Of course, there are also people with more mixed feelings about the whole thing.

Not all of them are even Chelish.

Conquering Infernal Cheliax was meant to be the crowning achievement of his life, in the very literal sense that after he did it he was going to declare himself Emperor of Avistan. It was meant to make him a hero of legend for the next thousand years. It was meant to get him into Axis.

Instead the paladins upstaged him with weapons out of, if the girl on the radio is to be believed, another world. He's not even mad. At the point that that happens, forces above the gods themselves are clearly out to get you and there wouldn't even be a point in getting mad at them.

He has his own people working on guns, of course. They're kind of obvious, once you've seen them in action. He's working on airplanes, too, ever since the girl on the radio mentioned them. He expects that, unless Lastwall has some other tricks up its sleeve, within two years Galt will have caught up technologically enough that his vastly superior tactical genius can make up the remaining difference. Of course, that just means that if there's going to be a giant coalition war to crush his empire and exile him to a tiny island in the middle of the Steaming Sea, it's going to be sooner rather than later.

There isn't a declaration of war. Just a Sending, and an offer to meet that he could refuse but probably wouldn't be wise to.

He agrees to meet. Having a gigantic army won't necessarily save him from that person deciding he's a threat to the geopolitical stability of Avistan.

"My lord Consul." He nods stiffly.

"Monsieur Riudaure," he replies. "I expect that you are here to tell me that I have now lost Lastwall's alliance through no fault of my own?"

"You never had it, formally speaking. But yes, given recent events, you continuing along your current course would no longer be in Iomedae's interests. I have already withdrawn most of my agents from Isarn" who were mostly spying on Cyprian's political enemies to prevent him from going the way of most Galtans to wield power in the last fifteen years. "I expect you can manage without them at this point, really."

"Of course." He isn't, actually, vain enough to imagine he would have survived his initial foray into politics without Riudaure's help, but the suggestion that such matters now is kind of offensive. "If I may ask, what is the plan for the future government of Cheliax? Surely Cansellarion doesn't mean to rule it himself." That would mean two of his neighbors being ruled by high-level paladins of Iomedae, and a third being Lastwall; he isn't actually the only power in Avistan that someone might want to form a preemptive coalition against. He could probably get Taldor in on it, if he could spin it in a way Iomedae's supposed homeland wouldn't find embarrassing—

"I expect it'll some kind of a republic, once the people are more accustomed to being free of Asmodean rule. The Lord Marshal hasn't stated any intention to run for office that I know of, and I'm not sure of his advantage if he were to run; he's very Splendid, of course, but I don't expect the Chelish people will be comfortable being ruled by a paladin for at least another generation. I wouldn't want to be."

"And yet empowered followers of Iomedae now rule, between them, something like a quarter of Avistan. I've no doubt this trend really is accidental, that they would call it lamentable, even, but in my own school of geopolitics, that is hardly enough to predict it to stop. At least not of its own accord."

"Is that a threat?"

"Hardly. If I went to war with the Church of Iomedae, the Goddess Herself would denounce me on the radio, and that, actually, would put an end to my career. Many of my men do worship her, or at least fancy themselves to be the sort of people who would."

wait what the fuck does he know and how

"Oh, it's obvious, really," he continues. (Riudaure has incredibly good Bluff but his thoughts are fairly predictable at the moment.) "Rumors out of Vigil are that the Goddess possessed a young woman uncannily similar in appearance to Her mortal self to deliver the city from Arazni. Probably her appearance was part of the miracle, in isolation, but the girl had, apparently, been seen before, and appeared to be involved in something far more secret than you'd expect a brand-new paladin to be. From there it was obvious that, if they actually did have a teenage Iomedae, she was also the girl on the radio, but I didn't believe it until she admitted to having been to another world. Getting petrified for a thousand years is a lot more common than that, and obviously it wasn't exactly that since we also have the goddess, but once you start getting into archmage bullshit there isn't much I find unlikely."

"Also, she said she was from Menador. That's a matter of historical record."

"In that case I think the likelier explanation is that we just wanted you to believe that."

"Please. If you had a fake Iomedae, she'd have been a much stronger paladin, and you wouldn't have had someone else using her sword."

"I'm not going to confirm or deny it, so what's your point, here?"

"That the gods, or something stranger, are clearly fucking with us all, and I meant to be a mythic hero but not the sort that fought that."

"Besides which, I do have my afterlife to think of, now that I don't have a glorious war with Hell itself to look forward to."

"So you mean to stop conquering? Not that I'm the one you have to convince, there."

"Oh, not entirely. Certainly I'll take Razmiran; that seems better for all involved than any alternative I can imagine. And Kyonin, maybe. But who would be next? Taldor? They deserve it, but my people don't actually want to be part of the same empire as Oppara even if it's ruled from Isarn. Ustalav? Please. I'm not that much of an idiot."

"Now, if there's nothing else, I do have my current empire to attend to."

"Only that, if you try to assassinate Catherine de Litran, you'll find it harder than you currently have any reason to expect."

Reports out of Vigil also included Iomedae speaking directly to Litran. Yeah, there's something going on there that he's not messing with either.

"I never meant to kill her. Marry her, perhaps, if I thought it would appease the royalist faction."

"Somehow I doubt she would appreciate that either."