"An actually friendly Lord would be too much to hope for. Who're you planning to support?"

"The Priest of Dionysus, Jeremy Meath."

Confusion. "Oh, after the current guy's gone. Yeah, he's a fairly obvious contender. And probably not the most suspicious type, so works okay for us."

"So, there's another problem with accepting Hauri's help, which is that... he might want to suggest himself as a contender."

"It wouldn't win, right? Even you'd be against it."

"If the firepower he sent us is enough to tip the scale, it would be foolish of us to assume that's all the firepower he has available. And who knows what nonobvious catches he might have installed in what he already sent. They might have orders to attack us as soon as we oust the current Lord."

"Yeah. They probably don't, but I was thinking of that as a reason to make sure we do use these early if we fight.

And I'm curious where Hauri is getting these too. It's acting as at least a middling high-end scourge quickly; maybe it stole someone's library?"

"Yeah, that's worrying. ...I think this all adds up to it not being a good idea to use that help. People are more likely to notice there are diabolists around if there are actual devils doing things, and it'll be much harder to actually get support from the rest of the city if I use that sort of power. So... yeah, I would ask you not to use this, and would disclaim involvement with it."

"So do you think we should try to kill them? Send them back to the Abyss that way, and if Hauri resummons them they might be weaker."

"—we could maybe talk to Rose and see if there's a less costly and difficult way to do the unsummoning."

"There always is. There's just no easy way to find out what."

"Hence calling Rose, in the worst case we find nothing new."

"No reason not to. She'll only be able to help if she knows of these specific summons, but that'd point us to where Hauri got them too."

"Yeah. Excuse me."

Phones are a thing that exists.

Hey, why should Sam be the one who-- oh right; she's the least cursed.

Rose has little to say. She confirms the cabal's view that Hauri is almost certainly not one of the few Others to be human enough to practice, so it must have a scourge ally or be very lucky. The specific creatures are all new to her. No help on breaking the summons.

Strategically, her position is that bogeymen are usually overwhelmed by hate or anger or drive to cause fear. Otherwise the Abyss doesn't let them escape and they never become known enough to be summonable. They will fight, one way and time or another, so the question should be either where to direct them or how to have as little as possible to do with it.

That information's useful. Thank you.

Does she have any idea if it's possible to have a bogeyman get over that?

It happens. The Abyss makes sure its escapees have to be strong and ruthless, but this rarely involves outright mind control. More often it's just that the Abyss rewards the type of action it likes to see. (This is pretty basic scourge stuff, mentioned at least in passing in the summoning book that Rose doesn't know Sadde got from Johannes.) These ones are going to be fairly hobbled by the Seal; Hauri must have had some reason for choosing bogeymen instead of some other type.

Would they then be basically doomed to breaking the oath if left alone?

They'd be forced to go looking for acceptable targets, or Hauri might have something more creative in mind.

Hmm. Useful to know. She relays this to the others.

Yeah, nothing groundbreaking. They can at least make a point of talking where the monsters can hear about how The Lord Of The City Is Unprovokedly Attacking People and Isn't Bound By The Seal Of Sadde. Them being practitioners probably means the Others will get the sense of what they're saying, and then if the monsters do take a side it'll be the right one.

Oh yeah that sounds like a good idea.

Redundant if they decide to direct them anywhere; useful if they don't. Why not. Of course, if they don't use the bogeymen then no one has anything approaching a plan for actually winning this, do they?

Well.

Yeah, actually, they do.

Also Sadde has a long shot she wants to pursue.

...if it involves the cabal, details would be appreciated.