"Probably they did. And their families. But I think that still leaves - more people who think they have no choice to play along than…people who think it's fine… I don't know. A lot of people were Nazis and it didn't even take a hundred years to get them to be like that. Though it also wasn't that hard, once you won the war, to get them to stop…. Part of me says that our job is to bring modern technology to Golarion and there are a thousand people more qualified to figure out Cheliax but part of me doesn't believe that at all and doesn't really think these people will get it right unless we help them."

"Turns out we'd have been better served waiting six more months and reading up on denazification. Not that we had any way to know that at the time… maybe more about social organization and history in general. We probably could've guessed that'd be useful."

"Yes. I think in hindsight it was stupid to not have thought of this more as a - political and diplomatic project, as much as a technical one. We thought we had a different political environment we were operating in, but - I spent a lot more time building guns than thinking about meeting Presidents and how to not offend them and how to be taken seriously while a teenage girl - you know, to Lastwall's credit, I don't think the 'girl' part's mattered -"

"Their wizard secretary and engineering, sorry, siege secretary - are both women. They do seem more American about gender than I was expecting."

"Well. Mixed feelings about the other Iomedae but if she created women's rights then good on her. I wouldn't necessarily have expected you could do it without - guns, and tractors, and maybe birth control -"

"Maybe they have birth control? Maybe you just need that. We could ask one of the women."

"We could. Maybe should. Maybe I'd feel a little less disoriented if we understood - anything about this place other than what the people on its important secret projects behave like. If it had - families and farms and things - I mean, I'm sure it does, but -"

"I assume Lastwall has families somewhere - maybe none of the people in charge do, if they're like - monks and nuns or something. And then if they don't have families women can do important work - that sounds a little more plausible, with the surrounding tech level, and also really sad."

"I mean, it's what I wanted to do and I wasn't expecting to be sad about it. I didn't have America to compare to, and it seemed like a pretty good deal, having Aroden to obey instead of a husband -"

"Well, yes, it's what I'd have done too if I had the chance, but - having seen the way women are treated in America it seems sad to imagine that women can either - not raise a family or not do anything else. Better than not having the choice, but still sad."

"- I have no idea how to make birth control. I did look into it when we were doing medications but it looked complicated and I gave up. You could probably do, like, surgical interventions made easier by priest healing - maybe once we've gotten through the first week we can ask questions about what Lastwall is like and get a sense of things like this -"

"Copper IUDs are mostly just copper - of course you need to have competent doctors to install them but maybe healing magic can help and even if it can't that's going to be easier than setting up a whole pharmaceutical industry. It's a shame biology is so complicated."

Iomedae could not keep up with all of the biology. She could really only keep up at things that she happened to find utterly delightful or that didn't require very much cleverness. All the biology she knows she already told Lastwall, on day 1: inoculation, and how to identify the bread mold that treats infections and consumption and the plague. (Hopefully even here there is a bread mold for that.) "It's a shame everything is so complicated. …I didn't want to say it in front of the President because I didn't want to sound like a naive child, but I think we're going to win. I think they're underestimating America, and underestimating how the thing - has its own momentum, once it's going."

"Of course they're underestimating America. They've never seen it, so they hear me explain blast furnaces and they think 'Wow, we can make swords and armor much more cheaply' and not 'We can build cars and trucks, we can make buildings out of steel, we can make all our tools out of good steel and use those to make more better tools faster, we can make steel ships and steel boxes and fill them with corn and feed a million people on the other side of the world.' I don't think they'll really understand until it gets going and they can see it for themselves. It's kind of unbelievable."

"Their god ought to be able to see. I don't know what the point is of gods at all, if they can't see things like that."

"Yeah. She told them to resurrect us, I bet She saw it. Don't know why She didn't show them, but she must not have, you could just see it on some of the researchers' faces when I got to lathes, like they were expecting me to tell them how to make table legs."

"The gods work in mysterious ways," says Iomedae, with immense dissatisfaction. "- I was all right with it, with Aroden, because I trusted Him. I suppose it's silly to trust the god I happened to be raised faithful to more than a god who is me."

"That's an Americanism they made up to explain away the fact that Jesus hadn't done anything for a couple hundred years. I think it makes sense to trust Aroden more than the god version of you, you don't know anything about who you grew up to be besides that she started a military dictatorship and became a god, presumably by touching a magic rock that also ascended a mafia don and a drunk."

Iomedae bursts into giggles. It's not that it's funny, exactly, but it's walking some kind of tightrope between hilarity and tragedy and the giggly side is the better one to tip over into. 

Alfirin hugs her. "No starting military dictatorships, and no becoming a god without talking to me first, okay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it, except insofar as I don't control my dreams."

"Not that I don't love your careful pedantry, but I think you're probably allowed to just say 'wouldn't dream of it'."

Iomedae says in Commune to do it, and approves the devoting-the-most-resources of the plans they propose to her, but commands that they adopt the more cautious of their proposed schedules, delaying substantially to buy more secrecy. Partner with Kraggodan as much as possible for the coal mining; do as much work as possible in Vigil, which is hard to infiltrate, and much of the work underground in the fortress itself. 

Should they sell much of this information to the Church of Abadar? Yes. Confidentially and with a negotiated delay on the Church of Abadar's open use of it? Yes. 

Do they need to fear external threats to the girls' safety and to continued custody of them? Unclear.

There is not much for anyone to notice - even an archmage who is paying Cansellarion and Lastwall particularly careful attention - for three months. They do partner with Kraggodan on the coal mining, and they use Teleports to move the fuel for their first blast furnaces, and they don't send anyone out of the fortress with the first guns.

(There are ripples, if you're looking closely. Lastwall's usual suppliers in Absalom have been procuring more boots of teleportation for them, but no new regular teleport routes materialize. The air above Vigil is always smokier in the winter, with the additional need for heating, but this year it's worse than usual, darker and sootier. Some call it an ill omen.)

The Church of Abadar pays them eyepopping sums of money, in secret. They offer most of these eyepopping sums of money to their teenage girls, in secret.

Iomedae is not richer than Bill Gates and intends to be impressed by nothing less. She does smile broadly at them, though, so as to encourage honorable behavior like paying your employees. "Thank you. Is it legal here to pay your government to make policy changes or is that bribery?"