If I figure her out I will likely let you know, assuming it's not some horrible secret that eats everyone who finds out. Maybe I'll make a C team and then we can reshuffle everyone without it being a particular statement. ...I really need a second wizard, if I'm doing that. A second overt wizard. Maybe I should send Daeran on a second recruiting run to Absalom, the last one worked out pretty excellently...

She doesn't really know to which of them he's referring there. Probably Alfirin, Alfirin is much more impressive.

You could take Vynsiel off the trade runs, if Daeran doesn't turn anything up?

I might have to. But we've been inclining and inclining towards at this point being inclined to go after Terendelev, and it's going to be expensive.

The operation to rescue Terendelev is scheduled for the 24th of Calistril; Any later and it would interfere with preparations for campaigning in the spring.

They stockpile a truly ludicrous amount of resources for this operation. Scrolls of mind blank and communal mind blank sufficient to cover Marit’s core team and a score more. Potions of greater invisibility, purchased at insane (though fair) prices from the medium in Quantium who claims to be the only person in the world who can make them. Cold-iron demonbane arrows by the hundred. The scrolls they will use regardless; the rest, with luck, they can save for the future.

Marit wants it to be the case that, if Deskari shows up even with a lot of tricks he didn’t have in Kenabres, he will be dead inside two moments. He thinks this is attainable, with enough invisible, mind blanked archers on invisible mind blanked phantom steeds in the sky who can at needs pepper any visible target with very magic arrows inside a moment. 

And if Deskari doesn’t show up, then it’s almost a straightforward operation; they drop in on the ravener and hew it to pieces and flee with some of those pieces, the demons hampered in responding by their invisibility and Mind Blanks and by the fact everything should be over very very quickly.

(The list of things that could go wrong? Is really, really, really long. But to many of them, they have an answer, though often it's an expensive one.)

What about demons with blindsight?

There are no demons with blindsight.

Plan if we run into one: tell it that according to reliable demonological science, it does not exist.

And here I was going to suggest we just kill those ones first. Yours is a much better plan.

Do you have Arazni's Invisibility?

I got better at illusions, but I never did manage that one.

I don't suppose she does commissions these days.

Do you want to be the one to ask?

The biggest issue is that the abyssal rift leading right into the city makes teleporting directly in or out perilous. The Ravener is nesting near enough to the rift that they almost certainly cannot land on top of it. They will have to fly in, and fly out far enough from the ruined city’s center to be sure that when they teleport out they will at least land on the right plane. They prepare twofold redundancy on the teleports, both in case a teleporter is lost and in case one or more teleport groups winds up diverted by the chaotic energies, and scrolls of Plane Shift with each group in case they do accidentally Teleport to the Abyss.

They have two Wishes as an emergency reserve. The mission will in fact still have been worth it by his rough calculations if they have to use one, though not if they have to use both.

Galfrey is not invited. Cansellarion is.

He plans a Commune. To check if the operation should proceed as presently planned including the Resurrection of Terendelev a minute later. (If no, three prospective followups.)

And while he's at it he'd like to ask all the questions that Iomedae asked Aroden as a matter of course, sometimes a few different ways just to check which better-captured what she cared about: is our threshold for spending on personnel too high? For spending on magic? 

He also has a different question for Iomedae but he's not sure how he could phrase it such that a yes or a no would change his behavior, which means it's not a commune question after all, though it feels like one. What he wants is to know: were you wrong, about what it takes to build a good world? Or were you unlucky, taking the right gamble which can't always come up right? Should I be trying to carve out my own path?

Even if she says 'no, stay the course' he doesn't think he's ready to believe her. So he doesn't ask. The question about the operation, and the administrative ones. He didn't do the compressions for Aarind but he did give his odds on each question, for use in the compression.

The next time they're planning to give Catherine an Enter Image break from Alfirin he asks Alfirin if she minds giving her own odds as well. Two minds are usually better than one for it.

She weighs the numbers in her mind. Their operation is very well planned-out, but it's still close to the Abyss. There's a substantial chance Deskari will show, and - a nontrivial chance that their contingencies for that aren't good enough. And unknown unknowns... She puts it at around seven against two that the operation goes forward. She'll take longer for the questions crusade expenditures; they aren't one of the things she's been thinking about most for the past weeks.

He would not in fact have asked her to do an Enter Image when she wasn't planning one, purporting it to be about getting these answers. That would be - it's not the rules they're playing by, right now. They'd planned the Enter Image anyway to give Catherine a break.

He casts an Antimagic Field - a recent ability, actually, he's kind of smug about it except that he can't tell anyone except Alfirin who remembers him having had this ability when she last knew him -

- and he steps around a corner and meets Catherine on her way to her rooms.

She's slower and stupider and whips out her sword in an instant anyways because this seems like the sort of situation where she might need one - if Marit's decided to kill her for some reason suppressing magic will hurt him more than it hurts her but it doesn't matter he can beat her with just a sword anyways when he's wearing armor and he always is -

"Sir what the fuck?"

"I just want to talk and would prefer that you be quiet." Though also he's told the guards to remain at their posts even if they hear something. ...he's done that a bunch, actually, and then made strange noises to check if they'd obey.

He hasn't drawn his own sword which means that at least for the moment she has the advantage on him - she keeps it that way. She lowers her voice.

"This is more of an ambush than you needed if you just wanted to talk. Sir."

"I wanted to check, in an antimagic field, if you have been under the effect of mind control of any type, and I did not want an adversary who might be able to see through your eyes to be able to lay several contingencies that I know exist."

...Sword can go down.

"Thank you. You scared me, but - I appreciate it... How do you check that in an antimagic field?"

"The antimagic field is doing all of the checking. I don't think it'd suppress the - situation - itself, but I know her to be elsewhere - still true?" he asks an invisible ally.

      "Yes, sir -"

"And if she additionally had you Dominated or - otherwise somehow charmed, or your memories ongoingly altered... it'd suppress that." It's not a sure thing that she doesn't have Arazni's trick for ignoring antimagic fields, but he thinks Arazni's trick was wholesale, just making the antimagic field not be there, and the antimagic field is there, and also he's going to act like it's a sure thing so if she has tricked him she thinks it's been a complete success. 

"I feel differently than I did a moment ago but I think that's just the belt and headband - is it a problem if I take them off and leave the field and come back?"

"No, go ahead."