"...why are you making them pay for all the materials in advance, can't you find someone on the Mendevian side to make use of a holy bow if it finds itself without a buyer after it's crafted?"

"If it'd be a good enough use of money that it'd make sense to do that, we'd just make it for ourselves to begin with!"

"...maybe you should talk to Fiducia Rathimus about whether there's some scheme that would work to smooth out the mistrust profitably. Is there anything else I should know?"

"One of my side duties is to keep track of who's got a magic item they own in their own right that they might be willing to part with for the right price. Family heirlooms and that sort of thing. Now, most of the time that price is pretty steep, but sometimes I can get a good deal, and sometimes even a bad deal is still worth it. Anything I should tip you off about if I see?"

a really fancy crystal ball so he can remotely attend Commune classes "I could stand to upgrade the mace if something better comes along - not a sword, I never actually picked up the hang of swords. Other than that the generic sorts of things any cleric would want."

"Got it. I'll let you know if I see anything."

Sosiel Vaenic is a handsome man, younger than Blai, with tiny flecks of paint underneath his nails. He smiles warmly at Blai.

"It's good to meet you, Select."

"And you as well. Her Majesty suggested that I should talk over a - public relations complication - with you."

"Of course, I'd be happy to help."

"I seem to be from some sort of alternate timeline. Several things are different there, most notably that the Worldwound is closed but most relevantly that in this timeline Cheliax remains a possession of Hell instead of having been conquered in a manner so - distracting or expensive for Asmodeus that He dropped all His clerics afterwards." This gets less agonizing to talk about every time, that's cool. "Accordingly, my local duplicate is still in command of Chelish fort #11 and anyone may notice that he looks exactly like me apart from which holy symbol he wears."

He's screaming a little bit with his face, but the thing he's screaming is sympathy rather than anger.

"And you're — worried people will get the wrong impression?"

"Well, the thing is I don't have a wonderful inspiring story to tell about this. I am not a deserter, I did not spend my life heroically working out the dictates of my conscience in Hell's territory, I was dropped. And it cannot simply fail to come up indefinitely because of the other Blai Artigas. I am somewhat worried about people impugning the strength of my commitment now to Iomedae, but a little more worried that it will somehow muddy some important public relations affecting thing that I don't understand, if anyone expects a grand tale of redemption and finds only me. Relatedly my counterpart is theirs and will stay that way, I have absolutely no prospect of extraction and still wouldn't even if the Worldwound Treaty were to dissolve for some reason."

"It would be helpful to know more about your past, if you're comfortable telling me, and particularly how you came to Iomedae. That isn't exactly a common path for former Asmodean clerics, even repentant ones."

"I'd been dropped for a few weeks, spending most of my time in my office and mostly operating through my second-in-command, when She picked me up one morning. I didn't know it was Her right away - I tried a key first. I am not aware of anything special I did in those few weeks. I think I was inexpensive for Her, as third circle clerics go - my guess would be that I cost about as much as a new first-circle."

"Can you tell me more about what sort of things you've done since then?"

"I wrote to Lastwall, got a copy of the Acts and their disciplinary handbook, had a backup Acts scrivened off, switched my fort to the Lastwall protocol, and took more patrols than usual to cover for the neighboring forts being lower on healing than usual. Then one of the new Queen's adventuring party members decided to throw a Chelish Constitutional Convention - he's a Galtan Republican - and wanted Church representation, so I took a Teleport back into Cheliax and was in the process of walking to Westcrown to attend when I woke up outside of Kenabres without most of my possessions and with these bracers of translation and a chest wound. Since then I have been assisting with various exigencies - it took a while to realize the alternate timeline situation, the Worldwound being closed would not necessarily have stopped Deskari and an entourage from coming in person if they so desired and anyway many demons were already on the Material side at the time of the closure so the rate of incidents didn't drop off much right away."

"How were you — deciding what to do? Both while you were a cleric of Asmodeus, and after you were selected by Iomedae?"

"I was following orders."

"Surely that can't be all there is to it. Say it had been Baphomet who picked you up rather than Iomedae, I can't imagine you would have decided to betray your fort to the demons."

"...He couldn't have reached me, I've been Lawful all my life as far as I know."

"Say it had been Urgathoa, then, or Norgorber — I suppose you may have been Lawful Neutral already at the point when Asmodeus dropped you, but imagining that you weren't — and they had ordered you to spread the demonplague at your fort, or murder an adventurer who had come to help."

"I was already committed to the Worldwound treaty. It did matter that it was a god who supports that."

He nods. "And — say one of your superiors in the Church of Asmodeus had ordered you to violate the treaty, back when you were still his cleric, you would have refused?"

"I would have gone over their heads as per protocol for suspected enchantment or other compromise."

"Or, say that when you arrived in this world the journey had severed your connection to Iomedae, and you had been left with the choice of whether to pray to her or Asmodeus—"