The demons definitely cannot match the collective power of the gods. Even the demon lords can't do that, and they're not fighting in person. 

Perhaps closing the Worldwound is much harder for the gods than just killing all the demons, and they don't want to waste their power doing the latter without handling the former?

Or perhaps they could close it if they had to, but some of them like the status quo where they get to fight the demons forever. This is something he can definitely appreciate as a Gorumite! Cheliax and Lastwall are using the Wound borders to constantly train and level their armies, and maybe that's a net benefit for them. They don't want the demons overrunning Avistan, but they could be confident in the Wardstones stopping them, or they could have bigger forces in reserve that would stop any threatened outbreak.

Mendev is definitely fighting for its life and would love for the Worldwound or at least all the demons to go away, but it's the weakest country on the borders and it's not calling the shots. Many adventurers come to Kenabres for a spot of crusading and then they go home and he bets some of them don't think "I wish the demons were gone yesterday so I didn't have to fight them", they think "what a convenient way of leveling up and also getting some Good points by killing people". They help Mendev survive but they also profit from its misery, though not in a way where they contribute to it or could do any better. 

Gorum might not actually oppose the Worldwound? He hasn't explicitly said so to one of his higher ranking clerics, and he doesn't to Gorum's knowledge empower demons and their allies (because they don't go to him for power, they go to Baphomet and Deskari), but an endless battle on mostly static lines that people from all over the world can attend is something Gorum would endorse outright, if it didn't have the huge downsides of involving lots of civilians conscripted by Mendev. (And the civilians demons get their hands on, when they can bypass the Wardstones and reach some village, or when they managed to take Kenabres for a few days at the start of the last crusade, but more Mendevians die in their army than to random demon attacks.)

It's hard to know what the powerful demons' objectives are, because it's hard to get them to talk and also they can't be trusted. Empirically, the most powerful demon generals take and hold territories in the Worldwound, and every few years or decades lead a big mass assault on a Worldwound fort or a breakthrough attempt in between them.

Most of the demons in the Wound theoretically answer to Deskari - or at least they came from his domain - and he definitely wants to conquer the world and kill or eat everyone who isn't a Deskarite demon. Probably his generals want that too, in theory. But almost every demon is fundamentally out for themselves and will betray the others if they think they can get away with it and stand to profit. Demons don't serve in armies out of loyalty or a common cause, they only serve out of fear. Which is why their generals drive their own armies before them and don't actually lead them.

If they help (and can convince) the lesser demons to escape, then the stronger demons will definitely consider them enemies. Some of them might attack in revenge, others only if they thought it would get them their armies back. Some might go for revenge only if they have any followers left to impress. Some balors might take the chance themselves to get away from Deskari!

Deskari and Baphomet and so on will definitely consider them their enemies. But they tend to consider everyone an enemy who isn't a subordinate, and don't really believe in good-will alliances, only in short-term coordination over clear shared goals. (And in being the first to stab their partner in the back.) So it's less a matter of earning their enmity, and more one of not moving to the top of their priority list.

Of course a lot of the power of even the greatest demons comes from having followers to begin with, so leaving them without any means they hate you but also have much less ability to do anything about it.

"Oh, that's a very different picture! I thought that when you said nearly everyone opposes the worldwound, that meant that they were actually trying to close it. If many people are benefiting from it, and so incentivized not to actually close it, that makes the 'large wormhole' possibility less exciting," she remarks.

"When you say level their armies, though -- that's another thing that sounds possibly fictional. Could you elaborate on exactly what you mean by that?" she asks. "Because people on Earth get better at fighting if they practice it, but not in discrete 'levels'. So if that's not just a colloquialism, it could be important."

Misha and Arthur finish up their discussion and rejoin the group.

"Definitely answer that first, but also: how much variety is there in desires between demons? Like, are they all variations on 'killing and eating', or are most demons interested in different things?" she adds.

"I said everyone opposes the Worldwound in theory! The most powerful countries and archmages aren't doing anything about it! The only country fighting a total war is the small weak one that's a step from being overwhelmed by demons!"

"Maybe I should have clarified that, while Lastwall and Cheliax are reasonably powerful countries that like to throw their weight around, they both have many enemies they can't defeat and aren't really in the same class as, say, Geb, whom no-one sane would dare to attack, or Absalom, whom everyone keeps attacking and failing miserably."

Mages get better in discrete 'levels' because all spells belong to a level, also called a circle. Everyone starts out casting zeroth-circle cantrips/orisons - those are the spells that can be cast and caught and cast again - and then first circle, second circle, et cetera. You always have access to a circle and all the ones below it, you can't skip any. So although people improve continuously with practice and research, it's common to talk about wizards or clerics of a certain discrete circle.

People who fight without magic (which is most of them) don't have discrete levels, obviously, they just keep getting stronger and quicker, and master more skills but not in any particular order. But mages are very powerful, and very important to fighting, so the term spread from there.

Demons are endlessly variable! There are some broad similarities, because almost all the demons in Wound come from two or three demonic realms out of at least hundreds, and similar kinds of demons get sent to the Wound for similar reasons, and above all because most people are interested in the demons' abilities and vulnerabilities in battle. There are a dozen common kinds and several dozen more rare ones, if you only care about killing them efficiently. But once you try talking to them, you realize it's very very hard to generalize.

Gord hasn't seen or talked to very many demons who were free to do what they liked. Sure, in the heat of battle - when Kenabres was overrun by demons for several days at the start of the last crusade, or when they recovered the remains of a defeated and captured war-party - most demons killed and ate and tortured and raped and hurt in every conceivable way everyone they could get their hands on. But he's seen mortal armies, victorious on a field of battle after a string of defeats, and there's a difference of quantity but it's the same kind of thing in the end. Demons are much more evil and much more unrestrained, but if you look only at armies you'll conclude humans are only interested in conquest and slaughter.

Demons who are not in fight-or-flight mode - despite all demons being constantly terrified and lashing out in preemptive defense - can be interested in very different things. There are commonalities, yes, but individual differences often predominate, just as they do with humans.

Succubi want love and loyalty and worship and adoration, and are incapable of believing it's genuine (a reasonable assumption in the Abyss), so they take over people's minds with magic. (Also sex. So much sex.)

Abrikandilu are horrified by their own ugliness, and don't see a way to fix it, so they hate beauty in others and want to destroy it. They want to drag everyone else down to their level, and failing that, they want forgetfulness.

Brimoraks love watching things burn; Gord has met a couple of humans like that too, but luckily they couldn't make fireballs.

Cambions exaggerate one or two emotions to extremes; these can be anything from pride to greed to terror to obsession. (Cambions are not a natural group any more than "Mendevian soldiers", but they go down to ordinary weapons, so crusaders don't bother distinguishing them further.)

Coloxi are cultured and courteous and make excellent diplomats as long as they're kept away from mirrors, and they are bitter and resentful because no-one wants to receive diplomatic emissaries from Deskari.

Gord can go on in this vein for a while, including various anecdotes, some from his personal experience.

The others nod along, occasionally chiming in with additional clarifying questions. Weeping Cherry thinks that most of those desires are probably possible to accommodate, since they just seem like more extreme variations on things humans already do.

Checker has questions about various political factions, and Arthur wants clarification on where and how he came by each of these anecdotes.

Eventually, Weeping Cherry summarizes:

"Okay, so I think that probably helps a lot with having a plan for what to do with the demons, and how to receive them. We should probably also talk about what kinds of accommodations other, non-demon people will be most comfortable with at some point. But I think that still leaves us with the core question of how much the gods will let us get away with, and whether there's any way to improve on that."

"Based on Gord's descriptions, I think the main thing to worry about is still direct divine intervention. Either the gods will notice and react to any interference at all with Golarion instantly, or they won't. If they do, there's not much we can do about it other than try to act with unstoppable force. If they don't, which seems more likely to me, we can probably get away with sneaking an advance team in to try and contact the Good gods."

"Gord, you mentioned gods' high-priests calling down miracles -- is there anything we can do to make it easier for the Good gods to intervene on our side like that? Also -- I notice we've been at this for a while and I'm starting to get hungry. Does anybody else want some food?"

"We can try taking out our enemies' priests with a preemptive strike. Other than that - "

Help high priests. How would you do that, if cloning them a million times doesn't work because there's still only one god supplying the spells, and if you can't figure out how to power their spells yourselves? What else do clerics need?  ...wait a minute.

"The most powerful spells require expensive components. Gems, oils, incense, inks. If you can make those they will be able to cast a lot more. My own spells don't require much, the material costs only really start being apparent at fourth circle, so I didn't think of it before. And you were going to see if you could clone some of the clerics and wizards, or provide them with whatever you think magical power is made from so they can cast more spells. That would be a really big deal if it worked."

"I think we can win if we can contact them in secret and they cooperate and we have time to plan and prepare. If we don't have any time before acting then maybe they'll have time to ask for something they know they can use, but we can't really plan for it ourselves."

He'll have some food! Most of the time he has to eat his own created food and drink, which tastes so bland he's taken to carrying salt and pepper in his bag of holding. Wizards copied all their other spell designs from clerics, but they redeemed themselves by invented a flavoring cantrip better than anything clerics have before fourth circle. (Of course they gave it a name he can't pronounce. Whatever, it's the cleanup and food flavor spell.)

She summons a table with a spread of food. Thick beef stew and crusty bread, as things likely to be familiar to him for a safe option, pitchers of ice water and lemonade, a bowl of salad with little serving vessels of ginger and Italian dressing, and a platter of fresh sashimi with little bowls of soy sauce, because she's in the mood for fish.

Misha jumps on the fish immediately, and Checker serves himself some stew, but Arthur merely pours himself some water.

"We can definitely do physical materials, and maybe do restoring spells. The researchers say that they've figured out how to grant your sword spell to people, and can cast most of the others 'directly' but are still working on making them attach to people correctly. If you're willing to let them try, they might be able to put your expended spells back, and that would be a good proof of concept," she explains, serving herself some salad.

"Are any gems, inks, and incenses sufficient? Or are there specific types that we would need to copy?" she asks.

"They can try if they're sure it's safe. I still need to open that door," he says, but his mind isn't really there. 

They think they can refresh his spells - at least spells they've seen before, it sounds like, and once they're back in Golarion they'll soon see many more. They did this in a few hours. Give them a few days and they'll probably figure out how to give him another circle. For all he knows they can give him wizard spells, or give his spells to everyone in the world, or something equally fantastical.

The common definition of a god is anyone who can grant spells. What does that make them? 

Gord never really worshipped Gorum. Not like some other people worship their gods, with ritual and prayer and submission and fervent belief. He grew up knowing Gorum wanted some good things, things that Gord also wanted, and then he was in mortal peril and Gorum chose to help him and he does feel some obligation - one he has probably long discharged, but still - he was never Gorum's servant, or sworn follower, or even ally. They have a - working partnership, towards common goals, and if either one ever changes their mind then they'll part. 

Cherry, too, entered his life unexpectedly. Not when he was in need, but the whole world is in need. And she's offering him power with a clear implication: if he relies on her, he won't need Gorum anymore. 

He's not going to worship her, anymore than he does Gorum. But. Um. He may need a little time to figure out how he feels about this. He'll eat some stew. Stew is familiar and unsurprising and doesn't feel like a test of his Wisdom.

"Most spells need very specific components," he says around the stew, "that's part of why they are so expensive. Diamonds are common, followed by sapphires, onyxes, rubies, emeralds. Some need a stone of a certain size, others can use multiple stones or crushed powder. I don't know much about other expensive components but I think there are very many kinds. Some spells are probably obscure just because it's hard to source the materials, regardless of price."

"That makes sense -- if we do send anyone into Golarion, we can send them with a pouch of different sizes of those five gems, at least. Unfortunately, I don't think we have a good way to miniaturize producing many different kinds of ink and incense without bringing a fixity crystal, though. (And I would expect bringing fixity crystals to get the gods attention the way a group of people with gems won't). Maybe we can work out a system with little packets of powder, where you just add water and then it mixes it into a custom ink ..."

She is content to eat silently for a moment, but when she has finished her salad she continues.

"As for restoring your spells -- the research team is only mostly sure it's safe. It's working on some volunteers without obvious issues, but they also haven't had the little brain structures that hook into the magic for as long as you have, and every brain is unique. The volunteers right now are occasionally reporting phantom smells and tastes a moment after a spell is restored as the spell relaxes into place. It's safe enough that I would be willing to do it to myself, but not so unambiguously safe that I would want to make that choice for you. But if you're still up for it with that caveat, we can try it once we're done eating."

"I'm willing to take the risk to myself. I'm not sure about taking the risk to your only way of getting to Golarion. Do you think you could learn something from trying it that would let you prepare better before I open the door?"

"Also, I should clarify that the inks are just an example and many spells require different materials. Gems are the most common, though. Some spells also need worked objects, not just materials; they're expensive because of the work required but should be easy for you to replicate once you see one."

"If you can walk around safely in Golarion without attracting attension - or stay safe inside Milliways while I walk around for you - you'll probably want to see if you can copy wizard spells, because not all of them are available to clerics and vice versa, and then go to some big library or wizard's shop that'll sell you a list of all the known spells and their material components. Kenabres isn't a big city, but you could buy a normal Golarion teleport somewhere else for gold or diamonds. That's if you want to figure out a lot of spells and see if you can share them and power them, instead of going immediately for powerful allies who could do the legwork for you."

"Yes, I see what you mean. I think the main thing we would learn from whether we can re-empower your spells is whether finding some powerful clerics of Good gods and getting them to repeatedly cast the spell that calls down a miracle is a viable option -- unless that spell just gets the god's attention, and so multiple castings are redundant?"

She serves herself some select sashimi.

"I don't want to send you into Golarion, because Bar says that we need someone from the world in question to hold the door to prevent it from vanishing. We might be able to work around that by duplicating you, but I don't understand how Milliways' door determines what universe people are from. And you might not want to be duplicated."

"If we don't use fixity crystals to maintain the element of surprise, the travel time to anywhere in Golarion also bothers me. Even if we can pick up a teleport relatively nearby, that's still a relatively long delay. You mentioned that gods sometimes cleric people who are praying to them, which suggests that prayers sometimes get their attention. Do you know how often that happens? If we have a hundred people run through the door and start praying to the Good gods, is that likely to get their attention?"

"I don't know what gods can, or rather can't, do with a single miracle, and whether casting many of them helps. I'm pretty sure it's not just for getting their attention, there are lower circle spells for speaking to them, like commune."

"Wizards have their own greatest spell called a wish that can do some impressive things too, like move people from anywhere to anywhere even against their will, or make people permanently stronger, or heal or resurrect people which are cleric spells wizards can't normally cast. It can't do anything miracle cannot, although you need to ask the right god for a miracle they'll agree to. Wizards are always talking about how they'll invent something that clerics can't do, any day now, but all they've got so far is giant flaming craters." (Which is also something miracle can accomplish, so no great feat.) "But maybe they can do something useful for us."

"Being cloned sounds pretty great! I'll need to think about it for five minutes and then I'm sure I'll agree. Even if the clone can't open the door, I don't see a reason not to do it." Gord always has many, many more things he wants to do than he actually can; having more Gord to do them is an uncomplicated good.

"It's hard to tell whether the gods notice all the prayers but rarely respond, or whether they don't notice most of them and you need to get the praying exactly right to have a good chance." (He thinks he's explained this before? This conversation has gone on for long enough that he doesn't remember everything that's been said anymore.)

"Oh, yes, that's right. And if worship is pretty widespread, a hundred additional prayers is probably not all that much more noticeable ..." she trails off, and shakes her head to clear it. "Sorry. I should let you have your five minutes. I could do with a moment to center myself anyway."

She sits back, drinks some water, and doesn't think about strange new worlds and impossible magics for a few moments.

She does jot down a list of people they might want to contact: powerful clerics of Desna, Milani, and Sarenrae plus maybe Iomedae if we can think of a way to verify her; and a wizard capable of demonstrating wish -- maybe Felandriel Morgethai, who Gord mentioned we could probably do with a thousand of?

Gord spends five minutes considering how to divide his sword and other magic items, if they fail to duplicate those, and his spells and status as a cleric if Gorum doesn't sponsor both of them, and the going-away present from his parents, and the trophy skulls.

He also needs to come up with a new name for Second Gord (he is not going to call himself Droog) but that's not five minutes' work, it calls for serious thought.

"I'm ready."

"Okay -- the way that we do this, you're going to experience a slight jump, as though teleported a little bit to the left or the right. You will both be Gord. There is no 'original', both copies of you will be equally you," she explains. "I'm sorry if that sounds basic and obvious -- we've found that reminding people of this right before they split helps reduce angst and makes people more likely to cooperate with themselves."

She'll get a last confirming nod and clap her hands.

In a sealed vacuum chamber, freshly-integrated magic handling routines spin together spells for each of his magic items. In another isolated manufacturing location, the machines punch a tiny hole through to the positive energy plane, to collect some of the components they haven't figured out a way to duplicate. Mundane chemical elements are pulled from storage and carefully assembled into an exact duplicate.

These things come together in an instant, and then there are two of him.

"I was going to say 'you can call me Gordy', until I choose a better name".

    "But now I don't know which me should say it."

"You're the new one, I was standing here all along."

    "I still have my spells and channels! That means even if you can't replenish spells, you can copy them along with people!"

"Make a thousand Morgethais for a round, get a thousand Wishes, then they can choose whether to keep existing?"

    "Yeah! A round isn't long enough to get attached to a new body, it's just a flash of experience."

"Wait, no, we have separate souls now, so they'd go on to the afterlife."

    "...do we have separate souls? How would you tell?"

"Maybe Morgethai wants to have a thousand of her to each cast a Wish and then go to Elysium?"

    "We're shutting poor Cherry out. I'm going to go practice talking to not me." Gordy goes up to the Bar.

Perhaps she should have prepared him a bit better, but that didn't go terribly. She makes a note to check in with the other Gord later to make sure he's adjusting alright.

"Having forked myself many times, I have naming advice if you want it. And I copied all the parts of you that I can perceive," she tells him. "But I don't know which of those parts, if any, you would call a soul. Do they have any defining characteristics that would help to narrow it down? In my world, most of the things that make a person themselves are located in the brain (the gut and peripheral nervous system have almost all the rest), and your brain looks pretty similar to that, although there are additional parts made out of magic and out of the energy that you channeled to heal people. And some of the structures also weave into the rest of you, not limited to the brain."

"As for copying people for a single moment -- I won't tell someone who understands what that means and sincerely wants that no, but I think it would be a cruelty to yourself, to think of your lives as disposable like that. Making a thousand Morgethais who cast a single wish, and then can retire to different places, or explore the world, or continue collaborating with herselves sounds better to me, although not everyone would agree."

"I really don't see the problem with experiencing a thousand extra instants doing something you want? If there's some reason you don't want a thousand lasting clones but want to cast a thousand spells, it seems like a good option and not cruel at all. But people are different and can make their own choices."

"A soul is - everything that makes up a person? It's the part that goes to the afterlife if you die, and comes back if you're raised, and someone who's dead still has all their memories and personality and so on. Outsiders - people from other planes, like demons and azatas, some of who used to be mortal - sort of are their souls. If you destroy their body, they're gone. But a mortal body is separate from their soul and nothing you can do to the body affects it. That's more or less what being mortal means, that you have a body that can die without the soul being affected."

"If you really don't have afterlives, then I guess you're technically Outsiders. Maybe if you saw a Golarion person die and be raised by a cleric, that would make more sense. I'm not powerful enough to raise someone myself, but there are people in Kenabres who can do it."

"...do you think you might have accidentally made Gordy an Outsider? It's important to know, I - he wouldn't risk death so casually if he were!"

Gordy comes back from the bar with a bunch of flowers, which he offers Cherry. "Thank you," he says solemnly, "for making more of me. I can't give you anything you don't have already, so this is symbolic of my deep appreciation and gratitude."

"Now, what's this I hear of me maybe not having a soul?"

She takes the flowers and inhales their scent.

"Thank you, they're lovely," she tells him, a soft smile on her face.

"As for the matter of souls -- yes, I think seeing a Golarion person die and be raised would certainly clear it up. Either the soul is ... more like an external process, something that the afterlives actively do to collect people, which is possible; or it is something built into you which I can't perceive, which is probably possible but that I would find very surprising; or it is something which I can see, in which case you both have one," she says.

"If it especially concerns you, is there any way short of dying and being raised that you could check? Some spell that interacts with the soul while its still bound to a mortal body?"

"There's probably something out there. I've heard some spells can trap the soul and prevent it from going to an afterlife when the body dies. I definitely don't have any spells that interact with souls." He has disguise self, entropic shield and the nondetection left. He could pray for one but he only has a first circle slot free and interacting with souls (harmlessly) doesn't really sound like Gorum's thing.

"If souls are possible to interact with using magic, I think that makes it marginally more likely that they're a proper component, and not just a process that afterlives do?" she guesses. "But I don't think that really helps narrow down which part of you is a soul, because I think magic should be capable of interacting with all of you."

"Either way -- probably you should just plan on not dying (unless it's important) until you've had a chance to check, just to be safe," she remarks. "We have treatments for old age that are slightly more effective if you start them early, also, so you should look into that at some point. Applied consistently, we're pretty sure that most people should be able to make it to 150, by which point we'll have better options developed. Nobody has actually lived that long yet, though, because it's only been a few years since we got effective anti-senescence. Looking into that for yourselves is not very time sensitive, though."