Once he's gone, quietly, "I owe you my life. Again. I will not forget." Yes, there may have been other people working on it, but Morthalas made it first.

"You have the Winter Council of Kyonin to thank as well as me. It was one of them who actually placed the Dominate."

She nods. "Well, I suppose we'd best make their investment pay off." An elegant eyebrow-raise. "One assumes they do not have a simple way to destroy Razmir for us?"

"They have many secrets which they do not deign to share with mortals and half-breeds. I would not be surprised if they could destroy Razmir, but I would be surprised if they did. They are not easily moved to, uh, do things. Which is, perhaps, why their country is in its current state."

"Indeed. Then I will need to speak with the gentlemen of the sewers, regarding some more permanent solution to the newest self-proclaimed addition to our pantheon."

Meanwhile, Bishop Yasmardin Senir is not a cleric of Pharasma, neither a cleric of Geryon, and is also not an idiot. Wisdom is still his casting stat.

It is not impossible to spy on his 'monastery' (not in fact a Pharasmin monastery at all, though it is an organization no less concerned with death), but he generally knows when it's being done. He's hardly concerned about Jean Riudaure discovering any of his real secrets. It's just that, if Cheliax has placed a bounty of a hundred thousand gold pieces on the delivery of one's soul to Hell, one should probably take more care to avoid coming to the attention of the highest-level cleric of Norgorber outside Absalom.

(That the man is eighth circle, and good enough at not dying to still be alive ten years after defecting from Cheliax, does not faze him. Even Razmir would have cause to fear the Brotherhood of the Veil, if Senir had not decided that they were better off on his side.)

And also meanwhile, Viktor Sovin, fourth-circle necromancer, had been minding his own business aside from the occasional human sacrifice when some insane ninth-circle wizard who apparently thinks he's a god conquered his country and then invited in fucking paladins to fix Ustalav's necromancy 'problem'. He was, predictably, arrested by said fucking paladins, and given a choice to Atone, die and take his chances at trial, be made a statue until they fix the Evil afterlives, or be given to Razmir, who could 'make use of' him. (Unfortunately they can't tell him what this process entails, because Razmir won't tell them, but they do advise against it, it's just that Razmir insisted they make the offer as part of their being allowed to operate here.)

What he'd like is to be left alone so he can get more powerful and become a lich in peace. But of the choices offered, he doesn't actually regret any of his choices, he doesn't want to go to the Abyss, and he thinks being made a statue 'until they fix the Evil afterlives' probably rounds to 'forever' and if it doesn't means waking up in a world run by fucking paladins. So he'll go to Razmir, he guesses.

He's also possessed. He doesn't think the fucking paladins know this. It's...annoying, at times, but the ghost who shares his head is cooperative and a more powerful wizard than he is, so it does have its upsides. His ghost also keeps insisting that his boss, who's apparently the legitimate Emperor of Taldor, will save them, but Viktor is skeptical. It seems to him that someone who was good at accomplishing things wouldn't have to clarify that he was the 'legitimate' Emperor of Taldor.

The ghost in question is not, wholly, the same person he was in life, but since the person he was in life was someone who failed to become immortal, the ghost nonetheless prefers this to Hell. Julius Fabrius Vindex was one of the marshals of Emperor Taldaris II, and the ritual he carried out to achieve immortality - copied directly from his master's! - proved, alas, to have some errors in execution. While this did indeed advance the science of lichdom, only Vindex's sheer bloody-mindedness allowed him to cling to life, though in this unlife he maintains the full power of a fifth circle wizard. Taldaris has promised that when he regains his throne Vindex will be restored to proper immortality, but until that day he remains a faithful servant of his master, in death as in life Sovin is, of course, a disreputable wretch of common birth, but as he serves the Emperor, and so Vindex deigns to provide Sovin with his hard-won knowledge, gathered through aeons and only centuries out of date.

There are, of course, checks for possession; they aren't stupid. But for everything there is a counter, and it happens that the ghost in question was not, actually, in his body when the paladins did their Detect Undead scan, and he's very hard to notice when he's faded into the background, and so Viktor is handed over to Razmir, for an unexplained fate.

It's a silver-masked priest who explains the agreement to Viktor, whose hands are tied and whose spellbook is missing and who is not, at any point, going to get enough sleep that he could prepare spells if he had it.

"We will spare your life, since you prefer this to death." His eyes are dark. "There is a place for everyone in Razmiran; a great place, for the ambitious and the powerful -" he'll slap Viktor "- which you are not, grave scum! But you can be. Kneel before Razmir, hail Him as your god, and when your training is complete He will make you a master of magic both arcane and divine, grant you power political and and you will have eternity in His divine realm." The priest's eyes are vicious. "A better fate than you could have achieved, without it. Hail the Living God!"

Not worse than he expected, yet.

"Hail the Living God," he repeats, his head bowed.

He does not know where he trains, other than that it is a fortress of black stone and that he needs the Forbiddance password to enter, but the training he gets there is brutal and unforgiving. There's never enough sleep, never enough food, never enough time; every error he makes is harshly punished, and not admitting that he was justly punished for an unforgivable error is, itself, an error, regardless of the facts of the situation. He is expected to memorize the precepts of the faith - mostly endless boasting about Razmir's capabilities - instantly, to repeat them back without question, to speak approved words and think approved thoughts. There are regular Detect Thoughts scans, and they always, always end in punishment, but less punishment if he has disobeyed Razmir less, been more deferent in acts and thoughts. His fellow trainees sometimes disappear, returning with horrifying scars or not at all. On the other side of this there's training; in oratory, in arcana, and, surprisingly, in the use of non-arcane magic items - especially the use to make it seem as though you're casting the spell yourself. Asking why they do this if the Living God will give them the magic they need, or thinking this, is, of course, punished.

He endures.

Does he regret his decision? Not yet, for all his frequent thoughts that he would have been better off in the Abyss, where the fight never ends but there is always the dim chance of victory; this is Hell, a game rigged against him from the beginning, and he despises it, but he can endure it, because Razmir is even bad at torture his Lord is merciful and would not give him a load he could not bear. He will, in fact, emerge stronger.

He just wants to be left alone.

And, of course, there's someone else, who is not covered by the Forbiddance because he's Lawful Evil, now isn't he, who's very hard to detect, even when he's passing reports back to Czaszar in Ustalav...

Elsewhere, Lastwall's agent in the city of Karcau is jumped by something she can't fight off.

He goes to investigate.

Karkau had been, until this, Ustalav's least haunted county. It still is, going by number of mysterious murders. But someone clearly wants the mysterious murders that are happening to remain a mystery to him, and they were willing to commit greater forces to it than anyone else who's tried that, because they actually succeeded.

He discovers a secret society made up of the city's elite. Well, not in fact such a secret; a lot of people have heard of it, though they mostly don't believe the rumors they hear. Those who do claim to be in the know assure him it's no big deal. They have, like, orgies and such.

It's possible, rationally speaking, that the so-called Harlequin Society is indeed innocuous, just a bunch of edgy decadent aristocrats. Every city over a certain size has a club like that. On the other hand, this is Ustalav. Nothing is innocuous.

A few well-placed Suggestions and some judicious use of Alter Self later, he's secured an invitation to their next gathering.

The gathering is held in an old cistern beneath the city's opera house, its attendees cloaked and masked. People arrive and mingle, for now only slowly getting drunk.

And a small balding man dressed all in black moves to the front of the room and gets the crowd's attention.

"My friends, my friends," he says. "Welcome! We are gathered here to celebrate a great victory. Now, what victory, I hear you ask. Well, you shall see."

oh no

"But first, before we begin this evening's...festivities, a toast! To our lord and patron, the Jester Prince of the Cage!"

Alichino.

This isn't some plot of the godsdamned Whispering Way. It's a cult of the greater devil explicitly charged with achieving Hell's conquest of Golarion.

(Hell is not, in fact, so disorganized that cults of Alichino don't report to the part of Golarion that Hell has already conquered.)

—Flesh to Stone on the man who proposed the toast, before he recognizes him somehow—

It's about this time that the Forbiddance snaps up—

—and quite a number of the hooded and masked attendees turn to look at Jean Riudaure with devils' eyes.

It isn't a long fight.

Meanwhile, somewhere above them, and in cities throughout Ustalav, Razmir's administration is having a different problem. That problem is 'vampires'. Rather a lot of vampires. Where are all these vampires even coming from?

(The answer, originally, was 'the sewers of Caliphas'. But Luvick Siervage has spent the last several weeks coordinating his army's move into the underbellies of other cities as well, poised to strike on his command.)

It was, indeed, three days before that day that Remek Czaszar, Grand Prince of Taldor, had gathered the Whispering Way together; they do not often meet in person, for they have had centuries to nurse their grudges, and when they do it is with immense precautions - 

- But Razmir must die.

Not all were there, of course; there were those too weak, or who gambled that the Whispering Way would fail, and against them the oath gave no protection. There were the requisite requirements; the invocation of the gods to request that Urgathoa and the Whispering Tyrant (who does not grant spells, but is a god to many of those present) destroy dissenters, there were ritual sacrifices to empower the practitioners' spells today against their spells before, Dispel Magic effects to strip any Enchantment Foils, an endless list of tedious precautions before the final Geas was read out, and before the final Geas was cast, each one watching to see of Czaszar would be destroyed, or if he truly meant it.

Because in three days - 

- The class at First Step, center of the cult of Razmir, would 'graduate', to become full priests of Razmir.

(They do not, actually, collapse into murderous backstabbing before the Geas is cast. They may do so the moment Razmir is dead, but for now they have a common enemy.)