Okay, but, and this is all speculative, but I have a theory: whoever talks to us for long enough, if they're smart enough, notices that we're going to radically transform the setting. Most people haven't spoken with us long enough to notice, or, uh, they aren't - I don't want to say that they aren't smart enough but they lack the prerequisites and they don't have enough chunked to compute it all in one sweep, so they think about little things like eradicating malaria and don't leap to the generalization that Earth technology opens new opportunities to start reactions which create their own reactants... um, backing up a step, let's just say "we know about Earth technology" because that's already a big thing on its own. Most people don't have enough chunked knowledge to understand what it means.

And, on this theory, the reason for all the divine interest in the Vault is - us. The four of us.

Maybe Otolmens noticed first... maybe because I was thinking things which put me in the right state of mind, like it says in the setting document can get a god's attention... though I'm not within an alignment step... or maybe Ragathiel gave her heads up, as part of an ancient commitment or something? Or maybe she's just good at noticing things or has ways unique to her among the gods. Anyway, the theory continues that other gods noticed her noticing, when she pulled the flashy miracles, but didn't necessarily notice what she noticed. So this is Asmodeus trying to figure out what weird thing is going on.

And we shouldn't make that easy for him.

Are we that important? We're level three. 

And WW2 was an E6 campaign. 

If we were that important, why doesn't Cayden Cailean send an Azata to spirit us to Elysium? Or miraculously teleport us there?

Hmm, but I guess that's in the setting document too - Hell would send its own team of devils, or disrupt the miracle, and the balance of power between gods means that Elysium would have to substantially outbid Hell or cut a deal where Hell lets it happen.

Is there anything Elysium can do about him picking a hundred clerics?

No, but they can match him cleric for cleric without pissing off the inevitables. 

I don't want levels from an Elysian god, it'd mess up my build.

You're LN. I don't think it's a risk.

Or maybe it's the pro-shadow faction more generally that gets to match on clerics, if Asmodeus is anti-shadow.

I don't want levels from Everybloom or Pain-Man either.

I guess my concern is - if the antagonists of the game are actual gods, what am I supposed to do about it?

Where's the player agency?

Think it through: we've probably already met the first arc villian, so it's got to be one of Glorious, Tough, Alyssa, the Field Marshall, or Reeds. Could it possibly - and I know this is a stretch - be the one who worships the devil, preaches Fascism, works for Asmodeus who was initially portrayed as being on our side and Milan against us which obviously means the opposite is true, works for Asmodeus who Lyvina is theorizing is trying to figure out who we are and what we know, and just picked up a hundred mooks.

Nah, it's probably Glorious and the Queen.

You're talking a lot of sense.

Okay! We should add that to the list of priorities for today: find out what Reebs is up to, and murder him dead.

Or at least some of his lieutenants. Maybe we can actually get some combat encounters in this session. 

Cressida Kroft is...

Ah, that's the word.

Horrified. 

Asmodeanism is legal in Korvosa. It is not advisable. All of these poor idiots pinging Evil regardless of whether they've earned it...

All of these poor idiots?

Idiots they might be, but we don't all share your sympathy; being chosen of an evil god is pretty damning of your character, (not to mention your eternal soul).

Also, it hasn't escaped our notice that in addition an Asmodean Queen and an Asmodian Archbishop - the Vault's strongest divine spellcaster -, we've seen added one hundred and twelve spanking-new empowered Asmodean priests. 

We're being taken over. If we're going to act, we need to do it fast. We can start by ejecting empowered Asmodeans from Vault Groups wherever good and decent folk have a majority, so that they aren't privy to our planning. The Vault Colonel was chosen by Ileosa, but you can trade out one head for another without too much difficulty - my vote is that we coalesce around Lord Toff Ornelos.

My vote is for Glorio Arkona.

What's wrong with Qualins Rachmirol? Ileosa only picked out of the options we gave her.

She's ashamed to say that her own first thought was also to wonder whether she should abandon Law and throw in behind Toff Ornelos (should he decide to oppose the Asmodean church and not the Asmodean queen only), before her honor and her common sense caught up with the horror and she remembered a) that she's a public servant, b) channeled negative energy is indiscriminate, and c) that the senior Asmodean priests are dressed in yellow striped robes because they have shadows inside the Vault.

No, she needs to keep this from exploding.

How does she keep this from exploding... she needs the shadows entombed or destroyed, is what she needs, but the priests will resist that once they realize what might happen to them after.

...What even happened here? There weren't a hundred clerics in Korvosa yesterday. There weren't seventy. How can Hell alone casually pick up a hundred and twelve new clerics? Why do the forces of evil have apparently limitless slack for divine interventions - today it was Rovagug first, and now Asmodeus, but it's not like Kroft has never in her life had to kill an Urgathoan again because they spontaneously turned into giant undead snake-person three rounds after the first time she killed them. Where do They get the juice? Why is Good always on the back foot?

It's because they're spending all their effort on the Belkzen and Ustalav and wars of independence and the Worldwound, okay, but that just pushes the question around without answering it because why is there a Worldwound and a House of Oblivion but no permanent portal to Axis or the Summerlands? 

(It wouldn't even be hard to make one!)

Is it just Golarion - the Worldeater's Cage - where Evil is advantaged over Good, or is all of Creation like this?

It does seem like Creation chews through its virtuous gods much faster than the evil ones.

Both Acavna died trying to save life on Golarion from Starfall, and then Amazen died saving life on Golarion from Starfall, and then Tsukiyo was murdered, and then Ibdurengian was slain by Aroden, and Typhon by Ragathiel, and then Arazni died saving life on Golarion from Tar-Baphon, and then Aroden was murdered.

She won't count Arazni, because then she'd have to count eight billion demon lords who mostly killed each other without it managing to improve the world very much at all. And if Kroft doesn't count Arazni, she doesn't have to count Ibdurengian; that's how it works. 

So that's four heroic and noble gods, and in trade: Typhon. Worth it? 

And those are the ones she's heard of from the last few hundred years. It doesn't seem like things were any better in the Age of Creation, though, when Dou-Bral became Zon-Kuthon, after arbiter Achaekek went bad, after Curchanus was murdered by Lamashtu, after Ihys was murdered by Asmodeus. 

Near the beginning of all things, the strongest Lawful Evil gods were Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon, and the strongest CE gods were Rovagug and Lamashtu. Whereas the preeminent LG, LN, and CG gods are a constantly rotating cast of characters. Is Evil, uninhibited, inherently stronger than good? Or did it win an early lead which it was able to build on? Or perhaps it's just that a handful of Evil deities - maybe Rovagug and Asmodeus - are very good at what they do, and everything else is downstream of that?

Abadar teaches self-sufficiency.

She should stop complaining and... go for the Starstone, why not, so the Good and Lawful people of Korvosa can finally get miracles like apparently everyone else.

...Does someone in Absalom already have "march a bunch of virtuous people up to the Starstone to see if the situation has changed such that this works the way you'd hope it would" covered? Probably, right, she means, they live right next to the stone...