Robaldo tells them of his god, who came to him in a chess game, to tell him that the world has good moves and bad ones and you should pick the one that makes you Win. That just as you would in a game, you can pause to think for five minutes in real life, to try to be clever, to do something unexpected, to get yourself some advantage. It doesn't always succeed but it's worth trying.

As much as he has guessed of Tet's nature and teachings, which is only maybe 70% correct, but close enough for those with wisdom to guess more.

He tells them of luck, and how it'll average out in the end, so if on average you're winning you should keep playing even if you lose, but if on average you're losing you shouldn't even start.

And he tells them how to calculate, like a wizard or a merchant would, whether it's a winning game.

And a few of the gamblers realise for the first time that they're being tricked, robbed, every time they step foot in that place, even if sometimes it seems like they've benefitted.

He tells them of a a wizard's true potential: The value of options. If you can do one thing well, and you are put in many different situations, you will struggle and lose in most of them. If you have many skills, many tricks, of many different kinds, and if you know how to apply them creatively, you can find a way to win even in challenges you're not prepared for, that you had no warning would come. It'll usually turn out you've got something that can be used to Win, not always but usually, and usually is enough that it you keep playing eventually luck will repay you for it.

That this isn't only true of wizards, that often one is best off making sure one has as many options as possible, so that no matter what happens one will have at least one option that is good. That this is why freedom is so valuable, and democracy so valuable, to have a choice of ruler instead of just whichever one Hell gives you.

It seems to go down well, at least in Andoran.

There are children here tonight, although they're not supposed to drink yet. They can have a little as a taste.

They know about games. Would the adventurer like to learn noughts-and-crosses?

You seem old enough. Instead of playing a few games of noughts-and-crosses, how about we play every game of it?

Robaldo will write out the first 3 moves, and argue that since the board is symmetrical, that's all that really matters.
The children nod along, that doesn't seem complicated. The grown ups are watching while pretending they think this is for children.

Robaldo will write out the 5+5+2 = 12 replies.
The children aren't confused yet.

Robaldo will start proving Cross can win.

If Cross went first in the corner, and then the other corner, Nought has to go in the middle to block it.
But then Cross can take the middle and make a fork, either of these two squares wins the game.
Nought can't win in one move or block both of them, Nought is already doomed. Was already doomed back at its first move.

Robaldo will repeat this until Nought's losing moves have all been crossed out.

Then he argues that, of the draws, the one where Cross starts in the corner is the hardest to find, drags out the game for the longest.
"Obviously Cross wants to win", Robaldo argues, "So he should go in the corner first, to make defending more difficult."
And then in just a few more lines of persuasion he's written out the only correct game of noughts-and-crosses.

"This", Robaldo argues, "Is what Tet would do if you were playing Him. We've gone through every move and there aren't any better ones. And if Tet played a copy of Himself, He'd get a tie."

The adults look like they've been given something beautiful.

The children look like they've had something beautiful snatched away.

"If you don't like that this game is so easy to solve, that you can find the correct answer with paper and ink in under twenty minutes, maybe play something harder. Has anyone here heard of checkers? Tet could beat you at that too, but at least I don't think any mortal has solved it. If you're the first to completely figure it out, you could get rich scamming people who think they've got a chance of beating you."

The children will go back to playing, other games that they have not yet watched be solved or else noughts-and-crosses but with far more draws than they'd been having before.

The locals and the travellers will spread a story, of a cleric who was wise and helped some commoners, and of a god who was rather complicated and is hard to explain properly if you're not a wizard, but is about fun and games and the desire to Win at all you would attempt. 

Possibly many of the children might manage to pray in the right direction, although it'll be much rarer among adults.

I'll give you a 2nd cleric circle while you're sleeping, so you get more spells when you wake up.

That way you won't know for sure which thing crossed the line, whether it was the adventure or the teaching or the playing games that earnt it.

There's a limit to how many times you can directly throw yourself at monsters, hoping to "git gud", as the kids say these days.

At least the kids who talk to him have started saying that, the kids who'll listen to his bizzare attempts at preaching a religion he's mostly made up himself over like a combined one week of thinking about it.

He's pretty sure real religions like Iomedaeism have dogma that's been made up over millenia of careful thinking, by teams of scholars reviewing each others work. Probably he isn't going to guess a religion much better than that on a first try.

Why are people going to him for life advice anyway, he's a madman.

He's pretty sure all the people in his parents stories were madmen too. It's not like they clearly state that the path to becoming a notable important person who changes the world and maybe eventually a god is to throw yourself headfirst at monsters, with whatever happens to be at hand and doing whatever you can to kill them first. It's more like they implicitly assume it.

Who was the first person dumb enough to go to Cayden for life advice, anyway?
Cayden repeatedly threw himself at monsters, and look at Him now!

Robaldo joined a religion, when he became a cleric, but he forgot to quit his old one.

Actually the Caydenites are totally right about that.

Their older and more experience faith is the result of more accumulated wisdom than you've seen in your whole life and you should defer to it over your own made up religion.

I picked you because half My other cleric-candidates are borderline shut-ins, and it saves Me the cost of telling them to go outside and fight monsters.

You probably should go back to school though. Wizards really do need the whole "formal education" thing.

Also if you're physically near Morgethai, that has various implications that other gods, namely Asmodeus, might incorrectly assume I'm taking advantage of and waste resources trying to prevent.

Still, not gonna waste a vision telling you to do what you're gonna do anyway.

And the worst part is, it's not even fun anymore.

He remembers, when he first prayed, that he was thinking of Tet as someone who valued fun.

He doesn't think Tet would want him to keep going, like this.

Yeah, if it's not fun anymore, there's no arguing with that. Not unless you can find a way to make it fun again, which you won't until you know more spells, and have met more people.

Learning magic will still be fun for you I think, although it won't feel as much like a game, which will make it harder for me to track how well you're doing at it.

Not that it benefits you much for Me to have a good track of that, since I'll almost certainly not relevantly intervene about it at you.

Magical educational institutions in most of Golarion do not function as one would expect, if one comes from a more organised and standardised educational system.

For one, the teachers tend to be more interested in acquiring knowledge than in passing it on to others, and see students as useful pawns in obtaining more lore for themselves.

For two, magical research often involves travelling: Field trips to unusual locations, rare ingredients and magical creatures, as well as visiting other academies for unfriendly grudge matches where each faction tries to rob the other of what they've managed to discover, while simultaneously belittling them for their relative barbarism in the hope that promising students will defect.

For three, the students themselves often have obligations: foremost noble scions with feudal duties to be sent to boring regional events, and beneath them a continuous spectrum of slightly less noble brats whose families have made slightly less financial donations, each refusing to accept that they're at the level where the line ought to be drawn until even peasants on scholarships can get the week off for a funeral if they ask nicely.

It is less that there is a class schedule and more that there are teachers obligated to offer classes.

A third the faculty are chaotic, and opposed on principle to the concept of expecting students to behave in any particular way. Many of those are specifically Caydenites, and tend to approve of a student who just got clericed wanting a few months off for a journey of religious experience that they hope may one day lead to advancements in the field of mystical theurgy.

And the provost is Felandriel Morgethai, so the "school rules" faction has quite a disadvantage.

Robardo returns to school: It becomes apparent quickly that he does not actually have enough spells in his book and enough spellcraft at using them to succeed with half the ambitions that a direct divine intervention has caused him to have.

There is a faculty member who is a mystic theurge, and she's happy to insist retroactively that, when Robardo was chosen, this quest in particular was recommended by her as a way to further his growth in the divine arts.

That's why Robardo had to take a semester off, honest.

And he does have some revelations to share. Some anatomical sketches of dead monsters, a few jars of weird goos.

He's pretty sure barbarians are magical but can't explain how.

Oh, and a weird magic idea, are you guys into that kind of thing?

Robardo's Mega-Catapult is introduced to the faculty and exposed to peer review.

Firstly, the part where you have to cast at least 4 spells seems unpleasant:
1 to buff the martial you're paying to throw it, 2 to make it a magical rock you can Resize, 3 to Resize it, and 4 to heal your shattered arm afterwards.

Mostly the healing part, most wizards don't really have good options for that.

You also have to be standing in front of the martial while he throws past you, in a direct line with the target enemy. This is suicide.

Research Avenue A proposes: That the suicide attempt can be replaced by "Spectral Hand", a second circle necromancy that makes a spectral hand that can deliver touch attacks at 100 ft + 10ft/level. Since it's spectral it can't be damaged by normal weapons, except for how you've already enchanted the rock to be magic and since it's necromancy it uses your own life force, so when the rock destroys the hand you're still left wanting a healing spell only now you've wasted a 2nd circle slot. The necromancy-lovers claim it's still worth it for the range and much arguing happens without a result.

Research Avenue B proposes: The Reach Spell metamagic could be applied to increase the range from touch to close, at the cost of making Resize Item a fourth circle spell that the strategies inventor wouldn't even be able to use yet. 

Research Avenue C proposes: Replacing the martial with a Fly spell, also third circle, and dropping the ammunition out of a bag of holding. If you're an archmage (or a temporarily weaker wizard who like all wizards believes in planning for when he's an archmage), you'd be able to resize at least 500 pounds of enchanted rock into almost a hundred cubic feet of rock. Also, if you're pulling it out a bag of holding you can do the touch attack before it's falling and avoid the injury.

Experimental testing confirms: That this is impossible because a big rock isn't a weapon. Robardo is lying to us.

No I agree it's not normally a weapon but it is once a barbarian picks it up, and definitely is once the barbarian throws it.

...

Barbarians aren't wizards, idiot.

Over the next few weeks, the project-associated students and faculty have settled on the core design of a more "optimised" and "refined" version of the Almas-developed "Bricks of Retribution".

First, masons in a local quarry are paid to cut ~2000 pound bricks of solid stone.
The resulting stone bricks are expensively shipped to Augastana on Apso bay, where lies the Arsenal of the Andoren Navy.

The spell [Shrink Item] is 3rd circle and otherwise free:
It makes an object up to 2 cu. ft /level shrink by a factor of 16 in each dimension, leaving a factor of 4096 the original mass.
2 cu. ft of stone is more than 300 pounds.
It lasts for 1 day /level, and can be cancelled by a command word.

A barely 4th circle wizard, of the kind that Cheliax has far more of than anyone else, has 2 such spells a day.

He can shrink 14 cu. ft of stone, or more than 2200 pounds of it.
He can keep it shrunk for up to a week.
Suppose he does nothing but keep 12 such stones shrunk.
Each has a volume of less than half a cup, and can be carried on a belt at once.

On the day a fight is to happen, he instead will prepare Fly twice, also 3rd circle. This gives him 14 minutes of air time.

At 60 ft a round, our wizard can be 600 ft in the air in a minute, and still have time for fighting. With a 600 ft drop, the resulting stone shatters past a ships deck and cracks the keel, sinking it in minutes. This beats the previous best such spell, "fireball", which is also 3rd circle but less effective and can't be cast a week in advance.

If the enemy foolishly places his ships within flight of each other, such as because they are in port, our 4th circle wizard can take out twelve of them, and then return in a week to take out twelve more.

It also works on castles and palaces.

See, this is why I need a real education!

Nobody bothered to tell a first-year that Shrink Item exists! I could've killed so many more spiders with that!

...

No, actually, I don't think this works.

Cheliax protects it's airspaces. It has hippogriff-riders and winged-devils and enslaved things that fly, and wizards of their own.

If a wizard on a grey corsair takes off skyward they can respond in kind and expect to win on both air and sea.

And-

Reginald Cormoth stops.

The people's revolt won on land when loyalist forces withrew, but the war at sea never ended.

The same ship flying a privateering flag will loot slavers in the Inner Sea, but call itself a "Grey Corsair" when it pulls into Apso bay to free its winnings.

Most countries with a coastline hate Andoran for it, because a privateer will assume any flag of a slaver country might be a slavers' ship, and loot it on principle. With Cheliax at least they're mostly right, but Cheliax protects its merchants with warships, because for all that mortals want freedom if a god of Slavery wants something else there's going to at least be a fight about it.