Perhaps that's the true purpose of the Starstone, to draw all the absurdly ambitious conquerer types away from conquering the world.

Is he claiming that Aroden himself wasn't an absurdly ambitious conqueror? 

Oh, no, He was. Iomedae's clearly in His mold and it's not a mold approved of among the kind of people who frequent this coffee shop. And while Aroden doesn't get primary blame for the Empire His church definitely doesn't oppose it, like it ought to, if it were really concerned with human freedom.

The Starstone still might be useful catsnip for conquerors.

Does Aroden's church claim to be concerned with human freedom, or merely human wealth and human glory and human progress? 

It depends which priest you badger, really. The Galtan ones will generally say defensively that obviously Aroden cares about all things that are important to humans.

Ah-huh. Especially where the humans contradict each other? 

Yeah, yeah, it's very, Aroden is everything that you think is important don't think too hard about it. Really all of religion is a tool of those in power to maintain it.

Oh, quite. In his opinion, Aroden has some admirable qualities, but it's no excuse to go worshipping him about it. 

The man is charmed, and curious how they haven't managed to meet before. 

Élie is also charmed! He's spent the past several years traveling the world and learning magic. This is his first visit home in – well, in far too long.

Oh, there's so much he has to catch up on! The university's thriving despite the idiot of a provost. Does Elié go to the opera?

He wants to hear all the latest gossip about the university, though he's not sure they've had a provost who isn't an idiot in his lifetime. And naturally he attends the opera! Wasn't Mademoiselle Kerouaille simply divine – pardon his language – in that thing by Marivaux at the opéra national?

Oh, he attends the opéra national? He is speaking to a partisan of the opéra litran, now quite indignant with him. Does he have any idea what kind of deranged nonsense the opéra national has been staging? Of course not, he's been out of town.

Oh. Well, he never used to frequent the Opéra Litran (so called because its theater is on the Rue Litran, which is in Isarn), but he doesn't understand how a patriot – and what's more, a man of taste – could countenance what they did to The Sisters. 

The man feels that if the flower of the Galtan arts aren't translated the rest of the empire will never respect them!

And Élie certainly isn't against translation, in its proper place – which might be Absalom, or Westcrown, or Oppara. An audience of Galtans in Isarn should be expected to appreciate their own language. And anyway they butchered Renart's second aria. 

(Élie hasn't actually seen the original and for all he knows it was worse, but he's having too much fun to stop now). 

He can't defend Renart's second aria but he thought the first act was actually much better staged than the original, and it did attract the sort of people who don't go to proper Galtan opera.

And where does one go for a proper Galtan opera these days, if not the Opéra National? 

Well, the opéra litran is currently running three different new shows in Galtan, as he evidently prefers it, one of them all told mediocre but the other two quite good, and while they do not usually appreciate the patronage of partisans of the opéra national Elie could perhaps be forgiven under the extenuating circumstances of having been out of the country for these many years. - where's he been travelling to? 

Osirion, mostly, with stints in Quantium and Holomog, but he's been as far as Vudra. 

All non-Imperial travel, which the man approves of wholeheartedly, not that he thinks of the Keleshite Empire as exactly better - but of course Osirion like Galt has its own national identity whoever its foreign ruler, doesn't it.  He knows some people from Quantium, and can invite Elie to dinner sometime to meet them (the opera is tentatively forgiven). He knows little of Holomog.

Holomog is lovely! The whole place is honeycombed with minor rifts to the maelstrom! Half the population are sorcerers and they've gotten quite good at containing them! It's an excellent place to study planar geography! 

They also get by without much of anything by way of a government, unless you count their semi-divine sorcerer-queens, which most Holomogi don't seem to. He's not entirely sure how it all works, but they all seem happy enough. Some day he'd like to go back and write a monograph about the whole thing. 

That's inspiring! He's legitimately inspired! He regrets the impossibility of going himself! He wants to know everything - the food, the arts, the national character, the planar rift situation which really sounds concerning when you say it like that. (Other interested parties have gathered around too.)

If Elie would like, he can keep the occupants of this coffee shop all night with his travel stories. The proprietor will cough pointedly about the hour until enough gold is dropped on him for him to cheerfully serve them more drink instead.

Then he can tell them all about Holomog and its people, with their bright hair and their bright clothes, and how their children play at tossing cantrips the way little Galtan boys and girls toss balls, and the strange animals that live among the rifts – two-headed lizards whose skins are perfect mirrors, and something rather like a small pig covered in scales which rolls instead of walking, and birds with six or eight wings which the locals swear sing in Protean. 

And as the evening gets later, he can talk about other places he's been. The mana wastes. An Osirian tomb with a portal to the Sphinx valley four – no, three thousand years ago. And Tian Xia – 

Is anyone going to call him back to the crusade? 

He gets a sending.

"Karlenius mentioned he was expecting you by nightfall. Did you lose track of time or did something come up? Hope you're not dead."