She looks back and forth.  Ophelia, Gord.  Ophelia, Gord.  Ophelia.

"...so, what, you've been secretly good this whole time, then?  Is that what you're claiming?"

"Hardly.  I've enough blood on my hands, and enough questionable decisions to my credit, that I simply don't have the right to claim goodness.  But I do want to do helpful things more than hurtful ones."

If her tail was present, it would absolutely be lashing back and forth out of stress.  She's glad it isn't.

"You murdered a crusader to summon the Herald of a force beyond mortal comprehension. Beyond Deskari's, too, it seems. If you want to be helpful, convince her to wage war. No matter what you desire, you need an army on your side.

"War on Deskari, if you dislike him; on Cheliax, if you think devils are stronger than demons; on Mendev, for accepting tainted help, and not standing on their own two feet against the Worldwound. War until the world pleases you, until there are no more Haruns to curse for their own good, no more apologies for being too weak to win.

"This is the wisdom of Gorum: the future is weightier than the past. Own your mistakes, learn from error. We are ever only a step from redemption, for if we have erred, we can always turn to fight for the other side."

"And you, Herald, what do you desire in this new world? Who will you fight, who will you ally with, for your desires? I will help you if I can, for Gorum is a Neutral deity, and helps all sides fairly and equally."

She raises a finger at the declaration of 'murder', and - waits for the Herald's answer, then notices that the Herald is waiting for her in turn.  "I should note that I can bring him back, and, hopefully, fix his ills, should he permit that.  But.  You're right.  This is a war, and - it needs fighting."

A contemplative expression passes over her face.

"...We're only ever a step from redemption.  Hmm.  I think you've stumbled upon a truth that's more true than you know.  Thank you for reminding me of it.  It's a hard belief to hold on to, out here."

"I think I need to know more about what we're up against, about potential allies and enemies, to make this decision properly - but I'm inclined to take out Deskari, given the...rampant destruction themes.  I just got done with one of those; I'm not sitting by for another."

Gord will happily discuss military affairs and history!

"The land we're in was once called Sarkoris. Its people outlawed arcane magic. A century ago, they tortured a powerful witch, Areelu Vorlesh, until she snapped and opened the Worldwound, a giant rift to the Abyss. She was probably helped by the demon lord Deskari, who has an affinity with interplanar rifts. Demons gradually overran Sarkoris; few people live here today. 

"The demons' advance was eventually stopped when the goddess Iomedae created the wardstones, artifacts that surround the Worldwound and don't let demons out. Many demons can teleport and the wardstones also stop that. Like Harun said, the demons' obvious objective is to destroy them, so everyone focuses on protecting them and doesn't try advancing enough.

"Sixteen years ago, the demons started a big new offensive and breached the line of wardstones. They were pushed back, though, and after a lot of fighting we've returned to the status quo. The demons are on the back foot, but everyone else is too tired to press their advantage.

"Also, it's hard for mortal armies to survive in the Worldwound. Even if they reach the rift at its center, no-one knows how to close it. There are infinite demons in the Abyss. The closer you get, the harder it is to keep going.

"Most of the organized demonic forces in the Worldwound follow Deskari, or so they claim. They hold Iz, the old capital, and they have proper generals and armies - being demons, this means they have big guys with whips successfully driving a horde of little guys ahead of them, instead of the horde running off every which way. They have at least two balors, and many other powerful demons, and wizards. 

"Deskari is a giant locust and most of his demons are insects too. They swarm, eat, and move on. He calls himself Usher of the Apocalypse and as far as I know all he wants to do is consume and destroy.

"The other demon lord with a local presence is Baphomet, lord of minotaurs. He has many mortal cultists, the Templars of the Ivory Labyrinth, and has them infiltrate his enemies and sap them from within instead of fighting them properly. A couple of crusades ago, the Mendevian forces were so riddled with cultists that when they started burning them out they never really stopped until they collapsed their own ranks. They're still burning them; I expect we'll get a second Areelu Vorlesh any day now.

"I don't know what Baphomet himself wants, except that he hates Asmodeus. His cultists are mostly confused or crazy or dominated, but some are taking advantage of the chaos for their own advantage.

"Of course, there are many demons running around who aren't beholden to any demon lord. As well as monsters, undead, corrupted beasts, maddened spirits - this land would be the best vacation spot, if not for the demons. They don't respect the neutrality of inns.

"...Well, infinity minus infinity is zero.  And I can control all the bugs."

"...Are you saying that you - or rather, your patron - can dominate Deskari's demons, all at the same time?" Gord has the delighted look of someone who just won the Pharasmin lottery for fighting an especially rare species of undead tomb guardian.

"Well, I've yet to find a limit, and I have done some very taxing things over the past few days.  I wouldn't be surprised if my power worked on Deskari."

Her swarm buzzes with her, an ominous overtone - "Whatever else he is, he is a bug."

"Well that, dear Herald, sounds like a very good idea to find out with all due haste.  What sort of range does your ability have?  How much control do you have with it?  Though, given the chitinous orchestra, I presume 'a lot'...  What strength of dispel would be needed to break its control?  Are there other factors that would be useful for me to know, if I develop plans for finding and usurping Deskari directly?"

...Does she have a single relay bug on her person?  She does not seem to.  Drat.

"About a mile radius without specialized support, I can do anything I know how to make a bug do - and incidentally, what do you know about this guy's," she waves Brizz's hands, "innate abilities, there's some weird feedback I'm getting through him - I have no idea what your 'dispels' do or how they'd interact with my power, though it's ever been suppressed by hostile forces.  My power propagates through portals and into warped spaces."

"Most of his powers are mind-affecting.

"He can go invisible, and infect people he touches with different diseases he carries. He can influence the weak-minded, and distract them with by fluttering his wings. 

"He can make illusions of various spells, and if you fall for them, they hurt like the real deal. They're not really dangerous, though, because everyone knows a coloxus can't cast those spells for real.

"If he bites someone they become ugly and dull and eventually die if he keeps biting, just like a real fly."

"...shadow evocation is not, precisely, an illusion.  It's of the illusion school, magically speaking, but it draws from sources of pseudoreal matter that most illusions do not, and is correspondingly somewhat dangerous even to those that disbelieve it.  Furthermore, that dangerousness can be increased by specialized training in drawing upon the Plane of Shadow, to the point that it would in fact be 100% 'real', for our intents and purposes - though I would not normally bother with such.  It may be useful for you, however.

"It depends upon your nature, and how much effort you wish to invest in learning what sorts of skills.  Magic is powerful, but not precisely all-encompassing, given that anti-magic fields and the Mana Wastes exist; magic does not work properly, there.

"Speaking of which, most of a coloxus's abilities are relevantly magic-like, for the purpose of specifically anti-magic fields and dispellation, but not counterspelling - you can neither counterspell them nor use them to counterspell, as a spellcaster otherwise might.  The only effect that Gord mentioned that would work in an anti-magic field is one's droning wings.

"A coloxus's proboscis, while it may have the visual effects of rendering someone 'ugly', is best modeled as attacking - the part of one that is convincing, that bears force of personality, rather than mere surface beauty.  There are Splendorous folk who are quite proudly messes, and this does not make them less Splendorous - merely Splendorous in a different way.  There are also quite beautiful people who have all the Splendor of a wet paper bag."

"...It sounds like you know a lot about that sort of thing."  How did you learn?, she doesn't ask.

"Well, it has been my course of study my entire life.  ...Do you not study the arcane?  I would normally expect someone granted such a powerful spell to study how it works, and you do not strike me as incurious."

"...Well, if this is magic, it's very well-disguised, because certainly as far as I know there's no wizards on my homeworld."

She can tell that to her friend, it's fine.

"There's what."

"...No wizards, no - clerics, nothing like that at all."

What.  How.  Why.  "All the forces, even from beyond Pharasma's Creation, that I know of, can recognizably produce spellwork; how does your world manage?"

"...With effort."

"You're being silly", Gord tells Ophelia. "You call a being from the Dark Tapestry and expect to find normality? We are lucky the herald is human; the power behind her might defy all your hard-won knowledge. That is why Deskari wanted it, after all."

"The first step of understanding is to question."