"Like undead! What if you put some lich here and he starts teleporting around zombifying people?"

"Maybe we can leave some of the liches where they are at first? I'm not suggesting not rescuing some people, that's not Good. But we have one lich in particular whom it would be a really bad idea to rescue from his imprisonment and just leave in one of these nice rooms. He... maybe couldn't win a fight against incarnated gods?" Probably. 

"If you can find their phylactery, you can threaten liches and they'll behave, and they're usually Lawful Evil so they'll make deals and honor them. But even Iomedae couldn't find all of Tar-Baphon's phylacteries, when she was leading the Shining Crusade, so they couldn't destroy him and sealed him instead."

:Oh, him! I know where his phylacteries are, I found them all. He thought I would not spend so much time on it, when I could not tell Golarion, because of intervention costs!:

"But then... but you... Why did you do it? Uh, with respect."

:He was so evil and annoying! And he thought he put them where no one could go. He thought it so loudly. But I can go anywhere I want.: Desna is fairly glowing with pride.

Chaotic Good gods are so, so aaaagh?! If only all that power and passion were harnessed to a better cause, like Iomedae's - what they could have achieved by now -!

Chaotic Good gods are incredible! Gord is so, so glad they're on his side.

"Okay, cool. That was a lot of really good points all at once -- let me see ..."

She puts up another whiteboard, and writes "reassure vs. contain", "surprising sky", "light levels", "ambient environment", "dangerous individuals" on it.

"I think we should probably talk about the security first, because that's less visible and plausibly more important, and then we can circle back to what would be most reassuring and comfortable for everyone?"

"I'm not too worried about the security -- the nearest other environment is just over a thousand miles away," she says, pointing at it through the wall. "And if they try to teleport somewhere that they're allowed, that's fine. If they try to teleport somewhere that they aren't allowed, tests show that we can shred the spellform when it starts manifesting at the destination just fine. Likewise doing violence to people with magic -- currently, most jurisdictions are set to shred unrecognized spellforms by default. But I know that I'm not a Golarion expert, and I'm new to what magic can do. Does that sound like it will be sufficient? If not, what would be?"

"I must admit I don't really like the idea of holding someone's soul hostage to their good behavior? That sounds like not a good way for the world to be. Does that idea sound less horrible with context for some reason?"

"Obviously it's horrible! And I wouldn't do anything to their soul except to prevent a greater tragedy. But it almost definitely works, as a threat of retaliation, and so it can be a temporary measure or a way to safely talk to them to figure out something better. Preventing them from using magic while talking to them would also work, but you'd have to be very sure your magic beats theirs."

:It is not good to prevent people from leaving!:

"Keeping someone prisoner is bad. Letting them do bad stuff because they're free is bad. I thought we were going to solve this by helping all the people they were doing bad stuff to, to escape? The liches and whatnot can stay in Golarion or go wherever they want, so long as it isn't here."

"Even here in Cherry's world, you can't - rule the universe and track everywhere people go. Or I guess maybe you can, cover literally the whole plane in fixity fields, but that still strikes me as - " Lawful - "a single point of failure. If anything happened to the fields, or to Cherry, if someone took over somehow, nowhere would be safe and everyone would depend on help from outside again."

"All we can do is give everyone safety here, including from each other. Some people will want to live somewhere else and do whatever they want in complete freedom, and we have to - we must let them, as long as anyone who wants to can come back here to safety, or carry safety with them. I don't know how to do that without watching and controlling everything, on all the planes where people are, but - we won't have won if everyone has to live under Cherry's supervision forever."

"If we think some people are too strong to let them into the safe zone, or even on the same plane, why not leave them where they are for now? It might not be perfect, but it would be a first step and a huge improvement. We can figure out what to do with all the super-liches and demon lords and archdevils and evil gods once we're done with Hell. Maybe Cherry's world can stay a plane of refuge for people not strong enough to threaten it, and we can find other places for everyone else."

"If we are certain Milliways is the only way to get here from Golarion, perhaps we can fortify this side of the door beyond a fixity field's normal guarantees?"

:The other planes adjacent here do not form a chain back to Golarion. But someone might find a way! There is almost always another way to go places!:

"There are gods and other entities in Creation with very varied powers, beyond the kinds of magic that you have seen. I wouldn't blithely assume none of them can beat a fixity field."

"But you will have us and other gods on your side! I'm sure many Good gods and outsiders will help guard and patrol safe zones. And we're going to test everything we know how to do against your fixity fields, and you're going to learn and improve." Do they stop the passive or ongoing magic effects of major artifacts, or direct divine interventions? How do they interact with antimagic fields? What if they make a dead-magic zone like Geb's little accident? Are they literally Wishproof?

"Elysium is infinite - literally infinite - and full of very different people, and everyone goes where they want without anyone watching out for them, and no-one gets hurt if they don't want to. A big reason for this is that they know and believe it's true! But another big reason is that almost everyone in Elysium is Chaotic Good. If everyone from Creation could visit, things might get very ugly." He grimaces.

She rapidly scribbles things on the whiteboard.

"I am so glad we are talking about this beforehand," she opines.

"So first of all, Gord: the fixity fields currently cover only the solar system we're in. People who want to leave and live completely independently can, and they can also purchase fixity crystals to take with them when they do. We're talking about revising that policy in the face of things like gods that might be able to reverse-engineer fixity crystals just by seeing them, but still. I completely understand that having a single point of failure is a bad idea -- that's also why the vast majority of planets, moon-bases, space stations, etc. are designed such that they would continue functioning without active intervention. People just feel safer when that's true, and usually prefer that when it's cheap."

"And, to be clear -- not everywhere covered by fixity fields is set to shred unknown magic. About 6% of people are standing in a jurisdiction where unknown magic is permitted at the moment, because they like something about being there more than they dislike the idea of potentially being attacked with magic."

"I ordinarily wouldn't move people here at all without their permission, it's just that you all have convinced me that grabbing people from Golarion probably needs to happen in one moment to avoid interference."

She shakes her head.

"But I'm not against leaving dangerous people in Golarion if that is the best option -- both for the people here, but also for them. If this Litch is sufficiently dangerous that having redundant fixity fields across all of the places that people care about isn't going to be sufficient, then so be it. But I don't want to lose sight of the fact that everyone -- even very dangerous Evil people -- still deserve to have a good life. So I don't want to withhold whatever luxuries are safe to offer them."

"The question is ..." she thinks how to phrase it. "Actually, there are several: Are there things we can do to make the people we bring here more safe, at least by default before they opt-out? And once we've done that, does that make things safe enough that we can afford to help everyone? I really hope it does, but maybe it doesn't. In which case, how can we identify and exclude the people who we are not yet sufficiently equipped to safely transport? And then what can we do for them other than bringing them here that will make their lives better?"

"Does that make sense? Does that re-framing help, or am I missing something?"

"Those six percent of people should be given the opportunity to reconsider their communities' laws before we let even ordinary demons mix with them."

"The fixity fields can win a contest of brute strength, so almost all the danger comes from magical abilities. You can make an antimagic field that allows only your own magic, or only certain types of magic, and then build from there. Gods and their artifacts can usually overpower any anti-magic field, but you can recognize artifacts with magic and not bring any here."

"This plan uses magic instead of forbidding it, because that's how we do things in Creation. Maybe you can build a fixity field good enough to stop all magic dead."

"Do we have to rescue everyone from Golarion right away? Fighting Hell is more important and if we win there we'll be able to deal with the rest later. Why not start with rescuing only the people from Golarion we are positively certain are safe, instead of taking any chances?"

"That's a very good question! After all, there are many other worlds, and other Evil afterlives. Why is it crucial to empty Golarion at the same time as fighting Hell? It would anger many other gods who have local interests, like Zon-Kuthon, who otherwise might not oppose us in time to help Hell."

"One problem is that the door to Milliways is on Golarion. Our enemies will try to take over the door, or close or destroy it. Others might try to go through it, to escape Creation or steal a fixity field or to try attacking Cherry in her home. Golarion would become a battleground, with bystanders caught up in the mess. We can make a direct gate from Creation to Cherry's world at the last moment and use that instead, but Milliways' guarantee of safety makes it easier to defend."

"Another issue is that Golarion imprisons Rovagug, the world-eater, and Asmodeus holds the key to His prison. There's supposedly an ancient prophecy that, at the end of the universe, Asmodeus will release Rovagug, hoping to direct him against an even greater catastrophe. Now, I'm not an ancient god, and I've always though this is nonsense - why would Asmodeus do it if the prophecy also says it would fail, is He Lawfully bound to it? - anyway prophecy is now broken on Golarion. But Asmodeus might still do it in revenge, or out of spite. And while we're busy fighting Hell, Rovagug could do a lot of damage."

"If it's only Golarion that's in danger, we could move people we can't safely house to other places in Creation. Other planes, maybe. It would still be better than leaving them to die."

:We will not leave people to die:, Desna says firmly. :We will help them and keep helping them.:

:There will always be more people to save. After Hell, the Abyss and Abaddon and Boneyard! After Golarion, forty-seven thousand, three hundred and forty-three more planets! All the other planes of Creation, Fire and Shadow and more!:

:This is only the beginning. We will keep traveling and helping people. As long as there is Evil, we will keep doing Good. As long as there are chains, we will keep freeing people.:

:And when everywhere is free and happy, we will go back to Milliways, and we will wait for someone else to open the door.:

That's so inspirational! Even if he can't help much now, there will always be more to do! He will struggle and fight and grow stronger and stronger until he can help everyone, no matter how long it takes.

Well, that's discouraging. Iomedae's mission is to defeat Evil, not to struggle endlessly in an infinite multiverse. 

But Irabeth is resolute, and dedicated, and she will keep fighting as long as there are people who need her. If new Evil keeps arising, if new doors are found, it will be their charge to get stronger faster than that, to overtake the tide and to subdue it. And if the day comes when she falls, or chooses to lay down her sword, she will trust in the Inheritor to raise up another in her stead.

"Those 6% of people have already been informed -- the existence of a new world is has been all over the news since the door appeared," she tells Irabeth. "It's true that some of them are still debating, but some of them are committed to radical freedom, and some of them are more excited about getting to experiment with magic and/or have magic used on them than they care about potentially being hurt. And I'm sure there are a thousand other niche political opinions about this. People are into some pretty strange things. Once we're done here, if you want to talk to some of them, or record a message explaining your first-hand experience with demons, that could be helpful for the people who are still debating."

Turning to Cayden she adds "I don't see why we shouldn't have fixity and antimagic fields both -- extra layers of security are usually a good idea if they add meaningful non-overlapping protection and don't over-complicate things. We can have have the forks of me that are talking to your other shard about spell diagrams get the formulae for that and add them everywhere that wants one."

Addressing the group she asks "Am I correctly imagining a modified plan of: move everyone without an artifact here, move everyone with an artifact somewhere else safe within Creation? Where would the best place be to drop them off, and is filtering by 'has an artifact' the best criteria we can come up with, or is there a more nuanced one that would perform better? Both in the sense of permitting more people who would be safe to go somewhere better for them, and in the sense of reducing the risk from edge-cases?"

"I... would find it very hard to believe that humans, even very alien humans, prefer having hostile magic used on them. Magic can hurt people very terribly. And kill them, of course."

"I can understand the desire to see magic - I grew up around magic, so maybe I don't fully understand - but they can have magic used on them safely! By you, even, or by each other, right now if you teach them how! They can talk to demons or anyone else they want safely, or from far away! Radical freedom can't mean - the radical commitment to others' freedom to kill or torture you!"

"I very much want to convince these people to change their minds but I don't think I understand them well enough, yet, to send them a message about it. Perhaps I should talk to some of them first."

"That's a good draft for the plan! We can refine the artifact-rule a bit, rule out some people who are too dangerous all by themselves, maybe plan to bring in some useful artifacts we want to preserve or that we trust people to have. The other gods will probably have recommendations. And they'll know better where to contain danger, Elysium is opposed to containment and to danger both so Desna and I don't have a lot to offer on that front."