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Lucy attempts to solve post-Razmir Ustalav
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Absolutely she can have Sarenrite holy books! They have lots of Sarenrite holy books.

They will be happy to have secretaries interview though they'd like to procrastinate that until the really immediate crisis where Ustalav is overrun with undead and lots of people in Lastwall are dead and there's a Worldwound is over.

Valid. 

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Update on the Commune!

A sheet of paper with all the questions and answers written down, on the table so they can all see. (They had more than one Commune's worth of questions, so the rest will be a minute.)

The paper says:

Is the person who identified herself to us as Lucy largely aligned with Your interests?

YES.

Is the person who identified herself to us as Lucy seriously misrepresenting her abilities?

NO.

Is the person who identified herself to us as Lucy in urgent danger within the next twenty-four hours?

UNCLEAR.

Is law-light lethal to outsiders?

UNCLEAR.

Is law-light destructive to Tar-Baphon's seal?

YES.

Does it on net serve the cause of good for the person who identified herself to us as Lucy to shine Life-light over the moon?

NO.

Does it on net serve the cause of good for the person who identified herself to us as Lucy to shine Life-Light over Ustalav?

YES.

Does it on net serve the cause of good for the person who identified herself to us as Lucy to shine Life-Light over Geb?

UNCLEAR.

Does it on net serve the cause of good for the person who identified herself to us as Lucy to shine Law-Light over the Worldwound?

YES.

Has Cheliax learned information dangerous to the cause of Good about Law-Light or Life-Light?

NO.

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"Shame about the moon, but I can't say I'm surprised," Lucy muses, inspecting the paper. 

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"'Unclear' is the best result we've gotten on any Geb-related question in the past four hundred years," says the Lord Watcher of Lastwall.

"No, not surprising," says Kehler. "But unfortunate."

(Their current list of more question is 'Is Law-light lethal to some outsiders but not others', 'if she takes the actions you have recommended will Lucy be in urgent danger within the next twenty-four hours,' 'Is there a simple, accessible-to-us plan for healing Tsukiyo with a sufficiently good chance of working that you recommend we try to come up with and execute it?', and 'Is there anything of catastrophic importance we should ask that we haven't yet?')

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"I feel like I would have suggestions if I had all the local context, but as it is I'm not thinking of anything." 

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"And I'm sure we'd have suggestions if we knew more of what you can do," says Vaus.

(New additions to the list: 'do we already have plans we should carry out with regards to this that we have already dismissed', 'Should we inform Cyprian before going ahead with our plan', 'should we inform Felandriel Morgethai before going ahead with our plan', and various other similar questions for important allies.)

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Lucy is curious who all these people are but files it under "non-urgent," possibly unless the answer to any of those is yes. 

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Cyprian is the best general alive and the popular dictator of Galt, which is the main country opposed to Cheliax on a geopolitical scene, but he also fights lots of wars of territorial conquest and self-aggrandizement. Felandriel Morgethai is the most powerful wizard in Avistan and Chaotic Good. Nefreti Clapati is the most powerful spellcaster in the whole Inner Sea region and True Neutral and both mad and omniscient. Other names are mostly monarchs or heads of Good faiths.

(One of them is ambiguously both, Ruby Prince Khemet III, who is god-king of Osirion and high priest of Abadar, the Lawful Neutral-but-inclining-more-towards-Good-than-evil god of trade and cities, but he's one of the first ones who will get the cut if they run out of questions; Osirion is a secondary power at best and Abadar is firmly opposed to ever fighting wars.)

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...Lucy makes an interesting face when they explain Cyprian. 

(The face is: I must remind myself that I am NOT the most powerful human-scale agent around and I can NOT storm up to this man and scold him like a misbehaving child.)

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Galt is much better off than it was when it was under Cheliax and... internally... much better off than it was under the previous rulers, who were a rapidly-changing set of politicians, demagogues, mob leaders and generals pulling coups on each other or failing to do so and getting repressed.

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"Huh, sorta reminds me of Napoleon--uh, historical figure in my world."

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... At some point her writing down lots of stuff about her world would honestly be really useful but they've been assuming resurrections were higher priority.

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"I completely agree. I've got some blank journals, I can get started on it in any spare moments. --If I'm going to be using my blank journals for this I would like some more blank journals at some point." 

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- Yeah, they can buy her some or she can send her secretary to buy some tomorrow or she can buy some herself in the market, they're way less expensive than magic items.

... The magic item they really wish they could get her is an Amulet of the Planes, which let you plane shift, but the only ones known are either in Hell, in the private collections of Very Powerful People who almost certainly cannot be convinced to part with them on four hours' notice, or in the control of Razmiran remnant warlords, who are, uh, almost certainly not up for selling it, given how the last attempt made to trade with them went.

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Right now her context on Razmir is "he tried to conquer Ustalav, he got super mega assassinated, now Ustalav is extra bonus fucked." 

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He was the most powerful wizard on Golarion while being stubborn, socially inept, and inclined to respond to criticism by doubling down on whatever he was doing before. He was also a specialist in crafting magic items and the Lawful Evil ruler of a small state as an arbitrary and incompetent self-declared god-king, and a geopolitical ally of Cheliax. Our former spymaster, Jean Riudaure, attempted to lure him over to our side - he had exactly one Good advisor who he listened to - and part of Riudaure's plan involved agreeing not to meddle with him conquering Ustalav, if he'd work with us to put down the already extremely dangerous undead and build a road to the Worldwound through Ustalav, which would give safe passage for travel for troops trying to reinforce it. Then, simultaneously, Riudaure was assassinated and the undead and Chelish carried out simultaneous assassination attempts on Razmir, one of which unexpectedly succeeded thoroughly enough he stayed dead. We do not know how; killing a ninth-circle wizard is approximately impossible and he had already destroyed one city for defying him, so we weren't expecting him to stay dead.

We also weren't expecting all the undead to unite without the Whispering Tyrant around to mind control them into servitude. We did not think that was something they did. Apparently, under enough pressure, we were wrong.

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"...How does someone like that...get that powerful?"

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" - He got to be god-king by being a ninth circle wizard," Vaus says. "We don't know how he made it to ninth circle. We think -"

"- So about ten thousand years ago two extremely powerful magical civilizations, far ahead of where we are, decided to fight a war, and one of them tried to crash a moon into the planet to stop the other. The gods mitigated the impact, at great cost, so instead of all life on the planet ending only all civilization did. We think he found something from their age, that gave him magic nobody else understood or could replicate."

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"Crash a moon into the planet." 

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"Aroden, who survived it and later used his knowledge of pre-Earthfall magic to become a god, said that the Algothulls thought they'd be safe because they were at the bottom of the ocean."

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Deep breath. 

 

 

 

"I probably want to talk to Aroden at some point." 

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"Died trying to fix everything wrong with the world a hundred years ago, and not in the kind of way that leaves a body."

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"Okay. Not urgent. --We were talking about an amulet, I think, before we got sidetracked bringing me up to speed--"

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"One of the very extreme ways this can go wrong," says the Lord Watcher, "is if someone tries to kidnap you with the Wish spell, which has a known wording for kidnapping people which works from other planes, and which the most powerful devils can - very rarely and at great cost - use. If you can Plane Shift to a Good plane or back to Lastwall, you are approximately safe.

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