<I mean, he did spend a while crying. I don't know if it was specifically about that. I think he'd - love to leave. Do it tomorrow, if the place wouldn't fall apart. I suggested he go pretend to be a wandering minstrel, see his Empire from the ground up, and I think he really liked the idea.>

<...Oh. He would like that. I - want to see what we can do, so that he can leave without anything falling apart, and - not have it be too bad in the meantime. But we should in fact go back now. We can speak of it on our next visit.> 

Pause. 

<...He removed my compulsions. I - am going to leave them off, I think, I am - much less worried about it being noticed now that you are safe and outside the Empire's power.> 

< - I wish I'd understood in the first place, what I was asking of you.>

<I know. There are a number of things I would - know better how to convey, if I had to do it over. But this is where we are now, and - at least you are free, and I hope soon all of us will be.> 

And he'll bid Caris farewell, and prepare to Gate out with the Emperor back to the capital. (With some detours, so that it doesn't look like they're both coming back from the same mysterious unknown location together.) 

Having the modified compulsion in place is helpful and distressing at the same time, which really just seems unfair. 

It's...stabilizing, though, to be back in familiar surroundings, even familiar surroundings he hates. There is, unsurprisingly, a pile-up of paperwork to review, and half a dozen advisors who want urgent meetings with him, but...he hates it less, now that he can credibly tell himself it won't be forever. 

Caris spends all her time trying to reinvent spells from her world and making new impressive magic items. She and Altarrin and Bastran should all have boots of Teleport and rings of evasion and she'll see if she can make rings of sustenanceandprotection, the overlapping spell problem is supposed to be hard but solvable with enough spellsilver and she has arbitrary spellsilver. She eventually hangs an antimagic field and is very proud of herself and gets to work on making a magic item version of it so she can have an antimagic dungeon that her Teleport Trap redirects into. She figures out Flesh To Stone and is...not actually tempted... to decorate the wizard tower with the petrified statues of those who have offended her. 

And, mostly during his late-night hours when everyone without a Ring of Sustenance is asleep, Altarrin considers his options for Bastran's successor. 

The existing emergency options, for if Bastran were to be suddenly assassinated, aren't ones he's fond of. The Empire produces plenty of ambitious, reasonably competent, reasonably paranoid nobles, with the right connections for other ministers to back them, with enough favors owed to them to consolidate a stable power base. In emergency conditions, that's the highest priority; Emperors who don't have broad backing tend not to remain Emperors for very long, and unplanned leadership transitions are bad for the Empire. 

This isn't an emergency, and he can aim for better than just 'will stay in power'. The issue is that the Empire does not produce many people who are like Bastran, in terms of striving not to hurt anyone, to be a good person. Still pragmatic enough to secure their power base first, you don't survive court politics for long without that attitude, but - sufficiently bothered by costs paid in human suffering to keep looking for options that minimize it. 

And...the other issue is that he doesn't just want another Bastran. He wants someone who shares Bastran's principles and Good-aligned motivations, but who won't hate being Emperor.

Taking all of those considerations at face value, there are basically no candidates who meet all the criteria. 

In this case, though, he can loosen some of the other requirements. If it's planned, he has setup time; he can pick someone who doesn't yet have enough connections or favors owed, but could with the right support cultivate them over the next year or two. Maybe more importantly, he can throw a wider net on age. It's normally unheard of for an Emperor to take the throne before age thirty, and even that is considered young and inexperienced, but the fanciest kind of headband for Wisdom will go a long way. And he would normally draw a cutoff above age seventy or so - mages can live a lot longer than that, but as he was noticing himself, but people still tend to get less mentally quick and flexible, and life extension magic doesn't mean you keep the energy levels of your youth. But a headband for intelligence would help the second, a belt of Constitution would mostly address the first, and of course a Ring of Sustenance would give them more candlemarks in the day to stay on top of their work. 

This gives him more options. Count Eladore, age seventy-three, has the right humanitarian outlook - albeit in a stodgy, conservative duty-bound sort of way - and he has the needed experience and connections, and could probably keep up with an Emperor's duties if he had a +6 headband of Cunning. Baron Liaron, twenty-nine, is reasonably clever and thoughtful even without any enhancement, and might make a decent Emperor if he had more personal presence than a wet burlap bag – maybe a headband for Splendor and a year of close mentoring and encouragement would address that? 

Neither is delightful as an option. 

...what if he widens the net to include possible candidates who aren't mages? 

The Emperor is always a mage, and nearly always an Adept. Not because it's a law or anything, just because the Emperor does, fundamentally, need to be able to maintain their position by force if necessary. 

But arcane magic can be taught to anyone clever enough...

He'll go through a longer list of names, this time. 

....Oh, that's an intriguing possibility. 

Duchess Yara Velane. Twenty-four years old, one of the rare cases of an unmarried woman holding a noble land in her own right - and one of the even rarer cases of a noble who didn't spend their childhood as a foster/hostage at court. She was the illegitimate only child of Duke Velane, who died of a wasting illness in his early thirties but, first, granted his young bastard daughter a title and appointed her as heir to one of the oldest and largest duchies in the Empire, nestled along the coast less than fifty miles from Jacona itself.

She was, at the time, fifteen. 

She's not a mage. She is Gifted - one of the rarer Mind-Gifts, not much investigated in her childhood but marked down as probably Empathy. She is, by all accounts, brilliant and ambitious and charismatic, and genuinely loyal to the Empire but, first and foremost, deeply devoted to her people. ...And, according to her detractors, stubborn and hotheaded and prone to flights of fancy. 

Probably a headband of Wisdom would help with that. 

Altarrin has met her personally only in passing. His impression was a positive one, but he would clearly need to look into it further. She's definitely the most interesting candidate, and probably the highest-variance one. 

He'll take the shortlist with him on his next visit to Carissa's wizard tower. 

"Altarrin." Carissa has made herself a - it's not a proper Robe of the Archmagi, not really, it doesn't give her the resistance bonuses or the spell resistance, and it's purple because fuck Pharasma (and she's not sure what her alignment is these days). It's form-fitting and looks very nice on her and positively glows with magic. She's also made herself a wizard hat even though she's the only person on this planet who can cast an Antimagic Field. It's also purple.

She's so happy and it's delightful! Altarrin hugs her, and makes impressed noises about the robe after examining it with mage-sight. 

Once he's caught up on her recent activities - all of which are so impressive! Altarrin is delighted! - he can pull out his list. 

"These are the candidates I am considering for Bastran's replacement." And he can go through the pros and cons of each.