Marit has limited, narrow-in-scope international espionage operations by four months into his crusade. Some people in Ustalav to keep an eye on supply shipments winding their way up the Sellen, some people in Nerosyan who presumably work for the Queen or one of her rivals there but will at least tell him what those people want him to know, someone in Absalom who reads him all the international gossip over a scry once a week.

He wants to start getting reports from Lastwall, but it's looking like it'll be a tough nut to crack. Fort Lorrin is run more like a fortress than a city, never mind that it's been nearly a thousand years since it was needed in its capacity as a fortress. They appear to be well-prepared for and well-defended against Chelish attempts to spy on them, which is in fact the first good sign he's seen about them after a long strong of very bad signs, but deeply inconvenient since Cheliax has more resources than he does.

He ends up binding a couple of spyglass archons, wearing a false face, and telling them that he's a wizard who just wants non-secret updates about things that they may legally pass along to him, and that they should of course surrender if asked to do so, and gets a couple of weeks of ‘non-secret updates' about things that are nonetheless useful for inferring secret things before he loses contact.

(Banished, not killed, looks like. But if killing them would've deterred him from trying again, and it would have, then it's on shaky ground to try again on the grounds they were banished instead.)

He first visits Alfirin's gardens three weeks after he's arrived in this world, almost as soon as things have calmed down and the scroll of Gate he purchased is available. He writes her a note before he goes, so that if she murders him on the spot she can subsequently acquaint herself with his reasoning and decides if she wants to raise him. It's a risk, but it's not a large risk and it is a necessary one. There are no signs she's still active in the world. She's not scryably in an afterlife either. She is probably an ally if she is still around, and if she's trapped or petrified somewhere then retrieving her is one of his most urgent priorities. He doesn't know where to look, but the gardens are the place to start. He expects that she would want him, from his current state of information, to look for her. He has obviously taken care not to betray her demiplane to anyone; he doesn't have ready access to Mind Blank but he has a pretty good Nondetection up. 

People change, in nine hundred years, but the Alfirin he knows would, if she’d killed him, read the note and then raise him.

The gardens are as tidy and colorful and alive as they always are. He doesn’t think that's any information about whether Alfirin is still active; She learned from Arazni, her gardens probably tend to themselves. There are simple mundane clothes, some minor magic items. A silent alarm that he thinks tripped when he entered, but no immediate response, and none of the plants attack him. Rabbits, eerily trusting for rabbits - some of them approach him instead of running away. The bowers and alcoves where he has known Alfirin to keep clones (though surely not the only places she keeps clones) are empty. The antimagic cells are empty. The cottage that was Alfirin's workshop is gone, with the outline of its foundation marked out neatly by its lack of grass.

He sets two tuning forks; it'll take a while but he doesn't need to babysit the whole of it. Walks the place, carefully. Pets the rabbits. 

The absence of clones is not a good sign. The bowers should hold one indefinitely, even if she was petrified somewhere. 

He contemplates leaving a note, and decides against. He doesn't take the magic items, either, though he spends a while looking closely for anything that might be a concealed tuning fork to another demiplane, or anything that could be used for communication.

If there's another tuning fork here, there aren't any clues as to where. There are certainly none in sight or in easily accessible hiding places, but without digging up all the dirt and liquefying all the stone fixtures he can't rule out that there's still one hidden there somewhere. There are some wands of sending, but nothing that looks like it's designed for visitors to contact Alfirin if she's otherwise inaccessible.

He harvests some spell components that'll grow back inside a couple of weeks, finishes the tuning forks, identifies the magic items, and heads out. He's very busy and it's not suggesting an obvious next step; he can come back later when he has more time. 

He ends up not returning until after they take Drezen. 

The Knight-Commander sends recruiters to Absalom. He knows how a crusade recruiting tour works; probably the state of the art hasn't changed too much. He has dramatizations of their victories in Kenabres, some demon heads on pikes, a map of the Crusade's progress, and then the things adventurers care most about: stories about adventurers getting wildly more powerful in short spans of time. Also, pay. You might expect it to be inconsistent given the reputation of the last four Mendevian crusades but it is reasonable, paid out every month without fail, and spent lavishly by some crusaders on vacation here in Absalom to tell the stories of the scrapes they've gotten into. 

(He doesn't come himself because he's far too busy. Anyway, he trusts Daeran with this responsibility.)

Catherine de Litran intends, some day, to be queen of Cheliax, which means she intends, some day, to overthrow the current Chelish monarchy, which means she intends, some day, to be able to win a fight with a pair of pit fiends without particularly breaking a sweat. Killing demons isn't exactly the same, but it's a way to get stronger and to find capable allies, and as a nice bonus the treaty should keep her safe from a Thrune assassination. And from Cyprian. It's not a hard decision, even if the pay turns out to be much less reliable than advertised. She drops into a seat across from the Aasimar doing the pitching and asks, "So, what do you do for the Crusade besides look pretty?"

He turns delightedly to look back at her. "Being as pretty as I am is a serious responsibility and I wouldn't want other ones distracting me from it."

"Oh! You get paid just to look pretty? And drink in all the finest establishments in Absalom, which is really quite far from the worldwound - A nice gig if you can get it."

"Well, I should warn you, some demons will envy your beauty and come run up to try to mar it, and you've got to be quick on your feet. Or have healing powers. I have those, in case I miss a step dancing."

"None of those myself, though I don't think I've missed a step in years. Never been to the wound, though, care to go a round and tell me if my pretty face stands a chance up there?"

He'd be delighted. They have a pretty good pitch down, by this point. The demons thought Kenabres would be a slaughter, and they were right, but they were wrong about who'd get slaughtered; when the relief army arrived there was nothing for them to do, except press inwards towards Drezen, so the Queen called a crusade and that is what they did. Daeran makes a bit of a face at the part about the Queen but doesn't linger on it. The Knight-Commander is very deadly and very smart, and has no patience for incompetence or corruption but plenty for making soldiers out of men. They'll be in Drezen before winter. "There'll be lots of dancing. And plenty of drinking too, I suspect."

Well, there's just a couple possible hangups, as Catherine sees it - one is whether or not the Knight-Commander has any patience for making soldiers out of women, she is one you see, and somewhat more sensitized to the fact for having lived in Osirion recently. The other one is this Queen Daeran mentioned. Is that going to be, you know, a problem, she asks, letting a bit more of her Galtan accent slip into her speech.

Daeran seems to find this tremendously funny. The Queen, he tells her, is a paladin, and her greatest personal vice is being such a paladin, and her second greatest is being a Queen, and these are hardly small vices but they don't tend to affect other people very much unless you're Daeran and have the misfortune of being her cousin. The revolution will probably have to wait to come to Mendev until the demon problem is handled, but he hopes it does come then as it'd be stupendously funny and probably a great improvement too.

Oh, and she doesn't need to worry about being a woman. Between Galfrey and Iomedae the people of Mendev are if anything more sure women can be great warrior heroes of legend than that men can. 

A toast, then! To a demon-free future and all that implies!

Catherine's not an idiot. She doesn't sign on until the next morning when it still seems like a good idea sober.

The Knight-Commander said when he conceived of the plan to recruit adventurers in Absalom that he could call in some favors and get them Teleports.

True to his word, an elven woman with the range to go from Mendev to Absalom in one hop does three round trips a day - taking recruits to Mendev along with major purchases from magic item supplies in Absalom. If anyone tries scrying her, it won't work, but this isn't surprising - the kind of wizard who can do that trip in one hop can do a lot of things.

What is her name? Where does she live? Does she take other work for hire, or only favors from old friends? Catherine takes mental notes; She's going to want to know all the wizards of note she can.

She smilingly declines to answer every one of these questions. (She's Polymorphed into this form, though you need to beat a very good Nondetection or have True Seeing to notice this.)

(Alfirin does not, yet, have True Seeing up very often, nor will she risk casting it in front of a talented spellcaster. She suspects a disguise, though, because she expects an elf with this range to have been known to her already.)

The Absalom-based recruits don't meet the Knight-Commander until the day after Catherine arrives, when another day's trips have brought another dozen of them. The day that Catherine arrives they meet Irabeth, who is a half-orc paladin of Iomedae dedicated to training people to defend themselves and their homeland and their planet against the Worldwound. She is a very admirable and very unsurprising instance of her type. 

She mostly ensures they have the crucial mutual vocabulary with the locals and the basic equipment they'll need and enough comprehension of the local geography to not wander off into the Wound by accident. 

Does that happen very often, Catherine asks? People just…wandering into the worldwound by accident? Isn't the wardstone barrier pretty noticeable?

Not at night or in a snowstorm or in sufficiently thick fog, unless you can detect magic. Anyway - though she doesn't quite say this in so many words - the fundamental philosophy of the Knight-Commander is that people will make every single mistake you haven't trained them not to make, plus many you have trained them not to make, and if you cannot afford to lose half of them you'd better train them in chewing their food before they swallow it. This is probably more crucial with the Mendevian recruits than with adventurers in Absalom, who have often already survived their fair share of scrapes and the stupid ones perished, but still - navigation. Don't underestimate it. 

Once they've all been assembled over the next few days and Daeran's returned the Knight-Commander returns, too, from a different trip nearby, and Irabeth has them line up to meet him. 

Even after nine hundred years it would be difficult not to recognize him. What.