Thinking about how they'd fight him is of course their prerogative. In the meantime, he is happy to casually outperform their expectations in a field that isn't even his specialty. 

...speaking of which, may he magically diagnose a few of them to improve his understanding of local diseases? He is careful to stress that this request is in no way tied to his offer of healing, that it does not have any effects other than identifying important traits of the disease in question for later study, that any individual may refuse for any reason or no reason at all, and that he will not take offense if they do. 

It's not that medical diagnosis is completely unheard of, but it's abnormal and thinking about it as there being diseases which are a separate thing that can be identified is pretty weird. And they're somewhat leery of anyone getting a magical look at how their bodies work. They'll all decline.

"Thank you for your assistance," Rumalan said, "I hope you can speak with the General some time soon."

"I expect so. Likely within the next day or two, if he is willing. I intend to speak first with the other factions here in the Blade Grave, thereby to obtain as complete a picture as possible of the situation here. I intend to make them the same offer I made you, of healing in exchange for information.

"I am doing this because - in addition to wanting to heal people for their own sake - it would seem the current situation is an urgent crisis, and it is important to me to orient as rapidly as possible. I hope to resolve this crisis with a minimum of additional bloodshed and suffering, but it would be foolish in the extreme to meddle without consulting those who might be harmed thereby. 

"Is there anything else you would have me know before I speak with the Unbroken?" And is it a lie, that part's important too.

"There is a prisoner we are fairly sure has been in the inner keep since well before the Edict. Iron Guard Amelia. We know she is alive. If you parley with them, please ask to speak with her."

The only part of this that's a lie is the name.

Now why would they lie about that? It's something to bear in mind when he visits, at least.

"I will take that under advisement, thank you. Do please note, the abatement of the storm is temporary. I estimate it will only last another two hours without my active attention, and may resume suddenly thereafter." 

After polite farewells, Ipaxalon departs for the Unbroken camp.

And they will be waiting for him. This camp is larger, and rougher. It's tucked into the landscape (some of it existing hills, some of it the strange fused-metal spikes and curling 'waves') and wouldn't be easy to see approaching from the ground.

The women and (mostly) men here are wearing armor of thick cloth and bronze, not iron, and most have wrapped dull-brown turbans and scarf-veils, veils currently lowered in the calm air. Half of them are wearing roughly the same style as Janos, several of them with javelins on their back or close to hand; the rest, like the ones guarding entrances, are armored more heavily, and with shields, though not as much the legion of walking fortresses look the Disfavored seem to give off. Everything they wear looks weather-beaten; a few things that seem new and undamaged still look beaten, blending in with their surroundings.

They have a beaten-metal table and chairs set up, and Janos, a woman, and another man are waiting, talking quietly, and watching the sky for his arrival.

He is extremely easy to spot, and once again the winds calm at his approach. He glides in gently, checking alignments on general principles when he lands. 

"Sir Ipaxalon," Janos said, "My fellow captain Rodica, and Lieutenant Velkan. I'd rather introduce you to Captain Mattias, the overall commander of the loyal Unbroken, but he's further out. No one's alive with urgent injuries, but if you'd rather heal first and talk later, as you prefer."

He's not going to take their information and leave without healing, but they don't necessarily know that. He offers to heal first. It has the added advantage of buying goodwill, and they can talk while he works. He offers the same explanation of his healing that he offered the Disfavored. 

They're grateful for it, and will show him around to the couple dozen people in the camp, most of whom have some wounds that are closing, unhealthy-looking scars not totally healed (multiple have scars stained with verdigris or rust orange), or bad legs or arms from a more serious wound. One has chemical burns in a scar all down his right shoulder. ("Had to switch shield arms for that, cookfire blew in and the arm's been slow ever since.") One man has a poorly-healed gut wound and is unable to easily rise to see Ipaxalon.

Few of them have alignment; Velkan is Lawful Evil and Rodica is Lawful Neutral, one of the other guards is Neutral Evil, and the man with the chemical burns is Lawful Neutral. Rodica has a faint abjuration-universal aura from her shield, which has snakes inscribed in the curves of the spiral pattern most of the round shields the Unbroken carry.

Several symbols later, the wounds and infections are gone as if they'd never been. The chemical burns recede; they still scar a bit, but the arm's working better now.

Healing is gratifying, especially since Ipaxalon suspects doing right by these people is going to be much more complicated in the future. 

Once the last wounded are treated, he nods to Rodica. "Captain. I would be grateful for your summary of the situation here and what led to it. You would not be far wrong to assume I have only as much context as a traveler from a land far enough from this one to have never heard of Kyros the Overlord."

"Five years ago, the Tiers were the last independent part of Terratus. The Younger Realms, founded four and a half centuries ago, and we've been squabbling ever since. Stalwart is the oldest - 810 by the Sage's Ancient Reckoning - but not by more than a dozen years. West of here is Haven, just north is the Contested Lands, past that is - was - Azure, and between those was Apex. Along the south coast are the Free Cities, which broke loose of Haven about a century ago and hollowed it out, and Sunder, which was ours. The only permanent settlement in the Contested Lands is the Sages' castle, because we fought over it too often to leave villages. That's important mostly because you're going to ask 'why didn't we band together?' at some point - I damn well did, too late - and that history's most of the answer."

"The Sages played us to keep it that way," Janos says, "And I think Nerat, too, since the Northern Kingdom fell."

"I'd like to believe our foolishness wasn't our fault. But it was foolishness. And there's no excuse."

"An understandable regret."

Ipaxalon has many questions. About the nature of Edicts, about the Sages and what they studied, about relations between the Unbroken and the Regent's forces, about the diplomacy and formal declaration of war (if any) that led up to the invasion. He also asks many of the same questions he asked the Disfavored; often two biased perspectives are much more informative than one, and their points of agreement will be informative. 

Sages study quite a lot, from diplomacy to agronomy, but they're most known for translation, messenger birds, chronicling history, and their mages. There's not much in the way of Sigils where they don't have someone who can cast it. Or didn't; most of them died in the Edict of Fire. There's some around, as mercenaries or just doing field research because they're nerds. They also teach most nobility their letters and other tutoring, they're very good, if expensive, tutors. The Unbroken know less about magic than the Disfavored, but nothing will come up that contradicts what he heard before.

There were declarations of war, separate for everyone. Arrogant ones, more like "Kyros claims this land, kneel or die" than recognition of a war between realms. There'd been diplomats - Fatebinders of Tunon or Northern Kingdom nobility, mostly - in the decade or two before the Bastard Tier got invaded. They were probably spies looking for potential traitors, they didn't sway anyone and from what Janos and Rodica heard they didn't try very hard. (Nerat definitely had other spies.) During the invasion peace talks were offered, but only Haven (kind of a rump state, the money and power left with the Free Cities) accepted it peacefully, and only Apex (smallest) agreed to terms after fighting. The last three Free Cities surrendered unconditionally after Fatebinder Calio - one of the former diplomats - and Archon Cairn knocked Setting-Sun and Sunder into the sea. An Edict, from the Fatebinder.

Edicts are terrifying and unstoppable and that's most of what they know. Sages seem to have kept the Edict of Fire from completely turning their citadel into a volcano but it's still a volcano with a library-castle mixed into it.

Before the Edict of Storms, the Unbroken captains were selected by their men (with local conscription quotas usually filled by volunteers) but reported to the Regents, and ultimately the First Regent in Sentinel Stand. Since communication's been cut off, the regents outside it all got picked off by Kyros's forces (this is a lie), and those within it, Regents and Unbroken, are cowards shirking their duty, they've chosen leaders like Mattias by consensus of captains. Communication's hard enough it's mostly local anyway.

Specific questions?

He doesn't probe further on the outside regents; if they're covering for someone, that's their prerogative. He does note it, though. 

What do they know of the School of Tides and the beastmen? 

When and how did Kyros the Overlord begin his reign? (Ipaxalon is curious if the Disfavored apparently lying about Year Zero is mirrored here.) 

Were Kyros' laws ever communicated to the Tiers? If so, do they have an opinion on said laws? 

"Regent" would seem to imply a temporary arrangement. Are the Regents standing in for someone? 

What do they know about the actions of Cairn, Archon of Stone? What other Archons do they know of? 

Are they aware of any Sages that might be willing to speak with him?

What would they expect to happen if the Stormwall fell and the First Regent yet lived? 

If peace talks could be arranged, what priorities do they want represented as theirs? (This is carefully worded so as to not require them to lie about their priorities, if there are some they prefer to hold close to the chest.) 

What's considered common knowledge about magic in Terratus? (With similar questions as to the details.) 

What are the positions of the Tiers on slavery? 

Do they have a map they're willing to share?

Tidecasters were the other big school of mages. Waterworking and manipulating the moonlight - that's terrifying in a fight, drains your life straight to the one hitting you. They were pretty tied into the nobility along the coast, and did etiquette and navigation training for lots of people. Occulted Jade was one of the Five Wives who founded the Tiers back in the early years of Kyros - by the Overlord's calendar, they sailed west around minus fifty. Everyone was pretty surprised when she up and left, and took them all with her, rather than defend the Tiers. There were a dozen or two who stayed (true), but they fought in the Conquest and got killed (true), so there aren't any left (false).

Beastmen are weird. They're clearly smarter than animals, and cunning when they try, but at the same time they're incredibly stupid about anything civilized. Most of them in the Tiers were up in Azure, but they had tribes everywhere. Enslaving them is legal but usually stupid. Don't arm slaves, or take slaves who are permanently armed. Slavery's legal in Tiers law but it's not heritable, they have a fair amount of rights, and it's almost all done to settle debts - large numbers of rings in the hundreds of iron, or blood debts. A big fishing ship might have one slave, and he's basically like anyone else except most of his pay isn't his to keep.

Who knows, about Kyros? There were warlords in the east when the Fives Wives and Seven Husbands left, he was probably the winner. They didn't start hearing about him for a century or two, and mostly the Edicts.

Tunon's tried to tell everyone the laws but literacy isn't as high here as in the north, they will grudgingly admit that standardizing on a single script for the whole Tiers would have been smarter, if not using the Empire's script. They're different, and it's a violation of all custom and justice, but not awful for all that. The one about the overlord's name sure is full of himself, though.

It's been Regents for centuries. Nominally they're standing in for the two of the Seven Husbands from Stalwart who went back out to sea and didn't return, but Velkan's pretty sure that was made up later by the noble families and there's some other reason. (It will come up in passing that Janos and Rodica, though not Velkan, are distantly related to the Regent family.)

Cairn was an angry rotter. Seemed to hate everything and take it out on them. They hear his corpse is a hundred feet high now, he was only twenty then. There were rumors of the 'Wild Man of the Peaks' a couple decades back, probably the same guy, drafted by the Overlord. Walked through castle walls like piles of pebbles, but not Sentinel Stand, it's sterner stuff.

Besides the ones the Disfavored mentioned they know of Sirin, Archon of Song, she's with the Scarlet Chorus and controls minds. Janos heard she wears a locked headdress with a big gem in it, but he's not sure he believes it. Orphan Midwife, she's a good one, Sigil of Life is hers and she's been imprisoned for more than a century for letting her students spread it outside the Empire. Blood Ruin was the last Archon of War, more like Nerat than Ashe, and at least Ashe isn't him. Pox is the Archon of Ruin and plagued the whole Northern Kingdom last Conquest. Thousand Embers was born in Haven in Stalwart's year 60, he died in under a century but left a mercenary fire-mage guild in the Bastard Tier, the Chorus ate them up. Lightning, Entropy, Sorrows, Wounds, Fungus ("Really?" "Sage said so, swear on my shield."), Light, couple more Fire, Pestilence. Oh, and Runes, Mind Chisel, he's the first one anyone knows about because he invented writing a thousand years ago.

Mattias has a Sage handling messages, but most of them are out of the storm's area where they can send birds back and forth. Maybe look by the Oldwalls entrances, they like that stuff and the ones who're still resisting the Overlord are mostly the kind to try stupid things like find Oldwalls artifacts and use them blindly.

If the storm's still there and Stalwart's still suffering? Three-way fight, probably. Disfavored and the Unbroken captains both trying to break in and be the ones to hold the fortress when it's over, royal Unbroken fighting them off.

They want an independent Stalwart. There are only three Regents left (probably less) and they don't trust the First Regent, so they'd want a new government - they'd say militia elections like their captains now. Any other independent Tiers realms are bonuses. In principle Stalwart claims most of the Free Cities, but the only one it's picky about is Sunder.

No good maps here. Nor good knowledge of magic; they've heard of less than the Disfavored guy and disagree with each other about whether some things are possible. They're not ignorant but there's been a lot less military magic in their lives.

Interesting that they've heard of more Archons (or admit to it, at least) but less magic. 

(A plague Archon. What is this Kyros thinking.)

Can they explain the Five Wives and the Seven Husbands? That sounds relevant and he's not familiar with their history. 

He'd like to speak to Captain Mattias and the Sage at some point, is that something they might arrange?

"Well, yes, all the Archons - except the Orphan Midwife, maybe - are our enemies, to the Disfavored they're mostly strategic resources that might get brought in on the war," Rodica says, "But the stories spread far beyond their territories. Kyros doesn't care to stop it. He cares a lot about keeping control of the mages, especially the relatively new sigils like Life, Stone, that rage thing the Scarlet Chorus do, and iron-making."

The Five Wives and Seven Husbands are the founding mythology of the Tiers. The three officers vary in how much they believe it actually happened, roughly according to how close they are to nobility; Lieutenant Velkan says that the Tiers nobility, and such of them as remain, take it very seriously and trace their bloodlines to one of the Five Wives. Four, really; the Fifth, Occulted Jade, had few grandchildren and didn't found any of the noble lines, most of them stayed in her school.

In any case the story everyone tells is that there was war on the eastern peninsula, and a dozen small ships or more set out west across the open sea to find new land. Seven made it, with seven captains and five women of their families between them; there were others onboard, but they were the leaders. They landed, cleared settlements on the coast, and the Five Wives took charge of the towns and little hoe-farmed plots they had started while the Seven Husbands went back out to sea to check the fisheries. Few of them - maybe none - came back, so the Wives were in charge, and as the fishers got built up the next few generations, it became custom that, either in memory of that or (according to Velkan and the others can't actually argue the point effectively) in what would inspire the story, men rule at sea and women on land. By Tiers law men can't inherit or bequeath land, even a house in town, and women can't for boats or ships. You can own it, but if the gender's wrong, when you die it'll pass to your nearest relative whose gender permits it.

"If it's legend, it's one Occulted Jade never wanted to set us straight about," Janos says.

"Like that's saying much, the only thing more obscure than the Archon of Tides was an unruly Sage."

They'll definitely contact Captain Mattias and tell him. (False, actually.) But they're going to wait and argue before telling him how to go about finding him, no offense. (True.)

Hmm. That's an odd way of doing sexism, but given all of the everything here he's got other priorities. And why would they lie about contacting their leader? Perhaps they can't for some reason? He also quietly notes that this Occulted Jade would be centuries old if she was in fact present at the founding of the Tiers, but that doesn't seem impossible given the implied powers of Archons. 

"I intend to visit Sentinel Stand next, if they will see me. Is there anything else you would have me know before I do so?" 

Everything about Archons mentioned so far suggests that they don't age, and this is obvious enough to the locals it's not worth mentioning.

They look back and forth, at the question.

"We haven't had any dissenters defending his decision," Janos says, "Militia or remaining civilians. And if someone cared... they could have sabotaged us, without much favoring the invaders. If it's still Straydus Herodin with the title and throne, he probably thinks otherwise." (This is the truth as he sees it.) "I doubt it will sway him to be an honorable martyr if he didn't before," (True) "but better late, than having to kill him ourselves." (False.)

That is an almost ominous lack of disagreement implied, even assuming everyone who was initially sympathetic to the Regents stayed behind in Sentinel Stand. But a deeper investigation will have to wait until after his visit to the third side of this bloody conflict. "Thank you, Janos, I will keep that in mind."

Ipaxalon warns the Unbroken about the temporary nature of the calm winds, then takes his leave to overfly Sentinel Stand. Have they elected to indicate welcome by means of flags? 

Yep, men in dark red and bronze are waiting with four blank blue flags in a square.

He still can't easily make the absurd tornado around the walls halt outright, but he can go over it. He descends through the eye to land. If they had wind problems within the square before, they now don't. 

They had wind but only to a reasonable level, especially inside the walls. They still notice; the wind wall draws back from the walls slightly, and the air's actually calm.

"Greetings, Sir Ipaxalon. On behalf of the First Regent, welcome to Stalwart and Sentinel Stand."

"Thank you. I am from a place that is distant enough I hadn't heard of Kyros the Overlord or the Tiers before my recent arrival. I have thus far spoken with authorities among the Disfavored and the Unbroken outside these walls, but I may still lack important context. 

"For now, if you are amenable, I offer one-time magical healing and treatment of disease in exchange for non-secret information on a variety of topics, that I may orient more rapidly to the situation here."