"Not unless the Shining Crusaders attack the Chelish forces stationed at the Worldwound. I strongly recommend that you not grant passage to anyone who is unwilling to swear to abide by the current treaty's terms."

"We are happy to swear to abide by the terms of that treaty, once they are provided to us, and in the meantime to swear to either abide by it or come directly home at the first opportunity."

"Honestly also care about what Regill thinks of your plans, but I suspect that everyone will be very annoyed with me if I try to insist that you agree on anything."

"I will not assist with an invasion of Cheliax. I am willing to provide an assessment of whether the northern forts will hold."

"I expect that 'war over very swiftly' is going to entail agreements with the Hellknight orders in advance and I am tentatively willing to defer to them for assessments of objective criteria relevant to our agreement. Tentatively only because while I am impressed by Paralictor Derenge I don't actually know much more than that about the orders.  I do not expect to proceed with an invasion while substantial disagreement exists among reasonable people about how long it will take to succeed. My own command has a good track record of being correct about the odds our operations will succeed and the timeframe on which they will succeed or fail. And we can ask Iomedae the god, if She's any good."

"That makes sense. I will... think about that one."

"I care about what happens to Cheliax after, but I don't know that I have any easily swearable terms that capture anything I care about. I care about - you saw the elf girl with the burn scars in the corner before, yes?"

"Ember."

"Yes, Ember."

"Ember is an elf who was born the same year that Aroden died and the Worldwound opened. She tells us that her father thought it was a sign that she would help close the wound, and on those grounds he traveled with her to Kenabres, decades ago, when she was even more a child than she is now. The current leader of those who keep the peace in Kenabres is an old Iomedan inquisitor named Hulrun, and he was an Iomedan inquisitor at the time, though he was much younger then. He is, to this day, extremely concerned about Kenabres being infiltrated by demon cultists - which is a very real problem, to be clear, I have met an absolutely baffling number of demon cultists in the past several months."

"Hulrun was very wary of new crusaders by the time Ember and her father reached Kenabres. He felt that the city watch was insufficiently paranoid about them. I don't know what they did, Ember doesn't remember - she's a witch now, and may also have been a witch then, it's hard to say - but I know that Hulrun ordered Ember and her father burned at the stake. She survived only because another Iomedan, overcome with regret at the last second, rescued Ember from the flames and ran away with her. She instead grew up as an orphan on the streets of Kenabres, and may well help close the wound as her father predicted, no matter how many faces people make at me for including her and occasionally getting her killed. But Hulrun is still in a position of authority, in Kenabres, and when I met him he was spending time in the middle of Deskari's attack trying to hunt down the very group of Desnans that Arueshalae had warned about the attack, and who had tried to warn him in turn. - well, no, technically when I met him he was telling me not to call myself a crusader unless he knew who I was, but you get the point."

"I tell you this story, not because I in any way think that Cheliax is better, or even because I think that Hulrun is representative of Iomedans in general, whether you would consider our Iomedae a broken version of Herself or not. I tell it because I notice that it illustrates a way in which Cheliax is similar to the nation I have been to whose government most cares what Iomedae thinks. Ember isn't the only case, just the most obviously sympathetic. And I care about not starting a war in order to get a society with those same flaws in a different coat of paint."

"That is extraordinarily sensible of you. I still think it matters enormously whether or not people go to Hell, however evilly they are governed in life, but were that the exposure I had to the Church of Iomedae She'd be on the list of gods I mean to kill.

I am not sure what more I can possibly say, except - that you should visit Cheliax while you are here."

"Maybe I should. I should also be getting back to where I came from, but maybe I should anyway, especially if we think that waiting a day is likely to result in any more appreciable amount of safety."

"Anyway. I care about all of that. And then I care about, if you decide to have a war, and then win it as you expect, and then decide to try to rule Cheliax, whether you will then, as ruler of Cheliax, deliver me the troops I need to win my war. As you predicted, but yes, that's a thing I care a lot about."

"That I am certainly willing to promise to do, with the details pending a better apprehension of the situation but certainly possible to settle before an invasion. I have a strong suspicion that Cheliax's current forces are tied down by the fact that every other power in the Inner Sea is opposed to a country being run by Asmodeus, and that were it not run by Asmodeus it would have fewer problems on all of its borders. Also a lot of the soldiers will be Lawful Evil and I will be looking very hard for ways to let them escape it."

"I think they're mostly tied down by the countries that used to be Chelish provinces and then had bloody revolutions about it, but I obviously wouldn't necessarily know. I expect you to be capable of negotiating a situation with Andoran and Molthune that frees up troops in all of them, which amounts to the same thing."

"It sounds like we can probably come to an agreement that will leave me willing to transport you across, if I can. But I want both of us to have more information before we make any such agreements. So I still think that I should bring Marit across alone, first, if you'll let me, and then bring him back and have another talk about what you're planning in light of Marit's new information. And I think that I will also want some kind of preliminary agreement about what Marit will do, while he's over there."

"That seems very reasonable, though I want to raise the hesitation that Marit may have difficulty not coming to the attention of god-Iomedae, and therefore we should not lay plans that shouldn't rise to Her attention. Or shouldn't send Marit. There's someone else who could conceivably go and not get god-Iomedae's attention but it'd be more complicated in several respects."

"For all I know Iomedae watches everything I do all the time. But She's yet to interfere with any of my plans, and I don't see that anything about this one is the sort of thing that would cause Her to change that. I'm fine risking Marit, if he agrees to reasonable ground rules."

"Certainly. Do you have those in mind now, or should we both come back with proposals?"

"...come back with them, I guess, I ought to think about it. At minimum he'll have to abide by the Worldwound treaty, which basically says that you can't attack or otherwise mess with people if they're fighting demons at the Worldwound, and he should probably take precautions to avoid having been visibly and obviously associated with me before the same person later shows up involved in a war with Cheliax. As a practical matter he will obviously have to tolerate all of the members of our crusade who... inspire one to cultivate the virtue of tolerance. But I ought to actually think of an agreement that won't leave me annoyed with myself later, and you're welcome to help with coming up with one."

"Absolutely. I trust Marit and strongly don't expect you'll regret bringing him through, and am happy to work up a detailed agreement."

Nod.

"Thank you. And now I think I should probably return your artifact headband, and then see whether Aivu has realized that I'm in a private sanctum and decided to panic about it."

"...thank you for loaning it to me. I do think it helped, for that conversation."

She notices, then, that she doesn't actually feel embarrassed at all anymore.

"You are very welcome, Korva. I already thought very highly of you, and after this conversation feel more confident in that judgment." And she takes the headband back. "Let's speak again tomorrow."

Nod.

She's gonna have - a lot to think about. And probably have a lot of feelings, later. But she doesn't think she regrets the decision she seems to be making, here, if it can get her the resources she needs.

"I guess in the meantime I should be thinking about how to get more information on how the world-hopping works."

"That makes sense. Best of luck to you, and let us know anything else we can do to help."

"I will."

And she can go check on whether Aivu is worried.

Aivu is still gleefully playing hide and seek. It's Woljif who's noticed and decided to stand outside and swish his tail nervously.

Everything all right, Chief?

Yeah. I'd've told you if I knew we were going to do the private sanctum, sorry. Paladin stuff.