"You're not actually the most paranoid person I've ever met, but all of the others were operating in an environment with significantly more risk of devastating personal betrayals." 

" - it's because I've spent my entire life operating around paladins! They -

- have you got a couple of Alter Self -"

"I didn't prepare it today, but just give me one minute." 

That is either a significant underestimate or an extremely impressive boast. He'll wait patiently to see which.

He's not even trying to brag, he's been able to do this since he was fifth circle. 

"Ready when you are!"

"Lovely! Your name is Erdis, I'll do the talking, and I obviously won't be using any real information about the status of our actual forces, because it'd be tremendously stupid and undermine the point I'm trying to make."

And he Alter Selfs himself, into a much younger and somewhat plumper man with a shiny face and a broad smile, and goes trotting out towards the camp in search of some paladins who are eating dinner.

When he finds them he sits down, and looks a bit longingly at their bowls, and says, "Altriar. Do you mind if we join? I promise I won't ask for your food, but I'll sleep better if I at least smelled it."

" - is the meal hall closed," says the nearest person immediately. "We can put a bowl together for the both of you - go on -" And he'll offer his own around the fire for everyone else to top off with a spoonful or two of their own.

"No, no, I said I wouldn't ask! And I can stand to lose the weight, really - my mother's going to have a great deal to say to me, if even the Crusade can't fix the cheeks -"

"Your friend needs it," says the man who first offered his bowl. "And you want to muscle up, not to starve. I'm Helne."

Elie and Marit will now be FED. 

Ah, paladins. 

"Are you new?" Helne says. "Meal hall always closes, at this hour."

        "Is it that obvious - of course it's that obvious, I don't know why I even hoped it wasn't. We're with the fifth, stationed eighty miles out from here at the pass to Urgir, only they rotated us out. For, uh, the obvious reason -"

"The obvious reason -"

        "it's been a disaster, hasn't anyone here heard? So it started when - I don't know if they're doing this here too, but they decided to double down on mixed units. You've got me, only sign Aroden had anything to do with me is that I can smite things, though I still usually can't hit them, and then we've got - two, maybe three, veterans in a unit, and one person powerful enough for spells, and it's supposed to strengthen you faster, doing it like that, only they still want us to hold the same forsaken pass they previously wanted held with senior people!"

" - well, that's stunningly stupid," says a man eagerly from across the fire. "That's not how they did the mixed units anywhere else at all - you've got to tell your commander if he hasn't already noticed that that's not the thing which worked so well on the north march -"

"Oh, what're you doing around here -"

And Marit will smile, slightly sheepishly, at Elie, as he gets a whole account of the unit composition of the forces of the Shining Crusade. 

He finishes the stew while they talk.

"I was waiting for you to drop the illusion and put the fear of Aroden into them," he says after everyone else has left.

"Hopefully they'll figure out later the fifth is nowhere near Urgir, and come tell someone. To their credit, they usually do do that. If they don't I'll drop by in a few days and have a talk with them.

- I have fought with Iomedae some about - doing what it'd take to build a culture where it doesn't happen. She thinks it isn't worth it."

"She might be right, at that. I – look, you won't be offended if I mention infernal Cheliax, will you?"

"Not at all." He's offended at the idea of Infernal Cheliax, but that's all the more reason to be entirely comfortable with it being mentioned.

"That's a society where the kind of thing we just saw wouldn't happen. Not because those soldiers would have thought about the risks – because they'd believe that sharing anything as valuable as food or warmth or information is childish and stupid, and because they'd know from long experience that anything they let slip will be used to hurt them. 

Now, I don't think it's necessary to go quite that far. Paladins in my day don't have that problem either. But I have to wonder if it isn't because they've learned from their enemies." 

"I wish - it's great that they'll share food at the slightest provocation. I want a world where they'll share food at the slightest provocation. I just wish they'd think 'what's the downside of sharing food? what's the downside of sharing how many spellcasters per battalion' -" 

"I think you're right that it would be better if they thought about it more, and if incidents like this happened less. You probably don't want the world where they never happen at all. I don't know of a way to do that without fear." 

If it were just fear, it wouldn't work on paladins. 

He - takes the broader point, though. "I will tell Iomedae she is probably right. She'll be smug - she keeps a tally, you know, when strong disagreements among the staff are resolved, who was right. So that next time she can go 'six times out of ten, when Marit thinks I'm being an idiot, I'm right. ...four times, I'm being an idiot."

"For what it's worth, in my experience, paladins of Iomedae are much less likely to chat about unit tactics with total strangers than paladins of Aroden. She listened to you." 

That earns him a smile. The first one since Fabricate, if he's counting. "Huh. Well, if I'm persuasive to gods perhaps I should start in on Aroden."

"...You know, if you were really paranoid, you wouldn't tell Iomedae she's right, you'd be trying to figure out why I'm deliberately trying to get you to lower your guard. Though, maybe you are, you're probably better at concealing your thoughts than I am at reading you." 

"If you're evil, you've coopted Alfirin; she says she checked with a Miracle, which would, actually, suffice. If she's working with you, she'd've taken me out by now. She'd know she needed to; it would not be a hard task for two archmages and it wouldn't be one of many such tasks. I may've taken some steps in anticipation of that - I don't remember, obviously - but it's been long enough I'm pretty sure she hasn't betrayed us, though obviously I will continue being the kind of person she would've needed to take care of by now which means not acting as if I've derived that much reassurance from the fact I haven't been."

"She checked with a miracle that I am what I say I am – an ordinary human wizard – and not, say, Mephistopheles. I could easily be an ordinary human wizard with nefarious intentions! Or I coopted Alfirin and we're keeping you around because it's less suspicious and we don't think you'll catch us. Or we're not evil at all but acting at cross-purposes to the crusade for reasons of our own, which might be better served if you had lax security." 

He is not going to add that Alfirin is very, very good at impersonating one's Lawful Good allies while advancing mysterious plans of her own. He doesn't think she'd appreciate it.  

"- yes," he says cheerfully, "some of those things are almost definitely true! I've never met anyone who wasn't, on some level, using the crusade to pursue their own at least mildly nefarious goals."

"Not even Iomedae?"

" - she has amassed a country, an administration for it, an army that worships her, the admiration and respect of nearly all of the world's powerful living adventurers, she has stories told about her everywhere those adventurers come from, and she's the most powerful paladin anyone can remember because she throws herself at nightmares every day and Taldor pays for all the resurrections."