“I can cheerfully say I have not the slightest idea. I have done my best to spend my entire life avoiding crusading as much as possible, and it has thus far been wildly successful. The Iomedaeans might be able to help you, they’re big on crusading, but I rather feel if they were all that good at it we wouldn’t be on the fifth one right now.”

"As far as I knew the previous ones were aimed at entirely unrelated goals! But I will go read and inquire. Do let me know if there's progress on the ballads, I can never have too many ballads."

“That certainly sounds like a more agreeable way to pass time.”

Daeran heads off southeast, in the direction of his mansion.

She nips off to her library and reads - "reads" - about previous Crusades, about the Queen, about the Worldwound itself -

Her books are happy to answer these questions! According to them, the definition of a crusade as derived from Hallit etymology is a war significantly backed by a church or churches. That sees some use in scholarly works, but in the sense that everyone else uses the word, a crusade means a war that's like the shining crusade. The shining crusade was a decades long campaign between the empire of Taldor, the Church of Aroden, and the Church of Pharasma (plus a dozen lesser powers) led by the paladin Iomedae against the necromancer archmage Tar-Baphon and his armies of the undead. In the thousand years since then, there have been several other conflicts that are sometimes called by that name, but nowadays it's used almost exclusively for the fight against the worldwound - a task that is largely being undertaken by the churches of Asmodeus and Iomedae and the nations of Cheliax, Lastwall, and Mendev.

The history books claim that to date there have been four of these crusades. The first simply sought to support the struggling Sarkoris against the abyss, and was declared a victory prematurely when the lines stabilized. The second saw the scale of the disaster coming and attempted to seal the wound, but came to an end when the Lung Wa empire collapsed and the angels returned to heaven, leaving the wardstones to secure the boundary. The third crusade, if it can even properly be called that, was fought almost entirely within the borders of Mendev against demon and cultist infiltration, while the fourth was a long and drawn out affair that tried and failed to retake notable territory inside the wardstones and ended up largely just blunting the demons' own efforts at organization.

Queen Galfrey of Mendev has reigned for almost a hundred years by now. Prior to the age of lost omens, she was a paladin of Aroden, but when he died she converted to the faith of the inheritor. The niece of the reigning king, Galfrey was expected to go nowhere near the line of inheritance and live out her life in service to the goddess, but demonic attacks and assassins ravaged the royal family and her abilties as a paladin made her extremely difficult to kill, eventually resulting in her ascending to the throne when her uncle died of demonic poisons. In addition to being the ruler of the nation of Mendev, Queen Galfrey is a powerful warrior and a tactician of considerable experience.

The worldwound is a permanent planar rift to the Abyss, the chaotic evil afterlife, that opened in Sarkoris at the beginning of the age of lost omens. Allegedly, it was opened by a powerful witch named Areelu Vorlesh who had been hounded by the sarkorian inquisition for being an arcane caster and decided to take revenge. From its mouth pours an endless stream of demons, largely following the demon lords Deskari and Baphomet, and almost all of Sarkoris-that-was has been occupied by such fiends.

Gosh, okay. So - they want to move wardstones in closer to the center of the problem. That actually sounds kind of straightforward as a strategic goal unless they're really hard to move - what does the library say about that - did it look hard to move -

The wardstones are enormous and quite heavy, but not impossible to move. If you're in a hurry over short distances, you can spring for a few reverse gravities and pull it through the air while weightless, but this will get prohibitively expensive if you want to go far. The more usual method seems to be binding an enormous earth elemental to flatten a path, then move the wardstone onto a sledge and have it pulled by teams of draft animals. Moving it is thus very vulnerable to demonic attackers, who can teleport freely while inside the barriers, and of course wherever you stop the advance you'll need to build a new fortress to defend it, deal with all the demons that are now on the wrong side of the barrier before they go wreak havoc, and then stretch your supply lines across however many more miles of abyssal tainted land. It does happen, but always seems to be a big undertaking and usually only occurs when doing so will greatly drop the size of the perimeter, there's a river to float it on, or someone is really putting the work in.

Probably something she will be able to do more or less singlehanded once those ballads start circulating. The barrier doesn't - move with the wardstone while it's in transit -?

The books don’t explicitly seem to mention it, but the obvious guess is that they do; the issue most likely comes from the fact that stronger demons crossing the barrier are normally stunned for a while and the goal is for patrols to kill them before they can recover, but if you are moving the barrier then any demon currently hiding can just stay hiding until you pass and attack from the rear or freely ravage settlements once they regain their strength.

So ideally you'd want to have a line advancing along the barrier itself detecting evil, but you'd need a lot of people for that...

That or having fought a campaign to clear the area of demons for long enough to move it seem to have been the solutions used in the past, though both have their flaws. There apparently also used to be a banner called the Sword of Valor that inhibited teleportation and one author theorized might make the task easier if they could find a way to protect Drezen in its absence while they used it, but it seems to have been lost when the city fell to demons.

Probably this library doesn't happen to know where the banner is but she's gonna check.

It might still be there as a trophy, but if anyone has checked they have yet to share this knowledge with the authors of any of the library's works. If it was moved, it could be pretty much anywhere in the wound or the abyss by now given how many years it's been.

The demons might have gotten rid of it because it inhibits teleportation! Unless it only does that for the holder's enemies!

Well, since the banner is an artifact it probably wasn't destroyed - major artifacts are the next best thing to indestructible. Supposedly the banner needed to be displayed visibly as a flag or upon a wall in order to function, though, so if it's folded up somewhere it might be difficult to track down without magic.

Aha.

She confers with Iskander about her prepared remarks and then looks for Irabeth-or-whoever to give them a second look.

Irabeth is currently helping clear the city - they've gotten up as far north as the temples by now, the fighting still going house by house but now going much faster since there aren't any demons left strong enough to be a real threat - but they call breaks every few cleared buildings and at the next one Irabeth is free to speak with her.

Ky takes her aside for a private word. "I'm going to be the subject of an announcement soon," she says, "and wanted some local advice on how to speechify in reply."

"I'm not sure how much help I'll be, but I'm certainly willing to try. What are your goals for your speech, and what do you have so far?"

"It may need to double as a recruitment pitch, depending on how news travels. The Queen wants to call a new crusade."

Irabeth nods.

"I intend to join it as well. From the fact that you're giving a speech, I presume you've been offered a relatively high position? If so, I think you want to focus on something inspiring, but equally importantly short and memorable; the queen is very charismatic, and if you want something that'll stick with those listening without being overshadowed you'll want to make it as easy for them as possible."

"She wants to make me knight-commander. I did keep it brief but my natural inclination is probably too wordy yet - how many sentences would you say I ought to have?"

"Knight commander?  Congratulations! Those are some large boots to fill, but if the queen agrees you're up to it I'm sure you'll do a great job. In that case, I think you might want it a bit longer than I was thinking, but probably not more than a minute or two, and you should end it with something especially memorable. I'd still focus on quality over quantity, though, I think it'd be better to have a shorter speech than that you're happy with than something that long but sounds like you came up with it on the spot. If you need someone to listen as a sounding board, I'd be happy too, or I can round up a few of the eagle's watch if you want a better imitation of a crowd."

"I should probably practice it, shouldn't I." She looks over her notes. "Okay, here's what I've got.

"People of Mendev, my brother and I arrived here at what may have been the worst possible moment, featuring as it did a large-scale demonic incursion into your city pursuant to the failure of the Kenabres wardstone - or it may have been the best possible moment, allowing me to see the people of this city responding with incredible grace and courage to a crisis of heroic proportions. I have been privileged to meet and fight alongside many of the Mendevians who stepped up to the challenge and coordinated with friend and neighbor and stranger alike. Together we beat back the invading force and covered my approach to the wardstone to repair it. And today I am here to accept the command of the Fifth Crusade - to bring that wardstone and its brothers closer to the heart of the Worldwound, claiming back precious territory and essential safety margin from the hordes. I may be far from home, but I am fortunate to have found myself in such company, grateful to be positioned to author such deeds, and honored to find myself in command of such a worthy endeavor."

"- Iskander thinks it's laying it on a bit thick and he might be right, I don't know what plays well here."

"Hmm. I agree it's a bit much for a normal speech, and if you were just taking a supporting role I'd agree on cutting it. But Knight-Commander is the kind of title people associate with the acts of Iomedae; the position carries enough gravitas that I think you can get away with it, and then it's all upsides. Maybe get a second opinion if you want to be sure, but mine is to go with it."