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Lucy attempts to solve post-Razmir Ustalav
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" - We need to test whether your law-light destroys outsiders," says Ulthun. "If you leave to seek out a dangerous outsider currently threatening people in Golarion, Cheliax has a significant chance of learning you can do this. If we summon an outsider with a temporary spell, the summoning spell will be cancelled first. So either we need to risk the life of one of Heaven's own people testing it, or we need to summon an Evil nondevil outsider, let it break its bindings and attack us, and then see if Law-light works. Either way we're trying to test if a very dangerous weapon is lethal and there's no way to do that without stabbing someone with it. That's the problem."

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"That last one seems like the best idea to me but then I don't have as much context here--it's not that I like the idea of permanently killing anything, but, uh--based on the descriptions of--how outsiders work--for a demon it seems like it might almost be a mercy--"

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"We'll want to start with a summoned one," says Vaus, "then move on to calling spells."

" - Demons often enjoy themselves," says Kehler, "especially the dangerous ones. They usually still live short and violent lives though, though, so it's less bad than killing something with a longer expected lifespan."

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She makes a face. 

"--It occurs to me that one possible outcome is the demon turning back into a human soul. Human souls are--definitely not forbidden by the laws the light enforces."

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"- If that would work that would be very good," says Kehler, to general nods. "We haven't found any way to help Evil outsiders yet without resurrecting them first."

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"--Resurrecting them first is possible?"

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"If they haven't been dead for long enough to change very much."

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"But they still count, at that point...?"

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" - Technically," says Vaus, "Anyone, as soon as they die, becomes a petitioner, which is a type of outsider. The afterlife begins shaping them - or giving them the opportunity to shape themselves, it's somewhat ambiguous - into the sort of thing that inhabits it, and this process continues the longer it goes on until they become hard to recognize as their past selves."

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"But it's a continuous process...? Is there a hard cut-off point for where they no longer count enough for any resurrection spell to grab--the Pharasmin priest I spoke to said there were resurrection spells of varying power--do ones that have started to gain planar-dependent qualities lose those qualities when they're resurrected--"

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"It is, and they do," says Vaus. "People in the Evil afterlives are sort of - traumatized? and people in Nirvana often pick up coping skills, and in Heaven they are somewhat surprised by the fact that not everyone else is Lawful Good, but it largely corrects. And the most powerful resurrection spell has a hard limit of two hundred years if cast by the most powerful clerics in the world, though possibly a cleric more powerful than any who have ever existed who could do more."

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"If it's a soft limit and not a hard one then that suggests that I could de-demonify someone by glowing at their corpses hard enough--does Speak With Dead have a time limit?"

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"The head still needs to be intact," says Vaus, "but that's the only known limitation."

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"Still intact, or does intact again work?"

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"Let me ask," says Vaus, casting Message. (The conversation on the other side of the table is about appropriate demon containment methods.)

"We don't know."

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"Okay, we should test that on the head of someone we're definitely going to resurrect anyway." 

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"Understood," says Kehler.

(Another stack of magic items has arrived for her by this point, along with a question of whether she knows if her dress is technically armor, in which case she can combine its magical powers with those of an enchanted shirt, or clothing, in which case she can combine its magical powers with enchanted armor? Also if she's proficient with any armor.)

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"--It's--a dress? Dresses are clothing? But I'm not sure I understand what's meant here by technically clothing--like, I would expect to be able to wear multiple layers of armor, if I personally magicked them back home--also I'm not sure what's meant by 'proficient with' armor, the thing you do with armor is wear it--is wearing armor harder than wearing normal clothing--like, I would expect wearing a chain shirt to just be like wearing a shirt, admittedly I know less about plate--"

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" - So," says Vaus, "for complicated magical reasons, different items worn in different places have magical overlap effects such that you cannot wear two headbands, or two amulets, or two pairs of boots, and get the magical effects from both. You can wear two rings but not three, and you can wear both regular clothes, and armor over them, magically speaking, without interference. Most wizards who are famous heroes have enchanted under-robes and over-robes, for instance." 

"Armor's just hard to move in if you aren't used to it," says Ulthun. "Trips you up if you aren't use to the weight."

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"Huh. I might be an exception to the weight thing on account of how I am very very strong, but I don't have experience in it. --I might want to just forgo the dress altogether, the enchantments on it aren't actually, uh, that useful--it hangs right and stays clean, and it doesn't tear easily but that's not really the biggest concern I have right now." 

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" - It looks like a minor artifact," says Kehler.

Vaus is just staring. 

"... You know," says Kehler, "all magical items stay clean and are very hard to damage. As a side effect of the main enchantments."

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"This thing has so many pockets! Making it fall right took genuine magic. Plus I stitched my favorite word into it more times than necessary just to look nice--uh, my favorite word can be roughly summed up as 'the thing Sarenrae is about.' ...There wasn't much that could meaningfully threaten me, back home."

 

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"There is probably not very much that can threaten you here," Kehler says, "but that happening anyway is one of the few failure points we have so it's worth tossing a lot of magic items on you just in case."

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"Which is totally legitimate, it just wasn't a going concern when I was making this dress." 

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They'll nod in general understanding! 

Their best idea for a magic shirt for her is a Vest of Pockets, but they can combine this with the +1 Devil Defying Fitting Mithril Chain Shirt, which will grow with her when she shapeshifts (something armor usually has trouble with), will be easy to move in and has at least some protection against the scariest things Cheliax can throw at her.

(Its previous user was a wizard who used a lot of polymorph spells and occasionally got into close-combat as an unintended result.)

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