Well, I don't know what she was like in the end. But getting better about being who she wanted to be in this specific regard would've required having the slightest self-awareness about it.

Well, She got it as a god, or has been very politely keeping Her distance. And I am worried about coming to Her attention, because She is less compromising and I am less - a person she might compromise with.

Catherine thinks you want to help her conquer Cheliax, presumably pummel the church of Asmodeus back into the dustbin of cults for desperate idiots, deal with the Wound so it doesn't interrupt or complicate the invasion -

Marit also thinks Alfirin wants to do this, probably, though he'd say the same thing if he suspected she didn't.

Catherine is really remarkably forgiving. She did not tell Catherine everything, and picked what she did share with an aim toward making Catherine cooperative, but still - She could not persuade most of her victims to forgive her.

But yes, I do want those things.

I think either I'm incorrectly imagining the god Iomedae due to less experience with Her, or incorrectly imagining what you plan to do with an empire once you have it. It'd be genuinely kind of surprising if you are planning to be worse than the Thrunes but warning me in advance about this, but it'd also be genuinely kind of surprising if you're planning to be better but are afraid of Iomedae.

She doesn't even seem very good at stopping her really egregious enemies.

I am not planning to be worse than the Thrunes and - might just be dispositionally uncomfortable about coming to the attention of gods. I acknowledge that it's probably some form of paranoia to imagine that I would be a particular priority of Hers.

...But if I did become a priority, she could destroy me a lot more easily than she could Asmodeus. Or the Thrunes who presumably have some degree of His protection.

I can't blame you for wanting not to come to the attention of the gods in general but my impression is that that particular battle is in fact nearly won, for everyone.

You could try to treat with Her? You'll take Cheliax away from Hell, She agrees not to interfere with you in any way for however many thousands of years is fair.

I would take Cheliax from Hell regardless. I do not exactly have anything to negotiate with, there.

In Abadaran negotiations that doesn't necessarily matter, unless in the intervening centuries there's been a bunch of theology breakthroughs I'm not up on.

- It matters to me but I suppose you have a point there, that the only thing making my life difficult here is myself.

Hey, give Deskari a little bit of credit. He's clearly trying very hard and I'd say he has solidly inconvenienced us.

The only things making my life difficult here are myself, Deskari, and Queen Galfrey.

I'm aware that whole debacle was almost entirely my fault, a phrase I mostly find myself thinking when I mean ‘wouldn't have happened if Iomedae was here', and that it was necessary to apologize for my foolishness and inconsiderateness, and that it would actually have been a great evil to let the crusade fall apart and a great treason to just stab the woman, but - it would've been satisfying.

I wouldn't have stabbed her, myself, not that that makes it any less treasonous.

The next day Cansellarion is back in Drezen, somewhat better rested and asking to speak to Aspex. He doesn't say "the Knight-Commander" because he's really not sure.

Irabeth, who heard none of the previous day's drama except that Daeran returned in a great mood which probably means that the Queen is very mad, is puzzled by this omission but can in any event tell Cansellarion where to find the Knight-Commander, who is training his men. 

He can leave the men to it. "Sir Cansellarion."

"May we speak privately and confidentially?"

"Of course." Marit has tried a lot of different things to keep cultists out of his favorite conference room and isn't sure of any of them individually but there are really a lot of them.

"I think we are likely alone," he says when he gets there.

"In our communes, the Goddess confirmed that you are who you claim to be, and also that we should try to figure out who, exactly, that is. And I was wondering if you'll just tell us, or if you want to do your own communes first."

Marit feels annoyed at Iomedae. He's aware this is ridiculous. It's not her job, anymore, to the extent it ever was, to protect his or Alfirin's privacy; if it serves her for Lastwall to know who they are, and Lastwall asked if they should learn it, she'll say ‘yes'.

The thing is that the mortal Iomedae understood him and valued his eccentricities and, if she asked him to share an important secret, would convey with her earnest face that she understood it was a cost, and that she didn't ask it lightly.

The god does not love him. He admired, in the woman, the desire to become that god. He agreed with her that the world needed it. But - he's tempted to say he's glad there's such a god and wishes It wasn't named Iomedae. Because the impartial god of containing and maybe combating the evils of Golarion, instructing Lastwall to learn the identity of a soul She can see would be more usefully alignable if Lastwall knew more of it, is just a completely different thing than Iomedae, who he last saw six months ago, shaking her head apologetically and telling him she needs to know. 

He thinks if he'd had time he could've reconciled himself to it, grieved her, figured out how to vet and then relate to the thing she wanted to grow up to be. But that time was stolen and so his dominant emotion is 'you've got some nerve', even though he has no account in which he is wronged by Her issuing instructions to Lastwall. And Lastwall is behaving very reasonably in asking if whether he'll just tell them, between Lawful Good allies, and save them the trouble of a historical research project which will likely eventually succeed.

- set that aside. 

" - I'd rather confirm first, though if you are reporting this result firsthand then I am willing to trust you that it was the result." 

"I am a paladin, I did not cast the spell, though I was in the room with the cleric who was still capable of casting spells after reporting the results. I don't know for sure that She would decleric someone for falsifying commune results because as far as I know it has never happened. It's not the sort of thing Her fifth-circle clerics tend to do."

That's really a pretty persuasive argument. Marit is pretty sure that his dominant emotions here are all around annoyance and defensiveness and God-Iomedae-isn't-my-real-mom rather than carefully tracking the strategic situation. 

"Paladins can sometimes Commune," he says, rather than make up his mind about whether he's going to tell Cansellarion. "Iomedae could. We didn't have enough documentation to guess which things were things she could only do because she was Iomedae and which would happen to other people eventually."

"As best we can tell I am in many respects as powerful a paladin as She was at the battle of three sorrows, and I am unable to cast a commune. The same holds for all other paladins since Her, we are pretty sure that the communes were something She could do and not something other paladins can do."

He nods. 

He isn't sure that the god is correct, or that Her interests are his, but one really wants to default to not assigning one's allies expensive research projects while Hell rules Cheliax. And Cansellarion has been nothing but honorable. 

"My given name and the one I am known by in your histories is Marit. I have some frustrations with Galfrey but I actually admired her conviction that perhaps I could, somehow, Teleport, because I absolutely can."