“I don’t speak to him directly without Commune as an interface that frequently, but when I do He’ll usually end up saying more than what I asked about,” says Iomedae. “I think it’s only costlier for Him to volunteer things insofar as not using the Commune arrangement in the first place is costlier, and at that point He may as well tell me everything it’s worth my knowing. … Ordinarily I’d take it as strong reason to think that I was about to encounter some reason to distrust Alfirin which would’ve caused me some problem without His input, but He can’t see the other world so I think He’s just - endeavoring to not send us off where He can’t see without whatever He can see.”

And Aroden considers her a friend, sometimes does things for that reason, but it feels awkward to admit that to worshippers of the goddess Iomedae, who does not consider them friends, who loves them and is proud of them only if this happened to be an inexpensive way to arrange Herself and only if it pays for itself in the fact that many mortals find being loved and taken pride in motivating.

"That makes sense. Thank you for the clarification." This can go in the report back, it's useful information.

"He also said it's in fact relatively cheap for him to reempower anyone from the world where He's dead who wants it. I'm going to send Alfirin back with a fifth circle wizard to replace Mirdeliendë and we can tell Lastwall we'll keep making that trade, if they have other candidates for it. It's relatively cheap but not nearly free, so I don't think we should expect the goddess Iomedae, who is much more strongly budget-constrained than He, to empower anyone Aroden-empowered who we send through. My abilities as a paladin still worked fine but unsurprisingly when I prayed for new spells nothing happened, and I didn't get back uses of Lay On Hands. Or probably smites but I didn't test that. I think Karlenius and I should plan that when we go for the war we will stay Aroden's, be sparing with healing, use lots of pearls of power and conceivably sometimes need to return home for prayer.

And that does suggest sending Shining Crusade paladins through in general won't be that useful, they'll mostly be fighters with a few nonrenewable tricks which - inveighs somewhat in favor of using Cyprian's forces, honestly. Much of why I'd prefer to use my forces is the symbolic value, which is diminished if it's just our non-paladin soldiers, and much of the rest is that I think I could have my paladins take Westcrown while mostly only killing people they absolutely have to and I absolutely cannot expect that of the rest of the forces, not with Hell actively trying to muddy the situation as much as possible."

         "The civilians killed in Westcrown go to Hell," Kovets says. "Even if it's expensive for the goddess Iomedae to empower the Shining Crusade paladins, it seems conceivably very worth it."

"It's definitely worth asking Her. But - probability we win the war isn't going to be worth trading much against casualties during it. 800 adult deaths a day in the Western Empire - if by delaying three months we could prevent fifty thousand civilian deaths that's not worth it. I'd rather She be spending what resources She can spare on making it more certain rather than less bloody. - If by delaying three months we can make the victory flashier, more unambiguous, and more decisive, that is probably worth it, because I think that'll affect how fast the Asmodeans repent. I've been thinking which gods other than Iomedae we can ask for miraculous interventions in Cheliax, if we can squeeze out enough diamonds for it. I could imagine Sarenrae doing - give every dying person in this city a couple subjective days with higher Wisdom and true information about the afterlives to think and repent, or something -"

      "What is your working value of preventing someone from going to Hell, here," says Kovets. 

"Lastwall will have a better answer to that, our pre-contact answers just aren't applicable in a situation like this one."

      "Can we send our forces to the Worldwound where the discipline matters slightly less, and use Lastwall's to take Westcrown and so on," says Karlenius. 

"- I should perhaps let Lastwall's representatives speak to that," Iomedae says, "but my sense is that they don't see directly going to war with Cheliax as all that compatible with their preexisting commitments. Our arrival changes the degree to which they can expect to be able to do both, but meaningful institutional neutrality is of course not purely situational."

"No one would've been operating under the assumption Lastwall would remain neutral if their goddess personally showed up to command their forces - they weren't planning to in the Age of Glory -"

"We were not planning to in the age of glory but - When the Age of Glory failed to appear, we thought Tar-Baphon might break out of his prison - and then the Worldwound opened - and at the time there were a half-dozen factions in the Chelish civil war and no sign yet that Asmodeus was backing any of them. I believe that a commitment to neutrality in chelish conflicts was viewed as necessary to preserve our ability to contain Tar-Baphon and the Worldwound, and intervention in Cheliax was viewed as obviously a mistake. We were wrong, but - I believe the Lord Watcher considers those commitments to be a substantial constraint, which holds even in your presence."

"Embarrassing," says Arnisant. "There is flatly very little value to having an army for Lawful Good if it's going to promise not to interfere with Hell conquering the Empire."

"It's embarrassing but I would make the diagnosis narrower," says Iomedae. "It seems correct for those persons committed to their watch on Tar-Baphon to agree to some degree of neutrality, or otherwise they'll be interfered with and the world have to deal with Tar-Baphon again. It seems correct for the forces at the Worldwound to be signatories to a narrow treaty which forbids interfering with Cheliax's own Worldwound forces, or vice versa, even may this constrain how we can conduct our war. The part that's embarrassing is that once it's clear that Cheliax is now ruled by Hell, you want to start moving by far the bulk of Lawful Good's power out of those organizations so committed. The overwhelming majority of our forces shouldn't be Lastwall's, they should be Cansellarion's or in the service of other orders that are not literally Lastwall's government, loaned to Lastwall where it serves their own priorities. This is probably partially my own fault for arranging for too much centralization."

Falkner thinks the distinction here is largely one of outward perceptions rather than different realities on the ground. "I expect that if there were a sudden influx of volunteers to fight at the worldwound there might be a corresponding increase in resignations among current worldwound forces. Cansellarion has not yet asked his fellows in Lastwall to resign their oaths en masse, but I suspect when he does he'll get good uptake."

"Takes too long, though, and tips our hand," says Kovets. 

"Probably," Iomedae says. "I think we should plan to use either Cyprian's forces or our own, and in ten years everyone can write some spectacularly biting failure analyses… I also want to point out that 'their goddess showed up to command their forces' is more symbolic than substantive at this point. There is a lot I need to familiarize myself with and it is plausibly not worth waiting until I'm fully up to speed to go ahead. It's certainly not worth waiting just so I can get up to speed, if Cansellarion thinks he can win sooner. They are right to treat this differently from orders direct from their goddess, who in giving them would know exactly what She was trading."

Korva should, she knows, spend the hours before she ferries Marit over doing something productive, besides just talking to Nenio. She should come up with better ideas for how to decrease losses, or maybe check on Dorgelinda, or Harmattan, or Lann and the neathers, or Aivu, or her daughter. 

She doesn't do any of that. She sits by the grave she ordered dug for Staunton Vhane and his brother, the man who snapped her collar off before she left Kenabres, and who she killed in the process of taking Drezen. He was a cleric of Torag, and fought to defend his brother, even when his brother sided with the demons. His god didn't abandon him for it, even at the end.

It's a good place to mope. They probably wouldn't like that, either of them, but that's what they are to her, now. So she sits, and thinks a little bit about where she might be able to recruit more wizards for endure elements and more clerics for status, and she mopes, until it's time to go find Marit and ask Iomedae for the frankly insane and absurd number of wands she's going to need.

She alters self, before she goes across, just in case she runs into anyone from Lastwall who she would rather not reveal herself to.

There are indeed some people from Lastwall afoot in the operations mansion in use by the Shining Crusade, though not anyone who'd recognize her or vice versa. She gets escorted past them to Iomedae, who has some Bags of Holding with a king's ransom in it already. 

"Knight-Commander," she says to Korva, her eyes barely flickering across Marit even though they're close friends and that's a very grim expression he's wearing; it'd be pushing propriety, in this context, to ask how he's been.

"Hi.

"We'd - like to request some wands of endure elements, if that's possible, and maybe also status, although ideally we'd want a casting that lasts for ten or twelve hours, which I imagine is harder. Or if you have any other, more cost effective ways to achieve those effects, that would also be good. We're going to need kind of an unreasonable number of them, and we can work on other ways of getting them in our world, but I thought I'd ask here first. I think Marit has a list of other things that it would be useful to have, too, but those are the big ones."

"Our big challenge right now is moving material out without making Tar-Baphon curious what we're doing with it."

       "Second front," says Marit. 

"That's what we're going with. I don't know us to have wands of Status." Her crusade just has lots of people who can cast it, and for longer than it'd endure from a magic item. "Wands of endure elements we have plenty - might be currently in storage for seasonal reasons, actually, unless Lastwall requested them to in which case they're in here already. We can buy more for them and put them in the next shipment, if you think your need is more urgent than Lastwall's."

        "Even correcting for the natural tendency of any commander to find their unit's needs the most urgent, I think the Crusade has greater need than Lastwall and few good mechanisms by which to prove this to Lastwall and have it change Lastwall's supply behavior."

"Pereza, do we have any wands of Status?"

                   "We have a dozen rings of friend-finding, which function as permanent Status once they've adjusted to the wearers?"

         "That would be very useful," says Marit.

"We'd appreciate it."

"I don't want to waste your time, but in case further context on the problem helps, the demons have recovered a method of increasing their power. We'd already neutralized the previous lieutenant in charge of the transformations before we arrived in this world the first time, but the work has been passed on to someone else, now, and the newly empowered demons are reaching the barrier and winning fights against the barrier patrols. We've confirmed that Cheliax is also taking unsustainable recent losses, and I haven't asked Lastwall, but I expect that their forts are, too."

"I'm going to try to find and kill the new ritualist, if I can figure out who they are and where they are, but I'm going to need to stop losing units in the meantime. We can't field enough people together to keep them safe unless we can also protect them from the cold, is our big problem right now. We're also hoping to create some kind of system that allows elite teams to teleport in and respond to requests for aid, which was the idea with status, but we haven't worked out an ideal system for it yet."

"Marit also suggested that I should ask to see you cast Arazni's endure elements, in case I turn out to be capable of copying it."

"I don't prepare it in summer, but if you stay the rest of the night I can show it to you at dawn. You hold it practically like a cantrip, and keep handing it out to new people over and over until it exhausts itself in your hands. I can do a dozen, but Arazni could do thirty with each casting.

If you need some Greater Scrying or Discern Location or Dominate Monster for the ritualist, Alfirin is I believe ready to go through to provide support in your world. Operations to make the wound less dangerous for everyone certainly seem like something you should have support from everyone else for."

"Marit said that, too. I am not sure it's very likely to work that way in practice, but we'll certainly appreciate any help Alfirin can provide us with. And I think I can stay the night safely, yes."

"There are guest rooms here if you would like them. We'll add the rings, and I'll see if our usual wand suppliers have some inventory." 

"It'd also be nice to have a couple dozen veteran soldiers. I assume the constraint on that is suspicion, more than that you cannot spare them."

"Correct. You and Tanat are hard to spy on; if I send some veteran soldiers through they're obvious softer targets for everyone who has spies in Drezen. I could send some veteran soldiers through to a Lastwall worldwound fort at somewhat lower risk, and ask them to send the corresponding increase in capacity to Drezen, but it's still tipping our hand more than I prefer to do so at this time."

It'd be extremely useful to know how long until she moves openly and he isn't going to ask anything that might let him infer it. "We can make do with just the wands and other magic items."

She'll take a guest room.

She really ought to figure out how many times she can go across in a day, or if there's a limit at all, but she shouldn't test it now, when she'll need to show up to see the spell at dawn. And there isn't, actually, anything she needs to do tonight, as frustrating as that is when it's very likely that another team will die in the night.

She pens a letter to Galfrey, offering what she is sure is a clumsy account of the situation. She tries to read, for a bit, and can only handle a handful of pages. She writes down half a dozen stupid plans for how to improve their team survival rates. They could use telepathically bonded birds to monitor the barrier. They could figure out how to grant more teams phantom steeds, except for how that doesn't scale at all. They could build mini-forts along the barrier that people can shoot things from and then duck inside without needing an endure elements, apart from how that's probably also prohibitively expensive and will take forever and probably can't be done in winter. They could... kill the new ritualist, how about that, that really seems like what they're going to have to do here, except for how she isn't actually sure how. Probably the simplest thing is to capture some of the demons and dominate them, if they have an archmage, not that capturing super demons live sounds incredibly easy to do.

She sleeps. She's available again at dawn.

(They can't build more watchtowers but they could, conceivably, place Mansions at the relevant intervals and keep teams in them permanently, if they use Tanat for nothing else and stop using her Mansions to feed the troops. They could go hire some high-level adventurers in Absalom, maybe there are some who'd agree to be compensated in training in being a swordmage. They can ask Alfirin to check if Terendelev is undead and if she's killable if so, and then get her back.

They'll think of something.)

And in the morning Iomedae will demonstrate Arazni's Endure Elements, which she can put on sixteen different people by touching them one at a time and which additionally gives them cold resistance, heat resistance, the ability to walk across snow, and the ability to see (and shoot) clearly in snow, hail, and strong winds.

(Arazni was really really useful to have.)

She watches raptly.

And then doesn't try to copy it, because she expects to need her spell kennings today. She'll learn whether she can do it the next time she doesn't have anything more pressing to spend spells on. 

And she can take people back across.

Alfirin is ready to go across. Is there anything they need from her at the Worldwound before she runs off to do secret things? (Marit can probably guess) When does Korva expect will be convenient for the next transit?

Marit has a list of the Fifth Mendevian Crusade's best uses of her high-circle spells which she can compare to the other such lists that, if Iomedae's church is competent at all, they'll possess. (He wants to know if a Resurrection of Terendelev would work, and he wants to know if the locust swarm called Xanthir Vang who was a prisoner of the demon Jerribeth remains so, and he wants a dimensional lock on a cell in the dungeons, and he wants some mansions if she has the slots free at the end of the day. He doesn't particularly expect any of these to compare to the next-best use of the spell slot but it may depend how long she stays.)

He doesn't wish her luck with the secret things. That'd involve acknowledging she's going to do secret things. He can, indeed, guess.

(Another way the spell requests might happen is if there's two of her).