This is the exhausted sigh of an Arodenite who has had this conversation roughly thirty times today alone. "In two hundred-odd years a dryad will be born from this specific tree and when she's ninety will invent... some kind of... magically significant flower. Apparently." 

That's nice he guesses. In three hundred years if they do their jobs properly their grandchildren's grandchildren's grandchildren will have the luxury of caring about that. However, uh.

"And, General, with respect, I will shut up and stand here for the next six days or for that matter the next six months if you tell me that this is a matter of  great import to our military strategy for secret reasons but in the event you can possibly tell me, why?" 

Siiiighhhhh. 

"Well, you see, it's assign you or the bloody entire archmage assigns herself. ApPARENTLY."

Look, she listens to the paladins when it's really important, you can't have everything. 

Does she, though!!! 

No, that's not fair, he's heard about what she was like at first circle. Apparently when she first arrived in Avistan her adventuring party's paladin had to explain to her that skeletons aren't the same person as they were when they were alive. Because she kept trying to rescue them from being killed.

And for that matter just a couple years ago they had to talk her down from animating a skeletal dragon on grounds that it was an evil dragon and someone had to find her a regular dragon to gift the livery she personally wove for the evil skeleton dragon because her theory was that the problem they had with this plan was that it might be scary looking.

But she did, you know, actually not do that latter thing because they asked her not to. And really, compared to staggeringly ill advised dragon necromancy, prophecy-backed predictions about magic flowers are positively reasonable. 

He is still so exhausted, though. Why are wizards. 

Marshall's exhaustion is blessedly smaller, as he mostly only has to deal with the wizards assigned to his company and they are, modulo the inevitable nature of wizards, mostly good soldiers. Nevertheless, he nods sympathetically. "Understood." 

(approximately 32 years earlier, about 4 years after the launch of the Shining Crusade) 

.

The Crusade won't start taking women as soldiers until they've had Iomedae a much longer time than this, but it's always taken wizards whatever their gender.

Technically Avaryne is not a wizard. (Some winter witches like to believe they're just the same-- they're not sorcerers! they prepare spells, they do academic research, their spells become more powerful with Fox's Cunning-- but she is not in the habit of sticking her head in the snowdrifts and pretending her power is not fundamentally contingent on the sufferance of the Baba Yaga.) But she says so honestly, when she requests an enlistment contract for a five-year tour under the usual terms for wizards of at least 3rd circle, and she swears under Truthtelling that she is reasonably certain she's not any more of a security risk than anyone else not proof against a Dominate; if the Baba Yaga (or, more likely, the Queen) orders her to betray her fellow soldiers for some reason, using normal threats, she will simply die in the process of saying no. 

"...you're aware you're Chaotic Evil, right?" the recruitment officer is obliged by his brand new policy handbook to say, because they do have people checking for that, and apparently one of the hotshot paladins has some kind of theory about the thing where paladins sometimes Fall if you make them do this job being caused by it being Evil to materially mislead people about their risk profile. 

"I think I might detect away from my own alignment the way a cleric does, actually, but--" 

"If you were something else I'd see both, at third circle," says the wizard who was on Aura Sighting Everyone In The Queue duty earlier, is out of spell slots not allocated to emergency response, and has been hanging out interestedly because interviews with prospective new crusade wizards are slightly more interesting than whatever stultifyingly boring dart game his corresponding martials are up to at the moment and the recruitment guy hates trying to answer spellcraft questions. "You see it sometimes around the Good-Neutral and Chaos-Neutral boundaries. Arodenite paladins around when they start getting spells ping Lawful from Him and Good from themselves, there's clerics of Sarenrae who ping Chaotic, I met a Norgorberite once who pinged for both Good and Evil and like he was probably lying but he heroically sacrificed himself to save a whole squad of guys so I'm not totally sure he wasn't just a really weird type of cleric..." 

Ow. 

"...fair enough, but what I was going to say was it's irrelevant to what risks I'm willing to take because there's nothing I at all can do about it. Me specifically, I mean, I promise I fully understand it matters for most people." At the raised-eyebrow invitation to elaborate, she continues, "My understanding is it's like-- well, take Nidal, right. Kuthites don't go to Hell no matter how Lawful Evil they are or aren't, they go to Xovaikain. I don't know where my great-grandmother went when the Old Crone came to collect but I don't think her alignment mattered to the fact that it was neither the Abyss nor Heaven." 

She checked. The church of Nethys will sell you time with a crystal ball cheaper than the Abadarans will if you reliably tell them interesting facts while you're doing it. 

Alarmed blinking. Her Truthtelling symbol hasn't wavered. "My condolences?" 

"Thank you. Did you have any other questions?" 

Rifle rifle rifle through the pages. "Most wizards of Evil alignment who profess to be unmoved by fear of the Evil afterlives turn out to have been secretly plotting to become liches." Taldor fights a lot of wars and they have a lot of data about it. "Are you able to affirm that you have no such intentions?" 

"...most?" 

It keeps happening!!! No, he doesn't know why either!!!! 

He keeps his face neutrally professional. "So I am told." 

            "It's like ninety-five percent," says the Aura Sight wizard, helpfully. He's seen quite a lot of the post-horrific-emergency writeups for the number of times the Taldane armies have had this problem; he's Lawful Good, they let you read some of the forbidden lich facts if you can walk into the Forbiddance they're stored in and affirm you only want them in order to get better at fighting liches. "We're not even really going to believe you if you say no but we gotta ask, it goes in your file." 

"............are... are most wizards really stupid?" 

That's in no way an adequate affirmation. "Please answer the question." 

"I solemnly affirm that I have no intention of becoming a lich. Because that's stupid." 

Snort. "So noted." 

Sympathetic wry grin. "Any other questions on the list you only ask Evil people?" 

She'll answer all of them without difficulty. She might be Evil but she really does sincerely just want to join the crusade because it's a good way to circle up and save the world and maybe get to spend a little time around some nice Good-aligned people before she dies. 

Also, she can cast augury without material components once a day and she thinks the same principle ought to apply to divination if she can get to 4th. You know, if that's strategically relevant to whether they find her useful. 

Yep yeah here's her contract to sign they'll get her an assignment in the morning. Probably one of the cavalry divisions; they're short on wizards competent to ride a regular non-magical horse. 

"Good morning. Wizard Avaryne?" says someone, approaching her at the rally point for the division she's been assigned to. He's young enough that his being remotely in charge of anything is principally explained by the expensive plate and the entitlement to heraldry rather than anything about him personally, but the soldiers seem relatively non-sarcastic with their respectful nods as he passes, so he might also actually be at least a little competent. 

"If that's just what the rank is called, yes. You're the tourmarch, I presume?" 

"...oh, no, I'm his deputy," give him like two years, though, "you don't report to me," he is in no way making any type of facial expression that implies anything about the impact of this fact on whether he's allowed to flirt with her but he's kind of thinking it, "we both report to him. Marshall Patricks, of Phoenicia, at your service." He doesn't have a title yet, his father is still alive, but he says it in the very recognizable casually proprietary tone of someone who considers the place he's of to be a place that is his. "'Wizard' is not a rank, it's a form of polite address."