Then she'll begin.

"I am from another world. A week ago, in a magic accident we've since learned how to make repeatable - though not with high throughput and I am not going to explain any more details - my world encountered this one.

My world is in Pharasma's Creation, but I'm not sure it is the same creation, because my world is Golarion, but - earlier in its history. Aroden is not dead. Prophecy is not broken."

Tivath blinks. One of the invisible people in the room takes a breath that was louder than they were supposed to be breathing.

"...Are you...?"

"The claim I am making is that I am Iomedae, from the year 3824. I do understand that you will want to ask yours."

"I am sure we will. I expect You do not want to say anything else, now, and will want to speak directly with more senior people once they have confirmed this." The door opens, then closes again.

Lieutenant Kovrel Tivath has not been awestruck in the last ten years and it is her duty to not be awestruck now even though this is supposedly her goddess, not yet a goddess, in the flesh, and she just stabbed Her ten minutes ago. She reminds herself that probably the woman in front of her is actually Nocticula and she's about to die and that helps her not be awestruck.

"That is correct, yes. - if you have people who have learned this, really shouldn't have, and cannot keep the secret safe, the Shining Crusade will take them, you don't have to send them to Heaven for it."

"Everyone in this room was cleared to hear that. Probably some of us will need to have our assignments rearranged to minimize risk of having our minds read."

The best way to show bonus Iomedae that she is a competent officer is to not, actually, be going out of her way to appear competent. ALSO SHE'S PROBABLY NOCTICULA and Lt. Tivath is not awestruck. At all.

Maybe-Nocticula wants to smile warmly at her but under the circumstances this would be unprofessional so she'll get only an unexpressive nod. 

And then she'll sit still and wait for someone to run the emergency Commune to Iomedae which will presumably take them ten minutes, unless they use a scroll for it. 

Well, on the one hand this is (if true) not so time-sensitive as to justify an emergency commune when they didn't have a full set of questions ready. On the other hand, with all the questions this prompts they have a full enough set for the day. It'll take them twenty minutes, because they still want to get as much information as possible and it's worth taking the time to refine their questions.

Is the person who arrived today in Vigil presenting herself as mortal Iomedae from 3824 in fact mortal Iomedae from 3824?

- this triggers several mental patterns for 'pay this question significantly more attention than You were previously paying it' before it is being paid enough attention that it could meaningfully be said that Iomedae thinks 'WHAT?'

She looks.

Her habits are for prayer in the age of prophecy, where the cheapest thing for Aroden was for her to make her intent plain and clear in her mind, this path for a yes this path for a no this path for a maybe. They are probably the wrong habits for prayer, in the age without prophecy. Her best guess was that Iomedae would be relying entirely on her ability to read mortal intentions and directions related to Her domains, and some slow and expensive ability to piece together what was happening based on the laws of physics.

Luckily she should have no particular difficulty with having intentions of the right shape, though she was, until she'd gotten confirmation, carefully avoiding actually contemplating them. 

Three fronts, some binding commitments that alter how she can expend resources across the three of them but without which none of this would be possible at all. The Shining Crusade, and they will in fact lose the Shining Crusade if they're careless, they learned already from Arazni's death what happens if they rush things there. Cheliax, which needs to be conquered as swiftly as possible subject to her commitments to Korva because it is in fact wildly unacceptable for Asmodeus to have a country. The Worldwound, where she has promised her aid and which is also - a tragedy and a risk to the world, the kind of thing that'd be a top priority only if there weren't even worse problems. Three problems for which she had insufficient resources before but which she thinks she can, in fact, use to solve each other at least to some degree, now. 

She's planning to do all this with or without Iomedae the god's help, to be clear, and doesn't expect they'll necessarily need to speak. It is probably efficient for her to do most of it while Iomedae the god does things on planets that still have prophecy. But she is persuaded, now, after much less vetting than she initially put Aroden through, that Iomedae is Iomedae, and so if Iomedae does have anything to say then she's listening.

This is extremely important.

She reaches for that shining stubborn mind and  and - pulls it closer, just to check, just to make sure, just to - 

- okay, She does have permission -

- read Her mind and absorb everything in it -

Mortal Iomedae visibly stiffens, and then gasps -

YES

she answers the Commune, and then answers their well-planned series of a dozen followup questions. 

Tivath draws her sword and stands up, in case what just happened was the prelude to some other assault or ploy.

No other assault or ploy is forthcoming.

A minute later a middle-aged man enters the room. "You're dismissed, Lieutenant.

Knight-Commander. I'm Lord-Watcher Jan Zima. Our Iomedae says you are to be trusted and we are to follow your directives as if they were Hers, though obviously we have some obligations that we would not break on Her orders and won't on yours either. How much context do you have already?"

"Only what's learnable in a week without coming to Vigil, I couldn't costlessly have spied on you." She means it as a compliment and it comes across that way. "I have committed us to not conquering Cheliax with Shining Crusade resources until neutral observing parties agree I'll be able to have it over with in less than six weeks and not lose the Worldwound in the meantime. My tentative timeline there is three months from now. 

I meant, before I learned prophecy was broken, to ask Her the best allocation of forces across the two worlds, but I now suspect that's not actually worth it and we'll just have to figure it out. There are some odd things missing from the history books, I don't know if you edited them or if your Shining Crusade went slightly differently."

"...Edited. Also possibly our Crusade went differently, but some edits were made over the years to de-emphasize things you did that it would be unwise for most people to emulate. We kept copies of the originals but someone stole them all and replaced them a few hundred years ago, our best guess is Geryon cultists.  Our Iomedae confirmed that they were tampered with but that it was not worth Her correcting or the expenditure of resources it would take for us to recover them if that was even possible."

" - hmm." The least helpful answer from the perspective of trying to figure out where Alfirin is and what she's up to today but...she thinks a sign that this world did in fact have an Alfirin. That being maybe things Iomedae did that would be unwise for most people to emulate. "I don't in fact have it finished yet but you can look at our drafts to date, if you're interested. The bit of the most immediate importance is my archmage, Alfirin, who'll be helping us take Cheliax. If she existed here, she - may still, and is probably a force to be accounted for if so."

"...I have never heard of her. May still exist like Nex or like Morgethai or like Arazni?"

"I cannot rule out any of those. Alfirin may be able to herself, when she visits this world, but it's risky for us both to leave the Shining Crusade simultaneously. For that among other reasons I'll probably want someone well apprised of the military situation here to go back with me when I leave tomorrow. Is there anything urgent before I ask a lot of questions about our resources and current constraints and prospective allies?"

"I'll just stick my head out of the sanctum to tell the rest of my council that you have no immediate new directives that we need to be arranging forces and making plans for right now, so they can get back to their normal jobs." He does that, then returns.

"The biggest thing that you might not have heard about is that there's still a bunch of whispering way lunatics around and some of them try every now and then to let Tar-Baphon out. One such group is at it now, we're confident they're not going to get anywhere before we've identified them all, but it is taking up a nontrivial amount of our resources and isn't a situation that's public knowledge."

"I had not heard about that," so they have a more precise picture of how uninformed she is coming in. "Entities I'd recognize, or no?"

"We haven't linked any of them to identities that were around during the Shining Crusade. The Mirrorgrave is behind... about one in three attempts, but it doesn't look like he's involved in this one. Most of the liches are presumed to still be around, Malyas is still alive but never leaves his castle, Erum-Hel survived the crusade but hasn't been seen since. The Tyrant is sealed, obviously. The rest of the notable undead from the Crusade days are destroyed."

It is possibly the only thing this timeline has going for it. She does not know them well enough yet to feel comfortable joking like that, especially while they are all being meticulously professional in her presence. 

"Understood."

He's tense around her, for which there are many conceivable explanations, and she's in any event not going to propose Lastwall change anything about its current operations while she doesn't even understand them. So - time to spend several hours talking about the forces that are at Iomedae's disposal across the two worlds and the various commitments to which they are subject.

Lastwall has three and a half official commitments and one unofficial one. And the resources to handle two of them well. The official commitments are first and foremost, of course, to keep their vigil on Gallowspire, then to defend the southwestern Worldwound border, then to defend their own border with the Hold of Belkzen - they could in fact pull most of their forces away from that border if needed on a short-term basis, Belkzen is not the threat it used to be, but they'd be sacrificing a lot of civilian lives to raiders and if they left that border underguarded for long enough they'd be risking the country. Their last official obligation is to send what they can spare to the crusade in Mendev, but they are not in violation if it turns out that what they can spare is nothing.

Their unofficial commitment is of course Cheliax. The government of Lastwall is committed to a degree of neutrality in conflicts between other states in Avistan, and has made no preparations for an offensive war against Cheliax nor for any covert attempts to overthrow the current regime. Lord-Watcher Zima in fact does not know anything nonpublic about past, present, or planned operations in or against Cheliax. At some point after this conversation Iomedae will want to talk to Lord Cansellarion, whose lands are in the south on the border of Nirmathas, and who resigned his government post and army commission and status as a Knight of Ozem but not his four paladin circles or personal powerbase.