They ran out of diamonds before they ran out of spellslots.

She's already used all her healing.

And this is what she wants to be doing. She's living her best life.

Fine, she'll make a better offer, if he can't be convinced to open up by force.

They've both got a teleport, and it'd be dumb of them to waste it cancelling eachothers. The price of diamond dust in Almas has risen to slightly below extortion, and he need's quite of it if he ever wants to feel any better.

She's been to Absalom before, and he hasn't. She'll teleport them there, they'll sell some items, buy needed supplies at lower prices to shove into her bag, she'll show him a few sights, and then he can teleport them both back by dark. It'll probably make them a little profit, too, not that she's thinking of that as the point of any of it.

That's a perfectly reasonable suggestion and he doesn't see why she wouldn't have just started with that.

She wanted to see first how fast he could run.

It wasn't very impressive, honestly.

See, it'll be fine. He'll be back on his feet and being Chaotic Good at things in no time.

Wow, thanks Desna. Couldn't have asked for a better friend.

The Army of Cheliax didn't reach their planned camp location.

They've forcemarched all day and then another two hours past dark with Continual Flames for lighting, and they're now camped spread out by the side of the road over miles of terrain, in little forest glades or farmhouses they've captured, each company to its own.

If they were fighting an army it'd be suicide, a smaller force grouped together could defeat each batch in detail and roll them up back to the border. They're not fighting an army because Andoran's army is still spread across every town and village and it'll take them at least a week to get their act together.

They're hiding from a handful of overpowered wizards with Area of Effect spells until their queen can kill or cow the enemy archmage and they can finish marching to Augustana. For that purpose it works fine.

They are still marching to Augustana, yes? Nobody's told them otherwise.

The casualties haven't been that bad, really.

Morgethai stubbornly refuses to stand still long enough to die but that also means she isn't singlehandedly destroying Cheliax's army.

They can march on.

Being ordered to march on, they will march on.

Abrogail regrets not putting a clause in her contract that Asmodeus has to do His job properly. She didn't think it'd come up.

This is clearly a failure of insufficient Asmodeanism on her part, why would she expect the god of you-get-what-you-wrote-down to put in substantial thought to preserve His own country if she didn't explicitly contract that He had to?

They'd put hundreds of plans to Commune over the last few weeks. She'd bought an expensive pit fiend advisor to go over them. She'd waited as long as Asmodeus said she ought to. He'd said it would likely work.

What's even the point of paying to Commune with an allied god-tier intelligence if the plans they endorse don't actually work?

I only swore it was likely to work.

It was a calculated risk, worth doing in expectation.

Prophecy is broken on Golarion, I cannot swear to more than that.

Sounds like a skill issue.

Get better expectations.

Iomedae won that battle on luck.

She's been winning battles on luck a lot more often, since I showed up. Weird.

Aggregated across all wars on all worlds and we're way past statistical significance.

The other ones were You meddling through prophecy.

This one was just luck.

Morgethai isn't currently setting things on fire. Her men can rest a little bit.

She'll come home for a moment to refresh her equipment and-
Why is her city on fire?

We can explain.

We're like 80% sure what happened is that probably Morgethai, maybe one of her top minions, finally broke and went Evil, and turned herself into a vampire so she'd be powerful enough to destroy the city.

Turning yourself into a vampire takes several days.

The war started this morning.

A lot of stockpiled magic runes were used, this was clearly in the works for months.

Given that, it's clear the surprise attack plan failed.

Asmodeus specefically said that they hadn't yet anticipated our declaration of war twelve minutes before our declaration of war. If they'd had responses planned in advance and timed to the hour He would've noticed and wouldn't've said that.

I actually met Morgethai and all her top minions several hours ago.

They all seemed pretty alive back then.

They also seemed very surprised, when we gated in and started attacking them.

Maybe Nefreti, then? If she knew she probably wouldn't tell anyone on account of how she's insane so they wouldn't believe her.

We don't know what the vampire looked like, they had a disguise.

It might have been a Tar-Baphon cultist.

Tar-Baphon's seal is in Westcrown. A Tar-Baphon cultist would've attacked there.

Nefreti ... would be unlikely to have intervened in this manner in particular.

Yes, your majesty.

Sorry, your majesty.

Who was in charge of the defense here?

I've been very distracted you see, fighting a war.

Well, it was the city mayor until this morning when the Most High called a council meeting and said she'd been forewarned in a Commune that the city would be attacked, and that her involvement was necessary to respond to it.

We were all told to be very quiet about it, to avoid the news leaking to the enemy. The Most High sort of took over command of the city watch and all the other resources not committed to the war effort, because of the warning she'd gotten.

The city was in fact attacked, so the forewarning appears legitimate.

It was very fortunate that the Most High was there to help.

... We of course swear our allegience to you, Your Majesty.

If it was fortunate Rugatonn was here, why is everything still on fire?