Well, it's true that the last three crusades didn't win. It's going to take a lot, to make this one different.

Yeah. It's not exactly how Iomedae's own crusade went. Or maybe they lie about that one in the history books. 

They study the Shining Crusade in Lastwall! It's... true that the Mendevian Crusades aren't very much like it, and that the Fifth Crusade is arguably the least like it of any of them.

....but, on the other hand, a lot of people thought the Shining Crusade was hopeless for a long time, too. Iomedae had decades of military experience, in addition to being the kind of person who interrupts the arc of history and does what ought to be impossible, when she turned the crusade towards being something that could win. All of the previous Knight Commanders of the Worldwound crusades were the former, but nobody seriously thought they were the latter. Some people think that Korva Tallandria might be, even if she doesn't seem to have that experience and nobody really seems to know where she came from. So it's possible that it isn't so different after all.

What is Iomedae's - deal. You hear different things from different people most of whom only have half a clue themselves.

"Iomedae is the goddess of defeating evil. You hear a lot of other stuff, and it isn't all wrong, but that's the core of it. Going wherever there's evil in the world, and putting a stop to it."

"Seems like it's not going so well."

"There's definitely still a lot of evil in the world! If there weren't, there wouldn't be so many of us working on putting a stop to it."

"I've never been quite sure how you'd know if a god is - really on your side, or if they just think it's convenient to say. Even if the human was everything the histories say, if she - turned into the shape people think -"

"I don't think gods go around empowering people who are opposed to Their own interests. If you look at who Iomedae picks, and what battles Her church sends them out to fight, I'm pretty sure She's - on the right side, anyway, whether individual people agree with Her or not. Of course, if you abandon Her teachings, or stray from the path She lays out, She'll withdraw any powers She gave you. I've heard of several cases like that, but never one that didn't make sense to me."

"Obvious stuff, like secretly being evil? Or - non-obvious stuff?"

"Not always secretly evil. Of course Iomedae would take a paladin's powers away the moment he did anything truly evil, but that doesn't mean that people always do it secretly - what would be the point, if it came out right away? Anyway - it hasn't happened to anyone I know personally, so take this with a grain of salt, but there were a lot of cases in Galt, for instance. Iomedae empowered a lot of people during the initial revolution against Cheliax, it being an incredibly important cause and there being a lot of good people who wanted to throw off the chains of Asmodeus and follow Iomedae. But then some of those people turned to mass executions of the nobility, or killing anyone they thought might not be perfectly loyal to that incredibly important cause. And then a good number of those paladins fell."

And she couldn't just not choose them in the first place because - prophecy broken. Right. 

"And you've never heard of a case where you think She got it wrong?"

"Nope. She's got to make it everyone who strays from their vows, or people will lose confidence that being a paladin of Iomedae means anything about whether they can trust you."

"Ember - the witch girl, with burn scars - it was the inquisition of Iomedae that tried to burn her at the stake, she says. And did orphan her."

"The church in Mendev has - been through a lot, in the last century. I don't know when this happened, exactly, or what their reasons were, and wouldn't want to say anything about her situation without talking to the people involved. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was during the Third Crusade, when there were a huge number of Baphomet cultists in Mendev and the crusaders turned their attention to flushing them out. It's easier, when evil is being open and obvious, not to fall into being evil yourself. When the enemy could be anyone around you - I think that makes it harder."

"I think a lot of people fell then, too."

In some ways it's even more depressing if this is Iomedae, complete and whole, and this is just the best She can actually do.

In many other respects it's less depressing, though. 

Marit 'learns' some swordfighting technique at a reasonable speed for learning that and then departs, leaving a spy to linger to learn if the paladins thought that interaction was suspicious.

Korva has explained... some of what is going on, by morning. Not all of it. There's a lot. But enough that she can give Zara her coat and shoo her out the door to the rocks that take them up to the floating island, where there are baby dragons and azatas and orphans and slightly mad alchemists and desnans and mimics and sculptor gnomes. Early Sunset, her azata advisor from Elysium, is playing catch with Aivu near a waterfall, and Zara makes the most incredibly delighted sound about it.

She kind of expects that Zara will keep pretty indefinitely, in this situation, but she does want someone to be keeping an eye on her. Early Sunset is the closest thing the island has to a responsible adult who isn't a tree (she does, actually, think pretty highly of the trees), so she quietly explains that Zara is her daughter who she retrieved from the Thanelands last night, and asks him to show her around the island, explain a little more of how things work around here, and keep her from getting into too much trouble.

Then she can go check on what was brought back in the latest teleport batch from Nerosyan. Is there a charter copy there yet? Please?

There's - a declaration of the Crusade, and a lot of language about how great the Crusade and the Queen and Mendev are, and a few paragraphs that resemble permission for the Knight-Commander to conduct the Crusade, but not with a whole lot of specificity.  The language is plainly copied from the Fourth Crusade and assumes the Crusade will be operating entirely within Mendev. 

Also, how is Korva's written Hallit, because it's largely in Hallit. 

Well, it's a lot better now than it was six months ago, when she couldn't read Hallit at all and didn't have as many slots for comprehend languages.

This sure is not the wonderfully clarifying document she hoped it would be. It is, actually, kind of worthless, as clarifying documents go.

At the risk of continuing to seem like a four year old who runs to her mom every five minutes, she's going to stalk off to go find Marit.

Training soldiers! He works long hours; he's wearing Constitution rather than Strength so he can train in every daylight hour. 

He can step out for a bit, though. "Knight-Commander."

"It's not an emergency. Just, uh, the charter came. It's - worthless, or nearly so. It says almost nothing, and the things that it does say don't make any sense. I think they just used the charter from the Fourth Crusade and changed some of the names and years and stuff, which - doesn't really clarify a lot of the things I want to know, because the Fourth Crusade took place entirely in Mendev, outside the Wardstone barrier, and our crusade is a completely different operation that is supposed to involve pushing into the Worldwound."

" - huh. All right, I guess we'll have to write them for clarification. ...that's really not very fair to you, of them."

"I - guess? I don't think anyone is really tracking that." Shit, that sounds like complaining, you're supposed to deflect when people say stuff like that. She doesn't have a lot of practice, because they mostly don't. "I'd mostly prefer to have any idea what they believe they gave us the legal authority to do."

"Yeah. I can help you draft a letter to that effect, if you would like."

"I'm not sure it's the best possible use of your time..."

She considers, for a moment, actually exchanging words with Galfrey with the intent to accomplish anything.

" - no, actually, I'd appreciate that. Thanks."