They can arrange that immediately with the Church of Abadar, then. Iomedae was worried about introducing a bunch of old Taldane coinage to the modern context, so it'll just be gold bars, if that's acceptable.

She can work with gold bars. She's a little dubious of many things about the Church of Abadar, but she's pretty sure that Arsinoe is competent to exchange those for normal currency.

It'll be a few hours but they should have it for her then. Also, Iomedae'd like to go back with her, if convenient; Aroden put Narthoc up to ninth and there are some conversations she wants to have.

Yep, she can absolutely do that. 

Then a few hours later there'll be Iomedae with an eyepopping amount of gold. "Knight-Commander. I'm ready when you are."

She's ready. She can drop Iomedae and the gold in the command center and then... call Arsinoe there to figure out gold trading and transportation logistics once Iomedae is gone, probably. Korva is in fact maybe just a tiny bit nervous around this amount of gold. 

Arsinoe looks like she is too, honestly, but she's a professional and can quickly cause it to be in trustworthy hands and replaced by affidavits from the church of Abadar which no one but Korva can use and which therefore can't be stolen, and with anything else on Korva's shopping list. Did she still maybe want some Raise Dead diamonds?

"Probably, let me look at who we've lost in the last couple days. I think thing number one is backpay, though, if it's possible to exchange the papers for normal money on the order of, uh, today. - I have teleports, can I literally just hand these to a bank of Abadar in another location and get a ton of normal currency to pay the troops with?"

" - yes, you can absolutely do that. The bank in Absalom or in Sothis will have this kind of money."

That's going to take a greater teleport, but technically they still have greater teleports. ...she should probably put some thought into whether there's anything else she wants that's in Absalom before she goes, given that she's about to tie up all of her army's seventh circle spells. Since she hasn't thought about that at all.

...caaaaan she once again call on Marit to see if he has any advice. She hates needing to be babysat every five hours, but she hates wasting time even more, at this particular moment. Also kind of hates all of her impulses towards responsibility and efficiency, right now, but she's going to try to ignore that.

"- everything all right? What do you need?"

"Fine. I guess. - I'm sorry, uh, we have the papers from the Church of Abadar saying that we are owed the money now. Arsinoe suggests that if we want the actual money, we should take them to Absalom or Sothis, which are the main places where the Church of Abadar is likely to have this much money on hand. Both of those are a greater teleport away, which we can spare right now - but we're planning not to have any greater teleports on hand again very soon, so it occurred to me that I should probably think about whether there's anything I want to do or get in - presumably Absalom - before we tie all of those spells up and the city becomes mostly inaccessible again. And - I'm just not thinking of very many of the things I know there are, and I was wondering if you had - better ideas of what we might want there."

"- either Nenio or Tanat will probably want to sigh all night over a magic item shop. You should see if there's anyone there who sells metamagic rods, there are some that'd be worth spending some of these funds on and we can sell them back at close to the same price in a few months when things have stabilized, there's a flush market in Lesser Extend and so on. You should get your daughter some desserts. Do you want me to come with you, or go on my own with Nenio or Tanat and a discretionary budget?"

"I think I might have to go? Arsinoe said that the papers could only be used by me. I guess if there's an easy way for you to handle it then I would kind of rather that you and Tanat handle it."

...man, there's a level on which she should be thinking about Zara here, Zara would love to see Absalom, but - even thinking about that hurts.

"I know we'd talked earlier about - whether there were any ways to recruit people from Absalom to help with the crusade. I'm not at all sure that we have time to do anything about that, but - I also don't want to rush so hard that we miss out on an obvious win, you know? But - I've never been to Absalom and I don't actually know where we'd start. ...Greybor has, I think, whatever good that does us."

"To do that, I'd lay some preparations in advance. Come in with the whole party all well-outfitted and very impressive, tour some magic shops, buy them out of some useful items we can resell in a few months and make good use of in the meantime, and then swing by all the adventurers' taverns and tell how fast you've all grown in power, how the soldiers are living out of mansions - show off a spell no one has seen before, if you have any which aren't strategic secrets..."

"I can, uh, revitalize devastated landscapes?" Also wow she does not want to do ANY of that even a LITTLE bit, that all sounds MUCH worse than routinely braving death. She'd like to stay up here with her band of weirdos who nobody likes and not try to be likable at all, thanks. ...that sounds like something a five year old would say, though.

"Oh, that's perfect, you can march in across one of the parts of Kortos where nothing grows. Assuming there still are some of those. 

- my last commander hated all the politics, when she was your age. She was not very good at it and it is intrinsically kind of silly and, you know, she liked to be around people who had already judged her and not people in the middle of doing it. It does work, though. People join things they believe in, and they believe in things that have the spare resources to impress them. And they are completely correct to imagine the crusade with the impossible feats and showy magic items is more likely to pay them."

"That seems entirely true, and also seems like it - doesn't actually reflect the general atmosphere of the crusade very well, current influx of gold notwithstanding. So we've sort of got to act like we're used to having a bunch of spare resources when we're - not, at all."

"I appreciate knowing that I - that your last commander was once not very good at this, either, but - " oh wow, this hurts to say, she doesn't want to say it and she's going to say it anyway. "I'm not actually sure if I can do it?" Oh wow that also sounds completely ridiculous, what, you can run an army and fight demons but you don't think you can impress any of the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who live in the city at the center of the world? ...but yeah, that's absolutely how she feels.

"I think it's worth doing, but there are a million things worth doing and you can only do a fraction of them, and have to decide somehow. It'll still be an option in a few months, anyway, the extra Teleport to go over Vellumis isn't really that prohibitive a cost, though I agree with the instinct to get as much done in one trip as possible.

If you don't want to go at all I think we can get a letter from Arsinoe authorizing me to withdraw the money."

"That might be easier, unless there's something specific for me to do. I - could probably pull off impressive, but I'm not sure I can pull it off today, and I would really like to get everyone paid before we send them into the mansions."

"We could probably also use some magic items. But we're not going to get another windfall like this anytime soon, and it won't go nearly as far as it needs to if we spend it all on magic items." She should have a specific number, but she's not thinking of one. She wants it done today, though, she can't really afford to delay very long. Ugh.

"Let's leave it without magic items for now unless they're selling scrolls of useful spells Nenio and Tanat don't have. I carry a lot of gear, we can handle the unexpected a couple of times as it stands. I might ask if a seventh circle pearl of power is commissionable, just so we're not drawn quite as tight with spells there, but I'll pay the down payment out of pocket, if it is."

"All right. Thank you. I'll talk to Arsinoe about getting some papers that you can use."

...which at least that gives her an obvious next task. She can go talk to Arsinoe. Again.

Arsinoe will draw up those papers. "Just so we're clear," she says, "these papers authorize him to withdraw all of your money. If he takes it all and runs off to Tian Xia there is nothing the Church of Abadar will do about it. You've known him...a couple of weeks, right? I will fill this out for you if you want but I highly recommend against this course of action."

"Yeah, I understand. Thank you for the warning, but I'd still like to do this."

Honestly her personal convenience isn't a great reason to introduce a vulnerability like that, but - Marit is not, in fact, going to abscond with all of the money that he was instrumental in getting the crusade in the first place.

Then Arsinoe will very skeptically write out the paperwork that'll let 'Tuvan' take the money out of any Church of Abadar once he's passed a Truthtelling that the authorization is legitimate and he's the person it refers to and so on.