Cool.

Probably she should in fact be handling her own enormous financial transactions. Probably Marit would handle his own enormous financial transactions, and not expect other people not to be compromised even if they weren't before.

But she's tired. And she needs to talk to Harmattan, and to - Irabeth, she thinks, probably, as one of the only people who can be trusted to handle huge amounts of money and who is generally agreed to be worthy of trust with huge amounts of money, possibly she should have assigned Irabeth to this job, too, except that she didn't think of it - 

Whatever. There are more points on Regill's map that mark patrol deaths than there were, and nobody is yelling at her about it yet but that's almost worse, and if she's going to fix her crusade then she has things to do.

She'll give the papers to Marit, and tell him to try to be back with the money by early afternoon.

"Absolutely, Knight-Commander." And he'll grab Tanat and Teleport off.

She goes to find Irabeth first. She'd rather not ask anything big of Irabeth, but it's - good for her, maybe, to still be of some significant use, and Irabeth is the only Mendevian paladin who has been with the crusade since the very beginning. Someone needs to hand out payments to the soldiers - tonight, if as that's possible - and it can't be Dorgelinda or Harmattan, although she will need to get the records of pay from either Dorgelinda or Harmattan. Someone needs to make sure that all of the backpay actually makes it to the soldiers. Lann can handle the Neathers, and she can pay the Wintersun refugees, but she's going to ask Irabeth to handle directly paying the bulk of the force. 

Then she goes to find Harmattan, and get what he has of a legal code. He doesn't think it's done yet. She tells him that she needs what he has, and will create the final draft herself. ...then she hands the draft to Regill, and tells him to write another draft that fixes what he feels are the problems with Harmattan's, so that she can look them both over, combine them with the suggestions she recorded from other people at the initial meeting about this, and make something passable. Marit said that this ought to wait for a charter from the queen, but she has been waiting for a charter from the queen, and gotten nothing, and she's not going on indefinitely with no halfway passable rules.

Then she paces the command center, over and over, gripping Lariel's sword to steady herself and keep her brain from dripping out of her ears, playing with loose phrases and chaining them together.

She waits for Marit to get back with the crusade's money.

Iomedae's going to stop by Cansellarion's with some draft proposals for decapitation strikes on the current government of Cheliax! Draft proposals for decapitation strikes on the current government of Cheliax are one of her favorite things and she's run them by her military history tutors to make sure she's not missing anything obvious. (She's not; she has a lot more to learn on a battlefield than in planning this sort of thing. There are a few dynamics changed by gradual improvements in magic and spell availability, some secrets they were used to relying on that are now widespread, but the Shining Crusade just did more high magic combat than anyone today does with the possible exception of the Mendevian crusaders and their raiding in the Abyssal rift.)

Alfirin also enjoys this kind of planning, and having Alfirin around takes away some of the ache of not having Arazni around for it, but Alfirin is expected to be busy working with Felandriel and Aivu on spell development and running down their allies' archmagery-wishlists if she has spare spells at the end of the day of spell development. 

Cansellarion has a handful of older decapitation plans already, which he didn't expect to be able to use because Morgethai wouldn't sign on to anything too risky. Since he met Alfirin he's been dusting them off, making adjustments to account for Abrogail's lesser experience and greater sorcerous ability than her predecessor, and looking for places where a second archmage would make it enough of a sure thing that Morgethai would be willing to be that second archmage. He and Iomedae can swap plans and compare notes when they've both read through all of them?

Sounds perfect!

...the most immediately obvious difference is that Iomedae is used to having access to more magic. A lot more magic. Her plans assume about fifty people conducting simultaneous operations; it gets hard to go higher than about fifty because Alfirin would then have to spend two spells on Communal Mind Blank. (Obviously they all have to be under Mind Blank; otherwise they're scryable and three minutes in any location they're using for operations will be exploded by their enemy.)

Aspexia Rugatonn is the highest priority, both as the most dangerous person in her own right and as the person who probably knows where Cheliax's Miracle diamonds are, but probably Alfirin can just use Nightmare to tell when she falls asleep and then pop in to cast some obscure Alfirin spells which sleeping people can't resist. If Aspexia sleeps in a shielded demiplane that just means it'll be more expensive, requiring a Time Stop and a Gate.

Alfirin can cast Contingency on other people, but only with Arazni's Limited Wish, so they should think about how many people it's worth doing that for; even the minor Limited Wish diamonds add up.

She also assumes their enemies to have more magic; surely Cheliax wouldn't have been foolish enough to build a palace in Egorian without anyone who could lay stone walls immune to Disintegrate and Earthquake and so on, so presumably the palace has those and will need to be tediously infiltrated. Alfirin did secure a bunch of passwords to access Forbiddanced and Alarmed parts of the palace. Iomedae seems to treat 'if a duke of Hell shows up' as being in the same general category as 'if Tar-Baphon shows up' on the Shining Crusade battlefield, which is to say that the priority is having the communications and transport capabilities to drop her on top of the responsible party as fast as possible and then counterspell their efforts to flee.

He did not have specific plans for 'if a duke of Hell shows up', just a number of contingencies for trying to salvage as much as possible if things went horribly wrong. He can't win that fight.

...Alfirin got forbiddance and alarm passwords? How did she - possibly that's secret. Are they confident Cheliax doesn't know about this or should they expect Cheliax suspects an attack is coming?

How she got it is secret. Cheliax doesn't know.

Iomedae does not seem to assume there exist any fights she can't win, just fights that are more or less expensive for her to overdetermine. (That's maybe a slight overstatement. She thinks she'll lose if Geb gets involved, and this is why she is not going to go get Arazni. She doesn't think Asmodeus can directly involve Himself but if He did she'd lose that too. And it is a well-established fact that anyone can be pushed through a Gate straight into Abaddon and while the Shining Crusade won't take three moments to Wish them back, anymore, none of them will ever again think of anyone as invincible).

For most purposes, though, it's just a question of whether it's worth letting a duke of Hell cause problems for an additional several moments while she makes sure she has a full team with her or whether it's like Tar-Baphon where the winning move is 'Iomedae, as fast as possible'. It probably mostly depends what backup the duke of Hell showed up with.

Relatedly she's undecided about whether to try to take Razmir out as an opening move in the war. He doesn't work for Cheliax, but he might if they paid him enough, and unprepared archmages are (barely) killable where prepared ones they don't stand a chance of killing. He's Lawful, and neither of them benefit from her having to attempt to kill him, so in principle this is the kind of thing one just civilly negotiates his neutrality in, but everyone agrees he's an idiot so she isn't sure what to expect. She is inclined to negotiate and hope he stays out of it; she's fighting on too many fronts as it is.

Lastwall's neutral. Iomedae is worried that even though Lastwall is in fact serious about being neutral, their patron goddess conquering Cheliax will make it noncredible to everyone that they're neutral. She isn't sure if there's a good way around that. Cansellarion presumably thinks a lot more than her about how to maintain that separation substantively so that if his plans fail they don't take Lastwall down with them, and so that if they succeed they don't still take Lastwall's international credibility with them.  

Cansellarion has thought about this, though as with everything else he's been planning recent events change the picture somewhat. Everyone's going to treat the two Iomedaes interchangeably for this purpose, but everyone already recognizes a distinction between Iomedae's church and Lastwall. Cansellarion was going to base all of his operations outside of Lastwall when he eventually moved on Cheliax. Iomedae should do that too - Andoran or Absalom probably. Absalom minimizes the damage if they fail, but western Andoran is a much more convenient base. If they're not teleporting everywhere, which they might be with the shining crusade's resources.

If they do that and succeed then Lastwall's credibility should be fine with anyone who'd respect it in the first place.

She will defer entirely on the politics. She expects they'll be doing this mostly entirely by Teleports and accordingly can be based out of Absalom if they care to.

Are the Hellknight orders Lawful enough to negotiate with in advance? (She expects not. In her own time she is, and the church of Abadar is by virtue of not really having any geopolitical interests that'd be in tension with it, and that's it.) Is the one that has her artifact-sword worth demanding that back from? She thinks she won't have a divine bond with the artifact-sword, and so doesn't really expect it makes sense to wield it in combat, but Cansellarion doesn't have a divine bond with a sword and so for him it'd be a rather astonishing upgrade useful if they end up fighting a lot of pit fiends or something worse.

(By similar logic she thinks someone else should probably wear the crown of infernal majesty once they steal it; she's immune to enchantments already. It's useful to have a plan for artifacts in advance of the fighting so no one's trying to be diplomatic six moments into a war.)

She assumes that the Chalice of Ozem can be borrowed back from Lastwall? If she has two of them - really, if Alfirin has two of them - that's a lot more ninth circle spells.

The order of the Godclaw might be willing to return Heart's Edge. He thinks that they'd at least be Lawful enough to not tell anyone else about negotiations for heart's edge, or Iomedae's presence, if that's requested in advance... She probably wants to go through the church of Abadar for setting up the meeting, as if it were a Worldwound matter.

Lastwall might prefer not to loan out the Chalice actually, depending on whether it's Lastwall's or the Church's, he's not sure. Iomedae might be able to rent it - Lastwall doesn't really need the Chalice, and they don't need the money - well, actually they kind of do, but it's more that they're going to want to avoid giving much material aid. The chalice can do what?

She apologizes for leaving what were probably very unclear notes for her Church, unless that too is a case where the notes were clear and got lost. The Chalice of Ozem, if you are a bit of a god already, gives you a bit more capacity to act as one. Arazni showed them how to use it for that. Iomedae does not have anything resembling a complete characterization of what being a bit of a god is and what it lets you do, nor would she share it if she did, but the Chalice amounts to Alfirin being a bit more like Arazni, who had more than twenty ninth circle spells because she was a lot of a god. 

She'd be happy to rent it.

They're probably going to spend all day at this, or maybe several, but hopefully by the end of the day they can start narrowing down on some plans that they think will work and stress-testing them to make them work better and figuring out who needs to know of them in advance.

After a couple days Alfirin drops in late in the evening. "Allandra, could I have a quick word?"

"Of course." They're not in the middle of anything impossible to drop; she'll take Alfirin's hand, if it's a plane shift kind of word, or show her to a private sanctum'd meeting room, if it's not.

It's more the private sanctum sort of word.

"I don't object to you telling our new allies whatever you've been telling them about me, but you seem to have been telling them different things and I'd like to know why."

"... I don't think I have done that? I would've needed a very good reason.... no, I'm pretty sure I just gave them the same account of you. I guess Marit spoke to Lastwall and not to Cansellarion but you know what Marit thinks of you and I don't really expect it'd be a surprise to Cansellarion."

"Hmm. So Cansellarion has been downright friendly, which was somewhat odd but explicable given how we've shown up from another time and are offering to help solve all his biggest problems. But if that were it I'd expect about the same from Lastwall and instead they're almost hostile. Not quite to the point of turning down my ninth-circle spells when I offered just now, but - if you'd said Karlenius was the one to talk to them that would've been less surprising, apart from the thing where he didn't come here."

- Iomedae winces. " - oh. I would not have guessed that but having learned it I can probably backtrace how it happened. ...I apologize. I should've been more thoughtful, in advance, about how I would explain.  I discussed with Lastwall to what degree I trusted you. Which I do, mostly uncomplicatedly. And if I was similarly confident in the future Alfirin, which...I'm not. They were a bit confused, about how I'd arrived at my position, which I will admit is mostly trusting my instincts. 

And it seemed like it'd be a bit of an injustice to an ally, to say that I trust you and not acknowledge the reason that if my instincts were wrong this is the case where they predictably would be." 

"...so I explained that we were lovers, briefly, when we were younger, and Jan was appalled. Along a dimension to which I hadn't, actually, in my own analyses of my mistakes there, paid much attention - he felt it was an indefensible exercise of power, on my part, and a sign of rather remarkably poor judgment around you. I haven't wholly decided if I agree with his analysis. I am tempted to, because when someone goes around proposing a heuristic that would have prevented all of your own greatest stupidity and not much else there is an inclination to adopt it. I think it's at minimum a reasonable analysis, and wrong if it's wrong for very complicated reasons that are hard to convey, and it's just true we'd both have been better off in a military that expected us not to be ridiculous, and I'm glad that Lastwall apparently built such. 

...but when I was telling Cansellarion and Morgethai I was more careful about emphasis, because I also think that part of what happened with Lastwall is just that they learned pieces of the story in an order that called my judgment into even more question than was actually warranted. And with the story told more carefully and with more Splendour they thought it was no big deal at all, really.

I am kind of irritated with Lastwall if they're being rude to you as a product of their own analysis that I wronged you horrendously. But if they're scared of you it's because they didn't trust what I had to say."

"They weren't very rude. It would not have been notable except for how Cansellarion's reaction was wildly different. An indefensible exercise of...what power? Your splendour? Your position in the crusade?"

"Both, presumably? I didn't press him for details. The strongest version of the complaint that jumps to my own mind is that I exercised practical authority well beyond my official position, and it wasn't that hard to guess I'd have more in the future."

"Well, yes, that was obvious. I still can't tell whether they think the problem is that your judgement might be impaired in future decisions regarding me or whether they think it's an evil in itself like sleeping with a slave... I suppose it's not very important. And then Marit I assume told them everything I've done for the last thirty years that might lead one to suspect I'm secretly evil and that's why they distrust me."

"More or less. I will confess that while I trust you a great deal I haven't in my planning for if we have to fight an archdevil presumed you incapacitated by a Blasphemy. Marit actually said he thought you were vanishingly unlikely to betray us while I was around 'in a form that could experience it as a personal betrayal' but might sell us to Hell for the right price after that. I - he's Marit. If they'd asked him whether to trust me he'd have had just as much to say. I am sorry, I could have approached the whole matter more carefully. I'm glad Cansellarion likes you. I like him a lot."

"Well. That's one way Marit could've phrased it." It hurts; Marit may not have ever meant her to hear it but it's still cutting. "I would not sell out the rest of the Crusade to Hell. There's nothing Asmodeus would offer me worth that - even if you were gone -"

"I know. I have never been in the slightest doubt."