone out of the sea. It was a remnant of the moon that hit Golarion during Earthfall. It's said that it contained the essence of two gods, the ones killed when Earthfall happened.

Aroden set a series of elaborate precautions around it, and then ascended, and became a god. It is said He will return to usher in the Age of Glory.

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It is a perfectly reasonable, coherent, well written summary of a very impressive person life. One that at least says good things about Aroden the mortal - well, immortal - wizard. If any of it can be believed, but it’s fairly careful about citing other sources, that Altarrin can’t personally check right now but Iomedae surely would have, and on the level of facts, he’s not actually suspicious that the entire book is a fiction written to persuade. That hypothesis mostly rises to attention because it feels written to - not even persuade, at this point, it’s mostly upsetting - to cause strong emotional effects of some kind to him personally. Which is positing a level of inexplicable complex deception that doesn’t at all fit with anything else. 

He still reads the entire book with a growing feeling, of not even quite of disbelief, but of…surreality…the flavor of dreaming, noticing a world full of rich details that feel like they make sense but will crumble if he looks too closely. Even though as far as he can tell they don’t crumble, no individual piece is dissolving into dream-logic…

 

Once he’s finished, since he’s not sure what else to do, he goes back to read the remainder of the other holy text, the one with Aroden’s vision and teachings.

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This one is much more poetic, written for sermons, full of songs, of the achievements of humanity and the many achievements ahead of it, of the evils of the world, those of neglect and indifference and those of the malice of enemies and evil gods - and the power of human strength to overcome evils, to build and grow and learn and make the world better, to look up at the stars and wonder who else is out there and grow up and go check -

 

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Altarrin is running on approximately negative emotional equilibrium and he is, maybe, going to slightly cry a couple of times.

It’s - he doesn’t know why it hurts - it makes sense of Iomedae, in a way, how someone could end up with that particular combination of - determination and ruthlessness and nonetheless holding to sacred principles, drawing those bright lines…he suspects he’s still not looking at it the way she would describe it herself, it feels like she wouldn’t see it as a tradeoff but as pieces of the same thing…

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He wants - something - he wants to talk to someone but not really to - a stranger who has no context on why he’s here and probably isn’t cleared to know it anyway -

 

 

…Maybe going to see the injured soldiers is better than being alone with his thoughts. He can, at the very least, ask them for their impressions of Iomedae and the Church of Aroden.

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They're all missing limbs, and one is missing both legs, an arm, one eye, and his nose. They're in good spirits about it. Regenerate is seventh circle, so it only happens when it's not campaign season, but they've just taken Urgir (did he hear! Iomedae took the whole city by Miracle! No deaths at all!) and so soon there'll be time for a cleric to get to them.

 

They ...worship her, that's actually the dynamic there, not very complicatedly. She is their god, more than Aroden; She spends their lives, reluctantly, never hesitating to also spend her own, towards her aim of ending Tar Baphon and then Evil everywhere, and they are honored to serve her and will go to paradise when they die in her service. She is unfathomably powerful, and she is going to actually be a god someday. Anyone who didn't know that before Urgir knows it now. 

 

The Church of Aroden is - less a matter of deep religious devotion, for most of these people, and more the background fabric of their lives. Aroden made the world they live in, and He wants them to make even more of it, and He chose Iomedae, and allied they are unstoppable. They know the hymns and the stories from the holy books and they pray to him for guidance and wisdom, to make plans that work, just like they pray to Pharasma for the dead or to Erastil for a good harvest or to Sarenrae for a wayward son to awaken to the ills of his ways. But one gets the sense that it's hard for a god all the way in Axis to compete with a god on their very own battlefield, and - that's how Iomedae's people have been steadily growing to see her. 

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That's - really impressive, actually, on Iomedae's part. He can recognize that there's a strategy, there, she's impressive and charismatic but you don't get this level of hero-worship by accident. 

It makes him think better of her, overall. That her reaction to there being problems she can't solve, yet, is to be strong enough to solve more of them.

...It seems like information about Aroden, too, actually, it's - a much more direct sign of what He wants than just His church's teachings. He is supporting Iomedae, rather directly, and Iomedae wants to become a god - plans on it, seems to have plans that might succeed, if ascension is just...a thing that Aroden solved, thousands of years ago...that says enough about Aroden by itself, He could have taken away the ladder after He climbed it, but He didn't

 

Also, he was aware that something had happened and was probably good news, he heard the distant cheers, but he hasn't in fact heard any details of the battle! What happened? He suspects they'll be delighted to tell him the story. 

- and after that he'll gently poke those who seem willing to talk about their own history. How did they end up following Iomedae? How long have they been with the crusade? What was it like - the good parts, and the bad as well? 

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It varies, obviously! For this crusader, he's a second son of a farmer, there weren't any apprenticeships to be had, so he joined a mercenary company. They'd done some pretty bad things - halfway to bandits, sometimes - and then Iomedae was hiring and it sort of... snowballed from there? He didn't want to go to the Abyss, so, well, Iomedae paid Lawfully and on time and he figured he might as well do Good...

Oh, the leg? Some undead sonofabitch was taking a swing at Korkh over here and he took it on the leg. Happens, in the Shining Crusade.

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Altarrin listens thoughtfully, nods and tries to make the appropriate expressions at the appropriate spots. 

...He's a foreigner who doesn't know that much about Iomedae's forces. Can they maybe talk more about what they mean, when they say Iomedae works and pays Lawfully? 

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It means that she keeps her bargains. If she signs a deal, she keeps the deal, and if she says she'll pay on time, she'll pay on time. She doesn't cheat you. And she's Lawful Good, so none of this Asmodeus lawyer shit, no "exact words" nonsense. She makes a deal. She keeps it.

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...What's the 'Asmodeus lawyer' type of deal like? He doesn't think he's encountered them. 

(He can make guesses, but wants to hear it himself.) 

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They make an offer that sounds great and the point is to screw you over. They bury the screw-you-over-part somewhere so you don't realize what you're agreeing to and then they get everything they can out of you and throw you away and they call that being Lawful.

There's a whole god of it, Asmodeus.

"No, Mephistopheles is god of it. Asmodeus is just his boss."

"Same thing."

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That does sound like an incredibly frustrating way for someone to be technically obeying the law while actually not being net-positive to make deals with! He's glad to hear Iomedae isn't like that. 

 

...He is curious if they expected the fight for Urgir to go this way? It sounds like they expected Iomedae was going to win, but the battle as described sounds like - certainly not how he expects things to go, in war - is it just normal here for things to go that way? 

(Altarrin is fairly sure it's not, and is in fact a direct result of the diamonds he brought, but he's also pretty sure these random soldiers have no idea who he is and that Iomedae is being very careful with information related to Velgarth in general. And he's curious to hear their answer.) 

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Nah, this was a miracle. They figured they'd storm the walls and wizards would be throwing fireballs and demons and angels would be attacking everything and then Tar-Baphon's relief army would show up and everything would be a bloody mess.

... Miracles happen around Iomedae sometimes but not, like, often. 

"More than anyone else, though."

"Yeah."

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....Can they tell him about Tar-Baphon and Tar-Baphon's army? He's heard - some - and it sounds pretty spectacularly bad, but he'd like to hear their side of it. 

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Tar-Baphon is this evil necromancer guy, really powerful, who figured out a way to break the limits on how many undead a necromancer can control, so he controls, like, All The Undead himself directly, and he raises more undead every time there's dead bodies, which there are every time he wants undead. There's some orcs and stuff he recruited but they're mostly there because they think it's obvious he'll take over the world and they want to be on the winning side. 

And he's unkillable, because he hid his soul. (Evil wizards do that sometimes. Makes them more evil.) Iomedae will figure out where he hid it and break it, though. They say he first tried it a few thousand years ago and Aroden killed him and it didn't stick but he's back now.

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That does sound pretty horrifying! He's glad that Iomedae is around to help handle it. 

(He has...other feelings, too...but those can wait, they're probably not urgent anyway because Iomedae knows everything in his thoughts and does not, in the short term, seem bent on killing him for it - and she needs him, in the short term, and in the long term he can figure something out - and he does not need to be distracted or having emotions with these random soldiers.) 

 

...He's guessing they don't know many details, but he's curious what they can say about this 'hiding the soul' thing, and why it makes wizards more evil? 

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Not really? He's currently talking to the infantry, not the wizards. They just know that "evil wizard, usually necromancer, hid his soul in an object somewhere and is now puppeting his rotting corpse" is a thing, they're called liches, and they're all evil, and usually worse than they were before they were liches. You know, more atrocities.

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That does sound pretty evil and horrifying! 

(If that's a known thing here, it - has got to give Iomedae certain priors on how to interpret someone claiming to be immortal– not now, he can think about it later.) 

 

Now that Urgir is taken, do they happen to know anything about what Iomedae would be planning next? 

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They have SO MUCH SPECULATION. It turns out that soldiers with nothing to do sometimes try to predict what they commanders will do! The two most likely possibilities are "try to clean out more of Ustalav, where lots of slaves of Tar-Baphon live" or "try to attack Tar-Baphon in his fortress in Gallowspire," the latter of which most of the soldiers think means trudging through horrible mountain traps like when they lost Arazni, and a minority think means going around the mountains to attack from a different direction. Either way, lots of battles with undead are guaranteed.

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Who was Arazni, and what happened? 

(The way they talk about it makes it seem like it's probably important, and - important context on Iomedae, maybe.) 

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Arazni was Aroden's herald and a demigod. Before that she was a famous wizard - like, really famous, and a hero. She guarded the world from monsters and tyrants when Aroden went to travel the stars. He sent her to help Iomedae win the war with Tar-Baphon, and she died, really died, saving them. Aroden hasn't selected a new herald yet.

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He's sorry to hear that. It must have been - a very difficult battle. And a very important one, it sounds like, and probably Arazni knew the risks, but. 

(It's not his loss, or his war. He has emotions about it and he's honestly not even sure why, it's probably - something died to a hundred memories he lost and didn't prioritize relearning the records of in this particular lifetime, that stuck only in the deeper emotional-association layers of his mind. He's...lost a lot of people, over the centuries.) 

 

Is there anything else they think a foreigner new to working with Iomedae ought to know? 

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- She's Good? She always tries to save everyone? She makes sure people won't regret working with her? Not really.

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Altarrin thanks them for their time, and he'll leave them be to celebrate. 

 

(He's not really in a celebratory mood, right now. He's not sure what mood he's in, really. It doesn't match any emotion he has a name for.) 

He returns to his bedroom. Paces, for a few minutes, not really thinking about anything in particular. 

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He...observes that he is not sitting down and writing the letter to Bastran, even though he has pen and paper right there (requested from the servant-constructs earlier), and plenty of new information. 

So. What is he still confused about? 

 

 

...

He's not sure he is still confused. He feels like he has most of a picture, and - he's pinned down some points he needs to check, because obviously you have to do that, but it's not - like he really expects to get a different answer. If anything it's mostly because he wants to have better explanations for Bastran, that will cross the gulf between them, of different worlds and different contexts and different - well, Bastran doesn't know Altarrin's secrets, that he's immortal, that he was Ma'ar before the Cataclysm, that he was if not the First Emperor at least a co-founder of the Empire...

 

that he would have done better if he had known how

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(He doesn't have the headband and it's actually noticeably harder reasoning through this sort of thing without it, but - it's not completely new ground, he has handles on at least most of the pieces of it, he can think through it anyway, just slower.)

 

It...does seem worrying, in some kind of way, that he feels like he's confident in certain beliefs and also like he definitely cannot convey them to Bastran. It would be less worrying if it were just that Bastran wouldn't believe him, but it feels - more complicated than that - right now he's not sure he could convey it (whatever "it" is) even if he hadn't fled the Empire and there was no shadow of suspicion on him. Maybe even if he could tell Bastran his secrets, though definitely that would help. 

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All right. Can he break it down into pieces, the - thing he feels like he understands but doesn't have the words or even the shared concepts to convey to Bastran...? 

 

He - thinks Aroden is different, actually, from the Velgarth gods. Not completely different; He's still not very good at communicating with mortals, at least not without damaging Them, and He is still...a being that perceives and interacts with the world mainly through Foresight, which does impose certain incentives toward nudging - or forcing - those confusing noisy hordes of mortal beings to be less unpredictable. 

But. Aroden does not consider Himself owed our cooperation with not making Foresight messy, Iomedae said. There are pragmatic reasons not to throw sand in the eyes of our allies, but He didn't ask me to keep my head down and He's never asked anyone to stop inventing and discovering things. 

Altarrin didn't really believe it, at the point when she said it. 

 

 

He does now. Why?

Because he's now read through all of Aroden's holy books, and -

- it's not just that the teachings of His church are ones aimed at discovery and invention, at nourishing the basic human drives to build and grow and learn and make the world better - to look up at the stars, to wonder who else is out there, to someday be strong enough to go find out

- or that the history of his life describes a man - not mortal, but nonetheless definitely human and not a god - who very clearly pursued those goals, even at great cost - 

(It's also definitely not just that both came across as written for him personally - if anything that made him more suspicious -) 

 

But...it feels like maybe there's a thing there, some kind of core foundation, and maybe anyone who actually cares about it converges on...similar trappings...it feels like it's the thing Arvad meant, when he described it in clumsy words like 'civilization' and 'progress'

(words that are so easily misunderstood and corrupted, and end up being meaningless propaganda for an Empire that doesn't get at the core thing very well at all...) 

but the core thing is just, really, 'a world where everyone, everywhere, can be alive and okay and flourishing.' 

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That was a series of thoughts that he definitely cannot write down in a letter to Bastran and expect it to make sense. 

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The simpler argument is that Aroden isn't like the gods that the Eastern Empire knows, because Iomedae intends to become a god. And appears to be setting up quite a lot of groundwork for it, and the known mechanism for ascension isn't just mentioned in the holy books, it's also one that random soldiers take for granted.

And Aroden isn't stopping her.

Aroden seems to be, instead, pouring a lot of resources into supporting her. Not just by giving her very powerful repeatable-miracles, but by retrieving her soul from the gods of Velgarth, when Altarrin killed her there, and - given Aroden's other intervention decisions - that must have been costly for Him. 

 

One can assume that a person like Iomedae becoming a god is not conducive to a world remaining predictable along its existing track. 

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In the Eastern Empire, one of the standard complaints about gods (in the category of arguments offered in scholarly treatises, not the sort of complaints made by tired soldiers bitter about their comrades' deaths, which are generally much less philosophical) is that They do not, and cannot, communicate with mortals about Their actions. From the perspective of the mortals, trying to negotiate with gods is as pointless as trying to negotiate with a volcano, or an earthquake, or a hurricane. From the perspective of the gods, but mapped onto human metaphors, it's probably as absurd as trying to talk to - not ants, Animal Mindspeech does exist - trying to talk to trees, or grains of sand. 

 

 

But Aroden communicates with Iomedae. Not easily, it's costly for both of them, but He gave her instructions, when Altarrin appeared in their world as an out-of-context source of diamonds, a new option that shifted their priorities - and that wasn't the first or the second time. 

The first time wasn't an emergency. It was just - Iomedae deciding that she had learned enough to trust Aroden to keep His promises, and asking Him for one. 

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Of course, a lot of that he only has on Iomedae's word. 

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......This would be a very bad idea according to approximately everyone he's every respected and asked for advice in the context of the Eastern Empire.

He wouldn't be considering it at all, if not for the fact that he's - not just convinced enough to gamble on Aroden's church being better than the Eastern Empire - but very close to convinced that Aroden, as a human, approximately shared Altarrin's goals, and claimed he could ascend to godhood and keep his values intact, and - everything he's learned since about Aroden the god and Aroden's following bears that out, more or less. 

 

 

 

It's probably still not a good idea. But. 

He...could, if he wanted, pray to Aroden right now. 

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(And probably not get an answer, given the cost to Aroden, but - in that case he loses nothing. There are, of course, more horrifying scenarios where just 'deciding to pray to Aroden' opens a new vulnerability, but he doesn't, actually, expect anything disastrously bad to happen here.

...He'll guess there's a 1 in 1000 chance of trying this being a very bad idea, just because he doesn't have enough context to be more sure than that. But he's taken risks on far less favorable odds than that, before.) 

 

The next question is whether the upside is enough to be worth it, given that Bastran definitely won't be inclined to believe anything Altarrin writes to him on the basis of having directly spoken with a god. 

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- thinking about it in terms of what will convince Bastran isn't the point.

It's an understandable habit, given their past work together (and the loyalty compulsion), and it separately does make sense to consider how to communicate with Bastran effectively, whether the aim is to convey his current information state or to try to persuade Bastran of a particular plan. 

 

 

 

But that's - not mostly why he wants to run this test. 

He wants to run this test to convince himself. Or to stop being confused, one of those two. (Though probably the end result will be that he's still confused and unconvinced, because gods don't generally communicate Their responses to prayers, even here.) 

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...He's not actually sure how praying works. He's never tried getting a god's attention before, for all the obvious reasons. Iomedae would know, presumably, but she's not here. 

He - can try just holding up clearly, in his thoughts, the parts where it feels like Aroden is...someone who would be his ally, in a world where it was even a coherent concept for humans to ally with gods. (This maybe has the advantage that, if in fact he's completely wrong about Aroden, it won't work.) 

 

 

A world for humans, shaped by humans, with a god on their side. The wonders of a civilization that becomes possible when people are safe and have space to invest and invent and explore and build, when they aren't backed into corners by the desperation or by the endless day-by-day struggle just to grow enough food to stay alive. A city in the afterlife, a haven for mortal souls even after death. A god who wants humanity to be stronger, to never stop growing, even though no one knows, yet, where that path will reach. 

A man who became a god, because it was what the world needed. Who figured out how to take everything that he cared about, all the things that matter to people, the lofty dreams and the mundane day-to-day needs, and hold onto that even as He became something entirely different. Who left that door open, so that others might follow. Who still holds that bridge, communicating with Iomedae as an ally. 

A man who became immortal millennia before he became a god, because a human lifetime wasn't enough to fix everything, and just building glorious cities in the afterlife wasn't enough, not when there were still starving children in the mortal world. Who explored the stars, looking for - something - it's obvious what, or it would be to Altarrin, you go search for a way to fix everything that wouldn't come at such high a cost... 

A young man who worked and fought and strained toward a better world, and - made mistakes, and lost everything for it - and found himself in the ruins of his world, and kept going, because - even if things had been lost that were irreversible, even if some scars in the world would never ever be all right -

- eventually the ashes drift back to the ground, and the sun rises, and we build anew - 

You can't just walk away.

 

(He's crying, again, which he would be annoyed about if it were getting in his way but he's not sure that it is, right now.) 

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He wishes his world had this too. He's - jealous, of the resources Iomedae has, that mean she can afford to be Good - there's a flinch of defensiveness there, where he expects her to be critical of the decisions he made when he didn't see any other way, even though he predicts that in many specific cases he would agree with her, that he could have done better, wishes he had done better - 

- but Iomedae's world didn't always have a god on the side of humanity and civilization. It only has that because Aroden, presumably, looked at the state of the world, and saw that it wasn't acceptable, and tried for millennia to change it, and eventually saw that this was what it would take. 

 

 

Altarrin recognizes that. Altarrin made a promise to his own world - and to all the worlds, though at the time he didn't yet know there was more than one - and he made mistakes, and lost everything, and when the ashes drifted back to the ground and the sun rose again, he kept going. He's - not very good at it, yet - to Aroden he must seem very young, which is a bizarre thought. He's still making mistakes. Killing Iomedae was one of them. Building an empire out of mind control was definitely another. 

He's not sure if he would ever have succeeded at what Aroden did here, if he had been alone. But - there's something very simple there, and he thinks he sees it, and he thinks it's the same very simple thing that Aroden saw, and the same thing Iomedae sees. That he's - that they're - not done until everyone, everywhere, is okay. 

 

He's going to help Iomedae with this war either way. He doesn't need to fully trust her, or fully trust Aroden, to make that call. 

But...if there's more trust than that to be had, then he wants to reach for it. If the shape of an Altarrin, the promise he made to his world and the lengths to which he's willing to go for it, is - a shape Aroden can work with, as an ally - then he thinks he would want to offer that. Maybe here it's not an impossible dream, to have that, and - 

 

 

- he's so lonely - 

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Aroden's attention is scattered in a hundred directions, even moreso than usual - trying to make sense of the noise, running aspects and shards of Himself that He usually draws on less, because allocating attention to making sense of the world as a human does is usually much less efficient than the native Foresight of gods - but there is always a fragment of Him watching the mortal world, alert for the brighter glow when they angle themselves toward Him and call out in prayer. 

Usually the spark is less bright than that, and usually it's not coming from a mortal he could previously barely see at all and who was previously throwing off ripples of Foresight noise in all directions. 

 

Surprise is different, to a god's mind, habitually spread out in a dozen directions, but the effect is similar: this is new, this is different, this is something worth paying attention to with more of Himself rather than responding on existing patterns. The shard of Himself watching is one that usually handles Commune requests and the prayers of clerics, cannot actually make sense of what the human mind is asking for. 

Aroden pulls back more of Himself from the everything-else, and shifts a much bigger fraction of His attention to the mortal's prayer. 

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...Human but not mortal, is the first thing He picks up, which is fascinating. 

 

 

And calling out to him like - 

 

- like an echo of Himself.

 

Aroden can recognize that even from this vantage point. It's not bright because this is a prayer of desperate, screaming need; it's bright because it's aimed incredibly precisely and directly at...the core, simple thing. (Which when translated into Foresight is in fact quite complex, because 'what humans want' and 'what humanity needs to flourish' are very big question, and so the implementation of it explodes in fractal detail. But the core of it was very simple, when Aroden was human, and He remembers.) 

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...also even from this distance, He can tell that the human is terrified. Reaching out anyway, (mostly) unflinching, because - relentless determination, hope, a new path opening that might be better and come at a more acceptable cost - but terrified nonetheless. Of Aroden, of gods in general - of being crushed for inconveniencing distant greater powers, or, worse, of being boxed in - but the human reaches out all the same, because the upside would be worth it. 

The shards of Aroden that remember being human recognize that as well, and it's almost not a decision, to reach out in return, it's almost a process that just happens, like the reflection of sunlight from a mirror - 

 

(There is a moment of decision, of consideration, because this is expensive and because it casts quite a significant shadow on the human's Foresight path ahead - it's not good for human minds to interact with gods, even when it's Aroden and he is pulling the humanlike shards of Himself forward and being very very careful - but it's almost trivial to decide that the cost is worth paying.) 

 

Aroden reaches out, and shelters the spark in a piece of Himself that isn't very specialized for the purpose - He hadn't figured out how to implement that, yet, the Starstone is better at it now - but that can at least touch without destroying. 

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It feels like the cornerstone holding him to his body was pulled out and now he's falling into the sun, except it's something much stranger, too far outside what his mind can make sense of to even parse as pain, and Altarrin can't even have a justified panic attack about this because that would require being aware of his body. 

 

- and then there's a pocket of - not safety, but at least some minimal shelter, Something holding him like a child might very carefully hold an ant to examine it, and his mind is still the currents of impossibly-bright magic are still blasting him but the worst of it is instead routed around that shield. 

 

Aroden? he tries to say, or maybe just think. 

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A sense of - shifting, shuffling which exact part of the inside of the sun is facing him directly...and then, carefully and effortfully: 

 

I know you. 

And there are flashes of...memory, maybe, though rotated and reflected and warped, as though images had to be translated to some other sense he doesn't have and then translated back and the mapping is imperfect. 

 

  His city in Axis, bright and full and and glorious, and nothing but the foundation of it is His doing directly, all He has to offer is space to work and the rest is human hands, and not just humans but dozens of other kinds of people, safe and flourishing forever, writing their own futures, building and creating and living and

     coils spinning and a glass bulb lighting and

         a place like a library but more, and the not-voice of another god, translated lossily back into language, of course I have all of your records, Abadar says, I save every work of mortal hands, that none of it might ever be lost" and putting the pieces together after so very long and

          fragments that aren't a god's memories at all, that He brought with him since the very beginning an underwater city a voice that isn't human and it says you care so much, maybe too much, men like you and I should not rule, I have seen what becomes of us when we do 

    flying across an ocean and seeing nothing left of the first sanctuary he had tried to build, everything lost, a mistake that could never be undone - but not the memory of it, and never the promise, a vow that can't be taken back because it wasn't so much a choice in the first place as just - the shape he is and always was and

  never to walk away never to give up to return again and again no matter the cost no matter how long it takes, not until everything is fixed and everyone is all right 

 

 

and he thought he was alone, for such a very long time, and in a sense he was, but in another sense it's impossible to be alone in this mission, because most people can't and shouldn't be Aroden - most people can't and shouldn't be Altarrin - but everyone, everywhere, can want to live and be safe and happy, if they have the space and

look, look at the world from the angle a god can see, there are so many lights, there are so many sparks that will take the air Aroden can give them as fuel and use it to fight for the right thing, whatever that means to them, or at least what they think is right, but if you give them the space they'll take it, if you unblock the path they will follow it, and so none of them are alone 

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...Slowing, backing up, shuffling again. A hint of frustration, He wants Altarrin to - understand what he has, what he's always had, but it's so difficult to convey without hurting him. 

 

You were always our ally. 

You never needed to ask, or to offer. 

The shape you are and always were is enough. 

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Do you understand? 

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Maybe????? He got some of that???????

It's just. It's very hard to talk to the inside of the sun, see. It feels like being hit with concepts that are also made of superheated plasma and it's shredding his thoughts while he tries to have them.

And he's - not the right shape, actually, yet, to face his own reflection across a gulf of worlds and godhood, he's trying to re-orient but he's mostly in too much not-pain-just-intense-something to pull everything together. 

But. 

 

 

he's 

glad 

not 

alone

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Aroden doesn't normally try to show human minds His thoughts that directly! This is why!

But he wanted Altarrin to see it. That he was right, that there was something better, something worth reaching for. And wrong, that he didn't already have it, right there, where he would find it as soon as he looked. Aroden is proud and grateful and [UNPRINTABLE GODEMOTIONS] that Altarrin found the strength to look. 

Most people can't really live in a world where they're alone. It doesn't work, and they find the paths to follow where they aren't. Minds in the shape that - both of them are - are constrained in different ways, and they won't - can't - give up just because being alone is very very hard.

But still, even for minds of the shape that can't give up no matter how alone they are, it's really so much better to have this instead. 

 

 

 

...and Aroden is going to put Altarrin back, now, because He thinks the important parts were conveyed and Altarrin can figure out the implementation details from the human side of things, and that was already a much longer conversation than is really a good idea. Aroden is apologetic about it. 

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Altarrin seems to be...on the floor? Also his head hurts a spectacular amount and he kind of feels like he's dying. 

 

 

- not alone - 

He...can very effortfully manage to whisper "help" repeatedly and hope one of the construct-servants hears him and tells someone who will know what to do. 

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The construct-servant in the room with him is trying to help him back into his chair, (unsuccessfully, as it's not actually very strong at all) but seems to have also contacted someone because a pair of soldiers rushes into the room shortly.

"...Healer!"

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It takes a while.

(Alfirin has authorized access to this mansion for only a small number of people, recuperating soldiers plus a page for communications plus the senior command, and Alfirin is not immediately contactable. Marit has a permanent Telepathic Bond with Iomedae who has one with Alfirin for emergencies, but Iomedae isn't answering which isn't an emergency, they're probably just up to secret shit, but.)

The end result is that Karlenius comes in to heal Altarrin himself. His Lay On Hands handles exhaustion and dazedness and staggeredness and deeper-than-injury damage, if Altarrin has any of those problems. 

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This maybe helps at all but not very much! Altarrin is still in agonizing pain and not particularly able to string together thoughts. 

He can hang onto one thought, which is that he should tell someone - something - and he's trying, but he mostly can't focus on what the thing is and also cannot speak very comprehensibly. He mumbles some things. 'Aroden' is in there somewhere. 

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" - you had a vision from Aroden? Is there - something He needs us to do -"

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This is an unfairly complicated question. Altarrin is way too impaired to simultaneously hold onto his fragmented memory of the thing that just happened, and also make inferences from it to determine whether it has actionable implications right now for Iomedae's people. Probably Iomedae would...want to know about it...? 

He tries anyway and manages to at least get out Iomedae's name. 

(If anyone thinks to read his mind, he's clinging very determinedly to a single thought, which is that Aroden said 'I know you'...or maybe 'I recognize you' it wasn't really in language...and this is important and it means he's safe and he can trust them and this is very good. It probably also means other things but that's harder to figure out right now.) 

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- yeah Marit will try to read his mind, given the givens. 

 

They are TRYING to contact Iomedae but she is UNCONTACTABLE, which is not rare and not an emergency though in the moment it's really inconvenient.

 

"- he's thinking, that Aroden, recognized him, and that means he can trust us -"

      "Well, he can," says Karlenius.

"One assumes he wouldn't have believed that without Aroden personally saying so. Do you think he needs more medical attention? Iomedae recovered on her own but - she's Iomedae -" and she was, in fact, concealing significant impairment for the next four or five hours at least. 

        "I don't think Aroden would've caused him lasting damage, that seems - out of character -"

 

So they just get him as comfortable as they can in bed, with Marit departing the mansion so he can ping Iomedae periodically until - 

:Oh good you're back, Aroden sent a vision to Altarrin and he asked for you.:

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- Iomedae relays that to Alfirin and doesn't bother letting go of her hand yet, in case Alfirin has the spell slots free to drop Iomedae off at the mansion with a Dimension Door. If not, she'll walk on over, that doesn't sound like a screaming emergency even if it does sound - surprising, and important -

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She hates when things happen with suspicious Timing like this, even if this time in particular prophecy is fuzzy enough that it's probably not Anybody's doing - or, obviously it was in a sense Aroden's doing but he didn't pick the timing -

Dimension door

"I'll... stay inside the Mansion for now. In case you need me." - nope can't end that sentence there - "...for detect thoughts or dream interpretation or anything."

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Iomedae acknowledges this with a curt nod and then rushes to Altarrin's side. "How long ago was this?"

          "He called for help about six minutes ago - we couldn't reach you -"

"Off-plane, sorry. I don't think it'll help, but you should heal him just in case -"

          "I tried that. It indeed did not much help."

"Have you mindread him -"

           "Marit has it up."

                      "I haven't gotten anything urgent or actionable," Marit says.

 

And she sits down at Altarrin's bedside, and speaks softly. "Altarrin? It's Iomedae."

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Altarrin is very practiced at thinking through pain, and - it seems like more things are wrong with his head right now than just the headache - but six minutes is still long enough that he's dragged his thoughts into slightly more coherent order. 

"Iomedae," he says, and - wow, talking is bad, actually - it's okay, they're reading his mind (which is fine because he trusts them) and he's going to focus on at least getting the thoughts into some kind of order. 

 

He thinks he decided to pray to Aroden. To test something? ...to test whether he was right that Aroden was the kind of god he could be allies with, because it would be very important, if that were true, it would mean - too hard to follow that thought right now but he remembers thinking it mattered, that there was - something more to reach for, maybe, than just helping Iomedae with her war.  

- he mostly didn't expect anything to happen but it felt like a cheap test, at the time, he is sort of reconsidering that now but he did...learn something...

 

The memory of the not-really-a-conversation with Aroden is even more jumbled but he holds it up.

Aroden recognized him, it was - like looking into a reflection - Aroden said they were already allies, said they always would have been because he's - the very simple thing - wanted to tell him he wasn't alone here - 

(It's straining his mind badly to try to remember it but he keeps pushing, he thinks Iomedae would want to know...) 

- a shining city, a spinning wire lighting - what people build when given space for it - never really alone if the thing you want is the very simple thing - Aroden says most people can't exist if they're– no, that's not it, most people will live in a world where they're not alone, won't see the paths where they would be, even if those are the only paths to - fixing everything - 

- flying over an ocean and nothing left, except it's tangled up it's the same thing as the not-memory that he never saw of Urtho's Tower going up in fire and destruction, whiting out and when the sun rose it was over ashes and ruins and everything he had built gone and - never walk away - rebuild, over and over, come back over and over, never to give up until everything is fixed and everyone is okay because a promise that they can't break because it was always - the shape Aroden recognizes...

...not alone... 

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“We don’t follow Aroden, He and we both follow - a third, indestructible thing… and no one who sees it is ever alone -”

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....Yes. That. 

(He's crying, quietly, mostly not aware of this at all.) 

 

- feels like he's forgetting something...

Oh. Right. He didn't scry Velgarth, or write a letter to the Emperor, he did this instead, and now he's apparently incapable of remembering any of the reasons why he thought Velgarth was probably urgent, and he definitely cannot either write a letter or do the scrying-technique until he feels less like he's dying. 

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“Fair enough, I’ll draft - my letter - and we can plan for tomorrow. You’ll be out of it for the rest of the day, probably.

…..we took Urgir, and beat back Tar-Baphon’s relief army, with about eight hundred dead, forty inside the city. Because of you.”

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“I - heard - m’glad.” 

Tomorrow. Iomedae thinks tomorrow is all right and so probably it is, he's - scared, about something going wrong, but probably they can fix it...

...if they don't specifically need him for anything right now then he would maybe appreciate if they have painkillers, it can hardly make him worse at doing anything and he's really in a lot of discomfort and - since he's safe, here - would rather be asleep. 

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"Do you have Sleep?" she asks Marit. "He might be able to stay out if we put him under."

           " No," says Marit, baffled, "and even if we call someone in who has it - that's - the archmage who Gated here from another world -"

"It'll still work on him. People in Velgarth don't get stronger."

         " - right."

 

 

They will acquire someone who can magically assist Altarrin in sleeping, and then get back to the work of moving the army from outside Urgir to inside Urgir without committing atrocities against the population of Urgir.

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Bastran doesn't sleep well, that night.

When he wakes up, the next morning, his first drowsy thought is that he should ask Altarrin about the Gate-research - 

- right. 

 

 

He doesn't have time to spend ten minutes in bed crying, so the feelings can go in the box and stay in the box, and he gets up and faces the day's work. All of which is awful, of course, and that's not even a new state of affairs, his morning reports have been awful for months. There are three wars going on, and they still haven't entirely dealt with the stupid factory godsabotage, and now Altarrin is missing and probably working against the Empire, kidnapped or suborned by the god of another world, and all of his options either kill thousands of people or burn resources the Empire can't afford to lose or - instead burn other kinds of less tangible resources, and it feels like there's no possible route from here to anything being okay and probably they've already lost and might as well admit it. 

 

Of course, the thing to do is still to get up and eat breakfast and read his subordinates' reports. Where are they on having a draft ceasefire offer to send the rebel leader in Oris. Can they do that today, please, and then he can figure out what to do about the stupid treasury. 

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Delicious breakfasts are, of course, available daily for His Imperial Majesty! Cooking for him is the finest honor (and the best pay) available to any cook in the Empire or, quite often, outside of it.

And to go with his delicious breakfast, there are four drafts from the Ministry of Barbarians for His Majesty to choose from! (They are ordered such that if he just wants to skim one and stamp 'approved' the one on top will do just fine.) The top two are written in the standard imperial language for speaking with rebels ("the great mercy of his imperial majesty towards his disobedient subject", et cetera, et cetera), the bottom two in the standard imperial language for speaking with foreign countries.

The top one talks about diplomatic meetings to arrange an amnesty if the rebels surrender (which the Ministry of Barbarians expects the rebel will correctly see as an opening offer to be improved upon), the next-from-top-one offers to negotiate a withdrawal of direct imperial forces and the appointment of a member of the Orisian royal family as imperial governor if he acknowledges His Imperial Majesty's ultimately rule, the third-from-top suggest that the nation of Oris, having provoked a war with the Empire, now has the option of attempting to negotiate peace with the Emperor's victorious armies, and the fourth option is again suggesting that the nation of Oris should become an autonomous client kingdom under the Empire. Any of them are ready to send, with or without Bastran's adjustments.

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(Delicious breakfasts sometimes improve his mood, but Bastran kind of just hates eating when he's stressed. He will eat it anyway and not let himself look at all visibly dissatisfied about the necessity of feeding himself, the cooks don't deserve that.) 

 

He's tempted to just sign the first one and be done with it, but his shoulder Altarrin reminds him that this is a decision that will affect millions of people over decades and he does, after all, make decisions with those stakes constantly, but this specific one still deserves at least ten minutes of his time. He reads through all of them, and then puts them side by side and stares at them for a while. 

...The fourth one is pretty clearly closest to what Altarrin was aiming for. Bastran is really not sure that's an argument in favor of it, at this point, but...he gets why. It gives the rebels the most dignity, and 'client state' is still something that can be spun at court. He's going to pick that one, unless anyone wants to argue with him. 

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Nope! The point is to ensure that the Emperor has freedom of choice while still only leaving him with good options to use this freedom on. Nobody will argue and the draft will be Gated out to the army along with a diplomatic team.

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It's going to take days to reach the rebel leader, probably, they do not currently have good lines of communication. The one silver lining is that the delay is greater because the rebels are not currently gearing up for a battle; it would be very awkward if they attacked when the ceasefire offer had been made but before receiving it. 

 

He has NOT forgotten about their financial problems and will be available to meet with the Minister of Finance again soon, and he ALSO has not forgotten about their OTHER TWO WARS and will after that be available for meetings about Tolmassar. First, though, he wants to find out if the mage-research department has made any progress at all from a day with Altarrin's notes, and separately, if the Office of Inquiry has learned anything more from Aritha, including any insight into what mix of compulsions and the right incentives would buy her loyalty. 

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The mage-research department has made any progress, in the sense that there are now lots of loyal people reading his notes and speculating! There are reports on the Minister of Progress's desk that can be delivered to the Emperor!

There are not scries or gates to the other world that they can cast, no. There won't be for a bit, even in their most enthusiastic reports.

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Chief Inquisitor Siman is happy to answer questions! The Office thinks she is completely disloyal except to her compulsions but that her loyalty wouldn't be hard to win; she's been abused by the head of the mage-research division (Kottras is the usual unpopular-but-gets-results-and-has-connections, is his approximate state) and could be brought around without much difficulty if he was presented to her as unusual. He thinks that the typical threaten-execution-for-worst-thing-in-her-history-then-get-her-a-personal-pardon-from-the-Emperor trick would work, especially if they reassign her out of Kottras's command and keep her out of it.

They'll attach what they've picked up from the interrogation, of course, but so far it isn't much. Interrogation is an art, not something that can be rushed.

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(Altarrin personally dislikes Kottras, Bastran recalls, and just hasn't prioritized the matter because the man is, at least, good at his job, and adroit enough to avoid going around causing offense to important people. Altarrin always made a face when he put it that way. Bastran hates it too.) 

 

...He also hates the threaten-execution-then-personal-pardon strategy but...it does work. And they in fact do need Aritha very badly, and - urgently - and it sounds like she's sensible enough to recognize when she's being handed a lifeline and had better take it. He can definitely get her out from under Kottras, that seems fine, he can assign her to his personal staff, which does include some research specialists (sometimes the Emperor needs special-purpose new spells designed urgently and also discreetly.) 

He is aware that the Office of Inquiry does not like to be rushed on their interrogations. He is at this point still inclined to override them and swoop in and get Aritha working on their very urgent other world potential invasion problem. They can finish questioning her afterward, if it still even seems relevant at that point. 

What's the worst thing in her history that they would be threatening execution for. 

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Officially, plotting to go over to the otherworldly invaders, violation of her sworn oaths of service, and intrigue against the empire.

(The incidents in question were her assumption the otherworldly invaders would compulsion her to serve them after they conquered the empire and not doing anything to stop this such as telling people she thought there would be an invasion, obeying illegal orders from Kottras to violate regulations, and obeying illegal orders from Kottras to violate regulations for the purpose of petty intrigue.)

The Office will yield, but yield in the "I'll go put pressure on my people who will put pressure on their people" sense unless the Emperor is Extremely Firm about this.

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Of course. He'd like the Office of Inquiry to wrap up their remaining questioning by noon or early afternoon, and then - they probably don't need to be too in-your-face about the execution threat, Aritha sounds like the type to take even hinted threats very seriously, and he doesn't want her too traumatized or she won't be useful for weeks. He'd like a final report on the rest of her interrogation by suppertime at the latest, which is probably plenty of time to let her stew in hinted threats of execution, and he can go pardon her then. 

 

(If the usual amount of firm is enough to get him Aritha by the end of the day, he'll take it. It probably won't be, but he hates being Extremely Firm, and will hold off until after his list of agonizing financial and war-related meetings; if he hasn't gotten an interim progress report by then, he'll go back and be firmer.) 

Finance meetings. Do people have any new ideas for him. 

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The usual amount of firm will probably be enough. They'll want a pardon sealed with the imperial seal, of course.

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The Ministry of Finance has a long list of tradeoffs, which they have assembled into a set of horrible possible plans!

The Optimistic Option is to hope all the wars end soon (we're winning fairly decisively in Taymyrr, even if Tolmassar is being slow, and we're about to withdraw from Oris), borrow money if we need to, and be in a financial crisis if war breaks out with another world.

The Ultra-Pessimistic Option is to cut infrastructural, educational, and so forth and so on spending to the bone (which will be tremendously unpopular with the other departments) and focus on the assumption that there is about to be a war with another world and it will last for twenty years and we need to not run out of money by the end of it. It makes every non-long-term concession.

There are, of course, a variety of plans between them, all of which trade against different sacred values of the empire (selling very minor toleration of religion, losing imperial authority, giving up territory, devaluing the currency, allowing nobles to raise private armies) or practical values like "having a very large army" and "keeping infrastructure repaired" and "keeping your word to your people about pensions and wages."

(Among other things, the two legions that were garrisoning Oris were mauled, and there's the tradeoff of trying to rebuild them fast enough they'll be useful again in war or keep them somewhere they don't need to fight and understrength, which has lower maintenance costs but, uh, obvious problem.)

There are exciting new ideas, but they're all exciting new bad ideas. They might be a little less bad than some of the other ideas? There's plans to buy or buy-at-fixed-rates basically the entire diamond supply of the empire for extradimensional trade, which might be a hell of an investment or might be a disaster?

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Yeah. He's not very fond of any of those plans. 

 

...He does not think a war with the other world would last twenty years. He can imagine it lasting a few months, maybe; he can also imagine it lasting ten minutes, though in that case the loss condition is probably 'Tar-Baphon mind-controls Bastran and takes over from the top' which they should really try to avoid. 

Anyway, he would be - more willing than usual - to reallocate a lot of this year's budget toward infrastructure maintenance and education. The bridges aren't going to collapse in a few months even if no one reinforces the spells on them, and the children in school now aren't going to be grown until long after the war is over, one way or another.

(And he's more reluctant to go there, it's a sacred value for a reason, but - if they do cross that line and devalue the currency now, well, contact with another world is going to be a far bigger deal as disruptions go; his shoulder Altarrin is pointing out that it's inevitably going to transform the entire economy, in both good and bad ways.) 

It will obviously be enormously unpopular, but if there isn't a war, or they win or, or they manage to negotiate a truce and a peace, then in six months time they might indeed be able to sell their entire Empire-wide diamond supply for vast sums, and make everyone happy. Though they should not move on that until they actually have scrying, because if the other world doesn't contact them first, and they're unlucky with what Aritha knows, that alone might take six months. Gating will take longer. He has not yet gotten an answer he trusts from the research team on how long but he really doesn't believe the optimistic 'a few months!!!' claim. 

 

...Or, you know, they could reconsider the matter of reconciling with Norean in Tolmassar and getting that tax base back. He's not going to push that but he'll mention it briefly. A few time, including in passing to the Minister of Finance when they're packing up and happen to be alone in the room. 

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Pelias Declane will admit that there's someone in his department, who he trusts, who has family on the other side, and who might be able to get a deniable message (or work as a personal connection) over to the pretender, if the Emperor wants to hear what the pretender has to hear about the whole idea of reconciliation.

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He quietly thanks Declane for the information. He's definitely going to think about it. 

....Later, because right after this is a meeting with the Minister of War and the other military advisors, to talk about Taymyrr for the most part, and more decisions that were mostly made by other people long before Bastran saw them, and he's so tired but - one foot in front of the other. Keep going. It's not like he has a choice. 

 

 

After dinner, does he in fact have an Aritha available for him to go dramatically pardon?

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Aritha is not actually a kind of person the Office of Inquiry hasn't seen before, or taken apart before, or put back together before, and once they have the Emperor's orders they set her up very easily. She's in fact been fighting back terror that she'll be executed from the minute that they started on her and it doesn't really take more than a mention of what they're charging her with to make her practically unable to think about anything else. A tiny part of her is blazingly angry - at Kottras, at Altarrin, at the Empire - but mostly she's terrified and desperate and shattered and would probably burst into tears at the slightest scrap of compassion, which her interrogators do not extend her because that's not in this particular script.

 

Instead they have her admit to knowingly breaking regulations, to knowingly aiding Kottras in espionage, to learning of a threat to the Empire and not reporting it, to being motivated in that not-reporting-it by, perhaps, the vague hope that she'd be personally advantaged by the conquest of the Empire. They extract a very thorough confession; nothing in it is false.

 

They leave her alone, for an unknowable length of time but not enough that she sleeps, which she hasn't done since they woke her early yesterday back at the northern base.

 

 

 

And then they tell her that the Emperor has decided to see her, and she feels a desperate hope, for the first time all nightmarish day, because it's said that the Emperor is merciful, sometimes, and then an even more desperate terror, the terror that comes from having your choices possibly matter, from playing for your life instead of watching to see if it ends, and she tries frantically to think what to say to him - he won't care, that several of the charges are Kottras's fault, Kottras is more valuable than her - unless she can convince him she's valuable -

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Which is to say, yes, all set, should go very smoothly.

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He strides into the room like someone impatient and in a hurry, as though about to bark orders to the guards, and then - slows, stops himself, and actually looks at the exhausted, haggard, terrified woman in the cell, on a wooden stool which is the only item of furniture currently in the shielded stone room. 

 

"Have a chair brought," he says to one of the guards, not sounding impatient at all now. "- One for her, too, please." 

This is done in a hurry, and he sits, and he doesn't smile but he does meet her eyes. 

 

(It's a performance, of course, but it also isn't not genuine. He doesn't feel like hurrying and he doesn't feel like smiling, but he's also not angry. He's - not really anything except tired, and he lets a little bit of even that show.) 

"When did you last eat or drink?" he asks her. To the guard, "- bring her some water." 

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They made her eat and drink at some point, but she has no idea when. 

"Your Majesty," she says. "I'm not sure. I'm sorry."

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"You don't need to be sorry." Sigh. "I want to ask you some things, but it's important that you be - thinking clearly." Well. Compulsions aside, but that can be taken as assumed. "Is that doable, right now, or should I wait until you've had something to eat?" 

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"I'm thinking clearly, your majesty." She's too full of terror to actually feel her tiredness.

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He nods. He's still not smiling; he looks very serious, but definitely not angry, just - thoughtful. His attention is fully on her, and he has the skill of making 'giving someone his full attention' a somewhat intense experience. 

"Do you think you could reinvent the spell," he says quietly. "Not cast it yourself, necessarily, if you don't have the power, but could you replicate it to teach to someone more powerful? And what would you need?" 

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Oh. 

 

Of course. 

 

She is, still, valuable to the Empire. More valuable, even. As long as she can replicate the work of Altarrin himself. 

 

 

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He'll think she's a liar if she says instantly that she can do it. 

 

(But she can do it; she can do anything, if the alternative is death.)

 

"I'd need the headband, your majesty," she says, "it makes memory crisper. And I'd need - either to practice with concert-casting, or to pass it to someone else. But I could do it. In - two weeks, I think, maybe less."

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"Altarrin, unfortunately, took the headband with him. And I don't think we can risk the artifacts, anyway, something made him defect against all sense and reason. ...There are drugs that help with alertness and clear thinking, we can get you that, and Healers can help as well. And of course the best research assistants. I do understand if you would need longer, without it." 

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- she actually experiences some sinking grief, even on top of the terror, at the idea of never having the headband again. 

 

It's obvious why Altarrin defected; it's because they're goingtolose no don't think about that - 

"I think I could do it without the headband, your Majesty, in a month or two, with assistants."

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He doesn't smile, still, but keeps meeting her eyes. "If our top researchers need headbands, to keep up with the other world, then we'll find a way to buy them, or we'll find a way to make them - I understand you thought you could, with more study, and we don't have the headband but we have detailed notes and the others as examples. ...But not the first priority. We need to find out where Altarrin is and what he's doing, for that we need the scry, and no one else has told me they could do it two months." 

 

His expression shifts, to one that gives the impression of sternness and simultaneously of putting in effort to keep his voice gentle. 

"What I need to know, Aritha, is that the Empire can trust you. It's a highly sensitive project - you'll report to me directly - and it's of course going to be run at a high level of security," which means compulsions done by Arbas, among other things, "but - I need to know that if the other world offers you whatever they just offered Altarrin, you won't disappear off in search of greener pastures. I need to know that the Empire - that - can trust you. Can you give me your word, on that?" 

Bastran is very good, when he wants to be, at giving off the intense impression that he would Know If You Were Lying. (He's also decent at actually reading people and catching if they're lying, but he's practiced the vibe separately. They have a Thoughtsenser reading the girl anyway.) 

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She is not remotely imagining that she could lie to him. 


She has never in her life contemplated - being someone who can make promises, rather than being someone whose obedience can be arranged. She spends a second just flailing in the intensity of - the Emperor's presence, the entire concept he seems to be asking for that she's never encountered in her life - she does this even though the answer is obvious -

"I swear, your Majesty, you can trust me. I won't - even if they cut my compulsions, I'll be loyal to you, I'll do this work for you."

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He nods. ...And does smile, then, briefly, the smile of someone busy and distracted and bearing the weight of an Empire on his shoulders nonetheless taking a moment to show his appreciation for someone who can solve one of his problems. 

 

Only a half-second for appreciation, though, and then he's standing. "You heard me," he said to the guards. "- Do her compulsions let her leave this room? If not, fix it, please. I'd like to take her now to meet with my researchers and get settled - oh, she still hasn't eaten - they can talk over supper -" 

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And Aritha will stand, trembling, and follow him, trying not to be loud in raggedly drawing air, alivealivealive.

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Arbas will meet them at the research unit, because whether or not Bastran believes that her oath was made in earnest - he does - or that she's someone who will still mean it later when it's inconvenient - he mostly does - one still takes all the other precautions anyway. Arbas is the best in the Empire at this, probably in the world; he can make sure Aritha is incapable of betraying them, at least absent divine intervention, and also not have the compulsions get in the way of research-related creative thinking.

And, with Bastran's very very strict orders, he will mostly not even be creepy about it. Bastran makes sure to hover and give him a side-eye when he's pushing the limits too much. It's important for her future research productivity, that Aritha sees that he isn't going to tolerate men being...unpleasant...at her.

And then she can have dinner, and - he would tell her to get straight to work but she hasn't slept in two days. They'll start at dawn tomorrow. 

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After they cast Sleep on him, Altarrin does in fact stay out for the next five candlemarks, waking only once it's already evening. He's still not functional, when he wakes up, but the headache is down to a level where it's mostly tolerable if he lies still in the dark and doesn't try to do anything including thinking. He's mostly lucid enough that he can string thoughts together, but it makes the pain worse and it feels like probably he shouldn't push it. He really doesn't feel like eating or drinking anything, but he knows he should, and if anyone tries to coax him to eat - including the construct-servants, who are probably not very helpful with this - he'll do his best to cooperate before falling asleep again, this time without the help of a spell. 

 

By the next morning, he's - mostly feeling fine? There's a lingering sense of unreality to everything, like he travelled too far outside of the ordinary world and left part of himself behind there, but his head is only very slightly fuzzy and he's not in pain. And his reserves are actually better than fine, after eighteen candlemarks of rest. 

 

If Iomedae is around, he could use her advice on whether this means he should hold off longer on doing intensive magic? He's never had this experience before and doesn't know whether to expect it to interact with susceptibility to backlash, but he feels like it's probably safe to scry Velgarth, and it's now been two days; he badly wants to know what's going on. 

(If Iomedae is not around, he'll look for someone and ask who knows the most about aftereffects of visions from gods and whether he should be fine to do normal activities now, if he still has these symptoms.) 

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Iomedae is building her city; she's interruptible, but she's not really going to be much around. If she seems to be rebuilding her city with a ferocity that might suggest she has NOT processed her feelings about Alfirin murdering a lot of innocent people yet, well, no one's going to wonder too much at it; she's Iomedae. She burns with righteous conviction at all times. 

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He...really wants to talk to her, actually, about multiple things. But it's understandable that the logistical aftermath even of a successful battle - maybe especially after such a successful battle - is urgent and time-consuming. And he's not really supposed to leave the mansion, and probably still not allowed to leave camp. He'll settle for finding literally anyone who's around and who he knows is in Iomedae's inner circle and cleared to know things, and see if they have an opinion on whether very exhausting magic will be bad for him at this point. He wants intelligence on Velgarth. ...Once he has it, he probably wants to talk to Iomedae. And maybe Alfirin, assuming she's not even more busy? 

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Karlenius is around! He thinks using magic should be fine, so long as Altarrin isn't pushing himself to a point that feels terrible, though he doesn't work with many sorcerers so he's less sure than he would be if Altarrin were a wizard or a paladin.

 

 

Alfirin is reconfiguring the wards on Urgir but Iomedae will be able to assess if she's interruptible from that, probably.

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That makes sense. 

...Also Altarrin has learned his lesson from the last time he did a potentially-dangerous thing alone and without even warning everyone. He would be very grateful if someone could sit nearby while he's scrying, in case casting it hits him unexpectedly hard. 

 

...It seems to be fine, actually, and he was right that it's more efficient in this direction, he can get a scry on the unshielded court ballroom and it doesn't even leave him out of breath. 

The ballroom is not actually informative, he just wanted to start with something on the easier side to calibrate and make sure it wasn't going to knock him flat. He wants to try for Bastran, next, and for Aritha. They're very likely both behind shields - Aritha especially, if the Office of Inquiry has her at a secure offsite location - and he's coming at the scry from a different 'angle' and needs to partly rederive-and-improvise his techniques for evading shields he designed. It's going to take longer, and hopefully not exhaust him too badly. 

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Bastran: in a meeting with the Minister of State! Unhappy about it! Altarrin will not be able to get much of a sense of what they're meeting about unless he's willing to watch for the next ten minutes. 

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He's not. Bastran is alive, and at the palace, and carrying on his usual routine, as usual at least to the extent that he's still going to meetings. Also stressed and miserable, but that wasn't a 'the Empire is collapsing' face. 

(If anything, Bastran would cope better if the Empire were collapsing. He's...good in emergencies. It's not good for him, in the long run, but in the short run he focuses better. That face was Bastran instead dealing with business as usual except more and worse.) 

 

Aritha? 

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With magical researchers! Embarking on an important magical research project! She's very happy! Bastran is gay and did not let Arbas sexually harass her very much and she is alive and if she succeeds at this project she won't be executed! That's what happiness is!

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He tells Karnelius that he has urgent news for Iomedae. And...does want to talk to Alfirin, too, whenever that can be arranged, he might need her help. 

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Then Iomedae will notify Alfirin that Altarrin has urgent news for them, and they can both be at the mansion promptly. 


(They would ideally have relocated the gravely-wounded and important-prisoner-ally to within the walls, except that extradimensional spaces won't work within the walls until Alfirin figures out how to take away the exception granted to Tar-Baphon's servants and grant one to herself.)

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The first part is done already; Not terribly surprisingly it was a single exception for "undead" in full generality and easy enough to close off once discovered. Adding an exception for some, but not all, living beings will take longer.

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Altarrin hurries to meet them as they arrive. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he's moving in a very slightly dazed way as though not quite taking in his surroundings, but he seems otherwise fully recovered from the ordeal of a vision from Aroden. 

(His manner is quite noticeably different from the last time Alfirin saw him. Iomedae isn't doing the fearlessness effect, but he doesn't look afraid. He's not relaxed, he's tense and focused and worried about something - a lot of somethings - but none of that worry is about his safety here, or about being prevented from acting freely.) 

 

"The Emperor must have leaned harder on the investigators than I expected. Aritha - the mage-researcher who has seen me scry your world - is free, and working with the research team on his personal staff. She is working on rederiving it. Without the headband I - am not sure how long - but they are supporting her very heavily, I recognized some faces and they have our most elite mage-researchers as her assistants. It is probably still months but - I cannot easily judge progress, from this remove - it might be a week or less." 

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"As long as it's definitely longer than five hours this won't be a serious problem." and to Iomedae, "With your permission, of course."

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Iomedae makes a face. "I need to send them a note first, and - I want to send the volunteers, too, if Aroden says He can retrieve them, even if He says it'd be expensive."

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Altarrin nods. "I agree. I would still be shocked if it were less than three days, she cannot have started very long ago. I think warning them - I assume not about Aritha, specifically, but that there are other actors in your world not under the command of the Knights of Ozem will not make very much difference, in whether they see you as having broken your word, but it might make some. And I have not yet heard Alfirin's actual plan, but I doubt any amount of preparation would help the Empire block it." Glance at Alfirin. "- I can Gate you to a secure location in the right world, if that helps, it is minimal risk to myself and just exhausting." 

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"Yes, I was assuming you would provide interplanetary transit. Otherwise it's probably a matter of months on this end, too." She wasn't in very much doubt that he'd do it voluntarily.

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"I don't think they're going to believe me about my own name at this point but I am going to try to explain what, from my perspective, actually happened, all the same. If nothing else - if they did, actually, find themselves under assault from Tar-Baphon, I'd like it to look like a live possibility that I'm not as bad as that, and worth contacting. In five hours I can have the volunteers and a letter. Do you need me to pretend you're not voluntarily working with us, to protect allies or family back home -"

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"...I was not planning to hide it, no, I - would really rather not begin this by lying to the Emperor, when I never have before. I mean to write to him as well. Meant to yesterday but I was - still very confused - " He shakes his head slightly. "I doubt anyone will believe anything I say, either, but it might at least make the Emperor think. Once I figure out what I should even write. It - he does not know many of the secrets about my life," lives, "that both of you do, and it is hard to explain why I am willing to trust Aroden without...that." 

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"That makes sense. I'm sorry. I think you should write that letter, then, probably, and - while you're making the trip anyway, I don't suppose the two of you could pick up more diamonds? I keep - expecting another shoe to drop.

I have decided I don't care about further Foresight fog, except insofar as I should plan more conservatively when Aroden's out of commission and except insofar as we should abide the 'no novel Wishes' policy. If that's not what Aroden meant by intervening, it's at least a predictable thing I'd decide from what He told you."

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"We will get more diamonds unless something goes much more catastrophically wrong than seems at all likely. Hopefully the gods there will not make that too difficult."

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Nod. "I am wondering if Aroden will find my actions less noisy, now - it is very hard to interpret what He was thinking but it seemed as though I was noisy seen from the outside and only via Foresight, and that He was not confused, anymore, when He saw the - how I make decisions. ...Anyway, if there is Healing magic that would work on exhaustion, including magical exhaustion, I can cross into Velgarth with Alfirin and spend the intervening time on the other side of the continent buying diamonds. I assume you have gold to buy it with? ...I do also, to be clear, but it is distributed in a number of inconvenient locations and would double the number of same-world Gates." 

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"I can get you gold, and some potions of Lesser Restoration."

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"Thank you. I should be able to shop for you more usefully, now that I actually know the size cutoff that is relevant for the most powerful magic. ...It might take several candlemarks and I am not sure Alfirin wishes to hold a prisoner in my records cache for that long." 

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"The time required for the actual kidnapping could be as little as, say, ten seconds. But it'll probably be an hour, that's more resource-efficient. I think it makes more sense to do the diamond-shopping together either before or after, it would be mildly inconvenient if something happened to kill you and that could mean your gods will try for it. And I'll want to bring some of our smaller diamonds, which could help in some situations where something goes wrong."

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"How about you do the diamond-shopping before so they have some time to read the note that informs them that they should plan as if I'm conducting conduct operations in the rest of the Empire now."

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"I have no objection. I'm going to go back and see what more I can do on the wards in the next couple of hours, and meet you here in, say, four and a half hours? I actually want to do a quick experiment before we depart, with your search-spells."

"Knight-Commander, you're welcome to join us then, if you want to observe and are not busy, since it was your suggestion."

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Alfirin's being slightly formal, she's slightly on edge, why's Alfirin slightly on edge -

 

- the experiment is whether Altarrin can scry a Mind Blank, and in the course of conducting that experiment Alfirin will be without a Mind Blank, which is something she has been so careful not to do in front of people for - a long time, at least ten years -

 

"I'll be there," she says, "unless it takes longer than I expect to find volunteer envoys."

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She isn't particularly expecting to gain anything from this, regardless of the result, besides, she supposes, knowing for herself. Iomedae doesn't really care how Pharasma would Judge Alfirin, if She ever got Her hands on her, and if she's nominally Neutral -

Iomedae could tell the others, but... Alfirin almost hopes she won't. Lacking an Evil aura would not make Karlenius' mistrust of her any less justified, nor any less wrong. (Marit won't trust her regardless. Marit is not the trusting type.) It seems like it would be perverse, in a way, to win Karlenius' trust with a detect evil spell at the same time that she -

She didn't lose Iomedae's trust. But Iomedae knows her better, now, and likes her worse. It would be wrong, now, for her to use Iomedae to make Karlenius know her worse and like her better.

She gives a quick bow and departs. She really would like to get that exception into the wards.

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There’s subtext there, Altarrin thinks, and it’s new. He doesn’t let visible curiosity or concern leak, just nods briskly to Alfirin. “Four and a half hours, then.”

And turning back to Iomedae. “I would speak with the volunteers, once you have some. They - should know what they are going into.” 

And there are good parts about the Empire, if - buried deeply and warped from their original form - he wants them to hear it from someone who knows what the Empire was meant to be, not just what it is now. He’s not sure why it feels so important to him but it does.

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She nods. "I'd appreciate that. You are welcome to go wherever you'd like in Urgir, by the way. We have a protective Hymn of Peace up over the whole city, which makes it extraordinarily difficult to attack anybody or destroy anything, but isn't noticeable if you don't try that. And it's protected against dimensional transit of all kinds, but that's also not noticeable unless you try."

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He raises an eyebrow. “Am I not already prevented from trying both with Alfirin’s magic?” They haven’t said anything about reassessing it, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable of them to leave it in place -

- he remembers that brief pause, when he offered the Gate, and Alfirin saying she assumes he would provide interdimensional transit. She thought he would offer willingly, and in nearly all circumstances he thinks he would, but…she wasn’t counting on that.

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"Alfirin and I have longstanding stylistic differences around - whether it's better to tell you 'you have the run of the city, though it's safest and most convenient for us if you stay home' or not, if we anticipate you'll probably sensibly not wander the city full of Tar-Baphon's spies without a good reason. She has an inclination against - pretending to hand off power she hasn't - and I have an inclination towards making the exercise of power non-default.

But in fact if you try to walk into Urgir you will be able to do so." She shrugs. "You can also request more books, if you'd like those."

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'Walking into Urgir' wasn't in fact either of the things he was asking about, which is maybe enough of an answer, and it doesn't matter anyway; he's not intending to Gate out without her, and he's definitely not planning to attack anyone. Alfirin's - style, if Iomedae wants to call it that - makes sense to him, and he's not bothered, though overall he is glad to know. 

"I read Aroden's holy books - the one of teachings and the one of his history. Are there other books you would recommend? I ought to write to Bastran, first, but - I would like to know more about this world." 

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"I can get you some generic histories, I guess."

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Nod. "I would appreciate it. I think it is - not urgent in the sense that it is likely to change my decisions or priorities - speaking to Aroden did resolve most of my...remaining doubts. It did not really leave me less confused about the - parallels in our history," or what it even MEANS, that Aroden recognized him, "but Aroden did not seem - concerned about it." 

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"It must be important, for Aroden to have - found it worth trying to convey - but it might just be important in the straightforward sense that we can get lots more done if we know we can trust each other. I'll get you some history books, and some books about magic and geopolitics in our world, and then I'll get you some emissaries so you can brief them on what to expect, presuming Aroden confirms He'll retrieve their souls for me."

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"Thank you." 

Altarrin...sort of wishes they could speak further. But he doesn't having any pressing questions lined up, his remaining confusion is still too nebulous to put into words, and there's a lot for both of them to do. He can go start on a draft letter to Bastran, while Iomedae asks for volunteers. 

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Iomedae will Commune with Aroden to confirm he will retrieve his chosen clerics or paladins who die in Velgarth, and then select some of the weak paladins -- not powerful enough for spellcasting, but powerful enough for the anti-fear effect, because people who are capable of fear end up far more traumatized by interrogations and by torture -- to explain the mission to.

 

There's another world, called Velgarth. She spent some time there. She is at war with an empire in Velgarth, and recently the person she was negotiating with defected to the cause of the Crusade. He did this of his own free will, but from the perspective of the empire, obviously, it looks like a trick she pulled, or at minimum something she tried to orchestrate. They don't have the concept of paladins there; they'd see no reason why she wouldn't have done that. And now they're of course suspicious and probably terrified, and she is afraid that in their terror they might contact Tar-Baphon for help (or just scry him while trying to see what's going on; scrying the camp during the attack on Urgir would've done it) and invite Golarion's own war to their world. 

She doesn't like the Empire, as they can presumably infer from the fact she went to war with it, but she does not want its rulers to be terrified and desperate, since terrified and desperate rulers make bad choices, and she does not want communication channels so poisoned that the war will be impossible to deescalate, and she does not want them all enslaved by Tar Baphon. And she is genuinely grieved that from their perspective it looks a lot like she betrayed negotiations. She is, in fact, willing to pay quite a lot to prevent the appearance of that, quite apart from preventing the actual thing; it is really valuable to her that in Golarion people can not only expect that she won't betray negotiations but also that things which look a whole lot like 'her betraying negotiations' will be really rare and not countenanced by her. 

She expects the actual mission to be miserable. They'll surrender, be interrogated, and probably be killed. (She'll probably retrieve them subsequently, unless anyone is in fact in a hurry to go to Heaven and would rather stay there.)

She collects ratings until she gets two sixes and sends them to Altarrin. A twenty year old woman from an archery unit, new to being a chosen paladin, and a fifty-five year old man who retired from adventuring a decade ago and works in Pereza's department on logistics and who says she can spare the diamond Raising him, his arthritis is starting to get to him anyway and he's looking forward to being renewed and young in Heaven.

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He's been working on his letter to Bastran, but will set it aside to brief the paladins. 

 

He's sure Iomedae has told them plenty about the Empire's current failings. Those failings are real, and very bad, and it's a system that traps even the best of its people on paths where they have no leeway to...choose better options than the default...but the best of its people do, often, genuinely believe in the Empire, and would want it to be better if they saw a way. He thinks it's important they have the context on why. 

There was a Cataclysm in his world - a little like the one that happened at the beginning of Aroden's history, but more recent, only seven hundred years ago. The Empire was founded in the rubble and ashes, by a group of dedicated founders who wanted - a lot of the same things Aroden's church wants, he thinks, to build a civilization where no one would starve, where its people could invest in education and invention and discovery. And the Empire isn't not that. It's still the only place in Velgarth that retains much of the advanced magic known before the Mage Wars, like permanent Gates for transport. Its citizens are proud of their home, and Altarrin doesn't think they're wrong to be. 

The Empire is also incredibly paranoid and controlling of its people, and intensely distrustful of gods. This is a pattern that causes immense suffering, and it - traps people, it's a lot of why the Empire cannot, as an institution, easily turn away from war now, with Oris or with Aroden's church. But he thinks it's important that they understand why - that it's because the gods of Velgarth have never, once, intervened to support the cause of a flourishing civilization, or to give the Empire more options rather than fewer. It's...a path that goes nowhere good, to ban religion in an entire Empire and execute for treason anyone they catch worshipping a god...but it's a measure that was only taken after it had been observed that where there were priests and temples, people died and projects failed. 

He doesn't know why it's like that. But if Aroden had been one of the gods on hand, when the First Emperor took the throne, Altarrin thinks the Empire would have seen the shared ground between them. It was meant to be a place that would be aligned with Aroden. It isn't, and maybe it's too late, but - that's the vision they believed in, once, and many of the Empire's leaders still believe that nowhere else in the world is on a better track. 

 

 

(He doesn't tell them about his immortality; he's still going back and forth agonizing over whether to tell Bastran, but he doesn't want it dragged out of these people's heads by whichever expendable Thoughtsenser and interrogation team are sent to deal with them, and honestly he doesn't want it spread around Heaven either. His argument feels less coherent and compelling without that, but hopefully they're following anyway.) 

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Iomedae didn't, in fact, say much about her reasons for being at war with the Empire, though they expected she had good ones. They listen attentively. 

"All right," the man, Tiaves, says when Altarrin's finished. "I'm sorry you were forced to flee. It's never easy. I wouldn't worry too much. Iomedae's got a good head on her shoulders, she'll get it sorted sooner or later."

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She sleeps starting around the midday bell, because for the last bloody weeks of fighting those midday hours have been the ones where she was least likely to be urgently needed. She waits upon waking, an extra twenty minutes that is usually not part of her 'morning' routine, for yesterday's mind blank to expire, and then sends for Altarrin.

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There is a knock, at the door to the office where Altarrin has been writing his letter. At his acknowledgement, one of the uniforms opens it for... a fox.

 

"Hello! You're Altarrin? Curiosity, charmed to meet you."

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(He’s not quite finished the letter yet - it’s feeling very hard to write - but he’s been expecting an interruption and is ready to set it down again whenever Alfirin summons him. He’s wondering vaguely what kind of search-spell experiment she wants to run but it’s not the main thing on his mind. He’s preoccupied, still mostly caught up in thinking through Bastran’s reactions.)

 

…He blinks at the fox, which is not what he was expecting. “Hello,” he says, since apparently the fox can talk - what does it look like to mage-sight - 

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He looks like a perfectly normal fox who happens to be wearing a magical choker that looks a little like the scholar's ring Altarrin is wearing.

"Alfirin said I should get you for an experiment, but if you're in the middle of something you can finish that first, she's not in a hurry." She is nervous about something but he's pretty sure it's not anything to do with this elf.

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Altarrin is not a Thoughtsenser and so won’t be confused about being misidentified as an elf, or at all aware that Alfirin (who has always been perfectly calm and poised in his presence, and has him mind-controlled) is nervous about anything. 

“I am available now.” He sets down the letter again beside the pile of discarded drafts, and follows the fox who…apparently works for Alfirin…?

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He does! He would normally strike up a conversation for this part but they're actually only going a few doors down the hall so they walk in - companionable? He hopes companionable - silence.

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"Altarrin! Do you want me to explain the experiment, or just get on with it? It's - really only an extremely mild risk for you to know, if you care to, you're easier to locally mindread than Iomedae or I are, and this is technically an important secret especially if it works, but most of the secret is just you and your capabilities which aren't secrets from you."

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(Iomedae arrives behind Altarrin, and shuts the door behind her, and does not reveal on her face that Alfirin is Evil, though Alfirin is, in fact, Evil.)

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...Well that maybe explains the nervousness. She hasn't done anything yet, so he will content himself with curling up at Alfirin's feet and eyeing her suspiciously.

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He trusts them. Even Alfirin, who is not technically a follower of Aroden, but from what he's observed so far he respects and likes her, and Iomedae trusts her even if it's - maybe complicated. 

"I do not need to know what it is for," he says levelly. "I will need instructions, if you wish me to do anything other than observe with mage-sight." 

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She appreciates that! It barely matters, but she appreciates that he's willing to indulge her paranoia even when it barely matters.

"Very well. As I understand it, you found our planet with a search spell looking for magic items similar to ones Iomedae left on Velgarth. We'd like you to see if you can do the same thing for a particular non-permanent spell. I'm going to prepare it twice, so you can watch me do that, and then, I suppose, see if you can find the prepared copies. Then I'll cast it on myself, and you should see if you can find the cast version. The second one is for you, it will be useful on our mission." And she can prepare mind blank twice, more slowly than she usually does, and cast it twice, pausing if Altarrin wants to try any longer-casting-time search techniques.

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He wants her to pause briefly after casting it on herself - she seemed bothered to not have it in place and he wasn't going to delay that - so he can try to find the second one wherever she's folded up and hidden it, and then - with more effort - set up a detection-ward set-spell that he hopes will trigger for the actual casting of the spell. It's not a very good version, but mostly because it won't be stable for long or expand gracefully to warding a large area; he basically expects it to work, and those are problems that can be figured out in later research. 

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The second spell can't be found; if it was findable in the first place, it seems to be hidden by the first mind blank (Along with Alfirin's magic items and a couple of set-spells). When she casts it, his detection set-spell does go off! Someone cast a mind blank here!

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He conveys this! 

"I think I could with more work figure out very efficient area-effect wards - I could cover the city, certainly, if that is useful for - what you need it for. - Once cast the spell hides you from my Othersenses, I cannot sense you at all with mage-sight now and I suspect a Thoughtsenser or even a Mindhealer would do no better. I might be able to find the uncast spell, wherever you put it, had I checked before you had cast it." He frowns. "I - doubt I can run a search-spell for it once cast, if the structure is still there it is - hiding itself - but I am willing to try some ideas for a few minutes, see if I can route through the Void as Gates do..." 

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"Please do. Take as long as you need if you keep having ideas, I don't expect any of them to work but I think it's definitely worth trying for at least an hour if you've got an hour's worth of serious things to try."

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Curiosity can put two and two together and has switched from suspicious glares to angry ones. Not that they look very different on a fox.

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Presumably because he thinks Iomedae invited herself to see Alfirin without Mind Blank, for the obvious reason, instead of Alfirin inviting Iomedae for the slightly-less-obvious one. Iomedae is not ready to discuss this with Curiosity, now or probably ever, so she doesn't.

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(The intelligent talking fox who works for Alfirin is hostile toward Iomedae. Altarrin can’t pick up much more than that, and it does not seem worth poking, so it's not worth thinking about further.) 

 

He doesn't have a whole hour worth of serious ideas - he'll be done within 35 minutes - but mostly this is because he is really shockingly fast at trying new techniques wildly improvised on the spot, and needs much less rest in between than he usually would, thanks to the belt.

(Targeting spell-structure components the naive way absolutely does not work, as expected. Routing through the Void like a Gate-search also doesn't work. Routing through the Void-and-other-planes like an interworld Gate also doesn't work. Various ways of trying to more indirectly aim a search don't work. ...He tries routing specifically through each of the Elemental Planes just in case but this unsurprisingly also does not work.) 

 

He's definitely ready to sit down, at the end of it. "- Not sure it is an unsolvable problem," he says, "but it is a difficult one. If there is a way around the hiding-itself property of the spell, I have not seen it yet, and I expect it would take me months to - think of the right way to approach it differently, if it is possible at all. I - have no idea if it is worth that." 

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"I would expect that it's not possible, but I think it would still be worth the research project, if you're willing to do that and we don't have any better projects for you to spend your time on - It would be very important if you did succeed. Do you concur, Knight-Commander?"

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Something about the way Alfirin says 'Knight-Commander' feels like getting an axe driven through her ribcage. "I concur. Thank you for the attempt. I have my letter to the Empire, for whenever you depart, if you are still planning to operate there today."

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"...I still think we should go today."

He clears his throat. "I - am not finished my letter - I can finish something in another twenty minutes, I think, badly, but - it is possible I could use advice. On - I am not sure this is at all a common problem - but how to communicate something important to someone who has been a close colleague for many years, but you are - not actually on the same page at all." 

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"...I imagine this colleague is probably still under the Empire's mind-control. I - would usually prefer to have a conversation like that face-to-face rather than in a letter, if it could be done safely - I'm trying to think if we have a way to do that that would not immediately compromise your colleague's position - "

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He blinks inanely at her for a moment. 

"....I think that was vaguer than I needed to be. I am talking about the current Emperor, and it seems very difficult to meet him face to face in a way that is - not unacceptably risky for either of us." 

He looks down. "I - selected him, personally - decades before, actually, and supported his candidacy, because he is– the Empire is very bad for him but it is because he - cares about doing the right thing, and not hurting people."

Was that even slightly coherent he has no idea.

"He is under much less mind-control than most high level officials, but he does have a loyalty compulsion to the Empire. Also I suspect he is navigating an extremely complicated political situation," and is miserable about it not the point, "and it would be very easy to - make that worse." 

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"...It will probably create more problems than it solves if we kidnap the Emperor briefly."

 

"Is the not-being-on-the-same page primarily that - Actually, Curiosity, could you step out for a moment, some of this is secret -"

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...

Fine.

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"If it's primarily you being, ah, seven hundred years old and one of the founders of your empire - "

"...sorry, I thought I had a suggestion there. Knowing when to tell someone something like that seems like it would depend a lot on personal context that I don't have."

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Nod. "That is half of it, and - it is definitely something where speaking face to face would seem better, if only because he definitely has people who read his mail. I - think I would trust him with this information. I definitely do not trust the Office of Inquiry with it." 

 

A longish pause. 

"The other half is that I - prayed to Aroden, because it seemed like a cheap test to run," it really wasn't, "and I - learned things -"

he actually has no idea how much Alfirin has any context on that part but hopefully Iomedae can fill her in if necessary,

"- and that is an exceptionally difficult and complicated topic in the Empire. I should arguably not mention it at all but the fact that I trust Aroden is - a critical part of how I am currently making decisions - and if I do not bring it up then Bastran will notice." 

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"I think I'd expect that - a defection in wartime is a very bad context in which to try to have a conversation like that, even if it might otherwise go well, which I can't guess. The defection in wartime is the sort of thing that inspires - a lack of confidence in one's previous character judgments, and I think I'd expect that would make it very hard to - integrate new information usefully?"

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"That seems right. For the part about Aroden, I mean. He - will notice that I am holding something back - but that is not a problem in itself, it would hardly be the first time. 

 

- I do think it would - be useful and not obviously make things worse - to tell him that I am immortal. He - must have noticed that I am inexplicably skilled and well-educated in an implausible number of domains, it will if anything make him less confused." 

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"And perhaps explains what'd otherwise seem like a very uncharacteristic risk. I think you can - truthfully convey, by the way, that things will probably go better for the Empire because you came here. We're more likely to be able to handle it - delicately - and for instance have now been informed that you like the Emperor and think he's a good person, so we're less likely to handle it by replacing him."

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"...I have no particular advice on how to handle the conversation but - it sounds like a lot of things you might not want to commit to writing that your inquisition will read. I could probably get you into a mindscape together - ah - a lot like a dream that you're both dreaming - It would be noticeable, on his end, most likely alarm his security, but - probably looks less hostile than kidnapping him for the conversation."

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There are a lot of emotions there to be had and - not the time - 

 

"- That makes sense and I think it is - worth trying - does the spell require us to both be naturally asleep and dreaming, that would be a constraint on timing -" 

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"No but it's possible I can get it on him otherwise undetected in which case it will be much less alarming if that happens in his sleep than if he passes out in the middle of a meeting."

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"- It would be better not to alarm his staff. I– does it work across worlds, or would it require all three of us to be in Velgarth?" 

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"I believe it to be in the long long list of spells with no known range limit as of a month ago."

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Nod. 

"...Is there a way to cheaply test the range limit while we are in Velgarth? Could you - try to cast it to speak with Iomedae, from Velgarth, while she is here -?" 

They know each other at least as well as he knows Bastran, so it's a reasonable test, and they clearly need to talk through something though he's not sure what

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She is beginning to suspect that Altarrin's ability to read people puts him in pretty rare company. Most of which is in this room.

"We could. Cheap to test - I don't think I'll need those particular spell slots when we're there. There's a couple more spells in the same category - a link that has no range limit once established even if you need to be nearby to set it up in the first place - telepathic bond, a couple others that I wrote down somewhere - that I was planning to test on my first trip to Velgarth."

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They don't generally keep a permanent Telepathic Bond up, just temporary ones on days when it's important, sometimes with a Ring of Continuation so it lasts all day. A permanent one would be - a bad idea. "I should be interruptible," she says. "I'm setting up a justice system."

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There continues to be subtext, there, that Altarrin would almost certainly be able to make sense of if he still had Iomedae's headband. Which he doesn't.

(- he's not sure that 'setting up a justice system' should necessarily mean that Iomedae is more interruptible rather than less, that sounds important – if he could have paid more attention to setting up the justice system of the Eastern Empire, and done it right the first time -)

 

 

Nod. "I should think about what Velgarth spells make sense to test while we are there. It would be useful to have an interworld version of our communication-spell, but that generally requires a mage on both ends." 

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"Is the girl you're kidnapping likely to defect immediately when her mind control is removed and she's presented with a headband?"

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"I met her very briefly and am not sure, but - I think for most people in her position it would be the obvious response. The Empire has - failed to fully take advantage of her skills - and she would be aware of that." 

Pause. 

"...I think she might defect just because your world has afterlives." 

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"They are a plus."

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"Those representatives of the Empire I've had occasion to meet have been nearly universally Lawful Evil. Maybe not the mage-researchers."

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"...less of a plus."

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Aritha is perhaps the only person Altarrin has ever met who he thinks might actually, genuinely, prefer 'Hell' as it's been described to him, over - what the Velgarth gods have to offer. 

He doesn't say that. It wouldn't help. 

 

"Bastran would have asked her for an oath of loyalty," he hears himself say. "Separate from the compulsions. He - would have been very compelling, when he asked for it." 

Because he's good at this. Because Altarrin taught him. 

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" - wow," says Iomedae, with - a lot of feeling, though very very carefully no anger.

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Iomedae is definitely - reacting - and carefully trying to hide the reaction - and he doesn't understand why, which means that Altarrin is missing something. 

He genuinely isn't sure what he's missing! It's probably important. He - actually it might help if he was terrified, he's– it always makes it easier to focus -  but he trusts Aroden and trusts Iomedae and so instead he's just very confused. 

 

"- Clearly something I mentioned is a violation of your local norms but I am not sure what," he hears himself say. 

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"It's - you don't have Law as a detectable phenomenon, it's probably downstream of that -

Oaths are a very serious matter, and extracting an oath under mind control is - I won't say it's just not done, because there are always people who will break any particular taboo if they think it serves their interests, but - this one is particularly serious."

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"There are a lot of details that would be of - significant importance, in terms of what options she has, if she has any.

But I don't think there is any historical or current Golarion empire in which that would be a routine handling of a situation like being adjacent to someone who defected, and many in which it'd be a more serious offense than murder. It is unsurprising that without detectable Law things are different, but it's - interesting that they're not different such that you don't have oaths. It's a tactic that only works if people do think their oath means something."

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"Emperor Vittulus, 723 before the starstone. Deposed a year later, though. Not unrelatedly."

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Normally correcting Iomedae about a detail of history gets an admiring exasperated smile but today she's taking a temporary break from the admiring exasperated smiles. 

 

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- nod. 

(he's still not sure he understands, because he– ...what would it even mean, for 'Law' to be a detectable phenomenon - and if it was, that would - shift so many things -)

 

 

"For what it is worth, this was not a routine handling of a situation. I - can infer that Bastran was in a hurry, because under the standard protocol, Aritha would have been held and questioned for a week by the Office of Inquiry. He must have decided he could not afford that delay. 

 

"- The fact that he asked for her oath, when it was - understandably unfair to her to ask for any commitment - is my fault, I think."

 

There are some clarifications he could make but they're mostly in the vein of defending his...having made the right decisions...and he's not in the mood for that right now. 

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She is not, particularly, judging Altarrin for making decisions that made sense in the context he was living in.

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Iomedae spends very little of her time judging people. It rarely causes them to change their behavior. 

 

"It's - indicative, maybe, of some of the challenges of contact with another world. I'm not angry. It does pretty dramatically limit her options once we get her out, but there's a lot of that, in war."

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He feels like she maybe should be angry. 

"...I think I was trying to build the concept of - what your world means by Law. Even though we cannot see it directly, in Velgarth, and - I think it makes it much  harder, that as far as I can tell our gods are not Lawful, or - capable of understanding what that would mean.

...That is what I mean, when I said it was my fault, I - was trying to build a - civilization where oaths meant something. I suppose it was clearly never going to work, given all of the compulsions." 

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She is still not angry, because what Evil would turn tail and flee if she were? Human imperfection? That is one of the Evils least possible to combat with anger. 

"Have you - Aroden's holy books are largely for a general audience, I don't know how clearly they articulate what Law is, what we mean by it. If it's something you were trying for you might be interested in reading in more depth about it. Probably after your excursion, though, if you still intend one today."

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He nods, tiredly. "I think I would find it valuable to read more, but - later. I should take half a candlemark to finish writing a letter to the Emperor, even if I am am leaving out most of the - secrets - it seems valuable to send something. Once we are in Velgarth, it sounds like the order we have planned is - drop off the messages, test whether the shared-dream spell works between worlds and go shopping for diamonds while we give the Emperor a chance to receive and read them, and then have Alfirin kidnap Aritha. If the dream works between worlds we can bring her back here immediately and Alfirin can cast the spell once Bastran is asleep. If not, and we need to be in the same world, I - suspect it actually makes sense to go and return later, rather than waiting it out, I would prefer not to hold Aritha in one of my records caches for multiple candlemarks." 

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"Having Aritha arbitrarily incapacitated is cheaper than an interworld Gate - you could petrify her."

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They can do what.

"How does that work?" 

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"...I don't think you have the background, yet, to understand an explanation much more detailed than 'it's a sixth-circle spell that turns someone into a statue'"

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"- Reversibly, I assume? That would work, especially if it means that targeting her normally with Velgarth scrying would fail. It should fail anyway, my records caches are shielded with a type of shielding no one in the Empire should know how to route around, but I am not entirely confident that will hold up if they have many candlemarks, they will be trying very hard." 

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"Oh, of course. Reversing it is seventh circle, in theory it should also be compressible to sixth but I don't know anyone to have actually done so yet. We can also rearrange the timing, so even if the mindscape is same-planet range I could put you and the Emperor in it and then grab Aritha - "

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Nod. "If your hiding-magic spell works the same on me then it ought to make both of us unscryable even in theory, so there is not too much risk to spending longer in Velgarth. ...Though if we are visiting diamond merchants, and there are mages around, it will stand out to them, people are not usually invisible to mage-sight." 

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"Inconvenient. I suspect I'd draw some attention under mage-sight even without it, though - if it turns out to be a problem we can always drop it and try without in the next city, if that seems like a better plan. I have - substantial scrying protections even without mind blank. We might even prefer the Empire see them, it might help them realize we're not lying about Tar-Baphon."

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"You could also take a civilian to do your shopping and accompany them invisibly. You can take one of mine, even, for diamond shopping outside the Empire."

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Nod. "That would work. ...For what it is worth, I would prefer they not scry me, I - would somewhat rather no one know I am in Velgarth at all, and that they assume you transported yourself. But I suppose if they see you when you kidnap Aritha, they will likely attempt to scry you, and we can be separated or I can be invisible. ...What are your protections, do they bite?" 

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"They don't have to, but - I can cast some spells back through a scrying link, and perhaps the best way to demonstrate to them that sometimes scrying an archmage gets the scryer dominated is to let them scry an archmage who's not going to convert their empire into an enormous farm for mage-gifted corpses and see what happens."

"...Also, mind blank makes you invisible to scrying spells even if the spell was not targeted on you in particular and just happened to be looking at your surroundings, so if you keep yours up that shouldn't be a problem."

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"They will find that terrifying. I - suppose there is not actually very much they can do to us, in terms of - overreacting - and it is true and decision-relevant information for them to have.

 

- can the animated corpses be mage-gifted and use those Gifts? I would not have expected that to work." 

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"Not the most basic kind, but Tar-Baphon himself is an undead spellcaster, he is by no means limited to making only the most basic kind of undead servants."

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Nod. Sigh. 

"So we should bring the paladin volunteers, and another volunteer to take charge of the diamond shopping, and then one of us can drop off the volunteers with letters in a place where the Empire can quickly retrieve them. It would be slightly safer if it were Alfirin doing that, but - if the mind blank spell means they cannot cast compulsions on me, I think the risk to myself is minimal, as long as I scry the place where I am raising the Gate to make sure no one is in range to Final Strike it." 

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"Mind blank provides some protection against compulsions, but for outright immunity you want" - she rolls her eyes at this - "protection from evil, protection from good, protection from law, protection from chaos and then you'll still be susceptible to compulsions from truly neutral casters. Or you can be Iomedae."

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"...Huh. All right. In any case I am not planning to cross the Gate - and I trust you will prevent me from doing anything ill-advised even if they somehow find someone who is a neutral alignment and can cast it on me in five seconds through a Gate, I think your mind control spell would just override our kind of compulsions." 

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"Can you put one on yourself so we can test? Also - I think I should be able to shrug off compulsions easily enough but we should test that too."

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"Doing complicated compulsions on oneself is harder but I can try a simple negative one and see if you can override it, and a simple positive one to see if you can block it." 

He will try to compulsion himself not to move his feet, to check if Alfirin can make him walk anyway.

(It doesn't occur to him until he's mid casting it that he would under normal conditions find this test very stressful, and it's interesting that he doesn't now.) 

For the positive one he'll try compulsioning himself to keep his arms raised above his head. 

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She would make him stand on his hands, except that she doesn't know if he can do that and she doesn't want him to fall and get hurt. Instead he can pace a small circle with his hands in his pockets.

"...That seems suggestive even if I'd hesitate to call it conclusive. Now on me?" The dominate will allow him to apply exactly those same compulsions and no others because, while she is starting to trust him she does not see any reason to give him the opportunity to control her mind just because she trusts him not to take it.

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Incredibly reasonable of her! Altarrin will try both. He can't see what he's doing, with Mind Blank in place, or get any feedback on whether it's working 0 which actually makes it kind of hard to aim for 'exactly that and nothing else' - but he's very good at this, and they're not complicated compulsions. He will try dropping them on the mind that he knows is there, and - after checking with her - try again with five times as much power as usual if she confirms the first attempt doesn't work.

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The first attempt landed! Enough that she notices and can identify it, if not enough that she can't pace a circuit around her own chair with her hands in her pockets. Ditto the second.

"And are your abilities here typical? How much better than you, if at all, are the Empire's best? I'd hate to throw all caution to the wind here if it turns out this area of magic is a particular weakness of yours."

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"I am probably one of the best in the world at it." Being 700 years old helps; he's at 'among the best in the world' level skill in most areas of magic, with the exception of some kinds of heavy-duty combat casting where raw Gift-potential matters more than finesse, there are Adepts stronger than him out there. "There is one mage who works for the Emperor's guard and has Thoughtsensing as well, and he is better at - fine control - but not power, and in any case would lose most of that advantage while his Thoughtsensing is blocked by your Mind Blank spell - I suppose I cannot test directly whether it is but I am quite confident it would be." 

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This does not surprise her! Being 700 years old seems like it would help with a lot of things, especially in comparison to one's countrymen if this is a unique trait on one's planet.

"I trust your assessment. Thank you for helping me with these tests, I'll let you finish your letter while I prepare the rest of my spells, and then you can get me when you're done? I'll still be here, probably, I can get the next bit of my work on the wards done from here."

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"Of course." 

 

And he goes to write a letter. He'll be short and to the point; the real conversation is going to happen later, in private. 

He addresses it to 'Emperor Bastran', from...he puts 'Altarrin' with no titles, it is almost certainly incorrect to call himself Archmage-General now and he wouldn't be very surprised if they had stripped him of his noble title as well. 

 

First: it was by my own choice, or close enough to it, that I defected to Iomedae's world. I do not expect you to believe this, and cannot at this time offer proof, but it seems worth saying. I was not at the time thinking especially clearly, but I believe the compulsions were more at fault than the headband, though I admit I was in an unusual mental state to which the headband was contributing. 

At the time, my reasoning was that if I returned to Jacona, it would likely be in the interest of the gods to plot for my assassination. In hindsight, I think this is not true, and I was biased in my reasoning by having to work around the compulsions and believe that leaving was the best way to serve the Empire. I realize my departure must have been incredibly disruptive and terrifying, and I am sorry that I could not see a better way. 

I do, in fact, think that my choice to defect will serve the Empire better than anything else I could have done. Had I returned to Jacona, even if I had survived, it would have been far harder to avoid a pointless and wasteful war that is in neither side's interests. It is not a war the Empire could win; again, I cannot prove this, but I expect you will come to agree once you know more. In the interest of full honestly, I expect that had I returned and spoken to you, you would have concluded either that I was disloyal or having a nervous breakdown. I admit that I was arguably having a nervous breakdown, though I believe I was in my right mind in the ways that matter. I also believe that I remain loyal to the true Empire, the vision of the First Emperor, but of course I would say that anyway. 

I can only repeat what Iomedae has already written to you: it is of the utmost importance that you do not attempt to scry for Tar-Baphon. If he learns of the Empire and decides to seize control of it, both our side and Iomedae's will lose. 

I am not sure, yet, where to go from here. But I do not see myself, or Iomedae, as enemies of the Empire, and I hope that instead we can rebuild some kind of trust and have something better. 

- Altarrin

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It takes him twenty minutes, and then he goes to find Alfirin - and the paladin volunteers, who hopefully already have Iomedae's letter - for the Gate. 

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The paladin volunteers have no magic items, each have a copy of Iomedae's letter, and are waiting for the Gate, not apprehensive because they are paladins.

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Altarrin has multiple copies of his letter as well, and gives one to each of the delegates. 

And once Alfirin and her mysterious fox assistant are ready as well, Altarrin sits down to cast his Gate. He's going to use a doorway for the departure threshold, and the destination is a records cache with an embossed archway on one of the walls that, while not actually a permanent Gate, has been used for several thousand Gates over centuries, eventually naturally aligning the stone with the Gate-search spell and making it an easier target. He warns them that he's still going to be tired, after this. He can probably manage a same-world Gate immediately, to get the volunteer paladins and their messages dropped off, but after that he may want half a candlemark to rest before they go off on their diamond shopping expedition. 

 

...actually, since they're paladins, would one of them mind sharing the fearlessless effect? He - is noticing kind of a lot of flinch about Gating back to Velgarth, and it's fine, he can do it, but it would be nice if he wasn't doing it with his heart rate elevated. 

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The paladins would be happy to do that for him; it's a pretty unremarkable request. 

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And he raises a Gate. 

 

It is, in fact, easier from this side, and he knows the routing better. The Gate is up within ten seconds, a neat defined blue-white glowing threshold and a rippling milky-opaque membrane filling it, because for whatever reason you can't see across this kind of Gate. It would be nervewracking if he could experience fear. 

He stands - he's glad he was sitting for the casting, but he's steady on his feet - and beckons for the others to follow, and steps across into the muffled underground silence of a records cache in the far northwest.

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He is followed by Alfirin, Curiosity, two paladins and an accountant from Pereza's department who looks totally ordinary to mage-sight by virtue of in fact being totally ordinary.

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He drops the Gate as soon as they're through, casts a mage-light, and manages to actually cross the room to sit down on a crate rather than sagging to his knees where he is. 

"Two minutes," he says, slightly out of breath. 

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"Telepathic bond is down." Enter mindscape - "...And I can't reach the mindscape on the other end. Status and deathwatch are still active though I bet the cleric back in Golarion is not getting useful readings anymore. Take as long as you need, we're in no hurry yet."

She hasn't started laying supply caches for her future self yet - she could not really justify spending fewer resources on the war to do that - but she thinks when she does they'll be...smaller than this. This is rather a lot of supplies.

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It's so many supplies! Once Altarrin has slightly caught his breath, he goes and removes a crate two down in a stack, which proves to contain ALL OF HIS MAPS. There are so many, at various scales - and from various time periods - and carefully cross-referenced. 

"I am going to send the paladins to the Lastun Province administrative center," he says. "Or a field near it, rather. It is on a direct Gate-link to the capital, and it is not in a war zone so I expect they will be less - excessively jumpy. ...I will give you some standard shield-talismans just in case someone is having a bad day, and - if it is all right for you, may I test with something innocuous whether compulsions work on you in the usual way? I think they should, but the guards will be more likely to escalate to the use of force if they behave unusually, in which case I would probably advise that you stay in the field and wait for someone to respond to the Gate-signature, rather than walking over to the big stone building to surrender." 

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"Go ahead," says Tiaves. "I won't resist."

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He'll use the same two test compulsions as before, warning him in advance each time. It seems to work fine, and he's content for now not to test what would happen if Tiaves did resist. He takes them off right away. 

 

"Thank you for being willing to do this," he says, seriously. "It is - so much to ask of you, and I expect it to be terribly unpleasant - but it may end up mattering a great deal." 

And he scries the field to make sure it's not randomly occupied, and then tells them to be quick about crossing before raising the Gate. It's going to trigger an alarm and he wants it to be down long before anyone can respond. 

 

 

The Gate goes up to a field. There is, indeed, a looming stone building visible in the distance. 

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Iomedae thought it was important, and explained why it was important, and you don't really become a paladin of the Knights of Ozem if you don't trust Iomedae's judgment about these things. She also said it would be terribly unpleasant, so that's indeed what they are expecting. 

 

They hurry through the Gate.

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The Gate is down well before anyone responds, though every center in the Empire has in fact been raised to a higher than baseline alert level, and the response will be fast. 

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Altarrin wants half a candlemark to rest, probably. And a snack. He has some non-perishable foodstuffs, additionally preserved with spells that delay mold. It's not very tasty food but Alfirin is, if she wants, welcome to share extremely hard biscuits and jerky and a block of dried fruit. 

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She'll pass. Ring of sustenance and all.

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Jerky's good!

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The field is a park (clear lines of fire!) right outside the citadel in Lasavun, capital of Lastun Province! Since Lastun is at peace, there isn't any kind of immediate ambush. But gates are regulated and this is wartime, so a squad of un-gifted soldiers will show up to see who did this and if they or their bosses need to do anything about it.

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They'll find two people walking towards the citadel, their hands in the air. "We surrender," the man says calmly to the soldiers. "We are delegates of the Knights of Ozem, an organization at war with the Empire."

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"Right," says the corporal.

A runner goes and tells his bosses, while the rest of the squad will watch the paladins with weapons ready, since they don't trust them at all. People at war with the emperor usually don't surrender in a province that isn't at war, and this could be some kind of clever trick.

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It could! But they continue to stand there, not doing anything. 

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About a dozen mages, who STILL SUSPECT A TRICK and are watched by other less close mages, will Gate in for the purpose of putting up force-barriers around them and hitting them with compulsions not to harm people or use magic!

... The trap still doesn't spring?

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Nope! Now they're compulsioned not to harm people or use magic! They continue to stand there with their hands in the air. The man repeats the thing he said earlier about how they surrender and are delegates of the Knights of Ozem.

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Oh-kay, they are going to get them into a cell (not one of the nasty ones) and quickly ask their superiors who the Knights of Ozem are, they've got two people claiming to be from them who said they surrender.

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The WHAT?

... Make sure they absolutely cannot use magic. Make sure they cannot use enchanted items. Make sure they cannot stab people, they're very good at stabbing people. Ask them what the hell they're here for.

He's going to tell the Emperor.

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(The delegates say they are here by the request of Iomedae, leader of the Knights of Ozem. She said the Knights were at war with the Empire, that communications had recently broken down, that it was probably a suicide mission. They have some letters.


They are by this point notably weirdly unruffled about all of this.)

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The letters will take a bit longer, but the message itself reaches the Emperor within less than a minute. 

 

 

 

 

 

What. 

 

Message back: he wants immediate confirmation of whether they've been here the whole time and just not showing themselves - in which case this seems to mostly imply either that Iomedae can communicate between worlds or else maybe that Aroden can - or if they came over from the other world for this mission. In which case he wants to know how

Also he wants to read the letters but they should obviously take precautions and make sure they're safe and plausibly have someone else read them and reword everything in case they're, you know, mind control letters. 

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They were Gated over by Altarrin about five minutes before they were Gated to the site they surrendered at! 

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Yep, the Ministry of Barbarians thought of that, they have an expendable scribe making a fair copy of the letters. 

However, Duke Klemath Elmore has a problem. They have never before had foreign powers from another world intervene in a regional rebellion, swear not to intervene outside a region, and then intervene outside the region to kidnap someone. The soldiers presently holding them don't know what protocol to apply.

The foreign minister has three possible strategies for the Emperor:

- Treat this as a diplomatic mission from a recognized country, i.e., get them an embassy in the capital, spy on it but don't do more than minimal non-assassination-and-subversion compulsions in the event they need to meet with the Emperor.

- Treat this as a diplomatic mission from rebels, i.e, extract all the information we can without torture or compulsions-to-make-them-talk while keeping them de facto locked up but in a cell that isn't horrible, use compulsions to make them not harm people, Thoughtsense a lot. But, like let them go afterwards, if they want.

- Treat this as a diplomatic mission from rebels who have previously violated the laws of war such as by exploiting attempts to negotiate with them for military purposes, i.e., throw them in a dungeon and interrogate them mercilessly for all their information and assume their words are air.

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Well. So far it certainly looks like Iomedae's people broke their word and exploited Altarrin's attempts to negotiate with them in order to mind-control him into abandoning the Empire. 

But. Maybe it's not what it looks like. Or maybe it is but this particular pair of diplomats is completely ignorant of the betrayal and can't give anything away. 

 

...They'll go with option two. For now. And get them an actual guest suite, if possible, they can quickly add all the shielding that a prison cell would have without making it obvious. - Of course, if anything concerning does come up on Thoughtsensing, they should be willing to react immediately and escalate to option three. But Iomedae wanted these people here, and so Bastran doubts they're going to try to flee, at least not before they've told the story they were sent to tell. 

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Understood!

(Also, Klemath is going to send in some diplomats to ask them questions, both "where is Altarrin" and baseline ones like "so, what's your country like?"

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Altarrin was recently in a underground supply location where he recovered from the interworld gate and cast the in-world one. He's probably left by now, but they don't know for sure; they don't know what his plans were after dropping them off. 

Tiaves is from Taldor, and it's - the greatest power in Avistan, the glorious sponsors of the Shining Crusade? 

Kiritan is from Absalom, the city Aroden drew out of the sea, and she thinks that Taldor is the past and Absalom the future, not that either of them think about geopolitics much; they're Iomedae's people, and after the war Iomedae's going to be founding her own country in conquered Ustalav. 

 

 

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The Knights of Ozem did not take any actions aimed at causing Altarrin to defect. Nor, to our knowledge, did Aroden. The ring is a Scholar's Ring, a standard magic item which permits reading in unfamiliar languages and which does not cast any mind-affecting spells, nor does it dispel or suppress compulsions. Any magic expert from Golarion can verify that for you, though I'm aware that you'll need unrestricted access to Golarion to meaningfully check this claim. 

The Knights have not conducted operations in the Empire outside Oris. Our current understanding is that my headband, which vastly enhances the reasoning abilities and persuasive abilities of the wearer, caused Altarrin to notice that the Empire is caught in a trap of the gods' making, and to decide to Gate to us. He has included his own letter with more detail of his account. We understand that from your perspective this claim is implausible. We would, under the circumstances, be willing to go to considerable lengths to demonstrate its truth, but we possess limited avenues to do that. We've sent delegates, empowered priests of Aroden who I have briefed on the situation and who I expect you to interrogate and quite plausibly to kill (though of course I would be grateful for their safe return, and can arrange to collect them if you decide to leave them alive). This is costly to the Knights and to Aroden, but it is important to me to keep the door open for further talks, even at a steep price.

If nothing else, I hope to maintain lines of communication adequate such that, were your Empire under sudden assault from Tar Baphon, you would regard yourselves as having the option of asking us to come and stop him. I am not the most dangerous thing in my world, and I have no desire to see the Empire destroyed; that is sufficient that we might under some circumstances find ourselves allied.

The Knights ourselves have, at this point, very restricted ability to operate on Velgarth, but in the course of recovering from Iomedae's assassination we contacted other parties which can more easily transit between worlds, and which may conduct operations inside the Empire, in conjunction with Altarrin or independently. The most important such is Alfirin, a powerful mage of our world, whose capabilities in broad strokes are known to the delegates. (The Church of Abadar, god of trade and commerce, has also negotiated for access to Velgarth, but they are unlikely to operate in the Empire or anywhere they are unwelcome, and unlikely to operate in Velgarth at all in the next few weeks.)

From your perspective, this should be treated as notice of the end of the Knights' commitment to not operate in the Empire outside of Oris. We in fact don't intend to, but you don't to our knowledge have the resources to tell Golarion factions apart, and I anticipate that there will be operations inside the Empire using Golarion magic in the near future, and from this point forwards that assurance will probably make your expectations less accurate rather than moreso, which is very much contrary to my intent when I made that assurance.

I imagine my word is, at this point, worth very little to you. The delegates might help with that, or they might not.

But for whatever it's worth, I regret very much that negotiations were, from your perspective, betrayed. I prize the lives of my soldiers very dearly, and those chosen by Aroden are very expensive for Him to replace. I have nonetheless risked sending them to you because I think I have a duty to try much much harder, given what happened, to be credible to you as someone it is possible to negotiate with. I will make other costly expenditures towards that end, if I or you identify some that might be genuinely helpful.

I swear to you that I did not, and would not have, take any actions which from my best guess of your perspective would have constituted a betrayal of the implicit or explicit terms of our negotiations, that I did not authorize anyone to do so, that I sent no deliberate misrepresentations of our intent or our aims, and that Aroden would renounce me, were I to have done what it must seem to you that I have done here.

You can leave future communications directed to me in a scryable location with one of my magic items present for targeting.

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And a letter that appears to be from Altarrin, or at least has his name at the bottom of it, though none of his titles. 

First: it was by my own choice, or close enough to it, that I defected to Iomedae's world. I do not expect you to believe this, and cannot at this time offer proof, but it seems worth saying. I was not at the time thinking especially clearly, but I believe the compulsions were more at fault than the headband, though I admit I was in an unusual mental state to which the headband was contributing. 

 

At the time, my reasoning was that if I returned to Jacona, it would likely be in the interest of the gods to plot for my assassination. In hindsight, I think this is not true, and I was biased in my reasoning by having to work around the compulsions and believe that leaving was the best way to serve the Empire. I realize my departure must have been incredibly disruptive and terrifying, and I am sorry that I could not see a better way. 

 

I do, in fact, think that my choice to defect will serve the Empire better than anything else I could have done. Had I returned to Jacona, even if I had survived, it would have been far harder to avoid a pointless and wasteful war that is in neither side's interests. It is not a war the Empire could win; again, I cannot prove this, but I expect you will come to agree once you know more. In the interest of full honestly, I expect that had I returned and spoken to you, you would have concluded either that I was disloyal or having a nervous breakdown. I admit that I was arguably having a nervous breakdown, though I believe I was in my right mind in the ways that matter. I also believe that I remain loyal to the true Empire, the vision of the First Emperor, but of course I would say that anyway. 

 

I can only repeat what Iomedae has already written to you: it is of the utmost importance that you do not attempt to scry for Tar-Baphon. If he learns of the Empire and decides to seize control of it, both our side and Iomedae's will lose. 

 

I am not sure, yet, where to go from here. But I do not see myself, or Iomedae, as enemies of the Empire, and I hope that instead we can rebuild some kind of trust and have something better. 

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... Do they know how Altarrin was when they left him? He was recently believed Compulsioned and kidnapped and the Empire is obviously very worried about the Duke.

(In fact, the point of this is obviously to get them thinking about it so there's information a mage/thoughtsenser can work from for a scry.)

And, since they are if possible talking to them separately: So, tell us more about Iomedae and the Shining Crusade and the war she's fighting!

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Tiaves thought that Altarrin seemed visibly fine, though of course if Alfirin was puppeting him Tiaves would hardly have been able to tell. (A scryable amount of detail can be extracted from his head about the location they were Gated to; he's not trying not to think of it.) Tiaves doubts he was Compulsioned and kidnapped because Iomedae said that he'd defected of his own free will, and Iomedae wouldn't lie about that. (If Alfirin was puppeting him, that started after Altarrin arrived in Golarion.)

 

 

Kiritan will explain that Tar Baphon is an archmage, and a lich who discovered the secret to having an unlimited number of undead slaves, and tried to take over the world, and the Shining Crusade is the effort to stop him. Iomedae is the Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade, and the founder of the Knights of Ozem, her own paladin order of which Kiritan and Tiaves are members, and also Iomedae is the strongest bravest Goodest Lawfulest person ever to live, and is going to be the Lawful Good goddess of actually winning, someday. Lawful Good needs one of those. 

(Kiritan has a crush. She has this in common with at least half her unit.)

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And, to the Emperor, they will deliver... slight paraphrases... of the letters.

The Knights of Ozem did not take actions for the purpose of making Altarrin defect, and we believe Aroden did not, either. The ring is a Scholastic Ring, a factorymade mage-artifact for allowing the wearer to read in unfamiliar languages and which does not cast any spells that do anything at all to affect the mind, nor break compulsions, nor remove compulsions. Any Adept in Golarion can confirm that, though I do know you will need free access to Golarion to confirm this claim.

The Ozem-Knights have not engaged in military action in the Empire, outside of Oris and Tozoa provinces. We believe at present that the headband you obtained, which greatly improves the manipulative and logical powers of whoever wears it, caused Altarrin to notice a god-plot that had caught the Empire and so led him to leave it and join us by Gate. (His own account is in the other letter.) We understand that you have reason to disbelieve us, and would, given the present state, be prepared to do a great deal of work to demonstrate our honesty, but we possess few ways to do that. We have sent delegates, priests of Aroden who wield his miracles and who I have told everything they need to know about the situation. I expect you to interrogate them. I also expect you to kill them, though I would be grateful for their safe return and can bring them back to me if you let them live. Killing these delegates is expensive for my organization and to Aroden, and yet it is still important to me to ensure that future communications remain possible, even if the costs are high.

Even if this accomplishes nothing else, I desire to maintain the possibility of contact such that if the Eastern Empire was attacked by Tar Baphon, it could still call me to your aid in defeating him. There are threats in my world more dangerous than I, and unlike me they would desire to see the Empire destroyed, and so this may mean that we may be allies.

We the Knights have little power to act in your world, but since the death of Iomedae we have given information to other parties that can travel between worlds with greater ease and which are not forbidden to act within the Empire, either allied with Altarrin or on their own. The greatest such is Alfirin, an Adept of our world whose powers are broadly known to our delegates. (The church of the god Abadar, whose domains are exchange and markets, have attempted to purchase the right to enter Velgarth but are not likely to visit the Empire, for there they would be unwelcome, and unlikely to act at all within the next fortnight.

In your eyes you should behave as if we have given notice that the Knights will no longer bind ourselves to limit our military action within the bounds of the Empire to Oris and Tozoa Provinces. We do not intend to break these limits, but we do not believe you can tell the difference between the factions within Golarion, and I expect there to be military actions within the Empire's boundaries not limited to those two provinces in which Golarion magic is used shortly, and I expect that now the assurance I gave you will make you expect false things, which was very much opposed to what I intended when I first gave that insurance.

I do not expect you to trust my words, and the delegates may or may not help with that, but for whatever value it has I greatly regret that the past negotiations were thus in your eyes betrayed. I value my soldiers lives' greatly, and champions of Aroden are difficult for him to fill the places of, but I have nonetheless sent them to you because it is my duty to try with great vigor to convince you that I am possible to negotiate with. I will make great expenditures towards that goal if there are any that you or I believe may be truly helpful.

This I swear unto you: I did not take and would not have taken any actions which I believed you believed would have been a betrayal of the terms, stated or otherwise, of our negotiations. I did not give my permission for anyone else to do so. I at no point misrepresented by knowing action or inaction our goals or purposes. That my god would cast me aside if I had done what you must believe that I have done.

Future messages directed to me can be placed in any location not warded against scrying with any of my mage-artifacts available to target.

 

Let me begin by saying that I defected by my own free choice, as free as choices ever are, to the world of Iomedae. I doubt that You will believe this and I cannot prove it now, but it is still worth the statement. At that time I was not thinking unusually clearly, but it is my belief that the compulsions were more to blame than the headband, although the headband did contribute to the unusual mental state I was then in.

It was then my reasoning that if I returned to the Imperial City, the gods would then desire to plan my assassination. I believe now that this was false and that I was misled by my desire to avoid the compulsions that bound me, and so to believe that to depart the Empire was the finest way to serve it. I regret that I did not see any truer path.

I do believe now that my choice to betray the Empire will serve it better than any other choice would have; if I had returned to Jacona I could have only with much greater difficulty averted this purposeless and destructive war that neither party can gain from. The Empire could not win the war again; this I cannot prove, but I predict that you will think as I do when you know more. For true honesty's sake I believe that if I had come back to the Imperial City and spoken to You, You would have believed that either I was a traitor or that my mind had broken under the strain. I agree it could be said that my mind had in fact broken under the strain, but it is my true conviction that I was rightly thinking in every important way. I once more believe that my loyalties remain to the Empire in truth, the Empire of the First Emperor, but I do acknowledge that I would say this were I misleading you.

All I can say is to repeat the writing of Iomedae: It is a matter of the highest importance that you absolutely do not target a scry on Tar-Baphon. If he learns of the Empire and seeks to command it, it will spell doom for the Empire and for Iomedae.

I do not yet know where to travel from here, but I do not perceive myself nor Iomedae to be enemies of the Empire, and I desire instead to rebuild some little trust and to work for a greater good.

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Ughhhhh Bastran really hates reading rewritten letters. Especially when the originals were from people he knows. Altarrin's is downright uncanny, and - there's the unfortunate downside that he feels significantly less able to judge whether Altarrin really wrote it, or whether he was, at the time, in his right mind. He...practically admits that he hasn't been in his right mind. 

 

The rewording of Iomedae's is...if anything harder to account for, he's read only a few samples of her writing and still finds her terrifyingly unpredictable and so he can't tell if and where meanings might have been subtly shifted. 

He's...glad for the warning, though. Iomedae is right, at this point her words are wind, but - she could just not have warned him. She certainly didn't need to send her own people as hostages, or tell him details about this 'Alfirin' who is apparently counted among her allies but not under her command. 

He finds himself wanting to order that they definitely not kill the captive diplomats, half out of...spite...? To prove that the Empire is better than Iomedae? He's not sure. It isn't just that he hates ordering executions. 

 

 

Altarrin... 

Alive. It's - more of a relief than he had realized - he had never explicitly formed the thought that Altarrin might be dead but it must have been there in the back of his mind. 

Fragments of the letter drift in his head, as he rereads it aimlessly. 

 

 

You would have believed that either I was a traitor or that my mind had broken under the strain

the compulsions were more to blame than the headband, although the headband did contribute

it could be said that my mind had in fact broken under the strain

I was misled by my desire to avoid the compulsions that bound me

I defected by my own free choice, as free as choices ever are

 

to rebuild some little trust and to work for a greater good

 

 

my loyalties remain to the Empire in truth, the Empire of the First Emperor

 

 

 

I regret that I did not see any truer path

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He can process that later. Feelings: in box. 

 

The Emperor's orders are to scry for Altarrin - they'll need a specialist, he's not stupid and neither is the Adept who is probably puppeting him - they should try to scry for her as well. And of course target the room directly, though likely they'll have moved on by now. 

 

As long as Iomedae's diplomats are being cooperative, he wants the interrogators to be courteous, but they need to know everything. Details of the war with Tar-Baphon, as much as they know; anything more they can say about the circumstances of Altarrin's arrival, was it expected - it wouldn't have been, if Iomedae is telling the truth, it would have startled her as badly as his disappearance startled the Empire. Right? 

- whether Iomedae has an independent way to travel between worlds, or is counting entirely on Altarrin, that's important - 

 

- what was Altarrin here to do, assuming he didn't Gate out the instant he had rested - 

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They'll get a scrying-specialist to track down the fugitive and his allies and his base!

... OK, several scrying-specialists.

... OK, every scrying specialist in the Empire they can get their hands on.

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... Can they explain some basic concepts, they will try to avoid saying in quite these words, like 'undead', 'lich', 'necromancer', 'Alfirin', and 'Shining Crusade'? Also the circumstances of Altarrin's arrival? Really, how does travel between worlds work? I mean, how did Iomedae even get here in the first place?

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The diplomats have orders from Iomedae to be entirely candid and as helpful as possible. 

It's possible to use magic to animate corpses! This leaves the souls stuck in those corpses. It's debated how much the souls are conscious and suffering, but probably not 'none', and more if the necromancer doing it is Tar-Baphon. A lich is an Evil wizard who puts his soul in an object so he can't be killed, except if you find the object and destroy it. 

Alfirin is a ninth circle archmage. It's as powerful as a wizard can get, which is to say that wizards keep getting more powerful after that but there aren't tenth-circle spells. (Greater complexity lets spells do more. A fifth circle spell is the Golarion equivalent of a Gate. A sixth circle spell can, say, do that involuntarily to someone else, or do Chain Lightning across a battlefield. A seventh circle spell can Gate to a different plane. They are not wizard experts and don't know any famous eighth circle wizard spells - maybe an extradimensional Mansion is eighth circle? Ninth circle spells are, like, Tsunami, and Time Stop, and Wail of the Banshee, and Wish. The 'if you're nearby, and the ninth circle is not your ally, you die and it's not close' spells.)

The Shining Crusade is the war between Taldor and Tar-Baphon, except, Tiaves observes, ' crusade' sounds nobler and more heroic and easier to fundraise for.  (Kiritan's telling is that a crusade just is an exceptionally noble and just war, Good against Evil.) The war with Tar-Baphon has been on for twenty years, as they've ground their way across more than three hundred miles of horribly haunted, frequently mountainous territory. (It doesn't sound like they have permanent Gate-thresholds, or anything like it.) They're within a campaign season's striking distance of Gallowspire, his stronghold, now, but they have no way to take it, though of course it could fall as easily as Urgir. 

....Urgir fell a few days ago. It was a dwarven sky-citadel, impossible to enter with dimensional transit magic, its walls nearly impregnable even with very large magical explosions, held by a hundred thousand of the enemy, and the army as it besieged Urgir was encircled by a second army of Tar-Baphon's, of nearly the same size, and then Iomedae called the gods to her righteous cause and Urgir fell without bloodshed. It sounds unbelievable but they were all there, and witnessed it; Iomedae grew her wings and flew, and spoke to all within miles, and told them that she'd come to liberate the city, and then magic slaughtered all the undead within it, and bound all the living to not resist her or hurt anyone including themselves, and made new gates through the walls, and they marched into a city powerless to stop them and opened the ordinary gates and are now bringing order and civilization and prosperity. (Iomedae is being very strict about ensuring that none of the local civilians are wronged, even though the local civilians are orcs and keep trying to kill them. It helps a lot that the local civilians are magically unable to actually hurt anyone, most of the time.)

They know nothing at all about Altarrin's arrival; it must have been kept very very secret. He was in a Magnificent Mansion Alfirin put up just outside the city when they met him. His arrival still is being kept very very secret, actually; Iomedae had a song-sorcerer on hand to erase their memories of the briefing, if they didn't want the mission. (If they didn't want their memories modified, they'd have been turned away at an earlier stage). Iomedae says that Altarrin's arrival was a surprise to her, that she had not intended or expected it, and they genuinely believe that she not only wouldn't but in an important sense metaphysically couldn't have been lying. 

They have no idea what Altarrin is here to do, aside from drop them off.

 

They also know nothing about interworld travel beyond that Aroden did it a lot, and that Alfirin is a ninth circle archmage and those can kind of do almost anything if they have time to prepare, and that Iomedae is a nascent god and probably getting between worlds is easier than miraculously taking a city.

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Hey, the Ministry of Progress is our political ally, we should tell them Ministry of Progress to get on that animating-dead-corpses thing, especially if it's a possible route to immortality.

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And, back to the paladins!

This sounds very interesting, and they're curious about how they define the magic of wizards and song-sorcerers and people the gods give miracles and everything. (The Ministry of Barbarians intends to transport them to somewhere even further away where it's harder for their godly influence to do things just as soon as it has a minute.) This does indeed sound extraordinary! Can they tell them more about...

... Paladins, dwarves, orcs, 'nascent gods', how logistics works in their world...

(This list will go on for a while.)

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Meanwhile:

 

If they get half a dozen of the literal top spell-researchers with past work in scrying variants to, in parallel, try different ways of targeting or routing the search-spell, first to get around all known types of shield and then some wildly improvised modifications that might get around hypothetical shield-techniques not actually known to the Empire - 

(they think probably Altarrin is just not in this world at all, but they'll keep trying)

- they still can't target on either Altarrin or Alfirin, but in about thirty-five minutes, one of the scry-specialists trying three modifications at once, one of which is novel and invented on the spot, will be able to get through to the room. 

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Altarrin is totally still in the room! He's not incapacitated with fatigue or anything, but he wants to be actually rested before forging out into less thoroughly shielded areas of Velgarth, invisible or not. He's dug out a bedroll and is lying down on it, though not sleeping. 

 

He is also Mind Blanked and not visible on scrying. There's just a bedroll that might perhaps be subtly flattened. 

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Oh, is that a scry? She rather thought that might happen.

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The scry specialist terminates his spell, clears his throat, and announces to the room,

"Scrying an archmage, or something an archmage cares about, or a room that happens to contain an archmage, is a risky proposition. This could have been a final strike. Don't bother me again."

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh???!!!!

 

They do have guards, one of whom will have an unscaffolded Gate up underneath the man in about a second and a half, dropping him through into a remote underground shielded room where if he does Final Strike it will at least only cause infrastructure damage - 

 

- does this work 

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It works fine! Now one of their best scryers is in a remote underground shielded room.

 

 

 

 

...No, wait, he just gated out.

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(AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!?????)

 

 

To, uh. Where.  Can they scry him? Can they get him on a comms spell?

 

(also URGENT MESSAGE TO JACONA GET THE EMPEROR TO A SECURE SECRET OFFSITE LOCATION NOW) 

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Not far! Just to his quarters, where they can scry him writing a letter. They can also get him on a comms spell!

<I just want to reiterate that I could have done much worse. I control this man's actions; I control his magic. That is not by any means all I can do. You were idiots operating outside of your normal context so this time you get away with just a warning. If you bother me again, or another less forgiving archmage, you won't get a second.>

...The letter says much the same.

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(Bastran has been RUDELY INTERRUPTED in the middle of his WORK and is now in a randomized secure location a hundred miles away from Jacona. He is grumpy about it.) 

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They immediately drop the comms spell. It would - no one wants to kill a top scrying specialist, especially when this isn't even his fault, but the guards are terrified

 

...The mage-quarters are shielded against magic, not to a Work Room level but the mage won't see a Gate outside. 

They are not shielded against Thoughtsensing, and the scrying specialist is not wearing a talisman. There aren't many Thoughtsensers strong enough to knock someone out by hitting them hard enough along the Mindspeech channel, but they can have someone there in twenty-five seconds, hopefully while the compulsioned man is still staying put? 

 

Does the alien compulsion magic do anything to protect him from being knocked unconscious with a very hard Mindspeech thwack? 

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Nope! He is now unconscious at his desk, message hopefully thoroughly delivered.

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They will watch to be sure that he stays that way for a full minute and then send some Healers in, both to provide medical attention and to make sure he stays out while they try to figure out what spell is on him and whether it can be removed. 

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They were expecting a scry, quite possibly while Altarrin was still resting, and so the instant Alfirin warns him, Altarrin scoops everyone close together with a force-net and then dropping them through a horizontal unscaffolded Gate. 

- onto the other continent. His placement is not very accurate because he's doing it off an extremely out of date map, but it's hard to miss an entire continent and ten thousand miles is...completely doable, apparently, with the belt...but absolutely no one in the Empire should have scry locations or even the range, and he and Alfirin are still unscryable. 

 

They land in the middle of a desert. 

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She can puppet the Empire on a brief merry chase (Or a longer one if she had particular reason to) and hold a conversation at the same time.

"...This does not seem like an ideal place for resting. Are you recovered enough, or is there a better place to rest nearby that you know of, or should I be finding or creating shelter."

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He checks his reserves. 

 

"- I can make do. Give me a moment to scry. - we are on the other continent. It is smaller and less populated and I do not have supply caches here, but it has the virtue of being definitely outside the Empire's range. And I think it must have some diamond markets, once I can find where the cities are - the map was very out of date." 

He's going to sit down for it, though, and cast a reverse weather-barrier first because it is uncomfortably hot

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Oh. 'The other continent'. Of course that's what it's called.

Scrying and transportation are definitely the relative advantage of Velgarth's magic system, and the weather-barrier is a good enough short-term solution that she's not going to conjure a house, so she'll just stand around uselessly. She can hand Altarrin a lesser restoration potion, though. "Drink it, we have more and I'd rather not have you exhausted."

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He drinks it, and - wow, their healing magic is quite something - thanks her earnestly. 

 

It takes about ten minutes of Velgarth scrying to confirm that nearly all the dense population centers on this continent are around the coast. There are five major cities, none quite as large as the biggest Haighlei cities or southern port cities but certainly big enough to have markets and gem-merchants. 

If Alfirin and the accountant are ready, and once Alfirin has made them invisible, Altarrin can Gate them to the outskirts of the largest city. They'll want to walk the rest of the way to the market, to make it less obvious that a totally un-Gifted person just inexplicably arrived by Gate. It'll take them longer, here - Altarrin's attention-getting strategy had its upsides - but there are also risks to getting attention, even here where the Empire has no way to learn of it. 

Do they have some kind of cover story planned, or is it just "show up with an unreasonable quantity of gold, ask to buy All the diamonds above this size." 

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Does Velgarth have the stereotype of eccentric independent mages? It seems like the sort of cover story that would do something to deter outright theft.

...Also they in fact want all the diamonds. The biggest ones are the most useful, but smaller ones are used for other spells, or can be ground into dust that is used for other spells, and are still worth acquiring at a massive discount to their Golarion values.

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He's not sure of the exact details of stereotypes here, but it's probably workable for the accountant to claim he's shopping on behalf of an eccentric independent mage, which Alfirin and Altarrin hover invisibly. If it looks like anyone is tempted to try theft, well, compulsions are very low powered and Altarrin is very good at them and he can probably redirect would-be thieves toward better ideas than that. 

They'll want to keep an eye on the time; they're halfway around the world from the Empire, and it's morning here, but back in the Empire it's already late afternoon. Which is convenient, actually, they can spend four or five candlemarks here making a tour of all the cities and maybe even learn where the diamond mines are, and then head back once the Emperor is in bed. Though Altarrin isn't sure how to best combine that timing with the Aritha kidnapping, because once she vanishes the Emperor's guards will definitely wake him. 

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...They'll try to wake him. Which will probably alarm them further. Because Bastran will, in fact, remain asleep until he's finished with his conversation with Altarrin. That is still a reason to delay Aritha's kidnapping until Altarrin and Bastran have had some time to talk - she can make sure the dream has a clock in it if Altarrin wants to keep track of the time.

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They can do that then, after they've finished buying out every diamond market at every major city on this continent. 

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The delegates are still helpfully answering questions.

Paladins are Lawful Good representatives of the gods within a step of Lawful Good - so, Neutral Good, Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral. (Aroden's Lawful Neutral). Paladins are immediately stripped of their powers if they fall, either on Good or on Law. This would be expected to happen instantly, if they broke their sworn word or betrayed a parley or murdered an innocent person or something, but it usually happens more gradually, of someone making compromises they've given insufficient consideration, one too many times. The point is, if someone is a paladin and still has their divine powers (which, for these not-very-powerful paladins, mean just their magical healing and their aura of fearlessness and immunity to disease and ability to smite Evil which they obviously won't be using), then they are Lawful Good and everyone in Golarion knows it and that means everyone in Golarion can trust them. Paladin orders work extremely hard to make sure their members don't fall and also aren't afraid of doing things to the point of being useless and also have a useful reputation and also get the order's objectives actually done in the real world. The Knights of Ozem are...certainly the greatest paladin order in the world today, maybe in remembered history, and the reason is Iomedae. She's very good at recruiting, she's a brilliant tactician, she's ruthless in the manner that lends itself to 'deliberately strengthening their people by placing them under lots of occasionally-lethal combat pressure' but not in the manner that lends itself to 'your paladins fall' - 

- Urgir is of course uncharacteristic in that nothing like Urgir has ever happened before, but it's also characteristic, in that Iomedae is the kind of person who would try to besiege and take a city without any of the crusaders under your command doing any Evil, and the kind of person who would actually succeed. Many people would try that and therefore be ineffectual commanders; many people are effectual commanders because they don't try things like that. Iomedae doesn't lose, but she pulls out every trick you could imagine and many you couldn't in order to fix problems that anyone else half as ruthless as her would have resigned themselves to. One gets the sense she has never resigned herself to anything. 

 

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People who the gods grant magic are often like any other before the gods grant the magic, aside from whatever strength of character inspired their god to choose them, and like most kinds of people on Golarion they get stronger through adversity, which (it's disagreed on) either strengthens their soul and gives their god the ability to grant them more magic or, as it's service to their god, is rewarded with more magic. They pray for spells, and can then cast them. Most people granted powers by the gods are clerics, which unlike paladins can be of any alignment near that of their god. Some people granted divine power are weirder, stranger things, and not all even know the source of their divine power. It's a big world. Powerful paladins can do what they've seen Iomedae do - kill things very very effectively, heal, fly around on angel's wings, make their allies fearless, use a divine-bonded sword. Powerful clerics are much more flexible, and can generally use their magic to strengthen their allies and whole armies, and travel between planes and summon allied outsiders, as well as channeling healing energy more often than paladins and casting healing spells pretty much as-needed.

Sorcerers are anyone whose magic is inborn and who can use their magic flexibly as an act of will instead of building it from scratch or obtaining it from an external source. Song-sorcerers work through song, they mostly do morale and enchantment and illusion and so on. It's hard to characterize sorcerers; most of them can only do a few things, but there are few things that no sorcerer can do. 

Wizards have to be clever, and they build magic themselves on magical scaffolds, with no innate ability required. It's slow to learn and hard to master, but the most powerful and dangerous people in Golarion are generally wizards. Weak wizards can do minor spells, clean laundry, protect themselves from the elements, make food and drink tastier, that kind of thing; strong wizards are Alfirin, or Tar-Baphon, who can flit among the planes doing as they please unless someone like Iomedae raises an army to fight them (which can only really destroy their operations on Golarion and convince them it's less trouble to go elsewhere; for Iomedae to actually kill Tar-Baphon so he stays dead she'll need some miracles.) It's wizards who do things like remove their souls and build demiplanes and turn into dragons and craft mage-artifacts.

Dwarves and orcs are other kinds of people, from the Darklands unless that's a myth. Orcs are violent and impulsive. They still matter, they're still people, it's still wrong to wrong them and good when they have the things they need to lead good lives, but they're collectively very hard to deal with. There's exceptions to any rule, though, and some orc crusaders who are good soldiers. Dwarves are long-lived and extremely short and many of the greatest works of craftsmanship on the face of the world are Dwarven work. There are plenty of Dwarves in the crusade. There are also....kind of a lot of other kinds of people. Elves and gnomes and halflings and goblins and merfolk and kobolds and tieflings and dragons and giants and aasimar and bird-folk and cat-folk and rat-folk and that's definitely not a comprehensive list. 

 

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Kiritan's explanation of the fact Iomedae is a nascent god is just that - Lawful Good isn't good enough. Its gods are ancient and alien. Trustworthy, but - trustworthy to not hurt you, not trustworthy to leverage you towards fixing everything wrong for everyone who has ever lived or ever will. Hell still exists. So do Abaddon and the Abyss. It's unacceptable, and everyone knows it's unacceptable, and Iomedae is the one person who might be careful enough and powerful enough to change it. She and Aroden have obviously been angling that way for - well, for as long as Kiritan has personally been going to Aroden's church in Absalom and hearing about the Crusade. Iomedae understands Good, can transmit it to other people, embodies Law and can inspire it in her army. She can do things no one else can do, and Aroden hasn't picked a new herald since Arazni died because it's obviously Iomedae, and she took Urgir by miracle and she thinks like a god and she does magic only gods can do and she's explained why there needs to be a new Lawful Good god and the world needs her desperately. She'll go for the Starstone when the time is right but she's - already the person who will. 

(The Starstone? Oh, it's a trial Aroden set up that makes you a god if you pass. Obviously anyone can try it if they want. Mostly they'll die, though.)

Tiaves's explanation is slightly different. "Look," he says. "Iomedae is a legendary hero, the sort of person whose abilities can't be approximated by imagining anyone else, or an army of anyone elses. She's a tactical genius, she's not at all a bad politician, she goes around wearing say an eighth of the accumulated wealth of Golarion's largest empire, she has fought Tar-Baphon hand to hand a dozen times and it's him who generally has to run. Nearly every other powerful person on the planet has served on her crusade, or is the target of it. She just took a city that hadn't fallen for thousands of years. She is obviously greatly favored by Aroden, and extraordinarily powerful, and once we beat Tar-Baphon, if we beat Tar-Baphon, she'll have her own country in what used to be Ustalav, headquartered in a ludicrously well-defended dwarven sky-citadel with two different permanent active Miracles defending it. She'll have a large and experienced army, and no enemies on Golarion who'd dare get within range of her.

A lot of people ask themselves, what's she doing next, right? Some kinds of person, it'd be 'build an empire', but she has treaties already, with all of her new nation's neighbors. It's the undead we were asked to take up swords against, not the living. She means the adventurers presently in her service to disperse, in some cases all the way to Tian Xia, with stories of this war and the miracles she worked in fighting it. She has accumulated immense influence, respect, admiration, and, frankly, worship on Golarion, and it's not so she can conquer, and it's not so she can retire. She's not - none of us are - the kind of people who retire. 

The work she's been at, for at least ten years, is building a church, and building a legend, so that when she goes for the Starstone a lot of people across Golarion will worship her as a god already, and reach out to her in prayer, and that's helpful to gods that are just starting out. If the war ends well, and ends cleanly, then within a few years, she'll set up the habitable parts of Ustalav as an independent country under her church - that kind of thing is easier to do as a mortal - she'll disperse the word across the world, she'll write her holy book and have it cried on the streets of every city, and she'll go for it. There are no guarantees, but - Aroden built the trials, and Aroden works, through her, the greatest miracles anyone has ever seen Him work, and all of Good will be in her favor, and Gorum too, and Pharasma who hates the undead, and all of Law save Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon who know She'll be eternally their enemy - she's been building a coalition among the gods just like she's been building one among the mortals, is what I'm saying. It would not surprise me to learn she picked the crusade in the first place to get Pharasma to back her ascension.

And there's no one in the world I'd rather have bring human values, and what it takes to see them realized, to Lawful Good. I've scoured the history books and there's no one in history I'd expect to do better. She's smart, and good, and careful, and she's ours, and She'll be our god and we'll be her church, and then I guess we'll fix everything, everywhere, for everyone."

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... The Ministry of Justice wishes to explain to the Emperor that, uh, when it tried to scry the fugitives to apprehend them, an alien Adept used a terrifyingly powerful alien compulsion to overrule the first successful scryer's other compulsions and make him Gate out, then write and speak an explanation that the any "archmage" like her could cast compulsions on anyone who caught her in their Scry-area including a compulsion to Final Strike, and also to insult and threaten them if they ever try to scry on her again.

So, probably this Alfirin person Iomedae warned them about is already here.

(The Ministry of Barbarians has been sharing information, which it doesn't do often, but, crisis.)

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Well! That explains the having been suddenly and abruptly Gated out to a secure compound! Is the threat under control now? If the mage is now secured somewhere, do they they have any avenue to study the spell and figure out how it works and whether it can be blocked or unraveled?

He...can probably just work from here for the rest of the day. It's annoying, and probably doesn't even offer much protection in the case where this archmage 'Alfirin' actually wants to sabotage or take over the Empire or something, but it will make his guards less stressed. 

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The threat appears to be as over as any threat can be over when a terrifyingly powerful mage with unknown capabilities is rampaging around the Empire.

Quick analysis took place but there was deemed to be no simple way to block the spell or remove it safely as it overruled all other compulsions, so the spell was cut. Cutting it was simple for a mage, produced significant backlash on the victim, and the scrier is presently in intensive medical care. He is not expected to recover.

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...Reasonable of them. Hopefully if they don't keep trying to scry the archmage then she'll - leave them alone - 

(He would be terrified but his emotions continue to be put away to deal with later.) 

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If they had a sufficiently powerful dispel on hand they probably would have done that sooner, which means they probably killed the scryer. Pity, that.

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The Ministry of Barbarians reports on what the paladins are saying!

They boast of their sterling moral character, and say that they can only be chosen by the gods that respect law and justice, and that if paladins ever betray these their gods stop giving powers. But gods can give lots of different people lots of different powers, and the only constant rule among all these types is that they need to stay loyal to their gods. Iomedae boasts that she has lots of way scarier people and she just sent these because they'd be nonthreatening; so far they haven't demonstrated any magical powers yet, though they claim to be Healers and immune to fear. She says she has huge armies loyal to her and that they all have magical powers like-her-but-weaker.

They're pretty sure Iomedae is perfect in every possible respect as a general and a leader and a hero and completely unbeatable and they, fundamentally, worship her. They think she's partway through turning herself into a god, that almost all the other gods back her, that she just took a city with impossible miracles. They say that Aroden, the god who was once a man who Iomedae serves, invented a way for humans to transform themselves into gods, and that Iomedae will use it once she's built an invincible kingdom allied with all the other countries she hasn't conquered and fix everything wrong with the world.

They claim there are very large numbers of different sentient species with widely varying psychologies and lifespans.

They claim that people not born mages can learn magic (!) if they're sufficiently clever and know the right tricks, and that this learned magic, which they call "wizardry," is more versatile and can be more powerful than the magic of an ordinary mage, which they call a sorcerer; they may or may not count all Mind-Gifts as sorcery, as many barbarians outside the Empire do - as far as they're concerned, sorcerer powers are very wide in category, often involve song, and are very hard to precisely categorize. (This is fairly common, among barbarians, who sometimes do channel mind-gifts through song.)

This is, of course, a summary, and they have transcripts, but it's the important bit.

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(Kastil is, of course, trying to figure out how to drop an assassination squad on Alfirin if she ever shows her face directly anywhere in the empire.)

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....The Ministry of Progress should immediately start looking into this 'wizardry' that can apparently be learned by anyone, even those without Gifts. 

Iomedae is - very good at this. That part isn't news, exactly, she was halfway to building a church that worshipped her in Oris

He'll read the full transcript too, of course, but it's - fundamentally the problem is that he has no idea how to think about it, when he can't verify anything save that the "paladins" currently being questioned believe everything they're saying. 

It's a nice story. He would be tempted to believe in Iomedae too, in their place. 

 

He waits for further updates. 

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The Ministry of Progress will of course obey; does this overrule the previous top-priority order to try to find ways to get to Golarion themselves? And if they're both top-priority orders, can it have a higher budget?

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They can go on the list of departments that cannot tolerate a budget cut right now. Actually increasing it would imply a source of funds that they do not, in fact, have. 

 

- scrying Iomedae's world sounds like it might...go badly...if they do it before they have a better understanding of its magical capabilities. They should keep the current research team on it though. 

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The Ministry of Barbarians will quietly attempt to pump them for everything they know about Alfirin, wizardry and how it works, dimensional travel and all the nonsense their world's magic enables.

Also, they want to know what they know about the rebellion in Oris; from their perspective Iomedae invaded their territory out of the blue, so they're kind of confused about this 'she is a good person who respects the laws of the land' thing.

(At some point they will move the delegates from the Knights of Ozem to a different location wayyy further away from things they might sabotage and people they might assassinate, but still on a major Gate-canal line, and get them rooms that are exceptionally bugged but are not prison cells.)

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The paladins will happily answer these questions too! Strategic decisions about how much the Empire should know were presumably made by Iomedae before she selected them; their job is just to explain everything they know so that hopefully there can be peace or at least the Empire can avoid annoying, and being enslaved by, Tar-Baphon. They know wizards use spellbooks which have inks with special magic-relevant characteristics. Wizards can either learn spellforms from other wizards or derive them from first principles though the latter is difficult. They know dimensional transit is a high-circle wizard and sorcerer and cleric magic. 

They know that an apprentice can in a few years have a grasp of weak magics, and that an ambitious and lucky wizard with other wizards to learn from and lots of hard fighting, say because they're in the crusade, can reach fifth circle from first circle in a decade or two if they don't die for good along the way, and seventh circle from fifth in another decade or two, but probably not ninth even with the rest of their (magically extended) life, though of course occasionally some manage it, and occasionally it goes faster, like if Arazni, who was herself a ninth circle wizard before she became a demigod, is there to learn from. 

They know that Alfirin is ludicrously powerful. They've seen her do Tsunamis and they know she carries one of the crusade's diamonds so she can do a Wish in a pinch. They don't know all that much about her as a person? She's not the kind of person who comes to eat with the soldiers and talk at length about all of her nonsecret strategic decisionmaking, like Iomedae is, or to give grand speeches. She and Iomedae fight together, and she's obviously a very strategically important ally, but Alfirin's not in Iomedae's chain of command. Ninth circle wizards don't generally take orders from anyone. 

Iomedae didn't explain the situation in Oris in that much depth. She said that - the Empire runs on mind control, and that no one in it is free enough to consider whether the existence of the Empire itself serves its people or the other people of the world - like, not that they're selfish, that they are mind controlled to not be allowed to weigh the tradeoff, not to be allowed to stop even if it's not worth it to keep going.  She said that Oris had been fighting for its independence, and she'd backed them, and she thinks that an independent Oris would be in the interests of almost everyone involved, but then she got killed, directly by the Empire but indirectly by local-god-interference. 

She said the Empire bans all the gods though this was understandable of the Empire since the local gods seem pretty unhelpful and the way that people relate to gods in general quite troubling to the Empire for philosophical reasons she's actually inclined to grant them. She said that Aroden could vastly improve things on that front, and block the interference of the other gods, but that He was going to have a hard time getting a foothold without Iomedae, and of course right now she can't be spared from Urgir. 

...Lawful doesn't mean she respects the laws whatever they are. That's a decent approximation to use if you are inexperienced at Law, a guardrail of sorts, but it's not what Law is. It doesn't mean if you land on a revolution you always side with the people who conquered the country a year ago. Law is - well, Iomedae would've sent terms as soon as she decided to fight in the war, and tried to arrange talks, and conducted them in good faith. If they'd arrived at terms she'd have abided by them. She wouldn't have lied in any communications at any point, or been strategically bad at thinking about anything in order to convey a biased impression, or selected a person to write terms who she thought would get things wrong in her favor. That's Law.

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The results of the questioning reach Bastran at intervals, in neat summarized reports with attached full transcripts if he wants to take the time to read those as well. 

It's not a huge amount to go on, for the magic. Bastran...does not really expect the Ministry of Progress researchers to get very far in whatever time is granted to them. It's worth trying anyway, of course, and he's not sure he trusts that sense of pessimism, his internal predictions have a tendency to be unduly pessimistic when he's tired, or sad about something, and right now he's both, even if he's not dwelling on either because it wouldn't help. 

He's still very confused about the relationship between Alfirin and Iomedae. Alfirin - isn't in her chain of command, and theoretically doesn't take her orders, but does her favors anyway, despite being powerful enough that she would hardly need Iomedae's goodwill? ...Think about it later. 

The relayed explanation of Iomedae's attitude toward Oris is...unsurprising...and doesn't really tell him anything new. Of course she would claim that a free Oris with a church of Aroden in it is in everyone's interests, somehow even in the Empire's interests. Of course she would claim that Aroden isn't like the other gods that the Empire has encountered. Not that this means her claims are false, but - it's not really new evidence that they're true, either. 

Generous of her (he thinks, a little sarcastically) to concede, after the fact and past the point when it could matter, that maybe she misjudged the local gods and the Empire was right all along about Their unhelpfulness and Their opposition to the cause of civilization and progress. Took her long enough to notice. 

 

...The explanation of what 'Lawful' means, separate from 'obeying laws', feels like - the kind of thing Altarrin would talk about, and that he might actually follow if Altarrin were the one trying to explain. He doesn't really follow the version of it explained by the delegates. 

But it does seem like some kind of information, positive rather than negative, that Iomedae sent diplomats at all, and apparently ordered them to be cooperative and helpful. It's not like she couldn't have done it as a trick, to get the Empire's guard down, but...she didn't have to do it at all. 

 

He is of course on edge, given the strong implication in Iomedae's letter that Alfirin would at some point act against the Empire. It keeps feeling like the other shoe should drop at any moment. 

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It should, by this point, be late into the night in the Empire. She puts Altarrin into a mindscape, (a quiet parlour) explains the way to wake up (walk through the door), and that she'll give him an hour after Bastran shows up before she does anything else. (There's a clock, and unlike in a normal dream, it even tells time.)

Discern location. Spell Resistance. Greater Teleport. (500 feet up) Limited Wish.

And then she can invisibly, undetectably descend into the emperor's bedroom as easily as if he were sleeping in an open field. Physical barriers are for other people.

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The Emperor sleeps in a room shielded against scrying. The door is guarded, and there are wards to detect dozens of kinds of magic - as well as any unexpected magical signature above a certain total power output - but nothing to sense an invisible and undetectable Alfirin as she approaches, even as she passes through the shields. 

 

The Emperor is asleep. 

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It's usually quite hard to completely hide Golarion magic; There are some spells that can mask the auras of other active spells, but hiding a spell so it has no signature at all even in the moment of casting - it can be done, but only with two talented spellcasters well-practiced in working together, one casting the spell of concealment at the same time that the other casts the spell to be concealed. It's outright impossible for a single caster to do it - the two spells have to be truly simultaneous.

 

 

Every ninth-circle archmage can do at least two things everyone else thinks are impossible. Alfirin can hang cleric spells and cast a quickened mask dweomer in the middle of another working. The alarms don't sound. The Emperor is still asleep, but now he's having a very different dream.

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Bastran was in the middle of a confused and stressful dream where he was at his desk, working on some very important treaty, except that his secretary kept sending people in to request that he sign documents, which kept having the wrong number of pages, and the wax wasn't melting right for the seal and for some reason he only had ink in weird colors like 'bright green', and he couldn't even stand up to get better ink or wax because he had forgotten to put on trousers that morning. 

 

- and now he's stepping into a quiet parlor. Somehow, even though it doesn't make sense, he doesn't feel confused or surprised. There's a quiet calm behind everything.

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Altarrin is waiting for him, sitting in an armchair. He doesn't speak at first, just looks at Bastran with an expression far less guarded than anything he's shown before. There's - grief, and regret, and apology, and frustration, and deep, deep tiredness. 

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For some reason this isn't surprising either. 

 

He takes a step forward. "Altarrin. ...This isn't real, I'm dreaming of you. I wish -" 

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Altarrin shakes his head, slightly. "Dreaming, yes, but we are both really here. It is a spell from Iomedae's world, that Alfirin cast for me. I - am sorry, I realize that is an escalation, but - less of one than kidnapping you, and I needed to speak with you in private." 

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What? 

 

...He walks to the other armchair and sits down, because that at least sounds less awkward than standing here stupidly and staring at Altarrin with his jaw hanging open. 

"I...got your letter," he manages eventually. "Well. Not - exactly what you wrote - one of the Office of Inquiry scholars did a rewrite. In case it was a mind control letter." 

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Sigh. "An understandable precaution, though - I assume it means the message you received is not exactly the one I sent. ...It does not really matter. Most of what I wished to say to you, I did not want to put in writing where the Office of Inquiry would read it." 

 

He ducks his head. "...Are you all right? I know - it cannot have been easy, these last few days." 

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For a few moments, all Bastran can manage to do is stare blankly. 

 

"Am all right?" he squeeze out finally, faintly. "I'm not the one who got kidnapped to another world! ...Or, I mean, I know that's not what you're claiming happened and you - presumably believe what you wrote - but it doesn't exactly sound better from your point of view." 

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Of course that's the first direction Bastran would go. It would almost makes him smile, if not for the fifty other reasons why the situation is not one to smile about. 

"I - was not very all right, no. I am much more all right now, and the reasons why are part of what I wanted to speak about here. But there is - some history to explain first." 

He closes his eyes. "I understand that once I tell you of it, the secret is out of my hands. But - you are the first person in this world I have ever told. I hope you will take that as an indication of trust." 

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Great. Okay. Where is this going. Altarrin is being incredibly ominous and he hates it. 

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He takes a deep breath. It would be really nice, honestly, if he could have someone do the paladin fearlessness effect for this. Frustrating how even in a dream, it's nervewracking. 

"What I am about to say will sound implausible. I cannot prove it here, but I can at least - offer suggestions for what you can check later."

A pause.

"I am immortal. It is - somewhat complicated - this body is not immortal, and over the centuries I have had many names. But I am about seven hundred years old. I was born before the Cataclysm, and - my first name, the one I was given at birth, was Ma'ar." 

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He makes himself meet Bastran's eyes, even though it really isn't making this easier to speak about. 


"A century after that, I went by Arvad. I - it was my fault, as much as anyone's, that civilization as we knew it before the Cataclysm was destroyed. I was the only survivor who - remembered the magic from before. It was very important to me, to rebuild something, and - that is what I have been trying ever since." 

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Bastran's mind is still bouncing away from it. It's too big, too much, it doesn't fit in his conception of how anything works. 

"If you were really Ma'ar, and then you were Arvad and wrote half our histories on that period, surely you could've painted yourself in a better light," he says dubiously, because that's the first thing his mind manages to actually grab onto. 

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Altarrin's eyelids flicker downward. "It would hardly have accomplished any of my goals at that point," he says quietly. "It was - too late to matter how people remembered him." 

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...And he didn't want to push for it - it's obvious, a flash of insight, of recognition - he didn't want to shape that story, because he couldn't look back on that first life with pride - because he regretted everything, because whatever his intentions, Ma'ar's life was one he thought no one ought to emulate. It's...the frame Bastran can see himself having on it, if he were in that position, and it's - strange, and uncomfortable, recognizing that pattern in Altarrin - his mentor, the man who has always known everything and been in control and wow that really does make a lot more sense, now, knowing that he's centuries old - 

- Altarrin is supposed to be stronger than him, Altarrin isn't supposed to be - sad and lonely and tired and bitter, or weighed down by his own regrets and failures, it feels incorrect to see him like this... 

 

 

I'm sorry, he wants to say, but what good would that do. 

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Altarrin can recognize that look in Bastran's eyes. It...does, actually, mean something to him. 

"Anyway. That is my history. And - I cannot regret that I tried, I will never regret having tried, but the Empire is not what I had wanted to build. We have wealth, and Gates, and books and schools and mage-artifact factories, but - at what cost - its people, our people, are not free, and we cause so much suffering every year - I know how you would have felt about Oris -" 

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Actually the way he feels about Oris is 'can they please not talk about that right now.' 

 

Focus. Altarrin just said a lot of things and Bastran heard all the words and yet somehow feels like he...missed the point, or something - why is Altarrin bringing this up, where is he going with it...? 

"You said you could - give me evidence this is true?" he says, because that at least he can latch onto. 

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He can. Not hard proof - anything Bastran can verify via an independent source is something that Altarrin could theoretically have learned himself from the same source, in order to fake this - but, at least, things that would be more likely observations in a world where Altarrin is really immortal, than in a world where he's faking it or insane. It shouldn't be that hard to give enough points of evidence against the insanity hypothesis, insane people are not known for their coherence or excellent memories of obscure books and events. 

He can even give a few examples of things that no one in the Empire should have a way to know even from books, because he wrote them down only in his personal records and happens to have retained them from his rereading. He doesn't normally prioritize relearning random trivia, but he can mention a basement library that was under a building which collapsed while the Imperial army was putting down a rebellion in an obscure city in Lastun two hundred years ago, and a handful of other things like that. The dream doesn't seem to let them do real magic, or else he would consider teaching Bastran some spells that no one but him knows. 

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Those are indeed a lot of pieces that, while individually explicable, in aggregate definitely start to seem a lot more likely given the premise that Altarrin is a true immortal. 

 

...Bastran is not actually starting from a position of maximum skepticism, here. He knows Altarrin as well as anyone does - Altarrin is...hard to know - but of course Altarrin would make himself immortal, if he could. A human lifetime isn't long enough to accomplish everything that matters to him, and unlike Bastran, who is a coward he isn't the sort of person who would ever willingly declare that his part of the work was done and it was time for the next generation to take up that mantle. He's someone who would carry on the fight alone, for centuries if he had to, never giving up and never walking away... 

 

He'll ask a few clarifying questions, but he's noticeably kind of distracted, this time by an entirely new flavor of waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is just the background Altarrin wanted to give him, before trying to explain what the bigger and worse thing is. Whatever the actual thing is, he's pretty sure that he isn't going to like it. 

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Yeah. That's not unreasonable. Bastran isn't going to like it. 

Altarrin doesn't like it either. He's trying not to let himself get away with stalling - he's watching the clock, they're on a time limit here - but. It keeps feeling like surely there must be some possible world where this would be a joyous conversation. Where Aroden's existence would be uncomplicatedly good news to both of them, an unexpected ally, resources they had never expected to have, a whole other world of people they can help save...

They've used half their time, now, which was the hard cutoff point he gave himself. He...still feels a bit like he's been talking around the important part, though, it's - he's not even sure why his mind wants to flinch away. 

- because he doesn't want to talk about Urtho's Tower, or Predain, because even now it still hurts. 

 

"There is - one further piece I should say, first, about my own history," he says quietly. "Before I turn to recent events. I– before I was a student at Urtho's Tower, I had grown up in a country that was very poor, in a region that was poorer and less civilized than most. It was - the first time I had ever even encountered the concept of Civilization - I think I had always known that things should be better than endlessly fighting your neighbors over your next meal, but it was the first time I had seen what that might look like. I remember– I remember very little, honestly, I lose memories between bodies. But this one has always stayed with me. I remember standing on a high floor of his Tower, looking at the stars, and - at all the other lights, the ones on the ground - and thinking, everywhere should be like this - and I made a promise. To myself, to the stars. That I would never give up, not until everything was fixed and everyone could - have that.

"...That is a significant part of why I took the immortality precautions I did, including the one that survived the Cataclysm, which - is awful in many ways. I mean, I also very much did not want to die, ever, but - I would have evaluated it differently, if it had looked as though anyone else would - actually do that work, to fix everything." 

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Bastran doesn't know what to say. It's clearly a very heartfelt speech, about something deeply important to Altarrin, and - he's also perceptive enough to notice that whatever he said about how okay he is now, Altarrin is - in some kind of emotional distress, as he says it. 

He is still mostly filled with a deep sense of doom about whatever Altarrin is about to say next

He nods along. 

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Altarrin is still deeply wishing this could be a different conversation. It's not just the starting points, the fact that Bastran is absolutely not going to hear any of this as good news, it's - 

- the fact that they're on a deadline, and that after this he's going to have to warn Bastran that he's helping Alfirin kidnap their best hope of gaining an equal footing with Iomedae by learning how to travel between worlds. And then he's going to leave, with Alfirin, taking Aritha with them, and Bastran will still be here, trapped by duty and loyalty that Altarrin trained into him because he thought it was necessary to accomplish his goals, and also literal compulsions, that won't let him change his mind about whether those goals are ones he shares, or whether the Empire is accomplishing them at all. That's the part that hurts. Though thinking about Urtho again, and mistakes that can never be taken back no matter how many new allies or new resources he finds in Iomedae's world, isn't exactly delightful either. 

 

"Did you read Aroden's holy books?" he hears himself say. "Or my notes on them?" 

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Oh no. It's the part he's going to hate, isn't it. Even moreso now that it's occurred to him that he's going to have to recount this to Kastil once he wakes up. And Kastil will probably have among his hypotheses that Bastran is cracking under the strain. 

"Some of the notes were summarized for me," he says, his voice very controlled. 

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Which means 'rewritten by the Office of Inquiry', probably, and who knows what they might have distorted, accidentally or deliberately. ...Also Altarrin's notes were not actually his best work, not by far, he could barely think at the time. 

"Well. Nearly everything I have learned about the teachings of Aroden's church has - sounded like it might have been written to convince me in particular," he says. "Much of it is - what might have written, were I far older and wiser and a better writer." 

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If Altarrin isn't wise enough or a good enough writer to keep up with Aroden's church then what does that make Bastran It probably makes him pathetic to be worrying about how a foreign god's church would see him, and Bastran's brain can shut up actually. 

"Go on?" 

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He'll give a summary. 

He's not especially trying to hide that he has emotions about this. Especially at, there are many, many things that will never be all right, but eventually the ashes drift back to the ground, and the sun rises, and we build anew.

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Altarrin is visibly emotional and this is kind of disturbing! Bastran might also have feelings. He's not sure. If he let himself have them, then they would both be having emotions, and probably Altarrin would notice and have emotions about Bastran's emotions, which would be humiliating, and then who would be driving this metaphorical carriage. 

 

"- And?" he says, because Altarrin was pretty clearly trying to hurry them along, earlier, but he's also pretty clearly distracted now. 

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"...I mean. It is - pointing at what I had been trying to do all along. What I had wanted to build, and not known how. I was obviously suspicious, it seemed too convenient to be true, but - if it were true then it would be one of the most important things imaginable, right, and - in Iomedae's world, when they reacted to my Gating there, I did not see anything obviously in conflict with it–" 

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- he lifts a hand. "Stop. Er, what - are you claiming actually happened, when you Gated there? You didn't really say, in your letter." 

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Shrug.

"I immediately collapsed, the Gate-technique is exhausting and I had already pushed myself with multiple attempts at scrying, after I had Gated to - one of my secret locations where I keep records of past lives. I think she must have ordered someone onsite to hit me over the head, I remember - pain and then nothing - and then waking not in control of my body.

"They had cut my loyalty compulsions. Iomedae was there, with Alfirin, who had placed some very obvious mind-control of her own that forced me to - cooperate. I think their initial assumption was that Tar-Baphon had learned of the Empire and we were either at war with him or already conquered by him, the first questions were just about that. After a time Alfirin relaxed the compulsion effect and we - had more of a normal conversation." 

And then they offered him the emotion-calming spell, because it was obvious he wasn't coping, and it - helped, sort of, and - he doesn't want to talk about that, actually. 

"- I also had diamonds to give them. If you heard from the paladin delegates about how Iomedae captured the enemy city in her world with multiple miracles and incredibly low casualties, that is how. They need large diamonds in order to call for miracles from their gods, for some reason." 

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It's probably obvious from his expression what he's thinking. Bastran doesn't really try to hide it. It's not like Altarrin couldn't guess, unless, you know, he's literally mind-controlled not to be able to think about it, in which case he presumably won't update on the facial expressions either. 

"I did hear about that," he says, very neutrally. 

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Altarrin can read Bastran perfectly well. He's not surprised.

He had on some level vaguely hoped it wouldn't come up, maybe, but - he wasn't going to lie, or even steer away from it, he's– maybe this isn't and can't go the way he wishes this conversation could have gone, under better circumstances than these, but even so, it won't help to step even further away from the conversation he wishes they could be having instead of this one. 

...He really should be honest that Alfirin still has the mind control up on him, even though this is inevitably going to give Bastran the wrong idea of what's happening here, because the reasons why he's comfortable with this and genuinely doesn't expect it to be abused are ones that might be literally impossible to convey accurately. He - settles on not bringing that up, Bastran is going to make the assumption anyway. And they really are on a deadline, here. 

 

"Anyway. At some later point, in Iomedae's world, I read one of the other holy books of Aroden's church. The one that tells the history of his life, as a human wizard." 

And he can give the summary of it, as he remembers reading it:

Aroden, as his histories tell it, was born before Earthfall in Azlant which only Axis, in these days, has perhaps surpassed, and He had become notable even before the Cataclysm as an extraordinary mage, brilliant and powerful, and then the alghollthu grew afraid of the human civilization on the surface, grew jealous, and they went to war, and they were, to their astonishment, losing. And they called in a great power from beyond the world, to destroy the humans, but they miscalculated, and very nearly destroyed the world.

 

Aroden survived, Aroden rebuilt civilization - not on Azlant's continent, which is just gone, a few isolated islands poking up above the sea, but on the alternate continent, devastated only by the indirect effects of the catastrophe (still sufficient to nearly extinguish humanity).

Aroden founded Taldor and worked to prevent the magical knowledge of ancient Azlantl from being forgotten forever, and he led an army into the Abyss and fought a demon lord, and he became a master of magic unparalleled in his world. And He travelled other worlds, looking for something, though He never told anyone what, and had spectacular adventures there, some recounted and some totally unknown.

And then, after hundreds of years of work, he dragged the Starstone out of the sea. It was a remnant of the moon that hit Golarion during Earthfall. It's said that it contained the essence of two gods, the ones killed when Earthfall happened.

 

Aroden set a series of elaborate precautions around it, and then ascended, and became a god. It is said He will return to usher in the Age of Glory.

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....Bastran feels like there's some kind of obvious inference that Altarrin is sitting there expecting him to have made already, and he - hasn't, apparently. Probably because he's distracted, for multiple reasons, including but not limited to 'Altarrin is mind-controlled by Iomedae's ally-if-not-subordinate and so nothing he says here means anything' and also...the corollary, that Altarrin presumably expected this as a plausible outcome, and so whether or not he was mind-controlled directly by Iomedae before he Gated out...

"- Hmm?" he manages. 

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Maybe it's less obvious if you aren't him. 

"It - matches the pattern of my own life. I...am still not clear on why or what that means, even now, but - it was a different kind of confusing, right, it seems - much less plausible that it was because Iomedae had - studied me in order to write a fake holy book that was maximally convincing. Even if I assume Alfirin had been reading my mind, and that afterward there was enough time to produce a new text, it - I was not thinking about the analogous events in my own history. I very rarely do." 

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How is he even supposed to respond to that. There are a lot of things he could say, but either they would be stupid and missing-the-point (if Altarrin is in fact doing all of this of his own free will) or else wouldn't make any difference (if he's, as Bastran mostly expects, mind-controlled by Iomedae's ally to believe in Iomedae's goals.) 

He hates having important conversations like this on a time limit, and he hasn't missed that Altarrin keeps glancing at the clock. 

 

 

...He nods, expectantly. 

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They are in fact running short on time, they have less than ten minutes to go, and - he wanted this conversation to go differently - still not a productive thought to dwell on, this is the situation they're in. 

 

"I learned from Iomedae that Aroden had sent a vision to her, when she prayed to Him for advice. I - decided to pray to Aroden, I mostly did not expect it to - do anything - but the information value seemed worth the risk, at the time.

 

- I am not expecting you to believe me, and separately, I am expecting you to - make negative updates on my trustworthiness, based on what I just said." 

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhh???!!

He did what????? 

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"...I gather from the way you are bringing it up now that something did happen." 

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Nod. 

"Aroden spoke to me directly. This is apparently quite rare. I honestly do not remember the conversation that well, which I expect you will find concerning, but. What I do remember is that He recognized the - goals I have, and the things I care about, and the methods I use to achieve those objectives. And He - wanted to convey that He was already, and always, my ally, just because of those shared goals, and that - no one with those goals could ever really be alone, because many people care about - things being better - even if they are un-strategic about pursuing it. 

 

- I am aware of how suspicious all of that sounds." 

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'Suspicion' doesn't even really describe how Bastran is feeling right now. He's - well, he's mostly trying not to feel any emotions at all, because all of them are stupid and unhelpful as per usual - but if he's feeling anything it's just - the metaphorical sense of falling, of no solid ground under his feet, of the world coming apart around him. 

 

"I see," he says, inanely. 

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Sigh. 

"...I really do wish we could be having this conversation under better circumstances. I am - I have been trying very hard not to lie to you, and I suspect that in the short run this will mean communicating my current beliefs and understandings less accurately, given how you will predictably interpret my words. I would do better if I could, but - 

- I could be wrong, right, and I– it is important to me to treat you as an ally, which to me means - communicating what I am thinking and what I believe, and why, and - trusting that you will take that information and use it well toward your, and our, goals." 

(Which may or may not even hold, given that Bastran is still under a loyalty compulsion to serve the Empire. Altarrin was under a lot more compulsions, of course, but - it's not a symmetrical situation.) 

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That was - less coherent than usual for Altarrin? He thinks? 

....It's unclear to Bastran whether this is evidence for or against him being mind-controlled by Alfirin or whoever else. Surely they would want to be unsuspicious, to avoid drawing attention to the question of 'is Altarrin being mind-controlled' - but maybe they could have guessed he would think that, and take the suspiciousness as evidence against mind-control– ....ugh. He has no idea how to think about this. 

 

"Is there anything else." 

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Less than five minutes to go, on the clock. Which also means less than five minutes for the Empire to mount any kind of additional protections on Aritha. 

He wishes even more that this part of the conversation could, somehow, be happening in a different context, where it could be less adversarial than this. 

 

"I personally pushed for our return visit to happen sooner than it might have otherwise. There - are many reasons for it, the church of Aroden wanted to buy more diamonds, they are absurdly valuable in their world. And Iomedae wanted to send some volunteer delegates to explain her recent decisions from their point of view. But. The urgent reason is Tar-Baphon, and - what might happen if you - if the Eastern Empire - gains the ability to scry Iomedae's world, and - uses it with insufficient paranoia, in a context where it would be almost impossible to judge the right degree of paranoia." 

That's more than enough background explanation. 

"- we are going to kidnap Aritha, the mage-researcher who worked with me on scrying. Alfirin is going to begin in - three minutes, it looks like. I would rather we finish the conversation by then. Do you have any urgent questions that I can answer very quickly."

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Why is this happening to him.

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Questions that are short and can be answered quickly...? 

 

"How much more expensive are diamonds in Iomedae's world, compared to here?" 

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"...I cannot give you an exact exchange rate, and probably it will change rather quickly once there is more interworld contact and trade. But - a fraction of the diamonds I bought for three pounds of gold are what let Iomedae conquer a city held by Tar-Baphon with minimal civilian casualties, which is apparently a near-impossible feat by their world's standards." 

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...It is an incredibly bad use of their precious remaining seconds of dream-conversation to sit here staring at each other, even if Altarrin feels like Bastran's facial expressions are pretty informative toward...something, he's not sure what. 

 

"I do not expect you to believe this or anything I said earlier, and do I think that the Office of Inquiry, if they investigated me now, would conclude that I am a traitor. But, for what it is worth, I still think we care about the same underlying things, whether or not we share the same immediate goals. I founded this Empire, and have returned to it again and again, over the centuries, and I still consider myself loyal to its ideals – which is perhaps a trivial claim, to the extent that I wrote them myself, but - you know what I mean. Or so I hope." 

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Bastran thinks he does understand what Altarrin means. He wishes he didn't that's a stupid thought, which he's probably having because his emotions are not sufficiently staying out of his way like they're supposed to. Go back in the box and stay there, feelings, you're not helping here. 

....He has at least a hundred questions, and he wants to pin Altarrin down in a room and pause time so they can talk for a week. Clearly neither of those things is possible. Given that, he's - what is there even left to talk about...

 

"Come back," he hears himself say.

(Come home, is what he wanted to say, but - is this really a home for either of them, he's not sure.) 

"I - just - send a letter, or whatever works, when, if, you can, just - tell me what it would take, to - get you back...?" 

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Bastran is clearly upset and - this is not a problem Altarrin can solve, right now. (Or even less than usual, that is. Bastran finds a lot of things upsetting and usually this is not very solvable.) 

I wish I could free you, he thinks. Which might, hypothetically, be productive to say out loud, in some other circumstances which are not the ones they're in. 

 

"I will," he says, and stands up, and heads for the door. 

- pauses there. 

"...Alfirin told me that I should walk through the door to wake up. I am not actually sure if you need to do that separately - if you are stuck in the dreamscape spell it will probably disturb your guards -" 

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Does he care what disturbs his bloody guards? ...he probably should. but. no. he doesn't, actually, not right now. 

 

"Stop," Bastran says, in the tone of voice he hates using because it means obey me. "I - just stay there." 

 

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This is not actually a compulsion and Altarrin could just step across that doorway but - clearly Bastran isn't done, here, with what he wanted to say, or get out of this interaction, or...whatever, he's not sure.

 

He turns and stands still, his back against the dream-parlor door. 

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Bastran crosses the room, looks Altarrin in the eye.

(It would be satisfying to hug him, in some sense, but also agonizingly awkward in a different way, and Altarrin has never given the slightest indication that he wanted that. So he won't, even though he...kind of wants to.) 

 

"I - thank you. Is all I wanted to say. For - teaching me things that made me better at being Emperor. ...For supporting me in becoming Emperor at all, I guess, that must've been you." 

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He can't see the dream-clock because Bastran is blocking it, but they must be at or over the candlemark point. 

"...You are welcome. I think I also owe you an apology for - putting you in this situation at all. ...We ought discuss it later." 

 

And he steps through the doorway. 

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...Bastran is maybe going to stand here and stare at the dream-parlor doorway where Altarrin just disappeared for a while, unless some outside force (which he's sort of vaguely hoping for) causes him to wake up anyway. 

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When putting the Emperor into a mindscape, she cared about being detected. If she were detected, the Emperor's security would be panicking for an extra hour, and they'd be on high alert and that might complicate taking Aritha. Not a major complication, but worth a little more effort to avoid.

 

She doesn't really care about that when kidnapping Aritha. The Empire is going to know she's been active in a few minutes anyways. Scry. Teleport. Dominate Person.

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Aritha is sleeping after a lovely day of magical research. The Dominate Person doesn't even wake her.

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A few minutes, his imperial ass.

The alarm rings simultaneous with her entry into the room. It takes four seconds for the shift his independent-assignment-lieutenant-with-implausible-authorizations stationed on eight-hour alert to form up and draw weapons - leaping out of bed as they throw power into their activated talismans. One Gater per squad opens a mass horizontal gate and they all fire simultaneously a moment before they're dropped through the mass vertical gates, shields ready and already firing.

From Alfirin's perspective, thirty-six different sorcerers in three different twelve-sorcerer teams will immediately fire through Gates towards her from above before, unexpectedly, twelve of them* appear from completely different Gates to land on the floor and fire from there. She is presently being hit with force-daggers, lightning bolts, fireballs, and, of course, most of all, the specialist Adept-killer weapons that are functionally enchanted sling bullets that fire force-daggers on impact with probably-the-target's-shields and then immediately fireball through the hole the force-daggers tear.

(In fact the majority of Kastil's strike teams are not Adepts. Masters positioned near existing lay-lines, as these were, and equipped with powerful artifacts, as these are, with little need to do more than use their artifacts to shield their squads and then spend their energy on throwing compulsions and firing their Adept-killers as fast as possible, can serve nearly as well as Adepts in combat.)

Alfirin is immediately attempted-compulsioned with separate orders to take no volitional actions and to immediately disable all of her spells, shot with a very large number of projectiles, surrounded in a vast haze of fire and lightning that incinerates anything near her, and have Adepts trying to sever all compulsions on her and the worrying one she placed on Aritha as quickly as possible. Any who can't complete their tasks will just shoot her a lot.

(*: That's all that could fit in Aritha's room.)

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Aritha dies instantly because she's a normal human being.

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Compulsions have no effect on her; they settle on her enchantment foil and she understands them but is not, in the least, compelled. The mages trying to cut her spells flail blindly. A master's spells will do nothing to her, an adept's will fail most of the time. (Tar-Baphon can only do slightly better than fifty-fifty, if he hasn't dispelled her spell resistance, which he almost always does.) Sling bullets bounce off her robes as if they were enchanted steel plates, or swerve away from her person to impact the walls behind her. But a few of them get through, and if the fire doesn't hurt the force-daggers do.

This is mildly inconvenient and Aritha is dead, which is also mildly inconvenient.

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If she decided to stick around for three or four rounds they could probably even kill her. She could end everyone attacking her now with a circle of death but she doesn't, actually, prefer that, and doesn't prefer to keep doing that to every successive wave of reinforcements. Even though it would send a stronger message about not fucking around with archmages, since apparently the last one didn't sink in.

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She can grab hold of Aritha's corpse with one hand and her metamagic rod with the other and quickened greater fucking teleport away from here. Look, she didn't kill anyone unnecessarily even though they were trying their absolute best to do the same to her. Iomedae would be so fucking proud.

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They will try and fail to counterspell her teleporting out and, meanwhile, sound the general alert to the extent it has not already been completely sounded.

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Altarrin is going to go slightly over the time limit Alfirin gave him, in the mindscape, but only by 90 seconds or so. He's still in the records cache they picked for this purpose, back on the main continent but at the far southwestern edge of it - past it, in fact, on an offshore island, maximally far from the Empire. 

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Cure Moderate Wounds.

 

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"...She looks dead, I thought you were planning for her to not be dead."

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"There was an ambush. Aiming for me, obviously, but not very discriminatingly. Time to see if the local gods make this a problem."

Raise Dead

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Altarrin, who when Alfirin arrives is still asleep on the bedroll he dug out for this, will wake up from the mindscape just as she's finishing - he's instantly rising to a sitting position, flinging out mage-sight, looking around - 

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- and Aritha, from her perspective, wakes up somewhere unfamiliar , feeling like she was recently dropped off a tall building or something -

- screams for help -

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He isn't going to compulsion her to not scream, it's - fine, actually, if she screams, it's not risking anyone overhearing her. If she tries to Gate back that's going to be a problem but she's a researcher, not a combat specialist, she's not going to be incredibly fast at emergency Gates and may not have the skill for unscaffolded Gates at all. 

He scrambles over to get himself into her field of view, holds up both hands. "Aritha. You are safe here." 

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" - Archmage-General? Where are we - who is -" She gestures at the person next to him, both of them are just invisible to mage-sight like there's nothing there -

- also there's a fox? What? Why's there a fox?

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"It is a long story. Right now we are in - a secure location known only to me, several thousand miles from the Empire, but we need to leave this world as soon as possible - are you all right -?" Her compulsions are gone, which he hadn't realized was part of the plan, and he's expecting her to panic about it as soon as she notices. 

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"I feel terrible -"

 

She pauses to try to get slightly more information about that, and then she notices -



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- he cut her compulsions. 


If he cut her compulsions, it's because he wanted her this way, and there's no advantage to being - angry, or horrified, or - 

- it does rule out, though, what she'd been hoping for a second ago, which was that he hadn't defected and had just been doing something terribly important and secret -

 

'we need to leave the world as soon as possible' -

 

"We're working for Iomedae now?" she says calmly. She's not planning on working for Iomedae, but this is the kind of thing one doesn't say and preferably doesn't even think.

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"Not quite. You're a prisoner but if you don't want to betray your Empire you can remain a prisoner, or a statue, or die in martyrdom if that's your preference. I was hoping we could have had this conversation before removing your compulsions but they came off when you died. For what it's worth, I'm sorry about this." Dominate Person

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- that is the coolest spell she has ever seen and she is terrified of whatever it's presumably doing to her that this woman thought she should be sorry for but this is actually only a secondary line of thought behind -

"When I died?"

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"The Empire objected to me kidnapping you. I don't know if they were trying to kill you to prevent it or just insufficiently concerned with your survival to use less-lethal methods on me. They were mostly aiming for me."

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- no, the confusing thing here is not that Aritha died given that someone Gated in to kidnap Aritha, the confusing thing is that Aritha is here given that she died.

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"...And I can return people from the dead."

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And now the lack of compulsions is making her feel dizzy, because - because she could, right, just work for the people who can return the dead to life - who did it for her - she wants to -

 

 

- she told the Emperor, specifically, 'even if they cut my compulsions' - she did not really imagine a scenario where they retrieved her from the dead -

 

- no one has actually asked her anything. She doesn't need opinions. 

 

She pulls her face together and - nods, at the revelation that the woman in front of her raised her from the dead.

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"Aritha," he says, seriously. "We are not going to ask you to break your word. I know Bastran would have asked, and - whether it not it was a fair situation to ask it of you, I imagine you preferred having the option to - make promises that would be believed. And Iomedae's people take that even more seriously than I do. I - you will be safe regardless of what you decide to do, and - my hope is that we will find a way not to be enemies with the Empire, it is very stupid, and then you could go back. But I cannot say how long it will take." 

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Aritha's head is still full of confusion and dizziness and gratitude and terror and half the things Altarrin is saying make no sense but her face and voice have settled into a practiced configuration by now. "Thank you, Archmage-General. I am grateful, Archmage-General."

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"You'll want a restoration, probably, for the resurrection sickness. Someone else will confirm, when we are back on Golarion, that you'll only need the one, stronger people need two but I think everyone from your planet is in the relevant sense quite weak. But that won't be conditional on you agreeing to work with us. We should go, Altarrin, and finish this conversation elsewhere."

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- he'll raise a Gate.

(He's running mostly on learned patterns, right now, his thoughts are a thousand miles away. As far away as Bastran is, to be more specific. He's upset about how the conversation went, even though being upset about it is really not at all helping with anything.) 

He returns them to the mansion, exactly where they left, minus paladins and most of the gold they had brought, plus diamonds. A lot of diamonds. 

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She'll dispatch a page to request Iomedae's presence "at her convenience," which shouldn't take very long.

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Yeah Iomedae will happen to find it convenient to drop by almost immediately. 

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Altarrin is tired and would sort of rather slip away and lie down in his bedroom, but he's the only person here who Aritha knows. And he probably should tell one of them what he spoke about with Bastran, while it's fresh on his mind. He stays. 

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Aritha is being pretty uninteresting decor. She's very good at it.

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"It all went approximately according to plan, though the Empire is a bit more prepared for a powerful wizard than I expected. Aritha died, I raised her, unless you have questions for her I'm going to get her set up in one of the rooms here before the rest of the debrief.

...The fact that I can raise the dead is a secret, by the way," she adds to Pereza's accountant, "And we'd be very disappointed to hear it from the rumor mill."

(Saying it here makes it clear that it's not a secret she's from Iomedae for nefarious purposes. Any more.)

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- Pereza's accountant will nod anxiously. 

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It definitely was a secret from Iomedae until now (well, until yesterday's claim she could cast Reincarnate, of which this was a plausible but not inevitable implication). Iomedae of course does not look at all surprised.

She looks at Aritha thoughtfully for a moment. "Do you have objections to being Alfirin's prisoner for the time being? I have confidence she will abide by your, and our, laws of war, and there are no hands I know of in which you'd be safer." A lot of people would nonetheless rather be Iomedae's prisoner, but this seems less likely to be true of Velgarth people for whom 'paladin' doesn't mean anything. 

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Alfirin raised her from the dead. "I have no objections, your" shoot how is Iomedae titled -

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"You're not in my chain of command and can address me as you please. I am the Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade."

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Aritha isn't really processing the strange social games these people are playing, but she is taking notes so she can process later once she's safe and alone. "Knight-Commander."

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She is safe though most people in her position would probably notice that being left apparently alone in an archmage's conjured mansion does not particularly increase her safety level, relative to the archmage being visible in the same room. Here is her room, it's hers, nobody is going to bother her here unless it's an emergency. Alfirin would be grateful if Aritha does not cause any emergencies. There is food, the uniforms can bring it at her request though they've gone through most of the variety that came with the mansion so she probably will not get any very particular requests made. She has free rein of the rest of the mansion, except for doors that are locked. There are baths. There's a library but it doesn't have that many books in it, they can get more on request. She will not be able to leave the mansion or attempt to open locked doors, nor use magic, (other than mage-sight) nor try to harm any person other than herself. Does she have any questions?

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How do you speak my language. Why are you toying with the Empire instead of just taking it. Why are there uniformed force-spheres staffing this place. Can I learn to cast spells like you do. Can I learn to raise the dead. What did you offer Altarrin. Are you and Iomedae the most powerful people in your country and - are countries better, with women running them -

 

"No questions, Archmage."

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"...It looks like you in fact have questions. I am not going to make your life worse for having asked them, but I'm also not going to push you. If you change your mind later, you can ask one of the servants to get me if you want to talk and I will come by when it is convenient for me. If you'd rather talk to someone less intimidating you can also ask for Curiosity, he's my fox and can probably answer most of your questions that you're allowed to know the answers to."

And she'll go back to her own debrief.

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Altarrin will join them at the debrief. He lets Alfirin speak first, though. 

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"The short version is that we have thirty-seven more wishes or miracles, two Imperial casualties if you count Aritha, and they were treating your delegates well as of when I checked shortly before Aritha's abduction and our departure. The other casualty was the person they had trying to scry us, I think they killed him after I dominated him. The mindscape conversation happened but I don't know its contents, Altarrin will have to describe that."

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Nod. Sigh. 

"He believes me about the immortality. I was able to give him - evidence he could check independently - but I think he was not even very skeptical. He is unsurprisingly very suspicious about Aroden - I tried to explain it as coherently as possible, and convey my reasoning at every step, but I cannot blame him for being dubious. It sounds implausible even to me. ...It really does not help that the true explanation of what happened as soon as I arrived in your world is that Alfirin cut my compulsions and placed her own mind control, I was not going to lie to him but he will draw the obvious conclusions. I am not sure it will - end up helping - I did warn him about Aritha, before the dream ended, which might make it seem less like a ploy to distract him while we arranged that. 

 

- It could have gone worse, I suppose, he - the first thing he asked was whether I was all right. And at the end he - asked what it would take to get me back, told me to write to him, if I could. And he thanked me for everything I had taught him. I think he may have been - assuming I was in danger and he might never see me again, and did not want to leave anything unsaid." 

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She nods. "That's - better than I'd have expected, under the circumstances? I think I'm less worried the current Emperor will do something stupid, more worried he'll lose power to someone who will. I'd be interested in the results if you scry later to see how they're taking it. It matters less, because they can't take it by allying with Tar-Baphon, but it'll be - informative. I don't think you want to keep doing dream-talks, eventually they might figure out how to counter Alfirin if you give them enough chances.

We could also drop a letter offering to Raise the dead scrier, if that apparently works smoothly - I guess it might only work if it's immediate, before the local gods pull the soul out of the river -"

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"No, I agree, I think it was worth it the one time but - mostly to tell him the things I was less comfortable putting in writing. We can send a letter offering to try raising the mage who did the scrying - I am not sure how that would work, I am a little surprised it worked with Aritha. I can scry them now and find out what is going on - I would appreciate if you have more of the healing that fixes exhaustion, I will manage either way but it is not pleasant to cast when already tired." 

And once he's had another Lesser Restoration, Altarrin will get set up to scry the palace. He aims a scry at Kastil, first. 

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Kastil is, of course, warded against scrying! Altarrin can, of course, get through it! It looks like he's writing cyphered orders. He looks tired and stressed and as if he's had too little sleep, that is to say, normal.

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And it's not even necessarily out of the ordinary for Kastil to be up and working at this hour of the night. 

 

Watching over his shoulder and copying out his cipher as he writes it is not a good use of limited and tiring scry-time. Altarrin drops it, and starts a scry-rotation on all the people who might have been yanked out of bed for an emergency, and all the offices where they're likely to be meeting. He has to rest after every two or three scries, so it's going to take him a while. 

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It takes a great deal to snap politics in the Eastern Empire out of its comfortable old rut. (“Why” is, of course, obvious: If it didn’t, it would have been snapped out of the rut before.) If you are an ambitious imperial politician, and you trade “what helps your career” off against “the good of the Empire,” the person who did not make that tradeoff and instead optimized his actions for career advancement more single-mindedly will get promoted instead of you. It is, in a hereditary monarchy, theoretically possible for the Emperor to pick from among his six sons the most virtuous to pass the throne onto; it won’t actually happen, but it's possible. In the ruthless political games of the Eastern Empire, where all high officers have advanced through layer after layer of ruthless, desperate challenges against those only barely less skilled than they to reach their present position, the only possible way to reach the top without sacrificing everything about your ethics is to be Altarrin and have seven hundred years of experience' unfair advantage over your rivals - or, like Bastran, to be his carefully-trained protege. What it takes to snap the Eastern Empire out of its rut is not a foreign war, or a civil war, or an attempted coup; the Empire has very good life extension, and anyone near the top has seen these things before. What it takes is, oh - 

- A single Adept mind controlling the Empire’s top mage who is also incidentally the Emperor’s mentor and top troubleshooter, breaking into the imperial palace, enchanting the Emperor, kidnapping a top mage-researcher, and fighting off an elite assassination squad who are equipped dedicated weapons for the purpose that absolutely everyone knows could have killed them in under half a second.

That’s what will snap politics in the Eastern Empire out of its comfortable old rut!

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It will, to Emperor Bastran, look sort of like this: 

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“ - no bloody way we can make peace with Oris, that’s Iomedae’s bloody headquarters -” 

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“ - plan for financial reconstruction, guarantee us twenty years but there will be riots over the tax increases -”

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“- We’ll handle riots, requesting permission to invoke martial law in - ” 

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“ - I bloody hate this but we’ll have to pardon the Taymyrr traitors if they yield, a double traitor will be a triple soon enough but it’ll settle the matter faster -”

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“ - decree for the purchase of every diamond in the Empire at yesterday’s prices -”

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“ - a list of the Hardornen cities favored trade concessions, there’s no question but that they’ll pay now for -"

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" - under the circumstances no immediate warning to officials regarding the dangers can hardly be too strong -"

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“ - Bastran, the mage-research department has sixteen urgent tasks of vital importance. I’m reassigning men over, but everyone good who isn't already with us is doing something else or has a price I can't pay or can't pass the loyalty checks, I need a blank check to meet their prices whatever it is, draft whoever I need to whatever their job is, and issue whatever pardons I have to to recruit anyone who isn't so absolutely devoted to the Empire's destruction they'd rather we all be Iomedae's slaves."

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This is really not what Bastran needed to wake up to after the conversation he just had with Altarrin, which was already coming on the heels of an incredibly eventful previous day that he hasn't even begun to make time to process. He got about two candlemarks of sleep before being shaken awake - by panicked guards who had apparently already burst into his room and been trying to wake him for thirty seconds after he failed to respond to the communication-spell alerting him of an emergency.

He has a headache. 

He lifts a hand. "Everyone please slow down. ...Thank you. Declane, get me an actual proposal for the tax increases and I'll sign off on it. Diamond requisition approved but put it in writing for me. Trade with Hardorn's a good idea, approved. Lady Voltha, same, get me a list of where you want martial law imposed and I'll probably sign off on it but I think it's overreacting to impose it everywhere. I'll issue pardons, we can't afford to send any more of our people over to their side. Baron Pierson, write a draft announcement to go with the emergency alert. Count Harleth - yes, approved, anything you need, talk to Declane about the money and put together a proposal." 

Are they going to be quiet for two minutes now so he can think

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Insofar as them all pushing their very-quickly-written-in-advance proposals across the table at once counts as silence, yes!

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Well, he's intending to actually read through everything, carefully, before signing it. In several cases he instead scribbles some corrections and hands the proposals back to be rewritten. 

 

Other reports he wants: have they actually picked up on any unusual movements in Oris? He...doesn't think they currently have much reason to expect that Iomedae is actively using Oris as a base, given that they've seen no sign of her world's magic being used in Oris' favor. It's a problem that she almost certainly would be granted shelter and aid there, if she sought it, but - honestly he almost think that makes it more in the Empire's interest to offer the rebels some more generous concessions in exchange for their agreement not to provide Iomedae with a base if she decides to move her operations back to Velgarth. And as a route for letting the Empire have 'diplomats' on site, in a position to notice and report any suspicious activity. 

He wants an update on the scrying-specialist's condition, if the man survived the evening at all. And an update on Iomedae's delegates. Have they been questioned about what just happened. 

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Well, no, they haven't, but you can't actually trust rebels. They're rebels. They don't keep their oaths! Trading away actual resources on the ground for promises is what gets you killed! KILL THEM ALL AND LET THEIR GODS HAVE THEM IF THEY DARE!

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They're being questioned. One of the orders Duke Elnore (and Inquisitor-General Siman) want signed is to switch from polite questioning to intense interrogation; a diplomatic mission used as cover for an assassination is a Serious Problem but not something you'd torture the diplomats over but these people are not registered diplomats they're surrendered soldiers of a power that breaks oaths.

 

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(The Ministry of Progress's request is, literally, for an unlimited budget, that is, a budget that does not have spending limits, which one might call 'not actually a budget'. What Count Harleth wants is a blank check.)

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The scrying-specialist did not survive the evening, unfortunately.

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No they cannot torture the not-diplomats. Bastran will sign off on orders that they can do a Serious Interrogation with active use of compulsions, they don't have to be polite about it, but - just because Iomedae's people are uncivilized doesn't mean the Empire has to stoop to their level, and they really shouldn't have any issue getting information out of the diplomats. They can have Arbas for it if their own compulsion-specialists and Thoughtsensers  aren't up to the task. 

 

...He's not counting on the rebels being trustworthy to make promises, he's counting on them not being idiots. Or at least on there being some chance that they'll decide not to be idiots, if the Empire lays out their options clearly enough. Maybe they will just be idiots about it, in which case the Empire can go back on a war footing at that point, but they're realistically not going to be able to crush the rebel forces for at least a couple of weeks anyway, and in the meantime they have almost no visibility into Oris. 

 

No the Ministry of progress cannot have a literally unlimited budget. Count Harleth should name an actual number. It can be a ridiculously high number but you can't make resource-allocation tradeoffs without putting numbers in them. 

 

...Also. He has a report of his own to make. In private, to whoever is around and seems like the best person to take a report on his dream-spell conversation with maybe-Altarrin-or-maybe-an-imposter. 

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Grumble grumble grumble understood.

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... If we make concessions now in exchange for gains in the future, they can just lie! If the Empire lays out our options and they say 'sure, we'll agree not to let Iomedae in' and then they let Iomedae in after our armies have all left and all our loyalists have died or fled, we're going to be in a way worse position than we are now, where there's lots of supporters of the Empire even if they're intimidated into silence.

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Look, the Ministry of Progress wants the ability to say to people who, themselves, just name a big number, "done," so it can get these people out of retirement/irrelevant jobs. Count Harleth will name a ridiculously high number if he has to.

(It will be Ridiculously Huge.)

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That should probably be Kastil.

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Macalay is really frustrating right now even if it's, you know, a pretty understandable reaction and might not even be the wrong call. 

 

...Bastran deeply doesn't want to roll back the ceasefire offer in Oris. He worked hard on it. The Empire really can't afford four wars. He...doesn't, actually, think that Iomedae is operating there right now; he at least strongly suspects that Iomedae doesn't have interworld travel of her own, yet, and it's all routing through Altarrin. 

(There are flickers of other thoughts, there; there continues to be quite a strong thread of spite-based motivation, that his Empire should be civilized and secure enough to be generous, and should keep its agreements, and not sink to the level of Iomedae's people.) 

He's tired of arguing so he's going to do the rude thing, and avoid having to talk about it any longer by telling Macalay firmly that the ceasefire order stands for now, they can talk about it later again but right now he has another important competing engagement. 

 

And he'll present himself to meet with Kastil and relate his memory of the weird dream-magic conversation and die of embarrassment in the process.

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Macalay will take a straight imperial order and live with it. The Emperor is the person who gets to give him orders; that's how it works.

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"Allow me to personally apologize for my failure to stop the intruder." He thought he was Sufficiently Paranoid. He will endeavor to be more so in the future.

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He wants to say something reassuring but…there isn’t really anything, is there, whether or not it’s at all reasonable for anyone to expect Kastil to have caught this and stopped it, it is Kastil’s job. 

“The enchantment my guards detected was cast by Alfirin, or - at least that’s what Altarrin - probably it was really Altarrin - claimed. He said there were - things he hadn’t wanted to put openly in a letter.”

And now the part where Kastil is going to wonder if he’s insane. Aaaaaaah.

“…He claimed to be immortal. Not his body, but that he can - get new ones, somehow, he didn’t really go into it. He claimed to be about 700 years old. That he lived before the Cataclysm — that, uh, his first identity was Ma’ar, the - one who fought the archmage Urtho. And then he claims he was Arvad, and - that the Empire was his project, that he was - trying to rebuild the civilization that was destroyed by the Mage Wars…”

and he didn’t want the history books to remember him kindly, because he didn’t think he deserved it 

“He - seemed to think he had failed. That if he had - done better - the Empire wouldn’t be a place that Iomedae wanted to fight. He was sad about it.”

Shrug. “Or, you know, he wanted me to think that. Or whoever was impersonating him wanted me to think it. …I believe him about the immortality, though, he offers a lot of…pieces we could check.. and, I mean, it sort of explains a lot about him.”

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"It does," says Kastil softly.

(This is the third time in twenty-four hours he has just discovered he is NOT PARANOID ENOUGH. Clearly he needs to be much, much more paranoid than he had previously been being, if he ever wants to be good instead of lucky.)

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Bastran takes a deep breath, clears his throat.

“He’d wanted to explain all that as - backstory, I guess. And a little bit more, about - some kind of vow he made at Urtho’s Tower, that he wouldn’t give up until he had fixed everything. 

“He, er, apparently thought it was relevant because - it’s not just Aroden’s church’s teachings that sounded suspiciously like - something he might've written. He says it was also the history of Aroden. Which I guess must be one of the ones we have up north, we could check if we're willing to risk the translation ring. Altarrin said that - um, that it sounded like history. Of his actual life. They had a Cataclysm too. Aroden - lived before it - and ended up fighting a war - it was with another species, in his version, but they'd - taught him, like Urtho taught Ma'ar. And then he was the only survivor who remembered their magic, he tried to rebuild - for a very long time, four thousand years. And then realized he wasn't going to be able to fix everything as a human, the existing gods - weren't good enough. So he figured out how to become a god, which - I guess is something Altarrin thinks is the sort of thing he might do." 

 

Another deep breath. 

"Altarrin prayed to Aroden. He says. To - check - because he was confused - he didn't really have any explanation for why he thought it was safe... He's claiming that Aroden answered him, and said they had the same goals, and - Aroden said he recognized him, or something. It didn't really make that much sense, but he clearly - it was so important to him, I think it was the entire reason he'd wanted to talk, to tell me. 

- also he admits that they cut his compulsions and put their own on him, when he Gated over. He didn't say that they had at any point taken theirs off. Which - I mean, he didn't have to tell me that, he could've lied, it seems like he was - trying not to. But - still means it's sort of hard to trust anything he said or any of his motives. He - said you'd probably conclude he was a traitor, if you were able to question him fully now. But that he thinks he's still loyal to - the thing he wanted the Empire to be, that he meant to found." 

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Kastil is not, actually, confident that Altarrin is an immortal archmage from the past who founded the Eastern Empire to preserve the knowledge of pre-Cataclysm civilization, he's just annoyed that he didn't even consider it, even though it explains a great deal about the man.

"Your Majesty, it does not seem like a great additional mystery, added to Altarrin's astonishing skills, that he is immortal, indeed it explains a great deal about him. Neither is it so extraordinary that the dream-individual who claimed to be him could have been him; neither is certain or proven, but both are plausible."

"The claim that Aroden is - his past self from another world who ascended to godhood? A stranger coincidentally identical to him except for the world in which he was born? - seems like some sort of lie that alien compulsions could force him to believe and that might then help him cease resisting other compulsions, but as a fact about the world it is wildly complex, raises more questions than it answers, and is of no use to us whatsoever."

"I am not surprised that he believes himself loyal to the Imperial dream. With many possible varieties of compulsions, making him believe that would be much more effective than making him completely forget all of his former loyalties. Nonetheless, I see no reason to take anything he said in the dream was true. Information he gave us is information that Iomedae, or 'Alfirin' if that is our current opponent, wants us to have."

And just what she's up to other than demonstrating "hi, I could have pulled a coup if I wanted to, tremble in fear of my might" is much less clear. But Kastil's going to go badger the Ministry of Progress into making his elite assassination team deadlier mage-killer bullets.

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He nods, heavily. “That’s - about what I thought. Damn it, I wish we could get him back. But failing that, you’re right, we can’t take most of what he said to me as - information at face value. Though it’s sort of informative that they went to the trouble of arranging a conversation in a dream. …I don’t think it could’ve been Alfirin, if it was an imposter, unless the magic lets them do weird things with time. The dream lasted - I would guess a minute and a half past when Alfirin tried to snatch Aritha.”

 

Sigh. He drags a hand over his face. “Do you have any other questions for me or can I go back to bed.” 

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He'll want more information about precise timing, but that's it. After that, Bastran can go back to bed.

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Altarrin takes a couple of candlemarks to scry, pausing to take notes during his rest periods. By the end of it he's significantly more exhausted than he was after the Gate, but he can manage to drag himself to find Iomedae and report in. 

 

Summary: the Empire is definitely panicking. Nearly every minister and their subordinates were dragged out of bed; he was able to scry the tail end of a hectic group meeting where the Emperor was signing off on new orders for, at the very least, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Progress, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of War. 

He wasn't actually able to read all of the documents, but his guess is that the Empire is already in a dubious financial situation - it was getting close to one when he left - and Bastran is raising taxes - and approving measures to respond to the inevitable riots in the provincial centers - in order to pour a lot more resources toward the mage-research division. He was able to get a peek at a list, on the Minister of Progress's desk, of mage-specialists being requisitioned for the project, and his guess is that they're going to be trying to reinvent arcane magic based on what they saw of Alfirin's spells. 

He was expecting them to respond by crushing the rebellion in Oris even more ruthlessly, given the assumption that they might be providing a base for Iomedae and the church of Aroden, but...actually he didn't see any evidence of this? He...isn't sure, yet, he needs to scry more people and locations once he's rested...but based on some glimpses of paperwork, and a decided lack of forward troop movements when he scried the Imperial legions in Oris itself, he actually wonders if there was already a plan in place to deescalate, maybe even send a diplomatic team to offer a ceasefire. Which is mildly surprising, but - maybe he wasn't giving Bastran enough credit. 

 

He was able to confirm that the scying-specialist died at some point yesterday evening. 

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"That's too bad. I'll send an offer to attempt to Raise them, I think - I hope they realize that this was Alfirin being extraordinarily restrained, but I doubt that's a - very available angle.

 

I think I want to set up Aroden's church on - Besen, Alfirin said the second continent was called in its trade language? - it'll make Him at least able to grab our dead, including from the Empire,  much more cheaply than he presently can, and it's probably a good enough position for negotiations with the local gods, too. The classic move when you have lots of diamonds and ludicrous geopolitical ambitions is to turn a desert habitable with some portals from the Elemental Plane of Water, but that's probably a project for after we've beaten Tar-Baphon. In the meantime I might see about just setting up an ordinary boring temple in one of the cities you stopped in for diamonds, with some pearls of power so the healing is renewable.

- I'm presuming, here, that you're at this point comfortable with my trying to establish Aroden on Velgarth. If I'm wrong there or elsewhere, stop me; I'm not trying to use you against your own purposes. 

....if Bastran has in the middle of all this arranged a ceasefire in Oris then I want to offer peace. I doubt he'll trust it, but, well, now that we have Aritha we can in fact declare a unilateral peace if we want to."

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“I highly doubt they will take you up on Raising the dead mage, but - it probably does no harm to offer, at least." Sigh. "I am comfortable with you starting a church of Aroden. I think it is a good idea, though I do also think we really should try to avoid pressing the Empire any further, and so avoiding the whole continent for now seems wise. I - am somewhat concerned the local gods will try to cause problems, if They can tell that Aroden - resembles me - but I think the gods with territorial remit in Besen might be less hostile, They would have barely noticed the Cataclysm." 

He closes his eyes. It's not just the magical fatigue from scrying; it's now closer to morning than the middle of the night, after a very long day, and his body craves sleep. 

"I am in favor of offering peace, even if Bastran will not believe it or find it reassuring at this point." He bites back on a yawn. "...And if you need a Gate, I think it will have to be tomorrow." 

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"Of course. While I have you, I do want my belt back, because you're hardly using the strength or the dexterity. But I got you one of your own of the highest quality for constitution, and a headband for splendour, and the catalogue of a magic items store in Absalom so you can think what else you ought to have."

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He gives her the same look that he has several times, now - surprised, faintly disbelieving, and with a muted flicker of annoyance-with-himself because he keeps being surprised in the same direction even though he shouldn't find it startling, anymore, and should really just finish updating. 

"Thank you," he says quietly. "I am grateful." He's not actually sure what she means by 'Splendor', and whether it's the same as what her headband did or a subset or a different thing entirely. 

Probably if he switches the belts very quickly he won't actually collapse during the brief interlude when he's not wearing either. This does not mean it's pleasant

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Does a Lay On Hands help? Iomedae's are very good and help with a wide range of maladies.

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It does help! It doesn't completely fill the hollow emptiness of his reserves, and it's clearly not going to be a replacement for a proper night's rest, but he's no longer desperately fighting off drowsiness and considering the walk back to his guest bedroom with looming dread. 

...He's not going to put the headband on in front of Iomedae. What if it does weird things to his head. Given that he has the option, he would much rather have a chance to get accustomed to it in private. 

 

"Thank you," he says again. "I - would like to speak more tomorrow, when it is convenient for you. But I had better get some sleep. - is Aritha all right, do you know, has she asked for anything?" 

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"I'm sure I can make some time for us to speak tomorrow. I don't think she has asked for anything, though the servants here report to Alfirin and not even very effectually that."

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"I will make sure to check on her tomorrow." 

And he thanks Iomedae again, and then makes his way to his guest bedroom, where he totally intends to have a look at the catalogue of magic items, but instead falls asleep without even managing to pull the covers over himself. 

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Aritha spends about half an hour recovering her composure and - while she doesn't really trust that she's unobserved - thinking. 

 

 

Does she believe that she was raised from the dead? She - isn't sure. She knows the other civilization can raise the dead. They did it to Iomedae, obviously. But why do it to her, especially if - as Alfirin was careful to say - she can remain a prisoner if she wants, doesn't have to work for them - can die a martyr if she wants, Alfirin said, and didn't even seem to mean it as a threat -

- maybe it's so cheap that you just do it in any situation where you'd offer someone healing. (She wants them to conquer the Empire, she wants them to conquer the Empire...) Maybe no one dies, unless the government actively prefers their being dead to their being alive. And Altarrin, presumably, told them to take her alive in the first place rather than to just kill her. 

 

She should probably talk to Altarrin but she's so blazingly angry at him she doesn't trust herself in his presence, and also has to wonder what he wanted her alive for, which doesn't feel like something she has to wonder about Alfirin.

 

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So once she's pulled herself together she asks one of the constructs in uniforms if she can be introduced to, uh, Curiosity the fox.

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Curiosity the fox can be found and introduce himself! He doesn't speak Jaconan, but he can understand it, and after he boops her with his nose she can understand Taldane.

"Hi, I'm Curiosity, you're Aritha, I hear you have questions?"

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"Lots of them, foremost among them why anyone would bother to answer my questions, and relatedly why I'm alive?"

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"OK so you're right that those questions are related, and there are a couple things going into the answer. First is that Iomedae doesn't like killing people if you could instead put in a bit more work to get everything you want without killing them. And if Alfirin kills too many people Iomedae gets mad about it. And nobody really wanted you dead, per se, they just wanted the empire to not be able to use you to do something incredibly foolish, so kidnapping you was just as good as killing you. The second thing is that Altarrin thought very highly of you and didn't want you-in-particular dead. The third thing is that, because Altarrin thought so highly of you, Alfirin wanted to meet you. And maybe she felt guilty about you dying because of her." Curiosity looks mildly unhappy about that last bit, for some reason.

"...And I'm bothering to answer your questions because I'm on vacation and I like meeting new people, and because Alfirin thought you'd be disoriented. And for other reasons that I'm not going to tell you, not because they're sinister, just because they're private."

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She's going to have to learn the court politics of an entire new court, isn't she. "What...is the relationship between Iomedae and Alfirin?"

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...Oh boy. Alfirin would...not... want him to speak his full mind here, would she.

"Iomedae is the head of the crusade and Alfirin is the only person who doesn't have to listen to her if she doesn't want to, because Alfirin is the most powerful living wizard on the planet. Alfirin mostly does what is in her interests but she and Iomedae have a lot of interests in common, like preventing the world from being overrun by undead. Does that answer your question?"

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So, Iomedae is Empress, more or less, and there's one person Iomedae - can't kill, doesn't have compulsioned, because she's - too useful to kill and too powerful to compulsion wow that does not sound like a stable state of affairs at all and Aritha now urgently needs to replay, in her head, the conversation in which Iomedae asked casually if Aritha would prefer to be Iomedae's prisoner - 

- has she offended the ruler of this entire continent - though why ask, if you might not like the answer -

 

- she's going to be candid. Mistakes here are safer than mistakes later. "That situation doesn't sound very stable and I'm worried about having inadvertently waded into it."

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Inadvertently waded into it? That seems unlikely. Even putting aside Aritha's age, and status as a prisoner, she's been here for what, a few hours? And not said more than a dozen words between the two of them?

...Probably she meant something else.

"I think there's been a miscommunication and you aren't in the middle of any situations. I agree that it's not very stable... but I think maybe you're predicting different things than I am from that!"

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"What ...are you predicting from that?"

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"That at some point, possibly after the war is over, Alfirin will go somewhere else and not keep working with Iomedae?" He hopes that day is soon. And does not involve Alfirin running off to do secret things half the time for a full decade again.

"...Are you worried they're going to try to kill each other or something? I don't know why they'd do that, what would the point even be? It's not...impossible... but I don't think either of them could really permanently kill the other without a lot of work and...they don't disagree on enough that they'd do that instead of just going their separate ways." There are other, worse options. Like Alfirin falling in love again. But he's not going to mention that one.

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"...in the Empire one of them would definitely try to kill the other, and even if that didn't work a lot of other people would die of having chosen the wrong side."

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"Oh. Well it sounds like the Empire is worse at some things." He looks awfully smug about that for a fox that never did anything to shape the institutions of the Crusade.

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"In the Empire people would also be - keeping a lot of track of who belonged to who, and would go with them when they parted ways."

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"Oh if for some reason there were a split almost everyone would go with Iomedae. If you want the company you should stay with Iomedae, if you want the cool magic you should come with me and Alfirin. When they split. Nonviolently."

"...Also we don't so much do the 'slavery' around here, people don't really 'belong to' other people. Except in the sense where Alfirin could make you or Altarrin do whatever she wanted, I guess, but she'd probably take that off if she was leaving."

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"I'm not talking about slavery, the Empire doesn't have slavery, I'm talking about - clientage, or favors owed, and, yes, about the sense where Alfirin could make me or Altarrin do whatever she wanted, that seems like an important sense of who belongs to who. Iomedae - asked if I wanted to instead be her prisoner, but I didn't - have anything with which to answer the question - and I don't know if I offended her, or would've offended Alfirin answering differently. 


- obviously I want the cool magic. If that's how the split gets decided."

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"I don't think you offended her. Iomedae's too Good for that. I don't know if Alfirin would have been offended, depends how much she likes you, but if she was she'd try not to let it affect her actions. You can change your mind if you want, I can go tell someone to tell Iomedae that you'd rather be her prisoner after all, but you'll probably still be in the same dank dark cell eating the same horrid gruel you are now."

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Well if one of them might be offended and the other considers herself too powerful for the behavior of beings like Aritha to give her offense then she's definitely going to stick with the one who might take offense otherwise! "I like Alfirin. I saw her cast a spell and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

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"I like her too! She made me into a person!"

"...So did you have any other questions or do you just want to know about those two."

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She has so many other questions about magic, she just knows full well that if she doesn't get the politics out of the way first something horrible will definitely happen to her as a result. 

 

She wants to know how their kind of mage-artifacts are made. She was planning to figure it out from scratch but maybe here they'll just tell her.

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"...OK so I can give the short version of that but really you want Alfirin for the long version." Wait no - "...or another wizard! Probably another wizard."

 

"Anyways, the short version is that there are some materials, the one everyone talks about is spellsilver but there's others that are important too, that can hold a scaffolded spell, and either release that spell later or if you build in a good energy source perpetuate it forever - and you can get a lot of effects that don't stabilize normally, because you have the artifact there to hold most of the structure while you tweak some of the details - that's why you can make a belt that makes you stronger than a strength spell - "

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"I knew that part, that part you can tell just by looking, but when I try to do it myself I don't see how to actually root a spell at all, or how to give it consistent power draw -"

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"Yeah, sorry, I'm just a talking fox. I can see about getting you a real wizard though. Or some books?"

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"Either of those would be great." Aritha will, of course, if she's ever free take this back to the Empire, but she doesn't really expect to be free before Alfirin has conquered the Empire. 

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"Well if all you want to know about is magic, I'll go see about finding you a tutor."

And off he goes (A servant gets the door for him)

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"...So Aritha had some questions about magic items and already knew as much as I did just from looking. Says she wants a real wizard to teach her."

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"I'll pass that along to Iomedae in case she has anyone who can be spared and brought in on the other planet."

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"You know, you could - "

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"No."

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"OK, what changed, you were looking forward to meeting her and now...?"

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"I do not want an apprentice who has sworn loyalty, first and foremost, to someone else. And I do not want an oathbreaker."

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It's a gorgeous sunny morning in the Empire, and Arbas apparently gets to comprehensively interrogate some Aroden-worshippers today! He doesn't even have to be subtle about it. This is going to be fun

(Not fun enough that he was willing to do it in the middle of the night and skip his beauty sleep. He got the message, informed the messenger that the Office of Inquiry staff could have a go first and he'd be there a candlemark after dawn to take over, and then went back to bed. He thinks it'll work out well, the cultists will have been kept awake most of the night and already be tired.) 

 

What have they said to the Office of Inquiry interrogators (or thought in a Thoughtsenser's presence) so far, about the Events that just happened? 

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They were unsurprised, when new people stormed in to incapacitate them and end the polite conversation they'd previously been having. Iomedae had said they'd be invasively interrogated with mind control, made exhausted and incoherent, and Iomedae is never wrong about anything so of course she wouldn't have been wrong about this.

 

They were not afraid, either, because they're paladins. That's not to say they aren't suffering, but it's entirely the suffering of the present moment, no particular suffering associated with anticipating that the next moments will be just as bad or get much worse.

 

They knew, and told the Empire from the beginning, that Altarrin and Alfirin and an accountant had come over, and that they didn't know what they were planning. There isn't more to be dragged out of them about that. Of course Alfirin can do approximately anything she pleases, she's a ninth circle wizard. No, there's not really a way to stop her. A Forbiddance would help make it harder for her to get into places but she could just fly in as an invisible gaseous air elemental or something. Iomedae could stop her, not because they have a specific mechanism in mind but because Iomedae can do anything.

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Well isn't that interesting. It seems like one of the 'miracles' that Aroden grants His followers is...a literal compulsion against feeling afraid? 

 

He basically buys that the delegates don't know any more specifics about what Alfirin - or Iomedae's random accountant - might have been here to do. But they have a lot more of the background necessary to make informed guesses on what sorts of things 'Alfirin and an accountant' (plus or minus a Velgarth mage of Altarrin's skill) could have gotten up to. Because 'anything she pleases' isn't an answer, and even for absurdly powerful mages, some things are more or less convenient

Alfirin isn't a follower of Aroden, isn't officially a member of Iomedae's militant temple order. Just hangs out with them, for reasons that Arbas doesn't know but that are presumably consistent to her. Alfirin is...too powerful for anyone to control, powerful in a way he's not sure anyone in Velgarth is, that implication came across clearly enough. 

What does she want, is the key question. 

 

 

He heads into the room where the paladins are being held, and sits. 

:So what we've already heard from you, is that Alfirin doesn't work for Iomedae, or consider herself particularly bound by Iomedae's promises - but likes to do her favors, sometimes, when it suits her whims. How long does that go back? And would you say Alfirin is friendly to your church, or really just to Iomedae personally?: 

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Oh, Alfirin is probably a sincere Arodenite, no one's heard otherwise. She doesn't have much time for mere mortals, the way archmages usually don't....but Aroden was an archmage himself, and Alfirin respects Him. They think. 

Tiaves knows that Alfirin's been involved in the crusade, on and off, for at least thirty years. She wasn't ninth circle back then, of course. Alfirin like Iomedae does not want the world to be conquered by Tar Baphon. That would be bad for everybody. 

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:Is getting one of the Empire's top mage-researchers killed something that Iomedae - and your church - would consider a favor done? ...It might've been a botched kidnapping and not an assassination, but either way the question stands: 

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It doesn’t sound like it? Iomedae is not big on either kidnapping or assassination, though obviously under sufficiently extreme circumstances it might be the least bad option. 

Tiaves, thinking about it, thinks Iomedae would have favored that if the mage researcher was looking likely to contact Tar Baphon? But presumably the Empire wouldn’t be that reckless.

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(It is around this point that certain events taking place, events that have been taking place for really a very brief period of time without being noticed, continue not to be noticed.)

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Arbas will let them continue wondering on the matter of whether the Empire would have been reckless enough to try to contact Tar-Baphon. (He, himself, doesn't think so, but it's a question well above his pay grade, and moot now anyway, the thing to worry about is what else Alfirin might get up to.) 

 

So. Alfirin and Iomedae have a working relationship where Alfirin doesn't answer to Iomedae - and so can operate with plausible deniability in areas where Iomedae has committed to stay uninvolved - and Alfirin sometimes finds it convenient to do Iomedae favors. 

What else might Iomedae not normally be willing to countenance, but consider a favor under sufficiently dire circumstances? Is 'mind-controlling the Emperor' on that list? 

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Iomedae is concerned with the fate of Oris, where there's an Arodenite church she fears is being brutally suppressed, and if Alfirin were doing Iomedae favors she might've done things in Oris.

 

(They could also just, you know, write Iomedae and ask what role she had in Alfirin's operations. She wouldn't lie.)

 

...Iomedae would totally be willing to countenance mind-controlling the Emperor. Directly herself - or, not herself, because she's a paladin and doesn't have the spell, but she'd happily command one of her own wizards to do it if it seemed like a good idea. They're at war with the Empire, and the Empire runs on mind control and tried to mind control her and is mind controlling her delegates, so obviously if it were strategically indicated they'd mind control the Emperor. 

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Well, at least they're upfront about it! Arbas is appreciative of honesty. 

 

What sorts of things could Alfirin get up to in Oris, with the magic she has, to protect Aroden's church there? Mind-controlling the generals is an obvious one, but does her magic also let her, say, kill large numbers of people, or mind-control entire armies, or trap entire armies, or instantaneously transport them somewhere else? 

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Well, she could probably kill any army in Oris with a Tsunami, or just mind control everyone - or actually, given that all Imperial soldiers are slaves, she could just free them all. That’s - well, Iomedae wouldn’t do it unless it were actually the best way to achieve her objectives, but it’d be very poetic and is accordingly appealing.

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Indeed. How long would it take her to cut the compulsions on, say, a thousand people? Is there a range limit, such that it matters if they're concentrated? 

 

...Also, come to think of it, under what conditions would Iomedae consider it a favor for Alfirin to interfere with Imperial compulsions not in Oris? 

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Oh, Alfirin could get miles around all at once with a Wish, that’s how Wishes work, if she had a safe wording or didn’t care about the danger.

 

Presumably Iomedae would consider it a favor to dispel everyone’s compulsions if it advanced the cause of human freedom and progress and flourishing and not otherwise? Like, doing it to destroy the Empire would be bad, because so many people would die, but doing it if you had something in mind that would be better would be a favor to Iomedae in the god-fashion where all Good is a favor to Iomedae.

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Hmmmmmm. 

 

 

...What would it change about Iomedae's priorities, and what Iomedae would or wouldn't consider a favor, if in fact the Empire has extended a ceasefire offer in Oris? And do they expect that Alfirin, presumably out of communication with Iomedae right now, would have an accurate understanding of what it would change? 

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- well, Iomedae would probably offer her own ceasefire, if the Empire signed a ceasefire in Oris. And she’d probably at that point consider it a major favor for Alfirin to leave the Empire alone, what with how otherwise the Empire couldn’t really take the peace at face value.

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Arbas doesn't especially try to hide the fact that he doesn't believe them at all on that claim. 

He'll keep asking questions for a while, poking mainly at different of what they think Iomedae would endorse, or consider a favor, in various different circumstances, and paying a lot of attention to anything that seems like it might be an inconsistency in their Iomedae-related predictions. 

He's also learning a lot about their world's magic, of course but mainly in the form of 'it can also do this impossible thing' and less its limitations. 

 

 

...he's actually pretty bored and will perhaps see if he can beat the Aroden-compulsion making them fearless by slipping in some subtle - and then less subtle - attempts at compulsions of his own. 

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They will continue to be totally convinced that Iomedae only wants good things to happen for everybody and would never collapse the Empire for some advantage to her own territories unless this made everyone across all the worlds better off. It makes sense that Arbas finds this boring; it's really stubborn and uncomplicated.

 

...he can't make them scared. He can make them convinced that something really bad is going to happen, in which case they'll spend a bunch of time thinking whether it can be avoided; he can make them convinced that coming here was a terrible mistake somehow; he can make them convinced that something really awful has already happened to them or to Iomedae or to their cause. He can cause them pain. He can make them wish they were dead, if he's willing to try hard enough. He can't make them scared. 

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Godmindcontrol is weird. (Arbas is perhaps slightly jealous. He can't make people incapable of being afraid, not that he's...especially tried...maybe he should try that sometime just to prove that he can totally do anything Aroden can.) 

 

...Can he squeeze different answers out of them while they're convinced that coming here was a terrible mistake, or that various awful things have already happened? - or if convinced that the Empire is already working for Tar-Baphon, that's an interesting one. 

(It's not really that he thinks they're lying to him, or even exactly lying to themselves, they're too boringly straightforward for that. But there's something weird and unnatural going on in their heads, and he's not actually sure how much it's tugging them to report beliefs that aren't the ones people would naturally come to given the evidence they have, but it's definitely starting to seem like the Aroden mind-control effect is making them...weirdly optimistic about human nature? Or something?) 

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It takes a lot of doing. Most of the day, by which point they're both so tired they can barely keep their eyes open.

But he can, in fact, with enough concerted effort and lying and making lies-believable and terrible-mistake-amplifying, convince them that trusting Iomedae was a mistake and the Knights of Ozem aren't worth following and they should resign their order.

And that - changes a lot of their answers, all of them previously calculated from the absolute conviction that Iomedae is doing a reasonable thing that no one with full information would feel lied-to about and that ultimately serves the flourishing of all people everywhere.

And without that, gone is most of the - unnatural optimism about human nature, the unnatural conviction. It wasn't god-intervention, not exactly, but it was - religious conviction.

They're still not scared. But they're despairing.

Good job, Arbas!

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Good! Religious conviction is so frustrating. It's the worst part about having to interrogate cultists, the fact that you can't even get them to directly look at the evidence that gods are useless and don't - can't - care about human things. Not that he knows very many specifics on Aroden but he's pretty sure he can guess the end result, because it's always the same. 

 

Arbas is also tired, by now - compulsions are individually low-power but ten candlemarks straight of modifying them in real time is enough to push his relatively weak mage-gift - but he worked very hard getting to this point. Getting even slightly coherent predictions and explanations out of people as exhausted as they are is also a frustrating process, but he can just read their minds, and utterly exhausted and despairing people are worse at - shaping narratives that fit with a lifetime worth of beliefs and assumptions, which he can't tear down in a day and isn't actually sure he wants to. 

 

Can he get some new, no-longer-excessively-optimistic bounds on how Iomedae - or Alfirin, not following Iomedae's orders but nonetheless pursuing Iomedae's objectives - might intervene in the Empire, even if the Empire is trying actually quite hard to de-escalate in Oris? 

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Well, since Iomedae isn't actually working for the flourishing of all people everywhere, then Aroden will withdraw her backing and there'll be a crisis on the crusade and both Iomedae and Alfirin will be too distracted to bother Velgarth at all.

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....Which would be incredibly convenient for the Empire, honestly, but Arbas absolutely doesn't expect it's what will happen. He's kind of annoyed that despite an entire day of pushing, he apparently hasn't budged their conviction about their god. Probably because it's put there via mind-control by Aroden. Frustrating. 

 

He honestly cannot think of any other angles to push, so he'll leave and go finish noting down everything he did get from them, which is maybe not completely useless. The paladins can sleep. 

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It's quite late in the evening when one of the construct-servants tells Aritha that Iomedae wants to see her, and she'd in fact been idly planning to stop studying the construct-servants and go to bed (though realistically she wouldn't have done it for several more hours). She immediately puts her notes away and anxiously tidies her borrowed robes - they're not flattering, but she actually kind of appreciates that -

 

- and goes to Iomedae, Knight-Commander who everyone else except Alfirin answers to, which is an Empress in everything but name and Aritha guesses plausibly also in the scope of the Knight-Commander's holdings but that's not going to be relevant to Aritha right now.

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Iomedae is using Keep Watch to skip sleep, and that catches up with you fast unless you spend the time more or less restfully. Talking is usually safe enough. She's sitting in some sumptuous armchairs in a different room of the conjured mansion, and gestures for Aritha to sit as well, which Aritha immediately does.

 

"This is a complicated conversation," she says, "I would like you to ask questions very freely. I would prefer that you only ask questions, at this stage, and offer me no assurances, and say nothing about your intent, and not even try to decide where your loyalties lie and what your plans are, until you understand why it's a complicated conversation.

 

Have you been told that souls, here in Golarion, endure forever after death, and go to judgment before our Judge and then to afterlives where they will continue to think and live and act?"

 

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Aritha had NOT been told this and of course it instantly - makes everything else inside her shatter, like she looked in and noticed it was all made entirely of daydreams and cobwebs, patched together out of scraps because she could never have the thing she actually wanted, the thing that -

 

- endure forever after death -

 

-  the Knight-Commander had instructions and she's forgotten them - 

 

- to ask questions, to only ask questions and not form intentions -

 

"Will this happen to me, I'm not from Golarion," she says once her lips are no longer too numb to speak.

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"Yes," says Iomedae. "It didn't happen in your world because Velgarth's gods grab hold of souls and return them to a new body in the material world, but here no one will intervene in the going of your soul to judgment, and you do have a soul, and are perfectly legible to all of the magics of our world that use souls, and there is every reason to believe you'll have our afterlives."

 

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Oh. 

 

 

The Knight-Commander is going to think that Aritha is an idiot. She needs to set her dizzy wondering delight aside and -

 

"If Alfirin hadn't raised me from the dead?"

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"You would not have gotten an afterlife, as you were still on Velgarth."

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"Can you bring it to them?"

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"- it's complicated," says Iomedae. "I - very much desire that every person attain eternal paradise."

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"Why's it complicated? Can I help?"

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" - the first part that's complicated is the part about judgment. Pharasma, the Judge, evaluates souls by how they lived in life. Whether they were Good or Evil, whether they were Lawful or Chaotic. Good is about - doing right by others, and not doing wrong by them. It is Good to feed the hungry, Good to shelter the desperate, Good to defend the innocent. It is Evil to take an innocent life, or a guilty one when you had better options, or to make laws that take many. To harm someone for your own benefit, that's Evil, and to strengthen someone, that's Good, for a first outline of it. 

Law and Chaos are more complicated. People often say that mortals are - badly approximating the thing that those truly are, that the thing the gods mean is broadly not the thing we are doing. I think I know what the gods mean, but I often fail when I attempt to convey it; you should expect that what you're hearing from me is not in fact what the gods mean, even if I understand it. 

An exemplary Lawful person is one whose word is trustworthy, always, when they give it to allies and when they give it to enemies; a judge who cannot be bribed and cannot be threatened into wrongly deciding the cases that come before him, a minister who notices her own side is undetectably breaking a treaty condition and who fights her own court to get that to stop, as she cannot be party to it; a person so trusted not to cheat where it gives them advantage that it is possible for even their enemies to come to the table with them and expect to be better off for it.

An exemplary Chaotic person - and I should be less trusted here, I'm not myself inclined to this style of thought and the habits that make it good for people - but an exemplary Chaotic person is one who, finding themselves oathbound to the service of an evil King, walks away, not because he has a full and complete conception of how he might Lawfully account for the breaking of the oath, but because ultimately he's not going to serve an evil King even if he said he would. I would expect a Chaotic person to say things like that you should, mostly, just look at the world and use your mind and your own strength to figure out what's going to go best, and make promises very rarely, and keep those promises while the reasons for those promises hold, but not place the promises themselves in the place of the reasons."

She pauses. 

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So, everyone will go to judgment when they die? Seems better than going to reuse when they die? Or - it depends on how much of yourself you retain in the afterlives, but surely you retain - or why call them that -

And why tell Aritha this, in person, now, with such - carefulness, such urgency - it's not about how to bring the afterlives to Velgarth, this conversation, even if the Knight-Commander is willing to indulge a digression -

 

It takes Aritha a while to come up with it, even once she can tell the Knight-Commander is waiting expectantly for her to say something. "This is - about my oath, to the Emperor -"

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"Yes. It was, in my view of the world, a tremendous evil to ask that oath of you. And you have the choice to declare - though not yet, please, not before I've finished explaining - that you don't want to be a person who holds to their oaths - especially to ones coerced like that one was coerced, that being a person whose word when so given is meaningful and binding is less important to you than other things. I cannot tell you what to do; I do not know which things are important to you. But I want you to make this decision with full information."

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"Coerced?" she says eventually and dumbly.

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"- can you tell me about the circumstances under which you swore to serve the Empire?"

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"- they interrogated me, after Altarrin left, and they learned about - that I'd been scheming to go over to the invaders, and broken my oaths of office - that was Kottras, he told me to break some rules, not important ones - and - I thought that they were going to - use me the next time they needed a Final Strike - they did that to a lot of people who hadn't even committed any treason - and then the Emperor came to see me, and said - that he needed to be able to trust me, not just to compulsion me but to count on me, that if you offered me - whatever you offered Altarrin - I wouldn't - disappear - I didn't disappear voluntarily, Alfirin made me -"

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"I know. You haven't been offered a choice, and won't be offered one until at least after the war is over."

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"I told him, I swear, your Majesty, you can trust me. I won't - even if they cut my compulsions, I'll be loyal to you, I'll do this work for you."

 

It feels terribly dangerous, somehow, saying those words aloud again, like Iomedae can reach out and shatter something, maybe everything, maybe Aritha, with that deceptively gentle voice - the Emperor, too, had a deceptively gentle voice -

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Iomedae nods and says nothing.

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There's something she's not conveying and she doesn't - know how - 

 

"No one ever - asked me, before, for - to do anything more than hold still while they adjusted my compulsions -"

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"And you meant it," says Iomedae, watching her intently. "You wanted to be - someone whose word meant something. You would - not have been happy, not have been served, if I'd showed up to say 'don't swear it, Aritha, I can offer you more than you can possibly imagine' -"

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"Not unless you could've saved me from being executed on the spot."

 

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"The Empire probably wouldn't actually have killed you, you were very valuable to them. They were probably making you believe it so that you'd be more loyal once offered escape from it."

 

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This feels like being plunged into cold water, or noticing you were plunged into cold water a while ago and now are numb all over.

 

"Oh."

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"Do you think you wouldn't have given your word, but for that?"

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" - probably if at any point in my life the Emperor had personally asked me for a loyalty oath I'd have given it! He's the Emperor!"

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Iomedae nods. "I don't intend to tell you how to feel about what was asked of you, or what to do about it. I do expect that your decision will have a large effect on which afterlife you go to, and so I wanted to make sure that, in deciding, you knew about the afterlives. I have a book here with pictures, of Axis and the Maelstrom, of Heaven and Elysium, with stories from people who live there. I want you to know what your choices are. Axis and the Maelstrom are very different."

 

And she takes off her headband, the headband, and hands it to Aritha, along with the book, and says, 'take your time', and then pulls out some unrelated paperwork.

 

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What.

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WHAT.

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She puts it on, of course. She thought she'd never feel it again. She -

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She was fucking right that the Empire is going to lose this war. She was completely right and they had the nerve to blame her for thinking it instead of getting ahead to what it would mean.

The Empire should lose this war. It deserves it. Gods may suck, but if there are paradises on offer, then gods are worth putting up with. And these people are - it's hard to describe it, it's not just that they have different local customs, it's not just that they have time for her - the Knight-Commander is hardly less busy than Bastran -

- it's an entire tapestry of everything that's happened since she got here, that their impulse is to not hurt people, that their impulse is to not use people - she can't describe it but she can recognize it and it's different and maybe she's making this up because she wants it to be true but it seems related to the magic that makes mansions and makes headbands, magic so abundant that there's not any more point begrudging brilliance to people than there is begrudging them

- she's supposed to be thinking about the afterlives.

She wants all of them. She wants to live forever and ever and ever and consume every experience and every wild possibility any god has ever dreamed up. She wants to be a god herself. She wants everything. 

 

She looks at the pictures, only half of her paying attention. They're all beautiful in their own way except the horrifying ones.  

 

She's so angry at Altarrin for defecting without her. He - plausibly couldn't have taken her, she would have had to try to stop him, and also he must've been thinking around his own compulsions very carefully, but - he left her to the Empire, after he'd realized what it was, he left her in a position to be bound to an Empire she knew could lose and should lose and would lose - 

 

 

....afterlives.

 

 

How would you build buildings like that. How would you build magic like that. Who would you learn from - why would they teach you -  but of course they would, if they had forever, if they weren't all of them pinned to things they never asked for and never agreed to and never wanted and no one ever cared -

How can such good news make her so mad, it doesn't make any sense -

 

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Aritha is loyal to the Empire, to the Emperor, and what that means, is that she's going to make sure they all fucking live forever no matter how little they deserve it.

 

...she hopes they get the nice ones. But she doesn't hope it that much.

 

She slams the book shut. ...she didn't mean to do that. She was trying to close it in a normal way. Her hands are shaking.

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"Do you have questions?"

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"The complication, with the afterlives, it's that everyone in the Empire sucks and so they'll get bad ones?"

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" - approximately, yes. Or Aroden could pull His own followers who He can see well enough to be sure they'll be Lawful Neutral or better, but given how the local planet works, that'd be - systematically draining the planet of all its best people, which doesn't seem ideal - I am going to fix the Evil afterlives. I just don't know how long it'll take me."

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"You can't leave Velgarth until then."

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"We're trying to get a church established there right away.  That should give Aroden a lot more visibility into his options. We - won't leave Velgarth until we've fixed the Evil afterlives, but I also - think most of the people damned to Hell - and that's most of the senior people in the Empire - I think they'd rather get another shot at living a life. Petititioners in Hell retain fairly little of themselves, and not for very long."

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"It looked pretty terrible," she concedes, grudgingly. 

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What a person. "I will bring you in on strategy meetings about it, and let you know once Aroden has enough visibility to work with us on it. It will - be an honor, to have you working with us on that.

 

Did you have - other questions -"

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" - the oath. What am I supposed to - what do you want me to do."

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"I don't know everything, Aritha. I can't see as far as a god can, and the gods can't see as far as they like either. It is my sincere desire, for you, that you get whatever afterlife most delights you, most opens the pathways you want to grow down.

 

 And I also think that for some people, part of being their most whole self is to ignore, entirely, what Pharasma has to say about you, and live your life willfully disregarding Her."

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- but then I might get a bad afterlife, Aritha barely restrains herself from objecting. How could I - be my most whole self by willfully ignoring the most important question of my life -

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" - I think you are not that kind of person," Iomedae says. "And so I will tell you that my best guess is that the Aritha who goes to Axis or to Heaven keeps her word, on this oath, even though it is enormously unjust that she was asked for it, and my best guess is that the Aritha who goes 'yeah, that was deeply unfair, and I am not held to it' ends up not being judged Lawful. It is not impossible to in a Lawful manner reach the conclusion that was unfair and you were not held to it, but it is very hard, from your starting point, and I would not actually expect you or anyone in your position to succeed at it. That is my prediction about the afterlife-related stakes of this decision you mean to make.

 

I could - separately from that set of claims - make claims about the true nature of Law and Chaos and what I think the right thing to do is, but I'm not, actually, trying to deliver a lecture on moral behavior, here, you haven't asked me for that. I'm just trying to give you some concrete predictions about what will probably happen, since it's your soul at stake and you deserve to know."

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"I want Axis."

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"That makes sense. It's a lovely place."

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"I also - want to have my word mean something. I - I obviously wish I hadn't promised - but I did mean it -"

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"I know. One can very lawfully wish they were not bound by their commitments."

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"I - don't think I know what it means to have promised the Emperor my loyalty if I'm going to be a prisoner forever."

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"Not forever. Once Aroden's sufficiently established in Velgarth that I feel confident we'd foresee Tar-Baphon taking over the Empire, or once Tar-Baphon is sealed or dead, you can return to the Empire. - and have lots of extremely valuable magical knowledge for them. You could also - ask the Emperor to release you, at some price, though I don't know if he would. The Empire obviously wasn't deliberately and knowingly toying with the fate of everyone's immortal souls."

 

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"I don't think he'd release me. That doesn't serve the Empire, and he's - he's bound to serve the Empire too -"

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Something flickers across Iomedae's face. "For whatever it's worth - it's a common belief that being more like the Empire - not all the way like the Empire, places in Golarion don't usually go that far - but that being more like the Empire serves an Emperor, or serves a nation, or serves a Church. I think it's not true. I think the strongest human institutions are built out of free people, doing what they believe in, with justified trust in the people around them. This is - a thing people disagree with me about, so you shouldn't assume that I'm right. But my own best guess is that the Empire, if it were the kind of place that'd let you go free, would ultimately be stronger and better, judged on its own terms. The Knights have a process to Lawfully renounce our oaths, so that if any of us ever find that this path isn't the one that we think fixes everything, we can choose a different one."

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She's a strange woman. Perhaps the Emperor would be just as strange, if Aritha were to speak to him more; perhaps being free, the way only Emperors are free, makes you strange. Or perhaps it's her god that makes her like that. 

 

Questions.

 

"You said - that what you were saying was just predictions about where I'd be sorted, and wasn't about what the right thing to do is."

 

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"Yes."

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"What do you think the right thing to do is?"

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"It depends on the person," she says after a while. "Both the end goal and the best route there - depend on your strengths, which I don't know, and your weaknesses, which you don't want to show me. There isn't a single right thing to do when you are sworn to the service of an Emperor who cannot permit you to grow in the ways you'd grow if you were free. ...personally, in that position, I would try to derive from scratch Law as the gods understand it, until I was deeply satisfied with what it was and whether it was something I aspired to, and what implications that had for my oath, and whether in the conception of Law I'd grown into, people in the position I'd been in originally could swear to things meaningfully. And I'd try to convince the Emperor I was right about human flourishing and what it takes to attain it.

But that's because those are two routes to a stronger position that I understand how to take, and that'd be stupid advice for many other people. 

I would be thinking in those terms - in terms of routes to a stronger position - for almost any person. The right thing to do is usually to become more capable of identifying and doing right things."

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She's very strange to listen to. She's obviously using the speech and conventions of a different court, and that's a big part of it, but there's a strangeness to it beyond that. It's as if Aritha can feel the force of her conviction and intentions and persuasiveness brushing past Aritha, not in fact coming to bear on her at full force.

The opposite of what the Emperor did.

Aritha - isn't at all sure she likes it better. 

 

She does think she understands, what Curiosity meant, that the Knight-Commander is too Good to resent Aritha choosing Alfirin. The Knight-Commander's power comes from - well, from the sword and the invincibility and the army, no question, but the Knight-Commander's soft power, the things that would be threatened by political snubs, comes from her narrative, and her narrative is one in which no mage-researcher's freedom can threaten her, in which some mage-researchers snubbing her is everything working exactly as intended. There is no way for this interaction not to make the Knight-Commander look good. If Aritha is grateful - and Aritha is grateful, that's just not the level of analysis she's using right now - then the Knight-Commander gently and undemandingly laid the afterlives out before Aritha and inspired her to hold to her oath, against the Knight-Commander's own interests. If Aritha breaks her oath, then she did it fully informed thanks to the Knight-Commander. If Aritha storms off angrily, the Knight-Commander grieves for Aritha's difficult position, is too forgiving to retaliate. If Aritha calls her on it - what is there to call her on?

 

"I want to learn how to craft your world's mage-artifacts," she says, after a long pause. 

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"Alfirin asked me to get a wizard in who can teach you. I'll do so."

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"I wish you'd gotten me a day sooner."

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And at that the Knight-Commander does turn the whole force of her gaze on Aritha, and what is in it is regret and pain and loss. "I am very deeply sorry that we didn't. We could have done so, at an acceptable cost, but were busy and didn't think of any reason to hurry,  and if you were to never forgive that I don't think you'd be wrong. There are few evils as profound as the ones we do by not thinking very much."

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"I'm not angry, Knight-Commander," says Aritha reflexively, because she can't - process that at all, right now. "I was just saying, I - I like the thing, that you're doing, and I'd be part of it, if I could - there's - nothing that you owed me, and nothing to forgive."

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"You are angry," says the Knight Commander. "A little bit, very quietly, very distantly. You should be angry. 

 

I consider myself to owe you, and every other person on every world, an eternity in whatever paradise you choose to spend it in, whatever the Judge thinks, whatever mistakes you made, whatever traps you stepped into, and I would be honored, were you to hold it against me when I fall short of that. I hold it against Aroden, you know. I get very angry at Him, sometimes, that He hasn't fixed it yet. You have been wronged, Aritha, as far as I know, by every person and every god who has ever touched your life; we do owe you an apology, those of us who could have done better, and I'm sorry."

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And that's what it's like, she supposes, for the Knight Commander not to be holding back the whole force of herself. It feels like being the center of the whole world, and also like noticing how many centers the world has, buffeted at once by the twin revelations of how much you matter and that everyone else matters that much too. It feels like a wave taller than a mountain crashing down around you and leaving you untouched, on purpose, because it was to your defense that it'd been hurrying across the whole ocean. 

 

Aritha weeps. 

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And then she pulls herself together, because she's not stupid, and she's not weak.

 

 

"How many people do you do that to every day?"

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"Between three and ten. When I'm a god, I'll do hundreds. I don't - mean it less because I say it more."

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"....when you're a god."

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"Aroden did it. And it's clearly not done yet."

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"Is it hard."

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" - becoming a god? Yes, it's generally regarded as such."

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"Thank you, Knight-Commander, for the explanation about your world and its afterlives."

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"You are very welcome."

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And with a great effort Aritha will actually give the headband back before the Knight Commander has to demand it, and then she will go.

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Altarrin spends the first couple of hours after waking up on scrying Velgarth. He’s finally eking some more efficiency out of the spell, and the finer control necessary to move his scry-point without dropping it entirely.

Equipped with a somewhat more detailed report on the state of things in Oris, he goes to look for Iomedae, 

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She's in Urgir, but can make some time for him in not all that long.

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The news he has for her is mostly good. He still looks - troubled, and unhappy, and tired in a way that has nothing to do with how draining the scry-work was.

“I am quite confident that Bastran did order his forces to offer a ceasefire in Oris, and does not seem to have decided to countermand it after - recent events, despite what I am sure is significant pressure from his advisors. …I think the letter and diplomatic party was dispatched days ago, though, and the message has not yet reached the rebel leadership. I am concerned the local gods would consider peace talks inconvenient.”

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" - yes, I bet they would. Unfortunately any intervention by us is also the kind of thing that'll probably be disruptive to peace talks, I'd imagine."

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Nod. "Unfortunately, I think that is right. I have been trying to think through what my - our - options are, for improving relations with the Empire from where we are, and...fixing it."

He closes his eyes. "I wish that I saw a clearer path forward - that having your resources was enough. It feels like - having allies - should make things easier, and not just more complicated."

 

He's been wishing for a lot of things, lately, which is usually a mental motion he avoids because 'what if, instead of being like this, the world could be in better state already' isn't a plan and it doesn't help. It mostly just hurts to think about, imagining what could have been, instead of this, if Iomedae had somehow ended up in Velgarth seven hundred years ago. He wishes they had gotten Aritha out a day sooner - if he hadn't talked to Aroden, if he had dealt with all his urgent priorities first before incapacitating himself for a day - it's hard to regret having talked to Aroden but it did, in the end, cost them a day... Also he's finding the stupid headband very distracting, and he isn't sure it was helping with scrying at all, but he can't tell how much of it the just that he's no longer under a lot compulsions and can think better even without it. 

(It's fairly apparent from his body language that he's distressed without being sure why, and wants something very badly but, again, has very little idea what.) 

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"I think we could bring matters to a close much faster in Velgarth, and I'm mostly choosing not to do so because it's very hard to split my attention across both worlds and it would be costly to leave Urgir right now. If you want to ask me to do that, leave Urgir, and focus full-time on Velgarth, that'd be a legitimate favor I'd grant you, it's not clear to me which of us is objectively prioritizing more correctly."

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"...I am not sure I think that Velgarth has worse problems than your war with an evil necromancer? Or - problems that will be less retrievable if we move more slowly for a while." 

He's certainly not going to ask her for a favor about it, even if for some reason she would be willing to grant it as one. He's - not actually sure why that feels so much like - not the thing he wants at all, not the way he wants to work with her people. 

- he doesn't know what he wants to be different but he wants it to be something he could explain to Bastran, something that would mean they were no longer on opposite sides of an impassible gulf. He wants to have less of his entire sense of safety and having resources to work with resting on a foundation that doesn't make sense

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"Do you want the fearlessness?"

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It's not actually...things being different in a way where anything would be okay...and he's not sure the thing making it hard to think right now is fear exactly. But it probably won't make anything worse. He nods. 

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"For what it's worth, I'm expecting things to be pretty difficult for you until you can go to Absalom and Oppara independently and - start figuring out what you think of us and our world and our war, in a way that doesn't rely on divine revelation. It's probably not even very risky, and plausibly we should just let you do it now, but you're so fragile that I feel very reluctant to risk it. Maybe that's ridiculous, since we could always just raise you."

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...That's a lot of it, isn't it.

"It would probably help. I - had not been thinking of it as something I could justify taking the time for, right now, and - well, I suppose it was not in my model of the situation that you would let me. It is not obvious to me that it is a good idea from your perspective, because - even setting aside if it would be dangerous to me, I might attract the attention of someone who reports to Tar-Baphon. I am - not very well equipped to make risk assessments in your world, yet. ...And I am fine, in the short term, I am not used to - operating under this much uncertainty, or - where my model of my allies and resources does not really have any detail except 'Aroden', but I can." 

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"Yes, it's a cost we can in fact just ask you to pay indefinitely for the sake of paranoia. I - prefer not doing that. In your place I'd be pretty unhappy about not being able to understand the context I was operating in, especially if my allies wanted anything more complicated than spy reports and gates. You have - the most information about how costly it is, and how much risk it's worth running of - I'm actually less worried you'll randomly run into Tar-Baphon's spies, more worried that he'll go after you deliberately after having figured out somehow you're relevant to where I got all the diamonds. It is pretty catastrophic if he gets to you."

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"...It would be catastrophic, and given that the downside risk is catastrophic, it does not currently feel worth it to go explore your world. And...I think I understand enough about - you and your people and your way of operating - to have something to start with, now that I have reason to think your letters were...not just words. But I think the part that I am finding - actually costly to reason around, is - 

 

- I have very little sense of how far you trust me? Or what that trust is based in. I think from your starting position I would not trust me, definitely not to - have good judgement, or understand any of the principles that are important to you to follow even, especially, when the stakes are very high - and I am not sure how to change that." 

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" - when immortal mages with interplanetary Gate abilities show up in my crusade, I generally figure that my job is to show them ways to make things go better, which they will take as happen to intrigue or please or amuse them, and to be clear enough about my reasoning and my priorities that they won't go around doing enormously costly-to-me things by accident. I need more alignment than that from my Knights, but - I wouldn't be very able to run a war, if I needed everyone to be a Knight.

I trust that you're not going to deliberately do things that are extremely inconvenient for me for no reason, and that you'd like for us to win the war, and that if I toss lots of different ways of helping to attain that in your direction you can pick out the ones that suit you, or are interesting, or seem important from your premises. 

I think Aroden was plausibly communicating - something more than that - but He probably wouldn't have tried to say it Himself if He thought I was going to, and I only have your word He did say it, so I'm not - putting much weight there, right now. I'd ask Him, if I needed to know whether I could trust you with something really complicated where I can't just trust a basically reasonable person who is against the world being overrun by Tar-Baphon.

I'm sure that, as a result of this, I'm - underutilizing you - and I'm sorry about that. It's a tricky balance to strike. In my experiences archmages" run off for years if I try to convince them not to become a lich, and then murder hundreds of people rather than talk to me about if there's any other way "are people who know what they're about, and I respect that, and you've been through a really difficult set of experiences recently and I don't want to ...pounce on that and convince you I'm correct about everything. Or drive you away."

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“…That makes sense.”

And he probably would think less of her, for being willing to put significant weight on his word about an extremely confusing divine revelation. Even if the thing she said is, for some reason, making him feel intensely lonely - it’s so stupid, he was far more alone than this for multiple centuries and he didn’t spend it getting whacked in the face by emotions - 

 

- he wonders if Aroden ever felt this way, this - confused and alone and caught between uncertainty on whether he could trust himself and his decision-making, and a deeper certainty that problems would go unsolved if he couldn’t and so no matter what he had to figure something out… 

“I will try to keep thinking of ways I could help,” he says, slightly woodenly. “Do you know if Aritha is all right - has anyone been by to explain things to her -?”

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"I spoke to her a little while ago. I think she was - surprisingly all right. She decided to keep her word, and serve the Empire by getting them afterlives sooner, and she asked me if it's hard to become a god."

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“- Oh. Good. I am - not surprised - she came across to me as someone who would - grow into whatever space was granted to her.”

Up to and including becoming a god. He wishes he could have given her Tantara, instead, but - he’s not sure she would have been that shape, if she had been born beside Urtho’s Tower…any more than Ma’ar would have been what he ended up becoming. 

…it’s a pointless line of thought, anyway.

”I want to get her a headband. …What does the one you got for me actually do, I am finding it less helpful than expected,” which he hates saying, when she didn’t have to offer it to him at all, “and I think Aritha would want one that makes her better at inventing new magic.”

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"You want cunning, generally, for spell invention, and wisdom for intuition and good judgment, and splendour for - force of will. Sorcerers generally benefit most from splendour, but you can have whichever you'd like. - headbands that do all of them to a strong degree, like mine, are not just expensive but not really purchasable with money."

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It’s such a weird way to divide up mental abilities. 

“…I think maybe our magic works differently than how your ‘sorcerers’ work, I am mainly noticing increased - emotional self-awareness and enhanced understanding of other people, which seems basically unrelated to how I do magic, although it might help with some aspects of combat. I suspect I would— I want the improved numerical-spatial sense, which I think is Cunning, but I am not sure it mostly makes sense for me to focus on spell-invention, and I do it half from intuition anyway and would otherwise benefit most from the one you are calling 'wisdom.' Aritha is definitely going to want Cunning." 

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"I'll put it on the shopping list. Do you want Aritha's headband to be from me or from you?"

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"- I am not sure that is a material question, I did not really have a way to haul back a lot of gold from my records caches and so the resources I have with me to buy things are all ones I already gave you - I was just not sure if you would be prioritizing it, I would have figured out a way to pay for it if you were not going to give her one otherwise, but if you are then you should just do that." 

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"I try not to put my allies in a position where they have to negotiate in advance with me to not be cheated. You brought us the diamonds, you get however much money you need for reasonable expenses. I think it might be nice for Aritha to hear that it's you that asked for it for her, though also I think she trusts Alfirin and I more than you and is somewhat mad at you right now."

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"Because I did not take her with me, and thus left her to be pressured into a loyalty oath she in hindsight wishes she had not made?"

Sigh. "I - am not sure if it would help to talk to her about it - at the time I would have said that stopping to collect her risked a high chance of both of us being taken prisoner for questioning, at this point I am - less sure - but I think I could not justify it to my compulsions the way I did my own escape, since I knew it was not in the Empire's interests or the gods' interests to have her executed. I do still owe her an apology, and I suppose I could tell her that I asked about a headband for her, if you think it would help." 

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"I think it would? She seems - pragmatic, and interested in tracking what resources she has here. And - someone who very much might be a Knight, if she'd grown up in my world."

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"I will do that, then. Thank you for following up with her." 

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"Of course. I - wouldn't have wanted to leave it to anybody else. Whatever she decided, about the oath, it was - important that she decide it, and in a way that wouldn't feel later like she was being - manipulated again from another angle."

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Nod. "...If I could have everything I wanted, here - which I doubt will be possible, no matter how we prioritize - I would want her to sit down and talk to Bastran about it. He - genuinely does not want to make anyone's life worse, especially not by asking for their loyalty." 

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"I'm - getting that sense, yeah. I don't know that it's impossible. If the ceasefire takes - and we can at least be in communication with the Marshal, tell his people that it's a legitimate offer and that there might be hostile coincidence but they should make it happen -

- then maybe we can have peace with the Empire, and in a year when Tar-Baphon is sealed they can have Aritha back and - I can go over and raise their war dead for them, make a better impression -"

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Nod. "It would be very good if you or your people could open communications with the rebels directly. It should not come from me - and I do not actually have a way to send anything directly, the Marshal is apparently quite good at staying underground and I have never met him to target a scry directly - but I could bring someone to a records cache in Velgarth, if your magic has a spell for it." 

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"I can do a Share Memory to give them the target and then it should work fine. The Marshal was probably trying to avoid you specifically. He's a - capable man. I think he'd be a decent King and that's not a character judgment I form too readily. He wanted, even before I met him, to make Oris richer and better than the Empire. He - thought the gods were on his side. They - just wanted to bleed you off, am I right?"

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"I expect so. And that - even if They had let him win, which I am not sure was ever in the cards, They would - not have let him build the kingdom he actually wanted." 

If it were that easy I would have done it five hundred years ago, but that's a pointless thread of bitterness to dwell on, and he's not even sure it's true, it seems plausible the gods dislike him in particular and it's not even necessarily unreasonable of them, given the destruction he was implicated in causing. 

Shrug. "Maybe we can find a way to change that. Velgarth would be so much better, if - people who had those ideals could have the space to pursue them." 

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A fervent nod. "I want to ask the High Priest of Sarenrae to go over there and do a Miracle and ask her to - talk to Anathei, or if She is Anathei, a - very distant fragment - to bring it back into the rest of Her and get them on the same page. And I want Aroden to negotiate, once He's established. 

 

The - most important thing to me has always been - to do whatever it takes, but - that it's possible, for doing whatever it takes to look like Urgir and not like endless horrors - because the forces that want to improve the world don't have a special advantage at our ability to kill but we do have a special advantage at our ability to - invent and ally and befriend and build. I'm never quite sure how much that is - already true, of the world, and how much i'm just claiming I can make it true. But I think I can make it true."

 

 

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He feels...a lot of things, when she says that, and it's tempting to politely end the conversation and flee back to his room and figure it out there, alone, but - he's been trying to act less like he's alone here, it feels like turning down a gift that Aroden tried to offer him at significant cost.

"...I thought I could make it true in Velgarth. And - right now it feels like I was just wrong, that - either it would have taken someone much better at this than I could have been from my starting point, or it was never possible at all. ...But Aroden did it here, and I am not sure His starting point was much better. And if we can both work toward it...

...I suppose what I am trying to say is that I hope you are right, that you can make it true, and - I want to help." 

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(Elsewhen and elsewhere...)

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The arrival of the first undead to set foot on Velgarth was not particularly marked. 

(Even the Whispering Tyrant with his limitless hosts of the dead has tradeoffs. He cannot be truly destroyed, cannot be undone save by a direct act of the gods that near as many would oppose as support, but to spare a battlefield general to conquer whatever world Iomedae happened to landed on - would mean he did not have the battlefield general to oppose the Shining Crusade that will probably, unless he can soul-trap Iomedae and/or Alfirin, end his empire and so unmake all he has built since his first death at Aroden's hands. And so it is, this time, not a battlefield general he sends.)

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It is known that he was Margrave of Vieland for a time, before the Tyrant gifted him with the cloak of mirrors he wears and the flesh rotted beneath his skin, and from this his name comes. (The Altered face he wears under the Greater Invisibility under the Disguise Self is, of course, proud and handsome; he would hardly have it not be, without cause.) It is also known that he is a terrifyingly gifted illusionist, that by an ancient pact he possesses allies among the deadly outsiders that lurk in the lands behind mirrors to prey on all mortals, and that he can cast seventh-circle spells without the staff he bears, though it is, of course, generally useful.

In his Bags of Holding are hundreds of pounds of gold, wands and scrolls of various spells he finds useful, a complete life-sized statue of his true appearance, a third-circle huecuva cleric of Urgathoa, and about a dozen fresh spectres that know he’s too dead to be a tasty snack, because if Iomedae has already made too much of a start at taking the planet over he’s at least going to make sure she doesn’t enjoy the victory.

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His first step on arriving in a new world is, of course, to spy on the more isolated locals with Detect Thoughts while invisible, inaudible, aura-shrouded, et cetera. Once he’s done that and located a small village nobody particularly cares about, he’ll kidnap a few hunters who looked like there was some risk of them disappearing anyways, and use his preferred combination of torture, illusions, necromancy and enchantment to convert them into his undead servants, and, more importantly, their knowledge into his knowledge.

It is a slow progression, for the Mirrorgrave; first hunters, then the most isolated farmsteads; from the isolated farmsteads to the traveling mage of the isolated noble’s court, and then - why, then the rest of the court. (The first three rural nobles he found he bypassed; they had cousins who would notice their disappearance. The fourth is isolated, distant, has poor relations with his neighbors, and is in bandit-haunted territory; it’s hardly surprising when his estate is burned in the night.) With this knowledge - rural, but of another world - and with the tattered remnants of a mage following him, it is little trouble for the Mirrorgrave to move in to the nearest city; first ripping the truth from the minds of beggars and then moving on to taking control of men and women who, though not of any great importance themselves, still understand matters of war and magic… and, of far more importance to him, understand matters of politics in the city and in the Empire, and of the nature of the state in which he has found himself.

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(He endeavors to send this information back to his master, through many secret ways. He does not know if he succeeds; the power that threw him across worlds was not a power so easily mastered as the simple spells he wields, and he is far indeed from the lands he knows.)

It is only then, with a fortress erected in the distant mountains and servants bound to his will, that his plan begins.

The Eastern Empire is a tool, a vast edifice of thirty million slaves, all under one hand.

And why should that not be the hand of the Whispering Tyrant?

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There are many preliminaries - but when the day of his plan comes, the Mirrorgrave wraps himself in many spells of warding, and reads powerful scrolls given to him for the hour of need and penned in the hand of the Whispering Tyrant himself, and steps through the bedroom mirror in the chamber of the Emperor of the East, Dominate Person spell ready to cast.

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Bastran was deeply asleep, but - among many other effects - the wards that instantly trigger when Mirrorgrave enters his room wake him instantly. 

 

- well, as instantly as he is capable of waking to full alertness, which is not nearly as fast as, say, Altarrin. He's rising to a sitting position and triggering the mage-light set-spell within less than second - what's happening -?

(He knows that the alarm will have triggered a number of defensive set-spells. There are more he can set off himself, with another half-second's effort of will, if it's worth it, but many of them would be a terrible idea in quite a lot of circumstances, like the shield that approximately blocks all magic from crossing it, including 'Bastran attempting to use the communication-spell with his guards.'

He also knows that wards will alert all of his personal guard, which was recently increased to high-alert levels, and no one else can Gate into his quarters but there are half a dozen Adepts close enough to his door that they can be through it in less than a second.) 

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Let it never be said that the Office of Inquiry and the Imperial Guard of the Eastern Empire are not ready to respond to any situation that might ever occur with the most absolute, unrelenting paranoia that a human being is capable of, especially not situations that have already come up once before and found their paranoia wanting.

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(They’d have only themselves to blame if they weren’t, really.)

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The alarm rings simultaneous with the Mirrorgrave’s entry into the room. It takes only three seconds for the shift Kastil’s independent-assignment-lieutenant-with-implausible-authorizations stationed on eight-hour alert to form up and draw weapons - leaping out of bed as they throw power into their activated talismans. One Gater per squad opens a mass horizontal gate and they all fire straight through His Imperila Majesty's door simultaneously a moment before they're dropped through the mass vertical gates to swarm through door and walls, shields ready and already lining up their next shots. (They can’t see the Mirrorgrave, but they can see where someone’s spell dropped something.)

The Dominate spell is interrupted before it finishes.

Then two seconds later the Imperial Guard do the exact same thing, except a large fraction of them spend their strength specifically on shielding the Emperor and Gating him straight out of the room..

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This is not really long enough for Bastran to figure out what's going on! Especially given all the magic being thrown around and the fact that he was at no point able to see whoever or whatever was attacking him! 

 

...now he's somewhere else and safe might or might not be safe but he recognizes the Imperial Guards. And is basically all of the way to fully alert, thanks to all the adrenaline. 

<Report?> he snaps out, because the comms-spell is faster than talking, and also he's scared and his chest feels stupidly tight. 

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Not for the next few seconds, sorry!

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The Mirrorgrave possesses a vast number of terrifying arcane wards against harm; he is invisible (not invisible enough!), possesses invisible mirror images who are easy to hit instead of him, possesses Mage Armor, Shield, Shield of Faith, and a variety of more complicated defenses. The odds of penetrating his wards are negligible - 

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They only need to touch his armor to unleash their spells, not penetrate it.

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- any physical weapon that impacted him would need to be - 

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Both bludgeoning and magical?

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Yes, that. In order to bypass even his lich defenses, and so reach his true wards.

… Shit.

The vast majority of the projectiles miss the Mirrorgrave. The fireballs and levinbolts that wash over him are essentially irrelevant; Golarion has had centuries to devise wards against such, and it is hard to cut his spells without being able to locate them; the majority, too weak to be any real threat, wash over his Lesser Globe of Invulnerability without even reaching his resist energy spells. 

But the true majority of the attacks aimed at him are spinning projectiles propelled straight into him at high velocities fired by literally hundreds of Masters and Adepts. When the tip of the bullet crumples (at first without harming him; he has Protection from Arrows and Stoneskin active) it fires off a blast of mage-daggers; when the core is forced in on itself, it fires off incinerating flames - useless against him, of course… unlike the force-daggers, the force-daggers fired from inside his Lesser Globe of Invulnerability, inside his Shield, and directly into his torso.

And against pure force, the magic of Golarion does not really have an answer.

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There is, of course, one secret defense of the Mirrorgrave, far more powerful than anything a mortal sorcerer could craft. In his cloak of mirrors are nine and four specially enchanted by the Whispering Tyrant; each of them appears at all times to perfectly, precisely reflect his full appearance, and each holds the trapped soul of a mortal who could not escape his grasp. Spells and attacks alike can be reflected into them, and no matter how deadly the spell it cannot do more than destroy a single one of the trapped souls he wears. Even a Disjunction spell would only have the thinnest hope of tearing his cloak asunder, and so long as the mirrors continue reflecting his true appearance, not the mightiest Implosion can harm him.

… At least, not the mightiest thirteen Implosions. Each mirror only blocks one attack, and once it's done that, well, he'll need to go trap more souls, won't he?

Before the end of the first second of fire, thirteen mirrors shatter as one. Before the end of the second he’s lost his spell. When the Imperial Guard joins in - 

- By the end of the sixth second since his arrival, the Mirrorgrave’s soul has fled to his phylactery and his body is a heap of bones and magic items scattered across Emperor Bastran’s bedroom floor.

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<Another otherworldly assassination attempt, Your Majesty.>

(The remains are being Gated to an extremely secure containment facility, where they will be reduced to separate parts, all of which will be placed in separate bins for later sorting into Extremely Cursed, Even More Extremely Cursed, and Let's See If Lava Works.)

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Is it over then can he go back to sleep he definitely cannot do that. 

 

Does Kastil have any leads on who or what or how? Or, maybe most importantly, whether it was a follower of Aroden? 

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(There are spare bedrooms.)

Not yet! All that's left now is broken, shattered bones and some magic items that were approximately indestructible. It won't be until they've cast some pastwatching spells and gone through the remnants and tried to trace the teleport that the Office of Inquiry will have a report for him on who was responsible, other than 'someone who could not, actually, take four times as much firepower as Alfirin and survive'.

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....Great. Good work. Bastran is impressed and satisfied with Kastil's preparedness and he is sure the Office of Inquiry is entirely on top of this and since he's a disaster when he hasn't had a full night's sleep if he's not needed for anything right now, then yes he will take one of the offered guest bedrooms, and a fuller report in the morning. 

 

- he assumes they've already thought of questioning Iomedae's delegates about it? Not that they can trust the answers, obviously, but it'll be informative if they have answers. 

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Thought of it, yes, gotten answers back, no; Iomedae's delegates are still (for security reasons) a long way from the palace. They'll report back once they've heard something.

Good night, Your Majesty. Sleep well.

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The paladins are much worse at reasoning when under enough compulsions to convince them that Iomedae is untrustworthy and they should resign! They are...still pretty sure that even untrustworthy Iomedae would, like, have Alfirin Gate-kidnap the Emperor, if she wanted the Emperor? What magic items were found on the intruders?

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Oh, you know. Magic ones. Headband, rings, belt, cloak of mirrors...

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FUCK 



THE MIRRORGRAVE IS HERE?




THEY NEED TO CONTACT IOMEDAE IMMEDIATELY AND ASK FOR HELP

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- even if Iomedae is completely untrustworthy, she's much much much better than Tar-Baphon. Really. 

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They'll pass this on to the Emperor!

So, tell them more about this Mirrorgrave...

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One of Tar Baphon's lieutenants. A lich, like most of them, which means if he's dead he won't stay that way. He'll go to his phylactery and reform his body from there. They don't know whether his phylactery is in Velgarth or back in Golarion; either are a problem, because if in Velgarth he'll be back and if in Golarion he'll tell Tar Baphon more information so it's easier for whoever comes next. He's been known to disappear, leaving a crumbling life-sized statue in his place.

 

He wouldn't have come alone, and he'll have killed and enslaved some people before he caught their attention - if there's a vampire that spirals out of control fast - 

 

 

- I think you're interfering with my professional judgment, says Tiaves irritably, about halfway through trying to lay this out. You should stop that if you want to stop the undead INVADING YOUR COUNTRY.

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What's a vampire?

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(Hey, Arbas, we, uh, might need these guys thinking clearly...)

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Dangerous, deadly undead, gaseous whenever they want to be, capable of Dominating people without casting a spell, and relevantly for a mission like this one they can reproduce themselves indefinitely. They usually prefer not to because not all their spawn will be under their control, but to deny this world to the living they'd do it.

Stake through the heart, sever the head, and douse it in holy water. They avoid direct sunlight.

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Arbas had left clear notes indicating that if the other interrogators wanted the cultists less or differently impaired for questioning, they should feel free to change his compulsions around, he just didn't feel like putting everything back at the end of a long day. He also hates being woken up in the middle of the night! But, well, if they're not sure they can navigate the godmindcontrol and getting honest answers while still leaving Iomedae's delegates able to think, fair enough really. It was a slog. Also he will admit that he didn't document his process very well. 

He'll be there in a couple of minutes, to undo the last couple of rounds of compulsions that actually pushed the paladins to the point of despair and believing they should resign, while of course reading their minds. 

 

 

- vampires, goodness, what a fascinating concept. Weirdly complicated? Sounds like something out of a ballad, but like, not the kind of ballad he's personally into.

Do the somewhat-less-impaired paladins (who are still probably pretty exhausted) have any thoughts on the considerations that this 'Mirrorgrave' might have taken into account when deciding whether to haul a vampire with him to Velgarth? 

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- oh, it's just that the evil mind control empire is mind controlling them, not that Iomedae is untrustworthy. That makes so much more sense of everything.  Pretty fucked up of the evil mind control Empire but Iomedae did warn them that the evil mind control Empire would be terrible to them, and she thought it was worth it. 

 

 

They'd be surprised if Mirrorgrave came alone, because he can only control a small number of undead himself, and that wouldn't be satisfactory to Tar-Baphon. And they'd be surprised if he came without the resources to at least give Iomedae a good fight if she had a church of Aroden here. Vampires aren't the only possibility but there'd be something.

 

I'm sorry, Tiaves does manage eventually. That we attracted this horror to your world. 

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Huh, neat, the 'incapable of being afraid because of godmindcontrol' thing does seem to make them bizarrely resilient. Could be useful. Arbas really should figure out how to do that. 

(He has no idea how to make sense of or respond to the apology and so kind of just ignores it.) 

 

...Do vampires have specific magical properties that might be scryable. What are the other kinds of resources Mirrorgrave might have brought along. Are any of them magic items that can be described based on comparisons to all these other magic items the Empire has studied in detail. What about his soul that he's apparently hiding somewhere, is that scryable. 

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...probably but barely-empowered paladins don't know. Iomedae will know. They need to tell her. They can - ask her to send more people, hostage to her returning home as soon as she's dealt with the Mirrorgrave, or something, it doesn't matter, they should just alert someone who has any idea what is at stake here.

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They'll consider it. The Empire is not incredibly satisfied by the extremely...one-way...communication setup that Iomedae suggested, and the fact that she's clearly trying to grab all of the routes for interworld travel for herself. 

Are the people who he probably killed and enslaved still going to be enslaved while he's dead, even if that's temporary? What sorts of things should the Empire look for, if they're looking for his local base with his dead slaves? How about a vampire - even if they can't scry for one directly, assume the Empire has instantaneous mental communication with all of its major outposts, and scrying coverage on all cities and towns, what would a vampire incursion and multiplication look like? 

 

(These people are fascinating and Arbas is sitting on the urge to steal one of them - probably the girl - and see if spending long enough at it means he can break her loyalty to her god, and if so what happens next. He's not going to do it, it doesn't seem like it helps right now and it would upset the Emperor, but he's so curious.) 

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Probably they want to look for a big uptick in unexplained deaths and disappearances.

 

(Kiritan is having the harder time. This is the thing they're here to do, it'll save many lives, but it's so terrifying and upsetting and she is horrified that you even can make her forget her reasons for trusting Iomedae.

...other people would be trapped and terrified and in pain, enslaved to the Mirrorgrave, if not for what she's doing. It's worth it.)

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oh no she's so sparkly and fascinating he has a job to do here, and it's not spending the next week exploring all of the most interesting ways her mind will fragment under enough strain - and whether any amount of it would make Aroden give up on her and stop giving her even the minor repeatable-miracles (and thus presumably cause her to give up on Aroden), which is really the most intriguing question. 

 

Unexplained deaths and disappearances, got it. They'll keep an eye out for those. Do the paladins have any guesses on where to focus their investigations - it's clearly not going on in a major city in the core Empire, or they would have noticed already without even knowing to investigate, but would this 'Mirrorgrave' have been more likely to pick a city in a border province, versus a rural landholding...? 

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They have no idea and it might've depended where he arrived when he arrived, which they also don't have any guesses about.

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Yeah, all right, fair enough. That's all the questions he has for now, then. 

 

 

He'll pass on to the other interrogators that they should probably just let Iomedae's Aroden-cultists sleep, he doubts they're going to get more time-sensitive information out of them tonight and they'll be less impaired on a given level of compulsions if they're better rested. 

...he does overall get the sense that, while Aroden is presumably horrible in the usual ways that the gods are horrible, it sounds like Tar-Baphon is horrible in the ways Abyssal demons would be if they were smart? He is not actually sure that the paladins' sense of which outcome there was worse was - biased by being cultists of Aroden - he too would prefer to live in a country run by the temple of Anathei to a country run by an Abyssal demon smarter than any human. 

He doesn't know if that means they should contact Iomedae via the dubious message-route suggested. Someone else - either the Emperor, in the morning, or or someone to whom he's delegated more authority - can make that call. Arbas is going back to bed. 

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When dealing with a matter of external infiltration of the Empire, the Office of Inquiry considers itself to be in charge while the Emperor is asleep, and when the Office of Inquiry feels that way, reasonable people usually listen. They are not particularly throwing their weight around, but they see no reason to wake the Emperor; agents of the Office will coordinate with State and Justice to look for mysterious and unexplained disappearances and anything that might possibly be the Mirrorgrave's hidden lair.

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Bastran does not sleep in enough to make up for the lost sleep in the middle of the night, and wakes up still feeling terrible, but it's fine, he will get up and not spend a candlemark in the bath like he really wants to, and read what are presumably going to be some stressful and unpleasant updates over breakfast. 

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Stressful and unpleasant updates!

- The assassin's magical items are being studied in a secure offsite containment facility. (The details of the security, not mentioned, include things like "complete force-walls" and "nobody who knows how to Gate touching any of the things.")

- Going by the assassin's (pastwatched) appearance, he was a human being who just happened to be able to magically walk through mirrors. Going by the recovered remains, he was a dessicated fleshless skeleton; he seems to have been under a sort of - weird visual barrier thing that is somehow not detectable through mage-sight? - up until he got destroyed and all his mage-artifacts immediately became visible.

- They asked Iomedae's paladins what this was and they're panicking! Apparently it was one of the most powerful servants of Iomedae's nemesis Tar-Baphon, and he's an immortal disembodied soul that can just regrow his body whenever he loses it. While this is good news vis-a-vis their ability to kill Very Scary Things from Golarion with enough concentrated firepower, it is not good news vis-a-vis Iomedae's nemesis Tar-Baphon knowing about them. The paladins think they should immediately ask Iomedae and her god for help against Tar-Baphon. The Office of Inquiry is skeptical, and indeed skeptical along the lines of "can this be a false-flag operation to get us to ally with Iomedae even though she hates us."

- The paladins think the assassin has a base somewhere in the Empire and they're trying to track it down; the Ministries of State and Justice are helpfully cooperating, in this.

- Kastil is demanding more Masters and Adepts, and also more Adept-killer bullets and that the Ministry of Progress start inventing even scarier Adept-killer bullets for even scarier Adepts.

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These are indeed not updates that leave Bastran delighted! 

He's grateful for their work on looking for the assassin's potential base, keep it up. Same on studying the magical items, he's sure their precautions are solid but they really should be very careful, they know how dangerous Iomedae's artifacts were and if it really is Tar-Baphon's servant then they might be worse.

The Ministry of Progress can ask for a higher number for their budget but he does, still, continue to want an actual number. 

 

 

...he's confused and genuinely not sure what to do about the possibility that Tar-Baphon knows about Velgarth and is genuinely worse than Iomedae, which he would be ready to believe. It could be a a false-flag operation - this might even be the most plausible explanation, given that their only source of information on the mirror-cloaked Adept is Iomedae's delegates, who arrived with rather convenient timing to pass on this 'warning' - and they should definitely be suspicious and not jump straight to allying with Iomedae or making any concessions. 

He - doesn't think it would necessarily be risking that much, to leave one of the more useless artifacts somewhere outside the Empire with a minimally informative letter?

They don't need to say that it was an assassination attempt, or that they foiled the assassination attempt, or even mention the paladins' claims, they can - maybe just say that the Empire received intelligence about a powerful Adept with a cloak of mirrors?

...He would like the Office of Inquiry's analysis of what risks this still presents, in the case where Iomedae is not literally worse than Tar-Baphon. (If she's working with Tar-Baphon, which is possible, then it also doesn't really give anything away, she would presumably be aware of any Tar-Baphon-related activity.) 

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The Office of Inquiry is politely opposed to the entire idea of giving true information to enemies, but also will do what the Emperor says.

... And they're willing to do that, but they don't in fact know what's more useless and what they just don't know how to use. They strongly suspect that if they suspect they will get an offer from Iomedae to establish a permanent presence the purpose of which is to bend the Empire to her purpose.

The Office of Inquiry's risk analysis is that it trades "risk of Tar-Baphon causing problems" off against "risk of Iomedae causing problems." Since they don't know if Tar-Baphon actually exists or any facts about him that don't come from Iomedae, because Iomedae very suspiciously kidnapped everyone in the Empire who could or might be able to work out how to Gate to her world, and they do know Iomedae launched a secession movement and carried out multiple kidnappings, they feel like this is a very simple tradeoff. If they assume that Tar-Baphon exists and is worse than Iomedae, then the obvious risks are that Iomedae would have agents establishing an illegal cult in the Empire, would support existing cults, would demand extremely high prices (officially or simply in the form of tolerating whatever it is they choose to do) for opposing Tar-Baphon here. The Office of Inquiry is really not happy about giving Iomedae any crack in the door at all.

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Bastran is not generically opposed to giving true information to enemies. Just because two factions are enemies doesn't mean that they categorically disagree on everything, or don't have any common ground, and (at least many) factions opposed to the Empire are nonetheless capable of following incentives. The stupidest wars are ones where the sides have different information such that each thinks they're making reasonable decisions that will achieve their goals, and are wrong. Oris is plausibly an example of that, right, the rebel leader thought that the gods were on his side and so he couldn't possibly lose even against the Empire's vastly superior numbers and firepower, and he was wrong about what the gods are steering for, and a lot of people died. 

(It's a principle that Altarrin always held - that, all else being equal, it's generally a good idea in expectation to communicate more.)

...Also they can just - not - take Iomedae up on establishing a permanent presence in the Empire? Taking one step down that path doesn't commit them to following it to the end. Iomedae could just already be establishing illegal cults, if she's the sort of person who would do that and lie about it, and if Tar-Baphon in fact doesn't exist, then it's not clear to him that sending this one message would make it any more likely. 

- also it's informative, right, if they send this message and don't follow up by granting Iomedae permission to operate in the Empire, and she goes and operates in the Empire anyway, then that basically confirms that her principles are lies, which would be important to know if it's true but he's - far from convinced it is true. 

 

Anyway. He wants to send this message. He will take input on how to set that up in a way that minimizes risk, and he's willing to run the content by the Office of Inquiry, but - he thinks the downside risk isn't enough to outweigh the general principle of Communicating More. 

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Chief Inquisitor Siman will leave the yelling at the Emperor to the specialist in this!

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"Your Majesty. I have investigated dozens of cases of criminal entrapment, blackmail, and luring-to-treason over the course of my career. In practically every case, the central element consisted of the slow downwards progress of the victim via demands each individually negligible, each perfectly reasonable in the context of the demand that preceded them or the new situation this demand created, ultimately leading to the initial criminal persuading the victim to take actions which would have shocked his pre-blackmail sense. I and the Office of Inquiry recommend to you now what we would recommend to the typical person who, tempted by his enemy, decides to take 'a very small step down that path:' Don't."

"If you are confident in this, I would strongly recommend writing down, now, a list of failure conditions, such that if you are ever considering accepting any of them, you have clearly been affected by otherworldly mind control or manipulation and should just give up on Iomedae, no matter how horrible and humiliating it might be by this point after all your cooperation with her in which she guided you to reconsider sacred imperial principles against the judgement of your advisors. What would you put on this list?"

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He sighs, heavily. 

"I'm not entirely sure this is what it seems, and I wouldn't - want to precommit to a path of action that would be a disaster if we're - wrong about a lot of things. But. Um. I see your point, and - I think it's more likely that Iomedae is our enemy than not, even if this particular attack really was Tar-Baphon and not a ploy. So I - guess it's worth drawing some bounds, on - things where it wouldn't cause an enormous disaster if Iomedae is actually what she presented herself as, but that's - doable, if she really doesn't want to make the situation worse..."

Sigh. "...Establishing a church of Aroden in the Empire proper. Meeting Iomedae face to face. Altering my compulsion or allowing someone else to do so. I...guess...stepping down as Emperor? Uh, reinstating Altarrin in his position without replacing the compulsions, though I would be very surprised if I were tempted to do that. Is there anything obvious I'm missing." 

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He'll give Bastran an approving nod. "Establishing a tolerated permanent presence that is technically not a church of Aroden in the empire proper, and the same for any other god of her world," he says immediately. "Disbanding the Imperial Army, or reducing its size by more than fifty percent. Disbanding the Office of Inquiry, or same. Draining the treasury - you'll want a definition of that written down; more than half of a year's income in subsidies, maybe?" Gross, not net.

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"- I want to leave open the option of tolerating a permanent presence of a clearly non-god-affiliated faction, if it turns out they exist, I think that should count differently. And - there are conditions where we might want to have the option of spending down the treasury to address a near-term emergency, I'm happy to say that handing them gold would be very suspicious but I want to note that there may be future edge cases. I can commit to - no financial plans that haven't been signed off on by at least three ministries?" 

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He nods. "If the nations of her world send us ambassadors and we accept them, that makes sense with no compulsions at all - and yes, Your Majesty, of course, given the crisis. It's handing them gold that would suggest mind control."

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...He wants to go through possible edge case scenarios for all the other suggestions, too. 'Establishing or tolerating a church' seems straightforward enough, but - there are scenarios where real time communication with Iomedae might be critical. He thinks probably speaking across a Gate is too high a risk and would indicate altered judgement, but speaking via a comms-spell relay might be justified? 

He thinks there are ways they might want to reformat the army - for example, if it turns out that un-Gifted soldiers are worse than useless against undead, or get turned into vampires? And they similarly might want to dissolve and reform the Office of Inquiry, if something happens to its current membership, it’s not as though that hasn’t happened before. 

Can Kastil think of any other edge cases to pin down before they embark on this? 

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Kastil thinks that speaking via a comms-spell relay could possibly make sense.

He also thinks that the odds that un-Gifted soldiers will in fact be so useless against undead, and undead will be so much the sole enemy they have to fight to the point where they don't even need to worry about bandits and Ithik, are so low that it's more likely that Iomedae tricked him into doing that.

... He similarly, obviously, thinks that firing/executing half of the Office of Inquiry is something that is, again, more likely if Iomedae is deliberately trying to trick him into doing that. If half of the Office of Inquiry ends up dead and Bastran needs to hire new people, this is, again, different, though he should probably still assume the gods (most likely Iomedae's god) are to blame.

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…He’s happy to commit to not making those decisions unilaterally, at least, and only making changes if they’re signed off on by several ministers? 

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Several ministers can also be talked to by Iomedae. Kastil is frankly very worried that Bastran is thinking about this. But also, Bastran is the Emperor, and he, not Kastil, is in charge, thank their mutual ancestors.

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They can talk about how to restrict any future contact with Iomedae to minimize avenues of influence.

 

…for now he would like them to actually just send the message, conveying at the very least that a suspicious mirror-cloaked Adept has been spotted in the Empire.

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As His Imperial Majesty commands.

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Altarrin spends the day reading about Golarion history and going through the catalogue of magic items thinking about what would be most useful so he can provide Iomedae with a list. He scries Velgarth again before he goes to sleep. He sees no sign that the Empire's diplomats are in talks with the rebels, but there at least aren't battles happening in Oris, and everything else seems calm enough. He goes to bed. 

 

In the morning, he wants to get the mandatory apology conversation with Aritha out of the way before - probably - he Gates them to Velgarth for communications with the rebels, which will also be a much better time to scry the Empire for complications. 

He goes looking for Aritha. Is she in her guest room? 

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She is! She got a wizard in to explain magic item crafting to her and now she's determinedly trying to learn it!

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Oh. Good. Altarrin is genuinely happy to see that. 

 

He's still going to politely interrupt rather than waiting for her to reach a good stopping point, because the next plans are time-sensitive. He knocks quietly on her doorframe. "Aritha? Can we speak - it will not take long, but there are some things I ought to say." 

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"Archmage-General." He presumably isn't, anymore, but that feels like all the more reason to say it. 

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He sits down. 

"First. Whether or not there were - realistic better options - I owe you an apology for fleeing without you, and leaving you in a situation that was predictably very bad. And - I am sorry that I did not push harder to expend resources on retrieving you. I made a...decision, that cost me a day, and it sounds like retrieving you a day earlier might have simplified things greatly. I did not at the time feel I was in a position to ask for costly favors from Iomedae or her people, but now that I look back at it, I could have." 

He does mean to tell her that he prayed to Aroden and very unexpectedly received an answer - he's not sure anyone else would have mentioned it - but it's kind of a distraction from the actual apology, which he wants to convey with the seriousness it deserves. 

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She blinks surprisedly for a few seconds before realizing - no, Altarrin is Iomedae's, now, and that's how Iomedae's people do things. 

(It's not that she would have mind controlled him. It's that she'd have told him about the afterlives, or whatever has the place of 'afterlives' in Altarrin's heart, and apologized to him, and that would have done it.)

Something hurts. More after the apology than it did before it. 

 

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He can tell that something is distressing her and he isn't entirely sure what. He lets out his breath in a quiet brief sigh. 

"I am not sure there was a better option. I was - thinking around my own compulsions, and had managed to convince myself that I was in immediate danger and likely to be assassinated by the gods if I stayed, and my being dead would not serve the Empire, but this reasoning would not have stretched to cover you. I - must have known on some level that Iomedae would undo the compulsions but I obviously could not think about it. ...Also it is plausible that if I had tried to collect you, we would both have been taken prisoner, I was really not in my best fighting form. So I am not sure I could have done anything else, or - even that it was a mistake in expectation - but I would still prefer if you had paid less of the cost." 

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"I forgive you. I'm here now and that's because of you. And - I see why you wanted to defect, as soon as you saw it."

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Nod. "It is better. I - was not sure how much of it I could believe, at first, it felt too good to be true and thus suspicious, but - it was important, maybe the most important thing, to - know, one way or another." 

He closes his eyes. "...So I prayed to Aroden. Or at least to - the conception of Him that I hoped existed, in case that might offer some safety in worlds where He was not that at all and the church's teachings were propaganda. I was not expecting to get an answer. It turns out that receiving answers from gods is - incredibly incapacitating - which is what delayed us by a day in retrieving you. But it was - a reassuring answer." 

He'll tell her more if she seems to want to hear it, but that seems like a big enough revelation to start with. 

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" - you asked Him about - whether Iomedae's going to stay in power?"

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He blinks. 

"More - broad than that. I more or less asked Him if He - cares about the things I care about. The way the Empire should be–" 

He stops himself. 

"- this is not going to make a lot of sense without explaining part of my personal history. Iomedae and Alfirin know, and Bastran now knows as well because Alfirin arranged for me to speak with him in a dream-mindscape, and of course Aroden knows now. I do not expect it to stay very secret, at this point, but I would - nonetheless be grateful for your discretion." 

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"I'm going to get returned to the Empire and presumably taken to pieces by Inquiry.'

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"We are aiming for your return to the Empire under circumstances where it would not be horrifically risky for them to know, and - under circumstances where it will not mean you are subjected to weeks of imprisonment and interrogation. And I rather expect the Office of Inquiry already knows; bringing it to them would have been Bastran's obvious next move, and - that is something I was taking into account, I am not expecting to hide this from the Empire. And I think it is strategically relevant in many ways, and you ought to know. I would just prefer it did not reach the ears of, say, Tar-Baphon, until we are in a much better position with this war." 

Sigh. Aritha is probably just going to be confused and suspicious until he goes ahead and tells her. 

"I am immortal and about seven hundred years old. - To answer the obvious question, that I am sure is especially salient to you, I would very much have liked to offer this to everyone in the Empire, but I have never succeeded at sharing it with even one other person. It seems the Velgarth gods are opposed. Also my current method involves killing people and would not scale. The afterlives are really a much better option, but I - did not know how to build those when I was young, or even really have the concept, and I knew there were things I could not finish fixing in a single lifetime." 

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"Oh," she says softly. 

 

"So it is just - I thought to myself that Iomedae had probably offered you - whatever has the place in your heart that 'afterlives for everyone in Velgarth' has in mine, but it's just - the same thing -"

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He has some sort of emotion. He's not sure what to name it, but he doesn't try especially hard to hide that he's having it. 

"It is not the only thing. I want - did she tell you about Axis - I want everywhere to be like that, it is not enough for the afterlives to be paradise if people's actual lives are still - if nothing changes. But. Yes. That was - what I needed to check, about Aroden, that He actually...cared." 

I wish I could have given you Urtho's Tower, but that won't even parse to her unless she's read a lot more obscure ancient history than he expects she has. 

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"And He does?"

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"Yes. I am very sure of that much. And - maybe more than that - it was a deeply confusing...not even conversation, that is not the right word...and He was trying to convey something more than just shared goals. And our life histories are bizarrely similar, I have no idea what to make of it. But the important part is– I think maybe it is actually just a - convergent pattern - to care about giving everyone an afterlife where they have space to grow and build, forever. Iomedae does not - resemble me in mysterious ways - and she wants it too. Alfirin wants it. You want it, now that you have - space to notice it is possible - I do very badly wish the Empire I had built could have given you that all along. I am still not sure how to fix it. But I intend to." 

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"I don't think I trust gods. But I can see the thing Iomedae is doing, and how she gets away with it, and how if everyone's doing it it's easier to do it than to do anything else, and - that's enough.

 

The Empire might be fine if you fired Kottras and there were afterlives."

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He actually chuckles, at that, though without much humor. "Kottras is really not the only person I would replace if I had any slack to afford that. And I think we need the Velgarth gods to be talked around on some things, though I at least have better guesses now as to which things. But - there is a skeleton there of something that could be much better, and if we can stop having a stupid war and ally with Iomedae's people then the interworld trade alone will offer enough surplus to afford a great many more things." 

He rubs his forehead. "And, in the meantime, I have things that I need to go and do in Velgarth. Before I go - I asked Iomedae for a headband, for you, I think she was going to offer anyway but hopefully that will be arranged soon. And I should try to teach you the scrying, when I come back, I think if I eke out some more efficiency then you would be capable of casting it - also this world has artifacts of Thoughtsensing, I doubt they are as good as true Mindspeech but I think it would make teaching much faster." 

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"I'm listening."

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Iomedae is founding a Church of Aroden today! She's taking some priests of Aroden, with pearls of power so they'll have spellcasting while Aroden can't give it to them, and a permanent Symbol of Healing because the crusade is rich and can do things like that nowadays, and she's taking the High Priestess of Sarenrae.

("I don't know if Anathei is Sarenrae. But if She is I think She's a - fragment that has been very distant for a long time, and - we need Her help -"

         "And even if She's not Sarenrae She's a being who is trying to do the right thing and should get help," said the High Priestess.

'....yes, that too.")

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Altarrin will provide a Gate! He's rested and shouldn't be too tired afterward! 

 

If there's no (same-planet) range limit on whatever spell Iomedae plans to have one of her people use to contact the rebel leader, then they should probably Gate to the other continent and stay there, where they're definitely out of standard Velgarth scrying range of the Empire. 

- also he's not expecting this to be dangerous, necessarily, but he has a shopping list for magic items. He wants a medallion of Detect Thoughts, or ideally, if they can afford it, a helmet like Iomedae's that does projective Mindspeech as well. Vambraces of Defense look like they might stack well with his existing protections and aren't that expensive. Maybe a cloak of Resistance? ...Ring of Invisibility, he absolutely wants that, Velgarth illusions aren't anywhere near as good for concealment even from mages, and he has room for one more ring on top of the Ring of Sustenance. He's probably going to think of more items as he has more time to look at the options, but maybe he can pay his way in future diamond runs, this isn't a bad start. 

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She will dump those items which are easily available on him right now and put the rest on a shopping list, and then she'll try to make some property purchases in this city for a temple while he does some scrying. 

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Altarrin took her to the biggest port city in Beset first! There is land for sale, and some existing buildings for sale though she'll have to be flexible about design and none were previously temples. It's a lot less convenient than it would be in a city with a temple of Abadar, the negotiations are going to take Iomedae a while, but she has gold to pay with and that goes a long way in any world. 

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She doesn't mind non-Abadaran negotiations when she isn't in a tremendous hurry. It just needs to be a building with enough throughput for lots of people, what with the Symbol of Healing. They're not going to charge for it. They're just going to have it up in front of a big statue of Aroden and have some mythic pictures on the walls all around as people file in.

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And Altarrin, feeling much safer with his extra magic items and also Iomedae nearby, finds a comfortable meadow to settle in just outside the city, and scries the Eastern Empire. 

 

...There is way more evidence of emergency meetings and emergency requisitions and small-scale Gate-movement than he would have expected if nothing (new) were wrong. 

Oris? No, a quick look at Oris doesn't show any shocking changes - 

 

- it's a faint hope and he's not expecting it to come to fruition but he'll try for Iomedae's magic items still in Velgarth, one by one, to see if any have been left in a remote location with a message. 

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One has! The note says Iomedae: An otherworldly adept with a mirrored cloak trespassing in the Empire was located and destroyed. Is there information you wish to provide?

(There was something of a struggle over whether or not to admit they destroyed the Mirrorgrave, but, ultimately, the scarier they make themselves sound, the less likely Iomedae is to try to muscle in, whether this was a false-flag attack or not.)

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He doesn't actually know what that means but he does know that it wasn't any of their people. 

 

 

Iomedae needs to see this right away. It's worth interrupting her property purchase negotiations. He scries for her and Gates directly to where she is, the hastily-retrieved note in hand. (He left the artifact where it was; it felt more cooperative.) 

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Well, fuck.



The convenient - and possible! - interpretation of these events is that the Empire has learned about Golarion magic, can now handle itself, beat up the Mirrorgrave and Tar-Baphon won't try that again.

quite likely and much more important to plan for possibility is that the Mirrorgrave will be back, because he's a lich, and will be angrier and more careful, that he underestimated them once and won't give them the chance again. And that he didn't come alone. And that he may well be in contact with Tar-Baphon, who would not go down to the same tricks. Or that the Mirrorgrave let them think they beat him, while also the Emperor is Dominated. 

 

Altarrin has not, actually, seen Iomedae respond to something she considers an emergency. The assassination in Oris wasn't one. His arrival was a candidate for being one for the space of about three rounds. This -

"They're not going to accept our help, are they. I can - think what we can send, but you're going to have to tell me what looks too suspicious -

Holy water, except they won't trust it, translated copies of all of our books on handling the undead and our dossiers on Tar-Baphon's top lieutenants individually - maybe we can share scrying-findings - they won't take our magic items because of what happened with you, will they - we need to find the Mirrorgrave's phylactery and should tell them how to identify it if they find it, and how to destroy it - which varies, unfortunately, by phylactery - I need to ask Alfirin whether Wishing a dead lich back to you gets their phylactery or not, if it's on Velgarth. If the phylactery in in Golarion then Tar-Baphon already has a full report and sufficient detail for Even Greater Teleport. We can maybe engage Tar-Baphon in Golarion offseason, keep him tied down - we probably should think how to do that - we should think if we can break his coalition with some Wishes, not all his lieutenants are sincerely loyal to him - though the Mirrorgrave is -

- healing potions. We should send them healing potions. And wands of Cure spells maybe, with instructions on how to use them, they're not complicated or - actually what'd be cheaper would be a Symbol of Healing. And - what else wouldn't be that suspicious, or would be worth the effort to verify despite how suspicious it looked -

- I want to try to raise Imperial mages in Beset, today, learn if the gods let us. I want to ask Alfirin to burn Wishes tracking down the phylacteries of a few of Tar-Baphon's most important lieutenants, and also all undead on this planet if that's even possible. I want to ask the Church of Pharasma for a Miracle for the same, and tell the priest of Sarenrae to do hers right now and then commune for advice -"

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"Do you need a Gate back to Golarion now or should I just go back myself and retrieve Alfirin to here - it sounds like you do need more supplies so maybe we should both go back and return once we have those -" Inconveniently he doesn't have a non-Gate way to pass messages, though now that they have Aritha - and a complicated emergency on hand - it might be worth trying to hastily rework the communication-spell to do interplanar routing... 

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"Gate us both, I need to pick up a bunch of stuff to give them - I'll send some people out to buy it - and I'll tell my people here to set up the church and work with the High Priestess."

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It hasn't been a long enough rest that Altarrin is delighted about Gating again, but he can give her a Gate back to the mansion as soon as she's updated the priests of Aroden and the High Priestess of Sarenrae on what's going on. 

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"Aritha. Tar-Baphon's operating in the Empire. Are you willing to copy every book I can give you on the undead into your own language so your people can read it-"

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" - yes, Knight-Commander. Tar-Baphon is - does the Empire still exist?"

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"I think so. Thank you for translating the books. I swear to you they will be put to no other use. You can stop if you want. I am obliged by treaty to make it known, when I request or require labor of prisoners of war, so that others can judge if the situation is appropriate; I'll include your account, if you have one."

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This is a scary variant of Iomedae. "I'm fine with copying the books because I don't want the Empire overrun by your enemies."

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Aaaand she's on to the next thing.

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" - sorry, you want how many of -"

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"Every one in Absalom or Oppara or Augustana or Quantium. You can pay in diamonds, if you run out of gold."

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The good news: The mirrorgrave probably brought his phylactery with him. She doesn't have a captive lich to test on, but she's pretty sure phylacteries don't work, or at least don't work instantaneously, over these distances. Tar-Baphon may have done something special for himself if he was planning to hide his phylactery on another planet, but that would have been expensive and probably relies on the thing where he's much more powerful for having been killed by Aroden, and her best judgement of him is that he would not have done the same for his servitors. If the mirrorgrave's phylactery is on Golarion then they probably have at least a couple years without him, as his soul races home. They might also have a couple centuries. Stars are really quite far away from each other.

The other good news: Tar-Baphon has not started pushing them off-season to tie up their ability to help Velgarth. Possibly because he thinks they are limited to wish-transit. And clearly has no idea how many wishes they have available now.

The bad news: Wishing a dead lich to you will not get you their phylactery. Wishing the phylactery to you could work, but there's no known safe wording for that yet, and it can be resisted. Also, Tar-Baphon will have such a safe wording, so killing the mirrorgrave won't stop his master from calling him back for an update whenever he decides he might want one. Which might be sooner if he notices the Crusade running around in a panic buying up every healing item in Taldor.

She doesn't have more bad news besides the bad news they all already know about. Iomedae should offer to the empire that Alfirin end their civil wars for them.

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She'll offer.

 

- and she'll moderate the healing-item purchases, or at least disperse them more. 

 

 

She needs Altarrin to grab some bones of some recently-dead Adepts, if he happens to have any idea where those could be gotten, and to try scrying for the Mirrorgrave's phylactery, and to try scrying for ...undead in Velgarth in full generality, is that the kind of thing he can scry for? The Mirrorgrave's cloak, if that's the kind of thing he can scry for?

 

And she needs visibility in Velgarth immediately, which means -

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The High Priestess of Sarenrae in Golarion in the time of the Shining Crusade, Emine Etciena, respects Iomedae, because it's genuinely quite hard not to. She does not, especially, see eye-to-eye with Iomedae. Iomedae is, very fundamentally, a wartime general who wants to be a wartime general of a goddess, who calculates when her sheep leave the fold how expensive it'd be to retrieve them compared to how expensive it'd be to replace them. Iomedae would leave no soul behind, were it in her power, but as it's not in her power she is not remotely, temperamentally, someone who leaves no soul behind. Heaven in Iomedae's stewardship will not send an advocate to every trial because it's not the best way to save souls with the relevant resources.

 

Sarenrae has teachings like that the line between Good and Evil cuts through every human heart, that Good is something we grow towards slowly, that Sarenrae is still growing towards it Herself. Iomedae is pretty sure she can be a purely Lawful Good god from day one who will track this fact about mortals and about Sarenrae because it's strategically relevant. 

 

Conversations where Iomedae asks for a miracle are always interesting and discomfiting. This one was particularly so. 

"They said that Anathei had taught them to see Good even in their enemies, that this was what the priest of Anathei asked for as the soldiers executed him for being a priest."

           "I genuinely don't know what that means," Emine says. "It is a teaching of Sarenrae, but it is - also an obvious teaching. There are many powers that might arrive at it or attempt to communicate it."

"But it'd be - easier for Sarenrae to talk to a being that sees things that way, to trade with them, than for Aroden to do so."

            "Probably. Or - not to trade with them. To grow towards the Good together."

"That's all I'm asking for."

 

That is all Iomedae is asking for only because it's all Iomedae thinks she can get. But she nods. "I will attempt it, if you have the diamond, and if you think it will serve the people of Velgarth."

"I do."

 

And so she goes through the Gate to the other world, and begins the prayer and preparations for a miracle, and then gets notice from Iomedae that there's a Tar-Baphon related emergency and Iomedae wants the miracle faster, and she takes five minutes away from her other prayers to pray for Iomedae, for the world to someday be one in which Iomedae would permit herself weaknesses, and then she goes ahead and does the miracle ahead of schedule as actually Iomedae wouldn't have asked if it wasn't very important.

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And Sarenrae's High Priestess on Golarion - not on Golarion - calls Sarenrae's attention to a very, very far away world, and cries out to Her that there is a god here Sarenrae might recognize and understand, and requests that Sarenrae find this god and grow towards the good alongside Them. 

 

 

Sarenrae grants that sort of Miracle, even if it's very far away and very costly.

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And Something reaches back to her. 

 

The gods of Velgarth are - not, precisely, the same kind of entity as the gods of Golarion. They swim in Foresight, past and future and the interweaving threads of causality, threads that can be nudged, ripples that spread and propagate across continents and centuries, not that either space or time are perceived by gods in the way they are by mortals. 

What the gods of Velgarth don't have is legibility, of the kind that Lawful gods of Golarion can bring, or formalized godagreements where to make it at all is to be a kind of pattern that cannot break it. The gods of Golarion vary on this, of course, but it's not that the Velgarth gods are Chaotic, they're...something else, orthogonal to the dimension of Law and Chaos. There are no treaties on what interventions can or cannot be done on the material plane, through mortal minds, there are only...resources, and costs, and strength and weakness and centuries of interweaving plans that build and leap off from each other. 

 

The Miracle currently being requested and granted, through an empowered mortal priest of a distant god, is not the kind of thing that happens in Velgarth, and it's very alarming. 

 

But the god that is called Anathei in some mortal lands, and Nameless in others, and Eternal Flame in most of them, is - while still fundamentally the same kind of being as Vkandis and the Star-Eyed and Atet - a little more able to see and touch the world through mortal minds - those sparks in the distance, so quick and fragile yet so bright, and even brighter when their light is aimed more directly at the Eternal Flame, and calling out for Their aid. 

This spark is calling out very directly, and is bizarrely less fragile than most mortal sparks, and there's - something - on the other side and past and very very far away... 

 

 

...that might offer the answer to a question that has never been in words but might, if it could be conveyed in language, translate as why is this happening. 

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Sarenrae is an ancient and alien thing, and the way Golarion conceives of Her is - incomplete; She can choose clerics, and make agreements, and send visions, and change the threads of the future through Foresight, but this isn't what She is; She is brighter and stranger. Mortals speak of Her teachings, but She sees only nudges that with more reliability turn those tiny shifting motes of light in the right direction; She can speak with beings which can speak with beings which can speak with mortals, but that isn't the same thing. 

 

But She does understand that question, that confusion, and She does, in a sense, know the answer -

 

- that's Her priestess, a mortal who turns to Her often, who knows which way to turn that is, doing a mortal thing to make it briefly less resource-expenditure for Sarenrae to directly intervene. Sarenrae would be clumsy, intervening here; She too sees by Foresight, and here She is blind. All She can do is blindly give Her strength to the motes of light that turn to Her in search of it, and hope they use it wisely. 

 

She - thinks that they will. Growing is good for mortals, and strengthens what is good in them; this is an intuition she has from a thousand directions, and can transmit all of them in whichever form this alien god comprehends, in predicted-spark-interactions, swirls and eddies and patterns -

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It is. But - 

 

 

- holding up the echo of past Foresight, and of - things no longer visible in Foresight, fallen away on the other side of a searing wound still burned deeply into the pattern that is Anathei - things held only in the strange fragmented memories that gods - that Anathei, at least - can carry independent of Foresight - before that, very shortly before that as gods reckon things, a time that was good for that-which-Anathei-tracks and that-which-Anathei-wants, a time of sparks growing brighter and more numerous, a time of growing, of strengthening that inside them which points the spark-light more directly toward Anathei...

 

And then the moment when nearly everything was lost, nearly all of the sparks shredded, or turned away from where Anathei could see their light clearly, and They didn't see it coming, not clearly, not in time - Anathei was weakened by it, far more than other gods - the Star-Eyed, playing a long game but arguably stronger for it - 

- see this spark, less fragile than most and more...durable...see the reflection of it in Their dimly-held memories of the before, see its history and pattern half-lost to anything Anathei can See, see the blind spot it spreads around itself, the ripples of unpredictability, and it's - worse - since it collided with this other unusually durable spark, that came from elsewhere, the path of its history again unseen, and vanished and then took the other noisy spark with it but now they're back -

- and Anathei would be curious, would want to see what it did in the beautiful swirls and eddies but it's too dangerous and Anathei is terrified of what might be lurking in that Foresight-blindness, whether the world and the sparks in it can even survive another wound like the last time - 

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Oh.

 

 

Grief, and loss, and pain, and a - similar memory - many of them, actually, because it's a pattern from many places -

 

That happens, sometimes, when mortals reach and grow and dream, that they miscalculate terribly.

 

But the stronger and more ambitious and more stubborn they are, the more they need to grow and hope and change, and trying to contain them instead of nurture the light inside of them just makes them turn away from light. They will grow; the thing that can be shaped is the direction.

 

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That would be...brighter, clearer, better...but Anathei does not know how to - do that thing - not here, not through this noise, especially not weaving through the web-of-interventions of the other gods - and Anathei is very very afraid. 

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Sarenrae thinks - She isn't sure, but Her best guess is - that Her mortals are trying to - make the gods, that mortals can barely see, drift into a shape that lets them grow and thrive. That her mortals are trying to reach for Anathei and Sarenrae, and hold them up to one another, for the same reasons that Anathei would do that with two sparks, or that Sarenrae would.

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They can do that? How? Anathei can't figure out how sparks can do that– no, actually, They can see some of it, the spark that first caught Their attention - not one of the noisy ones, but the bright one that called to Them and - opened a path across that great distance -

- how does Sarenrae make them so much less fragile, Anathei cannot do this, only the slightest of nudges when a spark turns directly toward Them and cries out in desperation, and even then Anathei suspects it's not usually very good for the spark, to touch it. 

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She can attempt to show Anathei. In other places, other powers have built - filters, of sorts, that let strange and distant beings touch sparks without harming them, that let them give some of their own power to the sparks. If You do that, it doesn't matter if You can see where your touch would actually help the sparks can see, and do their best. And a consequence of those filters, of those constructs, is that sparks strengthen over time, when desperation pushes them beyond their own present strength. The work of strengthening the sparks is done by their own will, so it's not so expensive.

 

Sarenrae would like to do that here, if Anathei could use it.

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That seems like a much better way of interacting with sparks! It's - an extension of what Anathei does, and perhaps not even completely dissimilar to what other gods here do, but it would be so much less costly... 

(And it's frightening, it would change things and Anathei has learned, painfully, that sometimes when things change, even if it looks brighter and better, it's a harbinger of everything being destroyed. But that's - not, actually, the only or even the main thing that matters, not to the Nameless god, the Eternal Flame, and - some things matter enough to be worth trading for Foresight noise and the threat of annihilation -)  

...Anathei wants to see how.  

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Altarrin, once he's Gated back to Velgarth and ideally had one of the potions of Lesser Restoration so that he's less exhausted, can obtain the bones of some dead Adepts, without attracting too much suspicion. Older ones, mostly, young Adepts who die tend to die in battle and often don't leave retrievable bodies. But older does at least mean more experienced. 

(Certainly none of the Adepts he most wishes he could bring back and give another chance at life are people who left bones he could retrieve.) 

He thinks he can get the body of the scrying-specialist who died recently, though doing so discreetly will be a little more effort. 

(...He actually knows the location for the bones of some of his past incarnations, but he is genuinely unsure what would happen if they attempted a resurrection on someone whose soul had been evicted from their original body at age thirteen, and also in all those cases it's been long enough that the souls may well have been reincarnated and no longer be available.) 

 

He would need to see an example of a 'phylactery' and study it in order to design a generic search-spell. If anyone present has seen the mirrorcloak before, though, and if he has his new item of Detect Thoughts, he can get the memory off them and then scry for that. Or if enough is known about its magical properties, that may be enough.

His other idea is that the magical artifacts left behind after the Mirrorgrave was destroyed, if that's indeed what happened, are going to be in the possession of the Office of Inquiry, and they don't have infinitely many secure locations. He can try for the locations directly, or if the Mirrorgrave is known to wear more standard items that also don't happen to be duplicated among Iomedae's items still in the Empire's custody, he can look at another example and then scry for 'the instance of this item in Velgarth.' 

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They can get him people who've seen the Mirrorgrave's cloak, and a description of all of its known magical properties, and they don't have an item of Detect Thoughts like Iomedae's helmet - those are rare - but they can get him a scroll and talk him through how to cast it. 

They don't have any captured lich-phylacteries but someone will ask Alfirin if some Wishes could change that.

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She can try, but it'd be a novel wording and those can go wrong. She'll want at least an hour working on it to minimize risks. She started four minutes ago.

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That would be very helpful if it's doable and ends up working. Though on Altarrin's side it would also be a research project of at least half a day to figure out how to search for 'phylacteries in general' (and not other magic items which are not phylacteries) rather than the specific example one. 

 

 

Altarrin has never cast a wizard spell before, but he's seen quite a few of them by now, and studied artifacts, and he's very very skilled with magic in general. With some training and then handholding through the process, he can cast Detect Thoughts from a scroll and get everything he can on the Mirrorgrave's cloak. 

He casts the version of the scrying-spell that routes around the Empire's usual anti-scrying shields, on the assumption that it might be in the custody of the Office of Inquiry. 

 

Can he find it? 

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Yup! It might take some work, but Altarrin knows how to get past Kastil's personal shields. The cloak is indeed in the custody of the Office of Inquiry, in a sealed metal box covered by all sorts of complicated warding spells in an extremely secure room in an extremely secure complex a long way from Jacona.

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He reports this, and then sets about examining it with mage-sight in as much detail as he can manage across that distance and routed through the barriers against scrying, and taking notes on his observations. He's very curious how it works. 

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The cloak is fantastically detailed work; Iomedae's headband is probably more complicated, but nothing else. Mostly it just looks like a complicated focus for a variety of permanent wards; some of them are complicated and difficult to read, but the simplest is a straightforward armor-like shield against physical attacks. It also appears to be completely indestructible, in similar manner to some of Iomedae's more dangerous items; there might be a crack in it, but not one that's easy to find.

And then it's doing something horrificially complicated with souls. Altarrin might be the only mage in Velgarth who understands it, but it looks like it has some kind of - soul-grabbing mechanism? And then it does something complicated and probably horrible to them once it has them, though just what is hard to tell just what it's doing.

... Does it have two separate soul-grabbing mechanisms? Hard to tell, but it might look like it? Whoever made it was clearly a genius, and a genius really, really into stealing souls.

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...He doesn't really know what to make of it but he wants Alfirin's assessment. Maybe via directly reading his mind while he looks at it, as soon as she's available to do that, it doesn't seem worth interrupting the Wish-planning. 

 

In the meantime he can retrieve bones. Three Adepts, elderly but who died of accidents or illness rather than old age, and then the bones of the scrying specialist. What should he do with them. 

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Priesthood of Aroden on site will attempt a Resurrection.

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It works! 

 

 

...The Adept picked for resurrection first, a very senior and experienced artifact-research specialist who died in an implausibly unlucky mage-artifact-factory accident five years ago, wakes up naked in a strange place, without his usual compulsions, and with completely alien magical artifacts within mage-sight range. It feels like about five seconds since he realized the test artifact was going to explode and he didn't expect to survive it. 

 

He is not a Gate-specialist, and unscaffolded Gates take quite a lot of specialized training for people who aren't Altarrin. He tries to shield himself instead. 

"Where am I - what do you want -" 

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The priest on site will straighten up with a grin of relief and order someone to tell Iomedae immediately and then hand over some clothes. Of unfamiliar make, though they're high quality. 

"I've resurrected you," he says. Iomedae said not to lead with 'I'm a priest', though they shouldn't hide it. "Shortly after your death, the Empire made contact with a foreign planet where magic works differently and resurrections are possible. Resurrected people return without being subject to any spells they were subject to when they died."

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The mage is only half paying attention because he's now attempting to contact his supervisor and then his other colleagues with the communication-spell, and becoming rapidly more panicked when this completely fails to work. 

"Where?" he repeats. "Are you - am I in the other world -?" 

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"No, just the other continent of your usual world! We're set up there because we're, uh, kind of at war with the Empire right now."

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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah this is way above his pay grade he is incredibly not qualified to be, what, negotiating with a foreign - no, otherworldly - power with impossible resurrection magic which is at war with the Empire for some reason - 

 

- they probably brought him back to torture him for information and he's so scared. He can just. Not say anything, though. Not saying anything is easier than saying things. If they want intelligence they're going to have to drag it out of his mind. 

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"We're not going to hurt you, we're trying to get a peace agreement with the Empire and we're hoping that saving a bunch of their dead people will help. We've got a magic extradimensional mansion up over there if you want to go inside and get something to eat and stuff, though it'd be really helpful if you were on hand for the next resurrection so they're not alone with a stranger like you were."

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He does not even slightly believe them! He's still not going to interact or answer any questions unless they make him. 

 

...He is still sufficiently curious about the supposed resurrection magic to sit here and watch while they supposedly do it again. (It might be a trick. He's at least 50% thinking it's a trick and they knocked him unconscious and transported him somewhere in order to pretend they have impossible resurrection magic.) 

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The priest will get the next dead Adept!

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She's a little younger, an expert in preservation spells for foodstuffs and books, who died in her fifties of one of the kinds of cancer that Healers can't treat very effectively. She is very competent, but her life was not that interesting

 

She wakes up less panicked, partly because having a boring and non-dangerous job is less conducive to developing a lot of paranoia, and partly because she spent the last weeks of her life in a haze of delirium and painkillers and does not actually remember dying. Also when your last lucid hours were in an infirmary surrounded by Healers, waking up naked is less startling. 

...Waking up without any compulsions is still startling! Less so, maybe they were causing problems in her delirium, but still. Also she's not in an infirmary. 

 

She sits up, and is surprised to find that it doesn't hurt or make her dizzy even a little bit. "Um." 

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He will hand her, too, clothes, and repeat the explanation about interworld contact and how being resurrected dispels compulsions, and how they can go inside for food and rest but it'd be helpful if they stayed to help orient new arrivals!

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UMM??????????????

 

That's not a thing! None of those are things!!! What????? 

- also she thinks that's Karam? She doesn't know him well but it's a small world for highly trained mage-specialists, he gave a couple of lectures at the academy when she was a student. Also he looks like he's kind of in shock and terrified and doesn't answer when she asks him via communication-spell what's going on. 

"- Um. Is he - all right? What happened to him?" 

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"I think I scared him," says the priest, with the lack of bedside manner that in Golarion would let anyone identify him as a crusade-trained priest who mostly doesn't deal with people on their first time of being raised from the dead. "We were going to wait and do this with, uh, the Archmage-General Altarrin on hand but there was an emergency. He'll stop by as soon as he can."

 

Aaaand he'll start working on the next Resurrection.

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"Archmage-General Altarrin is here? Why? What's going on?" 

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"It's complicated and given how much I scared the other guy I'm kind of inclined to just let Archmage-General Altarrin explain himself once he gets here." He's building a ludicrously impressive spell-scaffold, now, around this bone on the ground. "Uh, you can go back to the Empire if you want to but you can also not go back to the Empire if you don't want to. If that wasn't clear. That's part of why we're doing this outside the Empire."

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She watches in breathless awe. 

 

"Is there. Um. A reason you think I wouldn't want to go back to the Empire." She liked her job! The Empire was a good place to live! She just has a very doomy feeling about watching Karam sitting there clearly terrified. 

...Maybe she'll shuffled over to him and remind him of her name and try to be reassuring, since this - mage? mage-Healer? whatever he is - clearly isn't going to. 

 

(Karam is not especially reassured and also doesn't recognize this random middle-aged woman at all, though she does look like a native of the Empire. He's not going to pull away from her but he doesn't talk to her, either, that part might also be a trick. He's mostly failing to process the claim about Altarrin, it's either a trick or terrible news.) 

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"I was told that everyone important in the Empire is mind controlled all the time and that is not an institution I would personally choose to be a part of, though I know loyalty is a complicated thing."

 

Third person!

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The third Adept, a man named Tomen, was a specialist in passive detection wards, the kind that trigger silent alarms to distant locations when a warded building is entered without authorization. He died in his late sixties - not actually that old, for a mage, Altarrin is fifteen years older - of a building collapsing on him in Taymyrr, two years ago, and was buried in a local graveyard, where it was much easier for Altarrin to steal his bones. 

He wakes up abruptly. 

     "It's okay everything is fine," the preservation-specialist mage, whose name is Lianna, says quickly. "There's another world and they have resurrection magic and Archmage-General Altarrin is here." 

"I - what -" 

    "They said the Archmage-General can explain but he's busy. Here - they have clothes for us -" 

It's a less terrifying way to wake up but Tomen is still pretty alarmed and concerned! Karam looks like he's having a bad time, for one. 

 

     Lianna looks over at the not-mage not-Healer who has the resurrection magic. "Is the Archmage-General going to be available soon?" This is way too much mother-henning for her. 

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"I have no idea," says the not-mage not-Healer who has the resurrection magic, and then changes languages to ask this question of his own people. 

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"Altarrin, are you ready to Gate back?" Iomedae has had a Sorry Your Planet Is Being Invaded By The Undead And You Don't Trust Me At All package mostly assembled, and is making rapid revisions to a letter that she'll need either Aritha or Altarrin to translate. "Aritha, if you come along then you can do some more translation before we send the assistance package."

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"Does Velgarth have afterlives yet?"

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"Not yet but we'll raise you if anything happens."

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"Your word?"

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Two seconds of careful pause because she does not give her word without it and then - "I swear to you that if you die while we're in Velgarth I will have a Raise and if necessary a Resurrection and if necessary a True Resurrection attempted and that worked fine last time and I can think of no plausible mechanisms by which it'd fail other than 'some adversary messes with your soul' which seems if anything more likely on this planet."

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Then Aritha will come along. She's still actively copying notes as fast as she possibly can.

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This is so many Gates but at least they have magic healing. It seems to work slightly less well on repeated iterations, and he expects there'll be more Gates to go, but it's still getting him to the point of not being physically tired. 

 

He will Gate them back to meet the newly resurrected mages. (He told the priests to hold off on the scrying specialist until he was there in person. That one is going to be...more delicate.) He smiles gratefully at Aritha when he sees the translated notes. 

He'll wait for Alfirin, too, if Alfirin is joining them for this. 

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She'll just sit here and keep working on those. The crusade has a lot of notes on identifying and fighting Tar-Baphon's minions, unsurprisingly. 

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"Resurrections work fine," the seventh circle priest of Aroden who has been doing them tells Iomedae. "I held off on the last - should I do it now?"

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"Yes. We're going to drop off the package in ten minutes. Do they want to return?"

      "- I think yes, but I don't know if they want to return in ten minutes."

She'll address them, then. "The Empire is at war, and might benefit in that war from your return, but they're also going to very suspicious and you'll probably be heavily compulsioned and interrogated. Do you want to be returned immediately, or do you want us to negotiate any conditions first? We will also not force you to return if you would prefer not to, and can give you money to start a life elsewhere if that's what you want."

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Karam: is not engaging and not listening and absolutely not believing any of these claims. 

Tomen: is tense, for sure, but he has a lot of questions and - almost regardless of what's going on here, it seems like it would help to learn more? And if these people are evil then they're probably lying to begin with, so declining might if anything improve his prospects. 

Lianna: is probably the least suspicious and the most curious. She very badly wants to hear an explanation from Archmage-General Altarrin. 

 

...Apparently no one else is going to speak up, so she'll do it. "I think Karam should go back now. I'll stay to speak with the Archmage-General, and - I have questions. Tomen, are you staying with me?" 

     (Jerky nod.) 

(Karam is still not engaging at all.) 

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"Understood. I'm going to do a last round of revisions to the letter notifying the Empire of that."

 

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And as soon as Altarrin shows the cleric of Aroden will complete the raise of the scry-specialist!

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(Alfirin came through the gate with a pair of, to a casual glance, dead bodies which perfectly resemble her in every way. She spends five minutes getting them set up in the mansion, then returns to her work on wish wording.)

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He wakes up not under any compulsions - nor under the alien mind-control - and with his recent memories a jumble of being seized by an impossible force that rammed right over his existing compulsions, and then pain and confusion and then nothing. 

 

He immediately tries to Gate out. He's trained in unscaffolded Gates but not nearly as fast as Altarrin and he does not really expect this to work. 

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They hadn't discussed it beforehand but Altarrin doesn't actually expect anyone to stop him, assuming he thinks to try 'unscaffolded blind destination a hundred miles away' and not somewhere in the Empire, which will not work. He's not going to, either, but he does gesture to the other two recently-raised Adepts, and then takes a step forward and sits down by the man. 

"This is Archmage-General Altarrin. You were just returned to life with magic of Iomedae's world. We are on the other continent - it is not going to be in your Gate-range to return to the Empire. One of us can bring you there, in ten minutes, we are offering supplies to help fight - I suppose you died before this - there was an assassin from Tar-Baphon's forces. - Nobody is dead, the Emperor is fine, but it is still obviously worrying. They will need your help." 

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AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH??????!!!!!!!! 

 

 

....he's not sure why nobody is mind-controlling him? He - is in fact going to try for a blind Gate to a hundred miles away in a random direction, if nobody stops him. 

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"It is going to be much less convenient to return you to the Empire if you Gate somewhere random," Altarrin says, but otherwise makes no move to stop him. 

 

Is Iomedae going to say anything? 

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She is not. They don't trust her. Iomedae operates best in contexts where her most despised enemies will trust every word she says, and Velgarth isn't that context, and she is building that trust a hard way that includes letting people Gate off at random if they want to.

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"I am not sure how safe this continent is and, just so you know, I am planning to scry you to make sure nothing untoward is happening to you," Altarrin says in a very level tone. "And I am going to come retrieve you and Gate you to the Empire as soon as we are ready. ...Which, if I am going to be doing an extra Gate anyway, if you would prefer it I might as well Gate you back now. Would you prefer I do that." 

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EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS TERRIFYING AND AWFUL AND MAKES NO SENSE! 

 

 

- if the Archmage-General is mind-controlled, then telling him 'yes' almost certainly does not get him 'sent safely back to the Empire' but will also probably not result in him doing something worse than he was going to anyway? Maybe? 

The scrying-specialist scrambles up into a sitting position, and nods without meeting Altarrin's eyes. 

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"Do you want to put on these clothes, first? - I am going to Gate you to a border outpost, you will easily be able to summon help from there." 

 

- glance at Iomedae. "Is it going to be a problem, if the Empire has him for ten minutes before the care package is ready?" 

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"I doubt they'll get word before they get the rest of the package but I'll try to speed up the rest just in case. Aritha, hand over what you have, we'll keep working and drop more translated documents in further drops."

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"Yes, Knight-Commander." Translated documents. 

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And he's going to do it to a different remote location, randomized immediately beforehand, there is (hopefully) going to be less godinterference now that Anathei is (hopefully) talking to Sarenrae, but hope isn't a plan and Altarrin is never inclined to rely on luck. 

 

He Gates the scrying-mage to a peaceful field two miles from a Vushan Province Imperial Guard post; the province is coastal, northeast of Jacona, cold, and still thinly populated except along the coastline. 

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Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh this is definitely fake and a trick in some way and also WHAT and also the Archmage-General with Iomedae's people in Velgarth and Aritha is taking orders from them and that was Iomedae who was right there and aaaaaaaaaaaah he did not want confirmation of any of that being true and now he has it and just, generally, internal screaming is happening. 

 

...the field is quiet and peaceful and cold, but a heat-spell and then a weather-barrier quickly fixes that, and the scrying mage cautiously tries to orient to his surroundings. 

 

It's - belatedly - occurring to him that the Office of Inquiry is going to take him apart after this, and he might never be trusted again, and that's - he can't leave - only he could, there's nothing making him except fear of the unknown. Which - is apparently scarier than the known, even though the known is likely to be quite bad. 

Bastran is a good Emperor, an Emperor worthy of service, who isn't the slave of some foreign god, and Bastran is going to need all the help he can get. 

Also, probably someone is going to be here any minute to investigate the Gate, and his situation is already bad but disloyal thoughts can and will make it worse. 

 

He grits his teeth, and reaches out with the communication-spell for the nearest mage to alert them of what just happened. 

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(Altarrin is scrying him from a long way off, and sees the Imperial Guard arrive to investigate.) 

 

That could honestly have gone a lot worse?

He's ready to raise another Gate, for the care package and the other recently-raised mage who is more 'catatonic' than 'trying to Gate a hundred miles away', as soon as Iomedae gives him the word. 

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"The pallet's full of potions, careful not to jostle it." And she tucks several dozen sheets of paper in on top of the pallet and "Go."

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With scrying-assisted placement, Altarrin can raise two horizontal Gates nearly flush with the ground, with the destination in a manicured garden outside the city square in the furthest-northwest town in Lastun Province. The pallet settles gently with a minimum of jostling. He focuses hard and moves the departure-threshold so it doesn't do anything weird to the pallet intersecting it when he takes it down. 

 

"It will be a little while before they raise it to the attention of someone important," he says to Iomedae. "If you think they should move faster, I can contact someone directly with the communication-spell, but that will also be more startling and escalatory." 

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"It's not time sensitive on the scale of minutes as long as it doesn't get stolen or misplaced. No need for a communication-spell." 

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"I am sure the letter you left was clear, and everyone likely to find it is themselves under loyalty compulsions and is not going to steal it." 

Is there anything else to be done while they wait? ...Has Iomedae had a message passed to the rebel forces in Oris, he thinks that would be good, they're not going to be as much of a target but nonetheless should probably be warned that Tar-Baphon or at least Tar-Baphon's allies are operating in Velgarth. 

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She hasn't, and that's her next plan, though she's not going to discuss it in front of the Imperial mages. She'll go have someone cast the scry for her from the mansion. 

"Thank you for getting the package over. Let me know if any of the mages don't want to return so we can figure out their other options."

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"Of course." 

And - while intermittently pausing to scry for the pallet of supplies and its current location - he'll sit down to have a conversation with the two other Adepts. It's not at all the same conversation he had with Bastran; he does, right now, care about being reassuring, or failing that at least not alarming them even more. He doesn't mention praying to Aroden. Just concrete, neutrally-presented facts that he's observed about Iomedae and her army. 

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It's an incredibly disorienting conversation and they have no idea how to respond to it! 

 

Tomen is pretty nervous! Not panicking, but - very much on edge, including inside his own head, carefully steering around any thought that might later be dragged out of him by the Office of Inquiry and labeled as disloyal. He's trying to actually listen, he does want to bring back useful intelligence that will show how valuable and loyal he is but this is not a particularly easy mental state from which to do so. 

 

Lianna is genuinely not very scared to go back! The Office of Inquiry will be suspicious, sure, but she hasn't in fact done anything wrong, and – well, even if they conclude there's too high a risk of her being involuntarily influenced by Aroden, because of the method by which she became no-longer-dead, then that mostly just means they won't want her near important projects? Which might include food preservation, who knows, but even if they don't let her do her job, there are so many books she never got a chance to read before she got sick. 

(When one is from an uncontroversial well-off merchant family, boringly if highly competent, and also rather oblivious, it's not that hard to live an entire life in the Eastern Empire without ever having a particularly negative experience, even if one is not especially paranoid.) 

 

- at the end of a few minutes of conversation, she's - inclined to stay longer, actually. Not to defect, but - the Empire should have someone here as a neutral observer. Someone not very important, not like Altarrin, everyone knows that people behave differently around someone like Altarrin. 

(Tomen is solidly on the side of going back once they've gotten the full report from Altarrin, though he's carefully notthinkingabout the fact that if Altarrin's scrying turns up a sufficiently alarming response by the Office of Inquiry to Karam's return, he...might...reassess that.) 

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And how is the Empire, with its various highly paranoid officials, responding to the labeled delivery of a pallet of supplies, and the unlabeled but self-explaining delivery of a mage who died in unrelated-to-Iomedae (if probably godnudged) circumstances five years ago? 

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The letter, on its first page, reads: 

I did not intend this outcome; I may lose a great deal by it. I regret that I was indirectly the instrument of Tar-Baphon finding your world. Below, a high level summary of the perspective of the Knights on this situation. Attached, details of the included assistance and negotiable future assistance. The attached expansion on the points summarized here is not in Jaconan, as we had limited capacity for translation and a great deal to urgently translate for you, but my paladin delegates are literate and can read the rest of the letter for you. The attached documents on the undead have all been translated by Aritha for you (more detail within). 

- The Mirrorgrave is a lieutenant of Tar-Baphon. It seems plausible to us that this presages further involvement by Tar-Baphon in Velgarth. The Mirrorgrave likely did not arrive alone, likely arrived with some undead that can reproduce themselves from the living indefinitely, and will reform in days to weeks unless his phylactery (which may be his cloak, or may be a different powerful magic artifact he likely brought to Velgarth) is destroyed. 

- Your Empire is under threat from our enemy, an enemy to all civilization, and our desire is to aid you. We presume that most aid would not be trusted while you believe that we sent a magic item to force or enable Altarrin in defecting during negotiations. We have sent aid that we think may be so valuable to the Empire it would be worth the precautions the Empire will take against the aid being manipulated. We will send more of anything the Empire requests. We of course represent that we did not manipulate Altarrin, did not intend or orchestrate his defection, and have been dealing with you in good faith all along. Were there any available proof of that you'd find persuasive we would be eager to provide it.

- We made translations and copies of relevant documents possessed by the crusade about our undead enemies. They are enclosed.

- We've begun resurrecting dead Adepts of the Empire who may be of assistance to you in the war effort. We will resurrect more and will resurrect specific requested individuals if you provide us with their remains. Karam, the first Adept we resurrected for this reason, returned with this letter. The others will likely be returned after a short briefing.

- There is very little aid we are categorically unwilling to provide you. For the Emperor to be controlled by Tar-Baphon's servants would be catastrophic for all the peoples of the Empire and of Golarion. We are willing to negotiate ending the Empire's civil wars outside Oris, returning Altarrin, directly funding your war effort, etc.


Included: 

Ten potions which should cure the drinker of all ordinary injury

Six wands which when activated cast a spell that has the same effect of curing the target of injury, up to 50 times

A magical glyph which will indefinitely heal anyone who enters its presence (it affects each person only once per day).

I do not expect you to trust these, but I hope that you might contemplate using them anyway to save a person who would otherwise die. The spell has no effects on the mind, and is not specific to Aroden. 

Eight potions of invisibility, so that you can design wards against it. 

Eight potions of flight, so that you can design wards against it. 

Two scrolls of nondetection, so that you can design wards against same (you may not have anyone who can activate a scroll successfully. Instructions are included but without much confidence they'll be sufficient. Practice on the also-included twelve scrolls of Mage Armor, they're much cheaper).

Two scrolls of Break Enchantment. This (depending on the skill of the caster) ends Dominate Person, which you've witnessed, without killing the target. We can also free Dominated people for you if you leave them somewhere we can safely operate.

Eight scrolls of Death Ward. You really really want to figure out how to precisely imitate the protection this spell provides. Scrolls of it aren't easy to obtain on short notice; we'll send more tomorrow, and more the day after. It protects against many of the powers of the undead.

More forthcoming.

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Tell the Emperor, obviously.

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Fall upon the Weird Mage-Artifacts with glad cries, in the hopes of studying them a lot so they can learn how to replicate them!

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NO no they will NOT do that.

Karam is going to be cautiously and thoroughly inspected by the Office of Inquiry. The magic items are going to be cautiously and thoroughly inspected by the Office of Inquiry, specifically expendable people thereof, before they let the Ministry of Progress have them. Possible traps in the information are going to be seriously discussed, in advance, and then it will be studied by people very much warded and very disposable.

... They will tell the Emperor, though.

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...This is incredibly suspicious but it is, in fact, the least suspicious thing he can imagine a genuinely helpful actor - or even just a sane person who didn't like the Empire much but expected to like an Empire of undead mages even less - landing on, if they wanted the Empire to be willing to accept desperately needed help. 

 

Or it's a trick, of course, but - he genuinely doesn't know what world he's in. 

He signs off on all of Kastil's proposed precautions. He wants regular updates on Karam's state - and what Karam knows, and actually can he get a Thoughtsenser in who read Karam for loyalty checks when the man was alive, to make sure he's actually the same person and not a body double with superficially-convincing fake memories - and same on the magic items being extremely cautiously studied. 

He does think they should move quickly on that examination. Whether or not it's a poisoned gift, it's a valuable one, and he doesn't want them to fail to take advantage of that. 

 

- also they should question the paladins about this, and determine whether they knew it was going to happen or can make any inferences about what Iomedae would have been intending. 

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The paladins had no idea what specifically would happen when Iomedae was notified about the Mirrorgrave, but consider it completely obvious that Iomedae, who is an exceptionally Good person, would be doing everything in her power to prevent the Empire being overrun by the undead, and that what she is intending will obviously be whatever she said she was intending which is presumably 'to help the Empire prepare to fight Tar-Baphon'. 

Iomedae is trying extremely hard to help evil people who hate her and hate Aroden and murder priests and torture prisoners and force people to make oaths because they're still people and she cares about everybody. Is it that hard to understand?

 

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Yeah. Right. Of course that's what they're saying. Arbas reports it, but rolling his eyes. 

 

 

Arbas has a proposal about the paladins, actually. 

If they're going to be testing weird alien magic items from fucking Iomedae, he thinks it would be a good idea to know, one way or another, if they can deal with someone who Aroden has decided to empower with miracles. That seems like it could be the goal here - get people nice and grateful for Aroden's generosity, while using magic items that can channel Aroden's influence, and convince them that the repeatable-miracles thing is another gift and not a curse. He's at this point - with all the time he's spent in the paladins' heads and exploring their memories of other paladins and of 'clerics', a different kind of empowered cultist - pretty sure it has to be consensual. But that doesn't mean it can't be manipulated. 

So far he hasn't had much luck in shifting the loyalty to Aroden, even when he could get them into a state where they believed Iomedae had betrayed them, which - you know, says as well as anything else that it must be a form of mind-control stronger than his, normal loyalties wiggle around when you poke them. 

He'd like to have another try. 

 

He is, of course, loyal to Emperor Bastran and will wait on his Emperor's approval. There are probably downsides to this plan and Bastran will be able to make that call better than he can. 

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There are indeed downsides to that plan!!!!!!!!! Iomedae will be SO ANGRY and will plausibly take it as an excuse to escalate. ...Altarrin, honestly, would be so angry, and - wouldn't have signed off on that, almost categorically, if he were here and his normal totally un-mind-controlled self. 

He wouldn't call it a bright line that is unacceptable to cross. He would say more complicated words, about precedents and expectations and incentives and second-order effects, he would talk about how even the relationship between enemy factions is generally not at literally the lowest-trust possible point, and actions that push it lower cost something that can't be weighed or counted but does, in fact, cause real harm to the Empire and its people, in the long run. 

 

 

It kind of feels like a bright line, to Bastran, and - it feels like that means he has to be someone who's willing to cross it, if it's worth the price.

What is the price. 

It's an awful thing to do to someone - honestly, it's awful regardless of whether Aroden is just as bad as the average god but has better propaganda, it's not like it was hurting the paladins to be bound to loyalty to Him, not before they came to the Empire. 

In the world where Iomedae isn't trustworthy, and wants to destroy the Empire or conquer it or something stranger than either, then - well, they're going to either get conquered or destroyed, or have to do it to a lot more people, and whether they can do it is valuable information. 

 

(he wants Altarrin back and maybe this would mean he can have that, somehow, someday) 

 

In the world where Iomedae is exactly what she claims to be, and all of this mistrust is a stupid pointless waste of lives and resources and trust and goodwill being orchestrated by the Velgarth gods who don't like Aroden any better than they like Altarrin, then - 

- then Iomedae isn't going to change her mind and conquer or destroy the Empire because Bastran signed off on doing something horrible to one paladin, that didn't even involve killing them and for all he knows is reversible once they're back in their own world. She won't forgive Bastran, but - it wasn't the decision of thirty million peasants and merchants and tradespeople and mages and scholars and so much more, the people of the Empire he actually has to protect. It's his decision, and Iomedae can blame the person whose fault it actually was. 

Is it justified to break someone's mind, when there's a...put numbers on it...he can't say it's higher than one in ten but he's not sure it's lower, either, so - call it a one in ten chance, that actually this is just pointlessly and horribly betraying someone who genuinely only wants to help.

For a ninety percent chance that it's - at least an option the Empire wants to know if they have on the table - and some smaller percent chance, but probably still not as low as ten percent, that it's an option they'll need to survive an existential threat and it might mean he can get Altarrin back

(And surely it's more likely to work if the thing Arbas is doing is, in fact, fighting mind control and not the entirety of who someone really is, so if it works that's - evidence - he's not entirely sure he trusts that reasoning but he trusts it more than zero...)  

 

One person. 

 

(He's so tired, and it feels like nothing is ever going to be okay again and what does it even matter, to open one more never-going-to-be-okay-again wound in his Empire and his soul those are feelings. Box, go.) 

 

 

He is absolutely never going to forgive himself but he signs the approval. 

- with an addendum. If Arbas succeeds, Bastran will then negotiate to have the paladin sent back. The paladins that were sent aren't very powerful, so even if Aroden can immediately put the mind control back and re-empower them it doesn't add that much to Iomedae's strength, and - it sends a message, right - and also it just feels like. Not making it any worse than it has to be, given that he's going to do this at all. 

(And he sort of wants to order Arbas not to do it to the girl, but the older man is in fact genuinely more useful as an information source.) 

 

He sends this message back. 

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This may or may not take literally all day but Arbas will keep his Emperor updated on his progress! 

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In the meantime he wants updates from the Office of Inquiry on their other investigations, into suspicious disappearances and scrying for the Mirrorgrave's other magic items that may or may not still be on this world, or for other undead entities that can multiply themselves - that's actually something they can check against the books they were sent, right, which surely have some more information on vampires and the Mirrorgrave's usual practices, if they can develop a scrying-spell for vampires that's surely worth taking some risk... 

 

(He does not go hide in his room and cry and play the harp. He's not even aware that he wants to, particularly, it's an emotion and it's cooperatively staying in its box.) 

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She has a wish wording she's comfortable enough with to risk trying. She actually had it thirty-seven minutes ago, but she said she'd take an hour and it really does not do to rush such things so she spent those thirty-seven minutes trying to find loopholes or further improvements. She'll step out of the mansion and look around for Iomedae.

 

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Overseeing the construction of the Church of Aroden, that being what she came here for today before everything was derailed. 

 

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She can switch gears on the spot, though. 

"You have it?"

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"We'll find out soon enough. Have we got someone with a couple restorations standing by in case it goes horribly horribly wrong?"

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"I'll send them in to keep your clones company. Good fortune and all Aroden's genius go with you." Also a Prayer. It can't hurt. Arazni's version is really quite powerful.

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"The question is - and this is a political question, so it's your call - should I try for Taldaris or the Mirrorgrave? Taldaris is - a little more likely to work, I know more about him, he's not in it right now which will make it harder for him to resist, but Tar-Baphon might notice, if it's in his vaults somewhere, and that tips our hand a bit. The mirrorgrave - It will probably still succeed, won't tip our hand, helps more with our immediate problem - but if it's his cloak or another item that the Empire has it might make them trust us less and I know you're trying to work with them right now - "

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"I think the Empire will take losing the cloak quite badly, it'll undercut all of the questions I'm hoping the care package might prompt them to ask, and it -

- on the one hand it's stunningly stupid to have it be the cloak, right, but on the other we think Tar-Baphon helped him do it and I don't know that it's stupid for Tar-Baphon to have a servant who wears his phylactery - it feels plausible enough -

- try Taldaris, I think. If we make Tar-Baphon nervous, that's - a real cost, but we were going to be pushing him to the point of desperation in the near future anyway, and it might be for the best if he is forced into acting on that desperation too early."

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Then she can teleport out into the middle of the desert and wish for the phylactery of Grand Prince Taldaris II to be, let's say 200 feet in front of her on that rock.

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...Well. There is now something 200 feet in front of her on that rock. It's a box. She flies closer.

 

...It's a nonmagical box. Mind-blanked? Greater dispel magic.

 

No, it's just a nonmagical box. Well. At least she's not exploded. Teleport.

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"This is probably a nonmagical replica of Taldaris' phylactery, which could come in handy I suppose? Sometime later. What's the situation here and now?"

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" - huh. I guess we could use that to verify whether Mirrorgraves's is his cloak without stealing it, though I don't know if that's worth a Wish diamond. My next priority is communication with the rebel leadership in Oris about the ceasefire, I feel much better about helping the Empire so long as negotiations there seem to be moving in the right direction. Your next priority might be fishing for the Mirrorgrave's base here with Discern Location, if you have specific objects in mind you could target, or it might be figuring out and testing a contingency trigger so the Empire can't do to you whatever they did to the Mirrorgrave, presumably in conjunction with Altarrin, or I think Altarrin wanted you to look with him at the cloak through his scry and see if you could make more sense of it."

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"Discern location won't work, for objects I need to have touched it and for creatures - can't do something as broad as 'the nearest undead.' I'd love to set up a contingency trigger so they can't get me, but - assuming what they did to the Mirrorgrave was just the same thing they tried on me but with more firepower, I don't want an antimagic field, I'd be stoned to death over the course of a few rounds because I am not you and cannot take arbitrary numbers of depowered mages with my bare hands. I'll check out the cloak and then work on undead-tracking. Where's Altarrin now?"

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"Should be right next door."

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"Altarrin. Iomedae said you wanted me to take a look at your scry?"

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Altarrin has been scrying Oris, but drops it immediately. "Yes. I have notes that I could show you, but I think it will be faster for you to just look at the mage-sight directly. ...You have my permission to read my mind for it, and use your compulsion to direct my Sight, if it works on a fine-grained enough level for that." 

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...Huh. There are definitely times when she's done something like that, but this is the first time anyone has ever volunteered without her suggesting it first.

"I appreciate that. It is fine-grained enough, but I wasn't planning to use it for this." Detect thoughts.

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It's known to be very irritating and inefficient for non-mages trying to share concert-Sight with a mage to have to direct them verbally, and Altarrin is finding that, at this point, he genuinely doesn't mind and it feels like it would be worth it to make it faster

 

He gets the scry up; he knows exactly where to look and it's not hard, this time, despite the shields that need to be evaded. 

 

He'll show her a general overview and then focus on each element at a time, starting with the simpler ones that he expects she can map easily to her own Arcane Sight or Detect Magic or whichever one it is again and thus get used to the different view offered by mage-sight, but she should absolutely feel free to take control if something else would be more useful, she has so much context he lacks on what Golarion artifacts should look like and what any of this means. 

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She is happy to steer Altarrin's scry directly if it's not going to make their working relationship worse! It takes her a couple minutes, to get used to the ways mage-sight and arcane sight are different, but once she's done that it's just spellcraft. And she's very good at spellcraft.

 

...And then she starts swearing.

"Hells. OK so the good news is that this is in fact the Mirrorgrave's phylactery, that's what this soul-catcher here is doing, so we don't have to worry about finding it somewhere else on the planet. The bad news is, this is the mirrorgrave's phylactery, it's possible in the next couple days he's going to start possessing people in - wherever the Empire is storing this - and also it's one of those magic items that's incredibly hard and annoying to destroy. I haven't got all the details yet but it looks like it's going to be something horrible like 'thirteen virgins who are pure of heart must willingly sacrifice themselves so that their souls can wait in the cloak until the mirrorgrave's own soul returns there, at which point the nobility of their sacrifice will cause the cloak to shatter and the mirrorgrave be destroyed for good.' Or something else in that genre."

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What??? Why is that even a way magic works??? 

(Altarrin doesn't bother to say this, since Alfirin is reading his mind anyway.) 

 

They should probably not steal it without coordinating that directly with the Empire, for reasons of avoiding escalation, but - could they in theory just put it somewhere that even the Mirrorgrave couldn't survive if he started to come back, so his soul would just stay trapped until they figure out a better solution? It would also be annoying and difficult to Gate it into an active volcano but at least it's not thirteen virgins. 

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Twenty-nine times in thirty, tossing the lich's indestructible phylactery into the volcano gets you a lich seriously inconvenienced for the next few thousand years. The other time it gets you an animate evil undead volcano. They should try things a little less dramatic than that first.

Iomedae was against stealing it now, yes, because it would be an escalation and it's not such an immediate emergency. They should have a few days, at least.

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It does WHAT nevermind, Golarion magic is absurd but learning about it is not the top priority right now. Does Alfirin want to see any other details before he drops the scry, or should they report this to Iomedae and move on? 

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She's seen enough for now and can look again when the immediate crisis has passed. They've also got what's probably a nonmagical replica of lich's phylactery, but might be the real thing, downstairs. She suspects they'll have a lot of things to look at when the immediate crisis has passed.

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Altarrin...will maybe go read some of the original books that Aritha copied, with his Scholar's Ring, and see if he can invent a scrying-search that targets vampires. 

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Iomedae has one of the crusade wizards scry the Marshal from Iomedae's description; this would be a chancy thing, with a Golarion target, but no one in Velgarth is experienced in resisting Golarion magic or in shielding against it. 

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The Marshal is in a clearing under trees, wearing his armor with the visor up and eating soup. There's other armed men and women near him, but it's very hard to tell from a scry just how many people there are with him or where he is, other than 'somewhere there are trees'.

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The cantrip Message functions through a scry. If it's a Greater Scry, with hours of duration, it even functions reliably.  Iomedae doesn't know how to hang cantrips, but there are magic items of Message for precisely this reason. 

 

"Marshal?" a familiar voice will say near his ear. "It's Iomedae. I'm speaking to you through magic from a great distance. I can hear you if you reply."

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Marshal Orestan does a fantastically good job of concealing his expression, and having parts of his face covered with a helmet helps for that. "Pleased to hear from you again, Iomedae," he says casually, as if he never expected anything different. And, raising his eyebrows and putting his supper carefully on a small folding table, "I'll need to take this in my tent," to the people around him.

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She really does like the man. "I - regret immensely that it took me so long to be in a position to aid you again. My most important news is that the Empire is conveying you ceasefire terms and is willing to cede everything south of the Havau Bar Ridge."

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"Oh good," he says, as he ducks into his tent, latches it, and double-checks the sound-warding spells. "I'd spotted the diplomats, but hadn't gotten a good look into the terms yet. Give me more time to work on my 'so long as one citizen remains in chains we will never surrender' speech. Unless there's other news that explains why they're being so generous when we haven't even beaten their second army yet?"

(He is not, in fact, lying about the 'yet'. His losses due to raids on isolated camps are much, much lower than their losses due to constant guerilla warfare.)

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"That they were offering terms at all was a surprise to us, and seems likely to have been a personal decision of the Emperor. But - Altarrin defected to the Knights of Ozem, and the Empire is presently at war both with the Knights and with our extremely dangerous enemy from our own world, the one I have been fighting for the last several decades, Tar-Baphon, who is now operating in Velgarth."

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"Ah-hah. Thank you." He'd wondered what that lost battle was doing. "Give the Archmage-General my congratulations. How likely is Tar-Baphon to come down to Oris, and what do I need to know in case he does?"

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"I hope unlikely. We are doing everything we can to prevent that. I want to arrange a permanent Telepathic bond between you or one of yours and an associate of mine on Beset - the other continent of Velgarth, where we're presently conducting operations that need to be in-world, and you should immediately alert us if you notice any signs of Tar-Baphon or, more likely, his associates - anyone with Golarion magic except god-miracles - operating in Oris."

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"I can set that up. I'll want as much as you or yours can tell me about what signs to look for and just what he can do; the last thing I need is an enemy I don't know how to fight. I'd also like the pitch to pass on for why if he offers me everything I want with a ribbon wrapped 'round it I should tell him 'I'll think about it' and start stockpiling ammunition, though I don't know how urgent that is."

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"He can enslave and command any corpse, and has little use for the living. He won't mean anything he offers you, and Oris will never be free under him. And the problem with the undead is that once they get a foothold they are much, much harder to root out. I will probably match whatever pay he offers you, and actually follow through. - relatedly, we are now established enough in Velgarth to do resurrections. Need some of your soldiers back?"

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"Yes."

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"First pick is not someone in my army, though you can absolutely find a use for her; I remember Gate-logistics being new to you."

"Soria of Jenona, first-class Adept, formerly in Imperial service, tell her it's to save the world against someone plotting to turn everyone into reanimated corpses who are his eternal slaves and she'll sign up."

"For the rest - how many names?"

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"If you have remains, we can do eight to twelve a day. If you know the location of remains and they're inside the Empire that's fine. Without remains it's more expensive, though I'll get your first pick regardless." That was the expression of - a man who can control his expression very well, no question, but also a man discussing someone very important to him.

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"Right." Then he'll start listing names; Adepts who died to non-final-strike causes, two of Oris's best generals from the last war, places he knows a key person's remains were... "I assume you know they have Samien?"

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"Yes, Altarrin spoke with him. I am currently avoiding doing things like breaking prisoners out from inside the Empire - I want them to work with me on Tar-Baphon - but if that changes we'll get him, and his release may be straightforward to negotiate with the Empire's diplomats anyway."

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"Understood, thank you. Are collected ashes after a cremation cheap or expensive?"

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"Cheap. The expensive spell is if there's nothing left at all that was part of them when they died."

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"Right." Then he can start naming people who have ashes "- can you read a written list, that'll be simpler, or read over the link when you have that established. I can start collecting bodies."

Pause. "We're going to win the war but it's been a mess."

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"I know. I am - so sorry I didn't return sooner. I can't even truthfully tell you I couldn't have, just that it would've cost even more, elsewhere, on a battlefield you have no reason to care about as highly. I can read a list, if you take a couple hours to assemble one, and - right now I think direct intervention on the Oris front will probably just make matters worse, but I will come, if your judgment is otherwise, or send aid with the returned dead, if that'd help."

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"I think they'd do whatever it took to kill you again, yes - and I don't think they'll suspect resurrection when I have more adepts than they expect. They've already killed me six times, they say."

"And - I know Oris isn't your only war. I'd like a few priests of Aroden who can work miracles just so my men know Aroden's still here with us, that you aren't a myth, but they don't need to be strong..."

"... The main thing I don't understand is why the Empire's offering so much so fast, other than 'Tar-Baphon.' Are their other wars going badly?"

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"I can get you some empowered priests who won't draw as much of the Empire's concentrated attention. I...don't know why they offered the ceasefire. Altarrin was surprised too, and I'd expect he knows his own court quite well. He thought maybe he'd underestimated the Emperor. I think they still have the resources to aggressively pursue the war in Oris, if we accidentally made them think that was in their interests."

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"Mmm. Understood. Thank you. If Altarrin finds out why, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know." He may want to very slightly moderate his own demands, presently standing at "every inch of territory including some most dispassionate international observers, if the concept existed, wouldn't admit were ours, return of all pillaged cultural treasures, a vast sum of money, and official acknowledge of our full and free independence," just so whatever peace faction in the empire that exists knows negotiating is possible.

And, to more immediate matters, "I'll want an alert before your representatives arrive to set up the link. What will they look like?"

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"I'll send an empowered priest of Aroden and a mage who can cast the permanent Telepathic Bond. They'll - both be invisible, actually. Should be identifying enough."

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Amused. "Indeed."

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"Is an hour from now a good time for them to arrive?"

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"Yes. I'll let my people know."

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"All the fortune and all the gods go with you, Marshal."

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"They usually have," he says lightly. "And with you as well, Iomedae."

And then he can go broadcast the good news.

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Kiritan hates Arbas. She doesn't want to. Iomedae wouldn't. (If you rip that thought out, it gets replaced with 'a perfectly Good person wouldn't.')

It's necessary to kill people, sometimes, but it's never necessary to hate them; it just distorts your judgment, makes it harder to make predictions.

Of course, 'Arbas is as horrible and irredeemable as a person can be and will do the maximally awful and unforgivable thing at all times' makes pretty good predictions.

 

If you block Kiritan's ability to recall or think about most of the reasons she trusts Iomedae, she trusts Iomedae anyway, instinctively; if you additionally block her instinctive-trust, replace it with despair and doubt and self-loathing and anger, you eventually catch the tiny thought 'Iomedae sent me to be subjected to this', and you can chip away, from there, at most of Kiritan's sense of herself, her motivation to be a good person, her trust that things go better if you're a good person than they would if you're a bad one, her conviction that the thing Iomedae is doing works.

Eventually you can convince her that she wants to resign and go home because it was a mistake to ever try to make the world a better place because it can't be done and you'll only be tortured if you try and even Iomedae isn't really trying.

Her trust in Aroden is similarly rooted. There are specifics, lots of specifics; Absalom is a rich city and a free city and a city where men become gods, and Aroden is why. Magic lightens labor and defends humanity against the horrors that crowd in from outside, and Aroden is why. The sermons speak to good things, real things; you're stronger for listening. The Shining Crusade is as advertised; they are brave and they are careful and they are led by commanders who care about them individually and specifically, and who want them to grow stronger, and the place where Aroden has amassed most of his power on Golarion is a place where no one wants anyone else to be weaker, where people trust one another, where people are justified in that trust for one another, where people are inventive and clever and loving and brave and human, because those are the things that Aroden cares for.

If you block all that, she trusts Aroden instinctively. And if you start relentlessly shredding that, replacing it with every negative emotion it is possible to get paladins to feel, you can make her believe that godhood eats people, that Aroden is lying when he says things will get better, that things cannot and will not ever get better and everything will always be terrible and meaningless and all her suffering has been for no reason at all. That's most of what's left, once you've blocked Aroden and Iomedae entirely from how Kiritan reasons about the world: that everything is suffering, and always will be, and the suffering is meaningless, and things cannot get better, and no one will ever care, and she wants to die and she doesn't think Heaven would be better.

 

Aroden does not abandon her, for being reduced to this. To achieve that Arbas will need to get more creative.

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Well that's boring. 

Maybe she needs to more actively reject Aroden? To hate Him, the way she currently hates Arbas.

(Arbas is not even slightly bothered by intimately reading the mind of someone who hates him with all of her soul. It's less boring that despair and wanting to die, and he's used to it.) 

 

...Is there anything kind of positive motivation toward anything at all, that he can pit against the helpless despair and meaninglessness? Can he nurture a kernel of - spite, or bitterness, or anger that Aroden sent her here to be tortured, or even just the desire to go out in a blaze and set as much of the meaningless-world-that-is-suffering as she can on fire? If he can get her to want anything, in this state, maybe he can get her to want Aroden to hurt, to know the consequences of having betrayed her...? 

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Aroden hasn't betrayed her, though. She knows that because she's still His paladin. She's worried she's betrayed Him, she's worried she shouldn't have agreed to work for Him, but Aroden is still with her, keeping her whole and unafraid. 

(She is not very whole and the 'unafraid' has been pared down as narrowly as it can be, but still, she'd notice its absence.)

The strongest want she has is for this to end, to go home, for Iomedae to hold her and tell her it was worth it and she was brave and that there's still good in the world. If you take Iomedae out, she wants that from her paladin unit. If you take them out - 

- she wants to die. And refuse the resurrection she was promised, and - lie down in Erastil's gardens and stop being everything she is.

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Arbas is, for a moment, wistful about the strategy he definitely can't try, because he's spent days in Kiritan's head and it won't work. Which is - showing her that there is a way that things can be good, not everything has to be suffering, it's just that the entire problem is the gods. Drive out the gods, kill the gods if you can - and someday they'll be able to - and then you can have nice things. 

But the entire concept of Civilization, to her, is too deeply warped around her conception of Aroden, and there's no peeling that apart. Maybe he could put it back together, afterward, once he's gotten rid of the mind control, but Bastran isn't even going to let him try that because Bastran wants him to send the paladin back once he's succeeded at this. Which, fair enough he guesses, it does send a message. 

Also wistfulness is not really an emotion Arbas likes feeling, so he promptly moves on. 

 

 

...Lean into the wanting it to stop. He can work with that. He can work with her wanting to stop being everything she is - 

 

- what if she was never any of those things. She was never anything more coherent than a thing that ran away from pain and toward safety, that's all there is, and - the vows she made to Aroden were never more than words on the wind. 

She can't trust Iomedae. She can't trust her colleagues. She can't trust Aroden. And, at the core of all of that, she can't trust herself. There isn't a thing there that could be trusted, or trustworthy, or - believe true things on purpose, mean true things by its worse, swear oaths that meant anything, make commitments on its future that were anything but dust and lies. 

 

And she can just...stop. Whenever she wants. It's the trying that leads to suffering, the trying to pretend to be something she isn't and never was, and - if she just stops, which isn't even hard, then it won't hurt anymore. 

 

(He means that, even, at least to the extent that if he succeeds at kicking the Aroden-mind-control then he's going to stop doing things to her head, having achieved his mission here.) 

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Yeah. 

 

You can get Kiritan to believe that, if you rip away all of the reasons she ever had to believe anything else. You can get her to, where she feels Aroden's presence around her like an impossible promise, like a cloak, like a beacon in the dark, believe that it's a lie, because the promises she made to obtain it were lies, because promises are lies, because everything is a lie.

You can make her believe that she doesn't mean her oaths, and never did - and, this part is important, if Arbas misses this part it won't work - you can make her forget that she is allowed to come to the other Knights and set her vows aside, that she doesn't have to break them to find out who she is without them -

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This is actually kind of non-obvious, at the point when he has Kiritan's minded twisted into this much of a knot, but Arbas is very very good at his job and he can figure it out, at least after a few minutes of trying to block various other parts of her worldview. 

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No way out. She isn't the kind of thing that can make promises, promises aren't real, her vows were a lie and she has no way out of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, that'll do it. 

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Kiritan immediately has the kind of panic attack where you are wholly and completely convinced you are dying horribly of suffocation.

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It WORKED and Arbas is so satisfied. 


…The panic attack isn’t actually dangerous, he’s pretty sure you cannot die of it, but it’s mildly inconvenient. And not actually something he can block with compulsions, they can’t hit involuntary physiological reactions.

 

 

Also he did tell her that she would stop suffering once she let go of Aroden and he feels (a little bit) bad about that. 

He’ll summon a Healer to slow her heart rate and, when that seems insufficient, put her under for a few minutes while he eases up on some of the peripheral control, though mostly not the Aroden-specific parts because what if she wakes up disoriented and calls out to Him just out of habit, He’s probably too far away to hear but He might still just be waiting to pounce. 

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He’s not.

 

He knows, of course. He is blazingly furious, and deeply alarmed, and - now, weary and sad in a far more human way than His emotions usually are.

He could have done something. But at a very very steep intervention-cost exchange rate, and not neatly, He can barely see anything and He knows that Iomedae is engaged in very delicate work. It’s not worth the resource cost and it’s not worth the risk of disrupting something very high stakes that He can’t see…

…and it’s, probably, not an irretrievable loss, not with Iomedae on site to react as she sees fit…

 

 

 

It’s still something that will never, ever be all right, never be undone even if the damage can be repaired, a wound that will still be there no matter how many worlds they find and in how many of them they win.

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Kiritan will wake up in a comfortable bed in a quiet dimly-lit room, no longer having a panic attack. Arbas is nowhere in sight. A Healing trainee is sitting in the corner. 

She still can’t think directly about Aroden or any of the specific reasons why she once trusted Him, but most of the mind control affecting her direct feelings about Him has been eased back on. Her thoughts about Iomedae or her own trustworthiness are mostly unimpeded, at least by any current or ongoing compulsions.

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Her first realization on waking is that she is terrified and her second, which follows directly from the first but still takes her kind of a while, is that she's been renounced.

 

She collapses into the pillows howling in grief that can be heard from anywhere in the facility if they're not using magical soundproofing. Her thoughts aren't very coherent. She failed, she failed, everything that matters has been destroyed, everything that she is is gone - she's sure she's going to die and be soul-trapped or something, mostly because the Empire has to make sure Iomedae never learns of this -

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(There is in fact magical soundproofing. It’s an Office of Inquiry interrogation facility. It comes up.)

 

The Healing trainee finds this incredibly distressing! She’ll try to slow Kiritan’s heart rate in case this helps at all - it doesn’t, really - and then make a report that, um, the prisoner doesn’t seem very happy or okay about being un-god-possessed or whatever it was? 

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See, Arbas would totally try to help with this! He’s also good at the other part of his job, the putting people back together afterward. Bastran just said he wasn’t allowed to, for some reason. He’s grumpy about it.

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Bastran is so tired. 

He wasn’t expecting it to work.

It’s…good news, right, that it works? 

He isn’t happy about it, though. He’s so tired. 

 

 

He should..things…he should write a letter, to negotiate returning the (no longer a) paladin, since they do not in fact have a plan for that.

- he can’t. He’ll say all the wrong things and Kastil will make him rewrite it anyway and he’s so tired.

 

Can the Office of Inquiry figure this one out, please. Bastran is going to go to bed  he also doesn’t especially want to sleep, for some reason. He will go do paperwork which is absorbing and not about paladins made to renounced their god.

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The Office of Inquiry is really not sure why they're giving her back! The logical next stage is for a non-Arbas person to interrogate her now that the god-possession is gone.

... is the Emperor in any state to explain what was just done, and, uh, why?

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... He is not. Great. What fun.

Can Chief Inquisitor Siman have any explanation of what exactly anyone is steering for with this decision?

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"Sending a threat, obviously."

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... Right. Ministry of Barbarians, this is your job.

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From, Duke Klemath Elnore, Minister of Barbarians, etc, etc, etc, serving His Sovereign Majesty Bastran IV, etc, etc, etc...

To the foreign priest Iomedae...

... we have broken your god's control over one of the priests we took. By the great mercy of the Emperor Bastran, she will be returned to you alive...

There! Now all they need to do is add some vague hints that the same will happen to anyone else who invades the Eastern Empire and they can send the note out.

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Altarrin is checking the message-drop point where they left Iomedae’s artifact at regular intervals, in between trying to scry for vampires.

 

….he retrieves the message. He’s not sure what to expect. 

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Not the time for emotions. Or thinking about it. Or figuring out how and why and– no actually just WHY. 

 

 

He's going to scry Iomedae and Gate directly to her rather than spend two minutes walking around, and shove the letter at her. His expression is one that she's never seen on him before. 

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What has Altarrin that -

 


She takes the letter.

Cold, sinking horror. She's felt it before. When she decided not to spend their last diamond returning to Oris, or when she decided to take Urgir expecting to kill pretty much everyone in it, or when Arazni died and the first Miracle didn't change that, or in the first half-round of realizing you've walked the army into a trap, or the first time she had to raise her sword and decapitate an undead friend, or - kill a living one, because they'd broken a law she had carefully concluded required that punishment -

- there's plenty of cold, sinking horror in her life, actually.

The present one doesn't leave much space remaining in her mind to compare it to past occasions.

It actually feels like her thoughts are swimming through very slow mud.

 

They took her delegates. They accepted the surrender of her delegates, they interrogated them for long enough to know what it meant to be a paladin, and they tortured or enchanted them into Falling. 

(In a world without afterlives, having presumably learned that she selected Aroden-chosen delegates so that He could call them home if the Empire killed them -)

(She should be able to get them back anyway, but -)

 

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She is not less angry, after a round, but she controls her expression. Otherwise, she'll scare people. The people here are not the ones she wants to scare. She does not want Altarrin to believe she is angry at him. 

 

"Get Alfirin," she directs whoever's closest.

 

 

She can't hear her thoughts over the sound of a distant roaring that wants to smash the Eastern Empire into pieces, that wants to ask Alfirin for a Wish that ends every compulsion in Jacona and if it also kills some of them, fine, that wants to grab and shake Aroden for not - warning her, intervening - she'd have told Him not to -

- thirty million people under this EVIL EMPEROR's EVIL RULE that she cannot afford to dismantle in whatever happens to be the MOST EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING WAY -

 

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It does not take long to get her. And something is very clearly wrong.

"What...?"

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Alfirin has not seen Iomedae this angry many times. Iomedae is pretending to be less angry than she is but if you can see through that it just makes the actual amount of anger scarier.

 

Iomedae hands Alfirin the note.

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(Altarrin does not, in fact, think that Iomedae is angry with him, but she would be so justified in her anger. He built the place that did this, and he's almost certain he knows who specifically did it - who specifically has the Emperor's trust enough that Bastran probably signed off on doing it, because Arbas would not in fact act without Bastran's approval.

He is holding himself very still.) 

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"What in Rovagug's accursed service were they thinking. What could they possibly be hoping to gain from this besides - cruelty for its own sake -

Hell doesn't do this! Not to diplomats. It's - Baphomet would do this, Baphomet would think this was hilarious and fun and -

I think we cannot negotiate with them any more. Any peace deal they sign I would expect them to break the moment it's in their stupid blind short-sighted interests."

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"It's - it's so infuriatingly stupid - have they missed that if we wanted to fight them - let's go somewhere private - Altarrin, I'm going to be incredibly cruel about the  - work of your life - you may prefer not to come with us to plan, though you can if you want -"

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"I think I should be there." 

He'll walk with them, his expression distant and stony, and once they're in private he...takes off the mask, or at least that mask, it won't help to be incandescently furious with Bastran right now and he's still tucking that away behind - grief, mostly, for a very brave person who volunteered for a very hard thing, and in return had everything important to her destroyed. 

 

He closes his eyes and opens them. 

"I - do think there is reasoning behind this. Not - good reasoning - would not have approved it, and I will swear to that - but the Empire does...not really have a framework for what paladins are other than 'a variant on direct possession by a god.' From the Empire's priors, the level of deep faith that you have in Him looks like mind control. And they must be worried that Aroden can do it through your artifacts, after I defected and especially after what I said to Bastran in our dream. ...And they want to be able to study the gifts you gave them, but - they must be very afraid, that it will just result in losing all of the key people to the god of an alien world. It...would have felt decision-relevant, to Bastran, whether it was possible to undo that." 

 

A pause. 

"- and I think it might have felt emotionally relevant to him whether he could - ever get me back - in the hypothetical where I am in fact mind-controlled by Aroden. I - that does not excuse it and he should have known better and I am certain this was not his idea, I know exactly whose idea it was, but the combination of a completely unprecedented scale of emergency and - knowing I am working for the people he believes are his enemies and likely an existential threat - is going to be. Bad for his reasoning, here." 

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"You actually do have to not torture your enemy's delegates into renouncing their god no matter how much you want to know if it'll work!"

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Yeah he's not going to argue with her on that. 

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"I notice you are not saying 'There is an extremist faction at court which might have tried to pull something like this off unilaterally.' "

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Altarrin shakes his head, slowly. 

 

"I - think there is exactly one person in the Empire who could do this. His name is Arbas, he is a mage-Thoughtsenser with short-range Foresight, and he is in the Emperor's guard. He would...be personally offended about the entire concept of paladins, and want to prove he could defeat Aroden at mind control, which he would have assumed was what paladinhood consisted of. He would - probably have written up a very compelling pitch on the strategic justifications of trying this. ....I am actually shocked and appalled that Bastran agreed to it, I did not expect this of him, but - he does not really understand what it means to be a paladin either, he may not have - realized what kind of thing he was authorizing."  

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" - I don't like making decisions when I'm this angry, but - do you have the slot free -" Iomedae has known Alfirin for most of both their adult lives and she is pretty sure that they have thought of the exact same first-line response to this situation.

 

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"Yes. I even have it prepared, I thought I might need two for the phylactery -

I want Kiritan and Tiaves back. And I want Elnore. And Arbas, - And - who else would have pushed for it. Besides the emperor."

 

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"A number of people might have quietly encouraged it. I think Arbas is the one who would have advocated full-out for it, and - I am not actually sure how many people I predict were consulted in advance - the note they sent has a feel of something that was not well thought out or coordinated, Bastran would absolutely not have signed off on sending something worded like this." 

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"We can always take his entire council and return the ones who turn out to have not been involved."

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" - before performing any mental adjustments for how blazingly angry I am right now, that sounds like a great idea."

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...fuck. Usually Iomedae would be telling her to restrain herself at this point.

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"I fully understand why you want to do that and I am - not actually going to argue against it," because he is ALSO incredibly angry and - scared, that's that feeling, "but if you kidnap the Emperor's entire council in a detectable way and do not return them within two minutes then I think possibly the Empire collapses and many more people die. ...If you waited a couple of candlemarks they will be in bed and it might not be instantly detectable, except for Kastil who I want to talk to but who will have wards up that would detect his disappearance even if there was no recognizable magic on that end. And I think we should not wait to retrieve Kiritan and Tiaves." 

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Iomedae grimaces apologetically at Altarrin, who is after all correct. "After performing mental adjustments for how angry I am - probably just Arbas, if he's the one that Altarrin thinks would have actively pushed for it, and we can - it's not an emergency. - getting Kiritan and Tiaves out might well be an emergency, but the war crimes investigation isn't."

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Nod. "I - am inclined to believe Bastran intended to return them alive, but I am also not getting the impression he is incredibly on top of or in control of the situation, right now, or he would have sent a different letter." Sigh. "You should get them out. And Arbas." Thaaaaaaaat is going to be...interesting. Possibly in explosive ways. 

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"We might as well grab Arbas at the same time. Fewer wishes that way.

I do - Maybe Elnore in particular is not responsible but - If the empire were treating us the way we treat foreign powers, this would not have happened. No matter how much they think our emissaries are mind-controlled slaves of Aroden they would not have done this if they didn't fundamentally think we are savages who cannot be bargained with and can only be shown our place. Their ministry of barbarians is part of the problem and if the minister isn't it's only because he has no control over his institution."

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"...There is probably no point in scrying Elnore and checking whether he is in private, they are going to immediately summon everyone to a meeting once the paladins and Arbas disappear." Sigh. "And - at least there is a legible-to-them reason for why him, specifically, though I really hope you are also planning to send a letter. I will drop one off whenever you need me to." 

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"Oh, I'll write a letter.

 

I do think - there's a fundamental problem here in how they see us, which we tried to solve with diplomacy and that didn't work and that is suggestive that the only way to solve it is with overwhelming force. I don't in fact have a lot of confidence in how I'd handle that if I were calm, which is why - just Arbas. The better direction to err in."

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Nod. "I - would have said Bastran might listen and that might mean something, but I hoped he might listen when I spoke with him, and I am worried he did the opposite instead." 

 

He glances over at Alfirin. "- I assume you know you are going to have to immediately Dominate him if you do not want an enormous problem, and have that under control, but I am available as backup. Presumably it would not help right now for me to - apologize to the paladins." 

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"Oh I know. Iomedae, I'll wait until you're letter's ready if you want it to be simultaneous but otherwise I'm inclined to act now."

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Oh, the letter is written.

The Knights of Ozem believe the Empire to be under significant threat from Tar-Baphon, who will, should it be in his power, conquer the empire and enslave its people as his undead servants. It has been among our highest priorities to improve communications with the Empire so that we can supply the Empire with the resources needed to combat this threat. Towards this end, we sent delegates to the Empire with orders to assist the Empire in every way possible.

It is with great regret, therefore, that we now communicate that some faction within the Empire, presumably acting without the knowledge of the Emperor, tortured one of our delegates with the result (and, we believe, with the intent) of forcing Aroden to renounce her as a paladin. We are horrified and, frankly, baffled; we cannot fathom what breakdown of communications would have led anyone to believe the Empire would be served by such outrageous conduct, or even that their own standing within the Empire would be advanced by it. The actions of these criminals harmed only their Empire and a person who was by any conceivable interpretation of the situation either a lawfully surrendered prisoner or a delegate for peace negotiations. This was not just evil, it was very very stupid, in a manner that, were it not immediately and appropriately addressed, would seriously damage our hopes of peace with the Empire.

The Knights of Ozem would of course be not very able to meaningfully coordinate or cooperate with an Empire which cannot refrain from such conduct. However, we hold out hope that this occurrence runs as contrary to the values and principles of the Empire as they do to our own, and hope that the Empire is immediately conducting its own investigation into what enemies of civilization orchestrated this. 

As we had grave concerns for the competence of the Empire to ensure the safety of our delegates, we have removed them from the Empire, and apprehended one of the petty criminals suspected in this grave violation of the laws of war and of all civilized nations. Our investigation is ongoing, and I hope will be conducted in parallel with one of your own. After all, this crime is plainly as severe an insult to the Empire and the Emperor as to the Knights of Ozem, and represents a far greater harm to the Empire and Emperor than to the Knights of Ozem.

"Proposed changes?"

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"No, I think that gets the point across quite nicely."

She will pull a rabbit out of her pocket and tie the letter around its leg.

"Your paladins will be in the next room over in two rounds."

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...The rabbit presumably means Altarrin isn't needed for a Gate. "Are you going to put the letter directly where you took the paladins or Arbas?" he checks. "It - would be a good idea if they saw it immediately, I think, rather than the next time they scry the drop-location." 

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"Find me the Emperor. He should get this directly."

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Iomedae stands up. She wants to be there for Kiritan and Tiaves, and she isn't needed for Arbas. ...mostly isn't needed for Arbas.

 

 "We're better than them. Don't shatter the man," she says, which isn't usually something she needs to say to Alfirin but she's been needing to remind herself and probably Alfirin's not doing wildly better on that front. 

 

And she leaves. 

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The Emperor: in his private office, apparently, working calmly at his desk, his expression perhaps a little too distant and neutral. 

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Bastran looks like he's plausibly in a worse emotional state than Altarrin has ever seen him, which is - not entirely surprising - but still hurts. (It does not do anything to decrease how angry he is, just tangles uncomfortably with it.)

He'll describe the location, or Alfirin can just read his mind and grab it from him if that's cheap for her? 

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A description is enough.

She was not planning to shatter Arbas. She was maybe planning to make him shatter himself and - might have stopped before she actually did it. She probably won't do it, now.

Wish. Quickened dominate person. Detect thoughts.

(There is now a note-bearing rabbit on Bastran's desk.)

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ACK WHAT

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IMMEDIATE STRIKE BY THE IMPERIAL GUARD AND THE MINISTRY OF INQUIRY ON THE RABBIT

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The rabbit, being a completely ordinary sedated rabbit, dies instantly.

 

 

The note does not fare any better.

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...And there's a man on the floor in front of her, under whatever mind-control she's imposing. 

 

If she lets him think, he's going to be thinking - without all that much distress, yet - that oh that's not Iomedae but is clearly a spectacularly fucking powerful alien wizard so it's presumably Alfirin. And Altarrin-probably-under-Aroden's-possession glaring at him, fucking delightful. 

This is not a completely unforeseen consequence of stealing a god's toys. Arbas is not incredibly surprised. It is, if anything, a little flattering for the response to be an immediate kidnapping with impossible magic. Maybe Aroden actually felt threatened. He's faintly pleased with himself about that. He's presumably about to get horribly murdered but still, not many people get in any real hits against gods. 

(Every time he thinks about the concept of 'gods' it's tinged with disgust and derision and, deeper than that, a sense of anger, of - there could have been something better than wars and assassinations, it was the birthright of the Empire's people and it was stolen from them. This feeling goes deep, and is very genuine. Arbas has literally never considered whether maybe Iomedae is friendly, because in his head this is categorically incompatible with 'servant of a god'.)

 

He's also irritated that the stupid Ministry of Barbarians couldn't have waited on their letter until he'd had a chance to write down what worked, it took a lot of trial and error and no one else is as good at that as him but there are at least other people competent enough to follow clear instructions. 

Well. He did succeed, and the Emperor at least knows that the repeatable-miracle-godpossession and unnatural loyalty to said god is possible to undo. Probably someone, somewhere in this place is not completely incompetent and can re-derive it, which will surely be a high priority after Arbas was kidnapped and murdered horribly. He's not currently incredibly optimistic, looking at Altarrin's face, that they'll get the Archmage-General back, but Bastran was clearly so sad and hopeful and he can vaguely imagine it working out, maybe. 

 

 

He looks at Alfirin with an expression of mild curiosity. (His thoughts are not quite as mild as that but he continues to seem more satisfied with himself than afraid.) 

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- Altarrin winces, but now does not seem like a good moment to distract Alfirin by relaying that their letter was just exploded, let alone interrupt Iomedae to ask for another copy that he can Gate in separately. 

 

He watches. 

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"Why."

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Kiritan is ripped out of her bed and dropped on the floor of - she's been here before but she's too disoriented to -

 

- and Iomedae is there, picking her up like she's a small child - she wants to object, she has to tell Iomedae, but she can't find her voice - there's another priest, standing behind Iomedae, casting -

Greater Dispel Magic - 

- Heal -

 

               "What - happened?" says Tiaves.


"The Empire," says Iomedae, and there is something terrible in her voice, "decided to see if their mind control could be used to make paladins renounce their vows."

Oh. So Kiritan doesn't have to tell her. She knows. This doesn't feel better. 

Iomedae sets her down in an armchair, and - kneels, at Kiritan's feet, without letting go of her grip on Kiritan's arm.

                        "Kiritan," says Tiaves, in horror. "Are you -"

"She remains a Knight of Ozem," says Iomedae, very firmly. "Both of you have done more than I had any right to ask of you, more than Aroden had any right to ask of you. I don't know what the Empire did exactly, but we can fix it."

         "I'm not," Kiritan says, speaking is the most awful thing in the world but being silent would be moreso - "I'm not a Knight - Aroden's gone -"

"Aroden 
doesn't decide who's a Knight of Ozem," says Iomedae, "Pharasma certainly doesn't. I do. Kiritan is a Knight of Ozem, and they managed to temporarily tamper with Aroden's connection to her, and they will pay dearly for it. And Kiritan's powers will be restored to her in the morning, unless she needs more time." Her face is very firmly fixed on Kiritan, as she speaks, and it's impossible to disbelieve her and also Kiritan's mind has been doing nothing but hating Iomedae and disbelieving her and - 

Kiritan bursts into tears. 

           "Arbas," says Tiaves, in the background. "That's the bastard who -"

"Alfirin has him already," says Iomedae. 

                       
                         There's something dangerous in their voices, both of theirs. "Don't - hurt him," says Kiritan, through her tears, "we're - the good guys -"

 

And at that Iomedae starts crying, for some reason. 

 

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They're mind-controlling him to answer but it's hardly a state secret, or very mysterious at all, he would totally answer anyway. He'll say it out loud for her even though she can clearly pull it from his thoughts. 

 

Well, the strategic reason is that Iomedae just gave them a pile of artifacts, and maybe it's in good faith but maybe it's not. It's how they got Altarrin, after all. And also if the claims are true about Tar-Baphon they can't afford not to study and use them, but Alfirin must see how it's pretty unnerving, not knowing if the result will be losing more of their top people to another world's god. He made the point to Bastran that it would be information, on the risks of trying this, whether they could actually manage to reverse the mind control if they managed to catch it in time before the person Gated out. (Which they will, they're not going to make that mistake again.) 

 

The other reason is that Arbas is really mad at Aroden. The god, specifically, he - can imagine Iomedae being all right as a person, at this point. But the issue is that it doesn't matter, see, the Empire has been here before. The priests of Anathei are mostly lovely people and nonetheless, if you let them hang out in your cities then bridges start implausibly collapsing and communications are implausibly scrambled and sometimes one of them is literally possessed and murders someone important. Gods can't be trusted and - he thinks this is really quite self-evident, if one is not oneself being mind-controlled by a god, he knows Iomedae won't be able to see it but maybe Alfirin can. 

(He doesn't really expect Alfirin can, or will care, and he's probably still going to die horribly, but it's not like he minds explaining himself first.) 

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Does he have some particular grievance with Aroden, or does he do this, recreationally, to every religious person he can get his hands on. Alfirin would be somewhat sympathetic to thinking gods were innately untrustworthy, if Arbas were doing reasonable things in response. She does not, particularly, think Arbas was doing reasonable things in response.

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Well, Oris. But on an emotional level, the intensity of his current grievance is mostly stealing Altarrin. He liked Altarrin. Bastran is miserable about Altarrin's defection and it's seriously harming his ability to do the Emperor's job and it's not - Altarrin wouldn't have done that, it's not right

 

Also: to ordinary religious people who just have shrines at home and go to temples, no, this wouldn't be reasonable and wouldn't really accomplish anything. But he would absolutely try it on a possessed priest, if said priest represented a power that was an active and possibly existential threat to the Empire. Or if the pact-bound Shin'a'in invaded, say, that just hasn't come up because the Star-Eyed is at least capable of minding her own business.  

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They had surrendered. They were emissaries. They weren't doing anything.

Does he -

No, actually. She doesn't think she needs his reasons, right now. How did he do it.

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Arbas is much less cheerfully cooperative with providing that explanation! She can force him to but it's going to take a lot of prodding toward 'no, answer more thoroughly than that'. 

He will, however, eventually relate everything he tried: the progressive layers of compulsion-blocks on various individual thought-patterns, the induced blind spots, the tugs toward certain emotions and away from others, and eventually pulling Kiritan into a state where, not only did she deeply believe that doing things was a mistake and nothing could ever be better and there was also suffering, she also didn't think of herself as someone who could meaningfully give her word, and then he just had to nudge her to believe that if she renounced Aroden the suffering would stop. Oh, and also block the awareness that she had another out, that took some digging to find. 

She made him work hard for it. It was really quite impressive, especially for someone that young. He likes her, he thinks. 

 

(The admiration and liking toward Kiritan is, in Arbas' thoughts, not at all in tension with the fact that he clearly found it beautiful and fascinating to pin down her mind and find its fault-lines and explore all the ways it could break.) 

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Alfirin is starting to like Kiritan, too.

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...Yeah. Altarrin is feeling a lot of admiration for Kiritan, and - how do you even apologize for what happened - he does, at least, want to thank her. For being willing to try. For enduring something that should never have happened. 

Aroden has to know and - was He watching helplessly, too far away to intervene, or did He in fact have the capability to have prevented it, and - judged it wasn't worth it, because Iomedae could handle it far more cheaply, if only after the damage was done... Aroden must be so angry. 

 

 

Altarrin is watching the proceedings with such a neutral expression. 

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She is not sure, here, what she wants to do. Or rather, she knows very well what she wants to do, but Iomedae doesn't want her to and - Kiritan might, now, but the Kiritan that existed before Arbas violated her would not have.

 

Well.

 

Arbas can start by removing his own compulsions. With those gone, is he thinking anything different?

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He's mad about it!

...And surprisingly distressed, actually, genuinely distressed and upset and scared for the first time in this whole conversation. 

It doesn't seem like this is only because he is obviously interpreting it as hostile. It's - there was a stable point there, before, there was a structure in his mind he could count on staying put, and now it isn't, and it feels like maybe a lot of things aren't real, he can't really...the concept of the Empire as an entity slides away from him, feels suddenly incoherent and slippery and fake...and - he's kind of clinging to the one thing which is still real, which is Bastran, BastranBastranBastran, he's not sure what to do with that because he's powerless in the hands of the Emperor's enemies and about to die horribly but there's something there that's still important to him. 

 

He's mostly too distracted by all of that to be thinking in depth about what he did to Kiritan. 

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Well that's not very productive. Why doesn't he just -

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-

 

She could not do it, on her own. Her spells give her control, but they don't let her reshape thoughts as thoroughly as Arbas can. But with Arbas here, already dominated, she can use his gifts, his skills. She could twist him up like he twisted Kiritan. She could make him block his own awareness that he ever had cared about the empire, or the emperor. She could probably make him delight in his new freedom. Maybe she could even give him the same mind-controlled loyalty to Aroden that he seems so convinced they all have.

 

She's kind of curious, whether she can.

 

She also feels sick, and not just with anger.

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She will stand up, and walk out of the room, leaving Arbas where he lies.

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"Aroden is going to want to apologize to you," Iomedae says. 

       Everything is impossible, dizzying, like a dream. Like waking up from a nightmare. Kiritan's eyes are very puffy and she's trying not to think about how that makes her look in front of Iomedae, who herself has been crying quite unselfconsciously. "- sorry?" she repeats dumbly.

"Aroden is going to want to apologize to you," Iomedae says again. "He would have - not been well-positioned to act in a way that actually made things go better, but He will regret immensely that He couldn't, that you were - alone."

        "It was my - I'm the one who gave up," Kiritan says. 

"You haven't given up. It was a possibility I was ready for when I first Wished you back, and it would have been your right, but now I see it's just clearly not true. The woman before me is not one who has given up. She is not one who has forgotten a single one of the things she cares about. Aroden will still recognize you. I still do. Your mind was manipulated beyond all reason, you are not at fault, and Aroden will want to apologize to you. Shall I arrange a Commune, and say, 'do you want to apologize to Kiritan'? He'll say 'yes'."

        "- that couldn't possibly be a good use of a Commune," she objects, because no other objection feels like it would hold together in her head. 

"Kiritan, I would expend a great deal, were I far away, to be here to apologize to you. I did spend a Wish on bringing you to me as soon as I learned. Sometimes our work is in a state of desperate triage, and we pay the terrible cost of letting those holes be ripped in the fabric of who we are without ever mending them. But the rest of the time, we're trying to build something, and you are a part of what we're trying to build, and I am stronger - really - because you are here, and Aroden is stronger because you are here. And He'll be glad, if we give Him the chance to apologize to you."

         "What if He's - mad at me -"

"He isn't," says Iomedae, with absolute assurance. "I know Him, and I know who He's angry at, and it isn't you. - it might be me. I sent you into this. I underestimated the depths of the Empire's - evil, or idiocy, or perhaps it's the sum of the two that was really the problem - I wronged you. But mostly, I think He's angry at the people who accepted your surrender and then ripped your mind apart to try to hurt me and hurt Aroden."

         She can't think of anything to say to that. Iomedae is still kneeling at her feet and holding her arm, impossibly strong, and it feels - she wants to forgive Iomedae so Iomedae can stand up and get back to something more important like the Crusade but she hasn't, actually, forgiven Iomedae yet, but maybe that's all the more reason she shouldn't want Iomedae kneeling at her feet and -

        "They couldn't've done it to you," Kiritan says eventually. She isn't sure what she means by it. Partially that - that it has to reflect some defect in her character, that they did it to Kiritan, partially that - that Iomedae doesn't understand -

"Not now," Iomedae says, "because no manipulation can touch my mind. I don't think Aroden can give you that. He'd give it out more, if He had the option at a reasonable price. I expect they could have done it when I was younger. And Hell could break me now; there's no such thing as a mind that no one can shatter by any magic. There is something out that there got Dou-Bral."

       "They didn't do it to Tiaves."

                  "Kiritan," says Tiaves, from his armchair where he is eating a steak and drinking what would be a concerning amount of alcohol if he weren't a paladin and immune to poisoning, "the bastard went after you harder because you're a young woman."

That is, somehow, a frame that hadn't occurred to her, for any of it, even the parts that - felt like being touched inside of her, and felt bad because that's how they felt -

"If you have questions for Arbas," says Iomedae, "I can pass them along to Alfirin." 

         "- I guess I want to know why he didn't just ask us, to renounce Aroden, if he wanted to check if Aroden was mind controlling us."

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And Iomedae will step out, a short time later, into the hallway.

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Alfirin is there, leaning against a wall with her eyes closed.

"How is she?"

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"She's going to be all right. She does want it back, in the morning - I don't think anyone prepared an Atonement today - and I haven't been using the name of the spell." Sometimes Iomedae has intuitions about people like that 'we're going to fix what the Empire did in the morning' is going to go over much much better than 'we'll cast an Atonement in the morning.' 

"Tiaves said that the bastard who did it would've been named Arbas, and she said, don't hurt him. We're the good guys. 

She had a few questions." But if Alfirin's left the room with Arbas that's - probably for a reason. "I guess I could ask them."

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"I can ask them. I just - there wasn't much we needed from him, strategically. There wasn't anything left for me to do but hurt him."

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"I want to consult with the other Lawful churches about a procedure by which he can stand trial. So that next time it comes up there's - some existing framework - that doesn't just depend on who has the better kidnapping-magic, something that can make people feel like the circle has been closed and justice has been done without just - going until the fire in their own hearts burns down. I don't think the Empire will understand. It feels, right now, like the Empire has - decided, and declared, that they can't ever understand and won't try. 

I'm glad you didn't hurt him. It - you wouldn't have rescued her, by it -

 

- we need to talk, don't we, it just keeps being one thing after another -

 

Kiritan wanted to know how he decided to go after her and why, if he wanted to know whether being paladined was Aroden's mind control, he didn't just ask either of them if they'd be willing to renounce Aroden temporarily."

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" - We do need to talk, I was going to tell you this morning that I was going to do my Wisdom tomorrow - if you had anything you wanted to say, first - obviously that's not the plan anymore, but. When there's not a crisis, yes. We should talk."

 

"I could go and ask him, but - I don't think I need to. He wanted to break her, to see if he could, to - beat Aroden. He didn't ask because - if they'd agreed, and done it, he wouldn't have had as much of an excuse to try himself."

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"The Emperor authorized it?"

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"Yes. Arbas' idea, he pushed it, he - I don't know how much of this he really thought and how much was an excuse he convinced himself to believe - he convinced the Emperor that being able to do this would be necessary, to get Altarrin back. That they needed to know if it was possible. But the Emperor did authorize it, in the end."

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"From their perspective, I started it. But I still don't see - how you rebuild from this to a place where negotiations are possible, or would mean anything.

I guess it can probably hold like this for a year, until we've sealed Tar-Baphon. And then, I don't know, maybe we do just have to conquer the place."

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"It's hard to negotiate with Baphomet."

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I worry that ruling an Empire would be bad for you. A conversation for - even more privacy for this, and one where she's forewarned Alfirin that she might have emotions. It's not fair to just spring that on people. 

"I'm going to go bring our prisoner some food and water - he can eat and drink?"

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No.

 

"He can now."

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Then off she'll go. Partially because her paladins are underfed and she's absolutely not going to let the same thing happen to Arbas, and partially because - there are sure a lot of unspoken things, in talking with Alfirin these days. It feels a bit like wading through snowdrifts. 

 

The anger is starting to fade. What it leaves behind is just - deep tiredness.

 

 

There were - several things that were moving about Kiritan pleading for Arbas, but one of them was that it wasn't the work of wisdom, producing the correct answer to act on while the heart shouted otherwise. Iomedae knows that she is angry and has applied a correction for her anger and adheres to ethical principles that she will rarely bend and will certainly never bend in anger, because that is the set of policies that produces the best decisionmaking for human flourishing.

 

 


Kiritan just didn't want to hurt anybody.

 

 

 

She opens the door to the room where they're holding Arbas.

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Arbas is lying passively on the floor, staring at the ceiling. He doesn't react to her entry. 

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Altarrin is also there, and immediately rises. "The Emperor's guards - well, the Office of Inquiry mages, probably - destroyed the rabbit and letter. I think it startled them. Can we - they might be able to reconstruct it with pastwatching but we should really send another, I can Gate it -" 

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" - yes, of course. Let me just rewrite it." She pulls out a pen and starts this. "I think Kiritan's going to be okay."

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"- Oh. Good." He ducks his head. "I - would like to apologize to her, and - answer her questions - if you think it would not make things worse. It can be later. I need to be monitoring the Empire's response right now, anyway." 

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"I think it wouldn't make things worse but I'd want to be there as well, or give you the headband, it did feel like a situation where there were a lot of things I could've accidentally said that would've been very damaging. Probably tomorrow, once they've had some - rest, some time to decompress - I want to get her back to the rest of her unit, but I don't really want word to get out about -

 

- Taldor would go to war with the Empire over this, if that was how I wanted to play my cards, and conceivably even if I just neglected to play them. It would of course be influential that the Empire has lots of tempting diamonds, I don't want to claim they'd be - primarily idealistic, in this - but it's the kind of thing which will outrage anyone anywhere who hears of it, they'll start thinking whether they should go to war and then it'll be determined by all the predictable factors. Taldor can't do that much damage as long as we control most of the interworld transit, but there are a lot of idiots in Golarion, and a lot of things magic can do I don't know about. 

 

But I can't ask Kiritan to keep it secret. Even if Aroden takes her back in the morning, and I'm nearly sure He will, she's not - 

- she's ashamed, and she'll be moreso if she's supposed to hide it. I could relocate the whole unit here but they're archers, I want them on the walls of Urgir." The note's finished. She hands it to him. 

"Arbas, the magical servants can bring in your choice of food or drink. Do you have requests, or should I have them bring in a spread?"

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"Of course. Tomorrow is fine." Altarrin closes his eyes. Pinches the bridge of his nose. "I wish - I am not sure what. Maybe just that I had seen this coming. I am sorry." 

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Arbas does not really want to talk to the horrible cultist who is probably going to destroy the Empire. He doesn't really want to eat their food, either. He says nothing. 

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Then she'll ask the servants to bring in a spread of foods. "Kiritan wondered why you chose her over Tiaves," she says, conversationally.

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If that were phrased like a question then he would have to answer it (because these people are hypocrites who think the Empire's use of mind-control is oh so evil, but don't hesitate to use it on their prisoners - if they were allowing mage-sight he could confirm it's still active on Altarrin, but it's no more than an idle curiosity, he basically already knows the answer.) It's not actually spoken as a question and he doesn't have to say anything and continues to be deeply uninterested in talking to Iomedae. 

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Yeah, she doesn't in fact want to employ the mind control to make him answer, and she's not reading his mind. 

Once Altarrin's delivered the new letter - "Can we get a Telepathic Bond for the day, actually, Alfirin'll do it for us. I want to - go out flying, get my head on straight, but I want you to alert me if the Empire seems to be doing anything that endangers their or our people -"

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Nod. "Of course. I understand." He sort of wishes he could afford to just - leave, and go off somewhere alone and think, but really only one of them should do that at a time, and Iomedae clearly needs it more. 

 

Once she's written out a letter, he wants to make a dozen copies of it and drop them four at a time through three different Gates. One in a Work Room that will definitely be detected but should be safe from immediate attacks on his Gate while it's up, one 500 feet up above the Emperor's private courtyard, and one in Duke Elnore's private office, he's not in it right now - everyone is being frantically summoned to meetings - and he's among the least paranoid members of Bastran's council, and also the one who actually signed off on the Empire's letter. 

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(The letter will have the same contents as the original letter plus an assurance that the original letter wasn't an assassination attempt, they just wanted to urgently get it before the Emperor and that was the spell they had on hand, and that they'll attempt to refrain from triggering the Empire's alarms in future as they do want the Empire prepared to fight off Tar-Baphon as necessary, though getting this letter through seemed very important to them.)

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Altarrin will leave the room to Gate those to the appropriate locations. (And get slightly singed in the process, because it turns out that Duke Elnore - or someone else more paranoid than him - has in the last few days put up wards that bite on his rooms, but he's well shielded and it's not too bad.) 

 

And he'll accept a Telepathic Bond from Iomedae, and then - go back to sit in the room with Arbas, who doesn't trust him at all right now but Altarrin is nonetheless the only familiar face here. (And he does more or less trust Iomedae's people not to mistreat him, however blindingly furious they are, but there's no reason to leave it to chance, and he can scry from here just as well as from anywhere.) 

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The magical servants will come in with a fairly ridiculous spread of food for them both, after a few minutes.

 

 

 

Kiritan will come in a few minutes after that. 

 

She does not look very steady on her feet, but she is walking. She relaxes, somewhat, when she sees Altarrin next to Arbas. 

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Despite Altarrin repeatedly pointing out that if Iomedae's people wanted to hurt him they have a thousand ways to do it other than poisoned food, Arbas is still not eating. He is, in fact, still lying on the floor exactly where Alfirin left him, still staring blankly at the ceiling. 

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Altarrin is in one of the armchairs, drinking tea and scrying from the focus in his hand. He drops the scry and sets it down immediately.

"Kiritan," he says softly. He isn't sure what to say next. 

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She ignores him in favor of walking over to Arbas. “Did they hurt you.”

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Arbas is not exactly in a mood to answer that unprompted – though he might consider it, in this one case, because at this point he actually doesn't hate Kiritan, and in fact feels substantial admiration toward her – but (rudely) Alfirin's spell is still set to force him, not just to answer questions, but to answer them thoroughly and completely. 

"Not exactly," he says at the ceiling. "They - just cut the loyalty compulsions. Which I had not expected to be as - disorienting and unpleasant - as I am finding it." 

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- her face changes. 

 

 

"Oh," she says quietly. "I - I'm so sorry. I ....didn't. Actually. Think about - the fact you were forced to do it. I knew that was how the Empire worked. I just. Didn't think."

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??????????????????????????????????

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That is - at least not uncomplicatedly true - but it's not Altarrin's position to say anything. He waits to see if Arbas is going to. 

 

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She is clearly under some misapprehensions about Arbas, which is, you know, not unreasonable, she wasn't reading his mind for multiple entire days. Still. Arbas...kind of hates it when people implicitly claim he's a good person! It feels like being trapped in a box, which is maybe weird given that the compulsions don't feel like that. He never really thought of it that way before and he's not sure he is enjoying thinking about it now. 

"I think I do worse things when I'm not constrained to only do them if they serve the Empire," he says, dryly, and still not directly at Kiritan. "I think you're confusing me with - someone who cares about people the way Altarrin does."

...and now he's not sure whether or not it's even true that he doesn't care and he is not liking this observation any more than the last one. 

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"I'm not going to - blame you for things you did while enslaved to the Empire because hypothetically if you hadn't been enslaved to the Empire you might've done different bad things of your own free will. If you do those I'll blame you for those, I guess. It doesn't - change that it was - wrong for the Empire to enslave you."

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It turns out that however much Arbas hates iwhen people think he's making decisions based on virtue (ugh), he hates it even more when someone is claiming that none of it was his decision at all. 

"I did it because I wanted to," he says, in an artificially cheerful tone. "The Emperor let me because - well, mostly he wasn't thinking about it too hard, he's hopeless at paranoia when it feels like cruelty to him so he outsources it. But I gave him lots of reasons why it was decision-relevant information to have. Whether we can get Altarrin back, for one. But, you know, really the reason is that I hate gods and I hate letting them win and I wanted to see if it'd work. It really scared Aroden, too, judging by - all this. Not many people can say they got one over a god. S'worth dying horribly for." 

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Kiritan has absolutely no idea what to say to this! Any of the parts of it!

 

 

"Altarrin's not a paladin?" she objects eventually, because that's the most obvious one. "He's Evil."

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Arbas feels...something...about that. Relieved, maybe? Ugh. Doing introspection on what emotions he's having about being a prisoner of a horrible alien god: also terrible! 

"Well, no, but that's not the only kind of godpossession Aroden can do, is it," he says. 

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"Altarrin's also not a cleric? - are you?" she asks Altarrin. 

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"I assume I would have noticed if I were!" 

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"He spoke to Aroden," Arbas says, in a tone dripping with disgust and quiet simmering anger and - disappointment? "He admitted to it. What an idiotic thing to do. Don't see how that wouldn't leave him all nicely shaped to be Aroden's doll whenever it's convenient, even if it's not convenient to Him just yet." 

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"Aroden," says Kiritan, gathering momentum a little, "can't even afford to act on this planet, as you would know if you'd been paying any attention when you were reading my mind for the last week! He hasn't been possessing anybody or granting spells to anybody or nudging anything or granting any visions! And even if He could, I don't see how forcing paladins to fall helps at all with checking whether someone who had a vision from Aroden has been altered by it, because as you would also know if you'd been paying any attention when you were reading my mind, paladins fall if we're not Lawful Good and that's not how anything else in my world works, at all!"

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None of that was a question, and Arbas doesn't really feel like continuing to have that conversation, so he says nothing. 

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"Alfirin Wished us back. Aroden didn't lift a finger, Iomedae says He didn't even tell her what you did. Alfirin and Iomedae learned what you'd done and - and Iomedae thought you might kill me while you'd twisted me up like that and I'd refuse a resurrection and I wouldn't get an afterlife -" Oh no now she's crying she had such firm intentions to come in here and be calm and mature and definitely not start crying - "You didn't, win, anything, with Aroden, you just, made it, so there's no one Iomedae can send, so the Empire can learn about how Golarion works, because she's not, going to ask people to be erased forever for the cause of maybe possibly communicating with people who hate us and don't believe anything we have to say and don't want to change that and can't even murder us cleanly without trying to rip our eternity away first -"

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Arbas would personally prefer to be erased forever than to spend eternity under the power of gods. He doesn't say this. It's clearly not what Kiritan would want, or an argument that would move her in any way. It's not really an argument at all, just - a quiet observation that these people are aliens who think in ways he still doesn't entirely understand, not even after multiple days of reading Kiritan's mind about it. 

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"- We failed him," Altarrin says quietly. It's not addressed directly to Arbas but it's clearly audible to him. "His skillset is not - assessing what will or will not serve the Empire in a strategic sense. Bastran should have refused to let him do this. Bastran should have consulted someone, I think even the other ministers would - at least have taken into account what this cost. Bastran - knows that even when you are negotiating with enemies - even enemies who might be an existential threat to your state - it is still possible to burn what trust does exist, and make things even worse. It was not Arbas' job to be tracking that, but - it should have been someone's job - and it was the Empire's failure, that - apparently no one thought of it." 

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Well that's a horrible humiliating and honestly insulting speech to be subjected to. He's pretty mad at Altarrin about it. He can't even say anything about it because it's not a question and he's only allowed to answer questions (or eat and drink, which he doesn't want to do and at least they're not literally forcing him.) 

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"We failed too," says Kiritan, to Altarrin because it's what Iomedae said, and that's easier than thinking of her own thing to say.  "It was - a very hard problem - and other things were worth more to us, and that's why we failed, but we did. To - give the Empire enough evidence and enough breathing room that they could actually consider that this might be different. It - Iomedae says that if you ever look back on a battle and think you fought it perfectly, you're not - learning and getting better and stronger...."

 

And to Arbas, "we talk about that kind of thing a lot, because we're not, actually, delusional cultists who wouldn't even notice if our god was evil." 

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When Kastil and Nemis (commander of the Imperial Guard, whose name has tragically failed to come up in our story so far) catch the Gates dropping large number of notes for the Emperor, they respond with slightly less than total paranoia, in that although the notes are collected, copied word-for-word by a scribe, and then destroyed, this does indeed cause Kastil to reconsider his previous guess, which is that the rabbit was the first of many attempts to make them use up their ammunition on decoy targets. This is now downgraded as a theory compared to "Iomedae wanted to send a message and her world's magic has spectacularly weird rules."

Of course, reading the message - 

"It's a threat," says Kastil. "They tried the carrot, now the stick. The Emperor should be informed at once."

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- And, of course, the entire rest of the council is also assembled, about as fast as they can make it. To read Iomedae's note.

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The Emperor is even more miserable to be interrupted than he already was about all of the everything, but obviously he can't just not show up, however badly some quietly screaming corner of his mind, which is not quite cooperating at staying put in its box, wants to hide in his bedroom under the covers for the next year or so. 

 

He comes to the meeting, his expression stony. "Report," he says flatly. 

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The note is on the table, and there are multiple copies for the ministers to read. Kastil is here, not as decision-maker but as first-responder.

The text is:

The Knights of Ozem believe the Empire to be under significant threat from Tar-Baphon, who will, should it be in his power, conquer the empire and enslave its people as his undead servants. It has been among our highest priorities to improve communications with the Empire so that we can supply the Empire with the resources needed to combat this threat. Towards this end, we sent delegates to the Empire with orders to assist the Empire in every way possible.

It is with great regret, therefore, that we now communicate that some faction within the Empire, presumably acting without the knowledge of the Emperor, tortured one of our delegates with the result (and, we believe, with the intent) of forcing Aroden to renounce her as a paladin. We are horrified and, frankly, baffled; we cannot fathom what breakdown of communications would have led anyone to believe the Empire would be served by such outrageous conduct, or even that their own standing within the Empire would be advanced by it. The actions of these criminals harmed only their Empire and a person who was by any conceivable interpretation of the situation either a lawfully surrendered prisoner or a delegate for peace negotiations. This was not just evil, it was very very stupid, in a manner that, were it not immediately and appropriately addressed, would seriously damage our hopes of peace with the Empire.

The Knights of Ozem would of course be not very able to meaningfully coordinate or cooperate with an Empire which cannot refrain from such conduct. However, we hold out hope that this occurrence runs as contrary to the values and principles of the Empire as they do to our own, and hope that the Empire is immediately conducting its own investigation into what enemies of civilization orchestrated this. 

As we had grave concerns for the competence of the Empire to ensure the safety of our delegates, we have removed them from the Empire, and apprehended one of the petty criminals suspected in this grave violation of the laws of war and of all civilized nations. Our investigation is ongoing, and I hope will be conducted in parallel with one of your own. After all, this crime is plainly as severe an insult to the Empire and the Emperor as to the Knights of Ozem, and represents a far greater harm to the Empire and Emperor than to the Knights of Ozem.

P.S. A copy of this letter was delivered to the desk of the Emperor. This was not intended to cause him harm, but to ensure that this news reached him at once with the spell readily available. We will attempt to refrain in future from triggering the Empire's alarms unnecessarily as we do want the Empire positioned to defend itself from Tar-Baphon. 

"This was delivered tied to a rabbit in what we falsely initially believed was an assassination attempt. Additional copies were then dropped by Gate. Simultaneously, they kidnapped Arbas and took both the formerly god-possessed and presently god-possessed prisoner, in all cases bypassing our wards."

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"A direct assault on the integrity of the Empire, Your Majesty," Pierson says in a sharp voice, "and direct threats to the Empire."

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"Why that lying, hypocritical -" a furious Macalay begins to scribble his own note.

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... Elnore will need to make sure the Archmage-General doesn't send that out on his own, won't he.

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(Kastil had, actually, started seriously considering the possibility that Iomedae was hard-pressed by Tar-Baphon and genuinely trying to form an alliance of convenience with the Empire against him, after her equipment delivery. It wasn't his top guess, but it was fairly high ranked. That's gone now, of course; the carrot-and-stick theory just got a great deal more support.)

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The Emperor closes his eyes for a moment, massaging his temples. 

"I mean, I'm not - incredibly surprised that they didn't trust us to return their delegate like we said. There's not really a lot of trust to go around right now, is there." He makes a face. "They can't possibly actually think Arbas did this on his own, they'll have questioned him, that's - a threat of some kind...?" 

 

He feels like an idiot. He feels like it should have been incredibly foreseeable that this would be the reaction. Altarrin is there and Altarrin won't even defend his choices because Altarrin wouldn't have done this, and - why, again, did he do something that he knew even Altarrin, who no one can fault for a lack of ruthlessness or paranoia, nonetheless wouldn't have countenanced? 

He is not really experiencing emotions right now but somehow he's still experiencing pain, just - not attached to anything, which is almost worse. 

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"Hardly unusual in diplomacy. They picked something they call an offense against their law and loudly trumpet it, while giving us an opportunity to disclaim and back down; if we do, they demand reparations and use that to take more power in the empire and humble our government, if we don't, they wave the casus belli in foreign courts and the streets of their nation to build up support for an invasion. They offer us bribes with one hand, threats with another, to compel us to act as they see fit."

Bastran shouldn't have needed this explanation.

... Is he all right? He doesn't look all right.

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"The Empire does not give in to threats," says the scowling Macalay.

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The Emperor does not look incredibly all right, no. He hasn't been sleeping well - and this is probably not the first time his ministers have noticed that he copes poorly with disrupted sleep - and Altarrin is gone, and now Arbas is gone, and he feels like he's trying to keep his footing while caught up in an avalanche, out of control, tumbling down toward - something awful - 

 

Focus. 

"No," he says distantly, "I can't - see that it'd help, to - give in to the threat." And he's not going to lie and blame Arbas for everything. It was his decision. If it was the wrong one, then that's on him. 

"So we should expect an invasion, you think?" It feels like his voice is coming from the fake puppet body that he's piloting from another plane. "I mean, assuming she has anything to spare for one, with Tar-Baphon – er, do we think this is evidence one way or another about whether the Tar-Baphon related claims were ever true -?" 

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"Hadn't you already calculated that?" says Duke Klemath Elnore, words falling in slow motion as he slowly comes to the realization that imperial policy was madly improvised instead of sensibly planned. "Ah - 

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"It's a threat to do to all of us what she just did to Arbas," he says glumly. "Then maybe they'll return us with now compulsions, or go to Tolmassar and offer the pretender the crown. Or take him, too, and all the top generals, and then watch the empire burn."

"- Also, I'm not saying we didn't want to learn how to break godcompulsions, but how did they... learn... that we did this?"

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He hadn't, no, because he's a hopeless idiot who was never qualified to be Emperor and could only ever sort of fake it because Altarrin was always there and he's so angry with Altarrin for making him take this job in the first place  for abandoning him and running away to an imaginary fake better world for defecting that's what he meant. 

He didn't think of it because...why...because he's useless and a coward and he couldn't stomach another meeting of his ministers yelling at each other. That's what it comes down to, really, he just - wanted to hand off his responsibility to someone who was obviously unqualified to wield it, and go hide. He's so stupid. All of this is so stupid. He just - he wants - 

- he can't finish that thought, whatever it is. 

 

 

Also those are feelings. Feelings go in the box he's in a meeting he does not have time for this. 

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" - Chief Inquisitor Siman said he had a verbal imperial order to send him home with a note, and the Emperor was not to be disturbed -"

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" - the Emperor ordered it, and foreign communications are the duty of Duke Elnore's ministry."

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Cough. "Your Majesty, my odds that the Tar-Baphon threat was legitimate have declined significantly; the strongest argument that the so-called Mirrorgrave's appearance was not a false-flag attack was the mage-artifact shipments they provided us for use and analysis, but that can now be explained by a traditional bribe-and-threat approach, as His Grace Duke Elnore explained."

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" - There!"

And Macalay will throw his hastily-written response on the table for all to read.

From: Archmage-General Macalay, loyal servant of the only civilized country up until you mind control and kidnap me just like you do anyone who stands up to you.

To: The lying, treacherous, false priest Iomedae.

Since you are too stupid, evil, or both to even ask your mind controlled slave Altarrin for basic information you ought to have, let me lay this out for you in black and white.

First: There are no afterlives. There never have been. You’re spreading lies so idiots will die for you, so, screw you.

Second: At the point where you offer truce, then, under truce, send a sabotaged magic item to mind control and kidnap Altarrin, your word is air and your rights are null. Any country in the world would know you were at war with us, and any country in the would would know never to bother signing treaties with you. The only possible way we could have not realized you were trying to destroy us would be if we were complete idiots. We aren’t. The laws of war are for people who follow them, and it’s nothing but an act of blatant hypocrisy to break them and then blame us for it.

Third: Sending a polite note that someone who is totally not just one of your knights, at all, absolutely, is then going to kidnap the best person to test any of your claims about your world? Does not make it better. You lying sack of shit. There is no possible way we will not realize that this an act of war that you - yes, you, for all your pretensions otherwise - are carrying out to try to weaken us so you can conquer us more easily.

Fourth: There are no priests who are not combatants. Anyone, if possessed by a god and channeling that god’s miracles, is a tool for that god to commit acts of war, sabotage, and treachery. It is not possible for god-possessed people to surrender because gods don’t keep surrenders. The priest can mean it and it doesn’t matter. The whole reason we don’t trust priests is because gods don’t even know what truth is, just what they can get away with, and so a priest’s words are, like yours, always wind. Sending god-possessed people and hoping we wouldn’t do something about it if we noticed is criminal, and, also moronic.

Fifth: If you prevent us from learning how to fight you in any other way, we will learn how to cut your god’s control over their servants, and if we get the chance we will do it to every one of you, because there were rules, and you broke them. How dare you sit there, and arrogantly accuse us of crimes when you have fostered rebellion, broken truce, falsely sworn and sent saboteurs to destroy the Empire itself under flag of peace?

Sixth: Yeah, I know you’ll kill me for this. Doesn’t matter. I can be replaced. The Empire will not rest until you and every one of the gods is dead, so, screw you.

Archmage-General Macalay.

“There. And now we send this and I Final Strike when they grab me.”

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"We should all be prepared to final strike when taken," says Siman quietly, as he reads the "diplomatic message" with barely-concealed horror. "Better than the alternative."

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They are NOT sending that letter. "Of course."

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Lady Voltha spent her entire life scheming for power and now the Emperor is having a breakdown or something?

"No doubt."

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Bastran is also staring at the letter with - not horror, that would imply more capacity to experience emotions about things than he has, right now. Everything feels like it's very far away and not real and the world stopped making sense a long time ago. He....thinks probably this is not a good letter to send? He thinks - Altarrin would think - Altarrin would have actual thoughts about why it's bad. Probably. He is not successfully coming up with them. 

"Can we reword it to be more..." He trails off because he has no idea what adjective to use, there. 

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"Bastran, your foreign ministry, not the Ministry of War, has the duty of diplomacy," he confirms. "Archmage-General Macalay's suggestions will of course be given due consideration."

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"The Ministry of War has the duty of readying the nation for war," he snaps. "That means warning the generals and officers about our enemies' capabilities, and the precise nature of what awaits them when taken. This war began when they took Altarrin and it won't end until we kill whoever calls herself Iomedae now, and whatever other priests Aroden happens to have who can go after us."

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"Macalay -"

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He glares at Count Harleth. "And why hasn't the Ministry of Progress gotten us to where we can hit them, eh? They can go after us but not the other way!"

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" - Macalay, it's been two days!"

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"Excuse me," says Pelias Declane. "- What I seem to be hearing from Progress and War is that we are not, in fact, prepared for a war right now?"

He pauses. "I don't mean to suggest that we can afford to compromise our security, but even delaying the war, if that can be managed, until we are in a stronger position to fight back -"

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Chief Inquisitor Siman gives him the do you know how many cases of blackmail and extortion and criminal entrapment I have seen and how they all go look.

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okay then.

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"We can at least buy time with a few more rounds of diplomacy. Some more... moderate... tack."

Ugh ugh ugh he hates this "- and send messages to Tolmassar explaining just what kind of threat this is, and warning Norean not to trust any of their claims."

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"My mages are working as fast as they possibly can at reverse-engineering inter-world Gating," he says. "If you can buy me time, that may do it."

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" - Your majesty, I request permission to prepare the Empire for the disappearance of Yourself and the heads of the ministries," says Siman.

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"... Bastran?" Is he... all right?

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No, he's clearly not all right! Pelias has known him for quite a while! His mentor just got kidnapped and mind controlled and then he screwed up at an absolutely vital moment!

... Pelias will want to see if there's anything he can... do... as soon as he's prepped the people one step below him in the chain of command to take over if he's murdered or mind controlled.

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Oh right he should. Say things. 

 

"That seems reasonable," says the flesh puppet several planes away.

"We should - prepare for a potential war, obviously, keep working on that."

Is that topical? It's maybe topical to something that was said several exchanges ago, he...is having a lot of trouble keeping up right now.

"- in hard to observe ways, as much as possible, I think they must have Altarrin scrying us and providing intelligence, and I want to prepare but not at the expense of - making them think they can't afford to give us more time."

Is he missing things. Obviously he is, because he's an idiot and a failure at everything and he wants Altarrin back

 

"- you have my permission," he says to Siman, not 100% sure what he's granting permission for.

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"As you say, Bastran."

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Siman will ask for a written order once most of the rest of the ministers are gone. Or get Kastil to do it. He wants to be very clear on the legalities of this.

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Altarrin was scrying the meeting from the start. 

 

He frantically summoned Iomedae - and Alfirin to read his mind - at the point when the letter was set down on the table, clearly readable on a scry. He's been relaying everything since. 

 

(Wow. Bastran is pretty clearly not coping. It's obvious enough that the rest of the ministers are noticing too.) 

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"You know, this is actually shockingly helpful. I can see why this guy is not in a diplomatic role but I am getting more out of this than I expect to get out of whatever they eventually come around to sending."

 

 

Iomedae isn't angry, anymore. It helped a lot that Kiritan is - well, that Kiritan is the kind of person who becomes a Knight of Ozem in the first place, and that Arbas's methods don't actually seem to have been aimed at permanently destroying that. It's easier, soaring through the sky over cities, to draw herself closer to a gods-eye view of the world in which there's only people, doing what seems available to them, and all you can do is give them less terrible options.

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She is so tired of this situation.

 

"The reason we sent paladins in the first place is that we thought it would be easier to get their souls back - and that we expected torture, but - there might be non-paladins who would still volunteer. If we want one more try at diplomacy. Probably our best chance would be if Altarrin wanted to go back, they might - eventually - be able to conclude that he's not possessed or controlled. Or, more likely, they conclude that I can do completely undetectable mind control and keep panicking."

"...But if we don't think there's a diplomatic approach that stands a good chance of working, the empire is going to be a lot harder to conquer cleanly the moment this meeting ends." She really hopes there's a good diplomatic approach that she's just not seeing yet; she does not, at this point, particularly want the Empire, she just wants it to stop.

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"The specifically useful bit about the letter is - I knew that the Empire hates and mistrusts the gods and their followers. I knew already that the Empire thinks we broke and mindcontrolled and turned their delegate before they did it to us, and I knew that they really hated the gods. But - many nations hate and mistrust their adversaries, and still - wouldn't mistreat their delegates, since then diplomacy becomes impossible. And if you declare that you won't respect surrenders, well, then you won't get any surrenders, and that would make whatever war we had with them much, much uglier, except for how really if we decide to crush them it'll be bloodless - and it appears to me that they still don't quite realize that. 

What I was having trouble with was what kind of - halfway lawful, halfway principled policy besides 'we hate you so we'll do whatever is most immediately convenient with zero consideration of the precedents it sets or the paths to peace it forecloses' they could possibly have been employing. And I don't like 'we can't accept surrenders from agents of gods because the gods won't themselves respect the surrenders', but I - can see it, as a halfway lawful halfway principled policy, founded on an unfortunate but entirely comprehensible misunderstanding, that does not actually mean it's completely impossible to negotiate with them. In practice it kind of does mean it's effectively impossible to negotiate with them, because I'm not going to subject my non-paladins to what Tiaves and Kiritan were put through even before the Empire decided to break them, but it's quite different from 'we will just do whatever lets us feel like we got one up on you, at all times'.

 

 

I... do think we probably are deciding between either - taking them now, or going through an exceedingly costly, excruciating, plausibly-still-doomed process of trying to build trust from a strikingly bad starting point where if we fail we have to conquer the place messily. 

If we don't give them Altarrin back I just flatly don't believe we can build enough trust. 

If we do - that pretty much means they'll use Altarrin for interworld Gates, that's most of why they'd appreciate getting him back and most of the way it could actually help with trust-building. Aaaaand I still don't feel totally sure that one of these people won't, when they get to Golarion, try selling diamonds to 'whoever Iomedae's enemies are'. Where we're most invested, obviously, in that not being Tar-Baphon, but some idiot offering the Padishah Empire two hundred diamonds to give Taldor a bad century would also be a fairly unacceptable cost. 

 

Noting - I assume you were both tracking this independently, but - at the time when the decision was made to kidnap Aritha, it seemed overwhelmingly likely to me that that committed us to a war with the Empire. This seemed worth it because the probability of the Empire attracting Tar-Baphon's attention to Velgarth when it had not already been so attracted was high enough that I was willing to accept a guaranteed war with the Empire to avoid it. If I'd known Tar-Baphon was already in Velgarth and doing things, I wouldn't have considered that a good tradeoff. But it's the one we made, and this course was predictable from there, though I was briefly hopeful we'd be able to pivot off it. "

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"Agreed. I think - if Altarrin goes back, I want some monitoring in place so that we'll be able to notice if they are trying to contact Tar-Baphon and hopefully stop it before he gets anything useable -

It's a hell of a risk, though, if they start making diplomatic contact with others on Golarion then - Tar-Baphon will try to kidnap a diplomat out of some other court and steal their memories for a teleport -

I'm not sending Aritha back unless she volunteers. But that might be an intermediate step if she does."

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"She was pretty reluctant to leave the planet where souls find the River normally, even when I promised we'd raise her. I can ask. 

 

 

I notice that we're getting - mixed signals, rather than purely negative ones. They notified us about the Mirrorgrave's cloak. They are trying for a ceasefire in Oris. Doing this was stupid and destructive and now everything is much much worse, but - I have a fairly strong preference to handle them differently from how we'd handle them if they were also trying to flatten Oris right now, if they had less reason to believe I betrayed negotiations -

 

- they'll send a conciliatory letter to buy time. We'll send one back, offer to return Arbas now that we've completed our own investigation and offering to send non-god-touched delegates if they will agree not to compulsion them. They - presumably agree, still trying to buy time. And - maybe it's clearer, at that point, how stupid they'll be with the power to travel between worlds..."

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"That sounds like - not committing. It buys us a small chance of a peaceful resolution but means that if it comes to a war it's a war that lasts more than thirty seconds, and a lot more imperials will die. I think it's unlikely that that's a better tradeoff than either giving them Altarrin back, if he'll go, or winning the war right now."

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"I don't want to fight the Empire. But giving Altarrin back is the one way we potentially lose everything. I would prefer a hundred thousand Imperial casualties to handing them Altarrin back while it remains plausible they will immediately use interworld travel to offer Tar-Baphon forty diamonds to get rid of you and I."

Wishnapping Alfirin and Iomedae would fail most of the time, but not all of the time, and - that's it, for Golarion and also for Velgarth, once it succeeds. Tar-Baphon would drop them in an antimagic demiplane, take them down, and raise them as his own. 

 I know that it damages you, she doesn't say, to kill people on the scale that this war will require if we don't do it right now. I'm sorry. I'm tracking that cost too. I'm willing to pay that cost, too.

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"As you say." She favors acting now, in that case, rather than waiting for diplomacy to fail again. But Iomedae knows that, and if she decides to try diplomacy Alfirin is not going to do anything unilateral, now.

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Iomedae is - tempted to pray, here, but Aroden can't see her, and will have no counsel for her. 

 

 

It would, actually, have taken a truly extraordinary level of skill and caution and decency and cleverness on the part of many people in the Empire, for things to have gone any better than this. From their perspective, there is overwhelming reason to think that Iomedae mind-controlled Altarrin, or that Aroden did. Gods can't make treaties. She claimed, in letters, that Aroden was different, she gave her reasons, she gave examples, but -

- but the real and persuasive argument that Aroden is different is Law as it exists in Golarion, and they haven't successfully conveyed that, and the other real and persuasive argument that Aroden is different is Absalom, the city where men become gods, and they -

- she did try to convey that. Kiritan says that she tried to explain, over and over. But it would genuinely have taken someone very skilled and very careful, to notice, that the things Kiritan said could be god mind control but made more sense if Aroden was really different. Altarrin was that skilled and that careful, and Altarrin left, and his supporters were discredited, and his proteges now desperately trying to ensure their loyalty wasn't in question.

And she is fundamentally unwilling to let the Empire come face to face with Tar Baphon while possessed with hundreds of diamonds they can offer him for favors. They quite understandably cannot trust her without unfettered access to her world and she does not realistically think there's less than a one in ten chance that that leads to the end of both worlds. 

(Plus, of course, a much larger chance that they instead sell the Padishah Empire hundreds of diamonds to get rid of her, and while that is worth risking less to prevent than the Tar-Baphon scenario, it would be an enormous disaster that could still result in a lost Crusade, plus Iomedae and Alfirin soul trapped.)

It is probably just impossible - certainly from this starting point - to do diplomacy with people while you fundamentally cannot afford to allow them to develop the capacities they most want to develop.


It may have been a mistake not to leave Kiritan there, not to reply to the proud declaration that they'd shattered one of her paladins with 'you'll notice she still believes all the same things about the world' and nothing more.

Kiritan might well have died and her soul been irretrievably lost forever and that wasn't actually a price Iomedae had warned her she might pay. Therefore leaving her there at that stage wasn't really an option. So the error, if there's one in the handling of the Kiritan situation, is located at the step where she contemplated the risks to her paladins, soberly warned them about being compulsioned to swear oaths as she knew the Empire was the kind of terrible place that might do that, and did not explicitly ask herself whether she meant them to be risking the loss of their souls on this mission, because she hadn't imagined that as something the Empire's mind control could do. A place where her mind's far-afield scouts weren't far afield enough, weren't reporting in enough detail. That's an important kind of error to notice. She will adjust accordingly. 

The self-correction doesn't leave her with better options now.


A conquered Empire could develop interworld travel. Everyone outside a select circle could continue apace on their research projects. Altarrin could return and help them. They could make peace with Iomedae and make their own Gates to Taldor. 

"How would you do it? They're probably being scried, in there."

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"There were wards on the Emperor's bedchamber, to detect unexpected magic. None of them triggered, when I put him into the mindscape. They can detect me teleporting in but they can't detect me walking through the walls under a mind blank. I can dominate the emperor, then Siman and Kastil, then the rest. Maybe unnoticed but - I think they haven't started emperor-proofing the empire yet, if the people scrying notice something going wrong or if the other people in the room do - The emperor can still order them not to do anything about it. I think. I could also get the scriers first, if there aren't too many of them -

It would have been a more sure thing yesterday and will be a less sure thing tomorrow."

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"I'm going to try for five minutes more to think of another way out, but - not because it feels like there's one that's less than five minutes of thought away from me. You should make whatever preparations you'll require. Narthoc's on site." To throw more layers of protection at Alfirin. 

 

 

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And she leans into the scry, where the Empire's council is still arguing, and does pray, then, for the wisdom to see a better path, if there is one.

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"- As you say, Your Majesty," says Macalay. "Ready for war without alerting the enemy."

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"If they aren't already alerted," says Harleth drily.

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Why do you say things like that, Count Harleth, when you could, instead, not say these things? In the world where they aren't alerted we don't want to worry about this, and in the world where they are telling them you suspect is giving them valuable information!

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"If they are, there's very little we can do other than Final Strike," says Lady Voltha.

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"No point planning for the world where we can't win," says Macalay curtly. "We do what we can and if that's not enough we go to our ancestors with pride."

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Bastran has been mostly focused on Waiting For This To Be Over so he can flee back to his room and - (something he can’t even think about) -

- but that is clearly not right, and it jolts the world back into focus, even if the world is still very far away.

He lifts a hand, and the room falls silent.

 

“Macalay, I - don’t think that’s right. I think it does matter what we do, even in the worlds where we - can't win."

He takes a deep breath. This is where the quiet level voice of imaginary Altarrin starts nudging him, to point out that if he feels like there’s something hovering unsaid in the air between them, it’s probably because no one but him can say it. And he’s furious with Altarrin, of course, and he can’t trust the Altarrin who exists now, but that doesn’t mean the quiet voice is wrong.

“I don’t think we should give up yet, but - in the worst case scenario, I think it does matter a lot, for the people of the Empire if not for - us - whether it’s a negotiated surrender or - messier than that. I don't want us to lose the only hope of civilization on this planet, I don't want the people of this Empire to end up as subjects of Aroden, but - even apart from that, I don't want hundreds of thousands of them to die."  

 

He shrugs, then looks down at the tabletop, fixing his eyes on the grain of the wood. Good hardwood, from southern Tolmassar, transported by canal-Gate to a sawmill, and from there to a mage-carpenter's workshop, to be shaped by spells carefully honed for efficiency and control, to have preservation-spells laid on it against rot and woodworm, and from there to the Emperor's meeting-room. And here it is. A table that, before the First Emperor built the Empire, even a King couldn't have had at any price, and now moderately well-off merchants anywhere in the Empire can have tables nearly as fine. 

That's what the Empire is, just as fundamentally as it is 'the one place in the world outside the gods' reach - or, in some sense, it's more fundamentally about that, the Empire didn't start off shunning the gods, it's an instrumental goal not a core founding principle. He imagines the canal-Gates shattered, the sawmills burned, every carpenter-mage specialist recruited as a soldier and dead in a pointless battle for a war already lost, and - 

- and it's not that he likes the idea of Aroden killing the heart of the Empire and then animating its corpse, but at least there would be something left. Of what the First Emperor - of what, maybe, Altarrin, who he might never get back but whose life's work is still here - spent so much to build. 

 

“And…I’m confused. About what Iomedae is angling for, here. She rescued her people and she took Arbas. None of us were any more shielded than him. She could have taken me. One assumes she could have done it days ago. If she was planning this and just waiting for an excuse, I'm sure she could have found one earlier. I don't know what she wants - and maybe it doesn't matter what she wants, because she belongs to Aroden - but I do think that what we've seen so far is compatible with her at least not wanting hundreds of thousands to people to die, and - if that were true, that would be one piece of common ground. Which is just definitely possible to have even with enemies." 

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" - Give up yet?"

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"Your Majesty," he says, "I would rather make this empire a pyre than yield it to the god-worshippers."

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" - but Bastran's right. Their actions don't make sense. If they could just kidnap us all and return us with compulsions, why haven't they? We know they can break into the palace, they've done it before - "

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"Three times, counting the Mirrorgrave."

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" - three times. Why would they do this if they didn't have something they were trying for? They could've just killed or compulsioned us in our sleep."

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"I suppose they'd rather we surrender," he says. "Or maybe this whole Tar-Baphon thing is true, and they're just as busy as we are - if to them, all this is trying to stop a blundering child from knocking a lantern over."

"But that doesn't explain this."

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Kastil is shaking his head. " - Your Majesty," he says, "If I may respond?" because this clearly matters even if he does not really belong at the table.

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Bastran blinks. "- Yes, go ahead." 

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"Thank you. Count Harleth, I admit that I was genuinely conflicted, when she provided us with large quantities of mage-artifacts from her world. Your explanation could, in fact, make sense of all of her actions since the first Iomedae's death - the kidnapping of Altarrin and Aritha combined with the repeated offers of peace, neatly explaining our lack of decapitation - if, in fact, there genuinely was a Tar-Baphon threat that could, as her adept could, attack through scries. But at the point where she carries out false-flag attacks on the Empire and delivers threats to force us to submit to her, which point we must in fact be at if the Mirrorgrave is not real - under these circumstances, the simplest explanation is that there are high resource costs to taking over our state, to taking us as she took Arbas, and she would rather get what she wants, our submission to her will, without paying them. Otherwise she would have done it."

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"It fits, I suppose. But why Arbas?"

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"His Majesty's wards were too strong?"

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"...I don't think that can be it. Maybe if I'd been in my bedroom, but not my office. And we have evidence she can cast spells on me through my wards, she's done it before.

"Also, I - don't think any of what just happened is - very much evidence on whether the Mirrorgave is real? My best guess is that Iomedae would have done this exactly the same in the world where she's desperately fighting him, because to her it really did cross a line, and she's not - understanding why we thought it was necessary." Because how could you, if you had lived your whole life believing you could trust your god, he's sort of jealous of that actually even if it's a lie, it would be a nicer lie to believe than the truth. 

"...I think we didn't consider that, how - it looks from a perspective - I think we should have thought a lot harder about it, should have thought a lot harder about it, and - plausibly if we had better taken into account how it would appear to them, we would have decided something different." 

I made a mistake. It's my fault. He cannot quite bring himself to say it out loud. 

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"We can't go back on it now. It is done, and we need to face the world where it is done, because that's the one we're living in."

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" - so, Bastran, why did you return the un-possessed priest?"

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(More than one pair of eyes quietly turns towards him, there.)

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Because it was the one way I could think of to be less than maximally horrible, when I decided to do the horrible thing. Because we didn't have to break her and then keep her a prisoner among enemies until we killed her and erased her forever. 

He's not going to say that. He could say it to Altarrin (paingriefloneliness) but he can't say it here. 

"I think there's a significant probability that Iomedae would have found out anyway, not right away but at some point - probably the worst moment imaginable for it, given all the gods steering for our destruction - and it would have been a lot worse, if it had looked like we actually intended to deny her an afterlife in their world. I know we don't know for sure that they exist, but I'm pretty sure Iomedae believes they do, which is the relevant part." 

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" - Your Majesty, I submit that this happened, at the worst moment possible, since in any future moment we might be better armed."

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"... Understood, Your Majesty." Baron Pierson has a point.

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"Bastran," he says slowly, "I believed, and Archmage-General Macalay confirmed, that it was with the intent of delivering a threat to make them withdraw, since if they considered the act a great offense, they would not be greatly mollified by the offer to return her."

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"I mean, also that."

(Ugh ugh ugh why does he have to be having this conversation he wants to instead NOT be having this conversation he wants to curl up in bed in the dark and (slamming into a mental wall, a thought he can't think) and - fine, play his harp, it doesn't even feel like it would help but at least he could cry at the same time and– stop it, the feelings are not serving the Empire and so they need to stop and go away.) 

He shrugs. "Though I was thinking more of - if they knew we could break free any of our people they decided to mind-control at a distance with the artifacts, that they'd be less likely to try."  

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"Or they'd do it carefully, in an organized manner, so we didn't have time to break everyone out."

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"Well. I'll go get my troops ready for when I get kidnapped or enslaved. With your permission -"

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Kastil Gates out. No sense in wasting time.

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And Siman will follow the Emperor as everyone leaves, there to get his emergency decree.

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(Two minutes earlier:)

Iomedae wishes she was a god. She wishes she could actually see, from here, which hopes pan out and how to nudge them there, because this - isn't unwinnable, it's really not, but it needs something nudging towards things being better instead of relentlessly battering towards things being worse. 

 

You don't, actually, have to be a god to do that.

 

You do have to be really, really, really good.


She does flatter herself that she's really, really good. And that much of what's gone wrong with Velgarth so far has been related to how sharply any attention or resources expended on it traded off against those resources expended on the crusade, which was in dire shape when she returned to it. She's made a lot of mistakes that were just a consequence of allocating an insufficient fraction of her attention. She thinks she can, in fact, fix this without conquering the Empire, if she delegates Urgir entirely and makes it the work of this winter. (Urgir is also really really important to get right. But - possibly slightly less time-sensitive.) She suspects that there is a way to unravel this mess without conquering it. 


The problem is that the costs, if she's wrong, will mostly fall on the population of the Empire, many of whom will burn for their leadership's mind-controlled convictions. And on Alfirin, who will - damage herself a great deal, Iomedae suspects, conquering an Empire that hates her and fears her at a spectacular human cost. She'll do it. She won't be all right afterwards.

 

They're trying. They're scared and they have - good ideals, ideals that are only slightly off from ones that'd make her their devoted ally, and there's an easy frame where they've rode themselves off a cliff already with their pride and their closed-mindedness and their idiocy and their cruelty but - she gets to decide where the cliff is. She gets to decide if they've already rode off it, or if there's a little more time to turn away. 

 

 

"I'm so sorry," she says to Alfirin. "I'm going to ask you not to do it yet."

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"If this goes badly I will not be one of the ones who needs your apology."

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They can agree to disagree on that. 


"Altarrin, can we get an interworld Gate? I - realize that we've been asking nonstop difficult magic of you, and I'm sorry, but I need to delegate a lot of things at home, if I'm going to try to win a peace here."

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He drops the scry; the meeting is ending, anyway, and he's tempted to keep following Bastran on scrying just because he's so incredibly worried about him, but it's - not actually a tactical priority, or not one of the highest ones, that Bastran is clearly utterly miserable right now. 

"Yes, of course. I will need one of the healing potions to be able to do the return trip." 

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"Absolutely. I actually wanted to test at some point soon if a Heal does more than the lesser restorations to repair your reserves. I'm going back for - another care package, though I want to be thoughtful about how we navigate sending it, and to arrange the True Resurrection of the Marshal's friend, and to get Marit.

It's going to have to be Marit, if we do get enough assurances to send another diplomat. I trust him and he's not, in fact, a very religious person." It comes from having to double-check your god's deployment proposals, he said, the last time she said that to him. 

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"Of course." And he'll do the Gate. He's pretty tired, on the other side, but not actually 'collapse on the floor' level tired. 

 

- he glances over at Iomedae. "How long will it take? I - think I should be scrying Velgarth regularly, and it's substantially more costly to do from here." 

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"Understood. I think I can be done in twenty minutes."

And she can get him the Heal sooner than that. It's in fact a lot better than a Lesser Restoration; much more like being suddenly restored to full strength and health, though it doesn't actually refill his reserves at all, just affect his physical state around them.

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That's mildly inconvenient, though it's really nice at least not feeling any of the physical correlates of fatigue. Do they have nodes around here he can draw on, at least? 

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The area is very vegetatively sparse, but the locals don't use nodes for very much (they're familiar with the concept, but they can only in limited contexts directly use the energy) so there's some accessible. Probably won't be sufficient for the permanent interworld Gate-working they eventually will want.

 

 

 

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Good, then he can scry Velgarth without making the state of his reserves overall worse. 

 

...The Office of Inquiry is, indeed, making preparations. Even Altarrin can't get all of the details, from here, but - it's going to make this a lot more costly, if the predictable thing happens and Iomedae decides that Alfirin needs to conquer the Empire after all. 

He could go back. But the only way this actually helps, the only way it really succeeds at reassuring the Empire, is if he lets the Office of Inquiry and probably Arbas specifically do whatever they want to his head. He would do it - it's one of the worst things he can imagine but he would - only there's far too high a risk that they would learn interworld Gates from him and then go off and do stupid panicked things with them. 

 

He scries Bastran, who appears to be in his bedroom and, now that he's alone, radiating slightly less trapped-misery. That's...something. 

He waits for Iomedae to be finished with her preparations. 

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She returns with a care package and Marit and the running of Urgir thoroughly delegated to all of the third-best people for it which has terrible costs but - she weighed them, and she thinks that if this gamble works it will be worth it. 

 

"Ready."

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A while after Kiritan and Altarrin leave, Arbas's compulsions lighten noticeably - he can use mage-sight, though not other magic - and an armored man with a flashy magical sword walks into Arbas's room. "Are you Arbas?" he says.

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He's been continuing to lie on the floor mostly out of sheer stubbornness, at this point, but - this is something different. He sits up. "Yes." 

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"Right. I'm Marit. I am Iomedae's, to be clear, but not Aroden's, I'm a swordmage. Iomedae is sending me back to the Empire with you and I want to understand what in all the hells has been going on."

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He blinks at him. "Lots of things. Can you maybe be a little more specific." 

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" - yeah, sure. What's the deal with the Empire, as told by people who don't hate the place?"

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He can give The Standard Altarrin Speech, which he's heard at least fifty times. Or, well, the standard speech As Interpreted By Arbas. 

The Empire is the one and only place in the world that approximately never has famines, and has schools for all of its children, and permanent Gates, and assembly-line production of mage-artifacts cheap enough that even peasants can own mage-lights if they save up. This is because the gods hate progress and are terrified of mortals doing anything interesting and that's why you can't let them in, even though he's interrogated plenty of cultists and they were often nice people who didn't plan to end up causing assassinations. Assassinations are just the end result of the gods getting what they want, using mortal followers as Their pawns, and the Empire is the one place in the world where a person can live and do clever ambitious things and not be used as a pawn of the gods to make sure that 90% of the population will remain subsistence farmers. 

This does require a lot of compulsions, but they're not so bad if you aren't a criminal being interrogated, he likes his fine. He misses them, without them everything still feels like quicksand, and it feels like maybe he can't trust himself-like-this to do things that serve the Empire and not things that don't, which is awful because he likes there being a place that has books and clever research projects and convenient permanent Gates, and he lives there. When he's not a prisoner of cultists and probably about to be horribly murdered. (He suuuuuper does not believe Marit about being returned to the Empire.) 

There's also blood-magic but, like, they kill people who were going to have to be executed anyway, not all criminals are worth the risk of rehabilitating with compulsions, and it'd be really stupid to then go on and not even use that power for anything, when they can instead use it for perfect weather and digging canals. 

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"And what's the deal with Iomedae, as told by people who don't worship the ground she walks on?"

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She's nearly impossible to kill because Aroden gave her repeatable-miracles, which implies she's open to being randomly possessed by Him - oh, he knows they don't call it that, and it sounds like Aroden is better at it and sneakier at it than the local gods and maybe Iomedae thinks her mind is still her own, but how else would repeatable-miracles work. 

She ended up in a new world and didn't bother to learn much at all about the local situation before she went around telling everyone about an afterlife that doesn't exist, and fomented a rebellion right up until the point that she found out the local gods didn't like her much better than the Empire and failed to step in when the Empire killed her. Since then, she's:

- Promised not to operate outside of Oris and then broken that promise.  

- Specifically, she stole Altarrin, possibly the most loyal-to-the-Empire man ever to exist, certainly one of the people Arbas respects most, and mind-controlled him to work against his entire life's work. 

- Kidnapped the Empire's top mage-researcher, with some thin excuse about how it wasn't her but she tooooootally couldn't stop her other powerful ally from doing it. Yeah right. 

- Sent some godservants claiming to be diplomats. 

- When the Empire did the obvious thing about that, she kidnapped Arbas over it. 

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"Huh. You know, I was going to get to take the next couple of months off. I assume you have already been told, 'she's a paladin, she literally cannot have done half the things you just listed', and you are skeptical either that paladins are a thing or that she's really a paladin and not faking it? Which one?"

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Arbas thinks that paladins have lots of nice-sounding rules they believe they follow, and Kiritan and Tiaves at least seem like genuinely earnestly nice people, he's not denying that. But, like, obviously the place to look to actually make predictions is the god, and none of the things Iomedae has done seem uncharacteristic of how gods like to use their toys to play games with mortals. 

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"No, no, that's not what I'm saying, I'm saying - you got Kiritan to break her vows, right, and then Aroden broke the connection with her?"

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He got her to not want to belong to Aroden anymore.

Arbas doesn't really think she additionally? broke any of the be-an-implausibly-nice-person rules? That's not what he was aiming for. As far as he knows she didn't do anything except cry a lot, which is kind of reasonable of her, and then immediately storm in here obviously in a state to get very mad at anyone who might have hurt him, which was very sweet of her, if kind of confused, and, like, seems perfectly in keeping with all the rules? 

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"So the way paladins are claimed to work - the way everyone thinks they work at home - is that if they break their vows, ever, their god strips them of their powers and they're fallen and disgraced. The thing that happened with Kiritan, except - not of their own will, done to them from the god side. 

And I know Iomedae's vows, and they very much do not allow mind controlling people to enslave them and put them to work against their life's work, or making promises and breaking them, or even lying. So if she's doing those things, she has gotten around - maybe with Aroden's help - what we think is a law of the universe."

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It really seems like Aroden is the god here, and maybe it's convenient to play the game that way with all his normal paladins, but He could just decide to use Iomedae anyway? Since Iomedae is clearly very useful and it would be pretty stupid of Aroden to take away her powers because she was doing His will in ways that would be effective? 

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"I think you might be underestimating what a big deal it would be, at home? Iomedae goes around wearing...more than a tenth of the wealth of Taldor, and the reason they trust her with it is that she's a paladin, and she said she'll give it back when the crusade is over. Iomedae is conquering herself kind of a lot of territory, and the reason they trust her with that is that she drew some lines on the map and promised she had no intentions outside of them. That's the enormous advantage paladins have, that they can just say shit, and everyone believes them, because they believe she'd lose all of her powers if she ever lied to them. 

And of course, if it wasn't obvious, no one has ever, ever caught her in a lie. 

So - okay, maybe Iomedae and Aroden found out a way to pretend Iomedae's still a paladin when actually she's not. But every lie she tells is risking - the whole Shining Crusade would fall apart and we'd probably have, like, half a dozen wars on our hands. Also I'd murder her personally, if that's helpful to hear? There aren't many people who could do it but I might be able to."

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"And I guess you don't think all the kidnapping people counts as breaking her word because she is technically having some friend of hers do it for her?" 

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"I'd need to know what she actually said, and what she actually did? But I absolutely believe you that she's been doing things that are only technically what she said she'd do. You're not supposed to do that, she'll be embarrassed if I call her out on it, but it's not gambling everything she has."

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"See, but I don't actually care about about that difference, I care about what happened." Shrug. "...And I don't buy that Aroden cares. Why would He? How could He? Gods aren't people, they aren't - the kind of thing that can decide to tell the truth, they can't see that, they're just Foresight-poking things that are used to getting what they want 'cause they're so much bigger than all the little annoying mortals running around trying to do things that inconvenience them." 

He scowls. "I know you all think Aroden is different. Maybe I'd even buy it if I could read His mind, but I can't, can I, because gods aren't the kind of thing you can use Thoughtsensing on, because they don't think like us." 

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"It's not just Aroden. We're from different planets, remember? Iomedae was wrong that yours feeds its souls into the River like the planets we know of, and you guys are wrong about our gods. They do use Foresight, but they don't at all sound to me like the same kind of entity. They definitely do know what lies and truth are. Law and Chaos are god-concepts as much as human ones. Some gods give out truthtelling spells. There's a god who will renounce his followers for writing misleading contract terms."

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Arbas shrugs. "Well, from where I'm standing you haven't given us any reason to believe that except 'you should take me at my word.' We'd have gone and checked, Altarrin was working on it - Altarrin thought it'd be the most important thing in the world, if it were true - and you didn't let us, you just keep pulling the ladder out every time we get close. Tar-Baphon is a pretty excuse but it kind of seems like you just don't want anyone who's not working for you already to see your world." 

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"Oh, yeah, Iomedae is terrified that you will run right up to whoever her enemies are and give them a hundred diamonds to destroy her. Well, not terrified, since she's a paladin. But acting on that assumption, and not going to cut that out. There's, like, truthtelling spells that the gods give out, if you'd find that kind of thing convincing? There's lots and lots of books explaining Law and what we think the gods mean by it? But if the fundamental situation here is that you guys want to see Golarion for yourself, and Iomedae thinks you'll trap her soul in a rock as soon as you can find someone who'll do it for you, then, yeah, it just comes down to whether you find a way to Golarion before Alfirin convinces Iomedae to conquer you."

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He's abruptly very tired. "Kinda seems like one of those things is going to happen, then, doesn't it." 

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"Well, Iomedae doesn't think so! Maybe she's delusional, but she usually isn't. She thinks that maybe you actually won't horrendously torture diplomatic envoys until they no longer are willing to accept a resurrection, so long as they aren't religious, and that would mean we could actually send envoys who you don't think are obviously mind controlled, such as me, and that means we could negotiate something less stupid."

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Sigh. "Well, I'm not going to stop you. It's your life and also I literally can't."

And he manages to find the energy, somewhere, for a crooked smile. "You're stubborn." He likes stubborn people. It's something he can admire, even if he's not allowed to read their mind, which he's sad about because this man's mind is probably so fascinating. 

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"I mean, you could probably stop me? If you were like 'this is a stupid plan and will result in tons of problems, here's what to do instead to deescalate this whole mess', I'd probably listen to you. Who else am I going to listen to, Iomedae? She pretty clearly is at fault for things getting this bad in the first place, even if I'd be shocked to learn she actually betrayed a negotiation or broke a promise. - not because I think Aroden is perfect, just because she has so much to lose by it.

And if you were like 'oh no if we go back to the Empire we'll definitely try to torture you into being unwilling to accept resurrection', that will also probably stop me! I'll die for a good cause but that doesn't even sound like a good cause."

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"I wasn't trying to do that!" Arbas says, somewhat grumpily. "You people are just really incredibly stubborn about the god thing. - And we weren't going to kill her, Bastran was really firm on that, he said I could try but I had to walk out right away if it worked and we'd send her back to Iomedae. Reckon he thought Iomedae could fix it, or Aroden could, and I - I didn't want her broken for its own sake, that's stupid. I wanted to know if I can get Altarrin back. Bastran is so messed up about him being on the enemy's side." 

 

A pause. "- Can they? Fix it, I mean." 

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"They'll find out in the morning. Probably. You're not the first person ever to mind control a paladin into falling out of the paladin bucket, and it's usually fixable. 

I know the refusing resurrection thing wasn't your goal. But that's a way to scare people good, right, here's a planet with no afterlives and people will mind control you into not wanting to be alive anymore and then that's it, you're gone, you lose everything forever. The reason Iomedae sent you paladins in the first place was so Aroden could grab their souls."

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"We wouldn't've let her kill herself either, that's also stupid." Arbas makes a face. "I guess I can see why you wouldn't've thought that was obvious, since you don't know Bastran, but he's - he wouldn't do that. Even in a lot of cases where he should be willing to do it." Eyeroll. "Oh, and he shouldn't've let bloody Duke Elnore send a stupid inflammatory letter about it, but he's depressed about all the wars and he was probably hiding." 

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"I'm glad of that. That would really -

 

- do you want me to tell Alfirin to take all the spells off Altarrin, and send him in here, so you can look at him and see that he's not mind controlled, or will that just make you go 'ah, they can hide spells' -"

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"...If you're telling the truth about it, and you let me check, then I reckon it'd convince me, eventually? I've read the man's mind before, even if you can hide the magic I don't think you could hide the - changes."

A vague handwave. "Dunno that it'd matter. It wouldn't convince Kastil because his entire job is being the most paranoid person in the Empire and he doesn't like me. And I bet you can hide the magic, too, just on the basis that we haven't yet figured out anything you definitely can't do." 

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"I couldn't. I'm a mage myself, and I've never actually heard of a way to do it besides Mind Blank which is really obvious, it hides that there's a person there at all. But Alfirin's - there's not much where I'd want to give you my word she can't do it, I'll say that much. 


If we have to convince the most paranoid person in the whole empire, then this is probably a lost cause. But - the Emperor trusts you, right, if you mindread Altarrin and see that he's not mind controlled, then - the Emperor will at least think about whether we're maybe telling the truth?"

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"Maybe? He's probably mad at me over the whole Kiritan thing, or - embarrassed because I'm sure the ministers yelled at him, and taking it out on me. ...Yelled at him for sending her back, to be clear, not for trying it. But I don't know if he'd listen to me about another thing that he expects to get him yelled at. He'd - want to. Probably." 

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" -- all right," says Marit. "Don't you at least want to know? Whether you can convince anyone or not, don't you at least want to know whether we're full of shit or whether Altarrin came here like Iomedae says, because he realized we were trying not to fight your Empire?"

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"Obviously I want to know! But I can't use Thoughtsensing right now because of the mind control." 

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"I can tell Alfirin to change that! Just give me a minute!" 

 

And he'll stomp outside, leaving the door open so Arbas can hear him. "Hey, two things - could you let the prisoner mindread people, and could you take anything you still have on Altarrin off him and send him in here?"

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"...I'll ask Altarrin. He might be busy, should I tell him it's urgent? I don't want the prisoner mindreading people, unless you have a good reason."

:Altarrin? Arbas wants to check your mind for tampering, Marit seems to think it's a good idea. If you're free and willing, come by and I can take the dominate off.:

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"I would like to when I take the prisoner back to the Empire with me have at least a few shreds of evidence for anything we claim about the world. Previous communications have seemed a little sparse on that."

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He freezes. 

 

You realize he is going to find out I am immortal and - all of that, he thinks back at Alfirin. I am not actually sure that is a problem, Bastran knows and for all we are aware has briefed the whole council, but - something to take into account. I have no idea how to expect him to react. 

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"Well then sure, I'll just put a sign on the Mansion door saying 'Horrible telepath in residence, enter at your own risk'.

 

...Do you just want to let him check Altarrin, or you as well?"

 

:I realize. It's your secret and you know the man better than we do, it's your call.:

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"I have been assuming they will mindread me constantly while I'm in the Empire and I don't particularly mind if they get a head start on it. I was hoping to plead with you for protection from being horrifyingly mind-controlled, and it actually might be useful if I've been mindread first and someone can speak to consistency."

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And Altarrin takes a few deep breaths and then reaches out to Iomedae along the Telepathic Bond and relays the request. 

:I...think it is not really giving away anything we cannot afford to. Every new person that finds out is a greater risk the gods of our world find some way to use this information against me, but -: and he closes his eyes, briefly, though no one is in the room with him to see it, :but at this point I am - mostly relying on the assumption, which I hope is a valid one, that you would find it inconvenient if I were dead and would arrange to have me raised: 

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: - gods, Altarrin, of course! Do you want my oath?:

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:...I think I would rather not put you in a position of having to either break an oath or - make the wrong tradeoff, if something unexpected came up, if somehow you did not have a diamond for it - I have no idea what but I...can trust that you prefer me alive, I think, and I am not going to demand more reassurance than that: 

Not when the only difference is in how he feels emotionally about the situation, which is...not really a constraint on his ability to make decisions, at this point...and also if he's learned anything about Golarion and oaths, it's that they are serious business and he has no desire to use that on anything not completely critical.

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:I'm not going to make any oaths about it but I'd raise you myself, if for some reason Iomedae wouldn't or couldn't and I could. And also I should make you a clone or two, so it's automatic even if something happens to us.:

She doesn't think the clones will make that much of a difference, strategically, but they do tend to be very comforting.

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:I vaguely suspect you are underrating the benefits of being more sure of us but it doesn't seem urgent: Iomedae says, and then doesn't say more because it's possible she is projecting about a unrelated completely different situation that was thirty years ago and it's not fair to Altarrin to get that on him.

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...Huh. He hadn't been expecting that, from Alfirin, and still isn't sure what piece he was missing.

Also he feels like Iomedae is maybe continuing to miss the point, which is that he's as sure of her as he needs to be - a lot more sure than that, really, by this point - and the remaining steps involve earning that same certainty from their side. Which he doesn't think he has, yet, given their starting point. 

:Thank you. I - should probably go let Arbas read my mind, then, he is going to have a very interesting time of it but he might actually change his mind: 

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She blinks, twice, and maybe Marit won't notice anything else.

"Altarrin's on his way. Give me a second, and - there. The prisoner can read you and Altarrin. Let me know if you want that changed."

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"Thank you," says Marit, and steps back in, to where Arbas can now mindread him. "Altarrin's on his way." He is thinking that this seems like the most doomed mission ever and he will do his absolute best to salvage it but what a starting point, and that no wonder Iomedae and Alfirin's relationship has been fraught lately given that this seems like a setup for one of the highest-tension kinds of conflict they have, the kind where Iomedae is probably actually wrong.

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Wow. Huh. 

:You really aren't scared of her, are you: Arbas sends, thoughtfully. :What's the deal with Iomedae and Alfirin anyway? They got some kind of history, I can tell: 

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"The short version is the crusade almost certainly cannot succeed without an archmage, so Alfirin has a lot of license, and also Iomedae knows full well she ought to have some people around her who aren't afraid to tell her she's wrong, and also Alfirin is - ambitious and very dangerous and I don't trust her at all, though she too wouldn't outright break her word to anyone with any chance of living to tell of it or going on to tell of it in the next life. Don't read too much into my not trusting her; I barely trust anyone. 

If the Empire hasn't figured it out yet - Alfirin will win, if she decides it's worth fighting you. There's very few countries in Golarion that'd stand if she wanted them to fall, now that she's got lots of diamonds, and they'd do it by allying with Iomedae."

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:Mmhm. Figured. That all we can really do is make it cost her more, not stop her: 

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"- well, no, you can also give her less reason to do it."

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Arbas is not sure exactly what to say to that.

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As it turns out, he can get away without saying anything, because this is the moment that Altarrin arrives. 

"Arbas. I understand we are considering sending you back with Marit - thank you for being willing to do this, Marit, I appreciate that you are - trying much harder than would be reasonable to expect or ask."

And he turns back to Arbas. "You are going to learn some state secrets, reading my mind." 

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Arbas raises an eyebrow at him. "Are you gonna put my compulsions back first?" 

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"...Do you want me to?" A glance over at Marit. "Is Iomedae likely to object, if he is requesting it?" 

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"I wouldn't expect so? She's releasing him. If we're going to try for this we may as well - try for it properly."

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Nod. "All right." 

 

He puts the compulsions back. He has a lot of practice with the standard ones; it takes less than a minute. 

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Arbas relaxes visibly. He's back to looking startlingly cheerful and un-distressed, for someone who is currently a prisoner and still under different mind-control. He picks himself up from the floor and sits down in one of the armchairs. 

"Go on," he says, raising an eyebrow again. 

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Altarrin sits down as well, and drops his shields. 

 

His recent behavior probably does seem concerning and uncharacteristic, he's thinking, if someone is missing certain implausible and surprising context. Namely the fact that he's immortal and seven hundred years old. In a meaningful sense he founded the Empire and has driven its development ever since, though he wasn't the First Emperor - he was an advisor, Arvad. 

And the Empire isn't what he wanted. It's not a complete failure, it has its redeeming features - quite a lot of them, even - but it's fundamentally not "Tantara, but more robust to hostile neighbors", and it can't be, not from this starting point, not without some kind of outside out-of-context force to push away from the narrow awful equilibrium it's landed in. 

It's the fault of the gods. Not only Their fault, Altarrin has made plenty of mistakes and, of course, the other humans involved in six hundred years of day-to-day operations had some agency (it would be wronging them to imply they didn't), but - he understands better, now. The last time a prosperous, flourishing, free nation started building permanent Gates and teaching everyone to read and all the other corollaries of Civilization - the last time a genius archmage explored new realms of magic - it ended with a superweapon wielded in anger and fear, and a world nearly destroyed. And the gods must not have seen it coming; Urtho would have been noisy in Foresight too, not only Ma'ar. He can understand why They are so afraid. 

 

 

Altarrin - Ma'ar - survived the Cataclysm. His country...didn't. It was the worst mistake he ever made and he will never stop regretting it, and it's...a big piece, actually, of why he so badly wants to find any path here but war. 

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Arbas is making a range of incredibly fascinating expressions. 

:Why did you Gate out from the research facility?: he sends, once he's had a while to absorb it, and concluded that in fact he's just not going to succeed at absorbing it until he has an entire night to think. 

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It's not what he would have preferred to do, if he had fewer constraints. The issue is that he had trapped himself in the snare that was the Empire, just as thoroughly as he had trapped everyone else. It wasn't just his actions that were constrained, it was his thoughts - he can hold up some of the memory of that, how he was trying desperately to re-orient in the face of new information that just...didn't fit the Empire's existing paradigms...and stuck, unable to see his way through to a resolution. 

He convinced himself to Gate out by, more or less, rationalizing that the gods were likely to have him assassinated again, and that walking right into Their trap wouldn't serve the Empire at all. Which isn't that implausible, even, but the more likely trap - that he ended up under suspicion of disloyalty (or just of being influenced by Aroden), closely supervised, maybe even taken into custody by the Office of Inquiry - would have been worse. A position from which he would have very few avenues to de-escalate this into something less completely stupid. 

 

He wasn't sure, at the time, that Aroden could be trusted. But he thinks he knew enough to judge that it was worth investigating further, even at great cost. 

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:How? Gods can't be trusted. We know that. You must've been the one to write half those books, come to think of it: 

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The gods of Velgarth can't be trusted. (At least, not from the information state and negotiating position that mortals - or even immortals - have held for the last seven hundred years.) Failing to realize that sooner was, in fact, one of Iomedae's biggest mistakes. 

 

But starting from a position of ignorance, it's - not at all obvious that other worlds would be the same? It wasn't obvious this was the case here until a couple of centuries into the Empire's history, and for all the costs paid by Altarrin's past decision not to immediately jump to maximum distrust, he - thinks it would have been wrong to. Because they didn't have enough evidence, yet, to pin down which world they were in, and - it would have given up so much, closed off so many potential avenues for a better future, if they had wrongly concluded too soon that the gods were fundamentally not the kind of being that one could negotiate with. 

(He's not even sure that They aren't, actually, just that he doesn't currently know how to communicate with Them. He has some real hope that Golarion's gods will be able to cross that gulf, and - maybe there's still a way to shift that equilibrium of centuries toward something better.) 

 

Iomedae's principles, and Aroden's holy texts, certainly weren't proof that Aroden was different. They could have been nothing more than convincing propaganda. But it was a more likely observation, in worlds where it really did reflect Aroden's values. Arbas can see that, right? 'It was written this way because it's true' is a simpler hypothesis than 'someone constructed an elaborate self-consistent lie to achieve some other nefarious goal' – because there are plenty of other ways to achieve that nefarious goal, and because elaborate lies are hard to maintain and keep self-consistent. It's an ongoing cost, and a clever actor powerful enough to just impose their will anyway would realize that, and consider other less costly options. Right? 

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Following Altarrin's reasoning there is making Arbas' head hurt. 

 

:It would've gone so badly if you'd been wrong: he points out. :Why did you think we could afford that?: 

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Altarrin will admit that he didn't do the full cost-benefit analysis to his usual standards! He was...pretty impaired. But the thing about doing a cost-benefit analysis of tradeoffs is that it's not one-sided. Kastil's reasoning is one-sided; it's his job, he's supposed to focus solely on downside risks and not the potential upsides. But it's not enough, for the Empire overall to be entirely focused on not losing, at the cost of ignoring - opportunities that might be gamechanging, that might open the door to something better than this. 

And he's pretty sure that even at the time, he had a justified true belief that the worlds where his decision would be catastrophic were very unlikely. Iomedae had given really quite a lot of indications that she was - inclined to be merciful if she could afford it, and preferred peace to war. There were several reasons the Empire's apparatus of state couldn't update on that; she was fomenting rebellion, which made her an enemy, and she was a servant of the gods, which to them meant that even if she had been offering friendship with open arms, it couldn't be trusted. 

But Altarrin doesn't think he was wrong, to expect that if he Gated into her camp, Iomedae would be merciful, and try to understand what was going on. 

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:You like her, don't you: 

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He really does. Most of what he's seen of her since has only led him to admire her more. 

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:What about Alfirin? Marit seems to think she's opposed to Iomedae in some ways - not that they're enemies, exactly, but that Alfirin wants different things. Like ruling the Empire.: 

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She could, obviously, probably without that much difficulty. Top archmages in her world are absurdly powerful; even Altarrin couldn't beat her, unless he had a lot of warning and setup time and she didn't, and he has seven hundred years of accumulated knowledge and capabilities. 

He...doesn't overall get the sense that she wants to? For which he can't blame her. Ruling an Empire that's been boxed into a corner by the Velgarth gods is...not, actually, pleasant or fun. 

 

There's definitely some tension between her and Iomedae. He doesn't know the full history there; he expects there's something, maybe a lot of things. 

(he is not thinking about the fact that Alfirin is absolutely the sort of person to find a route to immortality, and Iomedae is...probably the sort of person to react negatively to the ways she might do that, if they're at all similar to Altarrin's...) 

He likes Alfirin. She makes sense to him, as a person, and she's - ruthless and careful - in a way that's actually deeply reassuring. Early in their acquaintance, she let on that she already had a plan to conquer the Empire, and had had it since three candlemarks after they got Iomedae back and she learned of the Empire's existence. Which was a relief to hear both because it implied she didn't want the Empire that badly, or she would already be in possession of it, and because - someone who has a plan, and especially someone who has the general trait of coming up with a plan when it's still only a remote contingency, is going to be - cautious, and thoughtful, and not end up killing hundreds of thousands of people because they weren't thinking ahead. 

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:Huh.:

And now he really wants to read Alfirin's mind. She's probably got a particularly fascinating one. Probably a doomed hope, though, and he's not done with Altarrin yet. 

:- Did you really pray to Aroden? Why?: 

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Because - 

 

Altarrin was, at that point, reasonably convinced that Aroden wasn't an enemy, wasn't Someone he was bound to end up in a fight with sooner or later if he kept pursuing his actual goals in the world. He had been alarmed, for a while, after he learned that Aroden was complaining about the Foresight noise, but Iomedae kept being very clear that this didn't mean Aroden was going to ask her to stop solving problems in noisy ways, let alone subtly manipulate her into being predictable. 

And - it mattered, whether there could be more trust, a deeper alliance, than just "Aroden will predictably follow His incentives and I can incentivize him not to be my enemy", because a truly allied god could change everything. And he knew, from Iomedae, that she had done that check. 

Altarrin also wasn't really expecting anything to happen, given how much it would cost Aroden, how much it in fact must have cost Him. It felt like a pretty cheap test to run. 

 

And - he's glad he did it, because he now has approximately complete confidence and trust in Aroden, and that changes quite a lot about the plans that are workable and the risks he can afford to take. 

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Yeah okay but why does he trust Aroden just because Aroden sent him a godvision. They've been over this. Gods can just lie, or - it's not even meaningful to say that They're lying, rather than poking people's heads in the spots that will make them behave conveniently. 

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...Here, it's easier just to hold up the memory and show him. 

 

  His city in Axis, bright and full and and glorious, and nothing but the foundation of it is His doing directly, all He has to offer is space to work and the rest is human hands, and not just humans but dozens of other kinds of people, safe and flourishing forever, writing their own futures, building and creating and living and

     coils spinning and a glass bulb lighting and

         a place like a library but more, and the not-voice of another god, translated lossily back into language, "of course I have all of your records", Abadar says, "I save every work of mortal hands, that none of it might ever be lost" and putting the pieces together after so very long and

          fragments that aren't a god's memories at all, that He brought with him since the very beginning an underwater city a voice that isn't human and it says you care so much, maybe too much, men like you and I should not rule, I have seen what becomes of us when we do 

    flying across an ocean and seeing nothing left of the first sanctuary he had tried to build, everything lost, a mistake that could never be undone - but not the memory of it, and never the promise, a vow that can't be taken back because it wasn't so much a choice in the first place as just - the shape he is and always was and

  never to walk away never to give up to return again and again no matter the cost no matter how long it takes, not until everything is fixed and everyone is all right 

and he thought he was alone, for such a very long time, and in a sense he was, but in another sense it's impossible to be alone in this mission, because most people can't and shouldn't be Aroden - most people can't and shouldn't be Altarrin - but everyone, everywhere, can want to live and be safe and happy, if they have the space and

look, look at the world from the angle a god can see, there are so many lights, there are so many sparks that will take the air Aroden can give them as fuel and use it to fight for the right thing, whatever that means to them, or at least what they think is right, but if you give them the space they'll take it, if you unblock the path they will follow it, and so none of them are alone 

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I know you, Aroden said. You were always our ally. You never needed to ask. 

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And Iomedae. Sitting by his bedside, when he was completely incapacitated by the awful headache that apparently results from talking to gods. We don’t follow Aroden, he remembers her saying, He and we both follow - a third, indestructible thing… and no one who sees it is ever alone 

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Wow. Wow. 

 

 

Scratch wanting to read Alfirin's mind. He wants to read Aroden's mind, as intensely as he's ever wanted anything. It'd be worth the headache, it might even be worth being mind-controlled, to see - that - up close... 

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"Is there anything else you want to see?" Altarrin asks him, softly. 

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Arbas shakes his head. If Altarrin shows him any more right now his head might actually explode. 

(His expression is a mixture of stunned and awed that rests very oddly on his face, it's clearly uncharacteristic.) 

 

"S'not going to convince Kastil," he says wryly. "He's definitely going to think Aroden manipulated you into making yourself vulnerable and then mind-controlled you. But I don't think there's any way of convincing Kastil to change his mind about gods, so." Shrug. 

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Altarrin looks over at Marit. "I think we are done here, then." He raises his shields again. 

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"All right," says Marit. "I want to go back to my original question to Arbas but I guess also to you, which was, is there any way to get your Empire to promise not to mind control me or do other insane experiments on me that seem like a good idea from your premises, where they'd actually probably mean it, so I can show up and talk to them?"

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Altarrin looks thoughtful. 

"I think it will be a very difficult ask to persuade them to speak to you with no mind control, the compulsions against harming anyone or sabotaging the Empire are standard even for diplomats of countries we are not at war with. I - think that if you could get a signed agreement from the Emperor and council not to go further than that, they would be quite likely to keep to it, the Empire - does genuinely see itself as a place that keeps to agreements - I think they would only break it if some other out of context event like Aritha's kidnapping happened with unfortunate timing, and convinced them that your side of the agreement had never been meant in good faith."

Sigh. "- it would be wise to have someone scrying you from a distance, so that Alfirin can scoop you out if they do try anything, and - we can be upfront about that, I think, they already know what Alfirin is capable of." 

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"All right. Then I guess we send Arbas back with a request for such a signed agreement? Can you write that?"

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Nod. "Of course." 

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"Great. See you shortly, then, Arbas." He's in fact dreading this, he doesn't trust the Empire's 'we won't break our word unless we convince ourselves you didn't mean yours' shit one bit, but they can do frequent scries and he's pretty sure that he can hold out under mind control torture for a couple hours before the combined wrath of Alfirin and Iomedae crashes down on the Empire but he really dislikes having that as an assumption necessary for his soul to continue being accessible to his allies.

Iomedae asked it of him. He thinks she's wrong, but he trusts her very very deeply. 

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He writes up the proposal. The gist is: despite the Empire's recent decision to torture Kiritan into renouncing Aroden, which from Iomedae's perspective is very much crossing a line, at this time Iomedae would nonetheless like to continue trying for a diplomatic resolution.

She's willing to send another delegate, this time someone who is explicitly not a follower of Aroden, let alone empowered by Him. This is, of course, an enormous leap of faith for her, that the Empire won't just torture him into refusing a resurrection and then kill him in a world with no afterlives, and the delegate in question is only comfortable doing this if there are certain precautions in place. 

(Side note: Altarrin now has direct proof that ordinary people, including Velgarth natives, can be brought back from the dead apparently intact. He dropped off some of them at the following border outposts but he's not sure word of this had reached the Emperor yet? It's also understandable for the Empire to be suspicious of this, since the resurrection magic is in fact a direct godmiracle, but he thinks they should be able to verify to their satisfaction that the returned dead are in fact the same people as before, whether or not they've additionally been subtly influenced.) 

Preposed precautions: the Empire can use its standard diplomatic-hostage compulsions to ensure safety. They can verify with mage-sight that the delegate isn't under one of the Golarion mind-control spells that can override compulsions, and they will have permission to read his mind. Altarrin would like them to sign a written agreement not to take the mind control any further than that. It shouldn't be necessary; the delegate, like the paladins before him, has orders to be fully cooperative with their investigation. 

Since Iomedae is understandably spooked by the Empire's change of heart about her paladins after the Aritha kidnapping - however much she understands why the Aritha kidnapping is what spooked the Empire into this course of action - she intends to monitor her delegates' treatment from a distance. If the Empire breaks the agreement on acceptable treatment, Alfirin can and will rescue the delegate before any irreversible harm is done. Altarrin hopes that the Emperor will understand why, and that making this clear up front will mean that if it does become relevant, it at least won't be a surprise. 

 

 

Once the letter is written, he can Gate a still-rather-stunned Arbas to yet another randomized remote Imperial Guard post. And then go back to regularly scrying the Empire and particularly the capital. 

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The High Priestess of Sarenrae returns to Golarion to sleep and pray for her spells, and returns to Beset in the morning to perform the requested True Resurrection. She's heard nothing from Sarenrae about how the conversation with Anathei went, but wouldn't have expected to. In her heart she expects it went well.

True Resurrection takes ten minutes to cast, and involves building one of the most spectacularly complex and beautiful spellforms known to Golarion magic. A lot of people with mage-sight have gathered around gaping, though with one minute to go she waves them away so the recently returned will have some privacy, and with a few seconds to go she flings out a simple cotton sheet for the body to appear under.

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Iomedae is on hand. The Marshal thought Iomedae would have an easy time allying with this person.

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Her orders were a rapid, dashed off "stop these traitors." Her compulsions had been modified to prioritize orders from her direct superior over the good of the Empire. "These traitors" meant six people actually trying to assassinate the Emperor, their families, their servants, and everyone else in the building.

She killed three, incapacitated two, and the sixth, bleeding out, stabbed her in the back, and then there was a very complicated moment of thinking in which she looked at her possibilities to accomplish these orders, looked for alternatives that would not leave a crater in the middle of Jacona, tried to throw the power of her Final Strike into a shield around the building it's not like Final Strike energy is very different from any other spell energy, and woke up under a sheet not under compulsions.

Right, well, priorities - "Has anyone arrested Mage-General Verthor yet?"

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"I haven't heard of him, I'm sorry. It has been years since you died."

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"Fair enough. If Jean prioritized this over fixing the Empire I'm going to be really annoyed with him, by the way. Situation report?"

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" - the stars in the sky are other suns like your sun, with other worlds about them. I'm from one of those. We are on better terms with our gods than anyone in Velgarth is with yours, and have a complicated arrangement for them to intervene legibly at our request instead of illegibly as suits them. One of the most powerful miracles they grant us is resurrection of the dead. 

 

Two months ago, in a magical accident of some kind, I was thrown out of my world and into Velgarth, where I met Jean. He was leading a rebellion against the Empire in Oris. It seemed like a very well justified rebellion with decent odds of success, and I offered him my aid and that of my order, the Knights of Ozem, though at the time I was the only member of the Knights in Velgarth. At this time, the Empire and Jean are negotiating a ceasefire in Oris, the Empire and the Knights are in a disastrous escalatory spiral that I'm currently attempting to arrest, and we're on the continent opposite the Empire, though we'll Gate you back to the continent you're familiar with at your request. You're not a prisoner, we would like you as an ally, and I have some spending money for you if you want to walk away."

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"You know that the benevolent gods claim sounds unlikely to me, I'm very surprised the Empire is negotiating a ceasefire with anyone, and I'd like to hear the argument for why I should be on your side."

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"In my world, there's a kind of magic called necromancy, that reanimates the dead, imbues them with magical vitality, and binds them to the will of the spellcaster. ...it's debated how much they're having the experience of being conscious and in terrible pain. For some kinds of undead, they're obviously fully themselves except where the bindings altered them; for some it's harder to tell. Thoughtsensing doesn't work on the undead. 

Most necromancers can command some small number of undead, maybe a few dozen at the most. But there is one, in my world, Tar-Baphon who learned a way to control an unlimited number of undead, and he was using that capacity to conquer the whole continent, kill everybody, and raise them as his undead slaves. I am the Knight Commander of the Shining Crusade that aims to stop him. - it's going well. I don't actually need your help there, especially, not that I'd refuse it. 

The problem is that diamonds are extremely useful for the working of some powerful Golarion magic, and were someone from Velgarth to sell him a few hundred large diamonds, then instead he could destroy the crusade utterly and return to his conquest of the continent. And - I think the Empire wouldn't do that. It wouldn't serve them, Tar-Baphon would come for them too. But they might. They are terrified of me, and not very good at systematically acting in their own interests when their problems are this far out of context. And they could do it accidentally without realizing it's what they were doing.

And so I and my allies, who are in a declared state of war with them, have been sabotaging their efforts to develop their own independent interworld transit, and they just retaliated by horrifyingly soul-mutilating one of the diplomatic delegates we sent them. I think the argument for siding with us is that we want the Empire to be free and prosperous, we just can't build enough trust to get them to take actions that'd actually help with that.

It would actually be pretty easy with our magic to conquer the Empire. But not to fix it, and - that's what would be worth doing."

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"I'm kind of horrified that Jean's given up on fixing the empire! Hopefully this is stage one of a complicated plot to get one of our other siblings to do it."

She considers. "So the obvious two ways to check your story are to investigate on my own, which I'm terrible at, but if you have common Mindspeaking or some other solution to the translation problem I could bop around your world for a week Gating to check on things, or I could just get within shouting distance of Jean and argue with him for ten minutes."

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"I can send you to him in Oris  - in about twenty minutes, once we've raised the rest of the dead he requested from us for today - or put up a scry if you are willing to argue with him through a scry."

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"Rather do it in person, I can probably Gate myself if you tell me where I should Gate to. What are the other things I need to know in the next twenty minutes?"

" - Obviously if Jean thinks it's the correct decision and he isn't mind-controlled or insane then probably the next stage is to try to beat up Tar-Baphon, since I don't know how to do diplomacy. If you want me to poke my family I can do that once I've checked the plan with Jean but if you need someone who knows the political situation you should talk to someone still alive."

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"We're trying to track down Tar-Baphon's operatives on Velgarth, if you think you could be of any aid to Archmage-General Altarrin on that, and we're contemplating some off-season raids to keep him tied down back in my home world but it's the beginning of winter back in Golarion, the war's not going to move much for another five months."

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"- Wouldn't helping the Archmage-General require letting the Empire know I'm alive?"

... She pauses. "I don't think scrying is my specialty, if you're short of Adepts I can do it but I'm fundamentally a combat adept..."

"... And, you do know that adepts can travel through Gates in winter, use them for long-distance logistics, and - animated corpses presumably don't need food but does whatever they do need instead burn?"

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"Archmage-General Altarrin defected and is working with us. I....need to contemplate how many combat adepts we'd need to do more than raids in wintertime, and have not done so yet because the situation in Velgarth is more of an immediate emergency and because we are in any event very short on Adepts, in that we have two if you want to work with us, plus a few recently raised people who are orienting and haven't decided what to do and haven't ruled out working with us, plus a prisoner who will collaborate on things that primarily serve the Empire.

Golarion mages are importantly different in several respects including that they can't do Gates. The other most important respect in which people from Golarion are different is probably a result of our gods being more helpful with miraculous healing in particular, and it's that any experienced soldier of our world is extremely hard to kill. The Empire did it to me but it took fifty Final Strikes and wouldn't have worked if the gods hadn't been nudging. They're getting better at it now, of course, but compared to my people you're broadly higher utility and wildly more fragile, and also if Tar-Baphon captures you it'll probably enable him to transit between worlds more cheaply. 

Undead burn. Once you've verified enough to want to help with the crusade you can go to Urgir - the walled city we took recently and are operating out of - and provide fire support and get more of a sense of how our magic functions, if that's what you want to do, though it'd in fact probably be more immediately helpful to me to have you as backup to Altarrin even if it's not your specialty."

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"I think I understand that," Soria says, who is not used to being fragile under any circumstances whatsoever. "I think everything else on the topic I should wait to tell you about until I've talked to Jean. What else should I know?"

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"My planet has afterlives." This has been very important to some Imperials and she - doesn't strike Iomedae as someone they'd be irrelevant to. "Souls go on to them when they die; we can scry people there and speak to them. We are - working on getting the afterlives that are good places for people to live available to everyone on Velgarth."

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"That seems important. Can I do that from here?"

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"Altarrin has an interworld scry; I don't believe he has an interplanar one. Aritha was his research assistant on contacting Golarion and has taken great interest in the afterlives situation and may herself be working out an interplanar scry, though if you ask her for it it's important to me you be clear about the range of uses you might put it to; she is our prisoner, and loyal to the Empire."

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"I think my chief use for it would be to confirm you're telling the truth, but I'm not prepared to make unconditional promises at present, especially about things I can't control like 'will I be compulsioned in the future.' And if she doesn't have it yet it's not relevant since I am terrible at magic research."

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"I don't think she has it yet. I can show you on our style of scry but I don't know how you'd confidently identify that as a scry rather than an illusion."

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"Seems correct. What else should I know?"

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"My Knights of Ozem are a paladin order. No one on Velgarth understands what that means and some disastrous misunderstandings have resulted; if I knew a set of words that'd give you the correct impression, then I would have had many fewer problems in the past, but - paladins are honorable and good, and automatically lose our magic powers if we do things that are dishonorable or evil, and in our world are an important institution for coordination because there is a many-thousand-year track record of reliability at being honorable and good, and we have healing magic but are not noncombatants, and the gods choose us, though I did spend a decade vetting Aroden before I decided to follow him, and we are not magically unable to conclude that our god is terrible, and 'breaking our connection to our god' through torture only functions insofar as it makes us no longer honorable or good."

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"That sounds like something we don't have, yes."

"Who defines 'good?'"

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"The incredibly unfortunate answer to that question is 'an ancient god who created the afterlife system'. It - tracks what you'd want it to track, mostly. Protecting the innocent, picking battles you can win and that are worth winning and winning them cleanly, choosing the least damaging means to your goal, saving as many people as you can, mercy and generosity and altruism. But - not all the lines are drawn precisely where I'd draw them, and I'm not sure it's a line that ought to be drawn at all, useful as it is to have paladin orders.

Overthrowing the ancient system of Judgment is on the to-do list, but - it's a long to-do list."

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"Interesting!"

She'll see if this person wants to keep telling her things!

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Until the rest of Jean's requested Resurrections are done, though that doesn't leave time for many more things. The Knights are assisted by the archmage Alfirin, who is very powerful and responsible for things such as the three extradimensional mansions now housing Arodenite operations in Beset. Aroden was human once and He represents that He retained His values when He ascended. His city, Absalom, is the city where men become gods and it stands up fine next to any imperial city, though Golarion is not on the whole richer than the Empire, partially because it has wildly more of a monster/evil necromancer problem than Velgarth. 

 

And then she can have a wizard throw up a Greater Scry of Jean, and, if he looks to be in a safe and quiet place, notify him there's a Gate incoming with Soria.

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- Right, understood. He'll clear space for it.

(uuuugh it would be so much easier if she would trust him but of course she doesn't know she needs to trust him instead of someone claiming it's him -)

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She will go through the gate!

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:Hi. You doing all right?:

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:Except for being in a state of maximum confusion! Are you sane?:

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:Sane, goal-associated, and engaging in a really implausibly complex plot which gets repeatedly helped by totally random coincidence! It turns out painting 'I am not on the side of the Empire' on an evil scheme to raise the welfare of the general population results in good luck proportionate to the amount of bad luck that usually hits the Empire on a random weekday! Ridiculously powerful and benevolent god-chosen champions drop out of the sky, singlehandedly smite enemy armies, and demand I change my schemes to be slightly less evil, causing them to work better!:

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:I'd say 'that's a joke, right', but I just came back from the dead.:

 

:You can't mean it's that simple.:

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:I can, actually. Yes, Iomedae is on my side. Gate to -: he sends her the image :- if you want to verify it's me in person. I am currently running the armed forces of a medium-sized state that had all of its native leadership I cannot impersonate decapitated by a spectacularly evil and incompetent governor, resulting in the entire population eagerly joining my army. Random secondary powers who don't like the Empire drop bags of gold on my desk. The secret to fixing the Empire is to put I SOLEMNLY SWEAR I AM NOT TRYING TO FIX THE EMPIRE on your flag, Soria! It's wonderful! Iomedae is dropping off priests of Aroden - god of Being The Empire Except Not Stupid - who can heal horrifying permanent injuries multiple times a day!:

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She will Gate over and hug him. :Did they arrest Mage-General Verthor yet?:

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Hug. It has been TOO LONG. :He attempted treason against the Empire upon accidentally cutting himself on a pocketknife that mysteriously dispelled all of his compulsions four years ago and was convicted and executed!:

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:Of course he did. Did you actually accomplish anything towards fixing the Empire, Jean?:

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:I'm building my own! It works better. I've smoothed Cesion and Celida's rise, though, if the empire's fixable we have two competent and energetic people working on fixing it. Now, we have the minor problem that if you're spotted anywhere in Oris and act like you know me I might slightly be murdered by my own people because you are terrible at lying -:

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:Over my dead body!:

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:It's not actually going to be that bad, but I would need to be careful about the situation. What I need you to do, for the greater good of every faction involved including the Empire and including me, is to follow Iomedae, do what she says, trust that she is in fact a better person than I am and really very smart, trust that her god is actually well-intentioned, and remember that if I die you need to resurrect me really, really fast.:

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:Are you in fact insane.:

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:I'm slightly manic because apparently 'random positive coincidences' include 'the member of my family I get on best with, dead six years ago, just returned to life!' I think the only battle I've lost so far lead to the defection of Archmage-General Altarrin to Iomedae's side, though I can't possibly tell you how! Other than that no, not really.:

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:... I am going to continue trusting you because you are my best friend and I will be really annoyed if you have not thought all this through in advance in a reliable and trustworthy way while I was dead.:

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:Excellent! Pleased to hear it! I have engaged in all the investigation of Iomedae and her god possible while desperate for support, that is, enough to know that she actually, deeply cares about people and is on my side purely because even people from other planets can tell I'm the hero of this story, which I have to say was a fantastic boost to my ego.:

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:You are not making me feel better about this decision!:

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:Sorry, sorry, I'll turn down the charm. I just really missed you.:

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:Same. Now. Calm down. Take deep breaths. Explain the logic of this to me.:

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:Right.:

Deep breaths.

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:So. The Empire's story is that the gods hate the Empire because they suck, and the Empire sucks - compulsions, torture, arbitrary abuses of power, constant warfare, perpetual lies, the huge horrible disaster that is politics - because it needs to do that to protect itself from the gods.:

:Alternate theory: The gods hate the Empire because the Empire sucks, and our history books lied about cause and effect for the obvious reasons a hypothetical state needs to.:

:Supporting evidence the gods aren't evil: The Tayledras vales; by all accounts they're a utopia even though they have no technology and live in the middle of a wilderness that hates them. Miracles of healing out the ass, wherever Anathei is worshipped. Ithik has frankly implausible harvests given the massive, stupendous incompetence its system produces. Iftel, which is completely and utterly unconquerable and I've never heard of an Ifteli civil war. None of these sound like 'the gods hate mankind.' They sound like 'the gods are perfectly nice except in the Empire.':

:Chief evidence against: The Empire still has really, really low famines. We are, actually, better than everyone else. And nobody else has just copied what we're doing except without hating the gods.:

:So any explanation of why the gods aren't the problem needs to explain why nobody outside the Empire figured that out and copied all its institutions, except without hating the gods? My basic attitude, reading the histories of our neighbors, was: Lots of people tried. Any time they were getting close, we invaded and conquered them because - well, first, because they were our neighbors, and second because if they copied us they might have good armies, and our non-neighbors weren't in close contact with us to steal our secrets. Any time someone started copying our military technology, we figured 'whoops, better crush them' and promptly invaded. As a result of that, nobody has had the time and resources to set up Adept or Mindgift breeding programs, which are what actually lets the Empire get the masses of magical power it needs to accomplish all of its ridiculous unique successes. So the Empire is spreading across the planet thanks to first-mover advantage from a lot of infrastructure built up while everyone else was recovering from the Mage Wars and some lucky decisions by Arvad et al, nothing else.:

:So what we need to test this theory, then is a state run by a young, competent, Imperial-trained administrator, a military genius capable of protecting it from the Empire, who knows the relevant immortality spells, who is talented at imperial politics and has connections high up in the imperial administration, and who, backed by the gods - who, if this theory is correct, aren't evil, just the Empire's enemies - which Imperial-trained administrator can, given a hundred and twenty years of extended life, produce six generations of new mages. This has never actually happened before. It has not, really, been attempted before. So I'm attempting it.:

:As evidence for why this actually works, let me describe the career of Iomedae since her arrival...:

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Arbas is Gated to a provincial Imperial outpost in the region of Iskith just north of Jacona Province.

 

His standard compulsions are back in place, but Altarrin did not actually give him any Imperial orders - you know, to the extent Altarrin is even a valid source of Imperial orders at this point, but he could also have just done a compulsion.

Instead he only issued a surprisingly gently-voiced suggestion that this is likely to be over with quickest if he immediately reaches out with the communication-spell to surrender to whoever is in charge and alert them of his identity. Altarrin suspects they will hold him on-site while they put together a report to send to the capital, but hopefully won't spend as long agonizing over whether an unbelievable report is bad for their career prospects if Arbas makes things clear and legible for them.

 

Arbas...does not actually feel like doing that. He will stand in the random park where Altarrin dropped him, thumbs hooked through his belt-loops, and whistle to himself while he waits for someone to show up and presumably demand to know his business. 

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The unexpected Gate was unexpected and definitely not authorized via the standard channels! The officials have been warned to be in A State Of Higher Than Usual Alert! They will send a team to check it out immediately! 

 

The town of Sissik is not a very happening place - Iskith in general is not a very happening place, really - and the team sent is not exactly alarmed. Probably someone forgot to do the paperwork and will get in minor trouble with their superiors over it. ...Moderate trouble, maybe, given the State Of High Alert. 

They will show up not in an incredible hurry. The lieutenant in charge demands to know Arbas' business, sounding very bored about it.  

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He can fix that! The boredom, at least. 

"Mage-Officer Arbas, Emperor's Guard. I've been a prisoner of Iomedae, that god-cultist of Aroden from the other world, ever since she kidnapped me for offending her. She's sending me back with a letter from - Altarrin, I guess he's probably not Archmage-General at this point but I honestly haven't checked? Anyway. I know it's above your pay grade, Altarrin wanted to drop me somewhere boring so they'd be less likely to blast his Gate. You should probably assume I'm dangerous since I might still be mind-controlled by Iomedae's terrifying ally. And send a report, or something? I dunno." 

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UM????? 

 

They...will get a mage very quickly to throw some more restrictive compulsions on him while they wake up the one and only Thoughtsenser on this posting, who was assigned here partly because he has a drinking problem and is not reliable enough for an actually-important posting. 

 

Within twenty minutes there will be a report headed for the capital, with the update that they have...someone who claims to be Mage-General Arbas and convincingly believes this to Thoughtsensing, and who claims he was kidnapped by Iomedae, and claims to have a letter for the Emperor? They're holding him under compulsions for now because he claimed he might be mind-controlled, though to mage-sight his standard compulsions look un-tampered-with. Please advise???? 

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Bastran sits at the desk in his bedroom, and stares into nothing in particular. 

He really should be less miserable, now that he doesn’t have the excuse of being trapped in an awful humiliating meeting. But he’s still - 

 

- nothing makes sense, he has no idea what he's doing, the Empire is in dire straights and it's probably his fault and even in hindsight he's not sure what he should have done differently. Except for not torturing the paladin into renouncing her god. He really shouldn't have done that. Let Arbas do it, whatever, it amounts to the same thing, and now Iomedae is furious and probably it's too late for diplomacy and probably there's going to be a war that the Empire is doomed to lose and everyone on his Council is in denial about it and and and - 

 

Stop being a whiny child and pull yourself together. It's not the imaginary voice of Altarrin. He's still mad at Altarrin. It's - the imaginary voice of his father, maybe, which he hates, but in this particular case, his father kind of has a point. 

He screwed up. Someone was very badly hurt, on his orders, and he misjudged whether it was justified, because he was tired, because he was lazy, because he didn't want to have another meeting. It turns out it was also a strategically terrible idea. He is quite reasonably upset about that, and upset that he feels like he has no one to talk to, and it feels like he cannot possibly keep moving forward and (a thought he can't think)... 

(- serve the Empire -) 

He doesn't have a choice. Whether or not he can do this, he will keep going. Because it's important. Because he is Emperor and this is his Empire and if he...gives up...then thirty million people lose everything they care about, for no reason at all except that he was too weak. 

 

The obvious solution is to not be too weak. 

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...also it's late and he's been going nonstop for sixteen candlemarks and it's no wonder he's too tired to think about tomorrow. He should. Sleep. Rather than sitting up moping like a whiny child. 

Sleep feels impossible. There's an obvious solution to that problem. He tries not to take drugs too sleep too often - for one thing, they stop working if he over-relies on them, and also it makes Altarrin worry. But Altarrin isn't here right now, is he. 

This is separately arguably a stupid idea because there might be MORE urgent reports. The thing is, he just. Can't. Not now. 

 

He takes a double dose of his usual sleeping draught - it's not dangerous, he did check that, he will just be completely useless if they try to wake him in the middle of the night and right now his only reaction to that is GOOD THEN HE WON'T HAVE TO HAVE MEETINGS.

He goes to bed. Maybe tomorrow there will be literally any good news. 

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Mage-Inquisitor Kastil has spent today so, so tired. He is not usually an imperial advisor. It is not his job to be an imperial advisor, he's very bad at it. It is his job to investigate horrible disasters and report back that the gods did it. And yet, he is being jerked from disaster to disaster without enough time to report something unexpected.

Specifically, Iomedae either brought back several imperial Adepts from the dead and sent them home - before, apparently, sending an extremely furious note - or created/trained very skilled Adept impersonators, and although the Office of Inquiry is checking them over, they do indeed seem to be identical to the originals, with no sleeper programming or hidden compulsions Kastil can find.

... Kastil is rapidly coming to the conclusion that he's missing something. His leading guess for what he's missing is fantastically complicated internal court politics in Iomedae's organization which he does not understand in the least and which the interrogated priests were completely useless for. Kastil hates fantastically complicated imperial politics. Why can't things just be hierarchies with people doing what they are told by their superiors.

Naturally, when he learns about that, the next stage is to send reports to everybody, so we don't keep getting the situation where vitally important information is only known to a few people.

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This is spectacularly confusing, and Macalay's best explanation is that they are just really ridiculously arrogant. He hopes the arrogance isn't justified.

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This is fascinating and he'd love to figure out how his organization can do it itself, but, prioritization!

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... That is, unfortunately, not... good... news. The extent to which it is good news about Iomedae's priorities (big carrots!) is overridden by the extent to which it is very bad news about her powers (hence, big sticks.)

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What nonsense is this. Baron Pierson is going to have to do SO MUCH PAPERWORK about it. Do they have any idea how much harder this makes his job?

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This is wonderful news!

... Probably the Ministry of Inquiry will object when Bastran says "wait, really, does that mean I can just resurrect Cesion and retire?" Probably not, though?

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Siman is busy organizing everything for the Office of Inquiry to take over if everyone gets kidnapped, and does not have the time to devote much thought to this.

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... Oh, and they gave Arbas back.

Send ANOTHER message to everyone (especially Bastran) and then the interrogator he gets assigned to gets to go "what the gods, Arbas?"

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Oh, does he have a story for them! 

 

It's like this, see. He was, with the Emperor's authorization, testing whether the 'paladins' could be persuaded - well, mind-controlled - into renouncing their god and severing the connection that grants them repeatable-miracles and may or may not also ongoingly mind-control them or at least open the door to possession if and when Aroden feels like it. Iomedae's people keep insisting it's not like that, but they would either way. 

Issue is that the Emperor wanted to do it on the condition that he would send the paladin back afterward. And, of bloody course, Iomedae flipped her shit about it and immediately kidnapped him as well as grabbing her own people back. He was interrogated under their form of mind-control, by someone he assumes was Alfirin - Iomedae's terrifyingly powerful ally-who-supposedly-doesn't-report-to-her, who didn't actually introduce herself.

She asked him why he had done it and seemed unsatisfied with his answers; she asked him how, and dragged all the details out of him. She used the mind control to make him undo his own compulsions, and then sort of just walked out and left him there for a while? He doesn't know what was up with that. 

Oh, also Archmage-General Altarrin was there, and clearly taking orders from Iomedae, so that's not great. 

 

And then after that he had a baffling interaction with the paladin who he'd done the thing to, where for some reason she came in - looking ghastly - and asked if Alfirin had been hurting him? And said she wasn't going to blame him for it because he had been enslaved by the Empire with his compulsions, even after he explained that he had totally wanted to do it? They had a brief and confusing argument about whether Altarrin could be under Aroden's influence without having repeatable-miracles of one of the two standard kinds, which he apparently doesn't so maybe Aroden doesn't like him that much. 

The paladin said some things? She made this whole little speech, actually, Arbas isn't sure what she was angling for but he can try to recall it as clearly as possible for the interrogator.

Aroden can't even afford to act on this planet. He hasn't been possessing anybody or granting spells to anybody or nudging anything or granting any visions. And even if He could, I don't see how forcing paladins to fall helps at all with checking whether someone who had a vision from Aroden has been altered by it, because as you would also know if you'd been paying any attention when you were reading my mind, paladins fall if we're not Lawful Good and that's not how anything else in my world works, at all!

Alfirin Wished us back. Aroden didn't lift a finger, Iomedae says He didn't even tell her what you did. Alfirin and Iomedae learned what you'd done and Iomedae thought you might kill me while you'd twisted me up like that and I'd refuse a resurrection and I wouldn't get an afterlife. You didn't win anything with Aroden, you just made it so there's no one Iomedae can send, because she's not, going to ask people to be erased forever for the cause of communicating with people who hate us and don't believe anything we have to say and don't want to change that and can't even murder us cleanly without trying to rip our eternity away first...

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... Huh. Interesting way of thinking about things.

(also, aaaargh the Empire is in terrible shape argh argh argh.)

Does he have any idea what "Lawful Good" means? It sounds like a technical term, here.

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It's a paladin thing? They have all these implausibly goody-goody rules about acceptable behavior and they have to make Very Serious Oaths to stick to them and will get kicked out of the order if they break those rules. They seem to think about it like the Law part and the Good part are different things, sort of, but Arbas can't really figure out why. 

They take oaths really seriously. The paladins were briefed that the Empire might try to force them to make oaths and they shouldn't do it or should at least be thinking at the time that a mind-controlled oath didn't count? 

 

They also talk about it a bit like it's also a...law of how magic works in their world...? This doesn't make a lot of sense to Arbas, but it sounds like they think Aroden can only give the 'paladin' kind of repeatable-miracle to people who are ""Lawful Good"" and they'll automatically lose it if they break the rules. They seemed to think he'd done this to Kiritan, except he can't see how that works, since she didn't do anything, he just eventually got her to think that she didn't want to be Aroden's anymore. 

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Huh. Odd. Continue?

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(Arbas does seem to be Arbas, at least, and not under any unfamiliar complications.)

(Ugh. He liked Altarrin.)

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After the baffling tearful lecture from Kiritan, he was left on the floor for a while longer (they did offer him food and Altarrin tried to persuade him it was safe but he was Not Convinced) and eventually some guy in armor with a fancy magic sword came in. He introduced himself as Marit and said he was 'Iomedae's but not Aroden's' and wasn't religious. He said Iomedae was planning to send him back to the Empire with Arbas? Though clearly that got changed later, probably because Iomedae is not that much of an idiot, but he thinks the letter Altarrin sent with him is about negotiating safe passage for him so he can come as a replacement delegate. 

He demanded to know from Arbas "what in all the hells has been going on" and, when asked to be more specific, just wanted Arbas' explanation of the Empire "as told by people who don't hate the place". Arbas gave him the standard spiel. He asked for the Empire's view of Iomedae. Arbas explained all the reasons why the Empire doesn't trust Iomedae at all. 

 

He made another go at persuading Arbas that Iomedae couldn't be evil because paladins have to follow all the implausibly nice rules? Arbas can try to recall this conversation word-for-word as well, it was...memorable. 

I assume you have already been told, 'she's a paladin, she literally cannot have done half the things you just listed', and you are skeptical either that paladins are a thing or that she's really a paladin and not faking it? Which one?

Arbas explained that it doesn't matter what principles a godfollower claims to be committed to, or what treaties they sign, because the real predictor is the god, and gods can't have principles or hold to treaties. And he said something like:

So the way paladins are claimed to work, the way everyone thinks they work at home, is that if they break their vows, ever, their god strips them of their powers and they're fallen and disgraced. The thing that happened with Kiritan, except not of their own will, done to them from the god side. 

And I know Iomedae's vows, and they very much do not allow mind controlling people to enslave them and put them to work against their life's work, or making promises and breaking them, or even lying. So if she's doing those things, she has gotten around - maybe with Aroden's help - what we think is a law of the universe.

Arbas pointed out that it would be smart of Aroden to make an exception for Iomedae, His most powerful servant, even if He liked to make his other toys follow all the rules as a condition for getting shiny miracles. Marit said:

I think you might be underestimating what a big deal it would be, at home? Iomedae goes around wearing more than a tenth of the wealth of Taldor, and the reason they trust her with it is that she's a paladin, and she said she'll give it back when the crusade is over. Iomedae is conquering herself kind of a lot of territory, and the reason they trust her with that is that she drew some lines on the map and promised she had no intentions outside of them. That's the enormous advantage paladins have, that they can just say shit, and everyone believes them, because they believe she'd lose all of her powers if she ever lied to them. And of course, if it wasn't obvious, no one has ever, ever caught her in a lie. So maybe Iomedae and Aroden found out a way to pretend Iomedae's still a paladin when actually she's not. But every lie she tells is risking the whole Shining Crusade falling apart and half a dozen wars.

Also I'd murder her personally, if that's helpful to hear? There aren't many people who could do it but I might be able to.

Arbas kind of likes the guy? At least he did after that point. No one else has been willing to even talk about murdering Iomedae. This man seems like he could maybe be open to being convinced that Iomedae is not all she's cracked up to be. 

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Hmm. Interesting. So that's the professional diplomat they send in to manipulate him, and that's the tack he picked - "we really are the good guys, anyone who could visit our universe, which you can't, can check and confirm."

And then...?

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Yup, he concurs, that's their diplomat, the one they're considering sending. Probably expendable.

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Arbas will try to remember that!

He pressed a bit harder on the point that Iomedae does seem to have been operating in the Eastern Empire, both with Altarrin and because you can't actually just use a cutout to do your dirty work for you and expect the affected party to treat that like you're perfectly toeing the line of your agreement not to mess with them? He seemed very sure that Iomedae wouldn't have technically violated her word, because of the paladin rules, but was at least willing to acknowledge that it was very much a technically and "You're not supposed to do that, she'll be embarrassed if I call her out on it" which is, like, not nothing? In general he seemed kind of pissed off with Iomedae for leaving him with such a disaster to try to deal with diplomatically. 

 

...Arbas came back to the point that gods aren't like people, they fundamentally can't be trusted because they can't even see all the things that people work with, they're just things that tug on Foresight until it's a pretty pattern they like, and they keep claiming Aroden is different but the Empire has heard all sorts of people claim their god was different and it's never been borne out. 

He said...

It's not just Aroden. We're from different planets, remember? Iomedae was wrong that yours feeds its souls into the River like the planets we know of, and you guys are wrong about our gods. They do use Foresight, but they don't at all sound to me like the same kind of entity. They definitely do know what lies and truth are. Law and Chaos are god-concepts as much as human ones. Some gods give out truthtelling spells. There's a god who will renounce his followers for writing misleading contract terms.

Arbas thinks this is bullshit but he's not especially trying to provide interpretation or commentary, yet, just relaying as much as he can remember as accurately as possible. It sounds like bullshit though. 

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Yup, sure does.

(And, yup, sure does sound like he's the diplomat, called in to deal with messes made by non-diplomats. Restra isn't a diplomat, but she can has enough experience in other fields to sympathize.)

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That is an obvious lie to try as long as they can't check it, yes.

... She's not claiming the afterlives are true here, then, where people can check. So she's adapting her story to what fits the audience.

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This is in fact the thing Arbas brought up next! It's awfully...something...how Iomedae keeps making all of these claims, both about how her world is so great and how cooperative she wants to be with them, and then yanking away every route the Empire has to verifying any of those claims! It's suspicious and terrifying! 

He brought it up, and his recollection is that Marit said, roughly:

Iomedae is terrified that the Empire will run into her enemies' arms and give them a hundred diamonds to destroy her.

There are truthtelling spells that the gods give out, if that would be convincing. There are books explaining Law and what we think the gods mean by it. But if the fundamental situation here is that the Empire wants to see Golarion for itself, and Iomedae thinks the Empire will trap her soul in a rock as soon as it can find someone to pay to do that, then it just comes down to whether the Empire finds a way to Golarion before Alfirin convinces Iomedae to conquer it.

Which was, you know, not something Arbas could argue with? He said...he can't remember what exactly he said, he was pretty distracted, but he said something about how it sure sounded like they were stuck waiting to see which of those things was going to happen. And Marit said that Iomedae still didn't want to give up yet?

She thinks that maybe you actually won't horrendously torture diplomatic envoys until they no longer are willing to accept a resurrection, so long as they aren't religious, and that would mean we could actually send envoys who you don't think are obviously mind controlled, such as me, and that means we could negotiate something less stupid.

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She hasn't the faintest idea whether or not they tortured diplomatic envoys or if Marit is just exaggerating because he and Iomedae hate the Empire, but if they did she's sure it was justified.

"I'll pass that along."

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Ah, realpolitik, nice to hear it. Wait, no, that's diplomacy.

SIGH. Insufficiently paranoid...

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Right. 

So the next thing that happened is that Arbas (who was pretty sure at that point that Marit would regret his life choices if he decided to show up as a delegate, since it felt like Marit was still living in the Unreasonably Nice Paladin Rules world) said it was his life and Arbas couldn't exactly stop him from making that choice. 

Marit said something like:

If you were like 'this is a stupid plan and will result in tons of problems, here's what to do instead to deescalate this whole mess', I'd probably listen to you. Who else am I going to listen to, Iomedae? She pretty clearly is at fault for things getting this bad in the first place, even if I'd be shocked to learn she actually betrayed a negotiation or broke a promise

And then Marit brought up the whole 'the Empire will torture Iomedae's diplomatic envoys into refusing being resurrected with resurrection magic' and Arbas pointed out that he hadn't even been TRYING to do that. 

...Arbas asked if Iomedae was going to be able to fix the paladin who he had convinced-slash-mind-controlled into renouncing Aroden. Marit said they would find out in the morning - he's not sure why then specifically - but that he thought probably. Arbas isn't entirely sure why he bothered asking about that, now, except - he kind of likes Kiritan, she was impressive, and he was curious what would happen to her? 

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Understood. This seems to be confirming all of her opinions. Go on.

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Marit said some more things about why Iomedae was so upset about Arbas trying to break the godmindcontrol on her paladin. 

Here's a planet with no afterlives and people will mind control you into not wanting to be alive anymore and then that's it, you're gone, you lose everything forever. The reason Iomedae sent you paladins in the first place was so Aroden could grab their souls.

Arbas pointed out that they super wouldn't have let Kiritan kill herself, and Bastran had pretty clearly ordered them to send her back alive, so they wouldn't even have denied her the afterlives? Though, like, also Arbas thinks the afterlives sound overrated, if they involve belonging to gods. 

 

And then Marit asked if he wanted them to send Altarrin in with all the otherworldly mind-control taken off, so Arbas could mindread him, and, uh - 

 

 

- he did that, and he definitely....saw some interesting things....and he thinks there were some actual serious state secrets involved? Honestly, Arbas has not really bothered to interpret what's going on, that's not his job or his skillset, but - if he's going to keep going here then he should definitely check that Junior Inquisitor Restra is either cleared to know bizarre terrifying state secrets, or else expendable? 

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Oh, both, but these might be unusually bizarrely terrifying so she'll check with her superiors.

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So, there's an actual risk here! Kastil is cleared for all state secrets that anyone's made a cleared list for instead of just sensibly storing it in their heads, but there might be some kind of sabotage programming in Arbas that they could discover with a lot more searching if they weren't time-constrained such that he'll murder Kastil if he sits down.

... He is knowingly taking a risk (mind-control that doesn't show up to mage-sight exists, even if it is spectacularly rare) but they have already scanned him, and Kastil thinks it's a risk worth taking. He'll go relieve Restra and sit down in front of Arbas.

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Oh, neat, it's Kastil. Arbas doesn't like him, and the feeling is mutual, but Arbas will at least admit that Kastil knows what he's doing. 

...and definitely isn't expendable, which is - intriguing, as information about the Empire's current priorities. 

 

He leans back in his chair. Grins at Kastil.

"Hey. So they asked me if I wanted to read Altarrin's mind, right, with their word that he wasn't under their mind-control anymore. I said, if any of it were true it'd convince me sooner or later – but not you, 'cause you're a paranoid bugger and you hate me. ...Also I think they can almost certainly hide their mind-control from mage-sight." 

A pause. 

"I'm– it was pretty convincing, and also it's absurd and ridiculous and you're gonna think I've lost my mind." Eyeroll. "But you probably already thought I was mind-controlled, so what's the difference, I guess." 

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"Arbas."

He is a paranoid bugger. It's his job. Slight inclination of the head, there. "Yes. Yes."

"And yes, I suspect so."

"Tell me."

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Arbas is still trying to go through everything in chronological order, since he hasn't exactly had much of a chance to think through it. 

"Backing up - before Altarrin got there, Marit asked me first if the Emperor trusted me, I said he was probably mad at me after my plan to see if I could break the Aroden mind-control on the paladins got everyone upset. ...And then, when they changed their mind-control so I could use Thoughtsensing at all, Altarrin wasn't there yet but I could read Marit. 

"He was thinking this was the worst mission ever, and Iomedae and Alfirin were having a fight? And - he was thinking it was the worst kind of fight, because Iomedae was probably wrong - on the question of whether to just go ahead and invade the Empire, I assume. Anyway, that was interesting." 

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... No, that is interesting. Unless they can fake Thoughtsensing or Marit is good enough to lie through it.

"It is."

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Right. 

Arbas asked what was going on with Iomedae and Alfirin, it seemed both politically and personally complicated, and they had a bit more back and forth about that, Marit said, more or less, that the crusade desperately needs Alfirin so she can mostly do whatever she wants, and Iomedae wants people around who'll tell her when she's wrong. And that Alfirin is ambitious and dangerous and Marit doesn't trust her, though she wouldn't break her word because of the whole ""Lawful"" thing, and also he doesn't trust anyone. 

He thought the Empire would lose, if Alfirin decided to fight and conquer it, which...seems pretty plausible. 

 

 

And then Altarrin showed up, and put Arbas' normal compulsions back before dropping his shields so that Arbas could read him. Arbas will do his best to recount what Altarrin was thinking.

He's immortal and seven hundred years old. In a meaningful sense he founded the Empire and has driven its development ever since, though he wasn't the First Emperor - he was an advisor, Arvad.

The Empire isn't what he wanted. It's not "Tantara, but more robust to hostile neighbors", and it can't be, not without some kind of outside out-of-context force to push away from the narrow awful equilibrium it's landed in. 

It's the fault of the gods. The last time a prosperous, flourishing, free nation started building permanent Gates and teaching everyone to read and all the other corollaries of Civilization, the last time a genius archmage explored new realms of magic, it ended with a superweapon wielded in anger and a world nearly destroyed. The gods must not have seen it coming; Urtho would have been noisy in Foresight too, not only Ma'ar. 

Altarrin survived the Cataclysm. His country didn't. It was the worst mistake he ever made and it's why he wants to find any path here but war. 

Which is, you know, simultaneously completely insane and also...sort of makes sense of Altarrin as a person?? If Kastil gets what he means??? 

 

 

Arbas asked him why he Gated out of the research facility up north. Altarrin was thinking that:

He had trapped himself in the Empire. It wasn't just his actions that were constrained, it was his thoughts, there was new information that didn't fit in the Empire's paradigms and he was stuck, unable to see his way through to a resolution. 

He convinced himself to Gate out by rationalizing that the gods would assassinate him again, and that walking right into Their trap wouldn't serve the Empire at all. He thought later it was more likely he'd end up under suspicion of disloyalty, or just of being influenced by Aroden, and then closely supervised, maybe even taken into custody by the Office of Inquiry. He thought that would have been worse, a position from which he would have very few avenues to de-escalate this into something less completely stupid. 

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Kastil has already heard that, so not displaying a shocked expression will take even less work than normally. "I think the same."

... Uuuuuugh. Kastil can almost believe that, he can see how Altarrin could conclude that if he believed that Iomedae was on his side, he just can't understand how Altarrin concluded that Iomedae was on his side. "Cursed ring of nonmagical mind-altering" remains his best explanation.

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Arbas pushed him on the fact that they know gods can't be trusted and, like, that probably Altarrin wrote the books on why?

 

And Altarrin's thoughts were that, sure, gods of Velgarth can't be trusted, and failing to realize that was Iomedae's biggest mistake. But he thought maybe other worlds were different? He - remembered it not being obvious even to him, until a few centuries into the Empire's history.

 

Altarrin thought that, however many lives were lost because it took him forever to learn that lesson, it was - worth it? That it would've been wrong to jump to conclusions, or something, because a world with gods that weren't terrible would be amazing. He wasn't even sure of the Velgarth gods being fundamentally terrible, just sure that he didn't know how to talk to them? He was sort of vaguely hoping that maybe the Golarion gods could fix that, by being better at talking to mortals. 

 

He was thinking that Aroden's holy texts weren't proof that Aroden was different, but - that they were more likely in a world where they were true, because that was simpler? ....Arbas honestly did not entirely follow that part, there was something something  'an elaborate self-consistent lie to achieve some other nefarious goal' being complicated, and any specific way being less likely, because there would be lots of ways and lots of different kinds of propaganda to accomplish any given nefarious goal? And he thought lies were expensive because you'd have to remember not to disagree with yourself later, and that a clever person - or god - would notice that, and prefer telling the truth? 

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... No, see, if you learn a correct lesson faster, you have the advantage over someone who learns a correct lesson more slowly. He's not sure if Arbas is summarizing badly or if Altarrin made a reasoning error. 

- Okay, okay, that's another obvious mistake, and he frankly cannot understand how Altarrin made it. All cases where you go "wow, this story is so specific, I bet it must be true" can be treated as one. There's a coincidence that Aroden's propaganda sounds convincing to Altarrin, instead of sounding convincing to a random Ifteli, but it's much smaller. It just means that Aroden wants to convince smart people.

... No, see, gods don't use words! - Kastil really just wants to argue with Altarrin. Or disenchant Altarrin, probably. That's much more likely.

(Nod nod nod.)

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Arbas pointed out that Altarrin concluding that Iomedae was trustworthy, and being wrong, would be disastrous. And Altarrin thought - 

 

- that he was too impaired to have reasoned properly through everything, but that doing a cost-benefit analysis isn't one-sided, and the problem with Kastil is that his reasoning is one-sided? Altarrin's feeling about that was mostly admiration, thinking that Kastil's job is to focus solely on downside risks, but - that it's not enough for the Empire overall to be entirely focused on not losing and ignoring opportunities that might let it win

He thought it was unlikely that Gating to Iomedae and surrendering to her would be a catastrophe, and he thought he was justified in thinking that, because - she had given lots of indications that she was inclined to mercy and preferred peace to war? He thought the Empire couldn't update on it because Iomedae was an enemy and a servant of the gods, but Altarrin still thought his decision to Gate to Iomedae hadn't been stupid. 

 

 

...Arbas, to be clear, is pretty sure it was stupid. 

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Yup, it was stupid.

(Well. Was mind control. Same thing.)

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He asked Altarrin about the weird tension between Iomedae and Alfirin. Altarrin acknowledged that there was definitely weird tension and probably a lot of baggage there that he didn't know. 

And Altarrin thought:

He likes Alfirin. She makes sense to him, as a person, and she's ruthless and careful in a way that's actually deeply reassuring. Early in their acquaintance, she let on that she already had a plan to conquer the Empire, and had had it since three candlemarks after they got Iomedae back and she learned of the Empire's existence.

Which was a relief to hear both because it implied she didn't want the Empire that badly, or she would already be in possession of it, and because someone who has a plan, and especially someone who has the general trait of coming up with a plan when it's still only a remote contingency, is going to be cautious, and thoughtful, and not end up killing hundreds of thousands of people because they weren't thinking ahead. 

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"Sounds like him," Kastil says drily. She'll still rip its heart out to enslave it to the gods, but at least the peasants won't starve.

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And Arbas' next question was, why did he pray to Aroden? 

Altarrin claimed he was already convinced by then that Aroden wasn't an enemy who would try to destroy him? He admitted he'd been stressed when Iomedae - who'd apparently gotten a vision from Aroden herself - relayed that Aroden was upset about the Foresight noise from the other world. But he seemed to think it was a big deal that Aroden hadn't asked Iomedae to stop doing things. 

Altarrin thought it was important to check if Aroden could be an actual ally. Also he thought it was an easy and cheap thing to try, praying to Him, because he didn't expect it to be answered? 

 

Well. Apparently it was answered, and - Altarrin's thoughts made it clear that he came away from it with complete confidence in Aroden? Which is incredibly suspicious by itself, as though the rest of this wasn't already suspicious enough. 

 

Arbas will do his best to describe the memory-of-a-memory of what Altarrin actually got when he prayed to Aroden:

  Aroden's city in Axis, bright and full and and glorious

     coils spinning and a glass bulb lighting and

         a place like a library but more, a god that saves every work of mortal hands

          an underwater city, a voice that isn't human that says you care so much, maybe too much, men like you and I should not rule

    flying across an ocean and seeing nothing left, because Aroden made a mistake that couldn't be undone

  a vow that can't be taken back because it wasn't a choice never to walk away never to give up to return again and again no matter the cost no matter how long it takes

    thought he was alone but it's impossible to be alone because everyone can want to live and be safe and happy

the world a god sees, so many sparks that will take the air Aroden can give them as fuel and use it to fight, and so none of them are alone 

 

...it was honestly really touching?

It was obvious to Arbas that this was - personal and deeply meaningful, to Altarrin. Which does NOT MAKE IT LESS SUSPICIOUS. 

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... Kastil did not, actually, hate Iomedae, up until this point. This may be felt to be really kind of strange, but fundamentally, Kastil is too tired for this shit. He doesn't bother hating people. Hating them would involve spending resources. He hates her right now, though, because she's puppeting the husk of his friend.

He cannot, actually, literally, conceive Altarrin going "ah, yes, the downside of attracting the gods' attention is very small and the upside is very large." Apparently if you do that to a god of the other world, they just directly transmit to you mind-control beliefs, possibly directly tailored to yourself, possibly just something that will make you think it was tailored to you.

"Bullshit."

(... honestly he is now starting to wonder if Arbas was lied to by Altarrin faking Thoughtsensing results or someone altering one of their memories' directly, just because that is so amazingly bizarre for anything made out of the remnants of Altarrin.)

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Yeah, it’s pretty bullshit. Arbas remembers feeling more convinced at the time— or, honestly, mostly just wanting to read Aroden’s mind. Yes, he knows that’s stupid, it’s just always where his thoughts go, he doesn’t think being curious about it by itself indicates mind-control.

 

Arbas thinks that was most of the bizarre part? There was some discussion afterward about conditions to negotiate for Marit, where Altarrin seemed more like himself. 

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Mmm. Yes. (Kastil doesn't think it implies anything other than Arbas being either Arbas or a fantastically good imitation.)

Go on?

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Marit wanted Altarrin to confirm that the Empire could credibly agree not to mind control him or do ""insane experiments"" to him. (Arbas was offended. In his opinion, his experiment was creative but totally sane.) Altarrin reminded him that the Empire would want to place the standard compulsions for diplomats so that he couldn't go assassinate the Emperor or something, but expressed that if Bastran did sign a formal agreement, he wouldn't decide to ignore it later unless something ridiculous happened. He said he wanted to scry Marit from a distance to make sure, though, and have a backup plan for Alfirin to kidnap him back if the Empire was misbehaving. Anyway, all of that is in the letter Altarrin wrote and sent with Arbas. 

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Mmm. Yes.

(The fundamental problem is the complete lack of trust, which of course exactly what you would expect. Nonetheless.)

(This is all for people other than Kastil.)

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He'll want less busy people double-checking that Arbas's mind seems to be as it was (he cannot say 'sane', 'healthy', 'intact', or 'not under mind control'), and meanwhile he needs to write up his report. (It will accompany the letter to Bastran.)

He'll begin with a summary of the information from the interrogation, and then move on to his interpretations:

First: Iomedae and her faction have now actually sent a professional diplomat who is not possessed by any gods, and this professional diplomat would like to negotiate a way to show up in the Empire without being taken to pieces by Arbas or whoever is filling his job, and would, indeed, like to engage in diplomacy to settle this without a war.

Second: Altarrin has been mind controlled by Iomedae and Aroden to the point where even Kastil can pick out flaws in his arguments. This probably is actually genuinely not the sort of thing compulsions can fix, at least not the last time it came up; there's mindgift mind-altering that does not detect as magical and cannot be fixed in any known way. (He really doesn't like the gods.)

Third: From the fact that they recently pulled off resurrections, Present Iomedae should be assumed to be the same person as the last Iomedae to use the name.

Fourth: In his estimate of the available information, based on how many Final Strikes it took to kill Iomedae last time, Kastil does not think they can win a war with her, unless her resurrections are very, very restricted, which their giving free resurrections to the Empire argues strongly against.

Fifth: They are represented as not trying to conquer the Empire because of Complicated Internal Politics between Iomedae and Alfirin, with Iomedae being the don't-conquer-them faction and Alfirin being the conquer-them faction. Kastil doesn't know if this is true, or if it's that the enemy faction gave up on feeding them simple lies and is now trying to feed them complex lies. (He's slightly leaning towards the latter, just because they are clearly still lying and why trust a liar's word about anything.)

.. Can he go back to trying to track down the Mirrorgrave's allies now?

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Bastran is so tired. He slept for ten candlemarks straight, which really should have helped, but it's a sort of tiredness that has nothing to do with how rested he is. 

He's so confused. It feels like a deeper layer of confusion than just not knowing whether Iomedae is telling the truth about any of this, or what she's angling for. It feels like there isn't a coherent world, that there are just...fragments, sensical in isolation but subtly incompatible, puzzle pieces that don't fit together. 

 

(Kastil thinks they might not actually be able to fix Altarrin. It feels unfair. He wants to shout at it, like a child having a tantrum, and demand that the world give him a better answer, because that one is unacceptable. He knows it doesn't work that way. And Kastil might be wrong, but...he generally doesn't get very far by assuming Kastil might be wrong.) 

 

Complicated internal politics. Whether or not the specifics are a lie, it's obvious in hindsight that the would have some kind of internal politics, that Iomedae's organization isn't going to be a monolith, even if the paladins sort of acted like it was. 

...He doesn't think they can win a war either. He had his doubts even before this. 

 

There's going to be another round of agonizing meetings and arguments, probably, but in the end it's his decision what to do with this information, and he's not sure he expects the arguments to give him any new information. So...what would he decide, if he had to decide now? Where do they go from here? 

Probably they agree to the conditions and accept the diplomat. It might be a trick - and it's probably only being offered at all because Iomedae thinks it will advantage her, and give her more of what she wants at a lower price - but he doesn't like the alternatives any better. And...maybe it will go better, if they can talk to someone who isn't acting like the Empire is gratuitously evil and engaging in diplomacy at all is a generous concession. 

 

He'll organize a meeting anyway, for whichever of his advisors want to argue their case for something different, but his starting recommendation is to accept Altarrin's terms. 

(And, yes, Kastil should get back to investigating the Mirrorgrave's allies.) 

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In fact, all of his advisors are willing to just accept the diplomat. Whether this is because they want to buy more time for war (Macalay, Pierson), genuinely want to avert a war they're worried about losing (Voltha, Declane, Elnore), or have some more complicated reason (Siman, Harleth), they're all prepared to listen and agree. They're all obviously worried about maintaining security against aliens, but that doesn't mean they aren't willing to at least look like they're trying to talk it out.

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And Bastran will write a reply, confirming that they accept Altarrin's terms and adding in some specifics. Here is an exact list of the standard compulsions they would use for security; for this, they won't include a compulsion against leaving, though they will block the diplomat from trying to go to unauthorized locations within the Empire. They do intend to use Thoughtsensing, and will reserve the option of a compulsion against actively lying, but are willing to agree not to use a compulsion that forces answers. They will not use any directly motivation-affecting compulsions, or any positive action-compulsions to force the diplomat to do anything against his will, but they will express that they may expand the range of negative, action-blocking compulsions if new reasons come up to be worried about security. If this occurs, they will immediately send a message to Iomedae via the existing message-drop channel. 

 

Here is a proposed neutral location for Altarrin to transport the diplomat, so they can have a team ready to place the compulsions and escort him to a secure facility, at a proposed time tonight. They will if asked relay letters for the diplomat, if he wants to write back to Iomedae about something, and give him access to the replies. Bastran's people will reserve the right to read said messages before they're passed on, but will not make alterations and will pass everything on exactly as it was received. 

 

Bastran will run the letter by his advisors before arranging to drop it off. 

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Iomedae is spending fairly little time thinking about the Empire. It's not that she doesn't earnestly hope that a negotiated solution is possible, and it's not that there isn't lots she could usefully be doing. But - the worst case scenario, with the Empire, is that they rig themselves to be hard to conquer with Domination and thousands of people, maybe tens of thousands, die when they have to seize it. 

 

The worst case scenario with the Mirrorgrave and whatever associates he brought to Velgarth is, well, the loss of two worlds to the undead. So her priorities are figuring out what Tar-Baphon knows and who he sent here, keeping pressure on him at home, having an organized force in Velgarth that can be Gated over to take the Mirrorgrave's base of operations down once they find it,  finding it, and making preparations so if Tar-Baphon shows up here himself they can make him regret it. It'd be a bonus to figure out how to destroy the cloak but it's going to be something horrendous requiring the soul-destruction of thirteen of her people, she just knows it, and it's probably not actually worth that.

(Tar-Baphon can not, in fact, safely show up on a battlefield that has Iomedae and Alfirin on it. He does it occasionally, when he has something important to accomplish on the battlefield that his lieutenants cannot, but unless he's given them a lot of other things to worry about, Alfirin and the other high level wizards can counterspell him, and Iomedae could probably kill him in a round, if he ever let her have one. Tar-Baphon doesn't lose that much by that, he'll come back, but it's him out of commission for a few days and they'd get all his gear and he probably doesn't have duplicates of the minor artifacts (though he also, relatedly, may not wear them to the battlefield).)

 

"If the Church of Pharasma were operating here I'd ask them for a Miracle to point us at all undead on the planet, I bet She could swing that. But - I don't actually want to invite Her... I don't know, maybe I should, Aritha seemed to think Golarion got a better deal than Velgarth does. It just seems like really something, to cause nearly all the Imperial leadership to go to Hell when they'd otherwise have been reborn as someone else and probably led perfectly lovely lives."

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It's - in some sense - reassuring that it was the Mirrorgrave. It suggests some things that Tar-Baphon does not know, yet. The Mirrorgrave is a trusted, competent, loyal subordinate, but not the one the Tyrant would send for a mission of conquest. It was an information-gathering mission, or a distraction, but it was not a serious attempt to conquer the planet which means that Tar-Baphon does not yet (or did not yet, as of a few days ago) know how valuable Velgarth would be to him, or to his enemies. This puts a bit of an upper bound on how bad the current situation is, with the Mirrorgrave temporarily out of commission.

Unfortunately, that upper bound is still quite high. The Mirrorgrave almost certainly did not come alone. One wish can transport multiple creatures. Apart from it rendering them unavailable for use back on Golarion, there is little reason for Tar-Baphon not to have sent another nineteen of his servants; the fact that his greater servants would be missed back home doesn't change this, it merely means that the others he would send would be lesser creatures. Also, bags of holding exist. "Twenty" is not even remotely the limit, either. The only reason she thinks he sent less than a thousand undead is that nobody but Tar-Baphon can control a thousand undead, and the Tyrant's direct control cannot function over these distances. (This, too, she infers from the fact that it was the Mirrorgrave, and not someone of less certain loyalties.)

The worst-case likely scenario, then, is that the Mirrorgrave came with a collection of undead that can reproduce themselves, hid a small number of each kind in each of a number of different locations, and either put them into dormancy or gave them orders to restrain themselves for a few days, and any minute now they are going to wake up and start turning the Empire into an expanding swarm of vampires, shadows, spectres, ghouls, wraiths, wights, and probably at least a couple more that she's never heard of. It would render the planet much less usable to Tar-Baphon than if he took it with its living population intact, but he might want to deny the planet to the Crusade enough for that to be worth it to him.

Altarrin is working on a search-spell for bags of holding. If it turns out that there's more than a couple that the Crusade did not bring themselves, they should bring Pharasma in, as awful as that outcome is.

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Iomedae prays to Anathei. She doesn't really know what to expect. Iomedae and Sarenrae are not profoundly alike in outlook, and Anathei more alien than that. They do have shared interests, here, in there not being a rapidly expanding circle of death and destruction emanating out from a dozen points across this world, but 'we have shared interests, let's cooperate' is not fundamentally Sarenrae's lens on the world. She thinks, instead, of all of the lives and hopes and dreams that will be extinguished if the Mirrorgrave's forces aren't found in time, all of the things that could have been which will be annihilated, and she tries to make it clear and true of her, that she is trying to extend in this world what Anathei would have her extend in it, boundless hope for the capacity of everyone in it to do better, mercy and peace and stubborn conviction, and she just needs some help knowing where to go to save people.

She tries that for a very long time, because it'd be very very worth it if it worked and because she's hoping that she can at least reduce Foresight noise for the maybe-allied gods if she gives them a better look at her. 

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Whenever she's finished that, Altarrin is waiting for her with Bastran's message accepting the terms for sending Marit as a diplomat. 

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- better than not-that. She'll authorize sending him now, then. - and take a minute away from their undead-finding efforts to say goodbye. 

She doesn't thank him. Marit doesn't like being thanked when he obeys orders he thinks are a bad idea. "I'll get you back," she says instead.

"You'd better." And he'll go.

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Altarrin will Gate him to the designated meeting-spot. 

 

(He's not very worried about having his Gate blasted or being unexpectedly mind-controlled, and Iomedae is right there with Healing. He's still somewhat tense.) 

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They do not blast his Gate or try to kidnap him back! 

 

 

The Empire has assigned a small Imperial Guard team, half a dozen additional Adepts with various specialties, and Legate Sterngal, an un-Gifted diplomat whose most relevant background is his time as senior secretary to the Imperial ambassador in Holy Ithik; he has more practice than most Imperials in being polite to godworshippers. He's low-ranking enough that he's not irreplaceable, but he's not exactly disposable. If they're doing this at all, it seems worth doing right. 

Legate Sterngal will meet Marit inside, after he's been collected by the Imperial Guard and placed under standard compulsions. They're polite but brisk about it. Does Marit put up any resistance? 

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No. His thoughts, which are presumably being read, are that the unLawful mind-control Empire is probably going to place exactly as much unauthorized mind-control as they believe they can get away with, but hopefully they won't believe they can get away with very much, and it's their loss, really, if they want to make him worse at thinking about the situation. 

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Well that's kind of insulting. The Empire is the place of highest law and order in the known world! Also their instructions were, in fact, very clear. They'll place the exact compulsions agreed on. 

(Done in this way, they're quite obvious, but mostly not affecting his thoughts unless he tries to think about, for example, schemes to assassinate the Emperor or destroy their Gate infrastructure.) 

 

Once they're in place, and the Thoughtsenser has confirmed that he's definitely not plotting to harm anyone, he will be escorted through a Gate to the secure building picked out for this, where Legate Sterngal introduces himself - very politely, and he's only gritting his teeth internally - offers him a seat, and suggests that he start by explaining his own understanding of what Iomedae is hoping for him to accomplish here. 

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He will introduce himself as well; he is Marit, swordmage of the Shining Crusade, in Iomedae's service. 

"My understanding is that Iomedae would like to arrive at an immediate agreement with the Empire that will permit us to collaborate on preventing Tar-Baphon from conquering this planet, and then a longer-term peace agreement that looks stable enough she isn't nervous about your having independent access to Golarion."

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The Empire appreciates Iomedae's desire for peace, which the Empire also wants. If Iomedae's claims are true, then they have a great deal of common ground. 

 

 

They are, of course, starting from a difficult position, with so many misunderstandings already behind them. Legate Sterngal will politely point out that, at this point, most of Iomedae's substantive claims are unverified, and currently unverifiable, and this is a tricky position from which to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement. Legate Sterngal recognizes that Iomedae is working hard to build more goodwill, such as by resurrecting some of their dead, though this is also a delicate matter given that it was done as a miracle of Aroden, which would be illegal if done within the Empire proper. 

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Iomedae has no objections to the practice of the Empire in banning miracles within their borders, and doesn't expect that to be an obstacle to a peace agreement. (In his thoughts, Marit is personally even more sympathetic. There should be some country that doesn't put up with any gods and sees what happens, though that country does need to not engage in conquest if it wants him to actually defend it.)

 

They are starting from an incredibly difficult position. The Knights are accustomed to looking for, from other governments, various signals that those governments are capable of sticking to their word when they give it, and of course many such signals don't translate across cultural contexts but recent events have been very damaging on that front and it's now a majority opinion among Iomedae's advisors that the Empire can't be trusted to stick to its word. He's well aware that the Empire believes that Iomedae kidnapped Altarrin and therefore that she can't be trusted either. He has flatly no idea if there's any way around this, but there's lots of things the Knights could offer to build the Empire's confidence in the Knights, if only the Knights themselves had any confidence the Empire was at all trustworthy. They could take parties of delegates from the Empire to their world, for example, convey diplomats from other Golarion nations, send Aritha back, send Altarrin back, teach a lot of Golarion spellcasting that can be used to verify the claims about afterlives and so on...

 

....there was, in fact, a letter about to be sent to the Empire, offering all of these things, when they got the declaration from the Empire that their delegate had been tortured into renouncing her vows. 

 

(Marit is so astoundingly angry about this, though he's trying extremely hard not to show it, what with how it won't help. He's not angry because it was evil. He's angry because it was stupid.)

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Legate Sterngal recognizes that this was alarming to the Knights of Ozem, and came across very badly in terms of their expectations that the Empire would hold to diplomatic agreements. 

(He is, in fact, very annoyed with the Emperor, and particularly with Arbas - the bloody idiot - for deciding this was in any way a good idea. He can't just say that, though, or even get away with much hinting.) 

 

He will say that he believes this may have revealed a...misunderstanding, a difference in cultural context, between the Empire and the Knights of Ozem. He definitely isn't denying that it was hostile, but in this world, it's - not a different kind of hostile than kidnapping a critical researcher on an important project. He cannot bring up any examples of that specific thing happening before, because the repeatable-miracle framework is not a thing here, but it's not something that wouldn't happen if - for example - the Shin'a'in had been taking sides in a rebellion, and dropped some Swordsworn in the Empire as spokespeople, and then their Tayledras enemies kidnapped an important mage-researcher. It's not something that would be banned by treaties, which the Empire certainly does not make a habit of violating.

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He is relieved to hear that the Empire does not make a habit of violating treaties. In Golarion, torturing delegates is definitely in violation of treaties, because when you torture delegates, then it's very hard to have any lines of communication which could be used for deescalating conflicts or arriving at mutual understanding. 

(Is that too condescending? He is trying not to be condescending but 'we don't think of torturing delegates as a particularly different thing than kidnapping non-delegates' is hard to respond to. He is doing his absolute best.)

 

Separately, in Golarion, torturing paladins into renouncing their vows is - well, if they aren't delegates, it wouldn't be a matter of 'you have communicated untrustworthiness as a negotiating partner', but it'd be a matter of - gratuitously horrendous conduct? Like the difference between executing people cleanly and ...grilling their colleagues alive in front of them and feeding them the bodies, or something? It's not that this is dishonorable specifically but it is bad behavior from a negotiating partner because it suggests that when they have the option of doing as much harm as possible, or not doing that, they will do as much harm as possible, even if the value to the Empire of doing so is really quite limited; they could have asked the delegates if paladins can renounce their god or be renounced or be forced to break their vows, they could have asked for a volunteer willing to do such a renunciation and be interrogated before and after it, they could have requested a voluntary renunciation of the particular delegates that they had, etcetera?

 

- this is hard to say delicately. But. The Empire believes that Iomedae mindcontrolled a person who was communicating with her in a diplomatic capacity, and because of this they believe her wholly untrustworthy, and they are entirely right to do so. Sure, technically no treaty existed between the Empire and Iomedae about the conditions of negotiations, but obviously mindcontrolling the delegate for the other side of a negotiation is a tremendously trust-destroying and unlawful thing to do, and obviously the kind of person or organization who'd do it isn't trustworthy in other capacities either. 

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(He thinks that is ENTIRELY REASONABLE and his superiors have been complete idiots about this. He's wondering if Marit thinks the same thing about Iomedae, actually.) 

 

...Taking a step back, can they get Iomedae's side of the story on what happened with Altarrin? Since she is vehemently claiming that the thing that happened wasn't mind control, even though everyone in the Empire who's ever met Altarrin is unanimous that his "defection" was wholly out of character and cannot be explained any other way. 

(He will not say explicitly that the Empire is at least being upfront about its actions rather than pretending they didn't do the thing that Iomedae is upset about, but there's some subtext.) 

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Yes, absolutely. So, his understanding is that the Empire believes that Iomedae got a custom magic item of mind control secretly made on short notice (or happened to have a mind-control Scholar's Ring already) and sent it through and - presumably Altarrin wasn't the only person to wear it and no one else has gotten mind controlled, right, so she must have the ability to decide remotely when to activate its mind control abilities?

Which isn't really how Golarion magic items work. He knows they can't verify this yet but he's happy to bring in a shipment of Golarion magic item experts from all over who'll testify to it. 

- anyway, and that Iomedae used this item to mind control Altarrin into defecting and buying some diamonds and Gating directly to her, leaving the item itself behind. The Empire still has the item. Presumably they've had the opportunity to look at it more closely. If this is what Iomedae did, it'll be noticeable on close inspection to any Golarion-item-experienced person who looks at it, which happens to include Marit himself. And this is an unnecessary loose end, for hypothetical evil Iomedae - Altarrin could have brought the evil cursed ring with him. 

 

 

What the Knights believe is that Altarrin put on Iomedae's headband. Which is definitely mind-affecting, but the Knights didn't plant it intentionally, or represent it as anything it wasn't, the Empire grabbed it off Iomedae's corpse after killing her and decided themselves to let people wear it. And the headband is a priceless magical artifact on direct loan from the Emperor of Taldor, and it makes you a wiser, more clever person, a genius.

It is not at all rare for putting on an artifact-tier enhancement headband to make people renounce their god, or their King, or regret their entire life's work, or realize in a blazing moment of glorious genius that there's a solution to a problem they never admitted to themselves that they had. Artifact-tier headbands do that. That's what they're for, that's why they're valuable.

Altarrin put on the headband and realized that Iomedae's letters and Aroden's holy books reflected something he'd cared about and fought for his whole life, something important to him, and that the Empire was barrelling towards a war with her that didn't need to be fought, and that he couldn't explain himself to the rest of the Empire without being assumed to have been manipulated. So he defected, still clutching the headband - which was decisive -- and not the ring, which was irrelevant.

 

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Could they perhaps have some other examples of cases where an 'artifact headband' has caused people to have huge revelations and drastically abandon all their current plans to go barreling after new ones? Does it...ever go well for them? Because, see, it does not from here look like Altarrin's decision was a genius move that will let him better pursue peace. Sure, he would have faced suspicion and paranoia if he'd returned to Jacona when summoned and explained his point of view, but it would have been retrievable, whereas defecting is really not and, from Altarrin's perspective, has closed most of his paths to convince anyone in the Empire of anything. And Altarrin is smart even without an 'artifact headband' making him smarter; he would have known that.

Which means that his decision very starkly looks like - something that serves Iomedae's ends, not the Empire's, and certainly not Altarrin's personal interests. 

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- so, Altarrin is now free and operating in conjunction with Iomedae and Alfirin on preventing Tar-Baphon from conquering both planets. The diamonds he brought them on the first day saved a hundred thousand lives, maybe twice that, and he is - as Marit understands it - the kind of person who cares deeply about that.

One of the things an artifact headband sometimes does is make you realize you care about - more kinds of things, more kinds of people - than you were previously willing to admit mattered to you. Or that the war you're fighting is not the one actually worth fighting.

Altarrin's defection may have made the situation vis a vis the Empire and Iomedae's diplomatic relationship much worse. But instead of being under suspicion and possibly arrest when the Mirrorgrave attacked, he is wearing all the best enhancement magic Golarion could buy him and working in conjunction with Alfirin on finding the Mirrorgrave's hideout before the undead the Mirrorgrave unleashed start spreading.

Adepts whose deaths - probably by the hands of the terrible Velgarth gods - he has grieved for years are being resurrected.

The Velgarth gods will never be able to deny the Empire its most brilliant and ambitious lights through assassination again, because they can keep being resurrected.

 

Marit thinks Altarrin's decision looks pretty good from Altarrin's perspective.

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Legate Sterngal will acknowledge that this is a compelling list of upsides, if any of them are true - they are, again, all currently unverifiable to the Empire, Altarrin continues to be out of scrying range even if they're claiming he's currently on the same planet at all. 

Still, it seems like Altarrin shouldn't have been able to know that things would go that well at the point when all he had was a couple of letters and intelligence on Iomedae's actions in Oris. And he's not a reckless man; he wouldn't take a leap of faith into the unknown even if the potential upside was very high. Even if Iomedae and the Knights of Ozem were willing to show Altarrin all sorts of proof of their common ground - which, he will again note delicately, is exactly what they're not letting the Empire check - Altarrin at the point when he Gated out didn't know any of that, and without some other form of influence their story fails to account for, it seems like he ought to have been in the same information state that everyone else was at the time? They had somewhat fewer reasons for suspicion then, it was before Aritha's kidnapping, but Legate Sterngal still thinks Altarrin couldn't have been confident in Iomedae, in which case it was a massive and very uncharacteristic risk to take given all of his existing knowledge about gods. 

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He notes that the resurrections should be verifiable, Altarrin's been dropping the resurrected people off, and that if the Empire hadn't been forewarned by Iomedae in the diplomatic communication that accompanied the paladin delegates then the Mirrorgrave situation would've gone far worse. They can presumably just consider internally how that would've gone if not for Iomedae.

 

....so among the things Iomedae sent Altarrin were the whole of Aroden's biography from his life as a human before he ascended, and his holy book. Marit suspects that maaaaybe if the people who've been permitted to read those have all been under extremely strict compulsions and surveilled by Thoughtsensers, then the Empire would not have an accurate sense of how persuasive and compelling they might be to someone who is reading them while not expecting to be seized and imprisoned for a stray thought like 'huh, this is credible evidence that Aroden or Golarion gods in general are different from our gods'. Also, smarter people can make more inferences from the same text. Perhaps to most people, a description in Aroden's holy book of how Aroden dramatically improved a common utility spell, increasing prosperity and flexibility worldwide, would be unpersuasive, but to a great mage like Altarrin who could follow the actual inventive process, it would be more persuasive because he could identify it as a real magical innovation that would credibly work, the work of a man he'd admire and want to be allies with.

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Perhaps. The Legate has not, himself, read the texts. His understanding of the contents, based on the notes taken by Altarrin at the time, was that they come across as...talking about many of the Empire's principles, especially as described in the more - purely ideological - early works by Arvad and other sages, before the hard realities of a world with hostile gods had really sunk in. 

...He thinks they should come back to that, actually, because it seems like the single root for most of the misunderstandings. And Marit did start to imply, earlier, that they've now come to agree with the Empire's position, that Velgarth's gods are awful and cannot be negotiated with or trusted - including by their own followers, who in Legate Sterngal's own opinion are often the worst-affected victims, he isn't sure how much the Knights of Ozem know about Holy Ithik but...well. Not pretty. 

In the Empire's paradigm, gods - or, to be more precise and concrete in their language, powerful entities existing across multiple planes and both sensing and manipulating the world primarily through Foresight - are convergently going to be fundamentally unable to understand the perspective of mortals, who live in linear time in the material plane and have mortal concerns - for food and shelter, for safety, for friendship and love and belonging, for art and music and dance, for knowledge and understanding and mastery - that just don't map to godconcepts. The gods probably don't hate mortals, it's just that mortals are to gods what the tiny small-lives that cause many diseases are from a human point of view. Convenient, sometimes - you can use small-lives to brew beer and make bread rise - but something to be contained and harnessed and casually destroyed when it causes problems, not something to be communicated with

Iomedae is claiming that Aroden is different - that all the gods of her world are different - but, as far as Legate Sterngal is aware, the claim is still that Golarion's gods are powerful extraplanar entities that operate via Foresight. And...even a human mind, ascended to a godlike entity, would surely be warped beyond recognition just by existing on such a different substrate. 

 

So...what gives? Why the difference? It might be more possible to build a shared understanding if the Empire has an understanding of Aroden with more moving parts in it. 

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So, the way the story of creation gets told in Golarion  - and it's probably bullshit, these things always are - Pharasma, the creator of the universe, pulled it taut across two axes, which are called Law-Chaos and Good-Evil, and She built the outer planes corresponding to each possible correspondance - Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral -

- the afterlives are real. He has summoned intelligent construct-creatures from them and talked with them at length. Some people have visited them, and many many more have scried them. Golarion people can scry their dead relatives and they'll carry on a conversation that would be very hard to fake, about things only they knew when they were alive. Marit is a skeptical person and interrogated his grandmother for quite a while once he was powerful enough to cast a scry himself. 

The Empire is going to complain they cannot verify this. This is a very urgent problem the Knights are trying to address. Aritha Tevanir is working on an interplanar scry so she can check for herself and as soon as the Knights allow it she's going to bring it back and show everyone. Marit is happy to do his own scries but the Empire can of course just disbelieve them as illusions. But - entertaining temporarily the theory that Golarion really actually does have afterlives -

Law means something. It means being - verifiable, it means engaging in trade, it means being a trustworthy negotiating party, it means being the kind of thing that can give your word and, having given your word, can keep it. Aroden is an ascended human, his values are much less alien than the values of most of the gods, but the other lawful gods are also the kind of entities that can trade rather than just manipulate, that will reliably  - if they answer questions at all, which they do through a special powerful spell that builds a scaffold that lets gods give answers to questions without touching the mind of the caster and thereby damaging them - answer the questions truthfully, because that is a concept they understand.

Not-Lawful gods also have the concept. They are not verifiable shapes, but they understand what there is there. No one would say about a Golarion god "they just don't even understand the concept of truth, it's not a lens they can see in the world'. Of course it's a lens they can see in the world! It's supposedly one of the foundations of all Creation! They give out truth spells! They renounce their priests for dishonesty! The powerful outsiders - afterlife-beings - that serve Lawful gods generally are claimed to be literally not capable of lying or breaking their word.

Marit is a suspicious person. He isn't totally sure that he buys all of this. It's obviously the case that a being which can lie might pretend that it can't. It'd be an expensive pretense to keep up, but you can't rule it out.

Iomedae spent a decade systematically attempting to verify that if she got Aroden's oath He'd actually mean it, and that is why Marit is sworn to the service of Iomedae and not anyone else in the world, but he does not extend the trust he extends Iomedae to anyone else just because she trusts them. Iomedae says Aroden is actually trustworthy, based on researching His life and holy books and talking to steadily more powerful and incomprehensible beings in Heaven and in Axis and doing tons of study of Law and what the gods mean by it, and Marit thinks that, well, this is more likely to be true than not. He's really not asking the Empire to believe it is definitely true.

But if Aroden is lying, it is because Aroden knows full well what truth is and is for His own benefit conducting an incredibly elaborate deception that stands up to intense scrutiny, for centuries. Aroden is definitely not not the kind of thing that knows what lying is. And He definitely knows what human values are, and either cares about them intensely or purports convincingly to care about them intensely. And He does do things like grant repeatable-miracles to people who genuinely care about those things, and run a church that conducts lots of research and science and magical development.

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.....Wow. Okay. Legate Sterngal is...not sure that he's enough of a philosopher for this conversation, the concept of reality on a fundamental physical-law level being divided into nine boxes along two axes is hurting his head. Why. It's so...specific...and bizarre...

 

He doesn't say this. 

He respects Marit's suspicion, and that he checked, and is still holding uncertainty about it even now. That's an admirable attitude. It certainly does sound like from Marit's honest perspective, the world he observed is compatible with 'Law exists as a concept for gods as well as mortals' and 'Aroden is Lawful' and 'Aroden understands human needs and interests well enough either to promote them or to convincingly fake doing so', which by itself does seem like enough to confirm that He is a different kind of entity than, say, Vkandis Sunlord. It remains the case that the Empire has to take Marit's word on it, of course, but - 

 

(Well, from the Legate's perspective, Iomedae running an elaborate deception on Marit in case she ever had to send him to another world, to convincingly believe even in his own thoughts that Aroden cared about humans and had common ground with the Empire, would ALSO be a very strange choice to make.

Or they can beat Thoughtsensing. Or they feed everyone the obvious propaganda as a matter of course. His report, when he makes it, will be pored over with great suspicion, and Marit's argument won't be taken to mean much. But leaning into Maximum Suspicion and Hostility is not actually helpful during negotiations, and Sterngal has ever interacted with a priest and been polite about their genuine faith in their god, he is capable of it.) 

 

- Velgarth, to be clear, does not have a creation story that anyone with a scientific mindset remotely believes. They can garner some facts about ancient history - and even-more-ancient prehistory - through scholarship, but they don't actually know where the world came from, and the top theory is that it just...is...and has been for millions if not billions of years, and mortals with their Gifts probably happened as a result of the same kind of process by which animal-breeding works. If Golarion is different then - well, for one thing that actually makes it really weird that it has humans in it??? Legate Sterngal is not himself a scholar and has no idea what theories they might come up with about it, he's got nothing. 

 

...can they talk more about the powerful scaffolding for talking to gods? And about how the repeatable-miracles system works, and how Aroden is constrained in it? It's another very large difference, and likely still the source of a number of factual and cultural misunderstandings. 

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Yeah. So, he's not a cleric or a paladin, he's never mindread one while they were preparing spells, he doesn't know for sure, but what they describe is a sort of - magical mental interface, through which they select spells without direct mental contact with their god. Sometimes a selection will come up empty, presumably because their god refused that spell for whatever reason, but it doesn't feel like you're sticking your head into a magical sandstorm, which is how actual visions get described. Paladins will select their spells while they're waiting for breakfast and look totally normal the whole time and if they're interrupted it's not a problem except in that they have to start over. 

Marit has seen people get visions from gods a couple times. It happened to Iomedae last week a few days after Altarrin arrived, actually - he's sure that's not, like, a diplomatically helpful thing to disclose, under the circumstances, but it is what happened. Visions from gods cause agonizing pain and sometimes memory loss and are hard to communicate to others in words and are Extremely Suspicious Obviously. (In the specific recent case with Iomedae, she was praying to Aroden for guidance about her plan to take Urgir and the usual scaffold only gives 'yes' 'no' 'unclear' and 'no answer' as response options and the situation was complicated so, she says, He had to actually talk to her. Marit obviously stuck around all evening to watch her very closely. She continued to behave like her usual self except tired and with a headache, and she went ahead with the Urgir plan she'd had before she spoke to Him, delayed one day to address considerations He'd raised.)

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Interesting. 

(...Also, huh, that implies a closer relationship between Iomedae and Marit than was obvious, and the way it was casually dropped - and what Marit is thinking, per the Thoughtsenser's quick report - doesn't come across as a deliberate attempt at manipulating the Empire's view. It's - he's not sure what to make of that, actually, except that Marit might not be as disposable as the obvious assumption implies.) 

 

 

...Arbas claimed that Altarrin had prayed to Aroden. Which is incredibly suspicious to begin with, but even moreso if Altarrin knew that a vision would be agonizingly painful and he would lose memories, especially since he was in Golarion and they're claiming that they were letting him use magic freely. Why didn't he just scry an afterlife himself, or go tour some cities, or read their history books? Does Marit have any idea what he was hoping to achieve by, instead, voluntarily submitting himself to something that even Iomedae found damaging? It just comes across as an insane decision for him to make, from a risk-benefit perspective, and Altarrin, when his mind is his own, is not insane. 

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Yeah, Marit agrees, seems like a terrible decision. He has no idea why Altarrin would've done that and had been assuming that Altarrin was just an insufficiently paranoid person in the middle of stressful confusing uncertain circumstances and prayed like many people do under those circumstances. If Altarrin is supposed to be more paranoid than that, then that's genuinely very weird.

He...also has no idea why evil Iomedae would've forced Altarrin to do that and then openly disclosed that Altarrin had done that? It seems like it hurt her case with the Empire a lot, compared to if it hadn't happened? He agrees that this whole business is tremendously suspicious. 

 

....it was Alfirin who had Altarrin Dominated. Iomedae can't cast Dominate, it's not a paladin spell. It's - possible, though not Marit's leading guess except insofar as it's his only guess, that Alfirin made Altarrin pray to Aroden? In which case the fact that this is wildly inconvenient for the cause of peace with the Empire would've been the whole point. 

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Is that, er, the sort of thing Alfirin might do, presumably without authorization from Iomedae? That seems...complicated and probably very important...and Legate Sterngal would like to better understand the relationship between Iomedae and Alfirin, and where they should be modeled as genuine allies versus fair-weather ones versus pursuing fundamentally different goals that sometimes happen to coincide. 

 

...Is it also possible that Altarrin lied about it? Or that Alfirin implanted a false memory? 

(Velgarth has magic that can do that, though it's on the list of magic the Empire doesn't possess and poorly understands. Golarion almost certainly does.) 

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(Altarrin could've lied about talking to Aroden though he can't think why. Song-sorcerers can modify memories for brief stretches, five minutes at a time, and the Crusade has a couple of them.)

Right! The Alfirin-Iomedae relationship does seem important and is one of the things he came most equipped to explain.

 

"Iomedae is the Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade. Almost everyone in it is directly under her command. Sometimes, powerful wizards want to help out with the crusade but not be in its ordinary command structure. Powerful wizards are ludicrously useful for crusades, so when that's what they want, it's generally what they get. Alfirin is an archmage. She can cast ninth-circle spells, the most powerful kind of spell known to be possible to stabilize at all. She is utterly indispensable to the Crusade. 

She and Iomedae have worked together on and off for most of both of their lives. They genuinely like and respect each other, most of the time. Iomedae trusts Alfirin. ...not to be a good person, but to be a person who acts strategically, and to be Lawful, honorable, to be a person you won't regret being an ally to, one who won't use you against your own purposes.

I don't trust Alfirin. Iomedae's judgment isn't perfect and - Alfirin seems like the sort of context in which I'd expect it to be less reliable than usual. It's a person who shares most of Iomedae's values, or purports to, and cares about Iomedae dearly, and speaks plainly to Iomedae the way few people do, and if she's obviously Evil, well, she's worse when you point it out, she's better when you expect better of her -

- Iomedae and Alfirin share, uncomplicatedly, top priorities. They both want to beat Tar-Baphon. They will work together and treat each others' resources as nearly interchangeable, when they're working on that. Iomedae can't give Alfirin orders, but her requests happen; Alfirin can't demand things of the Knight-Commander, but 'at the Knight-Commander's earliest convenience' is immediate. They're careful with each other. They know that the thing they care most about, the crusade, depends on them both feeling confident in this alliance. 

Insofar as they think the Empire poses a threat to their war with Tar-Baphon, they will both act ruthlessly with whoevers resources are more suited to the task, to stop the Empire from posing such a threat. It's Alfirin that kidnapped Aritha, because the Knights are not very good at high-magic stealth operations in enemy territory. Alfirin would've done it even if Iomedae told her not to, because it's the Crusade at stake, but also Iomedae wouldn't've told her not to, because it's the Crusade at stake.

Their secondary priority with respect to the Empire is the Empire not giving some other power on Golarion a couple hundred diamonds in exchange for destroying the two of them. Iomedae suspects right now that that's what you'd do, if you got access to Golarion, and so she's going to deny it to you, unless somehow that comes into conflict with priority number one of fighting Tar-Baphon. In this, too, my read is that they share interests, because either of them would rescue-from-soul-trapping the other at fairly extraordinary cost and Alfirin doesn't trust that anyone but Iomedae would do that and Iomedae knows that her allies would need Alfirin's help to be likely to succeed at that.

After that -

- after that my best guess is that their priorities are different from one another, because otherwise all of their recent strategic decisions are incredibly bizarre. Alfirin will have contemplated conquering the Empire. She could do it. Archmages are very hard to stop. Your clever precautions against the Mirrorgrave wouldn't be adequate. This we can prove, if you want proof, it's just hard to provide proof without escalating hostilities. I think one hope was that kidnapping Arbas would make this point effectively. 

I am not at all surprised that when Alfirin first proposed conquering the Empire, Iomedae told her not to. And I'm not surprised Alfirin listened. They trade favors readily, they like each other, they mostly try not to strain their relationship over tertiary priorities. And while Alfirin could conquer the Empire herself, if Iomedae were opposed it'd be - herself. The Crusade's administrative infrastructure is all Iomedae's. It'd be a lot more annoying for Alfirin to conquer the Empire without our providing some operational support.

I am very surprised that when Alfirin would definitely have proposed conquering the Empire again, after the incident with Kiritan, Iomedae refused her. Iomedae doesn't like conquest. And a conquest before yesterday would've been damaging to Iomedae's international reputation, it'd make some people nervous, it wouldn't go well with the image she likes to cultivate, it's not her preferred operational style. But a conquest yesterday - no nation at home would question it, after what they did to Kiritan. They'd say 'barbarians! good thing the crusaders handled it'. 

So I don't know why Iomedae didn't do it. My leading guess is that Iomedae really really doesn't want Alfirin to have an Empire."

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Well. That is all very informative. Legate Sterngal is closely attentive and takes notes. 

(It's not exactly the time to bring up that the Ministry of Progress is currently throwing vast quantities of money and resources at developing better precautions. The relevant part is that Marit - who is in Iomedae's command structure, quite high-up it sounds like, and has intimate knowledge of her operations and presumably of Alfirin's activity in the crusade - honestly and genuinely believes that Alfirin could singlehandedly conquer the empire.

There's also something - not reassuring, but anchoring, maybe - about the description of Alfirin. It sounds like a description of an actual person who makes sense. Nobody talks about Iomedae that way, not even Marit with his "suspicious nature", they talk about her like...well, like their god.) 

 

...Sterngal is going to be candid here. The Empire is, in fact, quite confused about Iomedae's recent decisionmaking and what she's angling for, and that confusion is one of the many barriers to trust. Clarification on it is helpful. It would be more helpful if it could be verified, but, well, same problem as everything else, they can't scry Golarion themselves or speak directly to uninvolved third parties who could provide their own outside accounts of Iomedae and of Alfirin. If they could do that, then - maybe progress could be made. 

 

- anyway, this is a side point and mostly useful for background and getting a clearer character assessment of Iomedae, but WHAT IS THE DEAL with her planning to become a god??? Can Marit actually just explain the whole 'people can become gods' thing some more, it's baffling. 

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Aroden did something before he ascended. Left an extremely magical structure in the middle of Absalom. People claim that it's a rock left behind from Earthfall, a catastrophe that killed nearly everyone on the face of the world and also some of the gods, but Marit assumes that's bullshit. But it's real, and Aroden built it. It is supposed to contain dangerous trials to identify only the worthy. Almost everyone who attempts it dies. Marit's best guess is that it kills-for-magical-power most people who go in, but every once in a great while, when enough magical power has built up, it can make a god out of someone. You'd think Aroden would've arranged for this to be people who are useful allies to him, but actually so far the two ascended Starstone gods are Cayden Cailean, Chaotic Good god of travel and drink and adventure, who supposedly did the Starstone on a drunken dare, and Norgorber, Neutral Evil god of crime. Marit doesn't know what to think of that. Marit also doesn't know if those are the only two or just the only two that publicize it.

Aroden's church says that Aroden did this because human values ought to be represented among the gods, not just Aroden's own values but the priorities of all humans. Marit doesn't especially buy this either.

 

Iomedae has studied the situation in more depth, though she's closed-lipped about it. She thinks that having an established church and worshippers, and negotiated agreements with most of the existing powerful gods, will help her ascend. She thinks her odds of success are very good. And she's not worried about the trials of the Starstone. She's...probably correct not to be. Iomedae isn't impossible to kill, yet, but she also isn't going for the Starstone, yet. By the time she is, Marit has no trouble believing that it'd take a god to kill her.  

 

Iomedae disapproves of the state of Golarion. It's - not, actually, just Tar-Baphon and his slaves, that's terribly wrong. There are a lot of monsters, a lot of the land is depopulated, roads are dangerous, Taldor's atrociously governed, Evil people go to the Evil afterlives which are flatly terrible. Iomedae thinks that among the best ways to solve this problem is to better allocate the resources of the Good gods. There used to be a Lawful Good goddess in Heaven, Shizuru, whose job was to be the - Knight-Commander of Heaven, sort of, to decide which fights were worth picking for the cause of a better world and to win them. And then something happened and Shizuru -

- She still grants Her clerics spells. But there's no directing intelligence there, that anyone can detect. 

Iomedae wants to be the god that does that, that allocates the resources of Good correctly so that all the really awful intractable problems that mortals are up against and just aren't enough to defeat are gone. 

 

"I have read her mind. She really means it."

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He nods and makes interested noises and - is mostly not even trying to assess, yet, whether he buys any of it. It seems implausible for "Good" to be a fundamental force in the universe, baked in at the level of physical law, that's not how things work. ...Less implausible, maybe, that the most powerful god, 'Pharasma' apparently, finds it convenient to have mortals believe that her boxes line up with the kinds of things that mortals care about. He doesn't bring this up yet, but he does intend to poke later at what exactly the fundamental laws of the universe consider to be 'Good' or 'Evil.' 

...It does, at least, make better sense of how everyone seems to relate to Iomedae. She is, in fact, arranging to be worshipped, so that her ascent to godhood will be smooth and she'll have a power base from the start. What a thing to do. He can admire the audacity of it, however skeptical he is that the substance of it is entirely careful propaganda. 

(Also, pretty fucked up of Aroden to make a magical device that kills people for power so it can save up to make someone a god! Marit just brushed past that, like it isn't even worse than what the Empire uses blood-magic for, and he's not going to press the point now but oof.) 

 

Iomedae - presumably believes that the "Starstone" will make her a god while in some way keeping the core of who she is intact? How does that work? Assuming it's known at all - did Aroden document his work in any way? 

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"Some of it is in his holy books, about cultivating virtue in yourself in a way that's not in internal tension, so that it remains on magnification. It's - partially what makes artifact headbands useful, right, it's like ascending just a tiny bit, and once you're sure you're the same person with or without an artifact headband on - with different capabilities, but not with different through-lines - no knots inside yourself, nothing you're lying to yourself about... I'm not actually an Arodenite, I can't give you a good accounting, but obviously Aroden was obsessed with the question, and left a lot of notes. Iomedae tries extremely hard at cultivating habits of mind that she wants to survive ascension. The way she writes and thinks are a product of that. She's a - strikingly careful person, if you ask her to explain her decisions she's always got half an hour of this very precise analysis which incorporates half a dozen considerations I couldn't have put words to.

I'm sure she doesn't come across that way when it's your civilization she has at the point of her sword. And she's obviously made some mistakes in her handling of Velgarth. She admitted it herself, when she briefed me for this. But -

- one thing she told me when she briefed me for this, is that while she was rebelling against you in Oris, she thought there was perhaps a forty percent chance that you were right and the Orisan rebels wrong, and the gods of your world fundamentally opposed to human flourishing. She thought the rebellion was likely worth it anyway, because Aroden isn't, and could negotiate with or interfere with the other gods if she could only get him a foothold, and that there was only about a ten percent chance the rebellion wasn't worth it because the gods could successfully crush the Arodenite church and kill her - though in her estimation, since the rebellion had definitely started before her and without her and won its first major victories before she met them, then in the worlds where the gods presumably were steering not for a free Oris but just for maximum harm to everyone involved, her presence would have an unclear effect on total casualties.

She had discussed with the Orisan rebel leadership the fact that the Empire would try to have her killed. She told them that she could survive a dozen Final Strikes unscathed if the gods were really with them, and, if the gods weren't with them, she'd still survive a dozen Final Strikes but not unscathed.

After the first round of Final Strikes in the assassination went off, and harmed her more than they would have by chance, she realized that it now seemed much more likely, at least eighty percent, that the Velgarth gods were indeed opposed to human flourishing, so she Mindspoke everyone who could hear her 'for complicated reasons, that was persuasive about the Empire's claims about the local gods, and I want to talk'. Though of course I don't think you had anyone in range, by then, and you killed her - which she's obviously not fussed about -

- but when Iomedae makes a mistake, that's what it looks like. She's probably making a mistake right now, not conquering the Empire, she's probably going to have to do it in a couple of weeks once the Imperial leadership has done more to try to burn the Empire down - but it's the same kind of mistake, where she weighed far more things than anyone else and just weighed them slightly incorrectly because of how she isn't, in fact, yet a god."

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Well. That's very very...something. 

 

Does Iomedae, in fact, still intend to have Aroden negotiate with Velgarth's gods? Legate Sterngal will be frank here, and say that he doesn't expect that to work, even if - maybe especially if - all of their claims about Aroden are true. It would be like trying to persuade the weather to care about starving children, it's just - not the sort of thing where that's meaningful? 

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Marit thinks that Iomedae intends to set up, on the opposite continent from the Empire, an Arodenite church, and then build a really impressive prosperous civilization, and then she's hoping that eventually the Empire will begrudgingly contract out some resurrections and carefully quarantine the resurrected to see if the areas where they're kept have more bridge collapses, and that eventually if it is clear to the Empire that Aroden's miracles, at least at one remove, don't cause harm to the Empire, then they'll be incorporated more broadly, and of course if they do cause harm to the Empire then that'll be an enormous emergency and crisis for the Church of Aroden. They're willing to commit in advance to various strong measures to stop Aroden if it turns out He's opposed to human flourishing on Velgarth for some reason.

 

(They doubt it.)

(Iomedae spoke with Aroden through Commune about the Kiritan situation. Aroden confirmed that he could have intervened, but didn't because He knew the diplomatic situation was delicate and didn't want to interfere with commitments Iomedae had made.)

(They tortured the paladins because they believed gods couldn't respect a surrender but the torture of the paladin worked because she worshipped a god that did.)

 

(He doesn't say any of that.)

 

Probably Iomedae and Alfirin will figure out how to kill the Velgarth gods, assuming they can't be negotiated with. It's been on their to-do list for a while. Some of Golarion's gods also need killing.

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(What do you even say to 'this follower of a god, who intends to become a god, also plans to kill gods she doesn't like.' That's. Just. What.) 

 

...He will say, not looking visibly ruffled at all, that if Iomedae indeed means that, her collaboration would certainly be appreciated. Though obviously that's a conversation for a long way down the line, once more of their misunderstandings have been corrected. 

He'd like to move on to talking about practical next steps, soon, but he has one more big-picture question, which is about Pharasma's whole Outer Planes system. Presumably it's been studied in depth, since the afterlife situation would make it very relevant, and - what do they know about what gets counted, especially for Good versus Evil but he's curious about Law versus Chaos too.

Is it based on which god someone follows, or just on their actions or the intent behind those actions or their personality traits? They...are presumably not going to agree on common-sense morality, because - cultural differences - but he would find it informative to hear a list, and also to hear Marit's own opinion on any points that diverge from his own intuitions on what should be weighed and how much. 

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Good and Evil don't match the human concepts perfectly but they match - suspiciously tolerably, considering the whole system was made up by an alien? (Aroden and Iomedae are not fans of Pharasma.)

It's Good to protect the innocent. It's Evil to kill innocent people. It's Good to kill people if it's your least bad available option to protect others, and Neutral if it's your least bad available option to protect yourself, and Evil if you had better options. Torture's Evil. Necromancy is Evil because it's enslaving peoples' conceivably-conscious corpses. Conquest is generally Evil. Raping and pillaging and so on are Evil. Feeding the hungry is Good, looking after orphans is Good, healing the injured or tending to the sick is Good. Getting a child by a woman and not supporting her is probably Evil. Slavery's Evil and benefitting indirectly from it might be Evil, if it's a small effect it's hard to be sure. Engaging in the trade in immortal souls is Evil. Executing people is Evil unless you have no better options to protect others from them. Involuntarily mind controlling people is Evil unless you have no better options.

It's Lawful to join an organization to which you make commitments that enable it to use you more legibly towards a purpose. Obedience is Lawful but as a special case of that; paladins aren't less Lawful because they're supposed to disobey unconscionable orders.  It's Chaotic to be the kind of person who recoils at the very idea of making commitments that enable others to legibly use you. Service to gods is generally lawful; people who follow Chaotic gods will tend to say things like 'He grants me cleric spells, I never promised Him anything' or similar. Though Iomedae, too, will say things that sound a bit like that. That she doesn't serve Aroden, that she and He are both the servants of a deeper thing that everyone in every world can see and reach for if they choose.

(Marit's not himself that complicated. He thought about it and decided to serve Iomedae, because he wants her to succeed at what she wants to do.)

Many people say it's Lawful to literally obey the law of the country you're in, and it's certainly not Lawful to agree to do so and then break your word, but there are Lawful spies and Iomedae wasn't endangering her Law when she decided to back the Orisan rebels, though she ought to have shattered it, if she mind controlled Altarrin in the middle of negotiations.

(Imperial leadership is mostly Lawful....mostly Lawful Evil. It's probably all the mind control and executions and conquest.)

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Marit is such a fascinatingly cynical person; he doesn't come across at all like the reports Legate Sterngal read about the paladins, which had him expecting a much more frustrating conversation than this has been so far. He likes Marit. This is, in significant part, a job skill - people can tell, if you feel positively toward them, in the moment of conversation - but also it's not nearly as much of an uphill battle as he expected based on his previous diplomacy with priests and cultists.

And, you know, at least they can agree that feeding the hungry and treating the sick is a good thing. (Pharasma must be weighting conquest very heavily, against the fact that in approximately all the conquered provinces, more lives are saved on net in the first century if not sooner, in children who would have starved before the Empire brought its canal-Gates and its weather-magic.) 

He has a lot of questions, actually - what orders are considered unconscionable for paladins? what are Chaotic gods even like? what's the common wisdom on when it is and isn't Lawful to literally break local laws, which Iomedae was doing the entire time she was in the Empire - but they've been talking for a long time, and he's accumulated a stack of notes and should really make a report and get clarification on his next priorities for discussion. 

 

 

For the moment, he wants to ask Marit for his sense of where to move from here. Obviously what the Eastern Empire wants is free access to Golarion, via having Altarrin back, but this is clearly a non-starter right now.

They may be interested in observing a scry of the "afterlives". (Not because they can believe it at face value but because it would be at least mildly inconvenient to fake, in the scenario where it's all propaganda, and also it was offered and 'accepting offers of concessions' is generally a good diplomatic move, it gives people the sense that you're engaged.) 

After that, once they've taken a few more steps toward each believing that the other side will abide by agreements they actually made, how about a closely supervised delegation? The Empire could provide some delegates, with or without Gifts though of course it's of greater value to send delegates with mage-sight. They could be under verifiable compulsions not to leave their escort or contact anyone. 

(It wouldn't be conclusive, but it would also surely start to approach the territory of very inconvenient to fake, and that's - better than nothing. And also it buys them time.) 

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A closely supervised delegation seems like a good target for the near future, once there's been more effort to make sure everyone's on the same page about what's being horrendously evil and what's a violation of standing international agreements on Golarion and so on. He's happy to demonstrate the afterlives with scrying, and happy to take off all his current magic items and do it stark naked if that'll be reassuring to the Empire about the possibility his headband is breaking their Thoughtsensing or something. (It's not. It makes him more likeable and better at diplomacy. But in their place he'd suspect it).

 

If they get some trust built, the Empire could also host delegations from other Golarion nations, and host experts in Golarion magic, and can start learning how to cast Golarion spells and use Golarion magic, which will be enormously valuable to them.

 

The thing Iomedae wants, in the meantime, is for the Empire to help her find the Mirrorgrave's base. It's really really important. Ideally they would loan Altarrin some scrying-experts but it'd also be helpful if they'd be willing to do searches he suggests, and they should be desperately scouring for any indications of missing people or strange occurances. This legitimately may be a situation where the next warning is a dozen cities devoured overnight.

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Legate Sterngal will (for the purposes of this conversation, at least) take that very seriously! He believes that the relevant department within the Empire is conducting a thorough investigation, and he'll certainly pass on advice to them, though he has no authority to give them orders. They are probably not going to want to update Marit on their progress, given that one of the possible scenarios here is that the "Mirrorgrave" was a false-flag attack orchestrated by Iomedae, but he is sure the Imperial mage-researchers and Inquisitors are working very hard on this. 

He is not hopeful about loaning Altarrin any of their experts but he will put the request down verbatim in his report, and let Marit know immediately about any updates there. 

 

 

...He should in fact go write his report, now, and plan on another discussion tomorrow, it's getting quite late. Marit is of course welcome to make his own report to Iomedae, which the Empire will have delivered to the message-drop point on his behalf. 

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(She probably watched the conversation. Or had someone do it and make a transcript for her. She was upset, about sending him off to only maybe not get horribly tortured.)

He doesn't say that. He'll write her. 

 

He - really appreciates getting a hearing. He deeply respects much of what the Empire wants to do and be, and regrets that they got off on this bad foot.

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Indeed. Legate is appreciate of Marit's efforts to convey more of what Iomedae and the Knights of Ozem are about, and will not even hint in his manner to what extent he thinks all of it is bullshit. 

 

 

...Once he's in private, and writing up a report, he's definitely thinking about it. It's not his area of expertise to judge, though, so he mostly just writes down observations without providing interpretation. The Thoughtsenser who was on duty for the conversation will be making their own report as well, and both will be copied to the Emperor and the Office of Inquiry as well as the Minister of Barbarians. 

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It is while Kastil is reading the report his Thoughtsenser wrote that he has a vitally important revelation which he will spend the next month, year, or century (his good fortune lasting), beating himself up about, which is that, as he reads the start of the report, he wonders, idly, why was Arbas so spectacularly stupid, both diplomats agree and so does the imperial council and him, and an answer neatly drops into place, "the gods," because that's always the answer, but how does it serve Aroden for negotiations to fail - 

- and how did he not come up with the obvious answer -

Oh. Well. Shit.

(Kastil does not, actually, think that this means Aroden is now on his side, he's still a god; Kastil's reasoning looks more like "the local gods object to a foreign god barging in on their territory, therefore they're trying to drive him and the single greatest threat to them to fight.")

Kastil raises shields on automatic, spends two seconds starting on a maximum urgency report before he realizes that he's being insufficiently paranoid, raises more shields, and stands up and walking straight towards the door, because his first priority, before he exposes anyone else, is to pass it on to another disposable-but-cleared inquisitor outside his direct chain of command, who can confirm that this follows from the logic and isn't some weird foreign magic making him irrationally convinced of something false, before - once past this checkpoint - immediately telling the Emperor. 

Naturally, it's when his extremely reinforced very tough metal door has just swung open that Kanyr, Adept in service to Mage-General Jovin (pretender in Taymyrr, now in disarray following a string of military defeats) Gates into the Office of Inquiry headquarters and Final Strikes.

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Kastil is not, in fact, directly hit by the fireball! Kastil's office is in an underground basement under quite a lot of granite, right 'round a particularly direct corner. But the explosion was directly above his office, and there's enough fire going absolutely everywhere there isn't a wall between it and the target that his shields are hit by what is still a very heavy blow, and he automatically throws an immense amount of power into the fire-deflecting and forwards-facing parts of his shield.

And that's when the roof falls on him.

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This Final Strike does not, actually, destroy the city of Jacona! The Office of Inquiry headquarters were not merely designed by a fanatical paranoid, they were well designed by a fanatical paranoid, and the low, dank building mostly consists of dungeons basements, with what walls it has deliberately designed to ensure that any Final Strikes in it would not ignite the capital (and, more importantly, vice versa).

Nonetheless, tongues of flame blossom from every one of the (very few) windows and the building (and the street outside) sort of slump down into a horrible little heap.

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Naturally, this raises an immediate city-wide alarm! 

 

Within twelve seconds - well before they have any idea what happened or how or who did it - the Emperor is Gated offsite to a randomized secure and secret location, the ministers are being slightly-less-efficiently evacuated to different sites, and every other centralized office is being sent orders for their mages to Gate out immediately. 

(Also, panicked citizens nearby enough to see the flames are fleeing on surface streets, which is mostly just adding to the chaos.) 

 

Within thirty seconds, they have a long-range Thoughtsenser stationed a mile from the collapsed office, to check for survivors. (There might even be some people who were uninjured or at least not badly injured enough to Gate themselves out, but the Office of Inquiry has very complicated and very secret evacuation contingencies for a Catastrophic Event like this and their orders probably aren't to Gate conveniently to the street nearby, as opposed to, say, to Gate to other secure facilities not in Jacona, and potentially to scry the aftermath before reporting in.) 

 

Are there any living minds still in the building, conscious or not? 

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Yup! The number is extremely rapidly declining even as the Thoughtsenser starts looking, which appears to be mostly due to Gates, not death. There are still some people not Gating out, though, trapped, conscious or unconscious, inside a building that is no longer convenient to evacuate without Gates.

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Gating them out is also a fiddly business, especially since they don't know yet if the site is safe! But they can get a scry-specialist with concert work experience who can anchor her scries on the Thoughtsenser's impression of location rather than hunting blindly or going down a list of names and scrying for people who have mostly gotten out safely, and then pull in a Gate-specialist who can raise horizontal unscaffolded Gates off that, as perfectly-body-sized as possible to avoid also Gating through enormous piles of debris. They do it onto the street, which isn't ideal, but they're a mile from the building, the Imperial Guard is already setting up a perimeter and shields, and it's better than dropping flaming debris through a lot of horizontal Gates indoors

 

It takes them about four minutes to get everyone out.

(It's going to take a lot longer than that, and probably a lot of pastwatching, to find the bodies. There's a pastwatcher already setting up but he'll need to sit down with a blueprint - which they're still trying to obtain a copy of, the Office of Inquiry is as secretive about that as about anything else - and go through the whole pre-explosion layout room by room.) 

There are Healers arriving on the scene by then, helping to pull debris - some of it still on fire - off the people just Gated out. What's the condition of their too-incapacitated-to-Gate-out survivors? 

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Varies a lot. Some of the ones in worst shape don't look like they're going to make it; others like Restra were non-mages who happened to be in some non-falling apart room and didn't run out of air before search and rescue showed up. Kastil's unconscious with a lump on his head and a lot of broken bones and some burns, it's not clear if he'll make it or not.

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The actual orders for their response are still pretty confused but 'keep Kastil alive if at all possible' seems almost certain to be a high priority! They'll get him to a proper infirmary and throw a lot of Healing at him. 

 

Next obvious priorities: pastwatching! Question anyone conscious about what they saw! Get back in contact with people who Gated out successfully and obtain a headcount and start looking for bodies! Report for the Emperor! 

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH

 

Bastran was doing fine, he was coping, and this is just. One thing too far. On top of all the other things that were already too far. He has to reply to the mage-guard alerting him via communication-spell because he's finding it slightly difficult to breathe. 

They should do all of those things and, uh, probably send a diplomatic message alerting Iomedae. Who might be responsible, of course, but if that's the case then she already knows everything, and - overall he thinks not, this seems like clearly Velgarth magic, a known kind of attack, and there are a lot of other explanations like 'one of the three civil wars'. Why do they have three wars going on right now again. It's TOO MANY THINGS.  But they should probably at least make it clear to Iomedae that they're not taking this as a reason to torture her diplomat. 

 

...they're not, right? Good. It wouldn't even help

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A terse initial note can go out to the message-drop point, saying just that there was an attack on a key site in Jacona, the Empire is investigating, this does not currently directly impact the ongoing effort toward diplomacy, but if Iomedae happens to have any insight into what happened and who was responsible (for example, the letter does not say, because she has contacts among the Orisian rebels) then information-sharing would of course be appreciated. 

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(Altarrin is in fact not aware of the attack before the letter reaches them. He's been scrying Jacona at hourly intervals only, mostly focused on his search-spell for Bags of Holding.) 

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"Serious theory but not a confident one, Someone wants to make sure I have no time to think. I don't think this is higher priority than what you were doing, Altarrin. 

They have the healing potions. - probably will be too stubborn to use them -"

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Altarrin has not, in fact, actually dropped the scry he was testing. He can multitask. "I think that is right. This is - they would probably have said if it was an unconventional attack, I am guessing a standard Gate-strike and there are many possible explanations for that. ...Somewhat more concerned that They want to make sure that Bastran has no time to think, if They would - prefer us to keep failing to communicate or de-escalate, and he was showing up to Foresight as likely to push for de-escalation unless subjected to more stress?" 

Bastran must be so miserable and scared and alone. Altarrin...is going to continue not having feelings about that, or at least not focusing on them. It's not the time. 

Sigh. "Probably. It would unfortunately do the opposite of help to remind them of the healing potion option, I think." 

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"I'll send something back thanking them for the update. Saying that we're open to conducting resurrections but given the sensitive nature of information held by key officials in Jacona we would prefer to have Imperial monitors on site for the resurrections, and have no plans to conduct them at this time: helpful or unhelpful?"

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"...Helpful on net, probably, they will be thinking about it already, and - more communication is almost always better. I am not sure I expect them to take you up, and - they are going to be reluctant to send monitors to another continent when they cannot Gate home unaided, and also reluctant to allow it in the Empire, but we could perhaps consider doing it in a neutral country like Hardorn..." 

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Sure. 

Thank you for the update. We regret the loss of life. We are as before open to providing resurrections but due to the sensitive nature of information held by top Imperial officials in Jacona, would prefer to conduct the resurrections under the supervision of Imperial monitors, perhaps in a neutral location such as Hardorn, and have no intentions of conducting any at this time. If you may wish to seek resurrections in the future you should preserve the remains of your dead.

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It’ll do. Or, well, someone is going to decide to take it as cause for suspicion, but Altarrin does not really feel like trying to analyze the various ministers’ levels of paranoia right now. Straightforward communication is, all else being equal, usually a better idea than not that.

At least the first day of renewed diplomacy is going less disastrously? He can confirm on his next scry that Marit is not being tortured. 

There was a letter from him as well, a little before the one from the Emperor. Altarrin hasn’t read it yet, he’s busy, but - what was Iomedae’s impression of how all that is going? 

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Marit's analysis was that the Empire was doing a convincing imitation of being genuinely curious about the misunderstandings and interested in addressing them, which of course means a moderate amount about the Empire's competence but nothing at all about its intent.

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Which does at least mean that they think it's worth the effort to make that convincing imitation, which - does have implications about how the Empire is seeing this, at least in terms of how seriously they're taking Iomedae and the Knights of Ozem. 

...The most likely implication is still that they're trying to stall while frantically directing resources toward military research on how to kill Alfirin. But that's not the work of a week, or maybe even a month, and if the Empire is at least aware that it's in their interests to buy themselves time, the side effect is that it buys time for Iomedae as well. 

And - he's not sure, but he thinks maybe - it means that if the Mirrorgrave's allies aren't located in time and hit the Empire, he's not sure which way the Empire will jump, but there's at least some chance they won't blame it on Iomedae and will instead take her up on an offer of help. 

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It is around this time that Soria will request a Gate back to the Temple of Aroden and explain that she's signing on! Since they need another Adept, and everything.

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Right! They certainly do. They're delighted to have her. 

(She's Lawful Good. It's definitely affecting how they parse her.)

 

They have a few different contracts recruits can choose between if they are in the category they're inclined to put Soria in, which is spellcasters of fourth to seventh circle. They're all short; she can read over them, or have them read to her, or consult with a priest of the god of contracts at their expense if she has any questions. One is for a person interested in joining the order and taking the vows of the Knights of Ozem; obviously she wouldn't be allowed to take the vows yet, they've just met her, but she can try living by them and decide in a year.

One is for a person interested in being part of the command structure of the Crusade, but not a Knight of Ozem. The rules are less restrictive and do not for instance oblige her to direct the majority of her pay according to her own best assessment of how it can best be used to improve the world, or to leave the majority of her estate to her best assessment of same, or to report even at great personal risk violations of the law of the Crusade or the vows of the Knights as high up the Crusade command as she judges necessary to get them actioned on.

The third is for a person interested in contracting with the Crusade for the provision of magical services, and obliges her to nothing particularly other than that. 

First two oblige her to take an illegal orders class, and decide how she wants her pay provisioned between 'in gold' and 'towards magic items purchased for her at the Crusade's negotiated discount' and 'in savings in the church of the god of contracts'. Third only pays in gold after provision of services and doesn't imply an ongoing relationship.

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Honestly she'd like to consult with a priest of the gods of contracts! Not so much on this in particular as because a priest of the gods of contracts sounds like a fascinating sort of person and she's really curious what his judgement on the situation would be.

She tentatively wants to pick the second; she's not prepared to commit to the Knights of Ozem because she has other loyalties and only finite trust in them; she's just showing up here because it looks like it's where she can do the most good, and then throw almost all the money into magic items because, although she is wholly capable of understanding people who wouldn't, their wages are actually fairly high* and, like, magic items. Her main reservation is that she doesn't know if they'll buy her useful stuff, since they're from another world and she's strange.

She is fine with illegal orders classes, though her reference point for illegal orders remains "murder the Emperor."

(*: This economics footnote was deleted for being longer than the entire rest of the tag. By popular demand: Although gold mining technology in the Eastern Empire is not in fact greatly superior** to that of Golarion, the Eastern Empire has tremendously more Adepts than Golarion has fourth through seventh circle wizards, and compulsions and the lack of a Non-Eastern Empire to bid against them mean that the government is much closer to a monopoly employer of their labor, allowing them to underpay compared to the open market for high-level magic that exists in Golarion. However, she is likely to reconsider when she encounters the price differentials in everything except food*** she is expected to buy; the Empire has factories full of mages working in assembly lines to craft magic items, putting it ahead of any entity in Golarion since Earthfall, and tremendously cheaper manufactured goods thanks to surplus labor freed up by the near-elimination of transport costs by the Gate-system, allowing almost all unskilled workers in the Empire who would be driving wagons to instead learn an extremely specialized crafting skill in the great metropolis of Jacona, and thus accumulate gains-from-specialization. This is one of the chief reasons that living standards in the Eastern Empire are so much higher than elsewhere else in Velgarth.)

(**: Or at all superior, possibly? We haven't figured that part out.)

(***: Two words: Plant growth.)

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The priesthood of the god of contracts will be setting up their own temple, of course, but for now they're all operating out of the same conjured-extradimensional space (well, three such spaces; one for bunks and storage, one for nonsecret operations, one for secret operations) and he's two rooms down; she can book an appointment for later this afternoon.

The way purchasing magic items out of her wages works is that once she has twenty percent of the discounted cost she gets the item on loan, but has to return it or pay the difference if she leaves the Crusade; once she has paid it off in whole it's hers. She can indicate whether she wants her magic items liquidated towards the cost of a resurrection if she dies, doesn't have resurrection insurance, and isn't resurrected under the Crusade's normal prioritization of returning its dead (the people who make that decision aren't told if she has a personal resurrection order, obviously).

 

And then they'll hand her off to a Knight who runs illegal orders class! The class is just Soria but it's considered healthy to have several students who can debate hard cases so he'll round up some other soldiers to participate.

The Crusade has extremely broad and sweeping protections for soldiers who refuse to obey an order on the grounds that it is unconscionable. Soldiers are obliged to do this with respect to orders to commit rape or torture or soul-violence or to betray a parley or to kill noncombatants when there are other methods of safely disabling them or to conceal any feature of a situation from a military court. They can refuse a surrender only if they have no way to accept it that actually neutralizes the threat.

Outside those cases, conscience is still a sufficient defense for disobeying orders, if you can truthfully articulate to a court that you were trying to do the right thing, didn't see a way of obeying your orders compatible with that, communicated this promptly, and turned yourself in to the Crusade for them to evaluate the situation. Iomedae is fairly generous with this. People have been acquitted of desertion because they realized they were unwilling to kill a girl and so ran away. The girl was a vampire. That's a stupid principle, but it's a principle, and if it was genuinely your motivating principle - Iomedae says that there's enough lost, in war, without letting it devour all the incoherent inarticulable impulses to Good inside one's heart.

(She is not infinitely generous with this. They can look at another example where someone deserted, didn't report, was found days later, and then claimed it was because they'd decided fighting the undead was inherently wrong. That, it was ruled, did not count.)

It should be made clear, here, that disobeying orders generally gets large numbers of people killed. It is a bad thing to do, under nearly all circumstances. The Crusade is trading, here, between making fewer mistakes where people die for lack of discipline and making fewer mistakes where people with grim discipline do things they know they shouldn't have done. But - well, only the latter send you to Hell, for one thing, and for another, there are fewer illegal orders, when everyone knows they won't be obeyed, and for yet another, people who can trust each other to be actually trying to do the right thing can, sometimes, stand together under greater adversity than people who only know they'll die if they run. 

Questions so far.

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"So you're saying that if an officer orders a soldier to torture someone and the soldier says no, the officer, not the solider, gets in trouble."

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" - yes. Definitely. Completely uncomplicatedly."

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"I like it."

"How does all this interact with probabilities? Like, say someone surrenders, and I'm ahead of everyone else doing something important so there's nobody to hand them off to and I hit them with a force-net and keep going, and I think there's a nine in ten chance that'll hold them until someone else shows up that's probably fine, but if there's one in ten does that become 'I'm getting my friends killed?'"

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He smiles approvingly. "You can never know anything for sure, on a battlefield, but if you can incapacitate someone instead of killing them, that's the much better default unless they are a wildly unusual degree of dangerous - and remember, if we are known to accept surrenders, a lot of people will surrender and that saves our friends' lives too."

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"Of course!"

"... Now what's the number. I really don't want this to come up, but it will."

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" - for how sure to be that they'll successfully be taken prisoner, before you should just kill them even if they surrendered? - I think I'd say that if the expected cost to the Crusade of leaving them alive is more than the Raise Dead, go ahead and kill them temporarily and just make sure to notify someone that that was an emergency measure and they're owed the Raise, and if the expected cost to the Crusade of leaving them alive is less than the Raise Dead, take them alive."

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"Thank you! Do you have values for the cost of a Raise Dead and, like, armor and spells and healing, in a book somewhere?"

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" - yes but I'm given to understand they're currently wildly in flux because of the interworld contact. To a first approximation, the Raise Dead otherwise gets used on a not-very-powerful soldier of the Crusade who, if the spell is unavailable, will stay dead."

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" - that does not actually sound like a very high bar to refusing surrender!" Understandable, but she would prefer a higher one!

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" - I'd think it would be? So in this situation where you think there's a one in ten chance they're feigning the surrender and will successfully break out, you'd have to think they'd kill eleven more people, to prefer to Raise them. - relevantly, I also wouldn't conceive of arranging to Raise someone as refusing surrender, it's still assuming responsibility for their continuing to be alive. I'd want to use a much higher bar in a case where that option isn't available for some reason."

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"... Right." Yes but... okay, more important.

"What about actions like 'throwing a fireball at a building where there are enemy troops and might also be civilians' that might kill noncombatants but are militarily important?"

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"You aren't categorically obliged to refuse an order like that. You won't get in trouble if you do refuse an order like that. I'd personally think about - how important is the military objective we're trying to accomplish here? How many innocent people will die if we don't accomplish it? Is there some other way to accomplish it at higher personal risk or higher cost to the Crusade but lower cost to the civilians? Of course, if we're unwilling to ever throw a Fireball into a building that might have a civilian, our enemies can use that; of course, if we make a habit of it, civilians will live in terror of us. The Crusade ought to be willing to take on somewhat higher personal risk to protect the innocent, or what are we even doing here, but if there's not an alternative that achieves the goal at less risk to civilians, there are goals for which it'd be worth risking civilian deaths, even at scale. We were prepared to take Urgir. Though I would hardly argue with anyone who said that we shouldn't have been.

What do you think? How much risk to yourself or your team would you be personally willing to take on to avoid throwing a Fireball into a building that might have civilians in it?"

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"If it was just me I'd just charge and use force-daggers. Other people - depends how expensive resurrection is, and, you know, probabilities?"

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"Raising the dead has historically been too expensive to be a substantive option for civilians killed in the course of war. Interworld contact might really change a lot of things, but - probably not that, it's still a fifth circle spell. Presumably if you charge and use force-daggers there's some risk you'll be killed yourself; that's presumably worth it to protect some number of people, right? What number?"

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"I've never really worried about that? It's not usually that much of a risk."

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" - you're a spellcaster, right?"

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" - I'm an Adept, yes."

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"In the magic system I'm familiar with it is exceedingly dangerous for spellcasters to find themselves in melee, unless they're a heavily armored swordmage or something." Soria isn't armored at all.

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" - I'm good at what I do?"

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" - after this class probably we should have you do some sparring with people and make sure no one's operating under major misapprehensions about anyone else's capabilities. Anyway, I think the Crusade's senior leadership has in mind their own figures for how to make tradeoffs between civilian casualties and strategic objectives. They haven't published them, though we know they authorized Urgir. Those are - probably not the numbers it makes sense for adventuring parties acting autonomously to use. This being a crusade against the undead it hasn't actually come up much."

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"I'm not an adventurer and I'm not sure the word is translating, I was in the Imperial Guard. But I do understand the logic."

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"In general a principle Iomedae advises is that you want to err more conservatively in the tradeoffs you make - more willing to incur costs yourself, less willing to have them be incurred by other parties, more willing to adhere to a simple and comprehensible ethical rule like 'accept surrenders', less willing to do things for which the chain of logic by which they have good results is long - in contexts where you are less well-informed, or angry or frightened, or have had less time to evaluate the situation, or where informed parties disagree about the situation."

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"Oh good, that makes sense."

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"And you never want to do things that you aren't willing to admit to having done, because if we can't look at the tradeoffs our soldiers are actually out there making, then every procedure we use for making tradeoffs is going to be wrong, and there's no individual situation that's worth blinding the whole governance structure like that."

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"That makes perfect sense."

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Then he has a, hmm, controversial case study for the illegal orders class to collectively consider. 

Urgir. If you're not Iomedae, and don't have the ability to take the whole city miraculously - do you do it?


(Context for Soria, which everyone else already had; the crusade was in the middle of a steep and miserable retreat which, if it didn't stop at Urgir, had no good stopping point all the way to Tamran, a hundred miles through nightmarish terrain, with Tar-Baphon sending an army across from Caliphas to encircle them. Urgir had been invested for six months, but to not much effect; the enemy was presumably Teleport-supplying it. 

Urgir is an orc city; orcs are universally chaotic and disorganized and not wise and not clever. No one's ever successfully negotiated the surrender of an orc city. Probably approximately none of them unarmed.

A hundred thousand people.)

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"- You pull a miracle out of your hat. Gate the army a hundred miles to safety, or something. If you can't do that then you figure out a way that you can."

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- well, sure, that's how you solve this problem if you're Iomedae. 'be Iomedae' isn't ...actionable, though.

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"Be Iomedae or know Iomedae! They both work."

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There is something to be said about how often if you think you're in a bind where you either have to do something very evil or let something very bad happen - it's not that binds like that never actually occur, they do, but it's easy to think you have no choice when in fact, if you're stubborn enough, if you cheat enough, you can find a better way. 

 

Though other times, that's how you get Arazni killed, and plausibly do the cause of Good more harm than the Crusade can ever do it favor!

 

They'll conclude by discussing among each other some situations one might find oneself in. Things like 'your commander claims to have direct orders to accomplish this objective even at extremely high cost, and wants to take an approach that'll kill a lot of people, but you don't understand why the objective is important, he won't tell you, he sometimes claims that things are more important than they are, and it wouldn't be worth it for the mere apparent stakes', or 'you did something seriously wrong in a battle, and your commander promised to protect you, and you found out months later he protected you by not telling anyone it happened', or 'your friend committed a serious crime but feels terrible about it and won't do it again and begs you not to report him' or 'you have a faint suspicion your commander is using mind control on people but you can't prove it and he'll be furious if you report it'.

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Well, the basic question is if you can do better without that, right? You can't not obey orders, so the question is how to interpret them - oh, right, you don't have compulsions. Hmm. 

In the fantasy where authorities are Good Knights of Ozem, right, in all these cases you just tell your boss's boss?

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Yes! And if your boss's boss doesn't listen, or if for any other reason you notice you're not, in fact, telling your boss's boss even though you should, you tell Iomedae. She has never punished that, even if it turned out to be nothing. 

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And if it's an emergency, you send a quick message-spell to your boss's boss and then start doing what your boss says until your boss's boss sends a response back?

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- if you can do that. Most people can't do that. Even most powerful spellcasters can't do that. You also have the right, if the spell is available and the emergency not on the scale of minutes, to ask for a truth spell about orders that you have grounds for suspicion of. (Your boss could also be mind-controlled!)

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Oh riiiiiight these people are weird.

"Makes sense!"

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They'll spend a while more on example cases, but really it seems like Soria has the core concept here instinctively, and if there are any problems it'll be because of interworld differences she didn't know about, which is important but a different department. He signs off eventually on her having successfully completed illegal orders class, with a recommendation they really spend a while on the interworld differences thing, and that's that, Soria's a Crusader.

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(The main internal differences thing is, of course, that 'your boss has been mind controlled' in the Crusade suggests you should disobey your boss, instead of the default assumption being that your boss was mind controlled by his boss to do what his boss wants.)

"Understood!"

Then she'll go find out what the Crusade needs her to do!

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Yara Velane loves being a duchess. 

 

She does not always behave like a duchess. It's a minor scandal that she's in her late 20s and still unmarried. It's a bigger scandal that she prefers drinking with the sailors out by the docks to hosting fellow noblewomen in her parlor. 

Yara doesn't care. She grew up half-wild on her father's estate - the late Duke Velane was indulgent with his bastard daughter, but already too distracted by his failing health to impose particular rules or discipline. She was already sixteen by the time of her first visit to court, and its lavish displays have never moved her. It's all fake

She's under the standard compulsions for non-mage-gifted nobility, of course, and beyond that, she owes it to her father's memory to do the best she can for his - now her - people. The duchy of Velane has a population of nearly a hundred thousand, if you count the town by Velane Port. Yara Velane is charismatic and driven and, many might say, headstrong and impossibly stubborn. She's been in charge of the landholding for over a decade, now, and for all the problems elsewhere, Yara is doing just fine. 

Whatever her compulsions, though, it's hardly disloyalty to the Empire to, once she's finished a hard day's work, don men's clothing and go spend her evening with people who know how to have fun. Sure, there's a Situation Of High Alert, but she's got a Mindspeaker back home to summon her if anything comes up. 

 

And, in addition, she has her secret weapon. Her father's house-mage had identified her Gift as Empathy, and the one that works on humans does seem to be that, but she's never met anyone else who could talk to animals with it. Well. Talk to animals and have them actually listen. 

They listen to Yara. The horses in the stable listen to her; the goats and sheep go where she asks. She doesn't need spells to tell the courier pigeons where to fly. And the gulls and petrels at the docks adore her. 

 

She sits in the outdoor back deck of the Lonely Stars tavern, the wind in her hair, tossing morsels of her supper to the crows lining the roof. She's surrounded by the familiar upraurious laughter of a dozen sailors from the unaffiliated trade ship Farro, spending two days docked while they unload their goods; they don't have letters of passage to stay in an inn, so they'll sleep in their ordinary bunks, and the weather is fine enough that Yara isn't going to push it. This time. 

(She's pretty sure that Petar, the first mate, is a secret follower of Anathei. It's never bothered her, but her compulsions will complain if she writes him a letter of authorization.) 

 

It's good to be here. The stuffy high lords and ladies of the Emperor's court have no idea what they're missing. 

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Petar leans back, kicking up one booted foot to rest it on the railing.

“We hired a new purser," he drawls. "Gal from the River Kingdoms, but we picked her up at a Vaterlunde port. She's -" and he makes a hand gesture, brushing his left upper chest, "- well, you know. We got her a spot right quick, we did." 

(It's where the Treterine Empire, bordering on the River Kingdoms to the south and Vaterlunde and Azill to the north, places its slave brands.) 

Petar grins a gap-toothed grin. "You'll like her. ...Won't come off the boat, though, doesn't drink and she's– well, she wouldn't put down her mark on the form, you know." 

(There are Imperial guards where the ship-docks meet the city. The form is a simple one, that illiterate sailors can sign with a thumbprint if they wish, and it's only followed up with a truth-telling compulsion for ship-mages and captains. It says that anyone entering the town denies the worship of gods, though the wording can be interpreted generously as 'denies that they plan to worship any gods while in the Empire', and it's certainly never stopped Petar from coming into town for his ale.) 

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Yara makes a face. "You'll have to bribe me with more than that." 

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Petar flings his arms wide. "We've got a keg of gen-u-ine Vaterlunde honey-spirits for the crew." 

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"- All right, fine, you've got me sold."

And Yara will toss back the rest of her ale and follow the crew back to their ship, grinning at the Imperial Guard who salutes her and calling out to him by name. (She knows almost everyone by name, by now, even the sailors who only dock once a year.) 

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The ship is small, as merchant vessels go, but hardy; it's belonged to Captain Danrak for twenty years. This year, the sails are showing their age, and repaired along several rips with tough waxed thread, and the standard is sunbleached to the point of looking rather ghostly. But there's a fresh coat of paint on the carved figurehead at the prow, a winged bare-breasted woman. It's a clear day with no hint of rain overnight, and the deck is still stacked with pallets of Vaterlunde silk and Ithik tapestries. 

They descend belowdecks, boots clattering on the stairs. 

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Yara is not, in fact, nearly as comfortably at home in the cramped ship cabins as the sailors themselves, who almost immediately fling themselves down into hammocks. She perches on a crate. 

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The woman who is presumably the purser mentioned is sitting on another crate of her own, intent on...polishing a sword? It goes rather oddly with the rest of her appearance; she's small and dusky-skinned, with thick black hair pulled back in a knot, dressed in casually in a loose tunic. 

 

She lifts her eyes to Yara, and goes very still. 

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"....Uh. What? Do I have something on my face?" 

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The woman blinks. "....Come closer, child, let me have a look at you." 

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Child? She's almost thirty. Old maid, is what people are more likely to call her. (Where by 'people' she means 'stuffy old men at court with too much time on their hands.') 

 

She gets up and drags her crate over. "I imagine you're the new ship's purser. I'm Yara." 

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The woman looks hard at her for a moment, then shakes her head, chuckling. "If I'm not mistaken, you've got a few more names and titles than just that. But Yara will do." She taps her own forehead with two spread fingers; it's a River Kingdom's gesture of respect, an elder to a high-ranked noble. "Eshaneel." 

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"A pleasure. Is this your first time in the Empire? I hear you've traveled a long way." 

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The woman shakes her head. Taps her heel against the floorboards. "Not in, exactly. ...I intend no disrespect." 

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That, too, is a coded phrase. It would disrespect the Empire, to step onto its shore while carrying her god in her heart – and it would dishonor her god, to deny Them. 

Yara doesn't ask. 

"Well," she says instead. "What's all this about? Do I have something on my face?" 

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Headshake. "It's a long story. But I think you'd best not dawdle. If you agree to take it on, you have a long journey ahead of you." 

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Oh no. Yara generally has no quarrel with religious people, if they obey the law, but mysterious religious people are intensely frustrating. 

 

"Give me the short version, then," she says curtly. "It can't be that hard." 

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Eshaneel ducks her head, with a 'well, you did ask for this' sort of expression. 

"The blade is called Need. She chose me - she chooses women in need, her previous bearer told me - and she led me to freedom. I suppose I am free, now, and this is where our paths will part ways. She calls to you." 

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That isn't how anything works!!!! What!!!!! 

 

"I'm not, though," Yara says flatly. "In need. I've got everything I could possibly want - and, no, I don't want or need a husband, I'm doing just fine without, and your bloody," godforged but she bites down on that curse in time, "sword is not welcome to go fix that for me." 

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Eshaneel slowly shakes her head. "Not that kind. If it is not you yourself in danger, it may be others. Need also aids those who serve and protect." 

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Yara scrunches up her nose. "Look. I'm not going to judge," and what she might consider judging can, as always, remain unspoken, "but while you're talking to me, it would be a lot easier if you can talk like a normal person." 

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Petar is hovering behind them, and clears his throat. "You've never spoken to any Imperials before, have you. Word of advice, they're the world's most stubborn stick-in-the-mud people you'll ever meet, but they're practical. Tell her what the shiny magical artifact does." 

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"- Oh, is it a magic sword?" That makes so much more sense. "Huh! Do you know who made– ...I guess not, if you inherited it. But that's incredible. What does it do - how did you use it to get free -?"

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Eshaneel exchanges a Look with Petar. He inclines his head in a slight nod. 

 

"She does healing," Eshaneel says. "And magic, shields and levinbolts and such. And swordfighting skill, for anyone who does not already possess it. ...Also some sort of - forewarning - she tells you where to go, to arrive in time to save people. And - she knows when and where to find her next bearer." 

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"Huh! Someone figured out how to put short-range Foresight in an artifact? That's - amazing - too bad how they're probably from bloody Ithik and we can't recruit them." Or maybe long dead, the blade looks...very old...and well-made artifacts can last a long time. "Does it need repowering? Or does it have a self-maintaining reservoir like a permanent Gate?" 

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Eshaneel raises her eyebrows at Petar, who returns it with a heat-tilt and lip-twitch that means 'yes, the Imperials really are like this, just go along with it.' 

 

"She does not need to be powered, no. And I suppose Foresight is right, though - not visions, only a feeling of where to go and how urgently." She bows her head. "I cannot - get a clear sense - of your need, not directly, but - far, I think. And very urgent. If you take her, you will know where to go." 

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Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

 

Well. On the one hand, this is incredibly suspicious! And she should be extra suspicious because, you know, gods

On the other hand, this stranger is...offering her a priceless magical artifact? For free? Probably because of some sort of religious precept, but it's not like there's an imperial law that says you have to turn down priceless gifts just because the gift-giver is doing it out of religious charity? She could sell it to the Emperor and collect a pretty bounty, almost certainly. 

Also, she's so curious

"And you just - want to give it to me?" she says, squinting. "So I can help some needy women?" 

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The woman smiles. "Exactly. She is a gift to be passed onward, when another needs her more - and am certainly not welcome to offer my service to your lands." 

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Well. 

Does the woman have an ulterior motive?

...Honestly, if her ulterior motive is 'good relations with the duchess of Velane will mean a better deal on their goods and more coin in her treasury-chest', then - all the power to her on that? It's still an enormously good deal for Yara. 

Maybe she wants to get rid of the blade, because it's cursed with some hidden downside? But even if that's the case, maybe she can't solve the curse, but Yara has full confidence that the Imperial mage-researchers can. 

(Maybe it's a godplot. But Yara does not incredibly consider it her job to look a gift horse in the mouth just because it might be a bloody godplot. She'd get way less in port tariffs if she started getting paranoid about that. It's not at the top of her mind.) 

 

And, fundamentally, Yara is the sort of person who accepts the invitation of a sailor she's met four times in total to get drunk on his ship, and doesn't ask questions about their gods. And if she's sometimes ends up rolling around with a handsome captain in his narrow bunk, it's not difficult to fail to notice the travel-shrine stowed away in his cubby, especially when she's a few tankards of ale into her evening. 

(And if anyone tries funny business, there are a lot of gulls, all of whom are fat and sleek and Duchess Yara's loyal friends, and all of whom have sharp beaks.) 

She isn't going to turn down a unique magical artifact just because the woman offering it is probably a cultist. She's a polite cultist, and that goes a long way. 

 

"Then, Eshaneel of the River Kingdoms," she says, with an ironic half-bow, "I would be honored to accept your gift." 

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Eshaneel offers the blade, hilt first. 

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She takes the sword. Hefts it, feeling its balance. 

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Oh, it's a good sword. And about the right weight for her, too, though it must have been a touch long and heavy for the small woman in front of her. 

(Yara is trained in combat. Her father never denied her anything when she asked, and - well, even at nine years old she knew how many advantages she would need, to command the men of her father's duchy not just on paper but in truth.) 

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.....Oh. 

 

 

She - does feel something, now. It's - nothing she's experienced before, not exactly, but it's not completely alien either, it feels like it's in the same place that her Gifts come from. 

A tug. It does, indeed, have a direction, and it's getting stronger. This way, this way, go go go - 

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And a voice, almost, or the ghost of one, creaky and dusty and amused. :Well, well, well, what have we here? ...You'll do, I suppose: 

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This is so strange and also so fascinating

 

 

...ugh, she was promised honey-spirits and a rousing night of drinking games. She doesn't want to go riding off into the wilderness of - that's got to be as far as Vushan, not even in her own duchy - can it wait until morning -? 

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No! No no no NO it absolutely cannot wait. Incredibly urgent. Now. Gather her best, ride as fast as they can - 

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Eeesh. Well, it's not a curse, exactly, but Esheena could perhaps have stood to mention that the bloody thing is rude and impatient

 

 

Also it might not even work, and she'll feel incredibly stupid if she drags a squadron of her top Adepts on a fool's chase. 

Then again, if it does work, and they heroically rescue some poor woman - or women, multiple, it feels from the tug behind her breastbone that it might be a lot of women - that will be a story she can tell for the rest of her life. 

 

She sighs, and stands. "Ap-parently I'd best be off quick like that. Fill me a flask for the road?" 

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Marit, of course, requires only two hours of sleep, at least unless they steal his magic items, which they haven't yet, or ask him to remove them, which they also haven't yet. Marit doesn't like sleeping; it's when they'll mind control him, if they plan to do more of that. He also doesn't like betraying capabilities, though Iomedae thought that they already knew that Golarion magic permitted one to get by with very little sleep.

He lies in his bed, motionless, not sleeping, contemplating the Empire. Iomedae, obviously, got the worst possible introduction, as that's what the gods wanted. Evil men executing terrified teenagers for the crime of resisting the foreign conquerors who'd burned their shrines and killed their priests, ideologically committed not just to the godlessness, which seems fine, but to spreading it by terror and slaughter and the eventual extermination of every people who sees things differently.

Not great. But then, they were handed a hard problem. Humans tend to be incredibly Evil, if you hand them hard problems.

 

And the gods would've preferred the Empire incredibly Evil, probably. Good is - in significant part, at least - the thing people build in the moments they aren't fighting for dominance, for survival, for security. You can't let them have that, if you want to keep a handle on them.

 

Alfirin probably already has a plan to kill the local gods. She's the kind of person who would. 

 

Why doesn't Iomedae want her to have an Empire to use to do it?

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The Thoughtsenser on night duty is not especially senior or high-ranking. He is selected primarily for being as disposable as a Thoughtsenser in the Empire ever is, and he has - rather deliberately - been provided with the bare minimum of context. 

 

 

He is incredibly confused. 

Points of confusion: 

- ...Good as a concept. What does that mean? It seems like he's gesturing at - safety, progress, invention and discovery and everyone able to afford to feed and clothe and teach their children, except that's what the Empire does and he thinks it's obvious the Empire isn't good? 

- The Empire being incredibly evil? That's– well, maybe less confusing and more just uncomfortable to think about, he can see how the executions would have come across if you didn't have the historical context. And maybe even if you did. He's never had to watch an execution in person and he doubts he would like it. 

- The gods preferring the Empire to be "Evil" and not just poor. Why? That doesn't seem like a godconcept? Isn't it the whole point, that gods don't care about the things humans do? 

- Iomedae's relationship with Alfirin, both formal and in terms of personal history

- Alfirin as a person, just in full generality

- The claim that you can kill gods at all??? 

- Iomedae being apparently opposed to conquering the Empire?? which is not how she was described to him at ALL???? 

 

 

He will write down all of these points of confusion, and keep mindreading to see if he can get any answers. 

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The most straightforward account of why Iomedae didn't order the Empire conquered is that she wanted to. It would be - out of character, obviously, but only barely out of character unlike usual when it'd be wildly out of character. Marit, himself, when he heard the news about Kiritan, wanted the Empire conquered, not 'for the benefit of everyone living in it and the end of the civil wars', though that's the pretty obvious upside, but so they could bring the Emperor to his knees before them and make him apologize. 

It wouldn't, actually, make it better. You should never, ever conduct an operation seeking satisfaction; it's not worth it, and you won't find it. The only objective for which you should ever draw your sword is to be ready to kill someone; the only objective for which you should ever conquer a country is to govern it (or dismantle it for parts). Iomedae's patterns of thought, and there's no way Iomedae forgot them.

But it's possible that she was tempted, and so she erred in the way she always says to err when you're tempted, by being conservative. She can't ask Aroden, here.

 

It's really hard to imagine this having been the operative constraint for more than half an hour.

 

There's the possibility that there are legitimate strategic constraints he doesn't know about. He's not thinking much about that for the obvious reasons. 

And there's the possibility that Iomedae thinks that Alfirin, with the Empire, would be very dangerous. There's a sense in which - you should expect that an Evil archmage, made an Empress, would be bad news. Alfirin - 

- what does he know about Alfirin, really. He's known her for decades but she's not an easy person to read, and the people who are best at deception lie to themselves. 

He knows that she didn't, actually, hurt Arbas, and that she didn't conquer the place when Iomedae requested she not, and that -

- and that she had the diamonds, which does in fact kind of rule out many of the 'Alfirin's been lying to us all along' scenarios. 

 

Why did Iomedae give her the diamonds? Marit wouldn't have done it. Even if he trusted Alfirin completely, there was no reason to, and you don't do things that open up vulnerabilities, even if you trust the involved person completely. Marit has secrets from Iomedae, and he does trust her completely. One's a safer number than two.

But Iomedae is - well, possibly making the biggest mistake in the history of Creation, but if she's not doing that, then she's being her usual self, and doing what she and Aroden conceptualize as - a leap of faith, a determined bet on a better world that is itself one step on a route to make it true, throwing her trust out into the void in the hope that something can grow on it.

 

And she was right, about the diamonds.

 

Marit hopes she's not wrong about the Empire.

 

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Vecaki Nerrs, third-circle cleric of Urgathoa and rotted corpse, hates the gods, life, civilization, the Whispering Way, and, yes, his boss the Mirrorgrave. Overall he's kind of big on hate.

(He grew up in Ustalav. That'll do it, for most people, even if their god doesn't abandon them when they turn around and decide they aren't leaving and are going to settle down and fix the place whatever happens.)

He hates Urgathoa slightly less than he hates other gods, because she makes him stronger. She's only doing it so she can eat his soul later, but, eh. Everyone has to go and becoming a tiny part of the goddess of feasting on rotting flesh seems all right to him.

Right now he hates the Mirrorgrave because he's not back yet. If the Mirrorgrave doesn't get back soon, he'll need to let the spectres loose, and he knows how angry the Whispering Tyrant will be if he loses him everything unnecessarily.

Midnight, that was the deadline.

By midnight.

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The country estate of the Marvit clan was overrun a long time before the Mirrorgrave arrived, and that was, after all, why he chose it. Nearly all the farmers who used to work it fled bandits or gone off to become bandits themselves, and a few wild men lurking in the woods hardly gave the Mirrorgrave and his servants problems. Brambles have grown up all around it, thornbushes blocking most of the entrances, with a stone wall (not high, but high enough that you'd need to climb it) and firmly locked gates deterring the rest from peering too closely at the shabbily-maintained buildings inside. There are, of course, the usual wards and traps guarding it, established by the Mirrorgrave's servants during his brief supervision, but few are especially visible.

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Riding hard through dark creepy woods at nearly midnight is OVERRATED. 

 

...Yara was kind of surprised and miffed the first time she discovered this. But it's not, actually, the first hands-on threat to Velane that she's handled personally. She's a hands-on sort of duchess. Equipped with charged magic items, she can handle herself in a fight - at least with bandits, even weakly Gifted bandits if they don't have real training - and she's useful to have around whenever you're asking horses to do things they don't otherwise approve of. 

This is the first time they've ridden out on the warning of a magic sword artifact equipped with short-range Foresight, rather than in response to a message or communication-spell plea for aid, but it wasn't all that hard to get her best dozen Adepts out and riding at her side. Duchess Yara has been doing this for a while. When she gives orders, people listen. 

 

The State of High Alert warning passed from the capital did tell them to look out for 'unexplained disappearances' and respond immediately to any failure to report in. She...is a little less dubious of the sword-Foresight, knowing that context, though she certainly hadn't expected it to come to her doorstep. Which it will, at least according to the subconscious tug of the sword-Foresight which is quickly gaining the intensity of a fishhook in her ribcage, if she doesn't hurrhurryhurry arrriveintime ridefasterfasterfaster also WOW this sword is obnoxious.

She is only groaning internally about the ruin of what was promising to be a very good night, and a hard-earned one after the day she's had. The flask of honey-spirits is in her saddlebags for LATER, once they either neutralize the threat or confirm that it was a false alarm. 

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A Gate to the edge of the Velane duchy, which is also the border of Jacona Province; the sword will confidently inform Yara that it's at least that far, but from there the exact distance and direction isn't clear, and the maps they have are questionable and out of date - Vushan Province really is a mess - and it's just generally not a good idea to Gate into a completely unknown emergency. 

In the vicinity of where they're going, there are not so much "well maintained roads", let alone signposts or any form of lighting or, apparently, any villagers to ask directions. 

 

It doesn't matter. Need is a homing beacon, and a dozen Adepts can provide mage-lights for the horses and slash overgrown vegetation aside, and Yara can soothe the horses and coax them to maintain a trot. They continue make very good time. 

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This forest is BAD and WRONG and Yara is not a stupid child to be scared of the dark but– oh that's not her feeling. It gets harder to peel apart her own emotions from the ones her Gift provides to her, when she's not paying direct attention, and right now her Gift is fully open but her focus has been on the horses. 

 

...slow down, slightly, and then reach outward, what's wrong...? 

(Yara knows to trust the instincts of wild animals. She can't sense an aura of blood-magic, but quite a lot of woodland animals will get creeped out - though presumably if it were that, her mages would have noticed -)  

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There aren't any large animals nearby. 

The smaller animals - the birds and squirrels and burrowing moles and lizards and snakes - are unsettled. A lot of them are recently displaced, stressed and off-balance in the way of territorial animals crowded into a territory that isn't their own. They fled...something. Something in that direction. (The exact direction Need is pulling them.) 

Something BAD and WRONG. 

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And she's having her mages check and none of them are sensing blood-magic. 

It doesn't feel right to her either. There are frogs alive, including displaced ones. Frogs are bizarrely delicate creatures and, while hardier animals are only disoriented and slightly sickened by heavy blood-magic fallout, frogs often just die, or are weakened enough that they absolutely couldn't flee miles. 

 

 

She will order a communication-spell report passed IMMEDIATELY to her steward, who should be woken if he's not already up. She wants an alert passed to the capital - not at the highest level of emergency priority because you really need more than 'the wild animals are upset' for that - but report that something is going on, and she has yet to confirm a disappearance or anything specific like that but she'd rather overreact than underrreact. 

And she wants a mage back at the keep to check in with the captain of her mage-squadron every...five minutes, that's often enough to assuage her anxiety without being too disruptive...and, if he fails to reply, immediately escalate to a panic-level alert and attempt to scry Yara herself and the scryable magic bobbins on her mages' livery and the scryable magic harnesses on the horses and report ALL OF THIS and - call for reinforcements from the nearest Imperial Guard posting and and prepare a response in force, because anything that takes out Yara and a dozen of her best people is very plausibly not something that her personal Guard can handle alone. 

 

...and they ride onward, more cautiously - but not much more slowly, because the bloody sword is screeching in the back of Yara's mind that they're running out of time 

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It’s the region of Lord Marvit’s estate, according to their sketchy maps. It looks pretty abandoned. One of the Adepts has family in Vushan and thinks maybe it has been for a while.

 

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She’ll order the mages to scry ahead. They’re less than five minutes away, but - she doesn’t like this at all.

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They won’t be able to see much unless the bandits or whoever they are have campfires, it’s very dark outside, but they’ll scry ahead just to see.

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It looks like there's something moving inside the estate's walls but outside the buildings, probably? It's dark enough that it's hard to see anything, and there's no lights but the moon and stars.

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...Well, they can't cast a mage-light from this distance. 

 

She'd like a report sent by communication-spell with this update, and half a dozen of her mages to split off and encircle the estate to cast wards and shields. If there's some kind of bandit nest in there, they don't want them getting away. Perimeter at 500 yards from the walls, which is about the maximum range of mage-sight for a poorly trained bandit mage, she doesn't want them forewarned either. They should slow down the approach, dim their own mage-lights, make them directional and aimed only downward for the horses to see where they're putting their feet...

And keep the scry up. That part shouldn't be detectable, and she wants to notice any sudden change in the poorly-seen activity that might mean they've been noticed. 

 

Within ten minutes, they're approaching the outer walls of the Marvit estate. 

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They get close - 

 

 

- and the horses are SUDDENLY PANICKING because something is VERY BAD AND WRONG.

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Um. 

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Immediate urgent report back to the landholding, Yara takes her horses' reactions seriously and she doesn't like this at all

 

And. Uh. Message is passed? Are the shields and wards up?

In that case she wants some bright mage-lights over there to get a better view of what even, before they try to unlock or break down those gates. 

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"What even" is shambling, magically-animated corpses, staring hungrily out through the wall at her (no, not through holes in the wall, the wall itself) with sightless eyes.

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And the light shines through, and Vecaki Nerrs utters a silent curse. The Mirrorgrave's statue is in the basement, and it hasn't woken up yet -

- well. He knows what this means.

"Kill them all," he whispers through cracked lips to any undead around, and starts casting his remaining spells. He'll have work to do, downstairs.

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WHAT THE ACTUAL GODFORGED FUCK

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- they’re not going in there. Keep the outer wards, raise a concert barrier-shield close around the walls - and a unidirectional magical shield to block magical attacks from inside while allowing their own fireballs and levinbolts through, and -

— what are those - almost certainly what the State of High Alert was about and wow she wishes they had sent out a CLEARER WARNING. 

 

well, she’s got a dozen Imperial-trained Adepts with top-notch shielding talismans, which she doesn’t even need to tell them to activate at full power now, and - do the things go down to fireballs -?

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The sword is tugging at her again, but - not to run in there, just yet. Orient first. And call for reinforcements. 

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What a helpful Foresight artifact! Not that Yara incredibly needed to be told either of those things, but she appreciates the advice anyway. It’d be extra helpful if it could shield her too. 

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Well, do they go down - or at least show any sign of injury - to massed fireballs aimed via scry and lobbed over the wall by skilled and disciplined Imperial Adepts?

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Yup! They are mostly slow and not visibly intelligent, and though they can take more hits than a normal person without flinching, if Imperial adepts fireball them enough then they go down. (Some of them seem to be pure bones, with no flesh at all, but they go down, too, under the same fire.)

One of the less rotten ones is a mage, though! It raises shields on reflex (not great shields, but shields), throws a fireball, watches the fireball hit their barrier, and scurries for safety in the stone central keep that is the least on-fire bit of the estate.

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Well, they can keep flinging fireballs! It's pretty freaky and bizarre that the DEAD ROTTING CORPSE is somehow mage-gifted, but her Adepts are at least BETTER at it! 

 

 

Dear Foresight artifact sword: any advice??? 

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The Foresight artifact sword is PRETTY SURE THINGS WILL GET WORSE FROM HERE!!!!!! 

 

There's something in the basement of one of the buildings. It's not something Yara can necessarily take down but it's very important that it doesn't get out

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....Okay. That's. Uh. Concerning. 

Yara would like one of her mages to make a direct report to Jacona. Yes. Directly to the highest ranking person they can reach. Now. And keep the comms-spell link open, things...might move fast. 

 

(She is...not not expecting to maybe die here. It's - the kind of thing you're opening yourself to, when you ride out yourself on the word of a weird Foresight artifact given to you by a religious cultist, even one who seems to be a lovely and admirable person. It's a thought at the back of her mind and she's not exactly upset about it.) 

 

Are enough of the rotting corpses down that her mages can Gate in and block the doors of that building over there? 

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The corpse-mage goes down under sufficiently concentrated fire - it appears to be fighting almost completely by instinct, but, you know, imperial mage-trained instinct - and yes, yes she can!

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One Adept should stay outside and at a distance, for comms-spell purposes. Three should hold the perimeter.

 

The remaining eight, Yara wants with her. And, yes, she's going in herself. No, she's not going to debate it. She's the one with the powerful magical artifact that may give them warning if something is about to explode. 

 

They Gate in. 

(It's been a little over thirty seconds since the mage-lights went up.) 

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Two of the Adepts hold shields over their Duchess! (They're also the two trained in unscaffolded Gates, and can drop her through one if necessary, horse and all.)

The remaining six, still on horseback, will fling up a force-bubble around the stone keep, then spread out add more thorough physical and magical barriers over windows and doors, then - can they scry what's actually down there...?

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What's in the keep are

- More walking dead, holding the only entrance, the spiral staircase up to the upper floors, and the hatch that leads to the basement. Disturbingly, these ones are wearing armor and carrying swords and shields and looking much smarter than they should for dead people, and there's another corpse-mage there with shields up who looks similar, and ready to zap any gates it can see. They're fairly clearly trying to hold the keep against assault. (Most keeps like this would just use those as storerooms, if they use them for anything.)

- In the upper stories, very little and mostly what you'd expect from an abandoned noble's estate, though there's some chests on the top floor that look recently disturbed.

- They can't scry the cellars because there's no light there.

- A few more corpses and skeletons come out of the burning buildings but they are not more fireball-resistant than the other ones noticed.

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Okay. Hmm. 

 

She...does not especially want to fight their way through the single entry-point. But maybe she'll detail a couple of her mages just to keep the armed and armored corpse-guard busy, and - 

 

- they can't Gate to the main floor, there's a corpse-mage there and it doesn't take being very good at magic to hit a Gate, but upstairs looks doable... 

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Her Adepts think she should not go in herself. They're inclined to leave someone on scrying duty and maintaining the force-barrier, and two more mages to occupy the door-guarding corpse, in addition to the two guarding Yara and the four mages still outside the outer walls.

 

That leaves three Adepts available to do some reconnaissance inside the keep and attempt to take down that creepy dead rotting mage (what is going on???) and any other creepy-crawlies that leap out of dark corners, and then they can cast some mage-lights down into the basement and see what's going on. 

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THEY DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS FASTER FASTER FASTER

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Aaaaaaughhhhh. 

 

All right. Fine. Gate in immediately, stay in touch with the comms spell, fight to clear the main floor as fast as possible and seal the basement door in the meantime. And if the bloody sword tells her to go in then she's going. 

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A Gate goes up to just around the corner of the second-floor landing, so they can drop the Gate and get shields up before the corpse-mage can get line of sight to throw anything at them. 

They charge down the stairs, shielded and flinging fireballs ahead of them. 

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The shield-wielding corpse is supernaturally agile and deadly! It will go down under fire, but not before it hits a mage harder than a human ought to be able to hit. (The blow rebounds off the shield, of course, imperial mages know what they're doing, but...)

This buys time for the corpse-mage to put up a shield-barrier, but although this delays them, it does not stop them. The reanimated corpses do their best to hold off the adepts, but all they're doing is buying time; Yara showed up to this fight with overwhelmingly superior firepower, and she hasn't lost it.

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And in the basement below, Vecaki Nerrs is cutting at the extremely tight cords that keep the bag of spectres closed, because the Mirrorgrave did not want to depopulate the planet accidentally - 

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This seems to be going pretty well! 

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IT WILL START GOING VERY BADLY VERY SOON IF SHE DOESN'T GET INTO THAT BASEMENT RIGHT BLOODY NOW

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Wow, okay, the sword doesn't need to be rude about it! 

 

"I'm going in," Yara informs her mage-guards, very levelly. The main floor isn't completely cleared of horrifying animated corpses, but the one that can throw fireballs is down, and the Adepts in there should at least be able to shield the area by the basement stairs. 

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The horses have OBJECTIONS!!!!! 

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Well, yeah. Horses are also useless on stairs. She'll dismount, in a single fluid motion, and draw the sword, and "Gate now please -" 

 

 

And then she's at the trapdoor leading to the basement. 

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The sword is suddenly raising Yara's arm without her willing it, and a cord of mage-energy lashes out and flings the trapdoor open and throws a mage-light. 

 

(Yara will be able to feel it drawing on her reserves, exactly the way that her existing Gifts do.) 

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Okay wow that's incredibly cool!!! 

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- focus. 

 

Now that there's light, one of her Adepts can get scrying coverage. What's down there. 

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There's a ladder that's deliberately not propped up; there's sacks of stuff, there's a work-table with blood on it. Standing between the work-table and the trapdoor is another shield-and-sword undead. (It has glowing eyes.) It is standing guard over another corpse, this one with a mouth open in a silent scream; it's wearing armor and a dark cloak that both appear to be mildly magical, and is just finishing up cutting all the heavy-duty cords keeping the mouth of a small bag (on the table) shut. On the armor, the cloak, the hilt of the knife, and a pendant around the cloaked corpse's neck is the symbol of a red fly with a skull on its back.

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Well. Shit. That's spectacularly fucked up! 

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Yara doesn't need a ladder! Yara also does not have time to figure out a ladder! Yara needs to leap through that open hatch right now and fireball the creepy screaming-face corpse to distract it and then get a force net around that bag and hold it shut at all costs. 

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That sounds like a stupid idea! 

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Yara just needs to trust that it would be a much stupider idea not to! 

 

Also she's shielded with very powerful magic and the sword can heal any nonlethal injuries very fast and she should JUST GO NOW RIGHT NOW NO SERIOUSLY

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FINE

 

"After me," Yara barks to her mages, and leaps down through the stupid trapdoor, and - throws a fireball, apparently, or the sword does from her reserves - 

 

 

- force-net on the bag, apparently the sword can do that too, if not as advanced or efficient a technique as the Imperial standard - 

 

 

Yara really hopes her Adepts are going to FOLLOW her and keep the creepy corpses off her back. 

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Doesn't she also have a SWORD? It's magic. She can fight dead bodies even if they're armored! 

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At that point, everything happens very quickly. The corpse will engage her; it is immediately apparent to Need's magical senses that it is magical, that its sword (or its touch directly) will drain the life from her wielder if it touches her flesh, and that it is trying to do this (The glowing eyes, visible up-close, make all this clearer.)

It's good with the sword. It's not stronger and tougher than most humans get; stronger and tougher than average, sure, but not really superhuman. But it could probably go up against any swordsman in the imperial army, in pure skill.

It is, however, up against Need. And against Need it is seriously outclassed.

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The last rope is already fraying when the force-net hits the bag and hurls it from the cleric's hands, and the bag goes flying across the room. Emerging from the bag but still trapped within the net wrapped around it are - horrible ghost-creatures, they look like tormented humans but they can't be wholly seen, they just look like insubstantial faces and hands pressed up against the net, trying to force their way out with no force at all to use.

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And Vacaki Nerrs, undead cleric of Urgathoa, channels energy.

Every living thing within thirty feet of him without walls in the way - which, right now, means Duchess Yara Velane and any adepts near the trapdoor - will feel their life draining away from them as negative energy makes a good try at tearing their soul from their body, and pass out.

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Yara: is now unconscious on the floor! (So are the two of her mages who were closest to the trapdoor and about to follow her.)

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The remaining mages in the building who are still conscious: alarmed and terrified and passing a communication-spell warning on as fast as they can!

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The sword referred to as Need: is not precisely alive, and is undamaged by the burst of negative energy.

She is, nonetheless, somewhat incapacitated by the fact that her bearer is now unconscious on the floor! But the reserves she needs to draw on to do magic aren’t quite the same as the damage done by the negative energy, and she can still hold the force-net, and shield Yara from more ordinary physical or magical attacks, and start trying to heal her.

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The wight will stab Yara while she's down on general principles.

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And Vecaki will gather his strength for another channel if those adepts come down.

(He doesn't recognize the curse - he's not as smart as he was, now that he's dead - but the force-wall spells he's familiar with don't go down if you hit them, and he already spent all his third-circle spells that might have been Dispel Magic.)

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Stabbing Yara doesn't work because Need is shielding! 

(She can't do it forever. But she can block a couple of hits, and she can dissuade more of them with a fireball to stupid creepy glowing-eyed corpse's FACE, take that!) 

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The three Adepts still conscious and inside the keep are regrouping. (The first priority is to haul the unconscious bodies of their fellows out of the apparent area-of-effect of whatever that was, that and summoning backup is all they can do for now; the men might be dying, but they can't spare the energy to Gate them back to the infirmary in Velane, not until they have reinforcements with fresh reserves and a better handle on what's even happening.) 

 

...Going down there seems like a spectacularly stupid idea. They are not going to do that. 

The three who were on scouting duty selected themselves for it because, of the team, they're the best at distance-casting and casting while aiming from a simultaneous scry, and one of them is fairly solid on the advance technique of 'throw fireballs through rapid Gates'. 

He'll fling fireballs at the silently-screaming corpse, which is keeping a little more distance from Yara so it's easier to avoid hitting her. The second mage will try to get the stupid sword-wielding glowing-eyed shambling corpse fouled up in a force-net so it can't keep stabbing her. 

The third mage, once both of the animated-corpse attackers are at least temporarily distracted, will try to raise an unscaffolded Gate under Yara and get her to the landing of the stairs, where she should be out of the line of fire until she recovers a little. He's not that fast at Gates at range, but from one room to another, he can do in under two seconds. 

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Plan Force-Net: Success! The glowing-eyed corpse is not strong enough to burst out of it.

Plan Gate: Success! Nobody will interrupt it.

Plan Fireballs: The first fireball ought to kill a human, and probably ought to kill one of the shambling corpses from earlier, but the eternally-screaming corpse only seems mildly annoyed; it repeats the horrible thing it did earlier and all of its wounds immediately heal.

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At least the mages seem to in fact be out of its range! 

 

...The mage who can do distance-Gate-attacks braces his stance, and reaches out to tap a node. It's clearly going to take more firepower, if they can't fight the thing up close and it can shrug off fireballs like that and then HEAL ITSELF with DEATH BLASTS. 

(His colleague will try to force-net the screaming-corpse as well, if it looks like it wants to head for the trapdoor.) 

 

When the first mage's next Gate goes up, a full five seconds later, the fireball he flings is node-boosted as hard as he can manage, and at least five times as powerful as the last one. 

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- Yeah, that does it. The screaming corpse is consumed by the flames.

(And Urgathoa feasts on another soul...)

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Okay. Now can he take down the SECOND shambling corpse, the sword-wielding one that's still trying to escape its force-net? 

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(And Need will keep healing Yara as fast as possible, desperately fighting to get her conscious again so that she can see the bag -)

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That's no harder than the last one.

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Okay. Okay. 

 

 

(AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH) 

 

Are there any other animated corpses left al– well, not alive, but still moving, in this building? If not then one of them will stay with Yara and the two other casualties, and the other two will advance on the basement and the bag of....whatever those even are...still trapped in a force-barrier. 

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Nope! There are not.

The bag of... whatever those even are... is clearly magic. The whatever those even are are also magic. There's a few other magic items sitting around, scrolls and wands sitting on the table, another bag; the statue is either magical or under some kind of magical effect.

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Okay. Well. Message for backup is conveyed. They seem to have the situation temporarily under control, maybe? 

They will pin everything magic behind separate force-barriers (and add a couple more layers to the one around the whatever-those-even-are, which is holding but they're certainly having a go at it) and...examine them? And pass descriptions to the mage-relay on the comms spell with Jacona, because what even??? 

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And Need is healing Yara as fast as possible, including by yoinking some spare reserves from the mage watching over her. She's on track to get Yara at least conscious, if not necessarily back on her feet, in another...two, three minutes, maybe. 

 

It is not at all clear if the situation will remain under control for that long. 

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Jacona sent a response that the rapid strike team was on the way to... someone who already went down... but they can respond again confirming that to these Adepts.

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For fifteen second nothing goes wrong.

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Then the Mirrorgrave has been dead for exactly forty-eight hours, and the uncannily-well-made statue shaped exactly in his image will - very much not move for the tiniest fraction of a second but have its magical aura clearly and abruptly and VERY MAGICALLY change, and then he will cast a spell.

The Mirrorgrave did not expect to immediately awaken in the middle of a fight, but prepared spells useful for a fight with imperial mages, sound passes harmlessly through Imperial mage-barriers, and the Mirrorgrave had two imperial mages to study.

Shadow Evocation (Shout) at the two mages in the basement with him. A cone of lethal sound, aimed to catch both of them before they can dodge, respond, or Gate out.

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The two highly trained Imperial mages are, by Golarion standards, commoners. They die instantly. 

 

Everyone else is out of range, either upstairs at the landing or outside the compound entirely. The mage guarding the Duchess hears - something - and gets a scry up, and bites down a muffled curse, and - no, actually, his first action is to Gate the Duchess out - and the other casualties as well, dumping them all through a horizontal Gate, and even as they drop through he's immediately yelling on the communication-spell to the relay-mage that WHERE IS BACKUP THEY NEED IT NOW!!! 

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....Yeah. Even Need has a doomy feeling about fighting that - thing - with just Yara, assuming she can get Yara conscious in time. 

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...Next problem, all the dangerous magic objects are still in there including the what-are-those-even in the force-net and it's presumably going to go RATHER BADLY if the animated STATUE THING lets them loose but also going back in there to try to secure the bag is suicide. 

It's...not really clear what to do except repeat the comms-spell call for reinforcements EVEN LOUDER.

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(The Mirrorgrave will rapidly notice several things: that the bag of spectres is open but the spectres are trapped inside some kind of very magical net-barrier, that Vecaki and the wight are both down in smoking heaps, and that there are no longer any animated undead under his control in or around the keep.) 

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Mmm. Unfortunate.

Then in that case the Mirrorgrave will - do some kind of complicated supernatural ability, and his stone cloak will fall off his shoulders and be replaced with the real one - create an illusion of himself outside the force-bubble, switch places with it - cast a few spells on himself, walk over to the bag, say something, hit the force-nets around the bag with a Dispel Magic, realize that that only gets rid of one force-net and he only has a finite number of Dispels Magic prepared, consider a moment...

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- And then an elite mage-strike-team from the Imperial Guard will Gate in and hit him with about forty levinbolts, fireballs, force-daggers and Adept-killer bullets within two seconds.

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The Mirrorgrave has not had time to refresh all his buffs yet, and did not think to prepare duplicates of all of them, which would have seriously cut into his Dominate Person and Circle of Death space. This is, moreover, the first time he's been conscious since he was assassinated.

Or, in other words, he's now smoking remnants under a cloak again. Rip.

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Sleep doesn't want to come. 

 

Bastran should arguably take drugs about it again; when he finally made his way to his bedchamber, he asked not to be disturbed except in an emergency, and he hasn't been checking the time since but it must be after midnight. Tomorrow morning won't go away no matter how hard he ignores it, and it will only be worse if he's not rested for it. 

That's the trouble, though. He's exhausted, his eyes gritty with it, but he doesn't want to to be waking up tomorrow morning, just rested enough to face another day. (Or, who knows, maybe jolted out of bed in the middle of the night again by some new emergency.) 

It's stupid, of course. He's a grown man, and - this isn't even a demand specific to the Emperor, it's a fact of adult life and adult responsibility that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do.

But there's been so much, and...it's still stupid, Altarrin wouldn't be childish enough to have this problem, but Bastran empirically is childish enough to have all sorts of stupid embarrassing problems, and - right now it feels like he's been drawing too deeply from that well, and is down to the last few dregs, and he just. Can't.

It's not even the flailing distress of a toddler having a tantrum, sure that if he screams loudly enough then some grownup will give him its way. He's just. Observing himself continuing to sit at his desk and stare into nothing rather than go to bed. 

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Okay. Move. Get up. Stop being a whiny useless brat and– 

 

...the quiet mental voice of Altarrin. It generally will not help to be cruel to yourself, Bastran. The world is cruel enough already. 

Great. Now he's being nagged by multiple internal voices at once. And he's suddenly pointlessly angry at it, at the soft patient imaginary voice of the man who's been there for him nearly his entire adult life, who supported and taught and coaxed and cajoled him through decades of responsibility he never wanted or asked for, who bent and carve and sanded him into the shape of a leader the Empire needed. And now there's nothing left of Bastran except the mask of an Emperor, nothing to be a counterweight - and Altarrin warned him of that too. ("You are also human, and you need other anchors, for your health, for your sanity.")

But Altarrin is gone, and the Empire is up against a war it can't win, everything is falling apart and - he doesn't know what it means to be Bastran, anymore. It feels like maybe he isn't anything, just a hollow shell of compulsions over emptiness, and if anyone really looked into his eyes, they would see the void where there should be a person, but no one ever does, do they, they look at him and only see the Emperor who they're bound to serve, who has the power of life and death over them... 

 

This is such a stupid line of thought. Bastran clenches his firsts, forcing a breath out between his teeth - 

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The shield-talisman ring that Bastran hastily grabbed this morning from one of the ministry supply-rooms, between meetings, to swap out for his discharged one because he didn't have time to recharge it himself - that ring was made slightly wrong. The loop of metal wire holding one of the quartz focus-crystals in place was poorly cut, and some behind-schedule mage-worker tried to tuck in the jagged edge rather than starting over or filing it down smooth. It doesn't affect the functionality at all, and isn't a cosmetic defect since it's on the underside of the ring, and it was hardly very likely that the sharp end would work its way loose of its fitting right the time when that the wearer was clenching his fists unreasonably hard, digging the bit of wire into his palm until it bites into his flesh. 

 

 

...this would ALSO not actually be an issue, and would probably go totally unnoticed, if not for a particular series of mistakes and misunderstanding in a particular factory a month ago, resulting in a batch of talisman items made to include an obscure spell recently invented for deeply unclear reasons, to snip compulsions when the wielder's skin is cut. 

 

(It's no one's fault. Just, as usual, a chain of miscommunications and bad timing leading to a lack of clarity on whether certain policies had been followed, and culminating in a harried Emperor being less attentive than usual as he grabbed a replacement ring.) 

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At any other time than this, Bastran might be reacting very differently. Even now, his mind starts to turn toward what's apparently the default reaction, which is tell Altarrin, Altarrin who would come immediately and react calmly and figure out what had happened, and what needed to happen next so that everything would be all right and under control. 

 

But Altarrin isn't here, and every direction he could turn from here is like a collapsing bridge, because, because - 

 

 

 

- because of the thought that he couldn't think, and that now he can't not think.

That Altarrin was right to leave. 

Altarrin looked at the Empire and saw failure, saw not the true civilization he had wanted to rebuild but only the rotting corpse of it, just barely animated by compulsions. And he would know, but really, Bastran could have known too. All he ever had to do was look at what was in front of him. 

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The Empire was always inevitably going to lose this war. The Empire deserves to lose, to be swallowed and digested and rebuilt into something that isn't seven hundred years' worth of chains. It can't be fixed, not from here, or else Altarrin would have stayed. 

 

...and the thing is, Altarrin could still walk away. He was smart and determined enough and he cared enough to notice when serving the Empire was failing its people, even with his mind wrapped in compulsions – and for all that he had been chained to his rotting Empire for centuries, he hadn't closed off all of his other options.

He was strong enough and wise enough to move on, when he realized that everything he had ever worked for was a lie. 

 

 

Bastran...isn't. 

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Bastran has, instead, spent the last month making increasingly flailing and destructive decisions, tearing apart and burning down what few shards of something good and admirable were left of the Empire, in a desperate pointless bid to delay the inevitable, to eke out a few more days or weeks of fighting a doomed war before the Empire would have to reckon with its mistakes– no, before he would have to live with his own failure. 

And now the reckoning is here, and - he's at the end of the road, at the end of all the roads, and there's nowhere left to go. He can’t keep doing this. He’s been burning his own insides for fuel until there was nothing left but a shell and now even that is gone and he just. Isn’t. Can’t. There's no forward motion left in him, he can't even bring himself to care about the future, there's just - a broken selfish thing that can't do or be anything other than pain, that doesn't deserve to exist - 

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...and there it is, the cliff at the end of every path his thoughts have worn into his mind, that he had to pretend wasn't there because it didn't serve the Empire to want to die.

 

He is still probably in some sense obligated to see it through to the end. What he really ""should"" do is call one of his guards, report the incident, have his compulsion put back, and get some sleep. 

He isn't going to. It doesn't even feel like a decision; it feels like walking facefirst into a stone wall in the dark, and turning and finding the path he came blocked as well, and there's no way out except, well, the ultimate way out of everything. 

And it's hard to care what he's leaving behind, it turns out, when he's not mind-controlled into it. It's hard to feel like it matters. The Empire isn't even a real thing anymore, and the facade that bears its name is at most days away from falling apart and revealing the emptiness behind. 

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A quiet distant voice - not quite the imaginary voice of Altarrin - is pointing out that if he kills himself and leaves his guards to find his bloody corpse in the Emperor's suite, this will have some predictably bad consequences. They'll blame Iomedae for it. Everyone will be panicked and even more paranoid and there will probably be a succession war and thousands of people will die - 

 

 

 

- and he can't think about that he can'tcan'tcan't, he's DONE, he's used every inch of his strength and determination and after that ran dry every remaining lever to guilt-trip and argue and shame himself into crawling a few more steps and it feels, right now, like admitting even a tiny bit that he cares about thousands of people dying means that he's STILL TRAPPED HERE FOREVER

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except he can't. actually. not. care. that's not a decision. it's just a fact. and now he seems to be doubly stuck.

 

Everything hurts, and even through it he can notice that there is something stupidly ironic or something about being too indecisive to get around to killing himself. 

 

- the quiet imaginary voice of Altarrin is pointing out that there are usually more than two options. Bastran doesn't yet see how that helps, and it's very hard to think, but...what does imaginary Altarrin have to say...? 

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You are not actually morally obligated to do anything you find intolerable, imaginary Altarrin is saying. 

Right, imaginary Altarrin. Great. The problem is that everything is intolerable. There does not actually seem to be an option here that doesn't involve doing one or another of the intolerable things. 

Is it more bearable if you know for sure it is temporary? imaginary Altarrin is saying back. 

 

 

...Yes. But he doesn't actually see how to temporarily cope his way to not having to do this anymore, and - it kind of feels like the scale of 'temporary' that becomes thinkable at all is measured in candlemarks, not days or weeks. He doesn't see how waiting two candlemarks to kill himself opens an avenue to prevent thousands of people from dying. 

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Right. What are the things that are going to go wrong, that he needs to prevent from going wrong before he can die without the guilt of taking thousands of people with him? 

Succession crisis, obviously. Escalating the war with Iomedae. Disrupting the Empire’s response to the Mirrorgrave situation. Probably other things? He’s already running out of mental space for tracking them and it feels like drowning in something dark and sticky, trappedtrappedtrapped, his entire ability to have thoughts starting to shut down and it’s so stupid, Altarrin wouldn’t have this problem…

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Altarrin would, in fact, be the best person in the Empire to handle this. 

 

 

And - the previous question, the one that rises on instinct and habit, is can we trust him. But - he knows Altarrin, and now that he can think about it head-on, it doesn’t feel like there’s any reason to expect mind-control to be involved. 

Maybe Altarrin isn’t loyal to the crumbling rotten monstrosity that bears the Empire’s name, and anyone loyal to that can no longer trust him, but - Altarrin is on the side of civilization. 

(Maybe more relevantly, thinking about whether he shouldn’t trust Altarrin makes the trapped screaming suffocating feeling come back. And - probably just deciding to trust Altarrin and go from there us at least an improvement on killing himself and starting the Empire down the inevitable messy fallout of finding his body in the morning.)

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So. That means he…has…to tell Altarrin. Somehow.

And tell him he was right. And ask him to fix it.

….and do that without obviously defecting, yet, because - option value. (Because Altarrin might need the resource of an Emperor not yet known to be compromised, who can solve problems via giving Imperial orders, but he can’t think about that directly right now, it’s too much like being trapped…)

 

And THEN, once Altarrin is there, (maybe existing will be more tolerable, somehow) and if not he can kill himself then.

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He can’t straightforwardly pass a message. He tries the simple way first, but Altarrin is out of range of the communication-spell, and also out of range of scrying.


It’s tempting to decide, at this point, that he Tried And It Didn’t Work, and give up and slit his wrists. But he hasn’t actually tried very hard, or come close to exhausting the options.

Anything that involves another human looking at his face sounds unbearable, right now. So. Start with that constraint that he needs to be able to do everything from his room…

 

Altarrin can presumably scry him, here. But would he, in the middle of the night and unprompted? He can write a note for Altarrin to read on a scry, that will probably reach Altarrin’s eyes only, but he would need a different channel to prompt Altarrin to check.

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What are the options for warning him? 

 

The message-drop location for Iomedae, he checks that often, but so does the Imperial side. If he drops something there without explanation, it may not reach Iomedae at all, and probably will be read by some suspicious Imperial guard.

If he goes through the official channels, gives orders that his letter not be read, then - it won't be, but doing that will attract attention, and questions, and Altarrin will have more options, will be more likely to thread the needle of a response where no one dies pointlessly, if he's not starting out with suspicion on the Emperor. 

 

(Though not Kastil's suspicion. Kastil, unconscious and helpless in a Healers' bed, obviously at the hands of the gods but that doesn't answer the proximal 'why', or - what's going to happen - and Bastran told the Healers to use one of the healing potions on him only if he was otherwise dying, because he was stupidly paranoid for all the wrong reasons, of all the wrong threats, and he can't even revise that order now without raising suspicion...) 

 

Another wave of overwhelmed exhausted emotional agony is hitting him - it's too hard, he can't do this, he wantsneedsscreams for it to stop and it's not stopping and he can't

 

But whenever or not he can, he's going to. Try one more time, that is. He just has to think of one more thing and that's it, he's done, he's already tried so much harder than is reasonable (but it's not about what's reasonable to ask of himself, it's about soldiers who will die pointlessly if the Empire falls about into warring factions because of Bastran's weakness as a person...) 

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...Iomedae's diplomat is in range. 

 

The problem is that Iomedae's diplomat isn't a mage, and can't use the communication-spell. But he's within scrying range, and - Bastran can find out who's on duty, where, and everyone involved has to follow Imperial orders, and it would be suspicious for the Emperor to send a secret letter to him but he doesn't have to make it clear who it's from, does he. It's technically not even clear in Imperial law whether it's illegal for the Emperor to forge a letter by someone lower-ranked who he can give orders, as opposed to vice versa. 

The second problem is that he has no idea if Iomedae's diplomatic hostage has an avenue of communication with Altarrin or Iomedae than Bastran's own. 

 

The third problem is that Altarrin would be well within his rights to be utterly furious with Bastran, who betrayed his ally's trust and tortured her paladin, and Bastran wouldn't even mind being executed for it but that's not the point, the point is whether Altarrin has remaining sympathy for the Empire– 

- it's a stupid question, Altarrin doesn't think in terms of sympathy to the thing that bears the name of the Empire. He just doesn't want thousands of soldiers to die in a pointless self-destructive war. 

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He forges a letter from a secretary to the Minister of Barbarians, and an Imperial order on Imperial letterhead, and he writes another letter and seals it in a second smaller envelope to go inside the first, addressed to Marit, diplomatic representative of Iomedae and the Knights of Ozem. The rest of the package is very clear in its instructions; they are not to open or read the letter before it reaches Marit, and should let him look at it without Thoughtsensing active on him. 

 

He Gates it to someone else's in-tray. He communication-spell contacts one of the night clerks - it's not that hard to pretend to be someone else, that way - and tells them that the message was missed in the earlier run and should be transported to the diplomatic compound at their convenience. 

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That's...kind of confusing...but the staff on the night shift are mostly junior - a lot of the more experienced ones were just pulled away - and they're sufficiently embarrassed about Probably Missing Something that the letter will be transported over with alacrity. 

 

They were not exactly ordered to wake the diplomat on overnight duty but they...probably should?

(Certain updates about certain activities in the northeast have not yet reached the diplomatic team, since there is ongoing discussion on whether they even want to tell Iomedae.) 

 

Ketar has orders to wake the diplomat, if he's asleep, and give him this letter addressed to him, and let him read it in private, no he is not cleared for the contents, the attached Imperial Order is very clear. 

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...Confusing but okay? 

 

Is Marit in fact asleep or is he still awake thinking. (Ketar has been intermittently rather than continuously checking, his Gift is tired.) 

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He's awake. He intends to sleep - otherwise his judgment will be impaired in the morning - but he doesn't need to quite yet and so hasn't yet.

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Well, they have this letter addressed to him, here. Ketar was not told it's urgent but it sounds like it was supposed to be here earlier so he should probably read it? Ketar has orders to give him privacy for it. 

 

(The letter has Marit's name on it, in the Imperial language and nondescript if slightly shaky handwriting, and does not specify in any way who it's from.) 

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- sure. He'll start actually trying to prevent being mindread, not that he expects it'll work, and he'll open the letter. 

(And cast Comprehend Languages.)

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(It wouldn't work, but Ketar is obeying a written Imperial order and not reading the diplomatic hostage's mind even though he's so curious.) 

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Inside is a single sheet of paper. The letter is short, written in considerably shakier handwriting with a few smudges. (Bastran maaaay have put most of his willpower and remaining control into making the cover letter and orders convincingly professional.) 

 

To Marit of the Knights of Ozem 

I would be very grateful if you could convey a message to Iomedae, and tell her that I recognize now the horrifying mistakes that the Empire has made, especially in our treatment of her paladins, and I am deeply sorry and wish to personally offer my surrender to her, though I cannot at this time give it for the Empire as a whole. 

I also recognize that the Empire is not the civilization that Altarrin wanted to build, and that he was right to leave. I would be obliged if you or Iomedae could alert Altarrin that I wish to relinquish control of the current empire to him, and hope that he may see a way forward from here, because I cannot. Altarrin likely already has as much context as is helpful. I have no standing to plead with Altarrin for anything, but if he would listen, I would beg that he act before morning, and find a way to confirm receipt of the letter. I will be in my quarters. 

- Emperor Bastran IV

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What.

 

 

 

Okay. So. This is probably -

 

A palace coup of some kind. Soon someone will storm in here and find the proof of the Emperor's treason - blame it on Iomedae and Marit, insist that they mind-controlled him like they did Altarrin -

 

 

He could walk out. They agreed to give him that right, and he has a Teleport. Two Teleports. Eighteen hundred miles, not all the way home but probably out of the Empire's range to quickly find him, especially if he then pops into a Rope Trick. 

 

He'll be pastwatched, if anything notably interesting or unusual happens in the next whatever-the-duration-of-their-pastwatching - and mindread tomorrow - this note will be read, and have whatever implications it was written to have -

 

- Marit hates this assignment so much.

He could burn the note and kill himself. That seems like probably not what whoever did this was playing for, which makes it better than what whoever did this was playing for, except that they can still do the pastwatching. 

(He folds the note, calmly places it in his pocket. He'll melt it with acid from there, inconspicuously.)

"Are you going to go right back to mindreading me now?" he asks the man, irritably.

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"- I was told to give you privacy until you were done," Ketar says uncertainly. "It didn't really have instructions on how long." 

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What is he supposed to do with that????

"I'm not done," he says, just in case the man in front of him is in fact not lying about that. "I want to write a response. I'm going to do that in privacy, if I may?"

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"- Right, yes, of course. Er. The imperial order didn't explicitly say not to read your response before it's sent, and usually the officers do read the message traffic, I think. Do you think it was supposed to, I'm not cleared to know what's going on but I could ask for clarification on that?" 

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"You can read the response, I don't mind. I don't think it's worth waking anyone up over. They'd be annoyed about that, right? I just want to write it somewhere where I can hear myself think. I feel really jumpy here."

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"Mmmhmm. Of course." Honestly Ketar is jumpy here too and he's not even the one in the wrong world right now. He'll duck out and wait. 

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Rope Trick. Marit will wait for a bit to see if this triggers their alarms. His thoughts, if they're being read, will be about how he just wants some privacy and this is the easiest spell that'll give him some.

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It does set off an alarm and startles some of the guards outside! The mage who responds to the alarm by scrying the room alerts Ketar that it's Some Otherworldly Spell and he should find out what the prisoner is doing, though he's not actually banned from doing magic in general, only from harming people or plotting sabotage.

Ketar is very conscientiously not reading Marit's mind when he reaches out to ask what the spell is and how long it lasts. (He takes secrecy above what he's cleared to know very seriously.) 

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It'll last all night and it'll give him some goddamn privacy is what it'll do. He's happy to say that under a truthtelling compulsion.

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The Imperial Guard requests permission from him to apply this compulsion (a very standard one) and then ask him if this is intended as a plot against the empire or assistance thereto, a plot against the emperor or assistance thereto, an attempt to subvert negotiations, an attempt to spread the worship or influence of gods, or a conspiracy to commit a serious crime (in general).

(They'll back off if pushed. He's an ambassador. But they're allowed to ask him to voluntarily submit to a compulsion to clear up a misunderstanding.)

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He is happy to submit to the compulsion (well, he isn't, but he'll do it) and assure them that this is not intended as a plot against the empire or the emperor, or assistance to such a plot (he wants to thwart the probable-coup, though he suspects the message will have been arranged to arrive too late for that), not an attempt to  subvert negotiations, not an attempt to spread the worship or influence of gods.

He doesn't know that much about what's a serious crime in the Empire. He isn't trying to undermine the Empire or the Emperor or murder anyone or mess with anyone's compulsions or do any espionage or do anything to do with gods and he isn't doing anything that'd be a serious crime in his world but they may need to list all serious crimes if they want an absolute assurance.

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Yeah, that's good enough for them, they'll back off. Thank you for assisting them with their security precautions.

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Then Marit will climb into the Rope Trick and Sending Alfirin, which takes ten minutes he's not sure he has. 

"Baffling note claimed from Emperor, emergency, check if Emperor dead, please get me better comms".

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...What.

 

"Scrying Emperor to check status. Will scry you shortly for comms, do not resist."

Scry on Bastran?

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Alive!

 

Also: awake, despite the fact that it's well after midnight. Currently curled up in a tight ball in the middle of his bed, radiating misery and despair, with some crumpled and discarded letter-drafts near his feet. 

There's a note clearly written for the purpose of being readable on a scry, in large thick penstrokes in the Imperial tongue, and sitting face-up at the foot of his bed. It's even less coherent than the letter to Marit.

 

ALTARRIN

YOU WERE RIGHT 

CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE

PLEASE FIGURE SOMETHING OUT 

 

 

The scry-sensor would be visible to mage-sight, if Bastran were paying attention, which he isn't. It's also unfamiliar to any of the specific spell-alarms on his thoroughly warded room, and well below the threshold to trigger a generic alarm. It will, for the moment, go unnoticed. 

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Well that's a new and exciting situation to add to their already long list of situations.

If Iomedae and Altarrin are around she'll grab them for a telepathic bond before scrying Marit.

:Altarrin, scry the Emperor, his compulsions are gone, tell me if anything changes. I need to talk to Marit.:

 

Greater scry, message.

"Emperor's alive, what's your situation?"

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Marit will, first, exchange codes with Alfirin, because technically it could be anybody who scried him after he sent Alfirin an urgent request for help. Then he'll explain that he's in a Rope Trick and surrounded by only mildly suspicious people who will nonetheless read his mind the instant he leaves.

Then he'll pull out the letter and both read it aloud and hold it up to Alfirin, in case those produce different results. 


To Marit of the Knights of Ozem 

I would be very grateful if you could convey a message to Iomedae, and tell her that I recognize now the horrifying mistakes that the Empire has made, especially in our treatment of her paladins, and I am deeply sorry and wish to personally offer my surrender to her, though I cannot at this time give it for the Empire as a whole. 

 

I also recognize that the Empire is not the civilization that Altarrin wanted to build, and that he was right to leave. I would be obliged if you or Iomedae could alert Altarrin that I wish to relinquish control of the current empire to him, and hope that he may see a way forward from here, because I cannot. Altarrin likely already has as much context as is helpful. I have no standing to plead with Altarrin for anything, but if he would listen, I would beg that he act before morning, and find a way to confirm receipt of the letter. I will be in my quarters. 

 

- Emperor Bastran IV

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"What do the mildly suspicious people outside your rope trick know already?"

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"That I got a letter, they were directed not to mindread me in reading it but that it was fine to mindread me when I was done, and that I demanded privacy and cast a spell and under a truthtelling compulsion assured them I wasn't engaged in any conspiracy against the Empire or Emperor - taking the letter at face value I think I have to pick one, but I am not taking the letter at face value, though I'm slightly closer if the Emperor is alive. The obvious guess here is that the Emperor is overthrown overnight and then I'm found with this letter once they investigate, or at least having possessed it on pastwatching -"

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"Understood. Are you expected out of the rope trick at any particular time?"

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"I told them it would last all night and expect I can stay here that long unless other events inspire them to more security than they're presently bothering with, in which case they may well dispel it on no notice."

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"In that case, stay there. I will keep the scry open for now. If they do dispel it - don't do anything that might make the situation worse. If you can avoid having your mind read do so."

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Marit makes his 'I have so many questions I'm not asking because I don't need to know the answers' face, and sits tight.

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" - I'm so confused," Iomedae says unhappily over Alfirin's shoulder.

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"It's a confusing situation. Altarrin, is this just - how he'd react to getting his compulsions removed? Do you have any idea how that might have happened?"

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Altarrin is watching Bastran intently on his own scry. He can pull up an illusion of it so that Iomedae and Alfirin can see as well, not that it's very interesting. Bastran has shifted position only to put his head down on his knees. 

He also looks confused and unhappy. "I...am not sure. I think how he would react to it is - path-dependent - and if my guess is right about his recent emotional state, now is among the worst times."

He frowns. "The fact that he is alive and unhurt and his guards are not visibly plotting something makes it less likely this is the setup for a coup. And I do not think he would have arranged to have his compulsion removed, in this state – though his compulsion is less self-protecting than mine were, it is not impossible that he straightforwardly ordered someone to remove it and swore them to secrecy."

He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose, then quickly opens them to keep observing Bastran.

"My best guess is godnudging. There was a case of factory sabotage around the time you arrived in Oris. A number of defective, modified talismans were released and distributed, that would snip compulsions if they accidentally cut the wearer's skin. I am surprised one would end up on the Emperor's person, but - slipping something through security precautions is the kind of coincidence the gods can arrange. I am not sure of the goal but - we ought assume it is hostile." 

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"Option one - Do nothing. Focus on mirrorgrave. Empire probably thinks we did this, if we're lucky they just put his compulsion back and we have to get Marit out and give up on diplomacy. If we're unlucky there's a more dramatic collapse.

Option two - I sneak you in there and we put his compulsion back - but Bastran will remember his compulsion being cut, and they'll learn about the letter to Marit, and - they will assume that we did some subtler mind control on Bastran and the secret police will stage a coup. So that's not really better in any way, we can rule that out unless something else comes up to make it look like a better idea.

Option three is to make contact with Bastran like he's asking us to and - I have no idea where we go from there. Maybe we can get a lasting peace from this but - it will be hard. There is a coup prepared in case Bastran does anything too likely to be mind control, like trying to make peace with us. The way I'd usually counteract this would be to stealthily dominate Siman and Kastil and ask them who they told to make coup plans, but I'd bet Siman delegated to Kastil and Kastil is not available for stealthy questioning right now.

Right now I'm inclined to - actually, no, if this is a godplot, and you're not too tired, maybe we should gate back to Golarion, discuss our options there and pick one, then come back here to carry it out."

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"I can do that." And he'll reluctantly drop the scry, and start raising an interworld Gate. 

 

"- If it is a godplot, I worry the main goal is to disrupt our attempts at diplomacy with the Empire and prevent us from negotiating or communicating effectively, in which case we should expect the timing has been nudged for it to go as badly as possible, probably in both the cases where we decide to act and where we do nothing." 

He drops the Gate, back in the mansion in Golarion, and sags into the nearest chair. "...Though my sense of the worst possible way Bastran could react to having his compulsions snipped by accident at a time like this, if none of his guards were initially aware of it, is that he would impulsively kill himself in a fit of despair. Which would obviously be a disaster as soon as anyone found out. The fact that he is still alive, and - tried to contact me - I am trying to figure out if that is evidence that the timing here was not maximally hostile." 

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"I am inclined to make contact. Things will probably go badly if we don't do anything, and I think - the amount which things can go worse diplomatically is pretty bounded. If things go very badly it's because this is distracting us from dealing with the Mirrorgrave, but I think that's - not an outcome your gods would steer for? Does that sound right to you?"

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He looks thoughtful. "I think They would not deliberately steer for the Mirrorgrave to succeed at conquering the Empire. They might steer for the Empire to expend more resources, and - I expect They cannot see very well, since the Mirrorgrave comes from another world. But I would be surprised if this plot were primarily aimed at causing a Mirrorgrave disaster, so I would expect only actual bad luck and not adversarially optimized bad luck." 

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"I suppose the first order of business when we get back, then, is to check the Mirrorgrave's cloak and make sure he hasn't reformed yet.

What are our means of contacting Bastran? Can you reach him with your comms spell or would that set off alarms? It would be a nontrivial expenditure of spells to mindscape you both again right now."

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"It would not set off alarms - he does sometimes use the comms spell with people from his room - but it might be detected. And is theoretically not secure, though intercepting a communication to the Emperor would be both nontrivial and very illegal. ...I am willing to try if we have a backup plan to get him out of there, if his guards decide to burst in, I - am very worried about how he would react if he thought they were about to replace his compulsion." 

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"Oh if we're getting him out of there and don't need to be sneaky about it that's not too hard. A teleport and a quickened teleport and maybe cloak of dreams so he's not resisting instinctively - "

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" - Altarrin. Could you persuasively impersonate him."

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"...You realize Altarrin's still our best bet at finding any bags of reproducing-undead hidden across the continent."

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"Even if we could only tell Bastran to expect extraction after that's handled that might go much better than leaving him to - escalate to suicide, or whatever -"

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"They are going to suspect something in the morning when Marit comes out of that rope trick and they read his mind. Unless we're pulling him out."

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Altarrin looks thoughtful. "If you have magic to make me resemble him perfectly, then - I think I could successfully impersonate him for a few days, yes. I would need a compulsion imitating his, they will be checking that more frequently given the high alert, but the Emperor is not often going to be mindread and never without giving his permission first." 

Sigh. "- And, yes, I would really prefer to handle the situation with the Mirrorgrave's contingency-plans first. I was nearly ready with a generic search-spell for Bags of Holding, and could try it now and see if it works. - and ideally communicate to Bastran first that we are planing to get him out. I am not sure what to do about Marit, especially since he may not have all night, if the godplot here involves giving the Empire a reason to question him urgently." 

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"An Emperor who's working for us - either you or Bastran if he's willing to follow instructions and won't get caught at it - can get a report about the Rope Trick, decide it's suspicious in light of the attack on Inquiry or whatever, and swap in a new Thoughtsenser with orders to report directly to the Emperor and directly to Siman who we're probably going to need to Dominate tonight."

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"Right. So I think the next steps are...we return to Velgarth, I Gate to somewhere on the right continent so that I am in communication-spell range of Bastran, and try to feel out if he is up for following those instructions and being extracted afterward once I have dealt with the Mirrorgrave situation. - I do also need much less sleep than the Empire expects Bastran to, and I could silently disable some of the alarms on his suite in order to do bag-scrying work from there without being detected, if it ends up looking like we cannot wait on extracting Bastran." 

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"Can we make this more robust to hostile coincidence - if you were a god, how would you make it go wrong -"

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"...Most ways I imagine it going wrong involve some other event happening in parallel and catching us by surprise, such that I do not have time to think. Or something happening to disrupt our communications, so that I lose contact with you while I am impersonating Bastran. We should set up redundant communication methods now. ...The worst case scenario I can think of is that this is a plan to put me in a position where the gods can use an existing plot to assassinate me." 

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"Plans, most of them probably infeasible on the relevant timescales: Mind Blanked invisible bodyguard for you, ring of Delayed Doom, ask Aroden to pick you so you're physically tougher and probably easier for him to engineer events around, have someone else impersonating the Emperor who isn't as fragile and you possess them if Alfirin has a scroll of it..."

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"No scroll, and it'd only work for half a day even if I had one - A mind-blanked invisible bodyguard is feasible but I don't know how much protection this adds if we're assuming a serious enough assassination attempt by the gods that Altarrin wouldn't just be resurrectable - And if it's not that serious I'm not terribly worried, unless your immortality is fast enough to interfere with a resurrection?"

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"It should not normally interfere but it seems possible the gods could nudge for me to end up in a new body almost immediately, in which case - well, I would still be alive, but in some random location and missing most of my memories until I could find a records cache, it would be massively disruptive. ...The difficulty with any magical option is that it needs to be undetectable to mage-sight, they will be on high alert for any suspicious spells on the Emperor. It probably would help, if Aroden could see me clearly and more cheaply nudge events, though I would still be concerned that He cannot see anything else in Velgarth clearly enough to intervene in subtle ways. But - if we knew for sure that at least one god involved was not hostile, I would feel better about trying this."

 

- a pause. He frowns, then looks thoughtful.

"Is there any way we can ask whether Sarenrae successfully communicated with Anathei, and if so what Anathei's intentions here are? I - am noticing that this could be interpreted as - an attempt to free the Emperor from circumstances that corner him into doing Evil things." 

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"The priest of Sarenrae said that she had a good feeling. I've been praying to Anathei because maybe it worked, but I was focused on - asking for help with the Mirrorgrave situation, not on - it'd be very like Sarenrae, really, to un-mind-control the Emperor so he could stop being Evil but at home she'd only do it if it would actually make things go well."

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"I am not sure how well the gods of Velgarth can see right now, either, it is probably noisy." He makes a face. "- The extra life-force from someone being chosen by Aroden is, in fact, noticeable, assuming Aroden would be willing to spend the intervention cost to choose me just for this purpose. Would there be any way to hide that?" 

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"Not without obviating the benefit, probably. - I'm going to try to arrange a Commune with Sarenrae, ask if She thinks the conversation with Anathei went well and if She thinks we can basically work with Anathei or not -"

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"- That seems like a good next move. I - unfortunately it would be almost maximally escalatory, to impersonate the Empire while being empowered by Aroden, and I think the chance is too high that they would notice and - try what they did on Kiritan..." He ducks his head. "And adding in more complicated precautions will leave open more ways for the gods to - cause things to go complicatedly wrong. But if Anathei is - sympathetic to Iomedae's cause, at this point - then I think I would be comfortable taking Bastran's place with no precautions other than those I can provide myself. I am not that easy to kill." 

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"I think we should in fact regard ourselves as being maximally escalatory, at this point. We tried diplomacy, now we are impersonating the Emperor to stand the country down so it stops resisting us. There's no sense in which it's good faith, there's no sense in which there's further escalation in reserve for any reason except 'it doesn't look like it'd be the best use of our resources right now'.  But I'm also comfortable operating without Aroden's involvement if there's some allied god, and it'll be a lot cheaper for Anathei than for Aroden."

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(It still feels different to Altarrin. Like he has some kind of legitimacy, in temporarily taking charge of the Empire, he has after all been its Emperor before. But probably it's not a relevant difference, at this point, and the main factor is that extra life-force is detectable and will get his mind read, and anything in his thoughts indicating that he serves Aroden will get him tortured.) 

"Talk to Sarenrae, then, and I - am going to try to check on the Mirrorgrave's cloak, in case the gods were setting up some interesting timing on that." 

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(Iomedae thinks that there is a complicated precious thing preserved by having the Empire conquered by Altarrin rather than an outsider who fundamentally misunderstands it the way strangers inevitably misunderstand each other. But she doesn't think that they, are, at this point, leaving anything on the table for cooperativeness reasons rather than for costs-outweigh-the-benefits reasons.)

She'll go ask the Sarenrites for a Commune.

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And Altarrin scries the secure shielded box in the secure shielded cell in the facility where the Mirrorgrave's cloak was being stored. 

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The box is intact and exactly where he expects it to be! There is a cloak in it. It is identical to the Mirrorgrave's mirrored cloak except for being not at all magical in any way. 

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That is NOT GOOD. 

 

 

Scrying for a specific magical object or person is harder than scrying for a known location, when done from another world, but he drops his first attempt and tries another scry aimed at the cloak's magical signature - where is it 

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In a secure box in a secure cell in a thoroughly guarded facility! 

 

...at a totally different location. 

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Altarrin is confused and he doesn't like it. 

 

...Iomedae is busy getting a Commune. He'll update Alfirin with what he just saw. His top theory is that the Mirrorgrave started to come back, tried to escape, and was immediately killed again by the Office of Inquiry's guards, does that seem plausible? But why is there a nonmagical copy of the cloak in the previous location? 

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"I would - given the mirrorgrave's other abilities - not be shocked if he could swap his cloak with a nonmagical one. But that would imply he did not reform in his cloak and reformed elsewhere on Velgarth - so either the cloak isn't his true phylactery or it's a very nonstandard one. Maybe he reformed inside a mirror or something. Or maybe it's related to - he has some power over images of himself, so maybe a painting, or those statues, or his reflection frozen somewhere - "

"Either way it means he reformed and the Empire probably destroyed him again, which means - he might have had some time to do something. We need to learn what the Empire thinks happened, once we're back - "

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Nod. "As soon as Iomedae is ready. I would rather try the bag-search spell from the same world, but I think I am ready to try it as soon as we Gate back - I will need another healing potion for it - if that does not tell me anything I will need to do a more exhaustive search for specific people and places, and would rather do it after I have informed Bastran that we received his message."

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"It'll take Iomedae about ten minutes. We might want to do that now, then? I can get you another restoration if needed."

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"...All right." Alfirin is right; he doesn't in fact want to sit around and wait an extra ten minutes for no reason. And in a way it's simpler to cast from here, albeit ten times as exhausting; the interworld scry-spell doesn't care about wards or shields. 

 

He gets the spell set up, and tells it to look for, not any specific Bag of Holding, but this generic form of it, that would allow for a bag of somewhat different construction, or with extra protective spells on it. He tells it to look, not here, but there, on this specific continent...

 

The main limitation of the current spell-draft is that it won't necessarily respond gracefully to multiple Bags of Holding within the range being searched, and it still takes a long time to settle. Also it takes his absolute full attention to hold the structure of it together. 

But, after a couple of minutes, it does land. 

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The scry thinks there is one Bag of Holding on the continent where the Eastern Empire is found. 

 

The bag is currently surrounded by horrible ghostly figures, mostly just faces and hands, insubstantial and only half-seen, pressed up against a force-net surrounding the bag. 

The force-net is inside another force-net, which is inside an artifact-powered force-box made of force-barriers, which is inside another bigger force-box, which is all inside an even bigger force-net, which appears to be currently stored in a secure dangerous-magical-item-storage cell with permanent force-barriers and two dozen different kinds of warding and shielding laid on all of its walls. 

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"What?" says Altarrin out loud, pointlessly, and then thinks to actually raise an illusion of what he's seeing and show Alfirin. "- I think I found the Mirrorgrave's Bag of Holding. It appears the Empire found it before I did. What are those things." 

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"...Undead. Either wraiths or spectres, probably. They're both - the spirits of dead people, without corporeal bodies. They can suck the life out of the living. Victims return as more of the same. They'd be a real problem if they got out on Velgarth, but it looks like they are, for the moment, contained. Ugh. I can scry one of them when we're back on Velgarth and I'll be able to notice if the situation changes."

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Altarrin drops the scry as soon as she's gotten a look, and flops on the rug. "I wish the Empire would have informed us. I suppose they are being paranoid again." 

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Iomedae returns. "Sarenrae says yes, She communicated successfully with Anathei, yes She thinks Anathei is now well-modeled as working towards the good of the people of Velgarth, no She thinks Anathei is not well-modelled as an enemy of the Empire or of the Arodenite Church, yes, She thinks Anathei would try to make sure that our intervention in the Empire isn't catastrophic, unknown if Anathei's who released the Emperor from his compulsions, unknown if our plan will work, yes Bastran is sincere and seeking to turn from Evil."

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"...Sarenrae can tell what Bastran's motives are?" Altarrin says, startled. "- Anyway. Should go back. I need to be on the same continent to speak to him." He's still sitting on the floor. 

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Lay On Hands, because he looks a bit wiped out and it doesn't exactly overlap with Lesser Restoration. "Yes, we should go back. Gods have - lenses through which they see the world most clearly. 'is this person sincerely seeking to turn from Evil' is - the kind of thing Sarenrae could see even if She can barely see your world at all."

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He pulls himself upright. "Well, it - does seem characteristic of Bastran, that abruptly being free to think badly of the Empire would - result in him having the revelation that he had hurt many people and wanted desperately to stop and to set it right. I - just wish it could have somehow happened when he was in a better emotional state for it." 

And he'll Gate them back to Velgarth. To the other continent, to begin with, though if Alfirin doesn't have a way to discreetly contact Bastran then he'll want to Gate to the Empire's continent and cast the comms spell from there. 

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Her scries are still up and start functioning again as soon as they're back in range. She can relay messages for Altarrin, in twenty-five word chunks, assuming nobody has noticed and destroyed the scrying sensor in the Emperor's bedroom.

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No one else has been into the Emperor's room to spot the scrying-sensor, and the Emperor has continued not to remark on it because he's now curled up on his side on the mattress, quietly sobbing. 

 

He's been trying very hard to wait but it's been half a candlemark, the letter would have taken some time to reach Marit but if it hasn't by now then it probably won't at all and the most likely reason why not is that someone opened the letter and read it and the Imperial Guard is about to storm into his room assuming that Iomedae has him mind-controlled, and - he can't let them put the compulsion back can'tcan'tcan't - he's such an idiot -

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- oh, if Alfirin can do that then it's probably better, it's at least not an additional spell to be detected, and not one that would be obviously communicatory. 

 

Can she tell Bastran that she's relaying for Altarrin, that they received the message he sent to Marit, that they're considering ways to get Bastran out, and they need to know what happened, whether anyone is suspicious, and what's going on with the Mirrorgrave's bag of horrible ghosts. If Alfirin can't fit all of that into 25 words the question about the bag can go second. 

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"Emperor Bastran. This is Alfirin, relaying for Altarrin. We're working on ways to get you out, can you tell us what happened? Does anyone else - "

" - know about this? What happened with the Mirrorgrave and the bag of spectres? We want to make sure you didn't miss any."

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Bastran lurches into a sitting position. 

"I - what - please get me out - I can't - please -" Bastran is not sounding incredibly coherent. He takes a shuddering breath. "Sabotaged item. Accident. Well. Godplot. Don't think - anyone suspects - unless they mindread Marit - put orders not to -" 

 

Which is when he actually processes the second part. 

"...What bag? What happened? I didn't know..." And it's too much to think about, he feels once again like he's drowning in something thick and black and sticky, trapping him here, eating him alive, there won't even be anything left of him for Altarrin to ""rescue""...  

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Wow, having been mind controlled to an evil empire for your entire adult life is really bad for people! She feels vaguely ill. This is going to be slightly more complicated than if the Emperor were more - cogent -

"Can you relay for me that we would like him to appoint Altarrin Emperor, with the plan that Altarrin will impersonate him until we can stabilize things, and that if he does so we will get him out of there."

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"Can you appoint Altarrin Emperor? The easiest way to get you out without a collapse is for Altarrin to impersonate you temporarily."

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He sags back to the bed in relief. "Yes. Of course. Please. He'll - do it right - thank you..." 

 

If they need him to do anything more formal than that, they're going to have to handhold him through it. 

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"Altarrin? What's the formal process - Actually probably unless it's very long we can do that while we do the swap. You're ready?"

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It's not going to be persuasive to the Empire even if they get it signed and sealed, and Bastran's in whatever not-wildly-encouraging state of ability to make informed decisions he's in. "- I do want him told we're not promising anything about what we'll do from there, though we are trying to protect the people of the Empire and will keep doing that. You can make promises about his safety, obviously, but if he regrets it after he's had a Heal I don't want him to think we'll put it back."

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“The actual formal process involves the full council, we cannot exactly do it now,” Altarrin points out. “If you can get me in there undetectably I can write a formal notice for him to sign and seal, that will make it at least  somewhat less blatantly illegal - might matter later on to how we can resolve this…”

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"I expect it'll go over extremely badly regardless, but I want him to - have knowingly done it, with authority he genuinely possessed, under an approximately correct impression of what we're doing and why."

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"Even just - something ordering you to take on his duties as emperor - I am not an expert on the Imperial legal code - " (mild chagrin) " - but something that makes this more of an official action and less us kidnapping the emperor and replacing him with a body double."

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Nod. “It will not really help in the short term if we are discovered, but - might preserve some kind of option value for later.”

He closes his eyes. “- And I will need a compulsion like the Emperor’s, to pass those checks. It - should probably affect my thinking much less, I can consider my loyalty to the Empire as I intended to build it and not necessarily as it exists now, but - just to warn you that I may be less able to track the bigger picture. I - trust both of you to account for that.”

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"Can you place that yourself? Can you remove it for an hour every night to think clearly?"

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"I can place it myself. Whether I can remove it regularly...might depend on exact mental state? I would need to believe that removing it and spending an hour thinking serves the Empire, specifically, not - my other goals and priorities that might come at the Empire's expense." 

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"If you don't remove it regularly then we'll probably have to periodically come and remove it and check we aren't missing anything, which means more risk of the whole thing falling apart. 

- do you want the headband? It helps with - impersonation, as part of the persuasiveness - but I know it made it more unpleasant to be compelled to the Empire's service."

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“It also helps with reasoning around the compulsions. I think it would be worth it. And - we should have a method of communication. Ideally I would have a way to contact you from my end, so I can time it to when I am in private and do not expect interruptions.”

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"Telepathic Bond, if Alfirin can conceal it, can be made permanent. It only works on the same plane and doesn't make the interplanetary distance, but we can do you and someone who will reliably be on Velgarth and not in any of the secret operations demiplanes."

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"I can conceal it for a few weeks but not permanently. But dropping in on Altarrin after a few weeks will be necessary anyways, to hide his ring of sustenance and headband. That's two more fifth circle spells, which would not usually be a concern but if I'm also dominating Siman tonight - on top of everything earlier today - I'm going to be pretty low on powerful spells."

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"I don't know anyone else who knows your trick for concealing auras but I can have someone else do the Telepathic Bond. Or - I can do the Telepathic Bond, actually -"

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Nod. "I think it is still worth it to act now rather than waiting two candlemarks until you have slept and prepared more spells - I am worried someone will show up to update the Emperor on recent Mirrorgrave-related events." 

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"Siman can plausibly wait two hours, or even four, but Alfirin usually sleeps midday."

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"I've been shifting closer toward morning, and midday on crusade is midmorning in the empire. I won't run out of spells but I'll be a little short if we have another crisis in the next few hours. Do you have someone in mind to take the other end of the bond?"

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"Kietres?" The newly-appointed priest of the Arodenite temple here, and therefore spending all of her time on this plane, evangelizing and working on temple logistics, but also trusted with operations-mansion access if she urgently needs to contact Iomedae and Alfirin. "If that was the Mirrorgrave's only Bag of Holding - you're sure of that, Altarrin? - I'm willing to take the chance on being low on spell slots."

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"I am quite sure it was the only one on that continent, and it would be surprising to me if the Mirrorgrave had dropped a backup bag on Beset?" He frowns. "We should decide exactly what we are doing with Siman before Alfirin mind-controls him - and make sure Alfirin can conceal the aura of that spell as well, it is rather noticeable. But I think we had best do the switch with Bastran as soon as everything is ready. - which does include making plans for who will provide interworld transport if it is urgently necessary, I will likely have some ability to slip off and Gate from Work rooms but not at arbitrary times." 

He looks down at the floor. "I am - very worried about him, and I am not even going to have a chance to speak with him, really. Can you - I know it is a lot to ask, given what he has participated in doing to your people - but I will feel better about this if I know he is safe and with people who - want to help him." 

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"Mhm. I'll prepare the bond and the permanency, it'll be a couple minutes." And one of the servants can get the human page to fetch Kietres and Soria.

"Bastran will be safe. We don't have that many people here on Velgarth and I don't think helping him recover from his life in the Empire will be our highest priority but we'll do what we can."

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"We can get him rest and healing and assurance that we won't destroy everything he believes in.

 

- I would, by default, prevent him from suicide, because he's not wholly in his right mind and also Lawful Evil, but if you think we should handle that differently -"

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"...I am not sure. I do expect him to find it very distressing to know you would prevent it, even if he - would not really endorse it and will be glad later if he stays alive. If the topic comes up - it might not, I am rather hoping he just wants to sleep and will be in a better state once he is rested - but if it does, maybe tell him you want him to take a couple of days to think about it, but would not stop him if he endorsedly wants to die after that point? He - would presumably not go to the Golarion afterlives anyway if you keep him on the other continent." 

Altarrin can't really ask for more than that, and it's not like he knows what would help Bastran right now, aside from...just being somewhere else, without the weight of responsibility, calling for him to make tradeoffs that hurt people. 

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Soria will show up, since she has been invited!

"Archmage-General! Knight-Commander!" And she will bow and/or salute to properly acknowledge her superiors in the former and present hierarchy.

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Kietres will also show up, and will properly acknowledge the Knight-Commander but no one else here is in her command and she's not tracking an entire different command. 

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"Kietres, I'm going to Telepathically Bond you and Altarrin and myself and Alfirin, you and Altarrin for a Permanency and the rest of us just for the next few hours, which look likely to be busy ones. I selected you because it should not be costly for you to remain consistently on the same plane as Altarrin and notify us immediately should he contact you.


Soria, I'd like you to attempt to learn an interworld Gate from the Archmage-General, right now. I'm going to loan you the Archmage-General's headband," which he won't be using because he now has Iomedae's, "and my magical belt, which increases endurance for Velgarth spellcasting. You can do a very small Gate for now to make sure you have the technique down, but my hope is that you can do a full size one for ten seconds twice a day, and you should notify me if that won't be possible even with the enhancements."

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"Understood."

She will put on the headband and click slightly more into awareness. "Archmage-General?"

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He has a lesson plan mentally prepared! The interplanar routing is like this. It's probably the part he'll have to go over the most, but Soria is a combat Adept, she's done a lot of Gates in her time, he should be able to show her how to lean on her intuitions of how-the-Void-behaves, more accessible now with the fanciest kind of headband for Wisdom. (Cunning might be more useful for her, but Wisdom does help with intuitive magic use.) If she's struggling with it, his backup is to get her to read a scroll of Detect Thoughts and read his mind, but he doesn't know if she's trained on scrolls yet and either way it'll add delay. 

Ultimately, she can probably get away with doing it quite sloppily, especially on the first test Gate that requires minimal power except for the search-routing, and Altarrin can prompt her through each routing-step until she gets it at least once. 

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Wisdom does help a lot! And although she's not very good at complicated theoretical work (and is even more confident that she isn't), her instincts for the more physical and intuitive parts of active casting of spells are very good. (The headband may be helping.) She's got enough strength and endurance to keep practicing for quite a while.

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Then she can master a (rather sloppy and not perfectly efficient) interworld Gate in half a candlemark of instruction! It's already longer than Altarrin wanted to take. He praises her, and suggests that she trust her intuition on routing efficiency, and that she should improve at it with a few iterations of practice, but he thinks even now she could pull off doorway-sized for ten seconds. He reminds her that Golarion healing is available and helps with drained reserves. 

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"Understood. Thank you, Archmage-General."

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Then Soria can be shooed (Kietres got the telepathic bond and left a while ago).

 

"Ready, then?"

 

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They should hopefully have a lot less need of interworld scrying for intelligence on the Empire, since they can use Golarion scrying from Velgarth, and also Altarrin can just...request updates the normal way, as Emperor, and relay them via telepathic bond once he's in private. Just in case, he'll inform Iomedae of where his notes on the more efficient scrying-spell are, so that in an emergency they can boost Aritha's endurance and have her cast it. 

 

The new compulsion is in place. In a distant corner of his mind, he feels pretty terrible about leaving Bastran to wait another forty miserable minutes, but - they are getting him out, is the important part. He's going to be all right. So is the Empire. 

He's ready to go. 

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Polymorph any object. Mask Dweomer. Mask Dweomer. Nystul's magic aura. Nystul's magic aura.

"OK. Get in the bag."

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He gets in the bag. 

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Then a teleport above Bastran's current location, invisibility from the ring, blink, fly through the ceiling. Ring off. Bag open.

"Emperor."

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Altarrin will scramble out of the bag as soon as it's open. He trusts Alfirin that it was safe, but he's not sure how much air supply there is in there. 

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Bastran has, in fact, managed to substantially pull himself together. He's sitting at his desk, and rises immediately. His eyes are a little puffy, but he's not currently crying. He is holding a letter on Imperial letterhead, which he shoves at Altarrin. 

(Wow, it's uncanny to see Altarrin there looking just like him.) 

"See if that's - good enough," Bastran says jerkily. "Obviously still has to be secret but - assume you want the option of more legitimacy later, if..."

He trails off because actually he does not at ALL want to think about the scenarios where that would be useful, since they probably involve things like 'Bastran still being alive.'

He swallows. Gestures vaguely at the desk. "Collected all the reports I could find in here. Put them in chronological order. Figured you'd. Want to fill in the gaps in your intelligence." 

 

Aaaand that is maybe all the coherent words he can manage. Hopefully someone else has it from here. 

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Altarrin reaches out and reads through the letter. 

"- This will do. Bastran, I - thank you." He reaches out and grips the Emperor's shoulder, briefly, and - there really isn't anything else to say, they can't afford to stand around all three of them.

 

He nods to Alfirin, who can presumably give Bastran whatever instructions he needs to follow next, which probably includes ducking into the bag but he's not totally sure. 

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"Wait!" Bastran is wearing quite a lot of talismans, some of them identifiably the Emperor's. He'll strip them off and toss them on the bed. "You should wear those," he says, without looking at Altarrin. "To - pass as me." 

And then he'll look at Alfirin, with an expression too dully exhausted and resigned to be afraid. 

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"OK. Get in the bag."

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He does that. Miserably. 

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Altarrin is locking the currently-incriminating Imperial order away in a drawer of the Emperor's desk. "Good luck," he says over his shoulder. 

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Inside the bag there's a half-dozen rabbits and a bottle of air and nothing sharp.

 

Invisible again, back through the ceiling and up outside of the alarms and then a discern location and greater teleport to get a thousand feet above Siman. Then another blink, down through walls and ceilings, checking the alarms and wards with arcane sight as she goes.

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There are, obviously, a lot of alarms and wards, but so long as she remains consistently ethereal while crossing them and stays invisible and with no noticeable magical aura, none of them will stop her, given that their wards are material-limited.

Even at midnight, Chief Inquisitor Siman is at work in an office in the imperial palace at a very large desk he has set up at a temporary headquarters, where he composes memorandums, usually via dictation to one to three personal secretaries (depending on how many of them are doing other stuff) while various others bring and take notes to and from him. He's down to two secretaries and two guards, who are doing extremely good wallpaper impressions, and remains a quiet, bland man inclined to fade into the background of any room he happens to be in, obviously an extremely useful skill here.

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Well this is what silent spell is for.  Silent dominate per-(silent-quickened-mask-dweomer)-son.

If the guards were paying very close attention they might have noticed something, though they probably wouldn't have been able to tell what it was if so and might if insufficiently paranoid imagine they imagined it.

(She is exercising zero control through the dominate at the moment.)

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One of the guards was paying close enough attention in the corner of his eye to glance over, observe that Chief Inquisitor Siman didn't have any change in his magical aura, squint, and observe that Alfirin is completely invisible, not making any sound, and not displaying any magical aura. (That is to say, fail to see Alfirin.) Then go back to staring ahead.

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Great. She's out of here, back through the walls until she's far enough away from anything important to the empire that she can teleport away unnoticed.

 

:I'm thinking I should just let the Emperor out and and let him sleep, unless we want to introduce him to anyone now. My read is he needs the sleep.:

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:Works for me. In the less secure mansion, please, and I'll post a guard. Altarrin, do you know anything more about the Mirrorgrave incident?:

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:As you say. Siman is dominated, I think unnoticed. Have not exercised any control yet so it shouldn't even be noticeable to thoughtsensing:

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And she can pick a bedroom in the less secure mansion and get the Emperor out of his bag.

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Altarrin is flipping through reports. :Please let him sleep, yes - you can offer the sleep spell you used on me, he has trouble sleeping when he is stressed. And - I have not found anything about the most recent incident, but I think Bastran gave orders that he was not to be disturbed except in an emergency, and if the incident happened after he went to bed and was dealt with quickly enough not to count as an emergency...: 

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The Emperor struggles out of the bag, blinking, and stands unsteadily, in the way of someone who would really rather collapse on the floor and is holding off by sheer effort of will. He has no idea where he is, and doesn't have the energy to ask. 

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"You are safe here. You don't have any particular responsibilities. I think you should sleep, not particularly because it benefits me but because you clearly need it. I can cast a spell that will put you to sleep if you want it."

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He's too miserable to be suspicious. What's the worst that happens, she kills him? (...Probably the worst that happens is that she mind-controls him to serve Iomedae, or herself, but is that even worse than what he just left behind...?) 

Presumably they are going to be watching him very closely and making sure he doesn't kill himself until they've finished asking him questions. He can't blame them. Answering questions sounds completely impossible right now but maybe it will feel less impossible in the morning. Or they could just mind-control him for it and then kill him once they're done. That would be easiest. 

 

"I would be grateful," he says stiffly, and looks around for - oh, there's a bed. He will go flop on it. He's shivering a bit, but it's mostly nerves, not cold, and either way he's way too miserable to think to pull the covers over himself. 

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Sleep. She prepared it three times because of how everyone on this planet is a defenseless commoner.

 

...

 

She'll tuck him in before she goes, if he's still shivering. Poor man.

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And Altarrin is reaching for her again on the telepathic bond. 

:Fairly sure at this point that the Emperor was just not updated yet on what happened. I could 'wake up' and request a report, but it's - uncharacteristic of him, at the very least. And getting you to nudge Siman to give a report would reveal the Dominate at least to him. Given that they will presumably alert me immediately if it becomes an emergency by the Empire's standards, do you think we can otherwise afford to wait until morning?: 

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:I think so - everything points to that bag of spectres being the only thing the Mirrorgrave had set up. Which means the situation is stable for tonight.:

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:Agreed. I do very badly want to know how they located the Bag of Holding before I did, and - apparently just in time - but I think my curiosity is not an emergency either.: 

And he'll go back to catching up on reports of the Empire, and mentally going over the various challenges of performing as Bastran. The difficult part is going to be hitting the right note of repressed misery, while still - ideally - being more functional than the real Bastran was over the last couple of days...

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Message to Marit - "Situation resolved. Wait until rope trick expires or someone comes to get you. Cooperate with new thoughtsenser in the morning."

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"You want the letter destroyed?"

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"Keep it. Give it to the new thoughtsenser if he asks."

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"Acknowledged." And he'll - attempt to sleep, so he can get his spells back, because while the situation is very confusing no one is going to tell him more than that.

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She'll... not sleep, because she's not tired yet, and because when it does come time for her to rest she'll probably do it with a keep watch rather than leaving the spectres unattended for two hours -

She can work on her wish wording for phylactery theft and try to calm her nerves and pet Curiosity and wait for the morning.

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Once Altarrin is fairly sure that he could convincingly play Bastran even if suddenly woken for an emergency, he grabs his required two candlemarks of sleep. Even after that, it's still a bit too early to start his day without worrying Bastran's guards about how little the Emperor is sleeping, so he dresses and sits on his bed and does some scrying. 

 

Once dawn has finally arrived, he'll get up and accept his morning reports from his secretary over breakfast. It's not that hard to imitate Bastran's 'just woke up' affect, he just has to radiate 'don't talk to me, it's too early' in his body language. 

(He already knows about their diplomat's strange actions overnight, of course, prompted by a 'mysterious' letter addressed to Marit from an unknown sender – a letter sent via the usual Ministry of Barbarians channels, but supposedly without the knowledge of the Minister himself. He intends to order a discreet investigation, have Siman select a new Thoughtsenser who reports only to him and the Emperor, and probably also a pastwatcher meeting the same criteria. But he's not going to actually do that until he reaches the relevant report.) 

 

Unsurprisingly, the matter of the Mirrorgrave's recent activities and the bag of creepy ghosts is at the top of the pile! He'll read through it quickly - read it more slowly a second time - note that he's still confused, do a quick check that there are no Thoughtsensers in the room not that anyone of them would read the Emperor's mind without permission anyway - and then update Kietres along the Telepathic Bond, though it's an update with an unfavorable ratio of questions-answered to new-questions-generated. 

 

:They found the Mirrorgrave's base last night.

:Or, rather, the duchess of Velane did, it was at a landholding near her duchy. Thanks to - they are still investigating, it says - but she claims she was gifted a powerful magical artifact by a foreign sailor at the docks. Specifically, the report says a sword with built-in Foresight, which - I am quite sure I know exactly what artifact this is, she is an immortal mage in the body of a sword with the self-appointed mission of protecting women in danger. Probably a godmiracle was involved at some point. I have no idea what it means that she's turned up here, except that - probably it was a godintervention, and apparently a favorable one. The report says that the duchess admitted on further questioning that the ship's first mate was a follower of Anathei - the attitude to foreigners is more live-and-let-live, in port cities - and the woman with the sword admitted to being religious, though she did not specify which god she followed.: 

A pause while he collects his thoughts, and gives Kietres time to note down any questions he has. 

:- Anyway, the sword gave her a Foresight sense of where to go, and led her to an abandoned keep which had been taken over by undead. They immediately passed a more urgent report to Jacona. She had a dozen Adepts with her and they were able to destroy the undead guarding the courtyard, and make their way inside and to the cellar, where there was -: and he describes the two animated corpses they fought. :The one with the permanently-screaming face was in the process of opening the bag, and could apparently fire blasts of 'death energy' - the duchess was knocked unconscious at this point - one of her mages was able to throw fireballs through combat Gates and eventually took it down. The bag was open by then but contained in a force-net. 

:And then at that point the Mirrorgrave showed up in person, by...animating a statue? Switching places with it? And instantly killed the two Adepts within range of - whatever spell he used. The remainder immediately evacuated the duchess from the keep. At this point they would almost certainly have lost the fight, except that that was the moment when the Imperial reinforcements from Jacona arrived and took the Mirrorgrave down using the same methods as before.: 

Kietres probably has a lot of questions! Altarrin certainly does! 

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Kietres will pass this along to Iomedae!

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Iomedae will respond through Kietres.

: - it's consistent with what Sarenrae said if Anathei was helping ensure the spectres were found before they were released. It'd have been a disaster if they had been released, spectres retain their intelligence from life but are evil and hungry and can kill commoners in a single touch and raise them as more spectres. The Mirrorgrave presumably has the ability to - switch places with images of him, he's Teleported away leaving a statue of himself behind before - and he'll do it again when he next reforms, if there are any more images of him on this world. I'm not sure whether to expect it'd let him return to Golarion.

A Forbiddance ought to stop him from swapping like that, if within the next two days you can without arousing the suspicion of the Empire get us permission to cast one around wherever you're keeping the cloak. It's divine magic, unfortunately.

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:Right. I am not sure I can unsuspiciously arrange that, and unfortunately I do not think I can scry directly for 'other images of the Mirrorgrave.'  ...If he only brought one Bag of Holding then I would be somewhat surprised if he had multiple bases with other statues or images, though, and everything they found on site has either been contained at a secure site or destroyed.: 

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:Yep. I'll check with Alfirin but my current best guess is that Tar-Baphon sent a small investigatory force, which would've sufficed if the Empire hadn't been familiarized with Golarion magic or if your gods had wanted your world eaten by spectres, but which will be inadequate so long as your gods are willing to work with us at least that far. And that if the Mirrorgrave does get recalled, he'll tell Tar-Baphon that this world is a tough nut to crack.:

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:That is also my best guess. I will keep an eye out for any indications we are wrong about that.: 

 

Getting Marit supervised by people who report only to him (and to Dominated Siman) is his next highest priority. Confirming whether the attack on the Office of Inquiry means that any emergency coup plans might trigger randomly is a pretty high priority as well. 

 

- he'd like a meeting arranged with Siman, he tells his secretary. It's an obvious request given the events last night, and also setup for handling the Marit situation. Also he'd like an update on the condition of all the Office of Inquiry staff injured in the explosion. 

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Of course! His secretary will let the chief inquisitor know immediately.

As he goes through the other news, the updates on the Empire do not look great. The rebels won a significant victory in Oris, ambushing the Imperial commander's vanguard, defeating it, and then withdrawing before his main force (unwilling to overextend itself) could catch up; imperial dead is estimated at twenty-six hundred and rebel dead in the double digits, and the rebels then sent back the diplomats alive with a refusal to settle for anything less than the whole of Oris-before-the-Empire-started-messing-with-it. The main imperial field army opposing General Norean suffered a major defeat yesterday while Bastran was asleep; there's still a great deal of distance between them and the capital, but large parts of Lastun and Iskith provinces are in rebel hands and the general is begging for reinforcements. (And, fairly clearly, worried about desertions.) There's no bad news from Taymyrr province, at least, though Jovin is still out there somewhere and they haven't finished taking down all his fortresses, but with Norean's advances their supply routes to Taymyrr are badly threatened and almost wholly reliant on a finite number of Gates, which god-miracles might be able to sabotage.

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This is not massively surprising but Altarrin very badly wishes he had found this out yesterday

...He'll relay everything he reads about it to Kietres via the Telepathic Bond, it's much clearer intelligence on the Empire's internals than they've had since he defected. And he asks his secretary (with deliberately weary and harried affect) to set up a meeting with the Minister of War and other relevant ministers after the meeting with Siman, to discuss responses to Oris and Tolmassar. 

 

Once he's done his breakfast and also reading the stack of reports, he can meet with Siman, who hopefully still at this point has no idea that he's being mind-controlled. He'll confirm first via Kietres that Alfirin is in the right plane and available; he intends to present this as non-suspiciously as he can get away with, and there's option value retained by not nudging Siman in any subjectively obvious ways just yet, but it's more important to get the arrangement he wants approved. 

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Kietres will pass this update along and send confirmation that Alfirin is available. Alfirin will be able to watch the whole conversation through Siman's eyes, so she should be able to intervene as needed.

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Obviously the secretary will set this up.

Siman has not received any evidence he was mind controlled over the baseline, so he will just do the obvious thing and show up to talk to the Emperor! What does the Emperor want to talk about?

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He wants an update on Kastil's condition, first! He admits sheepishly to not having had the time to go check on him yet today. 

(Is this the most strategically relevant part? No! Is it nonetheless very much what Bastran would ask about first: yes, definitely.) 

 

- also he assumes Siman heard about the weird event overnight, with the letter that was supposedly received by Iomedae's diplomat and prompted him to put up an extradimensional space as a privacy-barrier? He's pretty confused about it but it smells like a plot of some kind and on priors it may be a godnudged plot. He'd like to investigate what happened, but - quietly, if it was the work of an internal faction he doesn't want them getting wind of an investigation yet. He'd like to replace the Thoughtsenser on duty with one he trusts, who for now will report only to himself and Siman - and he'll have his loyal Thoughtsenser question the first Thoughtsenser, who according to the records is a very inexperienced kid who might not have been hard to manipulate.  

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Kastil's condition is getting worse, and the healers are skeptical that he'll recover. If it looks too bad they've got the potions Iomedae sent if needed, but they're obviously reluctant to do that without going through every alternative first.

Siman did, yes.

- Understood. He can provide a list of recommended candidates for this sort of sensitive project.

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Oh no! Bastran understands that Kastil will be so upset if he recovers thanks to suspicious godmagic, but they really can't afford to lose him. (It's not hard to act out the right level of partially-concealed distress.) If the Healers think he's going to deteriorate to the point that they'll have to use a Healing potion to save his life, Bastran...feels like they should maybe just consider using it now? And at least have Kastil back and functional sooner? He's not going to make that decision unilaterally, though, the Healers know better how critical it is. 

 

He will look very seriously at the list of recommended Thoughtsensers for sensitive projects. 

(Is Ellitrea on there? Altarrin wants her for it if possible, and she might not be too badly tarred with guilt-by-association from Altarrin's defection, given that Altarrin doesn't think he interacted with her at all in the week before he Gated out.) 

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Of course. Siman understands. He knows they understand how important Kastil is.

(... Altarrin asked the head of Office of Inquiry for a list of people for a very sensitive project! Everyone on his Top Preferred List works for the Office or is, at least, someone they have a very strong handle on. They don't trust other people.)

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There are, at this point a few different options. He could overrule Siman and appoint a different Thoughtsenser; it's a minor slight to the Office of Inquiry, but no worse than that. He could pick a Thoughtsenser on the list and privately give them a formal non-discretionary Imperial order to keep the information from Siman, and hope this in itself didn't trigger an anti-mind-control plot; he could do this with or without informing Siman of it, though the latter is pretty likely to explode. Or he could let the Thoughtsenser read Marit's mind, let them report the truth to Siman, and figure it out from there. 

 

A fourth option would be to bring up explicitly with Siman that, in the aftermath of the Office of Inquiry headquarters explosion, there might be Office of Inquiry contingencies the Empire doesn't want set off under these circumstances, and that this could be a case where the gods are trying to wield the Office of Inquiry to the end of causing a coup, and as a result he would prefer a non-Inquiry Thoughtsenser. The downside is that explaining the reasoning might trigger suspicion in itself, and he's not sure it would be in-character for depressed and exhausted Bastran to think of it. 

"I'll take it under consideration," he says, accepting the list. "Thank you for the update." 

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And once Siman has been politely dismissed...

 

Probably the best way to set this up is to nominate a different Thoughtsenser, someone who will, in fact, definitely follow the Emperor's direct order to give a redacted and maybe outright falsified report to Siman. The best way to arrange that, while minimizing suspicion and the snub to the Office of Inquiry, is to have someone else recommend it. 

It would be uncharacteristic of Bastran to advance a whole complicated theory about why the Office of Inquiry might be compromised, but less out of character for him to just...hem and haw about how he's vaguely uncomfortable having the Office of Inquiry running the entire investigation in-house when they're down a lot of their staff and (hinted at) just failed to be paranoid enough to prevent their entire headquarters from being blown up. And he can reasonably have some trusted Thoughtsensers on a list of people known to be less involved in scheming for political self-advancement, and loyal to the Empire over and above any specific faction at court. 

Is there anyone who he needs to meet with privately anyway, before the planned later meeting with all of the ministers, and would plausibly sign off on a Thoughtsenser from his list? 

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Siman will be dismissed and bow out.

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There are MULTIPLE very good excuses to meet with the Minister of Finance, who probably could be nudged into “recommending” a non-Office of Inquiry Thoughtsenser, but it’s less obvious why Bastran would turn to him specifically for advice on the matter.

Baron Pierson, the Minister of State, would be a good person to ask, but what justifies meeting with him privately before the larger discussion…

Oh, hmm, that’s a good idea to cover anyway, and would segue naturally into concerns about Inquiry Thoughtsensers. 

He’ll request a meeting with Pierson, to bring up the matter of current disruption to the Office of Inquiry, which he’s very worried about — and of course they’ll need to get them operational as quickly as possible, and he’s sure Pierson’s department is on top of finding them a new temporary office space and lending them some staff to cover the shortfall. But he’s especially worried about vulnerabilities within Inquiry right now, it anything that could conceivably go wrong by bad luck almost certainly will, and (he looks visibly distressed for a moment before controlling it) Kastil would be paranoid enough but Kastil is out of commission right now…

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Baron Pierson will show up with all the relevant files for everything he expects His Majesty the Emperor might want to talk to him about! (He doesn't look like he's been short on sleep, precisely as formal and precise as ever.)

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Why, Your Majesty, of course! He understands completely! Everything is being perfectly managed, he's happy to deputize people he can use to support them (and spy on them). Thoughtsensers? Well, State itself has very little use for thoughtsensers for its internal operations (but his political allies) - he'd be pleased to put some names forwards nonetheless for people who he's sure aren't being used to capacity where they are...

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(Altarrin will ask a few sensible questions, and throughout will radiate tiredness and wanting-this-meeting-to-be-over.) 

 

Are any of the Thoughtsensers proposed by Pierson overlapping with the list he made before? 

(He would like Ellitrea, who is certainly being under-utilized right now, and who he doesn't think was especially burned by her association with Altarrin, since she would have been able to testify under Thoughtsensing and compulsions that she hadn't seen him in weeks or been involved with the otherwordly artifact-research. There are also a few other candidates who he would be fine with, if they're on Pierson's list, it will slightly reduce suspiciousness if he doesn't end up offering a rejoinder with his own suggestions.) 

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Yup, Ellitrea is on the list!

Baron Pierson has learned how to project an aura of sympathy to being tired and wanting the meeting to be over, even though he LOVES meetings and paperwork and figuring out the right job for people, but he knows that the Emperor is strange, because many people are.

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Then he'll thank Baron Pierson for his advice, and jot off a quick note to Siman, telling him that Pierson will have an update on the Office of Inquiry's new facilities to him soon - and an offhand mention that on Pierson's recommendation, he's assigning this (non-Inquiry) Thoughtsenser to take over at the diplomatic site and assess the loyalties of the current Ministry of Barbarians staff, including the junior Thoughtsenser involved in the weird overnight events. She will report to Siman and to Bastran directly, not the Ministry of Barbarians side. 

(Siman can make his own assumptions about why Bastran went with someone else's recommendations. It's not necessarily even that significant, Bastran is known to be indecisive and, in cases where the decision is a lower-stakes one, often goes with the recommendation of the second person he consulted.) 

 

And Ellitrea can be dispatched to the diplomatic site immediately, while Altarrin prepares for the next larger meeting to discuss Tolmassar and Oris.

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Indeed! He does not see anything really weird in this, other than that he thought Bastran was in better shape than that from their meeting.

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Pierson is always happy to advise the Emperor about any important subject. It is no trouble at all.

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Marit's Rope Trick expires midmorning. He slept in it, and then prepared spells in it, and then has been pacing in it contemplating how the Empire executes people accused of participating in bizarre coup attempts. He is in a very bad mood by the time it deposits him back in his room. 

His thoughts reveal that he's scared, but not many details unless they're going to be very conspicuous; he's not contemplating the details. They've left him breakfast. He doesn't need it, but he'll eat.

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Ellitrea is pretty confused herself! She doesn't usually do random top-secrecy missions for the Emperor, and while she overall thinks she came off reasonably well after Altarrin's baffling disappearance, she wouldn't have expected it to put her higher on the list of trustworthy not-particularly-affiliated Thoughtsensers. Though...it is true that she's one person less affiliated than she used to be. 

(Or maybe it's that it makes her expendable, but she doesn't really think that's likely, and isn't going to dwell on it.) 

 

It's not additionally that weird to have received a face-to-face Imperial order from the Emperor, asking her to report to him before she reports to Siman. Probably the Office of Inquiry is under suspicion, maybe of having had a defector in their ranks who helped get the rebel general's suicide-strike mage a Gate-location in their facility? 

She will get what she can off surface thoughts, and once she's sure it won't be useful, she'll head into the room and sit down opposite him. 

"Good morning. I hope you slept well. ...We do try to give you privacy, to the extent reasonable, but the Emperor wants to know what last night's letter was about, because the department in charge of this," handwave at the room, "didn't know anything about who sent it or why. Seems it just appeared from thin air on some junior clerk's desk. Think you can shed some light on that for us?" 

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"Yes," he says reluctantly, and pulls the letter out of his pocket and gives it to her. "The letter purports to be from the Emperor and claims he wants to defect. I'm sure it's forged. I assume someone - trying to discredit him. I - didn't know what to do about that - I didn't want my people to be blamed for whatever plot it was -"

His thoughts convey mostly the same thing, with the added color that he absolutely now expects to be blamed for it and is terrified of her and very resentful about being in this situation, though he hopeshopeshopes that Iomedae's not being an idiot and something better will happen.

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She reads the letter, keeping most of the faces she's making internal, and then switches to private Mindspeech. 

:We're not going to have you executed for being the unwitting recipient of an attempt at some kind plot. I - don't understand what the plot could possibly be aiming at - under what circumstances it would be even slightly believable that the Emperor wrote this letter...: 

She focuses very intently on him. :Tell me exactly what actions you took as a result of receiving it. ...If something is a secret you'd rather not share, you have the right to flag that under the current diplomatic terms, but the most important thing here is determining whether you were complicit in whatever baffling scheme this was, so I think you had best keep that in mind.: 

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He's going to die horribly and he's very annoyed with Iomedae about it. 

"I thought it was plausible that the letter would arrive simultaneous with an attempt on the Emperor's life, or too late to stop it, and we'd be blamed for it. I didn't want to be mindread and have the Thoughtsenser on site learn of the letter; it seemed like whoever had sent the letter had probably intended that. I promised under your truthtelling compulsions I didn't intend to harm your Empire or Emperor, put up a Rope Trick, and then did a communication spell to my people, notifying them that I feared the Emperor was in danger and requesting they contact me. They did. I read them the note. I told them that I of course didn't believe the note but thought it might be timed with a coup or assassination or something.

They told me to wait for orders, and then eventually told me to stay in the Rope Trick until it expired and then cooperate with whoever the Empire sent." He's so alarmed and upset. 

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:That would indeed have made sense, but the Emperor is fine, and in fact had no idea the letter had been sent until he read the morning report. Which leaves me very confused, and wondering whether the intended effect was for Iomedae to take certain actions as a result of your warning. Actions that would be predictable to the Empire's enemies, which could in this case include the gods. Can you tell me what you think Iomedae would have done when she received your report?: 

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"Presumably they'd have checked if there was a coup in progress, what with how I said there might be one. After that - I don't know. Tried to confirm whether the letter was legitimate. Plausibly consulted Aroden about that, except I don't think he can see very well here."

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:Would they have ways of tracking the letter's provenance?: 

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"- only if Altarrin did, or if Alfirin can scry off just that, which she might be able to?"

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Thoughtful frown. :Can you think of any way that the contents of this letter could set Alfirin and Iomedae at odds? Or any other way it could sabotage relationships between the Empire and the Knights of Ozem, not from our end but by affecting how Iomedae sees us?: 

She is reading his mind in as much detail as possible; she's willing to be a little bit noticeable about it, it's not like he doesn't know they've been mindreading him. 

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There's the mystery of why Iomedae hasn't let Alfirin conquer the Empire. But the best plots aimed at that would've killed Marit, or killed whoever in the Imperial government Iomedae currently believes can be reasoned with; a forged note from the Emperor wouldn't do it. 

They might be divided on how to handle a real note from the Emperor? But if this were that, the Emperor presumably wouldn't be sending someone to interrogate Marit about it, unless this is just for appearances' sake and they're both to be killed once the duration on pastwatching is expired. 

..Marit doesn't think that'd divide them either. The thing that divides Iomedae and Alfirin is probably best approximated as "Alfirin's personal power she'd still have if the Crusade parted ways with her", or if you're of a more idealistic bent "Evil", and this note doesn't touch either. 

 

"Probably anyone who wants an invasion wants to convince Iomedae the Empire isn't competent to keep its word," he says. "But she isn't a fool, and this isn't even well-designed for that."

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Huh. She looks unhappily at him.

(She normally avoids any emotional expression, during interrogations, it's mostly just more frightening to the person who knows she has the power of life or death over them. But she is unhappy, and this man is - very tough, emotionally stable, isn't going to panic or crumple or stop being able to think if she's slightly upset where he can see it. And she hates being confused, and badly wants him to go a little bit further to helping her resolve it.) 

 

:Do you think Altarrin would have done anything against Iomedae's will or without her knowledge?: she asks after a few moments of trying to think where to even go next with this. 

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"Plausibly? I know nothing about the man, and everyone's been emphasizing how the defection was incredibly out of character, so I don't have much to go off in guessing what he'd do. ...Iomedae is too trusting, but she's not much too trusting. It'd be surprising if she were wrong about him."

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:Is it even faintly plausible that Altarrin could get Alfirin to work against Iomedae? ...Not that I see how this letter could be aiming at that, just, trying to get a sense of what the possibilities are.: 

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" - yes, that seems entirely possible." What with how they're both Lawful Evil archmages and Altarrin has something Alfirin wants and Alfirin has something Altarrin wants. 

He's frightened for Iomedae, now. Whatever the plan is, if she doesn't like it he probably dislikes it even more than that, and -

- and she's used to operating where Aroden can protect her, and here He can't -

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Oh no. That - would be seriously alarming - though she still can't exactly see how a very implausible letter could cause that to happen, or - who in the Empire could possibly have sent it, unless it was faked by Altarrin himself to distract Iomedae - this is stupid, she's distracting herself thinking about bizarre hypotheticals that are straight-up incompatible with the facts she knows, focus– 

 

It does sort of feel like the first instance in this interrogation where she's gotten anywhere, though. 

:Do you think Altarrin would want to conquer the Empire? Or, I mean, what exactly does Alfirin have that Altarrin wants?: 

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That one's easy. "She can probably figure out how to kill your gods, and would want to do it."

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She can what. 

- Ellitrea would almost be sympathetic, if that were what Altarrin wanted. In fact, 'allies who can kill gods' is the first reason she's heard that would explain why the Altarrin she knows might choose to defect, though of course the problem with that theory is that she doesn't see how he could have known at the time, unless he was scrying in secret and learned enough about Alfirin, somehow...

She's continuing to get rabbitholed in silly counterfactuals, but - to entertain this scenario a little longer - if Altarrin were really allying with Alfirin in order to kill the gods, she wishes he knew he didn't have to conquer the Empire via elaborate schemes, if he just came back and demonstrated a lack of mind control and then convinced them that Alfirin was good for her word...okay, fine, maybe it would be a little more complicated than that... 

 

:I see: Ellitrea manages after a few seconds of looking visibly startled. :Do you think Altarrin, or Alfirin, could have dropped the letter as part of some kind of false-flag operations against Iomedae, to convince her the Emperor needed 'rescuing' - would Iomedae fall for that under any circumstances -?: 

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" - I don't know. Maybe.  I - Alfirin knows her very well, has known her for decades, can probably predict exactly what'd move her on whatever they were previously contemplating - it'd be - it'd be the kind of betrayal there isn't really any coming back from, it's a dangerous move to make for - a world that's a priority for neither of them - but if she wanted to, sure, Alfirin could convince Iomedae that the letter was legitimate and the Emperor needed rescuing.

It's Alfirin I read the letter to. From the Rope Trick. Alfirin is the one who had the means to intervene immediately if there were a coup."

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:...Different scenario, if this wasn't a false-flag operation by Alfirin and was genuinely new information to her, how confident are you that she would have passed it on to Iomedae at all?: 

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"- that's nearly the same magnitude of betrayal. If she's trying to arrange to betray Iomedae already, then sure, she might've done that. If she hadn't already decided to betray Iomedae, then she wouldn't do it over this. It's - possible Iomedae wasn't in the loop if there was enough else happening last night. It's been an eventful week."

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:Mmm.: 

 

And she takes a mental step back, turns it from side to side in her head. 

:- If it's a false flag scenario orchestrated by Altarrin and Alfirin, what would you expect to be the next visible sign from our point of view.:

(...Unfortunately plausible that it's both of them dying before they can spread the secret any further. She doesn't say that.) 

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Yeah it's definitely both of them dying before they can spread the secret any further. 

 

He could Sending Iomedae in ten minutes. He's - kind of inclined to do that, except that Alfirin will be watching and will see that he's starting the spell and -

 

:Who're you supposed to report to?:

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She aims a piercing look at him. :I am not entirely sure I should give you that information, but - directly to people at a high level. And I'm inclined to think you should Sending Iomedae, if only because - we don't know that this is the explanation, it could be something less nefarious or just slower, that isn't too late to stop.:

She sighs. :I want you to prepare the spell and I will alert someone offsite – in Mindspeech, which as far as I know isn't trackable by magic – that if both of us die in the next ten minutes, it should be assumed to be hostile action by Alfirin, possibly without Iomedae's approval. If you are able to cast the spell, I want you to tell Iomedae that the letter was a fake, the Emperor is fine, and no action on her part is required. Nothing more, unless you want to argue now that saying more would be helpful.: 

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:No, that's fine.: He'll start the process for a Sending. :You're sure the letter was in fact a fake and the Emperor is in fact fine? Have you seen him?:

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:Yes, face to face. He seemed - I don't see him often in person - I think he seemed very stressed and worn down, which seems only to be expected, but otherwise fine?: 

And she'll contact a couple of Thoughtsensers who are stationed nearby enough and have the range to pick up a distance communication, and who will keep a secret for her for the moment, but who she trusts to raise an alert if she doesn't check in with them again and stand them down in the next candlemark. 

She waits. 

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"This is Marit. The letter was a fake, the Emperor is fine, no action on your part is required."

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She would ideally have contemplated this possibility in advance. Luckily the setup doesn't in fact oblige her to lie. "Acknowledged."

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- he relaxes slightly. Things will still probably go horribly but Iomedae probably won't be taken by surprise by them.

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Ellitrea also relaxes slightly. She's still confused, and displeased about it, but - she thinks that ruled out the absolute worst case scenario, and hopefully nipped some of the other potentially-very-bad scenarios in the bud. 

She is belatedly remembering that this man is a diplomatic representative, not just a prisoner, and - if they're in one of the scenarios where neither Iomedae nor her current allies were involved, and this was purely a home-grown typical court plot – and, of course, in the case where it turns out that Iomedae is operating in good faith, but based on the man's thoughts, Ellitrea herself is at least mildly leaning toward that interpretation – then it may end up being relevant whether Marit reports positively to Iomedae on his stay here. 

 

:Thank you: she sends. :I appreciate your cooperation. I expect to come back and question you further, once I know more about what's going on. In the meantime, I'm relieving all of the other Thoughtsensers on your case, and will be requesting an Imperial order for new instructions for the diplomat, he's not to press you on last night's events or our conversation. ...And, of course, I will request additional guards and magical precautions, in case whoever is responsible for this - either local or in Golarion - does decide to try to take you out.: She ducks her head. :Do you need anything else right now?: 

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:I don't think so. Good hope and good fortune, or, if that's not the local way to say it, have whatever you prize instead.:

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:Thank you.: Ellitrea likes the man, she decides. She wishes she could reassure him more convincingly that the Emperor hates ordering executions and is very unlikely to have him killed horribly, but...she's less sure than she would like, right now, that they aren't both going to end up killed horribly. 

 

She will report to the Emperor as soon as she can get a Gate back to Jacona. 

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The Emperor is clearly very busy and harried but can fit in time to see her before his next meeting. He ushers her into a private meeting-room, activates the artifact set-spell for a privacy-barrier (and casts a couple of additional privacy-spells, not that Ellitrea can tell.) "What is it." 

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She takes a deep breath, and - this conversation feels very sensitive - she'll switch to Mindspeech. 

:It was a very weird letter, your majesty. It was claiming to be from: wow this is agonizing to say to the literal Emperor, :...you.: 

And she can recount the contents in Mindspeech.

To Marit of the Knights of Ozem 

 

I would be very grateful if you could convey a message to Iomedae, and tell her that I recognize now the horrifying mistakes that the Empire has made, especially in our treatment of her paladins, and I am deeply sorry and wish to personally offer my surrender to her, though I cannot at this time give it for the Empire as a whole. 

I also recognize that the Empire is not the civilization that Altarrin wanted to build, and that he was right to leave. I would be obliged if you or Iomedae could alert Altarrin that I wish to relinquish control of the current empire to him, and hope that he may see a way forward from here, because I cannot. Altarrin likely already has as much context as is helpful. I have no standing to plead with Altarrin for anything, but if he would listen, I would beg that he act before morning, and find a way to confirm receipt of the letter. I will be in my quarters. 

 

- Emperor Bastran IV

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The Emperor looks unhappily at her. :That doesn't even make sense: he thinks back at her. :Did, er, Iomedae's paladin have any idea what it was about? - also I should've asked first, what did he actually do in response? Did he say anything about why he didn't bring it up sooner?: 

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:...He assumed it was part of a plot for a coup, your majesty, presumably one intended to wreck the relations with Iomedae too by blaming her for, uh, mind-controlling you. He didn't know who was in on it or who he could trust, it could've been the work of the Ministry of Barbarians. He asked for privacy and contacted Iomedae to check if you were dead or in danger, and got instructions from her to - stay where he was, basically. ...I had him do a message to her again before I left, confirming that the letter is a fake and you're fine.: 

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The Emperor looks so tired and unhappy. He drags a hand over his face. 

:I don't like it. I don't get what - whoever did it - would've been trying to accomplish, given that it's presumably easy to check that I'm fine. Either it's a very incompetent plot or it's - more complicated than it looks on the surface. Did the diplomat, er, have any ideas about what Iomedae would do in response?: 

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:Several, yes.: She bites her lip. :...The scariest is - he thinks it wouldn't be entirely out of character for Alfirin to go behind Iomedae's back, on something, if it got her what she wanted. She wants the Empire, and - he thinks she might have a way to kill the gods. Which Altarrin would - go for, if he saw a way - so he thinks it's possible this is Alfirin and Altarrin working together to trick Iomedae into, I guess, supporting them in conquering the Empire, so Alfirin can help Altarrin kill some gods.: 

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(Okay, that is - not even an unreasonable conclusion to come to - and is also genuinely one of the funniest things he's heard this week.) 

 

Undetectable Telepathic bond message to Kietres, :- Thoughtsenser and Marit came up with a theory that the letter was faked as part of a conspiracy between Alfirin and, well, me, working together against Iomedae so Alfirin gets the Empire she wants and I get her help in murdering the Velgarth gods. Just so you know. I think probably Marit is unlikely to do anything stupid as a result of this theory, but you should run that by Iomedae just in case.: 

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And to Ellitrea before there's been too much of a delay: he blinks. Runs a nervous hand through his hair. :Would that work? I - wouldn't have expected Iomedae to fall for the letter, not by itself.: 

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- Kietras will dutifully pass this along????? Alfirin and Iomedae wouldn't be playing against each other, that's wildly dangerous for the Crusade and everything they both care about???

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She can tell Altarrin Marit has orders to sit tight and cooperate and he's not going to reason himself into doing something else while he knows he hasn't been informed about the full strategic picture. 

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She isn't going to find it hilarious until Marit is safe and she's apologized to him but she can anticipate in advance that once she's done that she'll think it's really funny.

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Ellitrea bites her lip again. :He - wasn't sure. He thought Alfirin could do it if she tried really hard. ...But he also thought Alfirin would be watching him, if that were the case, and would make sure neither of us survived to get word out. So I'm not really sure. It's...probably not the most likely explanation, at this point, since we're all still alive.: 

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:Hmm: The Emperor looks unconvinced, or maybe just indecisive. :I really don't like - not knowing what the goal is here, or who's steering it. It’s - probably still internal, or at least involves an agent 

He sighs heavily. :Think I’d prefer to keep the investigation quiet. I’ll give you some standard Imperial orders to cover the secrecy, exempt you from random Thoughtsensing checks.: He frowns. Rubs the back of his neck. :And I’ll report to Siman myself, I think. I want you back on site at the facility.:

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...Right. Which is code for "the Emperor doesn't know whether he can trust Siman", probably, and...maybe also some more elaborate facet of court politics that she does not want to make her problem right now. She is content with the plan 'Ellitrea avoids drawing the attention of more powerful people engaged in powerful-people scheming.'

:Thank you, your majesty. I'll report any - other strange events - right away.: 

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And Altarrin sits down in the Emperor's office, and considers the most discreet way to handle it from here. 

If he wanted a mystery like this actually solved, he would be inclined to push for healing Kastil and throwing him at it. However, he in fact wants the opposite. Cutting out the Office of Inquiry entirely would be incredibly suspicious. ...Bringing in a trusted Inquiry investigator and telling them the truth - or a version of the truth where he, as 'Bastran', admits to having written the letter but claims to have recovered his wits now - would be, well. High variance. It's - honestly what Bastran might be inclined to do, if he really had managed to pull himself together enough to stay in Jacona, but that does not at all mean Altarrin is inclined in that direction. 

 

His current thought is to inform Siman that the matter turned out to be more sensitive and politically fraught than he expected, and that he would like to request a specific trustworthy Office of Inquiry investigator and have them conduct the investigation in secret, wearing a Thoughtsensing talisman and reporting to him directly. This avoids snubbing the Office of Inquiry too badly, while still suggesting the subtext that he's worried the goal of the letter was to cause one or another court faction to incorrectly set off a contingency-plan and sabotage their diplomatic efforts, which is among the better and less suspicious justifications for keeping the investigation very quiet. 

(Then he'll ideally ask Alfirin to undetectably-Dominate the lead investigator as well, just as a backup, before giving them an official Imperial order to keep this secret, and then - giving them access to the real contents of the letter, because trying to fake it just adds far too many ways for this to explode. With the headband, he thinks he can pull off a conversation that will leave the investigator assuming this was clearly a plot to discredit the Emperor, and not particularly suspicious that the Emperor is lying, let alone an imposter.

At that point, hopefully ordering them to conduct an investigation with the utmost discretion will also ensure that it moves slowly, and in a few days he should know more about which way he wants to steer.) 

 

He'll pull out the list of Office of Inquiry staff. He wants someone who will without question obey Imperial orders, who will keep their head down, and who is more a thorough plodding type than a brilliant detective, but - importantly - someone with at least some principles toward uncovering the truth even at the cost of political expediency, someone whose name won't have Siman jumping to the conclusion that the Emperor wants something buried or mishandled. A mage too, ideally, since otherwise they would have to bring someone else in for pastwatching and any other magical analysis. 

Who are his best options? 

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Mage-Inquisitors Jemon, Tenos, and Doral are all available options? Jemon is known as an plodding, strict worker with a focus on paperwork instead of social situations whose usual specialty is going deeply into the files of an organization and emerging a month later with itemized lists of all the crimes of everyone involved and how best to recover the money, Tenos is a fanatical and obsessive servant of The Law but, and this is important, a complete willingness to obey orders instead of not obeying orders (people not obeying orders is where problems come from in the first place) with an obsession with thoroughness, and Doral is a talented, driven and devoted mage who is recently returning to service after, honestly, burning out for ten years around age forty and spending those years under medical and psychological supervision - he wouldn't normally be a pick, but Bastran's a soft touch and he was a rising star then. Anyone else is either sufficiently corrupt or sufficiently obscure to seriously shock Siman. (He will, of course, be mildly shocked by the Emperor going over his head to anyone except Kastil, but Kastil would be overworked even if he wasn't in a hospital bed.)

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Well, it's a mildly shocking situation (thinks the mental model of Bastran that Altarrin has been running.) 

Altarrin knew Doral a decade ago, of course, and thought well of him then. He's not a completely unsurprising pick, but - he's a name that would be understandable for Bastran's eye to snag on, if he was skimming down a page for someone trustworthy and reliable and capable of creativity. Jemon is a strange pick for investigating a political plot, and Tenos...mostly just sounds frustrating to manage, even though Altarrin is confident he could handle it fine. 

 

He writes up the letter to notify Siman, naming Doral as the investigator he wants on the secret case. 

(And warns Kietres via Telepathic Bond and asks him to ask Alfirin to keep an eye on Siman's thoughts as he reacts to it, they shouldn't have to intervene but it'll be good to know whether he's suspicious and if so in what directions.) 

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Siman is annoyed and a little worried he's being bypassed (twice now!), but he's mostly just worried that he's failing at his job-of-keeping-the-Emperor-happy, and the first conspiracy in his thoughts is "the Emperor is planning to replace him." "The Emperor is impersonated or under mind control" has not risen as a hypothesis to his conscious attention.

Doral will be notified; does Bastran want to see him immediately or should his secretary add him to the schedule later?

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(Altarrin isn't very worried. This is an understandable response and he doesn't especially expect Siman to act on it until he gets a lot more spooked. Bastran does sometimes have department heads replaced, but he doesn't exactly have a reputation for executing anyone he replaces or even stripping them of their wealth and titles. He does want Alfirin to check on him intermittently and, if necessary, prevent him from taking any actions to secure his position that would have messy results in the actual situation.) 

 

He tells his secretary that he really can't fit in speaking with Doral right now, he'd like that scheduled for immediately after his upcoming ministry meeting, which he really needs a few minutes to prepare for where by 'prepare' he means 'hide in his office with no one looking at him'. (Altarrin has practiced the facial expression Bastran makes when he needs a few minutes of peace and quiet to "prepare" for yet another exhausting meeting.) 

 

 

(In actual fact, he'll spend the time doing some independent scrying-checks under his desk, where the spell won't show up to mage-sight even for someone scrying the room itself.) 

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The real Bastran, in the magical operations mansion on the other continent, sleeps for much longer than his impersonator back in Jacona. 

 

Eventually, though, he wakes up and takes a few bleary seconds to notice - mostly via poking at the complete lack of motivation to move or get up or do anything - that his compulsion is missing.

He sits bolt upright and gets half a second into, of all things, trying to reach for Altarrin with the comms-spell, before he remembers where he is and why. At which point he very predictably and stupidly starts crying. 

(Altarrin is in Jacona, Altarrin is - doing his best right now to clean up after Bastran's horrific mistakes - and he's pathetically grateful for it but it's also so upsetting, poor Altarrin, when he had only just gotten out...) 

 

He is not particularly going to be functional enough to call for anyone. 

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There's a guard at the door, in shiny magic armor, though his job is things like 'make sure the prisoner has access to food and water' and 'answer questions if the prisoner has any', not 'soothe the prisoner if he bursts into tears'.  He'll, uh, wait a couple of minutes to see if it resolves on its own like a sneezing fit?

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Not really, no! Bastran has completely failed to notice the guard's presence, though he is at least somewhat tracking that he's Iomedae's prisoner (and Altarrin isn't here, he wishes pointlessly that Altarrin were here.) He can probably calm himself down eventually but it would take more like twenty minutes than a couple. 

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Then after a couple of minutes, the guard will say uncomfortably, "Are you - injured, or - hungry, or anything - I can call in breakfast -"

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There's a person there???? This is terrible. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Why. He just wants everything to STOP. 

 

Bastran grits his teeth until the crying is slightly more under control. "I'm not injured. I - don't need anything - can I please just be alone -" 

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It is not standard protocol to leave crying spellcaster prisoners alone on request. Iomedae did say that security was not in this instance her highest priority and that the Emperor was a friend of Altarrin's and should be treated with kindness and understanding. Does that mean to leave him alone? 

"I'll ask the Knight-Commander," he says, "I'm not actually sure. We don't want to hurt you, or make this any harder for you than necessary, but this is a very unusual situation, and you're a very powerful spellcaster," and absolutely have the bluff to be faking this crying fit.

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Well, they're the ones holding him prisoner and they get to make the rules. Bastran will mumble out a 'thank you' and roll the other way so he can at least slightly pretend he's not crying in front of a random stranger who works for Iomedae. 

 

(He wants this to not be happening.) 

(He wants the world to go away.) 

(He is not quite at the point of regretting that he missed the opportunity to quietly kill himself when no one could stop him, because - okay, he's pretty sure there were good reasons even if they're not really coming to him right now - but between this and the fact that Altarrin is trapped back in the Empire and under a compulsion again as a result of his decision, it's - kind of hard not to regret it.) 

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"Knight-Commander."

       "Yes?"

"The prisoner's guard wants to know if he should at the prisoner's request leave him alone."

       - sigh.  "Altarrin's going to be very grieved, I think, if he kills himself right this very minute. And it - reduces our options. The poor man, though. - tell them no, and that I'll be right there."

 

She enters without announcing herself, a few minutes later, and if Bastran is still facing the other direction he may not notice.

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Bastran hears the new footsteps, but he can't see who it is, and can't especially bring himself to care. If they need to interrogate him, well, for one he's utterly dreading it, you would think that the fact that just existing is misery would make additional misery stand out less or something but it still sounds awful. And also he cannot at all find the motivation to try to be helpful on purpose. He's just going to lie here unless someone demands something of him. 

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Then Iomedae will have a desk dragged in and will work from here so she can intervene if the Emperor wants to kill himself. 

 

(And anyone he could conceivably take with him if he does can be outside the blast radius.)

 

(This is incredibly annoying but they need Alfirin's Dominates for possible emergencies and it'd also be - a step she doesn't want to take, when the man has spent three conscious hours of his adult life not mind-controlled.)

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Bastran will stubbornly ignore the sound of someone apparently...doing paperwork??...nearby (why?), and try to go back to SLEEP. He isn't even especially thinking about killing himself, right now, it - would upset Altarrin - it's just that he can hear someone else breathing and it's like a crushing weight on his skin and he just wants to be somewhere no one can see him or interact with him.  

 

 

Sleep is not particularly working.

And it's...probably rude? to just keep ignoring everyone here? It seems. Not really sustainable on the level of days. And it seems like he probably should want to know what's going on. It's - tomorrow, probably? He thinks he slept. He vaguely thinks he remembers someone telling him they could do a spell to help him sleep, and it must have been a really good spell, he doesn't remember lying awake miserably at all

 

He eventually rolls over to see who's there. 

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All right, but surely Iomedae of all people has better things to do with her time than do paperwork in his room? 

He drags himself into a sitting position. "Er. What are you doing here?" 

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"I am Iomedae, the Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade, and I am trying to ensure that it will be swiftly noticed if you decide to Gate out of here or start attacking people. I could enforce with magic a restriction against doing that, but it's my present impression that you've been subject to entirely too much of that, so I'd rather not."

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Wow. He is incredibly not going to do either of those things. That would require...being motivated to do anything. 

 

He hugs his knees. "I don't mind if you want to do your kind of compulsion, I - wasn't going to try - and you must have a lot of work to do." 

(She didn't say anything about magically preventing him from killing himself. He wasn't even thinking about it until he noticed that, but - wow, he would actually be very very upset and angry with her if she tried to compulsion him against it.)

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"I am not much impaired in doing it," she points out. "And I did, actually, intend to talk to you today, if you were up for it."

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He doesn't want to talk to her right now, but he doesn't really anticipate that changing in the next - indefinite length of time that he doesn't think about very closely because the future existing is awful - and also it would be mortifying to admit to her face that he's not up for a conversation

"Er. Okay. What did you want to talk about? - is Altarrin all right?" 

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"He's fine. He's reporting regularly and everything is going as hoped for. He has a complicated relationship with the Empire, obviously, but it was agonizing for all of us to have so little ability to improve things there in the last few weeks, and now he can arrange to bring the civil wars to an end and so on. He's concerned for you, but other than that, I think things are fine."

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Why is he concerned for me, Bastran wants to say, but he has enough self-awareness to notice that this is the world's stupidest question, 'keeps randomly crying' is probably just objectively concerning from Altarrin's point of view. 

 

"That's...good," he says uncertainly. His shoulders are still hunched, as though he's waiting for Iomedae to drop something very heavy on his head. (And even without her fanciest headband, Iomedae can probably pick up that he's finding it exhausting to be in anyone's presence, and is badly craving quiet and privacy and Not Being Observed, though he's not going to bring it up since her explanation for not leaving him alone was pretty reasonable.) 

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"If there's anything you've thought of that isn't in the reports you left him, we can pass it along to him."

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There are probably a million things he should tell Altarrin and if he were less of a disaster he would be able to think of them, but he really can't right now. Iomedae is probably judging him for being completely useless, unlike Altarrin, who probably got her expectations up because he's always thought better of Bastran than Bastran deserved.

He shakes his head and looks close to tears again. 

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"What's your best guess as to what you need to be functional."

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That's the worst question he's ever been asked in his entire life. It's - she's trying to be helpful, she's probably bothering at all on Altarrin's explicit request, because Altarrin cares and Altarrin is worried about him and Altarrin would be able to answer that question, if he were in Bastran's position, Altarrin wouldn't be obnoxious for anyone to help. But Bastran isn't Altarrin and never has been, he was just a hollow mask made of compulsions over emptiness and now all of that is gone and and and - 

 

What do you WANT from me, he doesn't say, because it's stupid to be rude to the incredibly powerful foreign godfollower keeping him prisoner, and also the answer is obvious, of course she wants him available to answer questions on how the Empire works, because she's trying to prevent its horrible rotting monstrous bulk from wandering headfirst into a disaster. 

Why don't you just put me on trial for torturing your paladin and execute me for it like normal sane people, he doesn't say, because it's mean and Iomedae might actually find it really upsetting. 

"I don't know," he says dully. "I guess if you want me to - do things - you could try a compulsion to make me serve Aroden's goals, then I would be - motivated to do useful things." 

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"Let's assume I'm not going to do that, for reasons that are some combination of 'it would be wrong', 'it's a contradiction in terms', and 'it wouldn't achieve my goals'. Let's also assume that I don't really care very much if you do things? I have Adepts. I could stand to have more of them but I can also raise more of them from the dead. If you want to retire to a secluded monastery on a hilltop except without the gods I really don't, in fact, mind, though if there's no such thing I suppose you'll have to build it yourself, or put up with a secluded monastery that does have some gods."

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Whyyyyyyyyyyy is this the conversation she wants to have with him. It somehow hurts even more, that she's - trying to be kind - and it's pointless, she can't help, no one can, he's - it feels like it's fundamentally incompatible with reality, for anything to ever be better than this, which is probably a stupid line of thought but he's way too tired to fight it. 

 

He curls up tighter. "I don't know." His voice is tight. "I don't - think - I want things."

(He wants there to stop being things. He wants to stop existing. Not to be dead, exactly, because Altarrin would be sad, just. No more things.) 

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"You wanted to be alone earlier, do you still want that?" She is pretty persuaded at this point that he's not going to do anything dangerous to her goals, and if he kills himself, well, Altarrin didn't think it was a good idea for her to try as hard as possible to prevent that.

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He wants to stop having conscious experiences. That was, like, a straight half-candlemark of conscious experience and all of it was of misery. He's so tired. He's not sure if it's even the kind of tired that sleeping would help with, but at least sleeping doesn't involve being conscious, and he mercifully doesn't remember any of his dreams. 

 

"I - think I want that," he says tonelessly. "And - if someone could cast the sleep spell again...?" 

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"I can arrange that."

 

And she'll leave, and send someone in to cast Sleep.

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"Bastran" finishes "preparing" for his meeting, and checks in briefly via the Telepathic Bond. He's checked up on the state of the investigation into the Mirrorgrave's second attack and the bag of spectres (which is still very thoroughly secured); at this point the investigation per se is mostly into Duchess Velane and how she came to be in possession of an artifact sword. (He's already leaned a little on them not to find her guilty of anything, since she probably saved the Empire.)

He is now hoping to bring up the matter of Oris and Tolmassar, and push at least for a resolution with Oris - he may want to be in contact during that, via the Telepathic Bond, and have Iomedae ready to quickly run proposals by Jean, if that's at all doable? A major advantage of having this setup is being able to backchannel in real time and ensure that he's proposing something that Oris will accept – and maybe get some leeway in what proposals Jean will accept, knowing that Iomedae has an agent in the Empire that can influence the Council's decisions. (He would prefer she not reveal anything more than that, but it does overall seem worth the risk of revealing that after swearing him to secrecy, if it increases his trust that the Empire will keep its word.) 

 

Also, as usual, he asks if there's any news on Bastran. 

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He isn't doing well, Iomedae conveys, because it'd be dishonest to do otherwise. He woke up, sobbed for a while, was unable to answer questions about what might help with anything, and wanted to be put to sleep again. Altarrin also had a hard time, of course, with being free for the first time in his adult life, but Altarrin recovered notably much much faster.

She is not at this time having him closely supervised.

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...Yeah, that's pretty solidly within the bounds of his expectations for how Bastran would cope with waking up on the first day of his life after he lost his compulsions and defected to the people whose paladins he ordered tortured. He's probably feeling incredibly guilty and ashamed and awful about all of his past decisions in the last month, which - is somewhat less something that Altarrin was dealing with, and also Altarrin is just less prone to converting intense guilt into suicidal despair. (Not at all prone, really.) 

If he decides not to kill himself, he'll - probably recover a little in a few days, at least to the point of having coherent conversations about what he needs? He probably is tired, it's been - an incredibly exhausting last few months, really last few years. It might help for Altarrin to talk to him, once he's rested some more, but unfortunately Altarrin is going to be busy for the foreseeable future and really can't randomly Gate to the other continent. 

 

 

- and he's out of time for being sad about this. Onward to the ministry meeting! 

(He makes sure to look a carefully-judged level of tired and unhappy-to-be-there, but he's aiming for 'mostly fairly functional Bastran' for this, Bastran whose few minutes of private time gave him enough breathing space to get through the afternoon.)

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It is not, actually, usually the case that the Emperor usually has daily meetings with literally all of his ministers together every day.

Most days, weeks, or months, however, aren't like this one.

"How bad's the wreck, Siman?"

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"We've finished the evacuation and shifted into our new headquarters, by this point," says Siman, who doesn't usually go first. "We'll still need to find out how many of our files were destroyed instead of lost, but so far the situation isn't looking too bad."

He pauses. "Except Kastil. The Healers haven't given up hope he'll wake, but they're not optimistic, without use of otherworldly magic."

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Sigh. "...I want him back. Siman, er, how - bad is your assessment, on whether he - won't be willing to trust his own work if he knows we used one of the otherworldly healing potions on him?" 

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"He'll be suspicious, of course, but he'll do his duty. Always does."

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Nod. Sigh. "I - remind me to make a decision before the end of the meeting, if he's not dying it's - not urgent for before then." He shakes his head. "Did the pastwatcher get anything on who did this?" 

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"I have a full report," he passes it over. "He concealed his face, but the pastwatcher got a look at the room he came from and we Gated into it. He was one of the rebel Jovan's Adepts, trying to achieve a decapitation strike; he had bad evidence you were going to be in the building at the time."

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"Ah." He glances quickly over the report. "Good work." Said with the deliberate effort of someone whose main emotional reaction to the report is exhaustion, but who wants to make his appreciation for competent work known. 

Glance at Macalay. "Since it didn't work - uh, toward its intended goal, at least - do you think we need to prioritize some kind of response, or can it wait? It sounds like Jovan is getting desperate, which - means he might try something else in desperation, but he's also less in a position to be a real threat, and it sounds like his intelligence on Jacona is, er, lacking." 

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"He's going to be an idiot," says Macalay. "He's always been an idiot. Bastran, this war needs to be over, we beat his armies, great; his castles are falling, fine; we've got six legions doing what is frankly police duties, and we're doing it because if Taymyrr revolts - which, probably, if they hear Oris is free - and Ithik gets an army in with nobody to stop them, we lose the province if we're lucky, and all we need for that is for every mage of his still under compulsions to open some Gates to Ithik. Is he going to be an idiot? Gods take me if I know! And we need those six legions, or four at least, up fighting Norean. And a new general - Tovray's not just beat, he knows he's beat, and that's all you bloody well need in a general."

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Nod. "I know. If you've got proposals for how to end it faster than this, I'm listening." 

 

(And Altarrin is reaching out along the Telepathic Bond, relaying a brief summary. :Pass it along to Alfirin, please, I want to know if she has ideas on how to take out Jovan as a factor. It – I do not want the man dead, exactly, but the rebellion would almost certainly collapse under its own weight if he were out of the picture.:

And, meanwhile, he'll look around attentively at the other ministers, in case anyone seems to have ideas. 

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Kietras will pass that along but also the answer is definitely 'it'd be trivial'. He can die in his sleep tonight if Altarrin gives the word.

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Really the question is not "Can she," it's "How lethal is it a good idea to make this assassination". He could be dead, or vanished, or petrified, or feebleminded, or hog-tied with his magic blocked on the footsteps of the imperial residence.

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Meanwhile, back at the meeting and simultaneous with this - 

"See how Iomedae feels about invading Ithik?" Duke Elnore says, not-quite-seriously. "None of their other neighbors are good prospects right now, but our sources say she hates Atet, too, and getting them into a war will make our job much easier."

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"You don't ask for much," Count Harleth says drily.

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"'Do more with less.' I've got ten mad risks if you want to take mad risks. Harleth, how are you on Iomedae's trapped gear?"

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"We haven't found any traps yet, so they're presumably subtle. You're thinking we send it to the front?"

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"That's on the stupid idea list. Healing potions for every combat-mage, and then a year later every one who drank one wakes up Iomedae's slave. So's putting some hotshot kid in charge of the army to gamble the army or sell it to Norean. So's telling half our infrastructure Adepts to try to gate-strike Norean and hope one of them can pull it off and he's got no heir."

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"Are 'take out loans to hire mercenaries?' and 'offer tax rebates to nobles who raise private armies' on the stupid idea lists yet?"

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"No, they're just things we should do, stupid or not. The pretender's headed for Jacona, Pelias; we can't count coppers."

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Bastran has been leaning back in his chair and listening to this with his characteristic 'gestating an idea' expression; it's not uncommon for him to start going down some line of thought prompted by an offhand remark, and then actually change the topic to it a couple of minutes later. 

(Altarrin, of course, already had this idea and has been waiting for a good opening.) 

 

He leans forward. "If we're considering things like 'ask Iomedae to invade Ithik'," he says, thoughtfully, "then - is it any stupider to ask her politely to end our civil wars? It's clearly within her capabilities to arrange an assassination or a kidnapping or whatnot, it sounds like both would fall apart or at least become much easier nuts to crack if the leaders were dead or imprisoned, and - I think it'd fit her stated motivations, to offer? Since she's claiming to want us united in fighting Tar-Baphon. And it's - I mean, there's definitely an argument she might do it just to set up for a betrayal later, but it's - an offer we can verify, and that would leave us in a more secure position to negotiate - and, I mean, if she declines, that's informative too."

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Pelias is thinking that that's somewhat odd phrasing for Bastran, actually! Not very, but considering the shape he was in last night...

He'll let the diplomats start, though.

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"If she is at active war with Ithik, that ties her down; if she considers herself as being owed a great debt by the Empire, she is likely to have more political capital within her own state to make demands of us, such as tolerating Aroden, and then to go to war if these demands are rejected." As well as more Bastran-being-grateful-to-her.

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"It'd make us look weak," says Macalay, which isn't a 'don't do it,' "and I hate depending on a bloody priest."

(That would be an angry speech. This is being unhappy.)

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"It would be an insult to the traditions of the Empire and the memories of our ancestors, to call in a foreign god-worshipper to act against an imperial subject, even one mad with treason!"

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"It would be." He shakes his head. "I say no."

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"Bastran, when she comes in, how do we ever get her out again?"

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He can understand the appeal. He can really, really understand the appeal. He does know that all the money bleeding out of the imperial treasury is the work of people who worked their entire lives for it, and he knows that there are lives bleeding out too, and the whole Empire is at stake.

He is very conflicted.

"I think both options are very bad," he'll honestly say, "And I don't know which is worse."

There. He has now staked his credibility on being the most pro-Iomedae person in the room.

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Sigh, sagging back slightly in his chair, as though the act of having an idea gave him brief energy and he's now being dragged back to earth.

"Yeah. I get that it sets a precedent, and that's - a problem down the line. Just - we need something, and I'm not sure asking her to distract Ithik is enough." 

Shrug. "I don't know. I think it's worth considering if there's anything specific we could ask that would set less of a precedent, and wouldn't - insult the ancestors - but could still make a difference. We could say she can only do distance magic from outside the Empire's borders, or something - I don't know, there's probably a better set of rules, just, I - think it should be an option on the table, even if we end up deciding it's not worth taking." 

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"What happens next war, when it's the pretender who turns to her? I don't know if either Jovan or Norean has."

And as far as any of them know, she kidnapped Arbas from outside the Empire's borders.

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Grump grump grump grump grump grump grump grump.

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NOBODY IS HAPPY ABOUT THIS ESPECIALLY NOT BARON PIERSON.

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Bastran looks kind of miserable and sick about it too! In the way where he's probably going to end up doing it anyway 

 

(Altarrin is, internally, moderately satisfied. He's not going to push this particular issue any further right now, after he asks for Macalay to work later on drafting some potential very-paranoid - and very checkable - conditions on how Iomedae would be authorized to act, and for Elnore to draft a potential message to Iomedae about it.) 

 

"Right." Sigh. "We should talk about Oris. Er. Does anyone have thoughts on the last set of demands?" 

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Duke Elnore shrugs. "The rebel leader has rejected the offer to remain a tributary state, and any and all symbols of inferior sovereignty; he's cut some of his more flaunting demands for returns and reparations, but not much. The Ministry of Barbarians thinks he's confident he can win the war, with Iomedae behind him."

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"He's an arrogant son of a bitch who thinks he's invincible and that he has us over a barrel." 

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"I would guess that Iomedae thinks she can dictate terms to all of us, he is confident that if she does these terms will be better than we can get elsewhere, and he further thinks that we will run out of willingness to reinforce Oris before he runs out of ability to launch ambushes." The Empire doesn't usually lose wars that way, but it has ever happened.

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"Elnore, anything good happen if this sonofabitch falls over dead?"

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"Iomedae resurrects him?"

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HMPH.

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Sigh. "Yeah. ...I mean, do we think it's true, that Iomedae can and will more-or-less dictate whatever terms she wants, and the terms she wants will be favorable to the rebels?" He rubs the back of his neck. "I don't really like the - framing on it, it does feel like it'll - look like weakness, risk other provinces getting ideas - but I think it might just not be realistic to hold out for Oris as a client state. And, er, I - think I'd be willing to accept the actual conditions he wants, just, if there were some way to make it - less the kind of treaty that would incentivize more rebellions in general...?" 

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"We don't know what Iomedae can do, except that she's sure trying to look omnipotent, and I don't know if the rebels know any more than we do."

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"The loss of Tozoa Province is a severe setback for the Empire and a blow - to the military might of the Empire in the eyes of the nations of the world, to Your majesty in the Empire, and to the dream of the First Emperor against the gods."

It is also the loss of patronage, tax revenue, et cetera, et cetera.

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"I'll bet he wants the words 'free and independent' so he can start rebellions," says Macalay, "just like we want it gone so there won't be. Keep us busy from coming after him." He shakes his head. "If they see us lose, we will have rebellions, and we'd just better make sure we have the troops to crush them."

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"I don't doubt that the warlord Orestan would be willing to accept a lower price or no price in gold, but I doubt that he would be willing to yield on freedom, land, or the gods. He expects a war, just as we do, and he must persuade every other one of the squabbling tribal leaders and petty barons and naked warlords to accept his agreement, and so he must promise them a 'full victory' if he wishes to keep his throne."

The traditional thing to do would be to bribe him with being an Imperial puppet ruler, but they tried that with the last mission and it didn't work, so.

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"I don't suppose there's anything we could do to break the Oris-Iomedae alliance?" he suggests. "We beat him before she came back, after all, and they can't have the same designs - he's no more heard of Tar-Baphon before she came here than we did. Without secure resurrections and miracle-healing, his position would be weaker... and if we try to turn her against Norean while the war is lingering, he might have her demand full acceptance of Orestan's demands to make peace." And reparations and return of battle trophies (such as the sword of the first king of Oris and the throne they have sat on since the third, all now on display in Jacona) would not exactly strengthen Bastran's government in the eyes of the Empire.

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He taps his fingers restlessly on the tabletop. “Maybe? ...So one point of leverage we might have with Iomedae - if we can trust any of the Thoughtsensing reports on her diplomat - is that she doesn't trust her ally, Alfirin, and can't afford to break with her, because the Knights of Ozem need her for their war back home, but she badly doesn't want her to end up with the Empire. Which...she might be more constrained than we've been modeling, and more - inclined for this to be over one way or another." 

Shrug. "I think we don't know enough about how she'll respond, right now, but - that's the point of the diplomacy, right, getting a better sense of her? How, er, optimistic do we feel about the progress there?" 

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"It's going better than I expected," Elnore admits. "The diplomat they sent is good at his job. I can't tell how well he speaks for Iomedae, under the circumstances; he has a lot to excuse and he's going at it as fast as he can. I'm inclined to believe him that she's very busy and doesn't want to start a war here; I think the Alfirin-story makes some sense, as an explanation of what's going on here - two allies with different priorities, working together against an outside threat, with tension between them; Alfirin grabbed Altarrin, Iomedae's trying to pretend that didn't happen so she doesn't need to give him back. I think the explanation that they needed his magic urgently and didn't have time to ask makes sense of why Alfirin might try this, even if Iomedae still wanted diplomacy."

"But I'm still not optimistic, because if Alfirin is prepared to kidnap anyone she wants any time she thinks that's a good idea and Iomedae will excuse it, we aren't talking to anyone with the ability to negotiate. Their diplomat thinks that isn't happening, but I don't think Iomedae would send someone who would."

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"The described relationship between Iomedae and her chief Adept sounds like one of the finest and clearest reasons that the Imperial system is superior to all others. With no unified head for decisionmaking, the two acting at cross-purposes is inevitable."

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("Alfirin grabbed Altarrin and Iomedae doesn't want to give him back" is also, in context, kind of hilarious.) 

Nod. Sigh. "It means something that she sent a professional diplomat who's good at his job, I guess. - Reckon it'd be worth feeling him out on what kinds of conditions Iomedae might accept? In terms of exiting Oris, or owing both sides reparations...?" 

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"As you say, Bastran."

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Right. The Emperor wants Elnore and the Ministry of Barbarians to come up with some hypothetical draft proposals by tomorrow, complete with potential messages to send to Iomedae: one on "suggesting" that the Knights of Ozem do something about Atet's horrifying religion (and tie up Ithik in the process), and on requesting she prove her intentions toward the Empire by ending one of the civil wars, and on demanding reparations and a formal apology to both Oris and the Empire for the Knights of Ozem's involvement in the war and its death toll. And he wants them to keep talking to Iomedae's diplomat, and (delicately, of course) try to get his predictions of how she would react to any of those proposals. 

 

Right. This meeting is NOT done yet even though he's radiating (subtly) with every line of body language that he wishes it were done. 

Next items: the reappearance of the Mirrorgrave and the discovery of his secret base? The Emperor's impression is that this is...mostly under control? Is there any kind of followup response that needs to be approved by him personally? Have they made headway on investigating the origins and properties of the sword-artifact with Foresight, or figured out how Duchess Velane came to possess it and whether it has implications about her loyalties? Also they should probably make a decision on what, if anything, to tell Iomedae about it? 

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The Ministry of Barbarians will do this!

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The Ministry of Progress has not yet tracked it down, no. They have no idea what this means and would like more time to research it or a chance to analyze it in great detail, which would unfortunately tick off the Duchess so they aren't pushing.

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Baron Pierson believes this entire matter is under control, yes; the commander of the Imperial Guard has subdued the otherworldly threats, the remaining artifacts are contained, and all their difficulties have been reduced to the difficulty of how to handle the artifact.

In his opinion, the most likely explanation is that it's a god-plot and they should immediately seize the sword before it can escape so the Ministry of Progress can analyze it, and if the Duchess disagrees that strongly suggests she's been dangerously influenced by the gods.

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The Ministry of Justice would like to carry out an investigation into the cults present in this situation, yes, and, as it traditionally does, objects to nobles abusing their power to protect cultists.

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"She did exactly what she was supposed to do and that's what matters," says Macalay, glaring the universal glare. "Wish I had more officers like her - someone should see if she wants a job."

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On the topic of what they tell Iomedae, Duke Klemath Elnore sees no reason to do anything other than "the Mirrorgrave's base was located and taken care of, everything has been destroyed or brought into containment." They may want to ask about some of the magical items, such as the bag of screaming faces, just to demonstrate that they really do have them.

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The Emperor will look indecisive, but second Macalay's point that Duchess Velane did very likely save Vushan Province, and maybe the Empire, from a dangerous threat. They should definitely investigate the sword further, and learn as much as they can about the cultist that handed it over, but - it would hardly be fitting to punish a young noblewoman for courageously defending the Empire, right? 

(Bastran is known to be - often easily moved - by reckless acts of heroism.) 

 

(And Altarrin will discreetly make sure that a couple of historical texts with mentions of the intelligent blade Need in them, and one obscure magical treatise written by an obscure court scholar who was incidentally one of his own past lives, make their way to the attention of a diligent Ministry of Progress junior investigator.) 

He's fine with Duke Elnore's proposal. He agrees that it's worth mentioning the bag of screaming faces, to see how Iomedae responds. They can maybe keep some of their other observations in reserve, as a check on whether she's trying to slip them false information? So far he thinks they have no indication that Iomedae knows about the Mirrorgrave's base; she wouldn't have had any reason to be looking that way, and if she had a way to locate the bag directly - and is truthful in her claim to want to help the Empire fight Tar-Baphon - you would think she would have warned them. 

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You would! He'll do this.

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(No doubt the Ministry of Progress will find them shortly! It just hasn't overnight.)

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And that's...probably just about everything? 

 

- Kastil. They need to decide what to do about Kastil. Uh. He will fidget and look incredibly torn and - say he wants to recommend that the Healers go ahead and use the foreign healing potion. They won't have him back right away anyway, they'll want to keep him under observation for a while, probably? Both to make sure he's actually recovered - they haven't seen the healing in action, just heard about it secondhand from Oris - and to monitor for signs of mind control, godly or mortal. 

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The most paranoid person in the room -

- Isn't in the room.

This order will be obeyed.

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The Emperor will want to follow up with Kastil in person, of course, but - tonight. Once he's had some time.

 

For now, once the meeting is wrapped up, he'll head over to meet privately with Doral and brief him on the investigation. 

 

(Telepathic Bond to Kietres: here's a quick update on the latest council meeting and his sense of how the different ministers are approaching the situation. He's trying to angle for ways to get the Empire willing to accept Iomedae's help with something, as a next step toward building any kind of collaborative relationship, and he wants the war with Oris over but it's complicated to juggle. Presumably on both sides. He would ideally like a report from Iomedae, before tomorrow, on what concessions Jean is more or less willing to make, and what Jean sees as his own hard political constraints. This backchannel has got to be good for something. 

He mentions that Marit will be questioned some more about Iomedae's reaction to various potential proposals. He understands that Marit is probably incredibly stressed and on edge, given that they can't safely brief him, but - he's pretty sure Marit can handle it, and hopefully it won't be for that many more days. Also, Iomedae should expect an official communication soon about the Mirrorgrave's base. He assumes she knows to pretend it's the first she's heard of it and respond accordingly, and also to respond without giving any indication that Altarrin is no longer with her? 

ALSO: can he get Alfirin on call in the near future for a sneaky undetectable Dominate Person? If she doesn't have the spell slots, that's understandable, but - he'll feel better navigating this conversation with undetectable mind control as a backup, it's pretty high stakes and important to minimize suspicion on himself, and he can't mindread the investigator in real time to gauge his reactions.

He doesn't ask for another update on the real Bastran's condition. There probably isn't one, and it would just be a distraction.) 

 

 

And then to meet with Doral! He'll invite the man into his private office, offer him a seat, and ask what context if any he already has on the Iomedae situation and the current diplomatic talks? 

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(Marit can handle it. This is why she sent him and not someone else whose ability to handle it might be an important constraint.)

 

(She's happy to backchannel with Jean.)

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Mage-Inquisitor Doral will arrive and be very polite and overwhelmed and keen!

"I've reviewed the files, of course, Your Majesty, but there's very little of substance there. Nearly everything is classified above my level."

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"Mm. Right." And he'll give a brief, harried summary of the prior attempt at diplomacy - let a hint of quickly-squashed sheepishness slip through, when he mentions the testing done on whether the 'paladins' could be disconnected from their god and the repeatable-miracles - and the leadup to this second attempt, which does sound like it's going better, based on the reports the new diplomat is much less...adamantly religious...and Legate Sterngal seems to have a good handle on him. 

 

...Or it looked like it until last night, when something bizarre and baffling happened, that has got to be part of a plot, but the senior Thoughtsenser he dispatched to interrogate the diplomat about it came away very unsure what the goal could possibly be. He wants it traced down to its origins and sorted out, of course, but - as discreetly as possible - it could have a lot of awkward consequences for the diplomatic efforts and for the situation at court, if word of it leaked around, and the whole Iomedae situation is already complicated enough. Doral will understand a bit more once Bastran shows him the notes. 

 

(Aaaaaaand can he get that sneaky Dominate Person now, and mindreading coverage in case the man does start to get suspicious?) 

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Yes, yes, sneaky dominate person. Altarrin is probably already aware that they might have a finite number of sneaky dominate persons before one gets noticed, but this one seems important.

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"Of course, Your Majesty!"

He does not notice the sneaky dominate person! To sneaky mindreading he is clearly loyal and impressed and eager to sort out whatever sensitive difficulty this is, right now his best guess is sappy love letters or something that someone is threatening to release.

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"So, er, a letter was slipped into the normal Ministry of Barbarians channels - it was in the middle of the night, junior staff on duty - and no one knows who dropped it off. And then letter was. Um. Proporting to be from me, and..." He will not actually squirm but it is the not-actually squirming of someone who is absolutely squirming and cringing internally and just has too much dignity and practice to show it. "- oh, and there was a pretty generic Imperial order - stamped by my office, not signed by me personally, I still don't know how they got their hands on it - saying to give the diplomat privacy to read it. And - here. Just have a look and tell me what you think." 

(And no one is reading his mind, but just in case, his surface thoughts are carefully matching that - he in fact genuinely did not write the letter! And genuinely did not seal or sign the Imperial order!) 

 

He slides copies of the letter, the cover letter, and the Imperial order across the table. 

To Marit of the Knights of Ozem 

I would be very grateful if you could convey a message to Iomedae, and tell her that I recognize now the horrifying mistakes that the Empire has made, especially in our treatment of her paladins, and I am deeply sorry and wish to personally offer my surrender to her, though I cannot at this time give it for the Empire as a whole. 

I also recognize that the Empire is not the civilization that Altarrin wanted to build, and that he was right to leave. I would be obliged if you or Iomedae could alert Altarrin that I wish to relinquish control of the current empire to him, and hope that he may see a way forward from here, because I cannot. Altarrin likely already has as much context as is helpful. I have no standing to plead with Altarrin for anything, but if he would listen, I would beg that he act before morning, and find a way to confirm receipt of the letter. I will be in my quarters. 

- Emperor Bastran IV

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All right.

Mage-Inquisitor Doral is not stupid, and he is loyal to Bastran. The message, on the surface, makes no sense. But it makes a complicated kind of no sense, the kind where every phrase is a reference, and he thinks he's pretty good at telling the difference between that and attempts to fake it. 'The treatment of her paladins', right, that's the attempts to break them out of their god's control. 'Personal surrender but not for the empire as a whole' is a fascinating one. 'The civilization that Altarrin wanted to build'...

This letter was written by someone at the highest level of knowledge of the complicated political situation that Doral has just walked in to. What they were trying to do, he can't tell. What he can tell is that this was a letter written for someone who knew what it meant, by someone who knew what it meant, whatever it is actually for, which he cannot even begin to guess.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

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The Emperor drags a hand through his hair. 

"I sent a non-Inquiry Thoughtsenser to question the diplomat - er, not that I don't trust the Office, just, if this was internal I don't know who was responsible or why - I wanted to know if it made any more sense to him, and of course why he responded the way he did, and what he told Iomedae. I'd like you to get everything from the Thoughtsenser directly, of course - and ideally not bring anyone else in, I incredibly don't want this ending up getting discussed in servant gossip - but the summary is more or less, no it didn't make any more sense to him, he was alarmed and assumed it was a coup plot, he didn't tell anyone the contents because he worried it'd set off the rest of the coup plot, and he asked Iomedae to check if I was, er, dead. Which presumably she did, and presumably she saw me asleep in bed, and past that we have no idea what she went off and did." 

Sigh. Heavy sigh. "The scary theory that the Thoughtsenser came up with is that it was a false-flag operation by Iomedae's ally Alfirin, who - apparently isn't fully on the same page or fully trusted, and wants the Empire - and maybe Altarrin, who - I guess if there's anything the man would sell us out for, it'd be to buy Alfirin's help in murdering the gods, and apparently the diplomat claimed she probably had a plan for it already and believed that."

He shakes his head. "...I'm really hoping that's not it, and it's something internal, but - keep in mind. I'm worried it's dangerous to draw attention to the investigation, not just, er, awkward."  

 

 

...Telepathic bond check, is that explanation going over mostly without suspicion? 

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Bastran also thinks there's a leak near the top. And either doesn't know who or thinks it was the Office of Inquiry.

(... or is guilty himself but that's just the usual suspect the victim instincts going, everyone who works in the Office of Inquiry develops those, this is the Emperor and he is a loyal man.)

Or it could have been Iomedae. Or Alfirin, who is the most likely suspect and therefore probably innocent just because of how many suspects there are, in a case like this. So far he concurs non-confidently that this was either an attempt to recruit him into a coup or an attempt to false-flag recruitment of him into a coup, but both of them run into the problem that whoever wrote this knows quite a lot that Doral doesn't know.

"I understand. Your Majesty, I request all available information on the situation with Iomedae and Alfirin." He needs to know this if he's going to carry out his investigation.

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:Oh he's incredibly suspicious, but not of you.:

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Of course! Doral can have full access to everything that was ever reported to Bastran, including the appendix pages of reports he was too busy to read, but that he's hastily gathered together. If Doral thinks he's still missing things after this, he should feel free to book time on the Emperor's schedule to ask about it privately, there are probably things Bastran knows that were only said to him in direct conversation and that he didn't write down. 

(Which Altarrin was not present for, and thus he'll need to ad-lib those conversations and guess what would have been said in private briefings, but hopefully the secrecy of the investigation, and the unreliability of memory, means that Doral is unlikely to go do cross-comparisons with the ministers and find a discrepancy.

There are a lot of notes, a full day's reading at least. They're probably 80% wild speculation and arguments between different departments on Iomedae's motives. The hardest evidence they have is the written communications exchanged, and the scrying and immediate after-action reports on battles and on later incidents like the Mirrorgrave ones and Aritha's kidnapping. (Plus the artifacts, of course, still under guard.) They...technically have copies of Aroden's holy books as well, which are probably not themselves mind control, but the ring that does translation plausibly is mind control that suborned Altarrin, so actually using it to read the materials is risky. 

 

Does Doral have questions or requests for now. 

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He'd like a broad imperial order sealed with the imperial seal to allow him to snoop? Then he's going to go talk to everyone and do appropriate pastwatching and so forth, since that's time-limited. That's it, though.

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He can have it!

The Emperor would like regular reports. And...obviously this might be time-sensitive, if there's a second half to it, but overall he thinks that investigating discreetly and thoroughly probably comes as a higher priority than doing it fast? ...He's not sure. If Doral finds anything that indicates otherwise to him, he should immediately report in. 

 

And the Emperor will thank him, tiredly but with some warmth, and shoo him out with his sealed Imperial writ for broad snooping authorization, so he can finally be ALONE

 

(So he can actually focus on the Telepathic Bond checkin, mostly. If it's not too costly in spell slots, he'd like Alfirin reading the man's mind a few times a day, to make sure he's not wildly conspiracy-theorizing something too close to the truth. 

...Also if they have translation capacity, something that would be useful for his goals and potentially interesting would be to send translated copies of Aroden's holy books. The Empire is not touching the Scholar's Ring but they probably would let some relatively disposable clerks and such read the material if the ring weren't involved?) 

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(She's working on it. There isn't good magic for writing in a language you don't speak, and those few Imperials she's in possession of have more important priorities, but if a few more resurrected people decide to stay they'll get it sorted out.)

 

(She assumes the man is going to think of pastwatching Marit, and the letter, and not the Emperor's private chambers, but of course if he does that Alfirin can make him stop.)

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(Iomedae is, unsurprising, correct.)

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Altarrin has sent a note with new orders for Legate Sterngal. 

(Ellitrea is still on site and still the allowed Thoughtsenser on duty. Marit is, in fact, not briefed on anything more suspicious than the letter itself. Continuing the diplomacy in parallel with the "investigation" shouldn't add in any more complications.) 

 

He would like Legate Stergnal to (with some delicacy, of course) ask Marit for his assessment of how Iomedae would respond to a range of proposals, most notably:

- A polite suggestion that she go bother Ithik, accompanied by a pile of materials on the religion of Atet, which is pretty much the opposite of what "Aroden"'s religion claims to be about. Marit can read those materials too, of course. 

- A request to help the Empire with one or both of their civil wars. 

- A treaty for Oris that imposes sanctions on the Knights of Ozem, or is otherwise embarrassing for Iomedae, but in fact gives the actual Orisian rebels most of what they concretely asked for. 

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Legate Sterngal will, of course, obey. 

(He wasn't fully briefed on recent events, though he was told that there was a 'minor' incident and security precautions have been modified.) 

 

He's not even particularly dreading it! Marit is vastly easier to get along with than the Ithiki. In fact, his orders are explicitly to complain about Ithik, which sounds like it could be incredibly satisfying. He brings the packet of Ithik-related materials with him to their meeting. 

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Marit is in a much worse mood for diplomacy than the day before, but he's pretty good at hiding it. His orders are to keep doing what he's doing, so he's going to do that; Iomedae is juggling enough constraints without having to worry that hostile coincidence could maneuver him otherwise.


He greets Sterngal cheerfully enough.

 

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Legate Sterngal will greet him with genuine cheerfulness! (He feels very insulated from the annoying part of court politics, out here.) 

 

He sits. "It seems the Emperor is floating the idea of asking Iomedae for some favors, with the goal of getting more information on how good her intentions are and how dedicated she is to carrying them out. I'd like to get your read on her and how she's likely to respond to some of the proposals they're discussing. To start - I know Iomedae must have encountered or at least heard things about Holy Ithik during her, er, earlier visit to Velgarth. I'm not sure how much she conveyed her impression of them?" 

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"She mentioned a little bit! She wasn't impressed. She considered at first the possibility they were the work of the god of tyranny and slavery from our own world, or one of His lieutenants, in which case I think we'd have gone to war with them, but she had determined to her satisfaction that, while it seems like a terrible place, it wasn't damning anybody, which made it much less of a priority."

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"Your world has a god of tyranny and slavery? Goodness. ...The actual discussion point here is, in fact, whether Iomedae would consider going to war with Holy Ithik simply over the enormous human suffering and waste of potential that the religion causes - I have some reading materials to show you - but I am curious to hear about your version first." 

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Asmodeus is the ruler of Hell, the Lawful Evil afterlife, and it's probably the worst one, though it has stiff competition. Petitioners in Hell are tortured, for centuries, until this reduces them to a suffering shell of themselves or turns them into a devil absolutely obedient to Asmodeus. One of Iomedae's major initiatives, back in Golarion, has been to make people aware of what Hell is like. Asmodeus likes to lie about it. And it's - horrendous, to threaten people with eternal torture to get them to do what you want (which is fund the crusade, mostly) but worse to let them ignorantly walk into it. 

 

Iomedae and Aroden mean to kill or dethrone Asmodeus eventually. It won't be easy - ancient gods are more powerful than newly ascended ones, but, well, some things need doing. 

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Wow. That's so deeply offensive and horrifying! Legate Sterngal is...slightly lost for words about it, actually. 

 

...Well, anyway, here's an information packet on Holy Ithik. 

 

 

Some highlights:

- The church of Atet, in Ithik and elsewhere, confidently claims that there is an afterlife, at least for Atet's followers, which is verifiably not true in Velgarth. 

- Their teachings are intensely socially repressive and hierarchical, and this extends to the afterlife teachings; nobleborn proportedly get a much nicer afterlife setup than commoners, for example. Slaves, of course, have the worst. 

- Atet supposedly punishes people directly in the afterlife for ""shaming"" Him by having ambitions above their stations. 

- Ithik isn't the only nation outside the Empire with slavery, but they certainly have the worst conditions for their slaves, who have a noticeably higher death rate than free peasants. 

- They are especially regressive on women's rights, not just compared to the Empire - which has female mages and female military officers and even a woman on the Emperor's council - but compared to normal poor uncivilized countries. 

- Women belong to their fathers and then their husbands, cannot own property, cannot get divorced from abusive partners (and the church teachings normalize quite a lot of abusive behavior, he's seen some of that up close), and are allowed into very few professions aside from servant work.

- The literacy rate overall among commoners is abysmally low compared to the Empire, but women are explicitly not supposed to learn to read, because it, guess what, ""shames Atet."" 

- Women who have Gifts are ALSO ""shameful to Atet"" and aren't allowed to be trained in them. The only dubiously unshameful thing for them to do is bear Gifted sons. 

- Foresight is especially shameful, for some baffling reason, women with Foresight specifically are ""bad luck"" and in some administrations were burned on a pyre as an apology-offering to Atet, though the current high priest goes with ceremonial blinding, plus or minus other less-visible and less-talked-about mutilations, and a life of solitary confinement and prayer.

- Very unsurprisingly, none of the most oppressed peoples of Atet are taught that they will have nice afterlives. 

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Wow! This guy was on a diplomatic assignment there! That must've required, uh, great skill.

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It mostly requires a lot of knowing when to smile through one's teeth and politely say a sentence or two no content whatsoever. The Empire, including the current Emperor, has definitely considered just conquering the place - yes, he knows Iomedae is against conquest in general, but this feels like an unusually clear case of a country where everyone except a handful of nobles would be vastly better off under different rule. They haven't because it would be an enormous disaster that would take multiple generations to fully pacify and culturally incorporate into the Empire. And Ithik probably intended a war with the Empire eventually, but they didn't feel like lifting the cover on that pit of snakes either, so. Awkward diplomacy.

 

...Does Marit want stories? Because Legate Sterngal absolutely has a few minutes' worth of stories (and a decade worth of pent-up frustration and resentment about foreign godworshippers. Present company excepted, Marit barely counts.) 

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- yes, he'd love to hear some stories. (In his thoughts are that he wants to be extremely careful not to say anything that'd be taken as particularly informative about whether Iomedae would defend Ithik if the Empire tried to conquer it. He has no idea if she'd do that and doesn't want the Empire acting on what they think is tacit permission.)

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He will tell a few minutes' worth of lurid depressing stories, including a public slave-execution, and the fate of a servant-woman who was caught having very understandably concealed her young daughter's Gift of Empathy, and also just a few quotes of the sorts of things that bored high-ranking noblemen who've had too much to drink will say out loud with their actual mouths about their wives and concubines, which isn't the worst thing in terms of human suffering and failure of Civilization, but is certainly among the top moments of awkwardness in terms of figuring out how to even respond

 

 

 

- and then they should move on to the actual topic at hand, which is: would Iomedae consider intervening in some way to try to help the people of Ithik. (Which would, incidentally, help the Empire to the extent it distracted the government of Ithik, since Ithik is sponsoring several of their rebellions.) 

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....he really doubts it. The place sounds terrible. Iomedae would hate it! Aroden would presumably hate it. But Tar-Baphon is still loose, and there are a lot of people who'd be nervous if Iomedae starts conquering places just because they're humanitarian disasters, and -

 

- that's actually not a good enough reason to conquer places? This is one of Iomedae's complicated moral disagreements with the Empire that doesn't just come down to having lived in worlds where the gods are widely varying levels of helpful. She isn't going to take the rest of Belkzen, even though it'll continue being full of orcish warlords and misery and could instead be peaceful farms supplying her new country. She wasn't even planning to take Urgir, before her sudden disappearance for a badly timed month forced her hand. 

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Hmmm. ...This is a bit of a digression, but are there kinds of intervention she would consider acceptable that aren't conquest? He would suggest "opening a church of Aroden in Ithik" except that Ithik has made all organized worship of gods other than Atet illegal because of course they have. It's not very well enforced, because they're not as competent as the Empire, but he's guessing that breaking their laws would still count as crossing a line from Iomedae's perspective? 

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Aroden generally won't pick clerics in places where that's disallowed. Notice how He hasn't done so in the Empire and hasn't done other interventions in the Empire, even to protect His people. Iomedae would probably be fine with having an espionage operation in Ithik, but not fine with doing anything they wouldn't be doing symmetrically given half a chance.

 

Probably if she and Aroden do address the problem at all they'll go directly after Atet, and then intervene in the country only once that's handled. But, again, that's something to do years from now; right now, they're really far too busy to operate anywhere that doesn't actively want them and isn't threatening their primary interests.

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...That's fair enough.

 

How about a different proposal. The Empire is considering asking Iomedae to intervene to help end their civil wars. He'd like to know how she's likely to respond to that, and what elements she would be to be crossing a line even if she was willing to take other steps. Is she on board with assassinations? Kidnappings? Threats? Bribery? Going after the rebel generals' families? 

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- she's not going to kill innocent people. If they're going to be executed by the Empire after the fact for being related to the rebels then that's the kind of thing that'd make her not want to help the Empire end the civil wars. She's also not going to threaten anything she won't, in fact, do, under exactly the conditions she said she would. 

And she's grieved by the sack of Tatanka and wants the rebels to win in Oris, and probably won't help the Empire end the other civil wars if it just lets them bring all their armies down on the people of Oris.

But if the Empire can offer assurances it won't do that, then - it shouldn't be a problem, really. Whatever's cleanest and ends the civil wars with the fewest casualties is best, whether that's Dominating their leadership to surrender or having them drop dead of a nightmare in their sleep.

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Well. The Emperor apparently wants peace with Oris, and the Emperor is not bad at his job, it'll probably happen eventually. 

 

The sticking point there is getting a treaty that both sides will agree to. 

...He recognizes that there are genuine political constraints on both sides. The Empire isn't going to sign a peace treaty that risks giving other provinces ideas and spawning five more rebellions and tens of thousands of casualties next year. The rebel general, meanwhile, presumably made a lot of promises to his troops and his generals and his allies in the local nobility, and genuinely can't accept a treaty that they'll see as too stingy and unfavorable to Oris.

One of the proposals being floated around is to write a treaty that's instead mostly unfavorable to the Knights of Ozem. He doesn't actually have examples in front of him of what that means, but he suspects the idea is to make it in the rebels' interest to weaken the relationship with Iomedae, and hopefully discourage other would-be rebels from going to her. If the treaty successfully does end the war, and gives the rebels pre-war borders, would Iomedae still accept that gracefully? 

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- that sounds great. He doesn't expect they'll be trusted if they promise not to operate out of Oris, and they do want Aroden there because otherwise the place is going to be subject to Atet's influence, but if the Empire wants reparations or something, or for Iomedae to apologize, or to publicly execute her, sure, why not.

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Or to...publically...execute– oh right resurrection. That's...quite something. It's getting the Legate to make actual unintentional facial expressions. 

 

He agrees that a promise to stay out of Oris would absolutely not be trusted, not at this point. Maybe someday once relations are better, but that's going to take time – the Empire currently sees Iomedae as dangerously unpredictable and incomprehensible, even if Sterngal is very aware that the Knights of Ozem, and not even unreasonably so, see the Empire the same way. 

Reparations - to both sides, maybe? because Oris definitely wants reparations and it's going to be like pulling teeth to get the council to sign off on that when their view is that the rebels started it - would help. An official apology would also help. 

(He is not even going to comment on the public execution comment although he's incredibly curious if Marit is saying that out of annoyance with Iomedae for handing him this job, and is maaaaaybe going to use his discreet signal to get a Thoughtsensing report just to assuage that curiosity. It might be relevant!) 

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- well, is he? 

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He thinks Iomedae would do it if it would help, but he mostly suggested it because the mental image is absolutely hilarious. The Empire does not actually possess any reliable ways to kill Iomedae if she's trying not to die, and he's not sure they possess many that'd work even if she's trying to die? You could probably decapitate her if you had like fifteen minutes and she was patiently holding still, which she would, if that was what they had agreed on.

 

(He's frustrated with Iomedae right now but he'd never hurt her, and that's not really part of his motivation for finding this hilarious.)

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He expects an apology to be no problem and a formal agreement about reparations to be no problem though the Empire's a lot richer than the Knights are, actually? The reparations might have to be paid out in resurrections with the Empire providing the diamonds. He's sure something can be worked out.

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Oris would presumably be delighted about resurrections and wouldn't have the Empire's concerns about people coming back subtly influenced by Aroden. 

 

Though if Marit has any suggestions for ways he would go about testing the hypothesis that Aroden is sending back the Empire's people with subtle mind-control (whether or not He's known to do it for normal resurrections), if he had the Empire's state of information about Aroden's capabilities and Aroden's motives. (So, "he wouldn't because he's Lawful" isn't a knockdown argument by itself.)

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Marit ....isn't actually sure how the Empire can verify that, if extensively mindreading all the people who've returned doesn't do it. At some point, if Aroden has that power, they could have just already done it to the entire government, so he's not sure it's a useful degree of paranoia, but he doesn't exactly have a knockdown response to it.

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He does think the mindreading helps. But the dead people had mostly been dead for years, making it harder to pick up on subtle shifts to their personality, and the scry-specialist is apparently kind of a wreck but that may just be a result of the obvious mind-control when he attempted to scry Alfirin. 

 

They could definitely use a trustworthy way to check, because...sooner or later, if they want an actual stable peace, they're going to need a resolution to the disputed question of whether Iomedae - or presumably Alfirin - mind-controlled Altarrin into defecting in the first place. And the Empire can't exactly mindread the former Archmage-General right now. 

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Marit gave Arbas permission to do a close read of the Archmage-General before returning, and similar things can be arranged with other Thoughtsensers who knew Altarrin well. He was actually hoping that Arbas would have been somewhat persuasive on that point. It sounded like the two had known each other.

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It was perhaps not maximally convincing for...other reasons...but it definitely included the fact that Arbas had himself been a mind-controlled prisoner, and was in fact still under mind control when he read Altarrin; they have only Iomedae's word for it that Alfirin wasn't doing a lot more than just blocking his mage-gift with it. 

 

...What would they do in Marit's world, if Iomedae or Alfirin were accused of un-Lawful wrongdoing on this level? Assume that for some reason it was by a party who didn't find 'well, they're paladins' a completely convincing explanation. 

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Arbitration over accused breaches of contract by the Shining Crusade is conducted by the Church of Abadar, god of contracts, credible in Golarion as caring far more about contracts than about geopolitics. 

 

The Church of Abadar would be hard-pressed, actually, if Iomedae and Alfirin were accused of serious wrongdoing. Enchantments can't touch Iomedae, and Alfirin probably has some way to fake it. If it were - something as serious as having allegedly betrayed negotiations, and the two of them the only credible witnesses....

 

...it would be done in Aktun, is what would happen. It'd be expensive, but Iomedae and Alfirin would pay if the arbitration agreement didn't cover it. In Aktun, the divine realm of Abadar, the city of the First Vault, with a population in the billions, Abadar could make any mortal subject to His truth spell, in His courthouse. Even Iomedae, who is more than a mortal. ...even a god, probably. They would Plane Shift the important parties to Aktun and they'd give testimony there and everyone else would watch by scry.

 

He doesn't think this will work on the Empire, as they reject the premise that there are Lawful gods. But if the Padishah Empire, or Nidal, or Tar-Baphon or somebody, accused Iomedae of perfidy, that's how it'd go.

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Huh. 

That - is indeed not workable for the Empire, right now - but it's intriguing that it's a questions his world has an answer to. And it presumably goes without saying that the Empire would find it very informative to be able to send their own representatives to visit 'Aktun' and see it for themselves (a population in the billions! wow), but he'll say it explicitly anyway. 

 

Is there anything else Marit wants to add, or questions he has, before the Legate goes to write up his report? 

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Oh, he could take people to Aktun in the next day, if they'd like. There is not a meaningful risk that they'll get up to trouble in Aktun; Abadar does not really tolerate that. He had assumed that 'come visit Abadar's divine realm' wasn't a very compelling pitch, but if the Empire wants to see it, that can be immediately and uncomplicatedly arranged. 

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It's - mixed - they would want to send someone who could be quarantined afterward, and someone un-Gifted to reduce the damage they could do if 'Abadar' mind-controlled them. But he will certainly include the offer in his report. They've - got to take some risks in pursuit of more information, at some point, if they ever want to resolve this one way or another. Hopefully on the side of peace. 

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That is his hope as well. 

(This is very sincere.)

 

And - if Iomedae or Alfirin did do something terrible, here, Aktun would be how to prove it to the other nations of Golarion, because otherwise the Empire just flatly won't be believed.

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(Sterngal is - mostly not making strong internal updates, right now, on his own beliefs about what actually happened with Archmage-General Altarrin. He can hold both sides in his head, for now, and respond to Marit's sincerity with sincere thanks of his own.) 

 

And he'll excuse himself for now, to go off and write a report. 

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Which, of course, 'the Emperor' will relay to his allies on the other continent by Telepathic Bond as soon as it arrives on his desk that evening. 

 

 

He's cautiously optimistic? They're not going to see a decision today, but he thinks Marit's testimony is enough that he can lean on the council to send Iomedae a stern diplomatic letter demanding that the Knights of Ozem offer formal apologies and reparations to both side (method of payment to be decided later, resurrections a possibility, the Empire is not going to want to supply diamonds for it but Altarrin is sure he can come up with alternate diamond sourcing that doesn't strain the crusade's resources.) And if Iomedae persuades Jean to accept a treaty that gives him pre-war borders, even if the Empire has no intention of giving cultural artifacts back that are currently on display in Jacona, then - they might be able to bring this to an end to the war in Oris within two or three days. 

 

...he doesn't want a blatant or even very suspicious intervention in the civil wars, but he wouldn't complain if it were within Alfirin's abilities to, say, give General Norean and all of his top staff who dine together food poisoning tonight. Just to keep them distracted for a day so he can buy more time to argue with the council. 

 

- how's Bastran doing? 

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(He's been alternating crying fits and asking for the sleep spell, and has refused all offers of food and company, but he hasn't made any attempt to harm himself.) 

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It has been solidly sixteen hours since anything went horrendously wrong.

 

The Crusade is now ensconced within the walls of Urgir; if Tar-Baphon comes for them, there’ll be time to call help, and also realistically he’s not going to attempt that, not in the winter with his armies recently beaten and the Crusade possessed with many more diamonds than he thought they had. He might try something desperate, but there’s no real reason to think Urgir is where he’d try it.

 

The Emperor of the Eastern Empire has his ministers supportive or at least cooperative with his plans for peace. If the Emperor of the Eastern Empire is in fact a body-double operating on behalf of an enemy power because the real Emperor is suicidal and surrendered in the dead of night, well.

 

 ....it’d probably be counted against Iomedae’s Law, if she went to trial, which she isn’t planning to.

 

The Church of Aroden in Beset is getting good foot traffic due to the free magical healing and food. 

 

The Mirrorgrave is presently disembodied. His spectres are presently both contained and intensely supervised. His undead allies are deader than undead, and there are no signs Tar-Baphon sent anyone else. 

 

 

Iomedae has no remaining excuses not to talk about her feelings.

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Alfirin doesn’t really have any excuses left either. She steels herself, finds Iomedae in one of the mansion’s sitting rooms, and sits in an armchair across from her, because sitting closer feels unwise.

“If you’re not unusually busy, I’m planning to do my Wisdom in the morning before I sleep. If there’s anything you want to say before I do, now’s the time.”

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She takes a deep breath, and then doesn’t say anything, and then takes another one, and - “would you like me to? I’ve - been thinking about it, and I do have a lot to say, but it’s not very carefully filtered for - being good for you to hear, or being the objectively correct reflection of human values, or even for being what I’ll really think once I’m not in pain.”

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“From a certain point of view the wise thing to say here is ‘No, not now, I should decide that tomorrow when I’m wiser.’

…Which is to say, yes, but tomorrow I might look back on saying that and wonder what I was thinking.”

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“The fact you’re going to enhance your Wisdom tomorrow is in fact a little bit loadbearing, in fact. If this is a catastrophe we have an obvious mechanism by which to reset from there and not spend the rest of my life detectably bristling at each other.”

 

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That is more reasonable sounding than “Let’s get all possible foolishness done while we still can,” which was not none of Alfirin’s reasoning in starting this conversation now.

“OK. Not tomorrow, then.”

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And Iomedae closes her eyes. 

 

“Right. Well, first off - this is my fault.” She does pause there, for Alfirin to interrupt if it’s false, but she’s pretty sure it isn’t and pretty sure Alfirin won’t reassure her it’s false if it’s true. 

 

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“...I would not say that it’s obvious how to assign blame here. But if you want to start with the frame where it’s your fault we can do that?”

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Impatient gesture. “There are virtues I aspire to, which I think are important, and if I had credibly possessed them, you wouldn’t have done it without - without talking about if there was a way to get the same goods at a lower price - and, and if you’d never met me, then, you wouldn’t have been - in such a hurry, and so scared -”

 

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There’s some truth in that - and Iomedae had other things to say. They can argue about whose fault it really is that Alfirin murdered seventy-nine people later, if that still seems important. For now she’ll just give a very slight nod of acknowledgement.

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“And I’m pretty distressed about that,” she goes on, “both in that I keep imagining - I keep imagining everything about it, actually, and I should probably stop, but I don’t feel like I understand yet what question I’m trying to answer for myself with the imagining, so I haven’t made myself stop. Imagining - what you believed, about me, about the world, what you were thinking, how afraid you were, wondering if I’m imagining wrong how afraid you were because I can’t remember what it’s like, and then, I try to be balanced, right, in where I’m letting my pain dwell, and that would mean spending a hundred times as much time imagining the people who you murdered, and if they were afraid, and what they were like, and what I would have thought of them and then of course that gets one into just an astonishing number of logistical questions, really, I’m not even sure how I would murder a hundred - 

 

-you didn’t say how many, I decided on a hundred in my head because it seemed like not the most important part to be spreading a lot of my sense of uncertainty over -

 

How does one murder a hundred people? Do you buy them? Do you go out and find isolated villages whose neighboring villages won’t even notice for a month until the cobbler fails to show - you don’t have to answer this, I’m not actually sure it’d be a good idea to answer this, it is terrible not knowing and it would be terrible knowing and it doesn’t matter, because - 

 

Because if you thought it was a mistake I would forgive it in an instant and if you don’t think it’s a mistake then you will do it again, and again, and again, where it’s similarly called for and probably eventually when it’s less called for, because I do think that people are - shaped, over time, by which trades they in fact end up making, and I said earlier it’s my fault and that’s part of what is my fault, cornering you into being the kind of person who’d do that kind of thing and stand behind it for forever and I don’t, actually, know how to bound how much harm that was. Is. Will be. - and I’m angry at you, for something about all of that, though I’m not actually sure what specifically.

 

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“I was not, if you consider it all together, more willing to make those trades for having met you.”

“...Seventy-nine. Most of them were not afraid, most of them - never knew - just fell asleep one night and never woke up -”

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She nods, mostly the normal way people nod and not the strangled way peoples’ necks move when broken. Mostly. 

 

“I thought of - I thought of the most cutting possible account of why I was angry with you, and refined it in my head until it shone very brightly, but I think it’s - it almost can’t be true, it’d be coincidence if it was, if the sharpest knife I knew how to draw happened to also be the actual explanation for why I am angry. Probably I am angry for normal human reasons like feeling - stupid, and betrayed, and grieved, and childish for not having priced this in properly already when if someone had asked me decades ago I wouldn’t’ve said this was that improbable -”

 

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Another nod.

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“The cutting account - uh, blunted slightly - is that I think civilization only works because most people, if they aren’t desperate, if they aren’t starving and their sister isn’t dying of fever, won’t knife a stranger in the gut for ten gold pieces. Enough of them will, obviously, that you have to spend a fair bit of the strength of your civilization on making it not a good idea, but most of them won’t, and that’s - that’s most of why, there’s anything, instead of - you can see what being slightly more instinctively murderous than humanity gets you, and it’s not -

-

-anything we care about -

 

And so it feels like, actually, the whole project of civilization doesn’t really, or shouldn’t really, have space in it, for people who are that selfish, and like if it manages to limp along having them, it’s the same way armies manage to function even though some of their soldiers are cowards who’ll turn and run.

 

I don’t know what I’d do, in a world where people are that selfish. I think it couldn’t be - the things I have done - I feel like in a sense my whole life is a bet on most people being better than that, deep down."

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"The thing I actually believe is of course that it’s some kind of cross-section of unselfishness and Law, that you need, and it’d be insane to claim you don’t possess it, and a civilization full of you would probably function fine, and if it was missing - something - well, a civilization full of me would be missing something too, I do know that. But it does feel like there’s something there, in the direction I am inclined towards angrily stabbing at, that there’s a sense in which this horrible ludicrously complicated world gets to present you all kinds of trades, especially if you’re inventive enough to go out looking for new ones, and I think I’m right to feel afraid of what world would result from you making all the trades that look as good as killing seventy-nine people to set up a backup form of immortality in case you ever run out of clones and allies at the same time - 

- And I do realize that forever is a long time and you probably will have, someday, run out of clones and allies at the same time, unless and maybe even if the church is charged with helping you, and that you won’t want them so charged because you don’t want to only do things it won’t rip me to pieces to countenance."

 

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There are things she could say, to defend herself - it wasn’t just selfish, she didn’t just do it to live forever, she can raise the dead and she can prevent death from aging and she doesn’t need the gods for any of it and maybe someday it won’t just be her -

- That’s not a dream Iomedae shares -

- It wasn’t just selfish but the selfish reasons were enough -

- Iomedae is right, civilization should not really have space in it for people like her -

“...I am having a harder than usual time reading you, and I can’t tell if you want me to defend my actions or - just nod along because they’re indefensible - “

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“ - please do, it’s easier to - think about explanations than to think about things I’ve entirely built in my own head -”

 

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“OK. I’ll try. It - wasn’t just for immortality - it was definitely for immortality, I think you’re overestimating the number of powerful wizards who finally die in their sleep even though they have clones and allies and insurance and by rights ought to make it to old age -

- But also this is - it’s the same thing that lets me raise dead. I could prepare it before, I could cast it but the spell would just fall apart -

- raise dead and reincarnate and heal and remove disease and - it doesn’t take a god -

- I know that doesn’t matter as much to you, you’re planning to become a god yourself and -

- I wouldn’t counsel someone else to make the same trades, unless they were - very like me already - more like me than anyone I’ve met -

- If you count on net it’s sixty-eight. I know that’s not much better and - it’s not really fair, to them, to count on net. It’s probably less than sixty-eight, those are just the ones where - I’m very sure - "

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“- it does matter, a great deal, to me, if there’s a route to wizards doing resurrections. I’m planning to become a god but even if I can fix everything that way, and I probably can’t, Aroden’s been at it for nearly four thousand years and his first planet isn’t even good enough - obviously it’s worth investing down a thousand other routes, even if it weren’t worth it for its own sake because people should have more within their reach - you’d have had volunteers, for a project like that, if it doesn’t consume their souls or something -

 

No, the relevant differential is - well, substantially it’s between something you did openly with volunteers and something you did secretly with people you murdered, and - and I’m guessing that’s not the part that was altruistically motivated -"

 

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“Achaekek. And - obviously not just Achaekek - “

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- Also Iomedae, and anyone else who might eventually oppose her.

 

She doesn’t say that but she doesn’t particularly attempt to conceal thinking it. 

 

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“Yes. Though the others that I thought would oppose me for that in particular were Urgathoa and Pharasma.”

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“I once put Aroden through eighty different Commune-questions about what Pharasma wanted and was as confused at the end as at the start. 

 

I don’t feel sure that arcane healing would be a problem, actually. She doesn’t see eye to eye with Urgathoa about much, and - She wants people to die old enough to be sorted - She probably wouldn’t like it if they never did die, but some people obviously get away with it, so who knows, really, and that effect’s a lot smaller than the effect on low-circle spells…

 

This is probably not - I’m glad that you thought about it. It may be useful for us to keep discussing it because it is emotionally familiar territory where we have a great deal in common and I won’t be upset with you and will be reminded of the many things I like and respect about you. It’s - not going to get at the core -"

 

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"I think I wouldn’t actually be very surprised if I learned that Aroden murdered seventy nine people in a magic experiment he thought was necessary to stop Achaekek from eating him. I’d go ‘ah huh, that’s where that Lawful Neutral was coming from’, rather than - having a crisis of faith - but also, I imagine, if I asked him, would you have done it for anything less, if it was only your life and not all of the battles we can’t afford to lose - I think He’d say no. It’s a way He feels to me …more like ‘me, if the best available strategies to me were slightly worse ones’ - which they would be, if I’d been born before Him, there are paths available to me and not to Him because I was born into His world -"

 

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"Anyway. That gets you - I guess it gets you most of the way there. But I think the version of it that is a - product of strategies I’d endorse as the best you can do for the world under sufficiently terrible constraints - the differences are subtle, but -

 

You’re not, actually, trying to do the most possible good under terrible constraints. And it’s harder to evaluate what you did as the work of someone who may, on lots of occasions, make the much less defensible versions of those compromises, over and over, and bothered less by them every time -”

 

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“I don’t know if I would have done it, just for myself, if I didn’t think - it would be worth it for other people in the end - I would have at some number, but I don’t know about this one - That’s not me saying I wouldn’t, I genuinely don’t know -

- It would’ve taken fewer, to do it, if it was just for the immortality. Half as many, probably fewer than that - “

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“There’s - there’s a thing where - the universe is just very big, and the chances it presents us with very unpredictable and very high stakes, especially if you mean to live forever - and I support you in living forever, obviously, I would never have said to you that it was time for you to die even if you were going to make Axis -

 

And so, even though in most contexts it is fine to be a person with some altruistic tendencies not fully pulled into tightly-specified tradeoffs with selfish ones, an archmage in such a state is going to find themselves facing - so, so many - chances to shatter, or sell out, whole worlds, for their benefit, decisions about whether to call in Pharasma to a planet being eaten by spectres, and -

 

And I believe that you wouldn’t, mostly. I believe that mostly while I’d wince at some of the details what you’d do with the power of life and death over a world isn’t very horrible, and that while you might get it wrong you are less likely to get it wrong than most people and not necessarily even more likely to get it wrong than me, and most of the worlds where it goes terribly are - error, not avarice - problems that get better when you’re stronger, situations where I will be uncomplicatedly glad if you have more diamonds -

 

This has been a big part of how I have predicted you for - as long as I have known you - and it mostly predicts you correctly. But - I don’t have a lot of resolution on it, in sufficiently odd cases, I think because you don’t yourself."

 

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“You’re right, I don’t. I can, I think - for an individual case - I don’t think it’s a good use of time to try to work through all the odd cases in advance, because the odd cases I run into will be different ones. Maybe that will change with more wisdom.

And you’re also right to worry that - there are things I would kill a planet for that you wouldn’t, that you think I shouldn’t. Living forever - in ordinary circumstances - isn’t one of them -"

 

“I suppose I never said - maybe you’ve guessed - what I had wanted the Empire for, before Altarrin came to us and we established more contact - “

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“I hadn’t guessed specifically. I figured we’d - talk about it, and you’d at least hear me out - I mostly trust the tradeoffs you’ll make in contexts we get to talk about, because we don’t actually - disagree on all that much - or at least it doesn’t usually feel like we do -”

 

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"We might not’ve. Gotten to talk about it, in this case, not extensively -

The gods here are weaker, and I think this world would be better off without - at least some of them - but I think even if they are weaker they are close enough to our gods that - I could’ve learned something, destroying one, that would be useful later. And maybe without any of our gods noticing. I wasn’t going to tell you, because - I wasn’t sure you could hide it from Aroden. Or would. Or that, in the midst of ascending, you could hide it from the others -"

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Iomedae leans back in the armchair, looks at the ceiling. “I don’t think there’s any kind of - obligation to protect foreign gods that aren’t even party to our usual agreements. I suppose it might make somebody nervous. It seems more like storming the Abyss to pick a fight with Baphomet than like -

 

- the work we are also eventually going to have to do, of destroying Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon…

 

Atet seems to have vanishingly few redeeming features. I do think you - value faith, and the things that spring of it, less than most of the people who’d be subject to your decision, and could wrong them that way, but - I don’t feel so strongly about it that I’d oppose trying to get rid of Atet, if you thought you could do it.

 

…part of why I didn’t want you to have the Empire is -

 

I hate this. I think you’ll hate this, and probably we could even manage a stupid loop where we both hate how the other is reasoning around this. But ever since I learned that you’ve done your immortality and will become an ancient archmage, one of the most important things I think about, in every decision I make, is if it’ll damage you. Because that just matters more than most things, probably, to how good the worlds are in the long term. I don’t - like using that lens, and I am not good at using it and don’t trust the results of it all that much. But. Part of why I don’t want you to have the Empire is that it’ll make you - more the kind of person who runs a mind-control Empire - and I’d let a lot of people die, to not have that -"

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"Fuck. You’re - right that I hate it - you - you shouldn’t -

- Can you tell me, when you’re deciding to let a thousand people die for the sake of my gods-damned spiritual well-being -"

 

 

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"- That’s - not really a fair thing to ask, I’m sorry, I’m 

- I will try not to ignore that completely, as a consideration. But I’d - I'd prefer to know when it’s part of your reasoning.”

 

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“Yeah. I’ve been - going back and forth on whether to try to ignore it myself. It seems like, at minimum, an area in which my heuristics are underdeveloped. And if it’s alike any arguments we’ve had before it’s alike to- you burning forests for me, so that the Crusade doesn’t have to have me be someone who’d order that, and I -

 

My standing as Lawful Good, and your spiritual wellbeing, are in fact both important constraints for our plans, and also it seems like it’d devour us, to do things for those reasons, instead of for our real reasons of which those are stupid approximations -

 

But yes. I’ll try to at least tell you. …this is part of why I don’t want you to take over the Empire now that it’ll involve so much close control of people who hate you and are terrified of you.”

 

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"I'm not looking forward to it now, either - you knew that already -"

"...I didn't burn the forest for the sake of your Lawful Good - nor anything else like it for that - I think the main thing I’ve done, for your Lawful Good, is not tell you things - this isn't an important nit to pick, that's still - wronging you greatly -"

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Iomedae shakes her head. Not like she’s disagreeing, like she needs some kind of new input in her head and that’s the one available. “I wish you wouldn’t. But you knew that, too. I - I really want to believe it doesn’t even help, that I am doing something coherent enough and Lawful enough and Good enough that there are no plausible circumstances under which I’m meaningfully constrained by what someone else thinks of it. That might even be true. It’s really very coherent. And very Lawful. And very Good. 

 

Even before I learned you were immortal, I did worry about you, about the - way you’d treat everyone else’s wellbeing, but not yours, as a legitimate strategic priority - like a plan was costless so long as all its costs were paid out of your own soul -”

 

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"...When you put it that way I'm pretty sure that's something that will have me boggling at my own foolishness tomorrow. I guess I imagined - my soul can bear more - more than most. Not necessarily more than yours, I was never worried about your soul as much as your reputation."

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“I couldn’t bear to murder seventy nine people. Forget what Pharasma had to say about it, I think I wouldn’t be the same, afterwards. War is - not, actually, the same thing - and we wouldn’t have been the same after Urgir, either of us, if we’d had to do it -”

 

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"...I suppose I can't really imagine you murdering that many people and being the same afterwards. I - think I would have recovered, from Urgir, eventually. It would have taken time. I agree war is - not quite the same thing - but I think it's less different for me than it is for you."

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“To a god I’m not sure it’s a very meaningful distinction. But I’m not, actually, a god, yet, and -

 

To a god I suppose it also won’t be - all that important - if the things you do change you, so long as they don’t turn you into the next Tar-Baphon, and I suppose I really don’t actually think they’ll do that. To a god some archmage murdering some hundreds more people each century for less and less good reasons isn't - a very high priority, really, and whether I'd still recognize you doesn't matter at all."

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"It’s just -

 

- me -

 

- that cares a lot about that -”

 

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Oh.

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"I didn't - know that - or - I didn't believe it - not consciously -"

And then she bursts out crying, because - because she cares too, whether Iomedae changes, and she's going to -

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“I guess it is - fairly hypocritical of me,” says Iomedae, after a moment’s pause. She may also be tearing up slightly.

 

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"Would you believe. That this the first time I've. Thought about this. Let myself think about this. The Wisdom tomorrow. Was sure going to be something."

 

 

"I'm going to miss you."

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“- I know. I’m - I’m so sorry, I know it’s - I know it’s one of those things that will be wrong, with the world, forever or at least until the very end - I’m not going to do anything else, but - I am sorry -

 

 

 

 

- and I wish I could say that I’ll miss you, I owe you so so much more than that -”

 

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"I know. You couldn't do anything else, it's not who you are -

- I'm worried, actually, about. About your ascension. Nethys said -

- I don't know if that's - just more selfishness -"

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Nethys said that sometimes Alfirin was destroying Hell all on her own. 

 

“I’m definitely - going to revisit - two worlds, a different set of problems and options than I thought I had, different set of tradeoffs, it’s not impossible it’ll change something. But it still seems like - of all the gaping holes in the universe, the one I’m most personally shaped to fix is the one where Heaven is not allocating its resources well for the fights it actually needs to win, and it’d be pretty surprising, if I could do more good running around with a sword. We’ll - check. If you, enhanced all unfathomably brilliant, think I’m actually wrong, I’ll take that very seriously."

 

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"I have had my doubts but - I didn't really think you were wrong that - we need you in Heaven - I'm just so much less sure now that - it actually works -"

"I don't think most people. Who care about the universe. Are best served by becoming gods -

Actually let's. Have the philosophy conversation later. When I'm not doing my best water elemental impersonation." She would kind of like a hug but she's not going to say so and she's going to do her very best, in this company, not to think so either.

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“- yeah. That one seems like - like it probably doesn’t have to happen now.

 

Do you want - me to hold you - I could take off the breastplate -”

 

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"...Yes. You don’t have to."

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In that case Iomedae will hug her without taking off the breastplate because in fact she really hates doing that and, also, they should probably have some measures of caution against bad decisions, here, even if the bad decisions seem very unlikely, because it’s while bad decisions seem very unlikely that you want to take precautions against them.

 

It’s not a bad decision to say “ - you’re very important to me. You always have been. I want you to be - immortal and safe and brilliant and - whatever you want to be -”

 

(It can’t be a bad decision. She’s in full plate armor.)

 

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She clings in Iomedae's cold metal embrace.

 

"I think I have also been avoiding thinking about the fact that I never stopped loving you."

 

 

"I am not going to kiss you now but I might if it still seems like a good idea tomorrow with more wisdom."

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“I think that if we were actively rather than as a historical curiosity lovers I would have phrased my communications with the Empire differently,” says Iomedae. 

 

And clings. She’s very strong.

 

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"That sounds like a consideration for unspeakably wise Alfirin."

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“Unspeakably wise seems like overstating it slightly! You will only be a smidge wiser than me. I am very speakably wise.”

 

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She laughs.

 

"You know, I can do your Wisdom and Cunning too. I think it's the right call, strategically, if we've got a week. But also I'd like to, selfishly."

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“I thought about it. If I’m going to - beat Tar-Baphon in the spring, ascend in two years, have Aroden’s reassurance it should go fine - then it seems like an indefensible use of ten diamonds I could instead stick in a vault for my church whenever they most desperately need it. But - if it’s going to be more complicated than that -

 

- and so far it’s indeed been pretty complicated -

- then, yes, I probably should. And I’d want to, selfishly. It’d make me sad to be unable to keep up with you. And it’s always on some level made me sad that I’m not smart enough to be a wizard. Just, you know, because all the cool people are.”

 

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"Well. It is complicated and even if it were simple, I do not consider myself bound to only do what is best for the world and am capable of my own diamond acquisitions.

…I do think you're smart enough to hang ninth-circle spells, with a good headband. It's not a good use of your time, and most people who survive to be archmages are much smarter than that, but - if you had plenty of time and, danger I guess, and all the other problems in the world were fixed - "

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“...then it would still be true, that when I was fourteen, I looked into whether I could grow up to be like Aroden and determined I wasn’t clever enough and decided to want something else. But, of all of the little tragedies we’ll never be able to put right, I suppose I can probably endure that one. 

 

Gods, Alfirin, I feel so - unfathomably powerful and so trapped and powerless - we still can’t have Arazni back, I asked. I definitely shouldn’t ascend any time soon, everyone’s mad about the noise. You’re -

I’m glad you’re immortal, and also - I never could have had, something I’d hoped I could have, and also I’ve been hurting you and not noticing, or not - doing the right things about noticing - and the best thing we could possibly have is a few years, before I go up in holy fire so everyone else can have some tiny rationed fraction of what they deserve - hundreds of diamonds and -"

 

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"You keep saying you're glad I'm immortal and I'm not sure if you're trying to reassure me or yourself - "

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“It is unbearable to imagine you going to Hell. It always has been. It was - the reason I couldn’t keep going - thirty years ago - I could feel, that if I let myself fall in love with you, I wouldn’t know how to stop, and I couldn’t be the god that Heaven needs. I have tremendously complicated feelings about what you did and I am sometimes sick with horror at the thought of what it may bring us to in enough thousands of years but I love you and I don’t want you to imagine - I don’t want you to be afraid of me -”

 

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Cling.

"I have only ever been afraid of you once. I'm afraid of the god you will become, sometimes. I love you and I - didn't know, that you still loved me, but I knew you wouldn't want to hurt me - if there was any other way - but You won't have those particular considerations, when you ascend."

 

"I also keep wishing we could do - more - It's like - Nethys told us, in as many words, 'Hey dumbasses, you've got hundreds of wishes, shouldn't you be using them to destroy Hell or something?' and - I can't for the life of me figure out how, but it seems like there should be a way because - hundreds of wishes is just -

But then all that power and the Mirrorgrave can still put us into a panic for a couple days - "

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“I think if you could take down Hell with hundreds of Wishes Aroden would’ve done that instead of or before ascending. Thousands of years travelling worlds, I doubt he was short on diamonds at the end of that. 

 

But it does feel like we’ve - got to be making mistakes, stemming from the scope of our imagination -

 

And probably Wishing yourself up is the right starting place to address that, especially if we don’t see any other.

 

 

 

As a god, I would still offer Asmodeus terms, if I found the means to destroy him, if it wouldn’t reduce the odds I succeeded. And much moreso any enemy of mine who wasn’t Asmodeus. Not fighting is - much better than fighting. I think in that specific respect being less particular will mean it being easier to do that for people I don’t particularly care about rather than harder to do it for the ones I already care about. I want to grow into a shape that - loves everyone like I love you, rather than one that loves no one at all."

 

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"Yeah it's - not just the wishes, obviously. That let one of us destroy a layer of hell, in other worlds. I just wish I knew what it was, He said we weren't ambitious enough, not that we didn't have access to what we'd need - maybe I'm reading too much into that and should stop trying to psychoanalyze Nethys, that's not the safest thing to be doing…"

They're having two conversations at once, now, and this would be somewhat easier with a telepathic bond but Iomedae was just regretting not being able to keep up with Alfirin and actually parallelizing their conversations instead of switching back and forth would make that more salient.

 

 

"I expected you'd - think Shelyn had that covered. The loving everyone thing."

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“ - did Marit tell you about that conversation.”

 

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"...No, what conversation?"

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"After - after I broke up with you - we talked about -” 

 

She closes her eyes. “I said, more or less, ‘it’s not that I am against love. It is observably a significant element of human values and one needs to account for it to make tradeoffs appropriately. It is simply that I think love is overrepresented, among the concerns of the Good gods; clerics are very useful to armies, but it’s possible for an army to be too large a percentage clerics, such that it’d be for the best if in the next round of recruiting you turned up no clerics at all. It’s not just Shelyn. Sarenrae’s halfway doing it, too, and Erastil with the thing for marriage and family, and the stories-for-mortals suggest it had something to do with whatever went wrong with Shizuru…

 

Love is fine. But Good already has far more love than is actually practical, and it’ll be an improvement to the overall amount Good is concerned with love if I have nothing to do with it. “

 

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"...As a purely practical matter about the collective dispositions of the pantheon of Good gods I can't really say you were wrong, but also that's - so obviously tinged by - what had just happened -

I imagine Marit said more or less that same thing -

 

 

- I thought I was the one who left."

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“ - I figure now that while it may be too expensive to have any experiential correlates of my values whatsoever, if it isn't, loving people is - better for them, as a way of relating to them, and they project it onto you and it's better if they're not lying to themselves...

hmmm? no, it was - I realized that I didn’t have good enough judgment to navigate high-stakes decisionmaking and being in love, so I told you I couldn’t do it. You left after that, but - I assumed you left because you didn’t want to be around me after I had broken up with you for a reason that obviously spoke poorly of me.”

 

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"...I don't remember exactly what you said, memory isn't perfectly reliable on that timescale especially for emotionally-charged moments - I think you said something less unambiguous, ‘I don't know if I can do this,' maybe -

- and I left because I didn't think I could - keep being with you - and also hiding what I planned to do - and even if I could it wouldn't be fair to you - and I thought it would be better, for you, if I was gone. In the long run."

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“Oh. I hadn’t been - trying to be ambiguous - I didn’t want you to think it was your fault -

 

Better for me if you were gone because you thought I was - too weak to actually step back otherwise? Or -"

 

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"You do kind of a lot of - wanting me to think that things which are my fault are in fact your fault - "

"I didn't think you wouldn't be able to step back eventually but - It would be hard for you. And you'd blame yourself. Which I now see I utterly failed to prevent anyways, but - "

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“The murdering seventy nine people was your fault. The fact you didn’t feel like you could talk to me about it in advance was my fault. The breakup was my fault. I could’ve prevented it by being - better at being me - and I don’t, actually, see how you could’ve prevented it, except by not being you, and I don’t wish you were someone else instead. Arazni was my fault I’m not emotionally prepared to argue that one with you right now. What else even is there -

- the whole state of Creation is your fault, I know Pharasma consulted you and implemented all your suggested changes and you should’ve made some more suggestions.”

 

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"Well, you know, at first She didn't think we needed Good or Neutral afterlives at all, just the Evil ones - really the problem is that I asked for free choice of afterlives first, and good afterlives second, and if I'd done it the other way around you could maledict someone anywhere -"


"I think if I had been a better version of the person I want to be I would have noticed that I could talk to you. And - probably it still wouldn't have worked, for us to be romantically involved, but -

Usually I do find it - charming - when your standards for yourself are ‘be a living god,' but - not when it's about my mistakes -"

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"The thing you don’t like about gods is the - oh, I don’t actually know how to say this, but I do think I understand the thing you don’t like about gods and I try not to do it to you. I try to be straightforward with you and make plans that, if they route through you, work better the more you understand of them, even if for whatever reason I can’t afford to have you understand all of them, and I try to let you make decisions that to me seem like mistakes, because you do me the same courtesy, and I try not to treat you as - something I can maneuver -”

 

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"I appreciate that, but - It feels like there's something missing, if you try not to manipulate me and then - decide later that things are your fault and not mine because you could have made different choices. Usually I could have made different choices too."

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"That makes sense. I guess - sometimes it’s hard to see why you would have made different choices, if whatever happened was - fine, by your lights. Or if - there aren’t realistic choices of yours that would’ve made anything okay. Or if - I can’t actually identify a thing I wish you’d do differently the next time, a concrete thing that holds from your perspective not from mine -”

 

Sigh. “I think it wouldn’t have worked no matter what. When we were thirty. I - was a bit of a wreck, in hindsight, at thirty. I was checking which things you could burn forever and which burned out, and I’m not sad I checked that, but.”

 

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"It wouldn't have, no. And we both knew it, by the end, and we both left."

 

"I should… go. Maybe. And let you get back to - whatever it was you were doing, before I came in. I'm sure it was important." She makes no particular move to extricate herself.

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“Mmmm,” says Iomedae reflectively, and doesn’t let her go. “I think things are more or less in shape, actually. Aroden is conveniently easy to evangelize for. Must be how He’s objectively correct about almost everything. Tar-Baphon’s going to try something, at some point, but I don’t have an actionable next step there beyond getting Aroden more visibility. Maybe we want to Wishnap all his lieutenants at once, but that’s definitely something to contemplate with higher Wisdom. The Emperor doesn’t want to talk to me and I don’t actually think anyone can help him; when we’re kind to him he feels guilty and starts sobbing.” 

 

There is a kind of prisoner who doesn’t want you to be kind to them, not in the sense that they want to be tortured but in the sense that they derive more assurance from your competence than from your apparent inclination to mercy, and in the sense that if they’re not permitted to leave they’d rather be Dominated, or chained to the wall of an antimagic cell, than gently persuaded that trying to depart isn’t in their interests. She doesn’t think that’s Bastran. She thinks Bastran is just having a nervous breakdown and will need some time to see if it’s permanent or not.

 

“There’s lots to do in Urgir but I’ve decided not to be trying to - hop in and out on that, it’s too easy for miscommunications to happen while everyone’s diligently scurrying around with more power than they’re accustomed to and a mission they think I gave them. Karlenius will handle it worse than me but he won’t commit any atrocities and the mistakes will be repairable.

 

So. Nothing to do but this, unless that was you politely telling me you have archmagery you’re supposed to be doing.”

 

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"No. No archmagery, really. I suppose I could be trying to figure out the Mirrorgrave's cloak, but Altarrin never taught the other Adepts here how to scry it without setting off any wards. I could work on acquiring Velgarth mage-gifts but - we don't have that many adepts, and I don't know how long it would take, or if it's even possible, or a good use of time. I was planning to make that call in a couple days."

"I do want to grab some pillows or a blanket, though. Something softer."

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“The armor is probably not in fact the only thing protecting us from error, and I can take it off.”

 

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"I suppose it's not - it does seem almost a scandal in its own right, the knight-commander taking her armor off to cuddle her archmage - And one of the other things protecting us from maybe-error is - not taking off your armor just because it's probably not the only thing protecting us."

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Iomedae is, of the two of them, the one much more impaired in fetching a blanket or pillow - she’d have to use her actual limbs to do it - so she holds Alfirin and waits to see if that line of reasoning ends up at ‘construct-servants, fetch a pillow’ or not.

 

“Obviously there is a clear and meritorious case for my cuddling my archmage. Whoever you usually have for it didn’t follow you through to Velgarth and now you are undercuddled, threatening your efficacy.”

 

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It doesn't end there. It also doesn't end with Alfirin letting go enough for Iomedae to remove her armor.

 

"...I don't usually have someone for it. Unless you count Curiosity, but - I don't know whether it's because he's a fox or because he's kind of me or just that he's not you but it's very much not the same."

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Going around, for years, with no human contact whatsoever that’s not for spellcasting, sounds like it would be really bad for Alfirin.

 

…. and Iomedae should, in fact, not let herself fall into the headspace where Alfirin not having nice things feels like a screaming moral emergency. That’s closer to being the protective factor than the armor is, and also easier to instinctively strip off than the armor is. 

 

“Mmmm,” she says instead, because apparently that’s what comes out of her mouth when she’s mostly trying to avoid saying things that are a bad idea instead of thinking of any good ones. “If I were Evil I would get so many deep pressure massages; they are plainly one of my great temptations towards vice.”

 

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"You know, I'd never particularly thought of that one. Maybe when I next return to my Evil ways."

 

She is not going to offer Iomedae a massage, because she does not have the expertise, she does not have the strength without turning into an ogre, and because that's really the sort of decision she should think about tomorrow with Wisdom.

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Yes, there is a reason she named a thing Alfirin, who is a wizard and has twigs for arms, literally cannot provide. 

 

“I want to talk again tomorrow,” she says, “if there isn’t another emergency. I think it’d help me a lot to have a better grip on - what tradeoffs you think your strongest self should be making. I think I’ve said - all I have for now.”

 

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She doesn't really have anything more to say now either. She'll just mage hand over a blanket and keep snuggling Iomedae for a while longer, because she really has been lacking in human contact for some time now.

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It's a quiet night. Shortly before dawn, someone who still has a Heal available will cast it on the prisoner.

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The spell itself doesn't wake Bastran. 

 

 

When he eventually does wake up on his own, a candlemark later, he - isn't feeling better, exactly, but his head is a lot clearer. Which is annoying, in a way, he wants to keep drifting, and instead the misery is sharper and clearer, and he doesn't really want to be conscious or have thoughts, but sleep feels impossible and there's a growing nagging sense that he should be thinking about...something... 

 

What is he doing here? It's a stupid question, in a way, he knows why he's here and he can observe for himself that he's not currently doing much at all, but - everything feels fake, and pointless, and like a picture that doesn't quite cohere. It keeps being somehow surprising, that he's still here. 

Well. He expected, planned, whatever, to kill himself once it wasn't going to result in thousands of people dying? And he...hasn't. Apparently. He's still here. It doesn't exactly feel like a choice, like something he did, but it's not like it could have been someone else's decision.

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Why? He's definitely noticing some kind of tension, there, between the background misery, the reflexive loop of - internal screaming, more than 'thought' per se - repeatedly yelling that none of this would be his problem anymore if he stopped being alive, and - what - 

 

- and the fact that he apparently does still want other things. The screaming part doesn't want to want other things, it feels like being trapped, it feels like opening that door even a crack, or even just acknowledging that it's already open, will mean drowning in the thousands of things wrong with everything that he has (in theory) the power to do something about. He doesn't want that power or that responsibility, he thinks maybe he never wanted it, but - it's not just the compulsions that held him pinned in a shape that would be loyal to the Empire and keep bearing that weight.

It's - so much more than that - it's the ways of thinking that Altarrin taught him over decades. That he can't unsee, now, even if it feels like there's no possible way to engage with it and not have it break him. 

 

 

...he's maybe really angry about that, actually? 

Well. Add one item to the mental list of counter-considerations against killing himself: if he dies now then he won't get to yell at Altarrin for putting him in this position at all, and then for not even being here, and - he wants that. 

(Which is, of course, massively unfair to be angry about, when Altarrin isn't here because he's instead holding Bastran's Empire together, and he can yell all he wants in his head that it's not his Empire, he doesn't want it, he never wanted it, but - he can't, it turns out, not care about the actual lives of actual people at stake. He is on some level kind of mad about that too, though it's deeply unclear who he's even angry with. The world, for containing thirty million people he has to be responsible for? Himself, for being pathetically weak and unable to just handle it like Altarrin can?) 

What else does he want? 

 

To be six years old again and in the safety of his sister's arms, back when he still believed his sister could do anything. Wow, that is genuinely pathetic and stupid. 

For Iomedae to forgive him. 

For Iomedae not to forgive him, and to yell at him everything that he deserves and then order him executed so he doesn't have to make a decision about dying and so no one can blame him for it. 

For the paladin whose torture he signed off on to be okay. 

 

...that one he can at least ask about? He doesn't think they would lie to him, about it. 

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Also he's hungry. Which is...probably not that surprising...he's left all the food they keep bringing him untouched, and he doesn't know how long he's been here but, based on the number of times he remembers waking up and requesting the sleep spell again, at least a day, and he hadn't eaten since supper the evening before all of this started. Some part of him still doesn't want to eat, because it - feels like it means admitting that he's decided to keep existing and that sounds awful - but it's probably stupid to keep not eating out of stubbornness or laziness or whatever it even is. 

 

 

 

It still takes him a very long time to find the will to move. He vaguely wishes someone would just order him to, or mind-control him about it so he doesn't have to exert any willpower, but Iomedae's people have apparently decided against that. 

He will mumble to the guard at the door, without making eye contact, that he would like to talk to Iomedae if it's convenient. 

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The guard will pass that along.

 

 

She does not show up immediately.

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Well, he did say 'if it was convenient'. He will go back to lying in bed staring at the ceiling and moping. 

 

 

...He should maybe make a mental list of everything he needs to apologize for? At least part of why he feels conflicted about killing himself right now is that it feels incredibly rude to beg Iomedae to get him out fo the Empire and then leave - well, die - without saying sorry for all the messes he caused. 

Well. He should apologize for being impossible to convince on the matter of whether Altarrin was mind-controlled. For being terrible to negotiate with in a thousand ways. For - the war in Oris - for having given the order to conquer Oris at all... 

Wow. There really are a lot of things he regrets. And...things where he's not sure exactly where to assign blame but probably he should regret something

 

 

He sort of wants to talk to someone about that but he doesn't know anyone else's name and talking to strangers about his feelings sounds agonizing. Of course, Iomedae is basically a stranger, but - it feels different, somehow. 

 

 

(He will continue to lie in bed miserably and ruminate on all the horrible things he's done in his life until something prompts him to do otheerwise.) 

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She’ll come in when she’s back from praying for spells and updating Aroden. Seat herself on a chair in the corner of the room and wave the guards out; she doesn’t exactly need guards for her person.

“We are making progress on peace with the Empire, and in its internal wars.”

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"Oh. Good." 

He drags himself into a sitting position and fixes his eyes around Iomedae's left nostril. "I. Wanted to apologize. For - a lot of things - I guess mostly for the paladins. I shouldn't have approved Arbas' idea, it was stupid and horrible and it didn't even accomplish anything and I should've - known that - " 

(It's taking a lot of effort not to cry but this conversation is important.) 

"- is she all right?" he manages. "I - told myself - she would be - if I ordered her to be sent back to you - everyone on the Council thought I'd been so stupid and it was stupid and I, just, I - thought it was one way it could be - not the most horrible way to do it..." Great now he is in fact crying, though not hard enough to prevent speaking. Just enough to be humiliating. 

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“Kiritan? She’s going to recover. 

Arbas - explained to us why from your perspective it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I - appreciate the apology. Kiritan will too, if I may convey it to her.

And I appreciate deeply that you meant to send her back afterwards. We would - probably have noticed, if you hadn’t, but I think you could have done a lot more damage, pressing her afterwards, and - I am glad that you didn’t.

 

It is a rare and important strength, to try to make things as not horrible as possible once you’ve decided to do them.”

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"Mmm." He's pretty sure she's being wildly too generous to him, it's not a strength to make flailing incoherent tradeoffs on decisions because some things make him sad. "I - of course you can convey it to her. Please." 

 

He hugs himself. "M'sorry about - blaming you for Altarrin - he must've been so frustrated about it." 

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“I would have made the same assumption, if one of my people vanished under similar circumstances. I think Altarrin is all right. He’ll be very glad to hear that you’re talking to us.”

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Shiver. "...I'm worried about him. I - was angry, but s'not fair, really, he, was trapped too, even if it's, a trap, he made. M'sure it wasn't on purpose. And he– I can't imagine going back, once I - was out - but he did it for me..." He pulls his knees in to his chest. "I - just - it's tempting to think that he can - bear anything - I used to think that. But he's still, human, things still hurt him." 

 

And acknowledging it out loud is awful, but he's tired of talking around it. "...I don't really. Want to be alive. But I - I already did so many things that - made Altarrin's life worse - I owe him more than that - he wouldn't just, give up, even if he had, broken everything, even if all the horrible problems were his fault - especially if it was all his fault..." 

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“I think that we’ve asked a lot of him, asking him to go back to the Empire, but that - he is someone who derives a great deal of reassurance from having powerful allies, and he has the means to update us continually, and we can raise him if anything goes wrong, and - it’s not a losing battle, anymore, trying to make the Empire a good place. It never will be again.

 

I do think he hopes very dearly that you’ll choose to stay alive. But I don’t think he thinks he has the right to ask it.

Would you want to go on, do you think, if you died, to a better world that cannot ask as much of you? Or have your soul recycled by the local gods?”

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He blinks at her. It feels like there's a very heavy weight on his chest. 

 

 

 

"Does it matter? What I want? I don't...think...I deserve. To - go somewhere better. And I'm - pretty sure I would be Evil. In your world's - way of doing things." 

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Everyone deserves somewhere better.”

 

 

“…and you are, in fact, Evil, but if you don’t want to be, I would not actually expect that to be hard to change. Having been mind controlled your entire adult life is a substantially mitigating circumstance, and the first thing you did when you stopped being mind controlled was stop hurting people.”

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Bastran has no idea how to respond to that. The way he is responding in practice is, apparently, by crying harder. It doesn't feel like it's a decision under his control. (It doesn't really feel like anything is a decision under his control, right now, the world feels too close and bright and made of broken fragments and there isn't a thing where he is that can do things on purpose.) 

 

"I...know...I should, try to, fix it," he says miserably. "I don't– it's too hard - I can stop doing things that hurt people, or just - stop doing things, I guess - don't know if I can do things that help people. To make up for it. I know I - owe them that - just, I'm, so tired -"

And Altarrin wouldn't give up and walk away but he has never, in fact, been anywhere close to as strong as Altarrin. 

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"I don't particularly think you should try to make up for it."

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Well then what does she want him to do to not be evil, if it's not - the sort of thing that Altarrin is doing right now? He doesn't really feel like he understands what she's asking of him, here. He looks very tiredly at her. 

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"I think people mostly shouldn't be - trying to get a score that's above zero. That's - one of the many things wrong with the whole sorting system. Who you were up until now just doesn't mean much of anything, about who you should be starting now. 

What kind of life do you wish you had lived?"

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"...I don't know. I - have no idea how to think about what I want, it doesn't - it's never mattered, so what's the point." 

 

 

"- and I think Altarrin would - tell me it's not a duty, to help people because I have the power to - but I think it is, actually? I mean. If the thing he's doing isn't - thinking he has a duty to help people - then I don't understand what it is instead." 

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" - so, some people, if they saw a cart hit a child and the child lying there bleeding and in need of help, would think 'oh, I suppose it's my duty to go and help the child, as little as I wish to', and then do it. This is...genuinely better than not going to help at all, obviously. I won't claim that duty is never what moves me. ...when I was very angry with you and Arbas over Kiritan, it was duty that I turned to, to make decisions that were right instead of satisfying. 

But many people, if they saw a cart hit a child, would think 'oh no, that child is bleeding, I should get them a healer at once'. Not because it is their duty but because it'll cause the child to be alive, instead of dead, and they want that.

 

I think Altarrin may have been trying to say - that if you can do that instead, then it's in fact a whole lot better for people. And that if you've gotten to the point where you want to die, then you're probably resorting to duty much too often and should stop being in situations where it's all you can call on."

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Nod. "...I guess I wish I'd - had a life that was more - the people I could help were children hit by carts, and not - having to decide which set of thousands of people are going to die." 

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"That makes a lot of sense. So, then, probably the thing to do from here is go have the kind of life you wish you'd had. Where you don't make any decisions about which people die, but can save children hit by carts, hopefully mostly because you want to."

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"...I used to want to be a minstrel. When I was a child. To - not be anyone important, just travel around and write songs about other people who'd done important things."

Wow he's not sure why he said that out loud. It's not even very on topic and Iomedae is probably going to think he's pathetic. 

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"That seems like a reasonable thing to do."

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"I don't - actually want to right now. I just - remember wanting to." Back when he could want things. Back when just existing didn't hurt. "Feels - too late to start over, now."

(But Altarrin would. Altarrin would never say it was too late.) 

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"Why's that?"

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Bastran puts his head down on his knees. 

 

"Just feels like I - can't go back to being that person," he says, muffled. "I've - ordered too many executions - to just be. Someone who plays music and helps children. I can't - pretend it didn't happen." 

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"If some other person, some stranger, had - by magic woken up in your place, in your life yesterday, they could have - walked away and become a musician? And you wouldn't feel that they had a duty to do something different?"

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Wow, that's a really horrifying and upsetting thought experiment! Poor stranger person waking up in his life and having to face the consequences of all his worst mistakes! Aaaah! 

Bastran makes a miserable sound. "I - no - it wouldn't be their fault -" 

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"But if it's you, it feels like - there's something that would be unaddressed, if you walked away, because you think it is your fault?"

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"Yes! Obviously it's my fault! I - it's not like I was under compulsions to do into - any of the things I did - I was less mind-controlled than Altarrin, he had to obey orders and be loyal to me, I just - had to do what was best for the Empire and its people. And I didn't even get that right, because I was - scared, and tired, and didn't want to have more meetings, and didn't want to think about decisions longer... That's my fault. And Altarrin still managed to...realize...way before I did, and leave - so not realizing is my fault too..." 

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"And it seems like - it'd be an injustice, if you weren't punished for that, and were forgiven for it, and could walk away and be a musician?"

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He curls up very tightly.

 

 

"yes..."

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"A thing I believe is that injustices - always have victims, they are always wrongs to someone in particular. Who is wronged, if you are forgiven?"

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It's really unfair that she keeps asking him QUESTIONS with difficult answers that mean he has to actually think. 

 

"All the people who're - still stuck in the Empire?" he manages eventually. "Who - lost people, because of me. ...Everyone in Oris who - lost someone they cared about - because I made the decision to conquer them. I bet the rebel leader isn't just, fine, with me going off free to play music somewhere nice, when he still has to - fix his country -" 

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"I doubt he would be fine with it. I think that's a little different than being wronged by it. 

 

A lot of people in the Empire are dead because of me, their families grieving because of me. Are they wronged, if we reach a peace in which I go about my Crusade and am never brought to justice?"

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Well, obviously that's different, Iomedae isn't a terrible person! 

"You didn't ask to be stuck in our war," he says dully. "And you've - got bigger things to do - I don't feel like it'd help, to - punish you more, on top of already having murdered you." 

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"That seems relevant to whether we should try to do something different, but it'd be a bit surprising to me if that were relevant to whether they were wronged? Something feels uncomfortable, to me, about the idea that whether they were wronged or not depends on the merits of a Crusade they may never hear about. We could say that they were wronged but we're going to permit that because we think other considerations are more important?"

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"...That makes sense. I - guess I do feel like - our people who you killed were kind of wronged by you, even if it was my fault and Altarrin's fault as well." 

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"That seems right to me. So - are they further wronged by my having been resurrected and restored to my work?"

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"I - guess probably some people are upset about that. But - not as upset as the people in your world would be if your war went badly because you were dead ? And I - guess - I don't think the people in the Empire have - the right to say that the people in your world don't deserve help because you hurt them." 

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"I'm not sure if you're saying that you'd argue they're not wronged, because I had sufficient reason to return to life, or that they're wronged but that shouldn't be an overriding consideration because Golarion not being conquered by Tar-Baphon is worth wronging them for, and I'm not sure how much the - different worlds - was doing, in your conception there -"

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"I - think it maybe matters some?" Shrug. "I don't know. I just - it feels wrong to punish you for trying to help Oris, even if some people in the Empire died, I - we started it and that's - on me." 

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"Hmmm. I think it matters who started it. But - people gave different accounts, of what the supposed provocation for the war had been, and I didn't ultimately end up thinking it mattered very much. It creates good incentives to punish people who start wars, so that people won't start wars, but - it's the rare institution that punishes the winners of wars, and being the loser of a war really seems adequately disincentivized. 

I guess there's a different line of argument here, which is something like, maybe there should be less punishment for people doing the best available thing, and more depending how dramatically their actions departed from the best available thing? But I'm not sure how closely that tracks the interests of any wronged parties, in a case like this."

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That all sounds incredibly confusing to reason through and it's making his head hurt and it's - sort of missing the point, which is that the thought of walking away from all the horrors and being a minstrel somewhere better feels impossible, it's not a decision actually open to him, he can't just move on and be okay, and it would feel deeply wrong of him even if he could. Bastran is not exactly sure if this feeling is the kind that's amenable to being shifted by argument, though honestly Altarrin could probably manage it given long enough. He generally can.

 

"Which line of argument here do you actually believe?" he says, dully. 

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"Oh. My own working conception of punishment is -

- what's the human impulse for justice fundamentally for? What is it doing for us, what kinds of worlds does it reach for? I think the answer is that you get less bad things, in the world, if it is a predictable feature of the world that if they happen they'll be punished; we execute murderers not because they have become bad and thereby begun to merit execution, but because there's less murder if that's how you handle it. In this conception, justice is Lawful - sorry - justice is ....contractualist? Justice is ....an agreement you would make before being born and ignorant of what soul you'd be born as?

...justice has its importance in the scheme of human values as an element of rules that societies agree to in order to be better societies. In the ideal, societies would make only those rules which, consistently enforced, make society better for everyone, and have those punishments which produce the best tradeoff between the rarity of rulebreaking and the harm done by punishment, and I would argue that also in the ideal world becoming subject to a justice system would be fundamentally voluntary, a condition of participation in society but an option people could meaningfully refuse if they did not agree with the tradeoffs their society was making. You can flee Axis for Elysium. 

Now, justice like other parts of Law and Good is built into the human spirit, and the way it's built isn't precise like that, nothing's precise like that in the human spirit. The way it often feels to want justice is to want a bad thing to happen to a bad person, so that they'll suffer, which will be good because they are bad. It also often feels like justice to hurt people who've done no wrong, but have offended local sensibilities, or to hurt outsiders more severely for the same crimes. Human spirits - reach for the Good - but aren't perfect in finding it. And my intuition is that the desire to bring about justice, in the absence of a system to which the relevant parties were knowingly subject, is a sort of misfire, it is the impulse being imperfect at identifying the situations in which it can usefully be activated.

Because in the absence of a system to which the relevant parties were knowingly subject, it's hard to imagine how justice brings about Good. It can't prevent things that no one involved could have anticipated they'd be punished for. It can only with some distortions and some paroxysms establish a precedent that may prevent similar conduct in the future, among the people who believe already in the workings of that system. 

There is something tremendously emotionally appealing about saying, 'if we hang a common murderer, how many more times should we hang an Emperor who with his words and his seal murdered hundreds of thousands? As many as it takes him to run out of diamonds.' It is a grasp for - a real thing, a true thing, the fact that most of the final violence of your world and mine is done under orders, and not by petty powerless criminals, and that most of the responsibility for it is yours and mine. But it will bring none of that violence to a halt to try to turn justice into something that it cannot be and is damaged by trying to be. 

In matters where there is no preexisting system of predictable punishment which the involved parties knew of, or could have known of, my answer is that justice is not, actually, one of the tools we have to hand, and we'll have to make do with other ones. In many real cases, it will be deeply unclear which systems count and what it would've meant to know of them, and sometimes something looks sufficiently like justice that it's better to treat it as an actual justice proceeding, but - in many cases, if we find ourselves struggling to fit these intuitions to these situations, we should consider that this may be because we are trying to make justice do work it cannot. 

I do think that people would ideally have a fundamental entitlement to the truth of what was done to them being known, and to decide for themselves whether to forgive it, and I think they would ideally have a fundamental entitlement to live in a place with justice processes, and for those justice processes to operate impartially with respect to wrongs done to them. But if you don't have the latter two - you should execute Emperors precisely when you expect it to make the world better, and not bother bringing justice into it."

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This is way too much philosophy for Bastran's current level of intense misery. 

 

He rubs his eyes. "- You would have a fascinating conversation with Altarrin about that, if you brought it up with him. I– it sounds like you think that it - wouldn't help, including with, er, second-order effects in the future, for your people to punish me, and my people's legal system won't, and - that there's nothing else there that matters?" He makes a face. "I think Altarrin would agree, and - I don't actually think it'd - do the world any good - for Altarrin to be punished. Because he's going to go do better things now, and - he would've done better things all along if he saw how." 

He wants Iomedae to know that. It feels very important, somehow, that Iomedae knows that Altarrin is - on her side, and someone who would want to help Aroden in His work, and someone who will do more of that if granted more trust and power and wealth. 

Bastran isn't. Bastran is just a useless coward. 

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"That's - true of nearly all people, really, though they vary in just how much it takes for them to see how."

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Except for Bastran, who is only capable of doing any useful things if mind-controlled to serve an Empire, and otherwise will be completely useless and mope and never actually accomplish anything important that is pooooossibly not a trustworthy thought. 

He shrugs. "I - maybe someday I'll - want to do better things. Or maybe I just - broke that. I don't know. Right now I just want to...not have it matter what I do or don't do, or - whether I'm any good at doing things - and, and not be letting anyone down..." 

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"Sure, makes sense. We don't in fact need anything from you. If you want to apologize to Kiritan I'll have her come through in a few interworld Gates."

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"I...don't want to drag her through a few interworld Gates unless it would help for her to - hear it from me -?" Bastran says uncertainly. 

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"I appreciate that. I think it would be good for her. She talked to Arbas and thought that was good for her, and that was with him saying he wasn't sorry and was glad he'd done it."

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"He said that?" Bastran is just going to quietly die of mortification over here! "I...don't know if I can say - the right things - but I'm not going to say that." 

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"I don't think there's a right thing, from you. She wants to do things in the world, it's good if she can understand peoples' real thought patterns and motivations whatever they are."

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It’s a startling thing for her to say, for some reason. He’s not sure what to do about it. “Oh. All right.”

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Just a slight bit of pride. "She's one of my paladins. She knows what she's about. - the reason she went to talk to Arbas was to make sure Alfirin hadn't hurt him."

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"...Oh." He lets out his breath. "I - that's really impressive." 

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"Most people shouldn't be paladins. But - a lot of them can, actually, with the affordance in front of them and the - not being afraid -"

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"It does seem like it would help." It's hard to even imagine. "That - must have been very awful for her, that she - suddenly was afraid once Arbas managed to, do the thing..." 

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"I think it harmed her very greatly. But - because it wasn't very long and because she needn't really fear it happening again, I think she's been able to - relate to it in a way where it isn't ongoingly damaging her. 

 

I should probably have sent you - older paladins. More stable self-concepts and more accurate expectations about what being tortured will be like."

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"I think in a reasonable world you would not have needed to expect that your diplomatic envoys would be tortured in - that particular way." Sigh. "I really do think we - would have done better, if not for Aritha's kidnapping." 

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"I believe you. It was a very significant escalation, and obviously made diplomacy from there very difficult to impossible. ...also if we hadn't done it the Mirrorgrave's operation might've succeeded." She sighs. "I regret that things got as bad as they did. They were much worse than they needed to be, between peoples who disagree on so little, and I do think much of that is my responsibility."

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He ducks his head. "I'm - sorry our world was so complicated. I really don't know what you should have done instead, with what you knew at the time. ...I think you didn't really get the - why we don't trust gods - for a long time? I don't know how much it could possibly have helped to be on the same page earlier, though. The Empire just is kind of terrible." 

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"I think if I'd understood more about what adversarial god-action looked like, and been more actively considering that it was operating with respect to me, I'd have tried harder to make sure my letters were getting through. I could maybe have - gotten Altarrin the information that was most decisive for him before he decided to spend hundreds of lives on assassinating me, and figured out you were Lawful enough I could avoid destroying the canal Gates -"

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Nod. "I don't know how - far we were from that, how hard it would've been to get there. I don't really know what Altarrin found decisive, I think it's - part of what he was hiding from us, before he left." 

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" - I would've offered, on the canal-Gates, if I'd known anyone was thinking about the contents of the letters at all, let alone someone like Altarrin. I think we came - quite close except for how if it wasn't thoroughly overdetermined then it was effectively going to be impossible.

The Empire has made - some terrible sacrifices - but it was in a very difficult position. I think in ten years, it will be one of the greatest civilizations on either planet."

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That's really overwhelming to think about. He closes his eyes. "....I guess Altarrin can make that happen. If anyone can." Though it still hurts to think about Altarrin being in the position where he needs to stay. 

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"Or we'll find someone else!" She wants Altarrin back with the Crusade for the siege of Gallowspire, which - if all goes well - will be this next season. "I am not sure it's the best use of him, and while I think he's holding up well now I don't know that it's what he wants to do for the next ten years, either."

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"I don't know if I could - make myself go back." He closes his eyes. "I, I know it would help." 

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" - don't injure yourself over it. Enjoy yourself, go exploring, play music. If it happens, when Altarrin starts thinking about successors, that the job has changed so dramatically that it's one you could do - maybe even one that would be healthy for you to do, to do the right version of things you always had to compromise before, to say 'no' to the things that you used to feel you were obliged to go along with - well, if that happens, we'll discuss it. But I'm not here to convince you to go back, I can see quite plainly when someone has bent themselves into enough of a pretzel trying to do their duty that they need something else entirely."

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It feels unimaginable right now but Bastran is very used to things feeling completely impossible and agonizing at the end of a long day and it turning out that in the morning he can just...do them. Though he's still not sure how much of that is the compulsions. 

Also the exhaustion is catching up to him again. His head feels gluey and thinking hurts (and he is kind of surprised that he managed to get through an entire conversation, somehow?) He's visibly drooping at this point, though. 

"I think I need to rest," he says stiffly. "Thank you for - coming to talk to me." 

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“Of course.” And she’ll go.

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When Mage-Inquisitor Kastil finally wakes up, he is feeling... fundamentally alive, not in too bad health barring a head that is still slightly sore, basically awake, and as if he hasn't properly stretched in days, and also there is a Healer by his bedside. His memory, however, is absolutely clear.

Gods.

And, as all of his shields snap up and the healer gets an immediate Compulsion to not harm him, Mage-Inquisitor Kastil says "I have classified information for the Office of Inquiry."

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Once he's inside the Office, Kastil writes down the classified information in a simple substitution cipher that the Office can easily crack, and then gets to explain.

"I had an idea and the Final Strike hit within the minute."

"To prevent you from passing it on?"

"Or to lend credence after I survived it," he snaps. "Get me in a room with someone who can tell me if I'm a fool or not. Someone sensible."

- - -

"You think the gods were trying to spoil diplomacy with Iomedae?"

"I think they're trying to get her to destroy us."

"Worshippers of the gods always want to destroy us."

A what-an-idiot expression. "Yes."

- - -

It's not actually much more than an hour later that Altarrin gets a letter that says Kastil can talk.

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Of course. He'll be available immediately in ten minutes as soon as he's wrapped up signing the current round of paperwork (but it's clear from his face that he wants it to be immediately. This doesn't even require a lot of acting. The real Bastran cares about Kastil personally, as well as respecting him professionally; so does Altarrin.) 

What does Kastil want to talk about, once the Emperor has checked off the mandatory expressing that he's very glad to see him back on his feet? 

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"I wanted to inform Your Majesty," he said, "that it was my conclusion that the most likely event for your uncharacteristic actions with Arbas was a deliberate plan by the gods to damage diplomatic relations with Iomedae." Specifically, for him doing it on Arbas's advice and not consulting anyone else first. "I had this realization within twenty seconds of the Final Strike arriving, though whether it was intended to silence me or to add weight to my words I cannot say."

"I wish to offer you my sincerest apology for my failures in realizing so slowly and failing to deliver this information more quickly."

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"...Oh." He winces. Ducks his head slightly, with an expression that clearly says that doesn't actually make it less embarrassing. "I - what's your theory, here? That They want us to antagonize Iomedae so that she destroys us?" 

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"That is the most likely possibility. Or that they want to antagonize Iomedae so that we destroy her, if the local gods fear Aroden. Or that they want us not to take some coordinated hostile action against them. Or that they wished to ensure some specific event would take place that would have been averted if I informed you of this sooner. I lack the information to place my confidence in any specific theory, instead of this general observation about the most likely cause of a a single event."

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Wince. "No, of course, I understand. Though, er, I'm - really not sure we can destroy Iomedae, but maybe the gods can't see well enough to be sure of that, other world and all. I - damn it, I wish I'd known earlier. Though...we might be making progress on diplomacy anyway. The new diplomat isn't religious and seems - more sensible."

He shakes his head, more as though to clear it than in negation. "Anyway. What do you need, to - narrow that down? ...Also, er, are you feeling well? We - hadn't extensively tested the healing potions - I'm sorry, I really didn't want to make you a test subject, either, but we need you and - the Healers weren't optimistic..." He trails off. 

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Bastran is seeming oddly indecisive right now. He's usually not that bad.

Is this more god-meddling, or the product of some kind of coup he could have prevented if he was present? Bastran's compulsions do look normal... he thinks...

"Perfectly well, Your Majesty. I can return to regular service as soon as the Office has finished clearing me for regular duty."

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- he nods briskly. “I’m glad. It’s very good to have you back. Please do keep me informed on anything else you think of.”

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"As you say, Your Majesty."

The compulsions do look correct. It's probably either nothing, or a godplot to get him to try to overthrow the Emperor.

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“It’s not over yet but - I’m hopeful,” the Emperor says quietly. "I'll send you a copy of the latest diplomatic report, but - I think we could have more leverage with Iomedae than we realized. And I'm more sure than that that she doesn't want a war if there's a cheaper way." 

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Oh. Good. This is probably a trap, what is the specific trap this time -

"As you say, Your Majesty."

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And the Emperor will dismiss Kastil, and go back to to the endless thankless work of trying to cause there to stop being a war.

(It’s not actually thankless for Altarrin, though Bastran would find it grueling and so he’s mostly inhabiting that for verisimilitude. It’s very satisfying, though, and he can update Kietres that Kastil is suspicious in all the usual Kastil ways, but does not seem to have formed any specific suspicion that the Emperor is acting oddly and might be a body double.)

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Kietres will relay in turn that Bastran seems to be doing a little better, and spoke with Iomedae about the moral philosophy of punishment at some length, and is having Kiritan in so he can apologize to her. 

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And Iomedae will at a time arranged in advance scry the Marshal Orestan.

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Then he will be in a sound-proofed tent!

"Iomedae," he says. There will be a battle soon - once again, he's just waiting for them to come to him. This time he expects it to go better. "Pleased to hear from you again. Is Soria doing well?"

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"I believe that she is. She signed up with us and has been very valuable, though I can't speak to anything specifically.


I want you to sign a ceasefire."

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"That is a much larger favor than any you have previously requested. It will ruin the momentum of the campaign, disenhearten my troops unless I can promise them victory, and encourage the Empire to believe they have me on the run, causing them to be much less inclined to offer terms I can accept."

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"I know. I think I can get you pre-war borders, I think I can get it for you this week, and I think any glorious victories between now and then are, if anything, making the peace harder to get, because the main constraint here is how much face the Empire can save and how credibly it can deter the inevitable revolts in all its other provinces once you achieve this."

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"Pre-which war? The Empire would be very eager to grant us our boundaries from before their last invasion, much less so to give us those from before they annexed Tozoa."

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"Tozoa's the whole puzzle, isn't it. I...wish you could live without it, honestly, but I know you can't and won't, and so I'm going to make them give it to you. I would just like it if tens of thousands more people don't die while we sort that out. and if the Empire doesn't in fact collapse over having granted it to you."

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He inclines his head in a nod of respect. "The Empire won't collapse; most of their territory doesn't want to be independent, and anyone who was going to rebel except for secession has joined Norean's play for power. They have a functioning justice system and all nobles are under compulsions of loyalty to Emperor and Empire, and anyone who wanted out from under them already got it. The Empire will face a war for independence in Tolmassar, and I am surprised that you don't want them to lose it."

"And, Iomedae, the people of Tozoa make up more than half of my army. The Empire hasn't raised any legions from it because they don't trust that anyone would fight for them without compulsions."

"But I recognize what you're saying."

"What terms do you think you can get?" He'll collect a map of Oris - an old map. "These are the prewar boundaries I am formally claiming; this is the area -" he'll use a simple light-spell to indicate the borders; it is almost identical, barring uninhabited mountain passes "- that Oris in fact held and that my troops are coming from."

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"I'm going to fix the Empire. If I couldn't, then by all means, independence for Tolmassar; but I can, and war is so stunningly wasteful, and desperate war in Velgarth even worse than that. I'll take down the maps. I think my resources within the Empire are inclined to push for the actual prewar borders, blaming the whole thing on the Knights of Ozem, demanding reparations of us, and getting some face-saving assurances that'll play well at home, if there are any.

When this is progressing well, I'm going to end the other two civil wars. I could've done that weeks ago, but - I wanted to make sure that didn't just turn out very poorly for Oris."

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"I appreciate it."

Can he tell Iomedae his bottom line and have her act as a proxy for him? Based on his faith in the gods and his experience with her in the war, the answer is... probably yes.

"I don't think anyone here will believe anything I sign saying everything is your fault. Is that a problem for you?"

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"I'm not going to sign anything that's false, but it is not a high priority for me that it be widely believed in Oris, much less that the mangled version of it that inevitably gets circulated is. I was thinking about something like - the Knights agree to withdraw any operational support they or Aroden are providing to the rebels in Tolmassar and Taymyrr, acknowledge that many of the deaths in the civil wars were our fault, agree to provide resurrections at no cost above material components, acknowledge and regret respects in which we didn't act in accordance with local international norms, condemn some of Ithik's interventions and say enough rude things about them we credibly don't seem likely to ally with them, etcetera."

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"Seems reasonable enough. I have no objection." He'll pull a coin out of his pocket and start flipping it while he talks. "If you can fix the Empire, I'm all in favor. The best candidate to do the job is Mage-Colonel Cesion of Jenona, a claim you should discount for personal biases that I nonetheless believe to be true."

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Altarrin seems like an impressive fellow, she doesn't say because banter is insufficient grounds to say anything that might make anyone think Altarrin's operating in the Empire more actively than 'advising Iomedae'. 

"We'll have to talk sometime about what a fixed Empire looks like. I think it definitely isn't in the middle of three civil wars, though. And I'm getting more optimistic about bringing them around on Aroden! We're in talks to schedule a visit to His paradise. I'm worried the diplomats will find Golarion's great cities merely mediocre beside Jacona but they cannot possibly have this complaint about Axis."

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"I'd love to see it, if I ever have a day free."

Flip flip flip.

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Aroden's not established here to the meddling with coin flips degree, and she has no idea if the other gods will approve this plan of hers or not. Plausibly not. Atet may have started to notice not just that she's noisy but that she's on top of that a menace.

"I expect the gods are divided, all told, about our plans."

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"Actually, they seem all in favor," he says calmly, pocketing the coin.

 "I cannot yield any villages or farms in the peace treaty that gave me troops and officers for my army. But - money would be useful for establishing a new government that isn't in debt to Ithik, but the reparations and the passes and the Tolmassar extension and the returned throne and so forth - 

- I put those in my peace demands to have something to give up so the Empire could save face by not yielding completely to my demands."

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"Thank you," she says, very earnestly. She'd guessed as much, but it's still - a move that many people wouldn't make, to actually be straightforward about which demands they're willing to move on. "I will update you if anything changes, but my current guess is that I can get you every village and every city, and the debt to Ithik will shrink in the face of interworld trade."

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"Thank you," he says. "Do let me know when that becomes a clearer possibility, I think Oris will be very happy to be the center of one of the first permanent trans-planetary Gates."

(He's happy to explain the other things in the demand he can and can't compromise over - he cannot recognize anything that will give the Empire a claim of sovereignty over Oris, which means not allowing Imperial subjects who don't swear fealty to Oris over the Empire to keep owning nonmovable property in Oris and making sure there are absolutely no treaty-granted rights for the Empire to run anything in Oris, station troops in Oris, monitor Oris's compliance with treaties, or legally interfere in Oris's internal politics in any way whatsoever.)

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"What if it's reciprocal, they can monitor you and you can monitor them?"

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"Then they can unilaterally declare that we're breaking a treaty when we ignore their demands and we're still powerless to object if they break theirs, because they're the Eastern Empire and we're not. Third-party monitoring is fine." Yes, yes, they can do that anyway, but he wants to give them no excuse whatsoever to station troops in Oris until he's sorted his country out.

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"I have no intentions of letting them start a new war with you once this one's ended, you know. But all right." She has detailed notes and will pass them on to Altarrin.

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What she intends now may not particularly matter, when she goes back to her life of trying to solve whatever the largest problem in the world is and he becomes merely another national leader.

"An assurance I did not need, but still appreciate."

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Marit and Legate Sterngal spend the day working on proposals for the trip to Axis. Marit wants it to be six people or fewer, for ease of transportation, and wants all of them to agree to their intent to follow Axis's laws (against theft, property damage, violence, or the use of magic on other persons or in a place where it may affect other persons without authorization). They should be unGifted, but he wants them agreeing to the rules as well. The Crusade doesn't need them compulsioned but if that's how the Empire wants to ensure that its delegates follow the rules the Crusade won't tamper with their compulsions, though it's possible there'll be an antimagic field somewhere in Aktun they pass through, which suppresses all magic.


They can't make magic item purchases in Aktun. Maybe a future trip. They can do sketches, if they'd like, and conduct interviews of the locals, and pay for those interviews if they want.

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Sterngal is less inclined to argue about the magic items given that they've agreed on un-Gifted delegates who won't be able to get much out of window-shopping with mage-sight. They'll almost certainly want to conduct interviews of the locals. Is paying for interviews the norm. What kinds of currency does Aktun accept? They should presumably avoid asking questions that might leak any sensitive information about Iomedae's war; are there other topics to be careful of? 

He will also want to clarify the laws of Axis in depth, but the descriptions aren't actually confusing. 

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Aktun accepts all currencies and changes them at a moneychanger for the currency used in Axis. The exchange rate won't be favorable; even Emperors find their money doesn't go far in Aktun. Paying for interviews is typical, but there are absolutely people in Axis who'd find an interview from a curious mortal to be entertaining such that they'd do it for free, it'll just take a little longer to find them.

 

He can provide in depth clarifications! Aktun doesn't make its laws for visitors hard to know! They're really really serious about contract violations, but this is easy enough to avoid if you are just offering people pay for interviews and then in fact paying them, or asking people to do free interviews.

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It's of course not Legate Sterngal's decision how much to budget for this trip, but he will nonetheless try to extract some estimates of how much paid interviews would cost for various demographics. ...Which he also has questions about, actually. Does Axis have cities and towns? Do they have mayors or magistrates? Is local authority hereditary usually or by vote or by appointment or something else? Basically, what's the power structure, and who are its important components? 

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Axis is governed on a fairly granular level, by whoever the local landowner is; they can set any rules, within the bounds of the general rules of Axis which prohibit theft and violence and not-agreed-to magical manipulation. Some parts have no more laws than that; some have tons of very specific laws, and mostly don't allow mortals at all because of the mortal propensity for lawbreaking. (Really it'd be something like, they only allow people with insurance against the costs of their lawbreaking, which mortals can't afford, because it'd be expensive because of their propensity for lawbreaking.)

Aktun is the part of Axis owned by Abadar; Aroden's Court is the part of Axis owned by Aroden. They both have few laws; Abadar because He wants to host a center of prosperity and trade and Aroden because He wants to be the foundation on which everyone can build their own thing. (The two gods get along). You can of course purchase some of Axis of your own, and then your laws apply there. You can of course when you purchase some land make a rule that it'll be governed by majority vote or by appointment or something, which you might do to increase rental values because people will be more excited about building things on your land if your land is well-governed.

There are said to be a million portals in Axis, so no part of it is very far from any other part, and mostly incompetently governed parts of it just end up having no one in them as people go somewhere that isn't incompetently governed.

 

It's not really Marit's thing but it's objectively very impressive and probably specifically persuasive about whether there are gods that understand Law and support human progress.

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Oh. Sterngal kind of wishes he could go, now. It sounds like something the First Emperor would have written about– no, not exactly, it sounds like something Arvad, renowned scholarly advisor to the First Emperor, would have described in a treatise about his vision of the true future Civilization. 

 

He spends a candlemark getting absolutely everything he can extract from Marit about Axis and Aktun and Abadar, and eventually thanks Marit and writes up his notes and sends a very thick package to the Ministry of Barbarians back in Jacona. 

He recommends they accept the offer. He recommends they send...historians, maybe? It's not a profession that absolutely requires Gifts, there exist brilliant and experienced un-Gifted historians, and they'll have the context to know what questions to ask and what claims to be suspicious of, but it should be easy to find scholars who don't know anything sensitive about the Empire's government or resources, because their area of specialization is 200 years ago. 

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"It's a good opportunity to learn more," Duke Elnore confirms for the council. "The Ministry suggests an academic delegation of nonmages, historians and mathematicians and so forth." Smart people with no special information. 

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The Emperor is looking through the notes provided. 

"It really does look like a good opportunity to learn more. Feels a bit - too good to be true -" Glance around the meeting-table. "If it's a trick, do we think it's aimed at anything more specific than, er, bribing us to work with their gods?" 

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"Getting us to drop our guard."

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"Espionage," he says, "and attempts to seduce Imperial representatives to the worship of false gods."

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"Or more direct methods of influence, should they be able to convert our less - experienced - agents into their own eyes."

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"To create the impression of overwhelming power, splendor and wealth," he says, "as they've already admitted, and so overawe us, without letting us to learn anything actionable."

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Slow nod. "I definitely see the risk of espionage. I think we should do our best to send agents who don't keep track of current affairs, limit what they can give away. And - probably plan on quarantining them afterward, only passing on written reports." Glance at Siman. "I'll take advice on other precautions there." 

And he shrugs. "I mean, they probably are trying to overawe us. But - it's still information, right? We just need to account for their motives, and - where they could bias what they're showing us. ...And 'they want us to drop our guard' is something you could say about any diplomatic overture where they carry through on an agreement rather than betray us, isn't it?" 

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Polite nod. His list of sensible precautions is right here, written down in advance for the Emperor's use.

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"Oh yes, of course. I think it's worth doing."

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"Maybe," he says. "Or the day before it happens, they kidnap us and have an army drop compulsions on everyone in the capital, while we think they're waiting to try to convince us peacefully."

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The Emperor makes a very tired face at Macalay. "Does turning them down actually make that any less likely? I - there's almost an argument it'd make it more likely, right - even if we assume they're not negotiating in good faith, if they decide they can't string us on any longer..." 

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"It does if we drop our guard because we think the fight's over," he rumbles.

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Sigh. "Right. I know. But I think it's worth doing for all the other reasons, and - I trust you to be vigilant and not let down your guard, whatever decision we make." 

 

He turns back to the rest of the room. "Any other arguments against, or can we talk about Oris now?" 

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The room is collectively prepared to move on to Oris!

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Right. Oris. 

"So the diplomat thought Iomedae would accept treaty terms that put reparations on the Knights of Ozem - well, specifically if it was paid in resurrections, which I have - mixed feelings about for us - but I'm sure the rebels in Oris would be delighted." 

 

...Glance at Harleth. "Er, this isn't necessarily urgent, but if diamonds are going to be one of our most valuable currencies in trading with the other world - I was wondering if they're possible to make. I looked it up in an alchemy text and we think they're just the same substance as black coal but differently compressed, right? I don't know if that would end up being cheaper than mining, but you'd think it would save some of the work, if you're not having to cast high-power surveying spells and then blast tons of rock. And we could have it all done on Trusk Island where the gods can't arrange mine-collapses." 

 

(It's slightly pushing it, in terms of what's in-character for Bastran to think of when he's under this much stress, but - it's also characteristic of him in a different way, to look for clever magical solutions to problems rather than solutions that involve a lot of killing people.) 

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"Physically possible, technically difficult. It'll be expensive, but we'll find a way." Seems like a decent idea.

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Pelias Declane is idly wondering when Bastran had time to go through alchemy texts with just how busy everyone has been, but he can speak up anyway. "It would help with our budget."

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"I don't like having our entire diamond exports going through Iomedae," he says. "Especially given that if she thinks we're the sole source of provision of a rare military resource, that makes us much more valuable to her to conquer."

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"I know. ...I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if she's investing in making allies elsewhere on the planet, it can't be appealing to her either to have the Empire as her only source. But I don't like it either. Probably the best we can do, for now, is keep working on the scrying research - though I know that's not going to be fast, unless we can somehow convince them to return Aritha - and accept the tours. We obviously want other alliances in her world, in the longer run." 

Shrug. "If anyone has a better idea, I'm listening." 

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Nobody has a better idea, though Duke Elnore certainly expects she's also going elsewhere; it's not like she can't just Gate from place to place, buying up valuables.

(Macalay GRUMPS, though.)