Once observers have confirmed that, yes, Cansellarion seems to have teleported his entire army into central Mendaor, and yes, he's fighting Chelish armies on Chelish soil, and yes, he seems to be winning - once those things are established, the leadership of Rahadoum is convinced enough that this is the best opportunity they will get and the fighting around the southern end of the Arch of Aroden starts in earnest.

"This is Freedom Radio, and a lot of new developments here for you since yesterday's broadcast. The first and most important is that, three days ago at dawn, the Glorious Reclamation teleported their whole army to outside Kantaria, where they engaged and very easily defeated the army of the archduke of Menador. 

Now, you're probably thinking 'it's possible to Teleport whole armies? I didn't even know that could be done!' because that's what I was thinking when I first heard the news. Normal wizards can only take a few people with them in a Teleport. My experts on magic tell me that Teleportation Circle takes a bit of ground and magically links it to another bit of ground, and then for the next several hours, anyone stepping on the one bit of ground arrives on the other. You can use it to move tens of thousands of people, and wagons, and horses, and so on – and that appears to be precisely what the Glorious Reclamation did. 

Now, this is a tremendously useful spell, right? Why doesn't everyone do it? It is also one of the hardest-to-cast spells known to all of magic. That's because it requires two archmages capable of casting ninth circle spells, acting in perfect synchronization across the distance to cast the spell together. And it's not often that Avistan has two archmages who want to work together. For a cause like breaking Asmodeus's grip on Cheliax, though, we managed to see it done. This leaves House Thrune's last move, trying to curtain the country in hellfire, looking more than slightly stupid. First off, it's a stark reminder that that is their vision for Cheliax: a country too weak to defend itself against the rest of the world, blockaded by a wall of hellfire that keeps its own people in and civilization out, like Nidal.

And second off, hey, we just went around it. Abby, I really think you should see if you can get your infernal masters to use one of the diamonds on your wisdom. You can try convincing them that you'd use their resources less stupidly if you were wiser, maybe then they'll let you do it. 

But that's not all of the big news I have for you since yesterday's broadcast. Listeners in Rahadoum have been telling me that Rahadoum has now struck out to retake its northernmost territories from Cheliax. Under ordinary circumstances, Cheliax would probably be able to beat back the Rahadoumi - but right now, they can't afford to send any help south, and I'm not even sure they can afford for the navy and the forces stationed around Corentyn to be tied up dealing with this. Cheliax cries out for freedom from every corner, and now we can each hear all of the others, and know that we aren't alone, and know that soon we will all be free together."

Razmir was initially reluctant to help. He likes the radio. Thassilon had mass communications. 

They don't know what exactly Asmodeus offered him, but he's on board now. 

Abrogail's initial proposal is just that they try the Wishnapping again, at an unpredictable hour, with repeated tries if necessary. Morgethai is the most important target, and they probably won't get her, and they probably won't get Cansellarion either, but if they get enough other essential people Morgethai may attempt an ill-advised rescue, or at least burn diamonds in the back-and-forth. Abrogail can win a confrontation that comes down to who has more diamonds.

"Might work, might be worth trying," says Lilia. "Alternatively, can we get him to pick a fight with Lastwall? We know they're behind this, and they may not know we know that, and you weren't wrong to propose that it'd solve some of our problems if we burn them to the ground. And he's nearer to them than we are, and can't really imagine that if they're getting bold they won't go after him eventually."

"Maybe," says Abrogail. "Though not at the same time as something else we have planned."

She doesn't elaborate. Lilia doesn't ask. "I think," Lilia says instead, "the best way to avoid having a war on three fronts in another two weeks is to destroy Azir and Vellumis and Vigil, if one can, and Razmir has presumably thought about how to do it." He has burned cities to the ground with less provocation, really, though burning Vigil wouldn't really work.

"We should do to Vigil what we tried in Isarn," says Abrogail thoughtfully.

"It can't be done, your Majesty. I had forty people in Isarn for that, a dozen in the city government; in Vigil at great expense we have four, none of any rank to speak of. And the preparations take too long for it to be impactful in the war. And I bet Iomedae just intervenes directly, though everywhere we can force Iomedae to intervene directly that isn't here is a good thing…."

Abrogail smirks.

A few hours later they notice in Vigil that someone is remotely tampering with the seals that keep Tar-Baphon's prison shut.

Well that's not good. It's not terribly surprising that some of Tar-Baphon's remaining servants would take advantage of Lastwall's distraction. Cansellarion's busy, the worldwound is already stretched kind of thin right now and they probably shouldn't pull anyone off Crusader's Fort if they can afford it - they are actually somewhat short of high-level adventurers of their own right now.

What they're not particularly short of, courtesy of two young women and the church of Abadar, is money, which means they can hire mercenaries to back up some mid-level paladins. He'll also teleport to Absalom himself and see if he can can call in a favor and get support from Ahnkamen given her god's interests and the reasons behind the Iomedae's Church's shorthandedness.

She agrees to go, and comes back two days later, mildly battered and blazingly angry.  It must have been quite a weekend; more than half the group is dead and two of the mid-level paladins have third circle spells now. 

"As you expected there were some servants of the Tyrant trying to break the seal. But - this didn't start in Gallowspire. I know of some divinations broken since prophecy broke, not for divining the future but for divining the past, and I know of some recent work to get them working again, as prophecy really ought not to have been broken backwards; by the time we got there it was nearly too late, but I was able to closely examine the original disturbance.

Someone's interfering with the Great Seal through one of the lesser ones."

"Those lunatics - did the Great Seal look like it was holding up?"

"Yes. In principle it shouldn't be possible to destroy through one of the lesser seals. But - temporarily introducing a vulnerability - I don't know. You might be able to get a spell off through it, somehow. The Whispering Way committed to this like they expected it to work. Does Egorian claim to be in secure possession of theirs?"

"It's at Westcrown and not exactly movable…They certainly didn't give us any heads-up about Whispering Way cultists seizing the old temple."

"Well. I know Lastwall prefers not to intervene in other nation's internal affairs, lest it distract from your mission. But this does rather appear to touch immediately on your mission."

"I dare say it does. We'll go public about it all first. With luck other countries will see this reckless endangerment of the continent for what it is and we won't be alone in intervening."

“We did what?” says Lilia. 

“Hell approved it,” says Abrogail irritably. “Don’t be precious. We only come out ahead, if Tar-Baphon and Lastwall fight. It’s a shame they can’t both lose. …we’ve been assured it’ll be possible to cut a deal, if he wins.”

Half a dozen oddities, now coming together in her mind. The mystery of why Aspexia’s being so free with diamonds and miracles. The mystery of what Razmir was offered for his help. The mystery of how Isarn got to the point of nearly succeeding, if she hadn’t intervened. 

Asmodeus is willing to expend unfathomable sums, to hold his country. Greater than we imagined.

The good thing is that the forces of Good are less inept than Lilia thought. 

“That’s a good argument for succeeding at it, your majesty,” she says. “But not much of one for failing at it. Lastwall’s claiming to everyone who’ll listen - and they’re paladins, everyone believes them - in a day or two it’ll be on the radio - turning over northern Avistan to Tar-Baphon is not something to do halfheartedly - I would that I had known, so it could've either succeeded or not been noticed."

"One can't help but notice that plans I tell you about don't work as planned," says Abrogail, idly. "And plans I don't tell you about go notably better - remove her."

Lilia doesn’t resist. It wouldn't work; in that, at least, Abrogail's not an idiot. And this is a tantrum, not sure proof; even odds Abrogail will calm down in a few hours and Lilia will recover and they’ll never speak of it again, even odds Abrogail will have her horribly tortured to death. She’s pretty sure that whatever Myrabelle’s magic warped in her, to make her loyal, also makes her care about that much less than a person reasonably ought to, but she doesn’t actually wish she was a snivelling idiot about it either.

The foreign minister whose job it is to try to straighten this out sits miserably still, his face unreadable. 

Cheliax, obviously, denies having done anything to release Tar-Baphon, and notes that he hasn’t been released, and that the only thing that happened was that some preexisting enemies of Cheliax conducted an analysis of a phenomenon no one else has observed at all and surfaced with this wild allegation.

Beyond Lastwall, the phenomenon was also observed by the dwarves at Kraggodan and Grand Councilwoman and Envoy for the Dead Ahnkamen. Is Cheliax declaring Kraggodan, Absalom, and Pharasma’s church to be their preexisting enemies?