- this is so suspiciously convenient! They are suspicious! - they're also kind of desperate, though, and if this powerful caster with a powerful ally and a plan wants to help then that'd be really good news, possibly the only hope of making this work...

(He really, really wants to help. Also, from their perspective, they are totally correct to be suspicious and he would be concerned if they weren't.) 

He asks if they have any kind of truth magic to verify his story. 

That's divine magic, they point out. Suspiciously. 

The usual kind is. He isn't actually sure if druids have that too, and also that would require them letting the ship come in so his friend can do it. He has the spell Detect Thoughts, which sort of serves the same purpose (he doesn't mention the medallion for it), of course it wouldn't help from his side but if their wizard has it...

Their wizard mostly just has fireballs!

"Why," he asks in the same trying-to-sound-authoritative voice, "are you sympathetic to our cause." God-followers can never answer that, they don't understand...

He has an answer for that! (He can't say the core part of it, of course, but he can say a lot of the pieces around it.)

He's from Cheliax; he fled with his toddler after Aroden's death and the ensuing storms. Watched at a distance as the various gods involved set things on fire, in blatant attempts to land their churches in control of the country. And then Asmodeus won, of course. And he has significant worries that Asmodeus is interfering here, which is why he cares about the civil war at all, why he was paying so much attention from his current home of Absalom, it's too late to do anything for his homeland but maybe he can do something for theirs instead. But - he's backing their side in particular, as opposed to one of the warring churches, because - he can't really see any of them as much better than the others, with the sorts of interventions their gods have openly been doing.

And, well, his god was Aroden and the other gods murdered him, and he never picked up worshipping a new god since; he feels no particular loyalty or friendship with any of the churches currently besieging them. He thinks a country with no gods is, at the very least, an experiment worth trying, and he wants to see it succeed. 

They can pay his druid friend, and pay for the supplies on the ship, if he can get it in without any of the churches interfering. They could help with that by throwing some fireballs, maybe.

Sure! He isn't certain if fireballs will help, but if he casts Charm Person on their wizard, that also functions as a telepathic link and he'll be able to pass on what he can see - he has a flight spell and invisibility and he's planning to fly around above the churches' armies and check what they're up to. (And he still has two Suggestions if he would prefer they be up to something else.)

...At this point, he's pretty sure the precious six minutes of flight and invisibility are really most useful if they're above the armies, and he has the (very stupid) message spell he wanted to teach Saba once the boy mastered second-level spells. Using his focus to cast it will mean he can't cast any other unprepared spells, but - probably still the right call, now that he knows roughly what the situation is. 

He gets out his spellbook and focus, casts the stupid Whispering Wind spell, and sends the captain a short wind-carried message giving him the all-clear to sail in, deal is confirmed and the armies are too busy bickering to do anything. 

(It's still kind of a gamble and he really hopes he's right.)

"Once the ship starts moving, I will fly around and tell you what is happening," he says to the wizard. 

That is not how Charm Person normally works and the wizard is appropriately awed (and suspicious but...they're going to need something to change if they aren't all going to die here...)

The ship starts moving.

He casts Fly and Invisibility and heads over to where the emissaries from the various churches were meeting, hangs out fifty feet above their heads and reads thoughts. 

They have successfully put together that no one claims responsibility for the ship arriving except the Calistrian who seems to have been suddenly struck by madness and also claimed responsibility for the death of Aroden and for Earthfall and for creating the whole world, in an increasingly exasperated voice, until they figured out she'd been cursed. They suspect each other of lying but also probably they should shoot at the ship, if it's not here for their side (and if that fucks over one of the lying other factions, all the better...)

Well, that's very inconvenient and he would like them to not! 

Hmm - what he wants is to suggest that it's a bad idea for them to fuck over one of the lying other factions, actually, that doesn't accomplish their goal of ending the siege at all. So, hmm - pick someone who's on the side of less committed to the 'shoot anyway' plan, and plant a careful, delicate Suggestion, that a specific other church is the one that's lying, for (reasons that feel convincing at least while the Suggestions is in effect), and they can't say outright that the ship is theirs, but everyone here would benefit from the ship reaching port. 

- no, do it both directions, see if he can get two leaders sort of winking at each other, both thinking the other is the one that arranged the ship and can't afford to say it but is obviously hinting it very hard, and then there'll be a faction arguing to let the ship come into land...

Skimming some thoughts, he decides to attempt this with the representatives of Sarenrae's church and of Norgorber's. It's not too hard to make a case that Norgorber's church would both secretly arrange for a supply and then try to hide this fact, given their - mercenary - nature...but they're possible to cooperate with, they want the same things here... He needs to stretch and handwave it a bit more to make a case to Norgorber's representative that Sarenrae is motivated to lie, but it's not impossible.

He plants both Suggestions - it doesn't take long at all, even for that level of detail - and waits thirty seconds to see if it'll work. 

There's still a lot of glaring and shouting but maybe some people are stepping back from the glaring and shouting, at minimum they should wait to see where the ship pulls in to port and what it's selling and then there can be (glare) recriminations -

He informs the rebels' wizard of this. The captain is going to steer as though making for their port, and then turn at the last minute toward yours. (It's very easy to tell from shore which is which.) I think they will hold their peace until it turns and then they will probably try to shoot at it, and preventing them from doing so via some fireballs would be greatly appreciated. You may want to get into a good position for that now. 

The ship moves past the port. There's a cry of confusion and anger. Fireballs start flying.

He has the advantage that he knows what the wizards on the church side are planning, and the disadvantage that he can do very little about it aside from telepathically pass it along to the one wizard on the rebels' side, below. 

...Also he's about to run out of Fly and invisibility, and should try to land not right on top of the church forces, but ideally close-ish to the edge of the city so he can try to catch some thoughts. 

The ship sails into the city's harbor. The captain is thinking that that wizard had better be shielding them somehow or he's going to strangle the man himself. Once he's out of spells. No point picking a fight with a wizard who isn't out of spells. 

The one wizard on the rebel's side seems to have gotten some friends, as it's pretty unlikely he can do this many fireballs himself. Fireballs are arcane magic, so the four assembled churches are somewhat limited in their ability to hit back, but they give it a good try, while backing up away from the water and out of striking distance. 

It looks like the ship has been hit at least once but it's not on fire right now, so there's that.

Well, he's probably about to deal with some number of people being mad at him, but - in its basics, it seems like his ridiculously low-resources plan worked. Well, assuming the rebels remain organized enough to keep the church forces off their backs. He can probably arrange something to get the captain's ship fixed for free, surely, a port city must have someone who knows how to fix ships (he knows nothing about the entire subject), and he's got another Charm Person left to try to get the captain happier with this state of affairs, at least - unclear if it'll come out that there wasn't a deal until half an hour ago...

He doesn't at all like how close it was - he prefers it be very overdetermined that his plans succeed - but it occurs to him that this is partly because the gods had Foresight before, and could make luck go their way. They don't, now. He was fighting four churches, but in practice it was just some humans with (very stupid) magic powers.

Sigh. He'll figure out the rest from here. 

The rebels are delighted to exchange the treasures that the churches of Azir wrongly hoarded from their populace for grain. They don't immediately think to clarify that this agreement was negotiated twenty minutes ago. The captain by the time Aroden gets back to the ship is mostly occupied with figuring out how to store a bunch of rare books stolen from the academies of Nethys. He does spare Aroden a glare. "Ship's damaged. Was your plan just that the other side'll shoot back? They could've hit the rigging."

"Well, they did not. I will find you someone to make repairs; I am sure they will be delighted to do it for free, given the heroic aid you offered to them."

Aaaand he is going to use Charm Person to seem as hard as he can like the sort of person who had a Backup Plan that would definitely have prevented the rigging from being hit, if not prevented the less serious damage, and then arrange to be very busy looking for the druid and making sure he's pleased with the arrangement. And hunting for someone who knows ship-repair work, of course; skimming thoughts gives him some advantage to this but he also asks some of the rebels who generally seem to know what's going on. 

Azir is a port city, they can absolutely repair a ship. 

The druid is flying over the city in the form of a seagull right now, getting his bearings. He lands eventually to ask about where he can set up his living space, and what he can expect from pay. They gesture at the looted treasures, and then point him to a fancy building. He explains that actually, he would like somewhere where trees go. They point out that he's in the desert. He says, rather slowly now because he's obviously speaking to idiots, that he's a druid. 

Eventually they suggest an empty space and he goes there and gets to work on causing it to have plant life. He waves at Aroden when he sees him.

"So, they do wish to pay you to stay longer? I apologize for the lack of trees. I did not think of that - I had never actually been to this city until now." 

"How on earth did you get the idea it'd go well to show up like this, then?"

"Knowing people and how they work?" For some definition. He still feels like he utterly doesn't understand humans in a lot of ways, but somehow everything that happened here was still quite predictable and expected. Maybe it matters whether it's groups of people in political and wartime situations, rather than his wife. "It took some amount of finessing, but they were really not hard to convince. And - I wanted to help them, and did not have a better way than this to do so. If it had not gone well speaking with them, it would have been rather embarrassing, but that is why I flew in first - you would have been fine and walked away with your gold, so." 

"Hmmmph," he says, and returns to watering the ground he has tilled and planted seeds in.