...Prophecy glasses. Brilliant. She is now regretting not getting around to wondrous items yet.

They can run those tests, and more. You can't prophesy the future of someone who is mind blanked, but you can still pick up effects they are going to have on other creatures. (Though the spell tends to be less informative about the causes of the target's fate than normal). Prophecy is mostly unaffected by private sanctum or nondetection.

Oh he's glad Alfirin thinks it's a good idea. ...He likes making glasses. He has pairs that can see magic and diseases and do variable magnification and also he's a reasonably competent mundane lens-crafter. 

Oh, disease that's - an easy way to get sidetracked - she's very curious how he did that. Does it detect everything that some healers call a disease, or just the things that remove disease will fix, or some different category?

He's not actually sure! It gets some things healers don't think of as diseases, it doesn't get some things they do, and the correspondence with remove disease is also imperfect. The detection mechanism was inspired by a magnifying device used in Axis to detect disease-bearing animalicules, but it was at one of those museums for pilgrims and the guide wouldn't let him write down anything about how it worked.

She has more questions but she'll hold them for now so that they can focus on their actual research project for now. Maybe later. How long would prophecy glasses take, and can she help?

It's hard to say – ordinarily a project of this scope might take him a month or two, but he'll probably have to develop something like a prophecy-sight spell first. Then again, that's probably the part Alfirin can be the most help with, if she can't do wondrous items. 

That seems like where she'd best be able to contribute, yes. She'd like to at least observe the rest of the process, since she's going to have to pick up magic item creation eventually, but they do have a number of other things they need to get done so it might not be the best use of her time. She's a little sad about that fact. She suspects large parts of the item creation can be done in the other demiplane, at least, which will help out with the timeframe.

It takes them a couple of days to work out a detailed specification for prophecy sight that they think will work. It will stabilize at eighth, and will last rounds rather than minutes or hours, and requires ongoing concentration - but it's enough to get started on, and they can probably fix many of those flaws in the process of actually implementing the spell.

And what's their story for the crusade about what they were doing? 

Secret archmagery! Unless Élie wants to go back to the fast demiplane and spend half a sidereal day on plans to deal with Tar-Baphon and have enough concrete progress to justify a couple of days - but the Crusade knows about the time dilation and Marit will wonder why they "weren't using it" and so it seems much better to just be honest that they are hiding things. She does in fact have enough built-up trust for that.

...even with Marit?

Oh, Marit will assume the worst because he likes to only get pleasant surprises. But unless he thinks they are literally mind-controlling Iomedae, he'll go to her first, and Iomedae understands that they have good reasons for secrecy.

One day Élie is going to find out what happened to Marit to make him like this. But for now, they can plane shift. 

The Crusade is where they left it. The plans for Marian Leigh are ready, though there'll probably be some swaps, and unit commanders will get their assignments two days out from the attack which is not yet.

Iomedae's out today, down at the coast of Lake Encarthan where the civilian administration of the conquered territories is based, adjudicating military court proceedings and probably (though no one says this) taking reports from her spies. Karlenius is in command in her absence, not that there's all that much to do. They are presently unharassed by the dead. There are plans for an illusion light show at night if the whole day's quiet.

While he's here, he should probably ask if Karlenius has strategic thoughts on how he should be spending his time

Karlenius is somewhat startled by the question! Probably he should be working on making Fabricate sixth circle, they were discussing the other night and it'll more than quadruple how many people have access to it? They will obviously need Elie qua archmage for Marian Leigh but if they're pretending they've only the one archmage they hardly need him hanging around to counterspell Tar-Baphon. He assumes that the Shield of Aroden/Arnisant incident is a divine intervention Aroden will do again in this timeline.

Élie is getting the sense he should take a wider poll of senior crusade commanders on what they think his priorities ought to be. Possibly lists should be involved. 

Alfirin has never really evinced any interest in what Karlenius thinks she should be working on. He can compile a list if Elie's interested.

He doesn't know the very first thing about the broader strategic picture of the crusade! Karlenius does! He's not promising to do whatever he's told but it's certainly information he would like to have! 

Sure! He'll ask everyone tonight and provide a list. It's not even really about the broader picture of the crusade, right, ultimately a lot of the question is about what benefits the world most and he's not actually great at that kind of big picture stuff but the balance of everyone's opinions will probably be a reasonable opinion, it almost always is. And not entirely because Iomedae's in the balance.

Élie thinks, but does not say, that the paladins he's met don't always care to distinguish between things that would help the world most and things that would help their particular pet cause. 

Does anyone around here particularly want to speak with him? If not, he might like to do a little sight-seeing. 

He's welcome to do some sight-seeing! He should be back by night, if he wants to see/participate in the light show.

He can do that! In the meantime – 

He wants to go back to Aroden's library. He can absorb a book's content in minutes – thank you, Naima – and he's still barely started in on one section. There's so much there – so much that was lost – 

He wants to go back to Aroden's library. But he needs to go to Isarn. 

He'd figured that out somewhere between Aroden's notes on the spells the Azlanti used to stabilize buildings thousands of feet tall and Aroden's notes on the operations of a particular municipal Azlanti waste-water management board. He thinks that one must have been from before his ascension – they weren't the writings of a God working disinterestedly towards the flourishing of all humanity, but of a man who missed his home. 

Élie can tell. He's been missing his home since he was old enough to read. He misses the Isarn of books no one remembered to suppress, the Isarn that drew in poets and philosophers from the whole world over, the Isarn where, if one was arrested for criticizing the emperor, they'd be put under house arrest and write three volumes of witty invective over their morning chocolate. That place might have existed for about six months, between Pharast and Rova of 4710, but it's gone now and he hadn't thought he'd ever see it in his lifetime. 

He teleports. 

Isarn is smaller, though not by as much as you might imagine, and poorer, but not by very much at all. There is work underway on a new wall around the city that'll encompass all the growth that's spilled out of the current walls of the city. The streets are very narrow and the buildings very tall: four floors or even five, everywhere, making walking through the narrow streets feel like walking through a maze. It's dirty and it's very very loud; everyone apparently advertises their wares by shouting. 

The city has more than three dozen religious orders. Arodenite ones, mostly, but also Sarenrite ones and Erastilian and Abadaran and one to Gorum, one to Calistria, one dually devoted to Shelyn and Aroden that produces world-renowned illuminated manuscripts. Some of them are across the street from one another and locked in a bitter rivalry such that either excommunicates any member that speaks to the other, usually over a difference of interpretation about a holy text, sometimes over differing stances on slavery or national borders. The largest Arodenite order claims its own island, in the middle of the river, and claims credit for more than a dozen recent priests who attained seventh circle or higher, and all the great theologians of the age. It teaches grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music. There are six opera houses in a complicated state of appreciation and animosity for one another; the central cathedral to Aroden is the most spectacular in all the world, with glorious high domed ceilings and intricate stonework and statues, out front, of man at his many labors, so startling realistic that men could have been petrified to make them (though, if he asks, they weren't. There's a sculpting college.)

There is, separately from that, a university; it has tense relations with the surrounding town, which is to say that in a recent incident thousands of students and townspeople participated in a tavern brawl that left five people dead. its largest school is that of arts and letters, though there's also one of medicine and one of theology and one of agriculture and one of magic.

And yes, there's political invective, lots of it, directed openly at the Emperor of Taldor and at the governor of Galt and at the mayor of Isarn and, in fact, at Iomedae, who is wasting taxpayer money on an unnecessary war, apparently, though most of it is directed at people Elie has never heard of for political opinions he has never contemplated, like that people should be forbidden to participate in mutual-aid associations or that everyone should be permanently reduce-personed for space efficiency reasons.