If he wants it he should decide today so Alfirin can what???

Conceal the spell to Detect Magic and unskilled Arcane Sight. Only Alfirin can do that so if he wants it he should get it done before she leaves.

They...did not know that was a thing that one could do. Though if it's a ninth-circle spell they suppose it's not that surprising they've never heard of it.

It's not ninth circle. (She doesn't know what circle, but it's never meaningfully traded off against Alfirin's powerful spellcasting.) It is the sort of ability that's much more useful if no one knows it exists; it sounds like it will be potentially be an extremely valuable component of the operational support Alfirin's planning to provide the anti-Hell forces in the future Golarion, if Cheliax too doesn't know it exists. 

They will tell nobody except Saiville, who will presumably tell Lord Watcher Zima but probably not the other Precentors Martial. Rumblebrand will take the apparently undetectable Grand Polymorph. The telepathic bond will be similarly undetectable?

It can be done just as easily and will last just as long. She'll send them with a couple of the local soldiers and a priest with the strength for Imbue With Spell Ability; do they need a wizard on top of that?

They can't do their own telepathic bond, if that's what she's asking. They don't expect to need ongoing wizard support. Pedrotti is good with languages and should be able to pick up the dialect after a couple of share languages and a day or two in the field, (He'd prefer a share language now, and an extended one tomorrow when they actually go to Barstoi, and that should be sufficient to have it down before the spell wears off) and then he'll be able to cast it on Rumblebrand.

Great. If they have a preliminary report for Lastwall, she can send it through with Alfirin (and with Alfirin's word to pass it along unread and unmodified, obviously). She wishes them fortune from its many sources.

They will think about whether they want to send a preliminary report and what they want to include in it. They were expected to be out of communication with Lastwall for a while, it's not expected that they will send a report right away and there are definitely some things that they want to report in person. (They are also a little worried about their courier being the primary subject of the report. Not because they expect her to try to read it, but just because that's the sort of thing they worry about professionally.)

They assume, given how Iomedae is entrusting them with important secrets, that the Crusade has a plan for extracting them if they are captured or killed and reanimated? She should not tell them if she does, they are only mentioning it in case that's the sort of thing thing that seems obvious to them but was only developed three hundred years ago. A lot of seemingly-obvious principles of spycraft are ones that in fact only got learned through mistakes and they don't know what mistakes haven't been made yet.

She suspects that her spycraft is indeed wildly behind the times but that particular concern is one the Shining Crusade does handle routinely given who their enemies are.

(The permanent Telepathic Bond turns out worth the expense because it turns a lot of extractions once people are dead into rescues while they are alive, and a lot of losses into extractions once people are dead.)

Then they can get their telepathic bond and their Grand Polymorph and get both of those hidden??? for a month??? and their first day of the Barstoi dialect of Hallit.

They write up a report to send with Alfirin that barely touches on anything they've learned about Alfirin. (They leave a more thorough sealed written report with De Luna)

Korva ends up running the barrier patrol three times, mostly out of pure restlessness, while she waits for Marit to be done training soldiers (and for Regill's runner, also riding a phantom steed, to come back with a reply from Paralictor Renth). There's a sense in which this is pointless and a sense in which it's the most important thing they're even doing here, but in any case she's spent a bunch of spells and a bunch of time giving her team endure elements and phantom steeds for the day, and she feels like she ought to make use of them. She doesn't run into much else to kill, though.

When it's evening, she wants to talk to Regill and Marit in the command center again.

"Knight-Commander."

"We have a problem. Regill noticed it this morning, or at least that's when he told me about it. Regill, did you get a reply from Paralictor Renth?"

"I did. It would seem your suspicion was correct. The northern forts are also seeing elevated casualties, beyond the ordinary winter increases. The losses are not as extreme as ours, but they are certainly present."

"A-huh. The problem isn't that our men are getting weaker, it's that the demons are getting stronger. We're losing significantly more patrols than we were a month ago, or than it's normal to lose at this time of year. The snowcaster elves - you probably haven't seen them, they don't come into Drezen if they can help it, they just camp outside the walls. They lost two men on patrol last night. We also lost a whole patrol to the south, apparently, one of the mixed Lastwall and Mendev patrols, which are normally capable of handling themselves."

"I talked to the snowcasters, and they said it was a fight with two succubi, which shouldn't be such a problem under normal circumstances. Then I took a team to investigate the site where the whole patrol party was lost, and did some poking around. I think it's Xanthir Vang's super-demons again. Except that Xanthir Vang is pretty thoroughly out of commission, so Jerribeth must have been right, and they've passed off the nyhandrian crystal ritual off to someone else. That, or there were a bunch of them left over who have decided to unstrategically attack us in small groups now, for some reason."

" - Marit, you're probably gonna need more context, aren't you."

"I suspect so. You think the wardstones aren't getting weaker, but more powerful demons are trying to get through?"

"Yeah, that's what I suspect. We know the demons have a new way of making themselves stronger, using something called nyhandrian crystals, which they get from the Abyss. A particularly mad evil wizard named Xanthir Vang was previously in charge of the experimental transformation process, which I'm informed is very painful and frequently results in death. When it doesn't, though, you get a super-demon, with heightened abilities that make it more dangerous than it otherwise would be."

"We killed Xanthir Vang. Or, well, technically he was kind of hard to kill because he'd transformed himself into a sapient swarm of locusts, but we neutralized him and gave him to Jerribeth, the demon who had previously been preserving the village of Wintersun as a diverting hobby. I don't expect that she let Xanthir go, she hated him. But Jerribeth also said that the transformation ritual didn't originate with Xanthir, it originated with Areelu Vorlesh, and that Areelu would likely pass the information off to someone else, now that Xanthir isn't in the picture anymore. She also claimed that Baphomet's followers were in charge of the supply process. Whether that's all true - the source is, you know, literally a demon, but that's the information I have about it."

"The previous batch of super demons honestly spent most of their time messing around inside the barrier. We didn't see many of them make it all the way to the barrier patrols. But it looks like that's changing, now, and it's going to be harder to hold the barrier if all of the demons that come though are tougher now."

"All right.

If all of what you just explained isn't known to the organizations holding the other Worldwound borders - well. You should tell Lastwall. I trust them to repay the favor where they can. Regill can perhaps speak to whether the same is true of the Hellknight orders and of the Chelish forces; I don't know if the Worldwound treaty forbids them from using strategic information like this provided by us to our active detriment, say by enticing all the superdemons to go for Mendev or something. It could be worth telling them even if they're going to be maximally hostile with the information, of course, I just possess too little context to suggest it. 

I am also tempted to suggest a Commune request to Lastwall, on whether it serves the peace and safety of this world for the Fifth Mendevian Crusade to invest extensively in handling the, uh, nyhandrian crystal ritual situation and if no whether it serves the same to call in bigger guns. - by my own values, I'd ask whether it serves Iomedae, but my best guess is that 'serves the peace and safety of this world' is closer to the question whose answer you care about.

Can we make our patrols much stronger, or give them consumables that strengthen their sufficiently-serious-emergency capabilities?"

"The big thing we're bottlenecked on is endure elements castings. After that there are lots of other things we can do to make the people in the patrols stronger, provided we have the money to pay for them, which we mostly don't. But the big blocker, right now, is just first circle spell slots. In comparison to a Chelish fort, Drezen probably has more than twice as many soldiers who could fight, but it has far fewer wizards to shield them from the cold. If we had twice as many endure elements castings, we could double the number of people in each patrol, and then they'd be a lot harder to take down. I am, having recognized this problem, pretty tempted to ask our allies for a ton of wands of endure elements, which as forms of aid go are at least fairly inconspicuous, if not economical."

"I guess we probably should also tell the other Worldwound forces, if they're going to be dealing with the fallout of the problem, too. I'm not particularly worried about the Chelish forces directing the superdemons here, if they weren't interested in holding the Worldwound I don't think they'd be expending so many resources holding it. I... guess we could also call in a commune to Lastwall, although that honestly isn't the sort of thing we've really done in the past, and I don't know whether they'll think it's worth a commune. And I'm not really sure that I think it's worth a commune, either? What are we going to do if they say no to both, just ignore the problem instead of investigating it?"

"I don't have a perfect guess how much the end of prophecy changes their internal estimate of the value of a single Commune question but I'd be surprised if it were worth far more, to them, than a Worldwound patrol; experienced senior soldiers aren't cheap either. If they say no to both I would assume that the problem will either resolve itself or is beyond any power we can call to aid us, or is unrelated to these crystals and we need to look elsewhere for the source.

How many first circle wizards do we have? How many Endure Elements castings?"

"...like, ten, for first-circle wizards? And then another six or seven second-circle ones, mostly people who were helping hold the fort that used to hold the wardstone that now rests here. Wizards are less than a third of our endure elements castings, even if you count Woljif, who was able to cover thirty-six people a day before he left, if I extended his spells to last two days. I can do that for anyone who can cast the arcane version of the spell. But most of our castings, unfortunately, are from clerics. The Sarenites mostly get it as a domain spell. Higher circle people also put all of their first-circle and often second-circle spells towards it, if they can cast it, although Nenio's weak on abjuration and therefore isn't very much help here. Daeran doesn't do endure elements, but he can grant cold resistance that lasts all day, so three patrols get covered with that. And some of the experienced paladins can cover themselves."

"I think it comes out to close to three hundred people a day, if you put everything towards it."

"I still prefer not to reveal my capabilities openly but I do have eleven first circle spells a day, and seven at second circle, and five at third, and know how to extend spells, if this is work you would like me to join. We can also probably purchase wands for it which would at least get us through the winter.

- also, you should see if you can personally pick up Arazni's Endure Elements. It's of course not the kind of thing normal people can learn, but - much of our work here is premised on you not being limited to the ordinary uses of magic. And She could do twenty targets with a single casting and make them not slowed by snow and able to see through a blizzard."

"...I could try it, if I can see someone cast it. I've never been able to song-spell endure elements, I've been trying for years, but I can do a different thing to mimic any spell I've seen someone cast, fifth circle or below. Hasn't failed yet. Only twice a day, though, so it trades off against teleports."

"Huh. Well, it's very useful in the field when the weather's terrible. I only know the one person who can do it, but you could ask her to show you.

The recent losses - how much are those going to bite, in themselves rather than part of a trend? I know we've generally only been sending senior people out..."