"'I can tell you who's in them, though only if you'll actually string them up, I'm not going to make enemies like that if you have to tell me my word isn't enough.' Incitement to murder and subversion of the law. But I also suspect abuses of power by your - personal guard - and I would rather have you in a jail cell while I ask the Watch the questions I suspect you will not like the answers to."

Iomedae, if I am making the wrong decision, please strip me of my powers.

Are his assistants still visibly Good?

Yes. 

"You don't understand this country," Oris Chets says. "You'll probably die before you do, but if you live, you'll look back in a few years and realize you were an idiot. But I am loyal to Kenabres, and Kenabres cannot afford this fight, so I am not going to have it. You can lock me up while you invent your reasons."

"You could not say better," he says, and will send Chets back under a guard (a couple of his inherited assistants, headed by Enric, who can take in a fight two inquisitorial assistants and a not-showing-alignment-yet warrior whose hands are tied by himself). Their instructions are to (of course) treat him decently, but not let him get away.

And then he can wait for the council to show up. Before the confrontation he used his wand of Whispering Wind (backed up by riders with written messages) to tell Irabeth, Ramien, Vassily Rathsmus, Irabeth's lieutenant Elin the Tall, the Select he met at the Temple of Iomedae, and Count Arendae that a meeting of the council was being assembled immediately and they should please either meet him at city hall or send delegates with their proxy for a vote. (Count Arendae is not going to meet him, but he has some hopes for the rest; Irabeth he asked to appoint Elin her proxy if she hadn't done that yet so he could speak for her if she didn't want to come.)

The next stage is to get to a room that people who are not good enough at lying to lie to him (he hopes) say is moderately secure, make sure there's nothing with an alignment in it, use his Prisoner's Ring to alert Lastwall that he really wants them to scry him so he can talk to them, and start writing a mildly secure message explaining some features of the crisis and that he really urgently needs the two seats the Church of Iomedae appoints on the City Council to be passed to him and the Select, and also please tell him the situation with Hulrun.

(He's also going to send Silvio and two of Hulrun's other former flunkies off to the watch HQ, if that's near enough the city hall, just to make sure they don't start murdering prisoners or anything.)

Lastwall will scry him from a crystal ball and - 

“Report.”

He's got most of it written and can fill in the rest with his voice when the scry hits. (In a language Lastwall speaks and hopefully Mendev doesn't.) His message for Lastwall is, roughly, a summary of what happened since he got here. The city was in chaos; he's killed more than a dozen demons just while walking the streets. There's no law and order; the people who were managing this are all going on Crusade and leaving a mess behind them.

Here's a summary of the events with Hulrun and the Church of Desna, he would like to know if Hulrun fell. The inquisition had a Desnan in its dungeons purely for disapproving of what Hulrun did, he released her. Here is some of the shit Hulrun got up to, everyone in the city hates him except Oris Chets. He'd kind of like to hear Hulrun's side of the story.

Here's a summary of Oris Chets, including the parts where he spent his own money to support the Watch / take over the Watch, his extremely illegal seizure of power that was arguably necessary in a crisis, his suggestion that Ettore immediately hang lots of people on his word, and his long working relationship with Hulrun. Ettore feels very conflicted about his recent decision to imprison him and would like any guidance on this from his superiors.

Everyone Iomedae picked is either great, or a disguised demon doing a very good job of impersonating someone great, except Hulrun. Irabeth and Select Stasia have greatly impressed him.

He commends the sterling work of all of his assistants; he's sent one of them to go talk to the Watch, who according to Oris have a vast number of cultists in their cells, who may or may not just be innocent people, once he has the legal authority to do something about that.

The inquisition is funded through seized property; can the Diplomacy With Mendev people turn that into a regular salary or something else less spiritually corrosive or is that his department?

Here's his brief summary of the miracle. He thinks the Knight Commander might be, or be puppeted by, the lilitu Minagho, based on this. The miracle sounds bizarre and uncharacteristic for Iomedae, and also the person he interviewed said it left a lingering hunger inside her, which sounds creepy as hell more likely to be Abyssal than Iomedaean. He thinks this is Really Important, and that it would be very good (possibly Commune-question-fraction good?) to know if the Knight-Commander (and his sister) 'is or serves a demon' or if the miracle 'was of a good god' because the Knight-Commander would be really useful if Minagho wasn't behind him. Also, here's the names of him and his sister, just in case the branch of the government that knows about Tian Xia knows anything about them.

He would really appreciate about a dozen men-at-arms who can serve as sergeants for a militia or the Watch, one competent officer who could put the Watch in order, and one competent officer who could run a militia. He thinks that will reduce the odds of Kenabres falling massively.

He would also like Lastwall to designate him and Select Stasia as official Iomedaean delegates to the city council because he's summoned a meeting so he can have the legal authority to try to help with the Watch... at all...

Hulrun was renounced by Iomedae at some point the day of his death. He apparently did not realize this until he was raised; he’d spent all his spells and limited-use abilities, and took the sudden lack of Detect Evil/Chaos/etc as powerful demonic magic. He is cooperating with the investigation.

Hulrun’s own account of himself isn’t a lot more complicated than ‘the city was full of demon infiltrators, including sophisticated ones using Suggestions undetected, on everyone around him and probably also on him, and he was trying to be paranoid enough to stop them, and nearly every time he arrested people on insufficient or flatly ridiculous grounds they did turn out to be demon cultists, and he didn’t have the resources to do better’. Lastwall notes that Hulrun’s after-the-fact identification of people as demon cultists may not have always been accurate, and on at least some occasions conflated “anti-Hulrun” with “pro-demon”.

The obvious cautions with respect to Chets are that Kastil has obviously now made a powerful enemy and equally obviously cannot go to particular lengths to convict the man for that reason if he wouldn’t otherwise have convicted him. That’s the kind of thing that’s hard enough for people to do that it’s often worth calling in an external investigator, not that they really have the resources to send one. If there’s anyone in the city who could do the investigation competently and lawfully, that’d be much better, even if they’ll do a somewhat worse job.

They can - try to arrange a salary that comes out to about the expected value of the confiscated property but doesn’t directly vary with it, and have the property go to the Church but not directly to the Inquisition. This is only slightly better what with how many people think of all Iomedae’s resources as fundamentally the same resource. Ideally the seized property would go to supporting the people of Kenabres who have lost family to demon attacks, or some other specific public cause. If Castelloni can figure out an appropriate cause and a non-inquisition non-corrupt person to administer the fund, Lastwall can provide him with funds to make up the difference. They expect to be able to recoup most of the loss through some combination of increased willingness by the people of Kenabres to tithe to Iomedae’s church and through diplomacy with Mendev.

That sure does sound like a suspicious miracle for Iomedae to grant and a convenient ‘miracle’ for someone else to grant. It’s worth mixing into a commune; As the person on the scene, what’s Castelloni’s best guess of how likely it is that the knight-commander is a disguised demon? Mind-controlled by a demon? Unwittingly under demonic influence? Galfrey of course did not ask before declaring the crusade, otherwise they could make inferences about the knight-commander from whether the crusade was endorsed.

Barring unexpected sudden personnel needs elsewhere, they expect Castelloni will get the men and officers he’s requested. They don’t know exactly when, though; they can have people available to send soon, but teleports are scarce. About a week, most likely, though it could be tomorrow if the teleport schedule is convenient.

How should the Church communicate its nomination of Castelloni and whoever he recommends to those roles in Kenabres’s government that are meant to be Church-appointed, is telling Castelloni enough? If so, consider it so ordered.

Ettore absolutely confirms that the city is full of demon infiltrators; also, he is not surprised that Hulrun fell. 

Ettore is looking forwards to releasing Chets peacefully, since that would mean he has the problem that he screwed up diplomacy with an ally and not the problem that the city was run by an enemy. He does not expect that to happen. He does not know if anyone in the city exists who is qualified to run the investigation who is not going off on crusade; he'd like to pass it to Irabeth (who is a professional, is either a paladin of Iomedae or a very good impersonator, and has done this before) but she's leaving on crusade; maybe she'll have a recommendation.

He would be fantastically happy to just donate the money to a good cause. He'll get back to them on that later, probably tomorrow, once he's figured out good causes. His obvious choice for a non-inquisition non-corrupt person to manage the fund would be Select Stasia, but he doesn't actually know if she's good at financial management, and the only priest of Abadar is leaving the city and doesn't have a successor. (If they can persuade a priest of Abadar that Kenabres is not going to collapse, he thinks that would be very good for both the city and his job, since he could just hire them to manage the fund.)

Right now... fifteen percent that it is entirely on the level, forty-five percent that the Knight-Commander is something in the vague category of "demon, demonically manipulated, under a demonic spell." If he had to put numbers on it - fifteen percent that he's a demon, five percent that he's not but his sister is (she's a tiefling arcane spellcaster of some sort on the surface), ten percent they're puppets or servants of a demon who isn't them, fifteen percent that it's more complicated than that but in the general category. Forty percent that there's an explanation that fits in neither of those two categories, this is making him extremely suspicious but it was not from the outside predictable that a miracle would be enough to make Galfrey declare a crusade without contacting Iomedae.

He will be very pleased to have the men; Kenabres is in chaos and the sooner he can start fixing things the better. (Also, not worth higher prioritization: If they can send someone who can reliably beat vrocks that would obviously be useful to have hanging out in the city even if they only show up for major crises - right now they need to rely on potions or wands to be able to handle any demon that won't die to massed fire, but he obviously does not expect to get anyone - he just wanted to register that Kenabres is one of the places they're needed.)

One other comment that was important but not urgent: Irabeth told him that everyone who had asked the Lastwall leadership about Count Arendae had been told to leave him alone. He would like to confirm that this is an actual order, and that it applies to him.

That is sufficient, thank you.

There is an inquisitor assigned to handling Count Arendae, Liotr; he may ask Castelloni for help and if he asks Castelloni should give it but he has given general instructions that no one should indicate such an investigation exists, or conduct one of their own, or participate in other investigations of Arendae.

His plans are acknowledged. Iomedae be with him.

And with them.

(Ettore now feels less like he is a tiny boat floating lost at sea out of sight of land, and more like that tiny boat feels after it spots a lighthouse.)

Assuming he doesn't hear back from Silvio first, he'll write down more records of the situation in a memorized cipher while he waits for everyone to arrive.

Ramien is a sturdy, quiet man of forty or fifty who arrives first but doesn't enter the building until Rathimus and Irabeth have arrived. Select Stasia arrives last and visibly (if you're good at reading people) wants to hide behind Irabeth but isn't going to do that because it'd be unprofessional so she goes over to stand next to Castelloni instead.

"I'm actually surprised Oris is leaving us waiting," says Irabeth, frowning, "is his location known?"

"Oris is presently in the inquisitorial prisons," Ettore says drily, "due to his attempt to persuade me to execute people on his word and on the assumption he repeatedly violated the law during the period in which he was seizing direct control of the Watch without any legal authority. I will be pleased to release him if my guesses as to his actions are false." Pause. "Hulrun Fell last night. Voyager, you have my apologies on behalf of the Inquisition for his past actions." Pause. "Select, you have been appointed to the second Iomedaean seat on the city council by Our superiors in the Church."

- Stasia swallows and nods. 

"Is it illegal to try to persuade you to execute people without trial?" asks Rathimus. 

"Ambiguous in the Law of Iomedae; incitement to an illegal act is a crime, but asking if an act is legal is not, nor is arguing that the act should be legal, and ignorance that the act was illegal is a complete defense."

Rathimus nods, satisfied.

"In the hopes of establishing common knowledge: I am Inquisitor Ettore Castelloni of the Iomedaean Inquisition. I have called this meeting because there is presently, essentially no functioning law or order in Kenabres. Because the crusade is leaving shortly with a large proportion of the members of the city council, it may take all hopes for assembling a decision-making quorum with it. I hope that, before the Crusade leaves, we can first establish some consensus as to our goals, and cause there to be someone with the legal right and responsibility to handle the restoration of order to the city, and then have all members of the City Council on crusade pass their status as delegates to appointed successors remaining behind in Kenabres."

"Elin can have my vote, or be appointed outright as representative of the Wardstone's defenders."

"I do not have an obvious successor," says Rathimus, "and I do not think it would be in keeping with the founding vision of Kenabres to cede my vote as well to Iomedae's church, giving it thereby, if I count right, an outright majority. I'll consider if there's anyone I would be willing to name."

There is a nervous silence.

Perceptible in the atmosphere of the room: Rathimus is not entirely confident that objections to the city being controlled by Iomedae's church are safe to express in front of the new Inquisitor, and everyone present is assuming it might be a great provocation and occasion for at minimum a long rant about to whom exactly Rathimus owes his life, possibly with swords drawn.

That Rathimus feels this way, and that he might be afraid to say it, are of course fairly extraordinary indictments of Iomedae's church, which normally does not make Abadar's church at all reluctant to work with them or reluctant to operate in cities they govern, but it's not an indictment that Irabeth or Stasia or Elin feel entitled to refute; they'll just watch the inquisitor, Irabeth ready to get between the inquisitor and Rathimus if the inquisitor takes tremendous offense. Stasia is unhappily noticing that she's standing where Liotr usually would stand and will be much worse than Liotr at talking an angry inquisitor down.

He nods. "I do not expect you to cede it to anyone; I simply request that you will fill it before you leave, ideally with someone qualified to handle the business of the council, so it is possible to legally carry out the administration of the city and to work to resolve its many problems."

(He doesn't miss this, but he thinks that acting offended or apologetic would make them feel more worried, not less. He is going to write SO MANY angry reports home about Hulrun.)

He'll add, "I have requested my superiors that they ask the Church of Abadar to send a replacement representative, but have no expectation that that will come soon enough to serve as a solution."

Rathimus nods. 

" - Thank you, Irabeth," he'll add, now that he's responded to the plausibly urgent thing.

"I currently believe the immediate priorities of the Council in the aftermath of the crisis are the reestablishment of a Watch to maintain order in the streets, as well as the ensuring of efforts to ensure the defense of the city and its rebuilding, and finding a way to fund these three important activities," he says, "with the task of protecting them from demonic infiltration that of the Iomedaean Inquisiton, though we would of course be pleased to have any assistance we can in accomplishing this. Are there any immediate priorities I am failing to think of?"

"I am aware of none," says the person opening the door and walking through.

"I beg forgiveness for the intrusion," says the tiefling following him.

(She has red skin. She has horns. She has a strong Evil aura. She has a long silk dress in black and silver that compliments her skin, and either it's magical or she brought enough dresses to fight off a surprise demonic attack and still have a clean, dry one.)

(He, meanwhile, looks like he's from a particularly unethical mercenary company's recruiting posters, aside from being foreign.

... Possibly one targeting women.

His aura is very strongly both Lawful and Good.)