In the morning they go back to the conference room to continue their lecture on building rich countries through industry and medicine.

After the break for lunch, Jan asks when they'll be able to explain the weapons they mentioned, and if there's anything they can do to help Iomedae determine whether Lastwall is trustworthy with them.

(Alfirin is a little annoyed about how all the questions go to Iomedae, even though it makes perfect sense given these people's religion.)

"We'll decide together," says Iomedae, who is also picking up on that. "I think - it would be helpful if you described what you would do if you had the weapons to conquer your world." This seems like a slightly wiser approach than saying 'reassure me you won't just impose your military dictatorship everywhere', because if they will do that they probably think it's right and glorious of them to do it and there's a chance they will just say as much.

"To conquer the world? We'd - skipping over Cheliax, for the moment, because the diplomatic situation makes that a little complicated - once we'd dealt with that - maybe with sufficiently obvious overwhelming force we could get a real peace treaty with Belkzen - our neighbor to the northwest, barbarians, conduct a lot of raids into our territory. And more permanently deal with Tar-Baphon if the weapons could be used for that. And then - make defensive alliances with all of Cyprian's neighbors so he stops conquering them? Ask the Goddess if we can and should do something about Nidal, or Geb? I suspect the weapons in question wouldn't be enough for either of those."

Iomedae isn't in fact qualified to do politics, and she knows it. She is a teenager and the President is probably very good at diplomacy and knows everything about a hundred different topics she is stunningly ignorant of. It sounds like a good answer. Is that because it's really easy to guess what she wants to hear? It's probably easiest to guess what she wants to hear if the goddess Iomedae is a lot like her. Or was a lot like her as an idealistic teenager, and then turned into the kind of person who founds a military dictatorship. 

It doesn't really feel like a solvable problem and of course that's not any excuse at all not to solve it. 

"Does your Goddess not want to rule the whole world?" she asks neutrally. It is a reasonable thing for gods to want, she thinks. 

…Did Iomedae at sixteen want to rule the whole world? Or - not at sixteen - at whenever this Iomedae left Golarion - and maybe hasn't yet encountered whatever convinced her otherwise? "No, She doesn't. She wants to - make a world that's free from great Evils like Tar-Baphon and Asmodeus, but not to rule it." He says as neutrally as he can. It probably won't help the situation if she thinks he's judging her for her ambitions.

"Does she rule this place? Is she doing a good job of it?"

"Not directly? We consult with Her on anything of sufficient importance, because She sees many things that we do not and is much smarter than us - but ultimately we rule ourselves."

Iomedae looks questioningly over at Alfirin.

"Can the paladin say all of that?"

"Of course. Alex, could you explain to these young women what we'd do with enough weapons to conquer the world?"

Alex explains much the same as Jan did, except that instead of skipping over Cheliax he says Jan would give him the weapons to free it, and he doesn't suggest doing anything about Geb.

"Can we leave and go to another country if we want, right now?"

Cansellarion blinks. "Um. You're not prisoners or anything - I think you should not go to Cheliax and we'd probably ask the Goddess whether we should stop you if you were determined to go there, but if you wanted to go to Andoran or Absalom or something -"

"What about Belkzen?"

"That's…also probably not very safe for you."

"Cyprian, wherever he is?"

Cansellarion looks unhappy. "We would not stop you from going to Galt."

Iomedae looks consideringly at her map, trying to track which countries are 'not safe' or 'not advised' and which are allowed. "Nirm -" wow her Taldane reading is four years out of date "-athas?"

"There's a bit of a war going on there and I'd advise you to be cautious before handing out weapons there but we'd let you go. It might not be the best place to go if you're - trying to get away from us, though. I live there."

"...can you take us now to Absalom, to the Starstone rock and the temple there which used to be to Aroden?" Iomedae is only like ninety percent sure this actually exists instead of being a legend and will be very embarrassed if she's wrong.

"Right now?"

"...yes?" Obviously this is being very rude to very important people but anything that can be faked at all can be faked more easily on more notice. (And if the very important people get annoyed and throw them in the dungeons, that'd be - good to know. If inconvenient. Considering.)

"Veena, can I borrow Mirdeliendë again? That's two steps for the boots, they only have three a day -"