Wow, she’s practically giving him the opportunity to focus on the more unobjectionable stuff!

“Murdering Asmodean priests and nobility, stealing from them, framing them for stuff we’ve done, sowing chaos and discord among them… like we left subtle goat themed calling cards and got a baron to order every goat in his land slaughtered and burned, that was pretty funny…”

Oh wait is that evil because it hurt the goat herds?

“I mean not for the peasants that owned goats, but it meant the inquisition and his Count took his complaints and comments about Baphomet much less seriously, giving us more room to operate, so it was strategically useful.”

That makes it a bit less Evil, right?  Or is it only Iomedae that thinks that way?  He should have studied theology harder.  He does at least know enough Good theology to put into play his next gambit though…

“And uh, yeah, when the opportunity arose and we could manage it, we sometimes kidnapped and tortured priests of Asmodeus, especially if they had useful information are we really needed to sow fear.”

There.  That should give them something Evil to focus on, but not so evil they can’t understand it (and even approve of it, if they’re being honest with themselves). And if they really push him on it, he can show a bit of remorse or something to draw them into thinking he’s willing and able to repent to Good.

Well, they already knew his group worshipped Baphomet, if he hasn't left out anything really horrifying then that's... mostly pretty reasonable? Sucks for the goatherds, obviously, and it kind of seems like they care more about what's funny than about fighting for justice or freedom or anything, but it's not like people who aren't Baphomet cultists never accidentally get regular people hurt. (And they should cut it out with the torture, Asmodeus loves torture and fuck Asmodeus, but it's not like she doesn't understand the impulse.)  

Of course, it's totally possible he's leaving some things out, but if so he has the sense not to admit it. They really are trying to fight the Church of Asmodeus, at least, she's sure of that much.

"—You should probably stop with the torture, Asmodeus really likes torture even when it's his own people getting tortured. Magic's better for getting information anyways, sometimes people who're being tortured will, uh, confess to things they didn't actually do, for some reason."

(Now she's a little upset, actually. Her old lord and her old priest are dead, they've surely been tortured far more in Hell than they ever did to Tea.)

Also, it's Evil, but it sounds like this man is aware of that and is simply choosing to torture people regardless.

"If you're planning to cross the border you can't follow Baphomet."

"—That's also true, I don't know what your plans are but, uh — I forget exactly how the law is phrased—" Fighting Asmodeus is a sympathetic enough reason that they'd probably go easy on him if he could say under a Truthtelling that he was going to give it up, but it's not a good idea to count on it, it'd really be a lot easier to just give it up before it got to that point.

"Within Andoran's borders, it's a grave crime to compact with an Evil power or a power of the Lower Planes, and a serious crime to willingly serve one, or to proselytize on their behalf." After the revolution the People's Council tried to make it a serious crime even to pray to one, but simple prayer turned out to be sufficiently common for that to be untenable. 

Sometimes with enough torture you can trick the priests into making Oaths you can get them to break soon after!  Fernando is pretty sure Asmodeus hates broken Oaths even if he likes torture and tricky compacts, and if the broken Oath is severe enough, it might even deny Hell a soul!  He doesn’t say this or even let his face hint at it because despite outward appearances he isn’t a total dumbass.

”I hadn’t actually thought about crossing the border, the fight is here…” and he doesn’t want to give up on his fellow cultists even if they aren’t exactly friends.

“Er, uh… how much of a ‘can’t follow’ would you all, or the border guard be looking for?  Like a basic truth spell and a simple formal statement, or a mind reading… or like full on loyalty tests with elaborate enchantments and illusions and extensive mind reading and such?… uh I’m not super strongly committed and can easily avoid proselytizing… but I’m not sure how broadly ‘serving’ is defined, but I don’t want to have my every thought looked through.”

Baphomet approves being able to outwit yourself enough to outwit others.  My mind is a maze.  But Fernando hasn’t ever pulled off in practice more than bending the truth just a little bit while under a truth spell.

"Oh, I mean, if you want to stay and fight that's totally fine, there's ways that are easier to fight if you've got somewhere to go back to but there's lots of ways that are easier if you don't have to cross the border both ways to do them."

The border guard... mostly doesn't ask that many questions, at least when she's crossed. Probably they ask more if there's no one vouching, or if the people vouching tell them the person they're with used to be a Baphomet cultist. "I'm not an officer of the law, I'm not here to — make sure you've got the exact right thoughts, or anything like that, just, it seems like the sort of thing you should know going in. Andoran's not Cheliax, the government doesn't go around reading people's minds just to be sure they're loyal, but if someone's accused of a crime I'm pretty sure they use mind-reading sometimes. And truth spells, obviously. And probably other things I don't know about, depending on the circumstances, I think they're careful-er with casters? —Uh, anyways." She looks at the wizard.

"There are two primary components, one about affiliation and another about actual service, but I don't recall the exact language used in the relevant statutes, if that's what you were interested in. It is not a crime to appreciate that Baphomet is warring against Asmodeus, but some of your other activities would almost certainly qualify."

"—Would examples be helpful? We could maybe try to remember some examples of what sorts of things have counted."

The problem is that, assuming it wasn’t an elaborate bluff (which it might well be), some 5th circle cleric or 4th circle wizard has a bit of his hair, a sketch of his face, and his name.  If he runs off to Andoran they might leave him alone for years, then draw him back into some scheme or plot he doesn’t exactly want to participate in.  He’s actually told these adventurers enough to guess this problem, but if they aren’t seeing it he won’t draw their attention to it.

Also they’ve been talking for longer than he feels safe given the possibility this location is compromised.

“That sounds useful if you have an example or two each way of allowable and not-allowable?  But maybe we should get moving and talk once we’re in a more secure location, assuming you still don’t mind me traveling with you and don’t have any more urgent questions?”

Nod. "It's not really urgent. We're not going to throw you to the Asmodeans." If they wanted him dead they'd do it themselves. "—We'll want to hang back a little bit when we get close to the time you might have to make your report. You can warn them about the disturbances out west, but don't give them a description of us, and obviously if you feel anything tugging at your mind any other time, tell us right away."

And they can set off. Fernando may notice that his Phantom Steed indeed doesn't seem to be leaving any tracks.

The lack of tracks is a nice trick, especially since it can apply to the whole party! 

He'll do his part to keep an eye out as they travel.  He thinks over how he can sell his story better... and he starts to consider betraying Baphomet for real.

They ride for a few hours from there. At one point, the Communal Mount they're using runs out, and they pause for a few moments while their wizard casts another. They don't run into any other people, and whatever monsters are in this forest, they apparently don't want to chance going after a group of adventurers.

When the second Communal Mount runs out, the halfling looks at the sky. "It's almost sunset. Let's stop here."

“I still have my bonded object spell if you want an extra rope trick up or an extra alarm?”

“And I would appreciate some more examples about how cases like mine are handled in Andoran?”

"We'll be sleeping in a pair of Extended Rope Tricks, but if you wanted to cast a non-extended one we could rest there until we're ready to actually sleep." They want at least an hour's buffer on the other end to be sure they have time to prepare their spells, so the soonest they can cast it is nine hours before dawn.

“I haven’t learned any metamagic myself yet…”

He casts his rope trick from the amulet around his neck without using the typical bit of powdered corn or loop of parchment (although he still has to use an actual rope for the target).

They all climb up the rope and settle in. 

"Right, okay. So — not all of these are necessarily going to mean the same thing would definitely happen to someone else. The courts here don't just care whether you broke the law, they also care about whether you were doing the right thing, and whether you were even trying to do the right thing. Uh, I thought of some while we were riding but I couldn't write them down — there was this bookseller last year, it turned out he was smuggling in copies of the Disciplines and running a secret Asmodean congregation, when they asked him at his trial how he'd failed to show virtue he said the only thing he regretted was getting caught. He got sentenced to death, I don't remember offhand what happened to the others. Then, a few months back, there was this merchant who kept getting accused of dishonest deals, and one of the people she ripped off accused her of being a Mammonite. Anyways, she got put on trial, and at the first part of the trial — that's the part where they make sure they know what actually happened — anyways, she said under truthspell that she'd never even prayed to Mammon since the revolution. They made her pay a big fine, since she'd broken some laws about not lying about what you're selling, but they said she wasn't guilty of serving an infernal power, since she'd just been trying to get rich, not specifically to serve Mammon."

"The rest of his 'congregation' had to go to spiritual counseling, but I think it might've helped that he got caught the first time he tried to hold a service, so the rest of them could all tell the magistrate that they only went once, seriously regretted it, and wouldn't have gone back again. That was controversial, though, it easily could have gone the other way."

"Right, yeah, I remember now." Justice thinks they got off too easily and isn't particularly trying to hide that fact. "Uh, regular non-Asmodean spiritual counseling, not, like, torture. Anyways, that reminds me, there was that woman with a deformed baby, she got caught desecrating one of the temples to Shelyn with Lamashtu's symbol, but at the trial she said under truthspell that she was trying to protect her baby and she couldn't think of any other way to do it. They made her go to spiritual counseling and pay a little fine to cover the cost of cleaning up the symbols, and I think they also, uh, explained that Shelyn doesn't want to murder deformed babies for being ugly." 

He nods. "Last year in Almas there was a different incident with Lamashtu — the perpetrator was initially arrested for similar behavior, but it turned out that he had been doing some sort of magical experiment to make enormous venomous winged centipedes. He swore he wouldn't breed more monsters, but he was still executed."

"There was the halfling who killed that slaver adventurer. The Thamirist."

"Right, him too — uh, there was this idiot adventurer from... Brevoy, I think?... who didn't realize Andoran was serious about not allowing slavery. The halfling he'd brought with him slit his throat in his sleep and escaped, and while the watch was interrogating him it came out he worshipped Thamir, who's this halfling god of murder. Which, I mean, that checks out. That one barely even counts, though, if he'd hung for it there'd've probably been a riot." She says this in a tone of voice that suggests she thinks obviously rioting over that would have been reasonable.

"In terms of things that wouldn't have normally been against the law, this would've been a few years back, but there was that family who beat their kids, which is totally legal." (She says this in a slightly disapproving tone.) "But it turned out they had an altar to Zon-Kuthon in their home, and they were beating their kids because they wanted to glorify Zon-Kuthon without getting in trouble with the law. They were definitely both convicted but I don't remember what happened to them."

"In the village where I grew up there was a tradition of praying to Urgathoa for protection from disease, and that's not sufficient to constitute 'serving' her. ...It's still unwise, to be clear, in significant part because it doesn't actually work."