"Good thought. You'll have to do it – and we should have a story for them if anyone asks."

"I did tell you I'm no good at illusions, right? But I can probably manage a first-circle spell that'll stand up to a casual inspection, at least." She makes them look like a set of eyes of the eagle.

Then he can put them on, and plane shift to their camp. 

He'd always imagined that prophecy would look like threads. Failure of imagination: prophecy doesn't look like anything he's ever seen. Now, Élie's a wizard, and finding words for phenomena beyond the ordinary range of mortal comprehension is part of his job. Still, of all the things this experience isn't quite like, thread doesn't spring to mind: rough weather, maybe, or a great number of intersecting spheres, or the sound of an orchestra tuning. The dominant impressions are confusion and density. If he was any less cognitively enhanced, he suspects he wouldn't have any impression at all. 

...No good if Marit notices him staggering around like a drunkard.

"Well," he tells Alfirin a few moments later, "that may take some getting used to."

"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it," she says, and adds, "It only took me a couple of days when I first learned the spell a few years ago." because they're out in the open and you never know who's listening. She resolves not to try the lenses for herself until they're in a private sanctum somewhere, at least.

She casts a sending to let the command staff know the two of them are in the material and available for the immediate future, and then, because Marit will probably want to know if it works, flags down the nearest officer and asks if the knight-commander's location is known at present.

"There was some fighting on the Ravengro front this morning, sir, and the Knight-Commander was there, but I don't know if she still is."

(And a reply to the Sending will confirm that it's been - not an unusual day, no pressing emergencies, but a busy one, and they're largely out in the field.)

"Who's in command at this site now?"

If Arnisant thought they'd be of help dropping in on a conflict right now he'd have said, so they can throw some spells at whatever local logistical troubles there are while waiting to catch up with the Crusade.

They can be directed to the site commander, Macilius, a competent Taldane general who like the wiser half of Taldane generals has no political or theological opinions whatsoever and is happy to get the archmages a list of things to do and vanishingly unlikely to make any note of their mood or their fancy glasses.

Perfect! They can do some things from the list until the high command is free.

She'll let them know about an hour later that things are quiet enough they can convene. 

"Tar-Baphon's being cautious. I think we want to keep pushing, see what it takes to get him to show."

"I imagine he's trying to plan a trap, but I'd be surprised if it was ready yet. So, I'm agreed we should keep pushing now."

"We can move from Marian Leigh on Gallowspire. We probably shouldn't, but we can. Other than that I'm not sure what draws him out - Kronquist?"

" - tempted by that, actually. It's a wildly more concentrated battlefield, the archmage advantage is more useful, we do need to handle it eventually - Elie, I don't suppose you recall anything about how that eventually went -"

He does, actually. 

"You besieged it and eventually everyone gave up. I think Malyas might be there to this day."

"- huh."

"Saved again by the profound tendency of the undead towards inaction. Or he left and has been dominating or impersonating successive rulers of Ustalav and Lastwall for centuries, could also be that."

"Perhaps we should give Fort Lorrin a sunroof. - anyway, I don't know that 'we never took Kronquist' is strong reason to think we can't, if we could see he was never going to bother us again it wouldn't've been worth the effort."

"The leaders of Lastwall are all your paladins and Ustalav is only ruled in the most technical sense, so I can't say he'd be getting much out of it. I suspect that at some point you beat him badly enough that he decided to lick his wounds for the next millenium, but I'm not familiar with the circumstances myself."

"It doesn't shock me that with Tar-Baphon gone he'd go into hiding, he has a lot of other enemies if Tar-Baphon's not around to keep them in line and undead do have, as Marit says, a profound bias towards doing nothing for a millenium. The most unappealing thing about undeath, really.

It'll be a very tough fight with Tar-Baphon still alive, obviously, but not as risky as Gallowspire. On the other hand if we win it we may just drive Malyas and his people back towards Gallowspire and make that fight even tougher."

"It seems better to keep them divided. I think we wouldn't want to actually take Kronquist, but... we could make some moves in that direction. If we go downriver to Ardis, maybe even as far as Chastel, we'd be solidly between Tar-Baphon's forces and Malyas'. And we'd be stretched out along the river, but I don't think it's actually a worse logistical situation than we already have with just Marian Leigh, and holding more territory on that front will make our defenses there more robust against a single defeat..."

"How many men can we supply through Marian Leigh -"

"Enough," says Pereza. "- I suppose we ought to try it once and make sure it works as planned but I would expect to, with routine Teleportation Circles, be able to supply a hundred thousand at the other end, and you'd be mad to send a third of that."

"I think if we go with this offensive - I predict the first major counterattack comes before we reach Ardis. Probably around the Eshirwood, depending on what the terrain there looks like... Probably with simultaneous attacks at Marian Leigh and on the Ravengro front, so we'll want to be sure to avoid getting into an awkward position on both fronts at the same time."