The hero crests aren't magic! They're very advanced technology, like replicators or morph or lightleapers - all things that behave superficially like magic but are actually situated on top of the same physics everything else uses and exploit it in impressive ways, maybe (like morph) reliant on local conditions but not anything truly supernatural. It's kind of an academic distinction for most purposes, except that apsels can make replicators, morph, lightleapers, and hero crests, and can't make (working) magic things. Hero crests are close to being too smart for apsels to make them, actually, but they squeak under the limit and work acceptably when mass-produced, so they had lots of people try them out and it turns out most humanish-brained envoys qualify. They're trying some psychometrics to see what's different about the other ones.

(The angels didn't program them to work off nonhuman brains. They can do a model that works for them, though, given a little R&D time.)

Everyone is still pretty confused!

... Except Grand Admiral Nicolas Montrege, who nods soberly, checks with his bracer that nothing's going on the angels collectively disapprove of, and calmly hires a demon to make him hero crests by the ton.

(He won't be the only one, but he is first.)

Here's a heap of them! This demon prefers to be paid in command performances of various theater, on top of the language that comes free with a summoning.

As it happens, Montrege happens to be the ruler of a state that until recently spent most of its money on art and culture, and still has the best opera house on the planet and first-rate performers to play in it, to say nothing of other, less prestigious forms of performance. The demon can be paid.

The demon is so happy! Yaaaaay!

The main difficulty in this sort of thing is the diplomatic one - that Amraterre is still trying to join Vanda Nosseo. This process is made slightly more complicated by the fact that their current territory includes lots and lots of regions that they conquered in the past twenty years, and while most of them don't really want their former rulers back (the nobility living in exile aside), all of them are full of interest groups which would have their own complicated proposals for what to do for a government if plotting against the Grand Admiral wasn't illegal, a process which requires careful handling. Amraterre is pretty sure they could get 51% of their country as a whole to vote to join Vanda Nosseo, considering all the bribes VN can provide, but there is absolutely nothing that could get 51% approval in some of the more mountainous regions they own, up to and including "eating food is good."

Having observed what happened with Ljudizem, just how much "getting Elspeth to record explanations" can they manage? Magically-induced truth is useful stuff, particularly when you could, say, magically tell them the truths that Vanda Nosseo has immortality on offer and the angels approve of Amraterre joining them.

Most of the Elspeth video is maximally generic and pre-recorded but if they have short statements she can quickly and confidently verify she can find time in her schedule to check and restate them. The immortality one they do have as a pre-recorded snippet already; the angels one would be a special case but she'd have to like, talk to the angels before she could say it convincingly.

The angel one is really important. 

The angels are happy to make a quick statement saying that they want humans to join Vanda Nosseo. Vanda Nosseo seems sane-ish and if these are the humans listening to their representative they think they want them to be in it.

Then Elspeth can verify that she went and visited some angels and they confirmed that they want humans to join Vanda Nossëo.

Amraterre is also responding to this by trying to end the war! They wish to point out that everyone on their side joining Vanda Nosseo will in fact mean that the war is over in practice, since the Coalition cannot actually win a war with Vanda Nosseo.

Sure, but you do not, in fact, have the ability to win an actual vote in most of your territory. The ones that are basically republics will join Vanda Nosseo and all the tyrannies will be overthrown and invaded by our armies. This sounds like a terrible outcome for our allies, but a GREAT one for us! 

Amraterre would like to investigate the procedures for joining Vanda Nosseo without surrendering territorial claims that can't win a Join Vanda Nosseo vote.

Some limitations, within which they may try to be creative:

- if you join, you can't stop people from leaving.
- you are not allowed to forcibly displace populations if you can possibly avoid it, and you can probably possibly avoid it.
- e v e r y o n e has to be allowed to vote, and if you sarcastically ask if that means rocks too, you are running a serious risk of some envoys earnestly trying to check if your rocks are people.
- if a sub-territory isn't pro-joining, and then is shanghaied into it anyway for some reason (here is a case study where they tragically did not notice that a certain religion forbade the use of paper and wouldn't touch the ballots!) they will be able to vote to secede from Vanda Nossëo, and you, pretty much immediately.

But you are allowed to bribe people, time the vote for when your PR campaigns are doing well, etcetera.

... So, are you saying that if we can get enough votes in our core areas to make the whole of Amraterre join, then any subgroups that want to secede would need to get 51% of the population together to leave? This sounds pretty nice. The whole problem is that nobody can agree on anything.

They can and do agree that they want the rightful king reinstated and you gone!

... Are we allowed to use our nation's military force to defend contested areas that failed to get a 51% vote to join Vanda Nosseo but didn't get a 51% vote for anything else?

Would that involve killing people? It's illegal to kill people in Vanda Nossëo and all your neighbors know that by now.

It will involve using lethal force to defend our not-yet-in-Vanda-Nosseo territory if stern words and asking Vanda Nosseo to teleport them out of it don't work, yes.

Yeah you're not allowed to kill people. Teleporting intruders out is allowed but it's a pretty labor-intensive proposition, how do they plan to justify this?

It would be a gigantic betrayal of everyone in those areas of their territory where nobody is familiar with voting at all to abandon them to enemy invasion just because nobody can get 51% of the vote. They know how bloody and horrible war is, and no country could just leave its people unprotected, especially not while there's an active war ongoing against a hostile invading power..

Well, they can get some Elspeth recordings to help people be familiar with voting at all, but Vanda Nossëo is not going to abet hostile takeovers of nonconsenting populations. They don't do conquest and won't cover for it.