This is another of those cases where people are deciding how to make tradeoffs with other people's lives! The poor damned souls didn't sign up to be traded off against whatever else is on offer!!

"We should always minimize the harm to victims, at the expense of any sacrifices necessary from those who freely chose to fight, on either side."

"...I admit I don't know whether devils count as freely choosing anything."

"So, unfortunately, I am not perfect," Weeping Cherry replies. "Yet. Humans don't really have a 'clean' reflectively endorsed decision function that they can just provide. But here is an existing price sheet that my self-tree maintains and publishes from which She can extrapolate, and I consent to being forked and emulated to get my opinion on things subject to the following constraints."

She summons illusions of both documents. The former provides a list of services that her self-tree sells, tradeoffs they have made, and completed and outstanding bounties for different kinds of work. If you are a god, it is immediately obvious that these prices are vulnerable to a Dutch book, although less so than mortals usually manage.

The latter document describes from what points in time members of her self-tree have agreed to be forked, and what conditions they were expecting at that time. For the purpose of fixing Hell, many of her are available.

"Based on what I have learned about Hell so far, I would guess that nobody there save Asmodeus himself is actually free to choose. His whole shtick is forcing people to obey," she remarks to Gord.

"Nobody is perfect! The gods aren't perfect! If the Lawful gods think they're perfect in some respect, that just means they've promised not to grow better than that!!"

...he was supposed to learn something from Irabeth, wasn't he.

"Tell Iomedae," he says, "that I'm not strong enough to help fight Hell yet, but I wish I was. I will gladly fight and risk myself, to spare others who were unwilling. I will work with Iomedae if it actually gets me what I want, and what I want is Good."

"Tell her that I'm not alone." Technically true, he has clones now! "And that she should -" mend her ways - "change, so more of us will cooperate with her, and then we might achieve more together. And probably she should work harder on convincing us and explaining herself to us, that can't hurt."

"I don't know what price I'd pay in hypotheticals I can't imagine yet. I can't promise anything on behalf of Future Gord, I can just barely manage to promise anything for myself right now."

"But if Iomedae's as smart and perfected as she's made out to be, maybe she can figure out something I can't, and cooperate with me anyway."

Cayden is pleased with Gord's growth! He will show it very clearly without saying anything, in the sort of reverse-sense-motive that a god wise in the ways of mortals can pull off.

"Devils do have some freedom," he says to Cherry, "but not the freedom to disobey Asmodeus, or their superiors in the hierarchy of Hell. He permits them freedom so they too can oppress other devils, all the way down the hierarchy, to the damned souls and the living mortals who serve them. It probably won't matter for the war, but I hope it will help the post-war settlement."

They go over all their allies, and their resources, and their tactics.

It's an imposing list. Heaven has been preparing to fight this war for aeons. Nirvana strains at the leash of its intervention budget, and they will break that treaty if they're sure enough they'll win. And Elysium has never been organized enough to obey budgets, none of them but the gods, and what they will do with at-will Wishes is anyone's guess, but the very first thing that will happen is that Hell is going down.

Hell, too, is oriented towards war. They have their own allies, and secret weapons, and the home ground advantage. They will not go gently, for Asmodeus's domain of Pride forbids it.

From the staging grounds of Heaven, Gates will open to Nirvana and Elysium, the Maelstrom and the Elemental planes, to a segregated part of Axis leased at great expense, and remote uninhabited parts of the Material besides; so that no one planar adjacency being severed may cut off their retreat.

And from all of them Cherry teams will gate into Avernus, and onwards to every further layer of Hell; under mythic Time Stop, and Mind Blank, and Wishes boosting their physical abilities and their mental saves; with a paladin's immunity to domination, Lawfully granted to those who are Lawful Good, outside the strict intervention-budget limits of the Material; and a hundred spells and buffs and miracles and duplicated minor artifacts besides, stacked sky-high, as far as the strategists of Heaven can devise, if Heaven were to boost a single mortal with all their might.

Each team will carry a fixity field generator, its field expanding at a third of light speed, affecting everything not a creature, and telling the Cherries of all there is around them, while still under the Time Stop.

Shards of the gods will go with them, Iomedae and Sarenrae and Desna and a hundred others besides, to communicate and coordinate and intervene, faster than even time-stopped mortals can; and the greatest Good outsiders who can last a few rounds against archdevils, buffed and armed with scrolls of Wish and Miracle and unshakeable conviction, called there with every new Gate that opens.

Other teams will Gate around Golarion, and stand ready to evacuate it to Cherry's world: as soon as they see something wrong, or the round after the invasion of Hell if they receive no further word. They will keep their fixity fields off until the last moment, to avoid drawing scrutiny.

And when the Time Stops expire, they will evacuate all the damned souls they can find, with the fixity fields via the still-open Gates, and with Wishes if they have to; to vast areas being prepared in Nirvana, swarming with Good outsiders and petitioners and guests from Elysium and from farther realms, alerted by the gods at the last moment and desperately trying to do anything they can to prepare, to find some loved ones or anyone at all in the inevitable chaos of the evacuation, and to help, oh gods please let me help -

They will transport the devils and their allies, with fixity fields and Wishes and bodily strength if they have to, to the Treshold and to Proelera, and thence to secure demiplanes, guarded by Lawful demigods who can credibly tell the devils they cannot escape and should accept a truce.

They will confront the archdevils and beard them in their lairs, from Barbatos to Asmodeus Himself, until their backs are to the wall and they are forced to kneel.

And then they will let them live and go free, with their Lawful word as their bond, for they are Good. But they will not let them hurt anyone again. Never ever again.

Are you ready, chosen heroes of the Light?

She does a final status check with the rest of her self-tree, the confirmation flashing green. She takes a final look at her own armor and enchantments, and stands to be ready for the Gate.

"All of me are ready," she confirms.

For the fifth time, Gord opens the magic door.

Fewer than two hours have passed on Golarion, since he first opened it from the other side.

And a few hurried rounds later, everything is ready.

The first Gates open.

Barbatos, lord of portals, guard of the entryways to Hell, stands sleepless watch.

What is -

The Gates to Dis, cast from inside the mythic Time Stop, go on through.

- this?!

He cannot interfere with them in time. He can kill them, as soon as they drop out of the time stop, but only one group at a time. Perhaps He could stop one group still under time stop, with a well-aimed Wish, but He only has the one Wish, and the invading army has legions.

Mythic time stop. It won't take effect until the invaders' own time stops come to an end.

In their domains, demigods have godly powers. They can talk among themselves as gods do; faster than even a time stop, though with limited bandwidth.

Dispater. Mammon. Moloch.

We are invaded, by powers great enough to take Avernus and perhaps Dis if we are not reinforced in time. No-one burns tens of thousands of Gates as an opening move if they can't follow up.

As Iomedae is general of the armies of Heaven, so is Moloch the general of Hell. It is the measure of Hell's might, and of Hell's pride, that a goddess should meet her match and more in a mere archdevil, unworthy of Asmodeus's full attention.

We make our stand in Dis. Dispater, hold until I can reinforce. Barbatos, attempt a fighting retreat or a static defense. Mammon, fortify Erebus. Belial, reinforce as able.

Baalzebul, close the portals to Cocytus. This is standing procedure, and costs them little; if fighting ever reached the Sixth Layer, it would be more important to contain it than to ship in more reinforcements who can't Gate or Plane Shift on their own.

Lord Asmodeus, be advised of the situation. Among the eight archdevils, Moloch is unique in not caring of His standing with the Lord of the Ninth, and so the first to alert him directly. Moloch does His best, always, and receives the standing in the hierarchy where Asmodeus knows He'll serve Him best.

She walks through the burning desert of Avernus, her team spread out around her. Frozen flames provide a steady reddish light which reflects off of the tormented visages of the inhabitants and the sporadic patches of black iron which dot the landscape.

She is not part of one of the teams that are pressing deeper into Hell. She is solely concerned with the people here, making sure that nobody is left behind.

  "I found another one," one of the other volunteers calls.

Her forks make up the bulk of their forces, but there is strength in diversity, so each team also mixes in as many other people as they can.

She jogs over. "Poor person," she remarks, noting down their identity and position.

Her initial plan had been to just automatically scan for anything that was being protected by the time stop, since they can't affect creatures while sped up. But it turns out there are a lot of false positives from that, and the possibility of false negatives is pretty worrying too.

So they sweep over the infernal planes, spreading the fixity field and marking everyone for extraction. Occasionally they come across something that would potentially be useful to hell, like a lost plane shift amulet, or a weapons cache, and they shred it before moving on. As soon as they have everyone located, they'll seed the rest of the plane with antimatter anyway. But better safe than sorry.

The atmosphere is made even more oppressive by the stillness. She looks up at the frozen clouds of ash that cover the sky, and wonders how the other teams are faring.

A different her hovers over the floating island on which Barbatos makes his home. She doesn't want to walk on the frozen churning worms below, even though they cannot squish unpleasantly below her feet.

She stares up at a giant white tree, blood weeping from its branches to fall like rain onto the maggots underneath. She counts each person hanging there -- carefully separating the powerful devils destined for confinement in Heaven from the more ordinary people who can be released to Nirvana or the newly finished rescue environments.

There is hooded figure meditating on a stone dias, just far enough away from the tree not to be spattered with blood. Despite the time stop, she keeps feeling her gaze drawn to him, expecting him to suddenly turn his head.

She calms herself, and finishes surveying the tree. She helps two Archons get in position near some of the devils who they expect might be able to resist a Wish, and checks in with the other survey teams combing the island.

It's not enough to simply locate everyone visible from the surface. They have found several people buried beneath the 'soil' of the island. The teams work diligently, striving to ensure that everyone is found.

Little can escape Asmodeus's notice in the Hells, once His full attention has been called down. 

The squirrels are moving in obvious coordination. The Gates behind them lead to many places, but ultimately all to the Good Outer planes. This is unsurprising; no-one else is capable of mounting such an offense.

Squirrel minds are hard to understand at the best of times. These are of an unfamiliar kind, and sped up besides; He will not waste His attention on the enemy's foot soldiers.

The weapons they might wield have not yet been revealed. The gates and time stops are unexceptional, except for their great quantity. Heaven's arsenal emptied would suffice for these, and more besides. They had not done it before, because it was not worth the cost to them; His counterstrike will be ruinous. What novel weapon do they think they have, that made them launch this attack?

The time-stopped squirrels are swarming all over Avernus, looting and pillaging as they go, and an - effect spreads in their wake. A subtle change to the nature of the plane. Something insidious, lying in wait, hiding from His gaze even as it attempts to subvert control of His own plane from Him.

That makes it personal.

Asmodeus will call upon His allies, and muster the fullness of His wrath, against those who dare to invade His domain.

Valmallos. Abadar. I will pay the first of You to explain to Me this planar effect and its consequences.

Moloch. You are authorized to expend resources to the eighty-seventh contigency level.

All Lawful Evil gods who dwell in Hell, and do not yet come under My tyranny: Our defense must come under a shared command. United, We stand. Fight in the defense of Your homes, cooperate with My forces, or have your tenancy revoked when I repel the invaders.

Mephistopheles, Geryon, with Me. You are the deepest versed in Hell's nature. Tell me of the enemy's strategy.

Abadar, do not aid Asmodeus. I will pay You more for Your silence.

We're all Lawful gods here! We can agree on Who can pay Me more.

Also, I have a principled objection to war, so Iomedae should pay more if She started it instead of bargaining.

In confidence from Asmodeus and from the rest of Yourself, estimate the value to You of trade with a new universe, with likely many more to come. As well as the long-term effects of much less war and less Evil in Creation. And the prospect of relaxing most of the rules on trade between Axis and the Material, which has now acquired higher technology from a novel source.

If I lose this war, which I intent to fight regardless of Your actions here, Asmodeus is likely to conquer the new world, leaving prospects for trade much diminished.

Iomedae has won the bidding war.

That upstart godling outbid Mammon's treasury? All of Good must be behind this alliance.

I will look at this new phenomenon regardless, for My own purposes. And then I may sell the information to You.