"More seriously, if you need help stretching the budget, I could teach your soldiers how to hunt the local game and make improvised arrows from what's available?"

"Improvised arrows won't do much about demons. I don't know how good the hunting is around here; occasionally up north someone will go shoot a ptarmigan for variety but maybe there's more available farther south - still, not the sort of thing it's wise to rely on. To be clear I have been led to expect that it will be possible to source donations and saleable loot, I just do not already have these."

"Is there anything else you think we should know about you working for Asmodeus for twenty years? Like — I'm assuming you've done some awful things, I'm not going to leave just because it turns out that you have, but if you spent a decade hunting down freedom fighters I would rather know now than find out because your counterpart decided it would make a fun story."

"I went to the Worldwound very shortly after graduating seminary and spent my entire career there doing Worldwound things. He doesn't tell fun stories any more than I do. If you want an outsider's perspective perhaps you can ask Fiducia Boian, if my letter has persuaded him to come by."

Does that mean he didn't have a torture hobby or does that mean he had a torture hobby so obvious that even random Abadarans know about it — presumably either way he's not getting an answer from Select Artigas, or for that matter Chosen Artigas.

"Is now a good time to conduct my interview or did you have additional topics of discussion?"

"If no one else has any further questions you can start in until something comes up or I need to go to the funeral."

"Can you summarize your understanding of Asmodean theology as of the time when you were a cleric of Asmodeus? Which elements of it do you currently believe to be accurate or inaccurate?"

"...there are several different acceptably orthodox approaches, are you asking for all of them or the one that I was using for my own working speculations when such were called for?"

"I am interested in hearing about all that you are aware of. However, you may begin with the one you were operating under if it would take excessively long to give a full accounting of all of them."

"I tended toward an... orthopraxic approach... where nothing about one's momentary thoughts were material so long as one continued to obey orders consistently, but some of the people I studied, served, or corresponded with adopted other philosophies such as 'it is preferable to be on the winning team, which is Hell's', or 'force and the threat of force make for legitimate authority' - those fared relatively well when Asmodeus dropped all His clerics - or sincere admiration for the pyramidal tyranny structure and an intrinsic motivation to ascend it. I... probably remain unusually orthopraxic, significantly because I find myself undercatechized even though evidence is accumulating that some Iomedaeans operate with less instruction than I've managed to acquire."

Asmodeanism sure is terrible!

(Asmodeus dropped all his clerics? Is there a way to make that happen here?)

"I see. How did those who believed that Hell was the so-called 'winning team' account for Hell's significant losses, both in terms of geographical territory on Golarion and in terms of, for example, the slaying of Typhon by the Empyreal Lord Ragathiel?"

"...a bad history education and selective skepticism."

"Perhaps your example led me to overestimate the intelligence of a typical Asmodean cleric." She thinks for a couple seconds. "Of the theological claims you believed while a cleric of Asmodeus, which do you now believe are false?"

"Define 'believe'."

"Which did you... assess as likely to be true?"

"I mostly did not do that. I learned... facts, about basic things like how many layers Hell has and which gods are ancient versus ascended, but my religion was not based around those and most of them have held up pretty well to finding other sources of information."

She flips to another page. "Apart from Asmodeus, which if any gods did you pray to under circumstances other than spell preparation?"

Knock knock knock?

Blai gets up to answer. "Once in a while Abadar or Gozreh or Nethys." Door.

"Two matters for your attention, Knight-Commander. First, we apprehended a cleric of Pharasma attempting to desert after the Queen's announcement; she was one of the recruits that you had instructed us to allow to return home, but she had not yet been informed of this even informally as of her attempted desertion. How would we handle this matter?"

This is much less interesting than her interview!

"Is this a first offense?"

"Yes, Knight-Commander, she's been with the army for less than a week."