"Sorry, she did that before she asked you?"

"Yes. There's no agreement. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry!! I think Iomedae should be sorry for making the woman a paladin!"

"She is in a difficult position," she says, tiredly.

" - this is stupid, isn't it, what's the amount of context that will help you figure out how to do this."

"Everyone's in a difficult position! Not everyone's an idiot about it! - there is probably no point calling her on it, though, because either she's actually better than the alternatives somehow or she's pretending to be a paladin of Iomedae and that's going to be a situation we want to wait to handle until we have more direct channels with the Church in Lastwall. I get the sense the Church in Lastwall and in Mendev aren't on the same page and I have half a picture of why, and Galfrey's probably a big part of the other half."

"Well, if you want to investigate Galfrey, be my guest. I have only had a handful of conversations with her. I know that she appointed me Knight Commander and announced the Fifth Crusade very shortly after arriving in Kenabres after the Deskari attack. I know that she's a paladin of Iomedae. I know that she's extending her life somehow, and has been the queen of Mendev for more than a hundred years; I don't know how. I know that she's a distant cousin of Daeran's, and that he hates her, and that she bullied Daeran into serving in the crusade, which I guess I can't point fingers at her for because I also constantly bully Daeran into doing things for the crusade. And I know that I don't like her. But I am trying not to let anybody else know that."

"Very sensibly," he agrees. "When I'm less busy in Drezen I absolutely may try Nerosyan. I don't want to go to Vigil myself to get apprised of the rest of the picture with the Church, even though ideally we'd have a diplomatic presence there. It looks like Iomedae is - more like 'herself but underresourced' than 'some other thing that's not her and doesn't want to be', and that means Vigil might have someone competent and paranoid enough to find me suspicious, and that means the whole trip isn't in your interests. My former commander can go herself if she wants, and she probably will, but I work for you now and a trip to Vigil doesn't in my current assessment serve you."

"...okay. Thank you for your honesty."

"Are there further things you should know to make this letter easier to draft."

"I'll ask you questions if I think of things but not that I'm presently thinking of." And he will take that as an order to not talk more about whether the Knight-Commander is, well, okay. It is reasonable of the Knight-Commander to want to discuss that with people she has known for longer than four days.

She should probably drop it. She does, actually, think that complaining about being assigned vast amounts of power because people have decided that you're a legendary hero is pretty contemptible and pathetic. Except she thinks that she may have hit some kind of new humiliation level that circles around to hurting less, or something, and if that's a thing that can happen then maybe she should talk about this while it doesn't hurt as much.

"Is there context on what happened that would help with understanding anything else. I would selfishly rather talk about it now than dredge it up again later. But if you have enough of a picture we should work on the charter."

"- I guess I am confused about whether you were in any respect in Galfrey's chain of command when she appointed you her Knight-Commander."

"No. I was a bandit from the Thanelands. I'd been helping Irabeth because the city was under attack. I never - enlisted in anything. That I was aware of."

"Galfrey either got ludicrously lucky or got a vision direct from Iomedae but if it's the latter the vision should've been wildly more specific. And should've gone to you, probably, though I guess maybe She couldn't reach - no, that's no excuse, hire Sarenrae." He shakes his head. " - one cannot, generally, just point at adventurers and declare they run your crusade now and will pay themselves in captured loot. It's not only that it's not very Lawful, it's just a really bad idea? Most reasonable people will just scoot out of your jurisdiction as soon as they can Teleport, if that's how you're doing things."

"I wasn't even really an adventurer, I just got taken raiding during raiding seasons. I mostly did support casting for my master and his team. I'd never done any, like, monster killing. We were going to go fight at the Worldwound last year because it was - cooler."

"You were a slave?"

"Well."

"Yeah."

"In my experience Lawful Good places and churches generally condemn slavery and, where they have the authority, prohibit it, except as punishment for a crime."

"I was a slave in the Thanelands! Nobody ever said the Thanelands were lawful good. It would interfere with all the banditry."

"At this point I wouldn't have been surprised to learn the Thanelands are a proud Lawful Good nation serving Iomedae. And still doing all the banditry.

My condolences, if you want them, on everything. The world is a deeply unjust place for everyone but the impulse towards justice isn't misplaced in crying out more strongly at the wrongs it can see, and this was - a lot of wrongs, by a lot of people."

"At this point I think this conversation is probably succeeding at being cathartic, actually, if it isn't also being terribly inconvenient for you."

"You can't tell anyone any of this, by the way. Nobody knows that Galfrey didn't ask me - Irabeth and Anevia may have guessed - and nobody knows about the slavery except for - Seelah and Anevia and Daeran, I guess, we haven't talked about it. Regill knows I'm Chelish, originally, I'm not really sure what else he knows."

"I understand." And the pause of Lawful people making promises. "I won't willingly speak of this to anyone without your permission.

You're - doing very well. Against any benchmark, really, but especially one that takes into account ...any of that."

"Well. Thanks. It's not good enough, really, but - thanks."

"I did want to run away at first. When Galfrey announced the crusade. I probably could have, I just - I didn't want to leave everyone in the lurch, like that. It seemed like it would have been cowardly, to run away from being handed a responsibility like that. And I guess I had no idea where I'd go, right, there was nowhere that it made any sense to try to get back to. But - I can't blame Woljif for leaving, you know, when we pretty much did the same thing to him. Nobody was being fair to anyone, when the Crusade was called."

"I do think that I have to do this now. Not for Galfrey. Kind of in spite of her. But I have, in fact, made other commitments to people that I actually care about honoring."

He nods. "Galfrey had very poor judgment in many respects, and wronged you immensely, and also - this is winnable, and you're the person who can win it."

"Thank you," she says, sincerely, because part of her wasn't sure.

"Okay. Better now. Sorry about all of that."

"Says approximately the only party to the mess I didn't want an apology from. 

Let's get this written."