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"That's not nefarious if she's only intending to use it in the interests of defeating Evil – but I've got several hundred years' worth of evidence that she is, and you don't. Unless I'm lying! Which I might be!"

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"I spent a while being uncertain but at this point I think it's fairly likely that paladins in fact, as they claim, can't break their vows, and that means she means it, though who knows if it'll last into godhood."

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"I think gods are even less able to break their vows than paladins. At least the lawful ones. ...So, what's your nefarious intent?"

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"Why in all the worlds would I tell you that?"

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"Well, in some of the worlds I might have you dominated. Not many, I'm not an enchanter, but it could happen. In this one, I just felt like I might as well ask." 

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"I am a Knight of Ozem, a loyal servant of Iomedae, and a fifth circle swordmage who only plots nefariously to get everyone else to be slightly more paranoid, or at least no one can prove I have any other reasons. How about you, what are your nefarious schemes here."

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"Oh, I'm only helping out with the crusade to put myself in a position to subvert the natural order of creation – or at least those parts of it whose existence offends me personally."

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"See, I figured. Which parts of the natural order of creation happen to most offend you personally."

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"Hell, of course. I'm also not fond of the town of Carcassona in the months of Erastus and Arodus. I was on assignment there once and I say with no exaggeration that a man could drown in his own sweat, besides which it's a malarial swamp, and the whole of polite society flees for parts north."

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"Hmm," says Marit, thoughtfully. "That seems like a hard problem to solve- Carcassona, I mean, Hell seems totally straightforward. No one knows what causes malaria, so it's hard to just murder it. I've heard the claim disease predates Urgathoa, so even killing her might not do it. There are cold parts of the Elemental Plane of Water, but of course if you open a permanent portal to one of them in the fashion of ancient ambitious archmages, it'll freeze over, and I'm not sure how much 'chilly but not near freezing' water does for you in improving the overall climate. Maybe you want a portal to a cold bit of the Elemental Plane of Air - that I've never heard of, but perhaps I wouldn't, and if malaria is caused by malarial airs then perhaps you solve both your problems at once."

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"So, I've thought about this. In the first place, I'd want to drain the swamp, which clears up the bad airs, and that's a simple civil engineering project. The weather, I admit, is harder. It's believed in my day that winds are caused by air rising as it heats and sinking as it cools – so perhaps I should open a portal to the warmer regions of the Plane of Air below the town and to the colder regions above it, and give them a permanent breeze. And then it's just a matter of restoring the theater or something."  

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"What's wrong with the theatre?"

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"Destroyed in the war. One of the wars. It was burnt out when I got there, anyway."

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"Ah, that's too bad. I guess the collapse of the Empire will've been terrible everywhere."

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"It's not collapsed, just – smaller."

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Marit looks at him thoughtfully for a moment but doesn't press it. "Maybe this time around when they build the theatre they can build it of stone."

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"Oh, I'm sure the old building was dreadful anyway, we'll do a better job this time around. – Maybe I should make a project of Carcassona when I get home, at that. I haven't thought about the place in years, just spent a bad summer there when I was twenty two. It might be good for me to have something small to fiddle with between projects."

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"Oh, for some reason I'd imagined you couldn't straightforwardly go home. If you can then you should bring us books of the sciences."

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"Well, I've no idea how I could now, but my wife will be working on it and I'm certain she'll succeed. I'm also certain I could succeed if I tried, but as long as I'm here I've got more urgent problems to attend to."

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"Do you actually have a plan to function in the presence of Tar-Baphon, if it comes up? The existing ones are 'be a paladin' or 'be Arazni' or 'be Alfirin' but I asked her what she was doing once and she claimed she wasn't even sure, that it was more than just 'being better than me at throwing off spells'. ...if it were just that, some other people would succeed sometimes."

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 "I suspect I'm more like Alfirin than I am like most other things, but I should set up a contingency just in case. There's an artifact back home which makes the wearer completely immune to all magic which affects the mind and I've been meaning to try and recreate it – it was made by Asmodeus and just on principle anything he can do I'd like to be able to do better – but it would probably take me at least a year. It didn't seem worth it there. It might be here."

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"You could study Iomedae. She picked that up about a year back, it was very exciting. No one knows if it's a powerful paladin thing or just an Iomedae thing, like the fact she can cast Telepathic Bond for some reason or the fact she can cast Divine Favor on other people."

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"Ooooh, do you think she'd let me?"

And, because it really does seem like a good idea to check – 

Alfirin, do we have a plan if I find myself face to face with Tar-Baphon?

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"Yes! That's why she eventually admitted she had it - against my advice, obviously - she wanted to see if anyone could figure out how to give it to other people."

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"Then I'd be delighted to oblige. I'd probably still be thinking about it from an artifact-design perspective, but it could be very interesting. I've already done some work with headbands of Mind Blank – wait, you can't cast it yourself, can you, I should probably make another one – "

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