He wasn't expecting that because that sounds like Clepati actually being helpful. A quick bow, then. "Thank you, Eminence."

"Are there questions I foolishly haven't asked?"

"Lots of them. There are even some I foolishly haven't answered. Not the same ones, though. There's one you haven't asked which I would answer in a way you liked."

"What is it?"

"Not that."

What would she ask now, that she wouldn't have asked before, that doesn't touch on dangerous or personal topics because she doesn't endorse being baited into discussing those -

She retraces the whole conversation in her mind -

When that gets her nowhere, tries the slower, careful way, like a god looking down -

"Are you playing the same game that I play with my crusade, Eminence?" The cosmic triage that is the game of the gods. Travelling between timelines, sometimes, and planets, sometimes. Because those are the same thing, somehow. Leaving just enough force in each place to get the minimal necessary result, or leaving worlds to hang entirely, putting the excess strength elsewhere.  Refusing the Teleportation Circles unless they came with something game-changing. Of course she could literally have just said to Alexeara "this won't be decisive in your favor unless some other things are in place, so I'll only help if they are", but maybe she couldn't have. She is, in fact, mad.

"You don't have it exactly right but you probably have it as close as you'll get it."

Then she'll smile broadly. "We appreciate your help."

"Build interesting things with it."

"I mean to." 

And they should....go, probably, because that was exhausting and she needs to write it down before she forgets it.

"To Almas, then? We have some time before Morgethai will be available but teleports are scarce enough that we should either wait there or here. And barring contrary strategic considerations, I like the weather there better."

"I don't like being out and about this nicely dressed without my Mind Blan-"

That sounds like a problem one could solve with a powerful spell in one hand while Teleporting out with a different spell cast simultaneously in the other hand!

"Thank you," Iomedae, now Mind Blanked, says even though Nefreti is gone. "Sure, let's wait in Almas."

Teleport. "Almas is a nice place. The locals are very Chaotic Good, if a bit less Chaotic and a bit less Good than they think they are. Nice parks, shouldn't have too many people at this hour. Kind of wish we had a wizard along for a telepathic bond."

"I can do a Telepathic Bond." She extends her hand for it. " - I think that I can do it as if I were a fifth circle cleric with the Community domain, but I don't know why a fifth circle cleric, or why the Community domain, and the duration is as if I were a ninth circle cleric. A lot of the things I can do I am approximately that ignorant of."

He takes it.

...Community isn't one of yours. Aroden's?

My takeaway from that conversation with Clepati is that she's willing to do teleportation circles now that I don't need her for them. And that you had a much more productive conversation but - I think it would've been pretty hard for me to follow even without the secrets I'm not supposed to infer and the answers that will make everything worse if I know them.

It's clearly the most impressive thing Iomedae has done since he met her.

She's mad but more like a mad god than a madman, which I suppose isn't surprising. I want to write it down before I forget it but after that I can and will attempt to explain the parts that aren't secret, especially if there's no one among our allies here who can - get results that good. 

And she's going to try to put it down in shorthand, except the secret which she's not putting to text and isn't going to forget. Sometimes with Nethysians the exact words matter. 

He won't interrupt while she does that, it's obvious why this would be important.

All right. So first off, she's obviously still got prophecy, somehow, and a week ago I'd have been at a loss about how but here I am from an alternate timeline and that proposes an obvious explanation. Everyone here is a prophet, if they're hanging around in 3824 and someone shows up asking them how the Shining Crusade is going to turn out. Nethys sees everything. How does that make him different from the other gods, who have in some cases more attention span? I suspect he can see other worlds, more than gods mostly can, because if Aroden could do that He'd have mentioned. 

She'd give him the headband but then it'd be a glaring beacon to all in Almas that these two people are more than the armored high level adventurers they look like. 

Now, it's pretty convenient to have prophecy when no one else does. But insofar as it's the sort of prophecy that you'd have if you went back to 3824, it is less useful if you take any actions in the world at all. So if you were you, or me, you'd wait for the single most impactful point, accumulate various advantages from knowing how things play out and then spend the advantage where you actually need it. But you or me also wouldn't become a Nethysian High Priest, and I think the thing she's doing is probably less sympathetic than that. I do think that she is meaningfully constrained by being much weaker in any context where she's acting rather than observing, and therefore mostly useful for - asking questions of her that let us determine which world we are in, rather than trying to get her to use her fantastic magical powers to alter which world we are in.

Does he seem to be following?

He follows. It's a good explanation that makes sense of...a lot of what Clepati has said and done. Not quite all of it.

Obviously in some contexts she intervenes in things. One possibility is that that is literally only where she can see both a world where she intervened and a world where she didn't, and can choose which she likes better without losing her vision. This obviously only happens if Nethysians are - coordinating with each other to explore the space of actions for the benefit of other Nethysians who'll see a wider range of possibilities, and I'm not sure if they're doing that? If they are it's through some mechanism that isn't as - strategic - as that. And is another reason their interventions will look capricious even if, generously, they were useful to producing good outcomes in other worlds that'd learn from them.

I do think that where she isn't compromising any of her visibility she prefers being helpful to not being helpful. Warning me not to ask about Alfirin rather than giving me a misleading answer that'd make things go worse for us. Giving me a Mind Blank presumably because it only permitted us nicer weather for our afternoon break and so doesn't much compromise her visibility on what's going on. The last thing I was trying to press her about was - whether she conceived of herself as, where she was unhelpful, conserving a scarce resource to expend it where it would do more, the way that Iomedae is often unhelpful when you pray to Her but not because She doesn't prefer good outcomes. Whether she refused you the Teleportation Circle because you could not succeed without more than that, or just because she couldn't tell. Which is very fundamental to whether I'd regard her as an ally.

There's clearly more going on than that, but - I don't have a clear picture of all of it. Some of it's related to - not tracking effects as having causes, thinking of them only as being information about which world you were in all along. Some of it is presumably just her personality. (There some irritation will come through the Telepathic Bond. Iomedae is trying to do her job and is irritated to be confronted with announcements that Alfirin loves her.) And some of it's - something I'm missing, I'll think about it more later. 

But the way I'd use her is to ask what kinds of plans are the kinds of plans that sometimes work, and what things you could go see that'd be a hint about whether your plans will work. The fact she's a ....wizard and cleric both? - is almost a distraction.

It sure is an incredible distraction if so. If you think there's useful advice underneath what she says I can try to learn how to interpret it.

If she's right that Alfirin and Morgethai can stabilize a intertimeline teleport at ninth and get a Miracle from Nethys to be allowed to hang an intertimeline teleportation circle at eleventh then that's - I guess I'd still rather have another actually allied archmage but I wouldn't prefer it by a large margin since it permits much better allocation of the ones we've got. 

She scowls at her transcript again, redacts the bit about Alfirin loving her which is unprofessional to care about and something she had no right to learn even if it's true. 

Morgethai is regarded as non-mad, right?