(What.)

"Awwwwww," says Iomedae. "I suppose I can suffer my steampunk power armor as long as it has detailing of gears for no apparent reason."

"Some of these gears are functional." Alfirin says, with feigned indignance.

"And the rest are to throw our enemies off the scent?" 

"Like a monarch butterfly."

They are both still giggling when they walk back on over to review the rifle-making processes. 

"Good evening, Avistan. This is Freedom, reporting live from an undisclosed location probably somewhere inside Creation. If you tune over to 95.5, the Church of Abadar will certify that I have sworn to them this morning that to my knowledge no lie has ever been spoken on Freedom Radio. That was an easy thing to swear, as this is our first broadcast, but they're going to tell you every day when they last heard it from us. Freedom Radio is here to tell you the truth, whoever gets mad about it. That's why we're reporting live from an undisclosed location. 

Now, some of our listeners are wizards in fancy towers, pulling out their crystal balls right now to try to learn who I am - good luck with that, wizards! But most of our listeners are ordinary folks, who saved up to buy or borrow a radio, or who went over to a neighbor who had one even though it's getting dark, because you wanted to hear how much grain's selling for near you, or whether there's storms coming. Maybe you know that on 97.7 there's dancing music, and maybe you know that on 97.9 there's sports, but you're not here for puzzles for wizards. What can the truth do for you?

Well, Freedom Radio's running because we think the truth can do very nearly everything. I can tell you what I'd do if my child was sick, and maybe it'll save yours. I can tell you if there's a war brewing, so you can hide what's precious to you when there are soldiers marching towards it. There are some things terribly wrong, in our world, and a world united can beat them into the dust, and a world that doesn't know what's true and what's a lie doesn't stand a chance. And I can tell you about the world to come, and line up some people who've been there who can tell you what you'll answer for when you face the Judge. There's a lot of things in this world that work because people are ignorant. And Freedom Radio is going to make sure that no one will ever be able to take advantage of your ignorance again. 

So, welcome. It's an honor to have you listening. In time, we'll introduce a way for you to call in and talk back. Now, the news."

It's a one hour news segment, which is starting with extremely basic facts about Golarion like which continents it has and which countries are on them, hopefully not presented in an excessively condescending fashion. It has updates on the most recent battle between Cyprian's forces and whichever River Kingdom he's at war with today. It has news of a shipwreck in a storm on Lake Encarthan and another of a shipwreck in a storm near Goka. It has an informational segment about what to give your children to drink if they're diarrheal and an explanation of what causes excess bleeding in childbirth and what to do about it if there's no priest nearby. And it includes interviews with ten farmers in ten different places about what most often eats their animals and what they've tried to drive it off. 

Iomedae waits smugly to see if Cheliax is now going to try to ban the entire concept of radio or not. 

Yes, they are.

Abrogail is alarmed. Some of her idiot advisors are parsing this as a dumb idealistic Andoran scheme, which like the attacks on slave ships is going to alienate them from their neighbors as much as it inconveniences their enemies. Three more such schemes and they'll be able to conquer Andoran back; they're nothing to be afraid of.

But the kind of person who invents a nonmagical way of receiving unblockable messages sent from some secret location halfway across the continent is clever, and ambitious, and probably has a plan beyond 'aggravate everyone'. It would be stupid to wait to see what the plan is, before responding to it.

She orders a lot of scries. Not during the broadcast, when she's sure the girl is ensconced in a Mage's Private Sanctum, but over the upcoming days and weeks. She can't be in a Mage's Private Sanctum all the time - or if she is, that narrows down her location to a few possibilities. Sothis, which would fit with the Church of Abadar's evident involvement, but she can't really see the kind of woman who runs Freedom Radio being willing to live and work in Sothis. Morgethai's private demiplane, in which case the problem reduces to the known problem that Cheliax needs to soul-trap Felandriel Morgethai, and might be sufficient justification to bend Hell's resources towards at last getting it done. Razmiran but that's ruled out because Razmir is too stupid to do this and too evil to want to. Vigil, whose Castle Overwatch Arazni defended against all kinds of magical interference, but it's hard to imagine the paladins espousing the liberating power of truth and freedom either. Or Cyprian, who has the subtlety - but this isn't where he'd turn the engineering prowess -

The scries fail. 

Well.

Well, Lastwall and Mendev's Worldwound forts can use radios for communications, and Andoran and Taldor and Qadira and Osirion and Rahadoum's ships may use them on the high seas, but Cheliax is Evil, and Evil is weak. Sucks to suck. 

"I have to say, Lastwall is being better-behaved than I expected from a military dictatorship," Iomedae says to Alfirin. 

"In more than just how they're treating us? How so?"

"I don't know. They liked the show. They don't yell at their subordinates. They could be concealing it well, but people - don't seem scared. They don't hide mistakes. We haven't had any of the stupid things that you'd hear about from USSR space projects or whatever, people reporting things work that don't work, or stealing everything that's not nailed down, or sending us the supply numbers we wanted instead of the real ones - maybe magic just makes it easier to be an effective authoritarian state."

"Maybe. Truth spells, lots of people who are paladins and can't lie - I guess I can see how they might have fewer abuses of power or messy politics. Could also explain how Cheliax has lasted a hundred years - the truth spells, at least, since they don't have Paladins. I still want to go to Andoran once the war's over or - whatever else happens to make it so Cheliax can't just invade."

"Yep. Andoran - wants to be America, and Lastwall doesn't. …you know what Lastwall really is is a theocracy in a world where the gods do things, and it doesn't have good Earth analogues for that reason. None of our comparison points are going to be any good because there just haven't been Earth countries pointed at the service of an involved god since they were low-tech themselves."

"Yeah. I bet we would have more examples if high school world history classes were more thorough, but they'd still all be pre-democracy examples, like maybe France was a theocracy under Joan of Arc - I don't know if it was, I didn't bother learning French history -"

"I think she died young," says Iomedae dubiously, who looked up Joan of Arc once after being told she was reminiscent. "The Catholic Church used to be a state and call crusades and so on. …maybe still is one, but just pretending their communes work?...there's so much more we'd know if we'd waited a few more years. Probably wouldn't have been worth it, even if the years are one to one and definitely if they're a hundred to one."

"Would've been worth it if we'd been learning the right things, I think, but we had no way to know what those were. I've been thinking about which things we didn't learn but we could've guessed that we should have - the only one I've come up with is that we learned how to make guns but not how armies use guns - World War I had trenches, but that's about all I know."

"Magic might make it more complicated anyway. I - don't know how good to expect Lastwall's execution to be. It seems like if you are paying all the costs of being a military dictatorship you should at least be a useful one and win all your wars but I'm not sure that's how that works. …do you suppose that the fact the other Iomedae was a tactical genius suggests I could learn. I have been assuming it requires, you know, genius."

"I don't think military dictatorships are good at winning wars?" She's not sure who is good at winning wars, besides America. "I think you could probably learn tactical genius, if she did. Unless she spent those four years of her life in a secluded monastery receiving training from the archangel Michael, in which case you might need to find that monastery."

"Joining us here today on Freedom Radio is Temos Sevandivasen , seventh circle cleric of Abadar. He's on the other side of a screen from me, in the service of my efforts to be hard for curious wizards to track down, but he's agreed to sit down with us for an hour and answer all your questions about Abadar. Archbanker, thank you for joining us."

"I have been very much looking forward to the opportunity," he says gravely. 

"Can you tell us a little about yourself? How did you come to the priesthood of Abadar? What do you do all day?"

"I was born and grew up in Kumura, a Vudrani kingdom that when I was a young man threw off Keleshite rule and had the opportunity for the first time to be governed independently. But the new state was badly in debt, and had many obligations that it was unclear if it could meet, and the people had been impoverished by centuries of exploitation and by the war that freed them. I turned to Abadar because I wanted to understand how to make a country rich, and His Manual of City-Building had a section on how a responsible governor could make a place rich through reliable rule. We arrived at agreements with our creditors - agreements to pay them in full, because a state like a man has only its word, and we wanted Kumura's word to be good. We set up a banking system. It took thirty years of hard work, but - Kumura prospered.

So much so that our neighbors grew jealous, and about six years ago they banded together to destroy Kumura and see it absorbed into a rival kingdom. The attack took us by surprise. We lost. I died there, but - I had insurance. I awoke in Absalom. I live and work there now."

" - are you going to go back?"

"I don't know. Abadar opposes war. It is a terrible thing. Necessary, sometimes, but always destructive. Civilized people would be able to compare their strength and settle matters in a fashion both prefer to destroying one another. Of course, if you predictably won't fight back that invites people to try things - but it's one thing to defend yourself whatever your strength, and another entirely to spend a few decades in exile and then come back to revenge yourself on entirely different people descended from the ones who wronged you. I dream of returning, but - I would have to have good reason to think the people of Kumura would not thereby be wronged."

"Let's start with the basics about Abadar, since some members of our audience have probably been living under a rock for the last hundred years, or are in countries that lie to them about how the Church of Abadar works. Is Abadar Good? Evil? Lawful? Chaotic?"