...

Wow.

Okay then.

He will nod gravely, say that he knows Iomedae Is the lawful good goddess of defeating evil and that She gave him powers to help him do that, that he appreciates everything Kristett has told him, that it has done nothing wrong, and that It can go freely. He would appreciate if Kristett would not tell the person who could be called Tuvan about this meeting for a few days while he does more investigation if Tuvan is in fact working for Iomedae, because there are ways around truth spells, and that if Kristett ever needs help arresting the people he has investigated the Iomedaean Inquisition is always happy to assist.

And then he will let the spyglass archon go and have a small quiet headache.

The man who is called Tuvan actually intends, when he returns from Vigil, to go talk to the Inquisition! He will show them his paperwork from Lastwall and introduce his agents and hopefully head off any problems. 

He'll stop by Korva's first, though, to let her know that 1) he's back and 2) she should be taking credit for Sunhammer.

Well, on the way back from his teleport he will be politely accosted by Inquisitor Castelloni and an invisible flunky (who Marit can, of course, recognize as the one of the Inquisitor's martial assistants, Silvio Zavala) who wish to inform him he is under investigation and they would like him to answer some questions.

Well. 

Good thing he has the note.

He would of course be happy to accompany them. He will notify them that his Bag of Holding is trapped, and he has some number of called outsiders in his employ in the city, none Evil, none with orders to attack anyone except in self-defense and even then to run first if they can, all told to obey the city's laws and the Iomedaen Church.

He is aware, but appreciates the warning nonetheless (he will say).

Will Tuvan testify under a Zone of Truth spell? It is not required, but if he is in fact innocent it will help clear him.

(While he leads Tuvan back to inquisitorial HQ, which does not have a Forbiddance because those are expensive, but he does what he can)

He is happy to testify under a Zone of Truth spell. (He does not say that he will even, as a courtesy, let it affect him, because that would be a rude thing to say.)

Inquisitor Castelloni is pretty good at distinguishing "this person is under a Zone of Truth enchantment" from "this person is just standing in a Zone of Truth," by this point. Not that he relies on that.

(He is also not in any sense relying on force to keep Tuvan here. He cannot possibly have sufficient force without taking actions that would be an unprovoked assault on an ally under the most plausible operating conditions. He is mostly just hoping that any murder of him will be sufficiently loud to provoke the Knight-Commander and any enchantment of him sufficiently nonsubtle so one of his people can notice and escape.)

Once they're back and in private, he'd like to get started on normal questions like name, alignment, deity and and nationality, to calibrate the Zone.

Once they're back and in private, he has a note from Lastwall saying that his espionage operations are authorized. 

Interesting. He'd like to get a Zone of Truth up and then read that note. Is it trapped? Will it harm him to read?

"- I have not examined it closely or opened it myself, obviously, but it would be sensible of them to have trapped it and told their own inquisitors how to disable the trap." Marit says. A bit suspiciously. He doesn't know for sure that this person is in fact Inquisitor Castelloni. Could be a demon.

This is under a Zone of Truth, which is the important thing.

"Please answer these questions individually: Did you trap it. Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours trap it. Did you enchant it.  Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours enchant it. Did you fabricate it. Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours fabricate it. Did you create it. Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours create it. Did you modify it.  Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours modify it. Did you add to it. Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours add to it. Did you remove or subtract from it. Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours remove or subtract from it. Did you seal it. Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours seal it. Did you cast any spell on it.  Did an ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of yours cast any spell on it."

"I did not trap it. I do not know an ally, superior, compatriot or underling of mine to have trapped it and can't think of any who would have other than Lastwall, an allied polity. I suspect that the allied polity Lastwall enchanted it. I do not know or believe any other ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of mine to have enchanted it. I did not fabricate it. Depending how we're defining 'fabricating' Lastwall may have done so, though they'd have been entitled to. I do not believe any other ally of mine, nor any superior, compatriot, or underling, fabricated it. I did not modify it. It seems entirely possible that Lastwall modified it. I do not believe any other ally of mine, nor any superior, compatriot, or underling, fabricated it. I did not add to it. It seems entirely possible that Lastwall added to it. I do not believe any other ally of mine, nor any superior, compatriot, or underling, added to it. I did not remove or subtract from it. Probably no ally, superior, compatriot, or underling of mine removed or subtracted from it. I did not seal it. I am highly confident Lastwall sealed it and highly confident no one else did. I have not cast any spells on it. I am sure Lastwall cast some spells on it. I do not believe any other ally of mine, nor any superior, compatriot, or underling, cast spells on it."

Oh good. And the enchantment effect is working. (That is almost certainly willing; Ettore isn't bad with enchantments, but he is nowhere near good enough to hit an experienced swordmage who isn't letting him.)

"Thank you."

And he'll take the letter into an adjacent room, carefully scan it with Detect Magic before opening the envelope and speaking the Secret Page password to read the letter.

The letter is from the Lord-Watcher Jan Zima and claims that the bearer is operating with Lastwall's knowledge and permission and that the inquisition is not to interfere with his business if it's merely suspicious and resembles espionage rather than being obviously evil or in violation of their mandate.

It'd be wholly reassuring, really, except for the Sending from Lastwall yesterday claiming the exact opposite.

Ettore will quietly send off some messages (to the Knight-Commander, to Lastwall in the regular sending drop, to Lastwall's ambassador in the court of Queen Galfrey, to the four people not on this list who his senior investigative assistants think - without consulting him! - are the best choice for informing Lastwall not on this list, and, sigh, one to Seelah specially marked DO NOT OPEN UNLESS I AM MURDERED) and then after a pause for all these messages to be sent, return.

"Your letter looks completely in order," and he'll return it. "You're free to go. Thank you for assisting the Iomedaean Inquisition with its inquiries."

Marit's pretty good at concealing it but he has been brimming with pride this whole time. It's not precisely the same for him as for Iomedae, but -

- this is the unborn child they have been worrying over for most of their lives, all grown up and calling them in for questioning -

"Of course," he says. "Let me know if you have further questions, or if you need operational support at some point, though I cannot commit that I will give it."

"I understand," he says. "Thank you."

(Don't his superiors have better things to do than keep testing him now that he's a professional? This cannot be the most efficient use of their resources.)

And now he'll go talk to Korva!

"So, it seems like you can probably leverage the Sunhammer incident into a fair bit of support for the Crusade among the Mendevian nobility."

"Seems pretty likely, if I can think exactly how to do it. I can obviously send a report to the queen, but I'm not sure if that's the best possible thing to do about it."

"The optimist's path, here, is to just tell Galfrey, and trust her as a Lawful Good and presumably competent person to understand that the game from there is that she collects favors from all her nobles and puts them towards the Crusade which is in your interests and hers. 

I am inclined to say we shouldn't do that because that plan featured 'trust her' as a step. But it does seem difficult to - route around her entirely. We don't have anyone else in Nerosyan. Lastwall offered to do it, but they'd also be working through Galfrey and the goodwill's useless to them. So our options as I see them are -

- have me go to Nerosyan and try to get oriented there as the Crusade's ambassador 

- send the news to Galfrey, see what she does with it, the Crusade might lose out but we'll learn more about her

- send the news to Galfrey, along with a lot of gossipy people who know the news, such that word definitely spreads through the city of your heroic deeds discovering and arresting Sunhammer, which maybe constrains where the credit flows, there

- or leave it be for a few weeks until we're better oriented."

"....you're probably doing more good here, for now, although I could be underweighting the importance of actually good relations with Nerosyan. Unfortunately, there's nobody else who's particularly obviously a good person to send, and only a few people I know personally who aren't essential and who manage to rise to the level of 'probably wouldn't make things worse'. Leaving it makes some sense - except that some people will already have noticed that Sunhammer is missing, Anevia did, he's kind of famous. It's a bit weird to sit on something like that for weeks."

"Which I guess leaves telling Galfrey and seeing what she does. I guess it's really a question of whether we think filtering the news through Galfrey or sitting on it for too long is more likely to result in the potential goodwill being wasted. And maybe a question of whether sitting on it just results in telling Galfrey the same thing later, which seems strictly worse."

"I think you can get away with 'an investigation is ongoing' for a week or two. But - if there's no real way we will have more power in Nerosyan at the end of that week or two, then yeah, it buys us nothing and loses us a little of the potential goodwill."

"...then I think we just tell the queen and see what she does with it, yeah. I'll write her a letter, I guess."

"I had no other business. My colleague in Vigil still intends to return here tomorrow night for transport."

"All right. Thanks."

So she'll write a letter to Galfrey about the Sunhammer situation and the cursed jewelry, to go in the next teleport drop to Nerosyan, and then...

She has to lead her staff in coming up with a set of legal standards and consequences for breaking them, which everyone involved is willing to stick to. She's pretty worried about being wildly wrong about how much punishment it makes sense to inflict on people, in either direction.

She's going to spend tonight reading through parts of the Shining Crusade's legal code.