"Yes, let's. Do we want to be Mendev or do we want to be something else, I remember that being a decision we had to make."

"Where are we relative to Mendev's pre-Worldwound borders with Sarkoris?"

"Great question. Debated, I think. Sometimes the border was the West Sellen River, which we're on the Sarkoris side of now, but ever since the barrier went up all of the remains have been considered part of Mendev, there not really being a Sarkoris anymore."

"Mmmm. Do you want the territory of former Sarkoris to be yours or independent, or - not Mendev's -"

"Well, I'm not incredibly impressed with Mendev. It might still be hubristic to think we can do better."

"Let me get back to you on how well the country built very carefully out of a crusade by the wisest person I know turned out."

"I do expect that Lastwall's at least less of a mess than this. It was one of the few places in the world that I didn't think sounded stupid and pathetic when I was fifteen years old and a very sincere devil worshipper. - I guess you may not interpret that as a compliment, but it's when I formed all of my opinions about Lastwall."

"Honestly I have a hard time imagining - how Asmodeus convinces people to worship him. I guess I'm not shocked he can do it, if he raises them from childhood, but - Aroden's pitch is 'prosperity and invention and glory and paradise', Abadar's is 'wealth and trade', Erastil's is 'the crops will grow well this year', Iomedae's is apparently 'defeating Evil' - what part of people is Asmodeus speaking to -"

"He won. The pitch is that He'll win again."

"It isn't that simple, of course. The Chelish civil war lasted a full generation of awful, bloody fighting, people were so unwilling to accept the outcome they ended up with. I didn't believe the death tolls when I read them, I thought they'd just pulled some ridiculously big numbers out of the air. But He won. Aroden was dead, Asmodeus had killed him, and what chance did anyone else have, if even Aroden's best laid plans could be tossed aside like garbage?"

" - that's contested, to be clear, that Asmodeus killed Aroden. I don't think anyone knows what happened to Him. It's what I was taught as a kid."

"So if someone else wins, beats Asmodeus, that's it, that's the answer to the only case He has for people? - I'm sorry. I think I shouldn't have asked that."

"I think they'll follow her. But they'll follow her the way they follow Him, right now."

"My job is to serve you, Knight-Commander, and we can speak of this if it's a concern of yours, and probably shouldn't otherwise, because it would be irresponsible of me to try to straddle obligations and loyalties like that. I would be wronging you."

"Okay. Thank you. I'm - going to turn this conversation back to Mendev, then."

"They may not give us much of a choice, Konomi gives the impression that a lot of people already think we're acting too independently. But do you think we have the resources to do better, if we have that option. And is trying going to make us more capable or less capable of winning."

"I think the question is what they do in response if they become convinced you're too independent. Recall you? And appoint who? Recalling you six months after she appointed you when all you've done is win would be enormously embarrassing to Galfrey. Having you die tragically and irretrievably at the front wouldn't be, if she's secretly evil and not a paladin, which I do intend to check; a paladin couldn't, actually, get away with that. Cut supply to you? That's not in their interests, and it looks stupid, and it might be the right trade for you anyway. 

My best guess is that they do not, actually, act on their unhappiness. My pessimistic guess is that they try to get you killed, and that's the assumption I intend to prepare based on.

I think maintaining the pretense of helplessness and disorganization...mostly isn't a thing. You can either actually be helpless and disorganized, or you can put the legal code together, and doing this does need to be part of that because a legal code isn't that meaningful without actual authority to rule by it. And I think you have a better shot of winning if you're not helpless and disorganized. There's the argument you should maintain the helplessness and disorganization for another year in case by then the Church of Iomedae is better governed and better resourced and can intervene on your behalf, but - I broadly expect it'll be better for you to behave like miraculous help won't come than to plan for it."

"...all right. Let's see if we can find a good way to not be Mendev, then, if we think it helps us win. I am not going to be more scared of Galfrey than I am of Balors."

"In my last job we usually did part of planning meetings with the paladins making us all fearless and part without. It's good to access both states of mind."

And he'll write a careful civil proposal that, where the crusade operates outside Mendev's pre-disaster borders, the Knight-Commander have responsibility for administration of the conquered territory, and a proposed clarification of the crusade's command structure, and so on.

Okay! Progress!

In terms of other stuff they're working on, she does want to know where he's at on having information about this side to give to his previous commander. There are, in fact, some good reasons to want to move forward with the other plan, if it's going to take a while to set up and can be used to secure more resources that they can use to win.

"I can make that report to her today, if you'd like. I think I have - most of a guess of what's going on."

"Okay. - if you think that it'll result in her wanting to cross then we'll need to come up with an agreement about what she does here, too, I guess I'll probably want Regill for that. Is that likely to be on the agenda tonight, or should I let him sleep and do it in the morning."

"I would prefer that conversation happen where you found me, if you're comfortable with that. I have tried quite hard to check if we're being spied on here but I'm only mostly sure we aren't."

"All right."

They can go over alone, this time, then.

"Do you want to come with me for the report? It's not meant to be secret from you."

"...yes, I'd like to. Possibly mostly out of curiosity, but I'd like to anyway, if it doesn't bother you."

"Not at all."

So they'll assemble the Shining Crusade command in the mansion, and Marit will nod seriously to each of them in turn and then begin. 

"Firstly,  every church in Knight-Commander Korva's world is incompetent, by our present standards. It turns out that the fact the gods don't make visible dumb mistakes must be entirely them benefitting from prophecy. Without prophecy, it is not rare for paladins to fall; you can pick them only off temperament, not at all of what path they're going to walk from there. Every intervention is much more expensive; everything is much harder to see. I think that Your Church is terrible mostly because gods are much worse at doing things, in full generality. I would naively have expected that to result in less divine intervention, while everyone invests in places where there are substantial returns on that investment, but for whatever reason that's not in fact what Knight-Commander Korva's world looks like. Abadar and Asmodeus have imitated you and Shizuru in setting up theocracies. The gods are more present, but clumsier. A lot of interventions look bizarrely at cross-purposes.

Everything I saw was consistent with Iomedae being - the god that we wanted Her to become - while playing directly against Asmodeus for control of the whole Inner Sea and losing because He's stronger and can think harder about it and pay more for it. It's also consistent with Her being notably worse than that, of course. I think I cannot yet rule out that all of the strength of Iomedae's Church is institutional capacity She built as a human and that as a god She's - well, what you'd get if a paladin ascended, but not anything better than what you'd get if any other paladin ascended. I'd need the ability to actually check the tradeoffs she's making, not just the mortal understanding of them.

The Church in Lastwall I have not visited. I spoke to their paladins in Drezen, went to the temple and read their holy books and their history books. I haven't visited Lastwall because I think it looks right, what you'd have wanted to build accounting for how Aroden died and wars opened up on too many fronts and it's now burning all its future for fuel but - recognizably something you built, not something anyone else did.

So that means it's got a good intelligence service, and it's in the middle of contesting the Inner Sea region with Asmodeus, and I don't in fact have a strategy for going there and poking around which I am confident doesn't attract attention.

The paladins from Lastwall would, in fact, fit in fine on the Shining Crusade. I'd like them better than I like your average here, actually, they're - more circumspect and more cautious and more temperamentally pragmatic.

It is probably only because they have been tempered by losing. I would've had a harder time making sense of them, if I'd met them before we lost Arazni. 

The situation in Mendev very plainly is that casualties are extraordinary and a lot of people are becoming seasoned veterans while working from only a fourth-hand account of what you are all about, and they end up at 'You are about Mendev not being overrun by demons' and it's not surprising at all that those paladins are just - paladins, with the classic set of strengths and flaws. And in the same spirit your Mendevian inquisition is just an inquisition, though I'm more unclear in that case why You bothered having it at all; badly catechized paladins are still very useful against demons and badly catechized inquisitors seem like they easily do more harm than good. But it is credible that it was the right tradeoff. 

They cut Alfirin from the holy books. I assume you weren't planning to do that."

"I was absolutely not planning to do that. Is it possible that - I didn't have her -"