It mostly requires a lot of knowing when to smile through one's teeth and politely say a sentence or two no content whatsoever. The Empire, including the current Emperor, has definitely considered just conquering the place - yes, he knows Iomedae is against conquest in general, but this feels like an unusually clear case of a country where everyone except a handful of nobles would be vastly better off under different rule. They haven't because it would be an enormous disaster that would take multiple generations to fully pacify and culturally incorporate into the Empire. And Ithik probably intended a war with the Empire eventually, but they didn't feel like lifting the cover on that pit of snakes either, so. Awkward diplomacy.

...Does Marit want stories? Because Legate Sterngal absolutely has a few minutes' worth of stories (and a decade worth of pent-up frustration and resentment about foreign godworshippers. Present company excepted, Marit barely counts.) 

- yes, he'd love to hear some stories. (In his thoughts are that he wants to be extremely careful not to say anything that'd be taken as particularly informative about whether Iomedae would defend Ithik if the Empire tried to conquer it. He has no idea if she'd do that and doesn't want the Empire acting on what they think is tacit permission.)

He will tell a few minutes' worth of lurid depressing stories, including a public slave-execution, and the fate of a servant-woman who was caught having very understandably concealed her young daughter's Gift of Empathy, and also just a few quotes of the sorts of things that bored high-ranking noblemen who've had too much to drink will say out loud with their actual mouths about their wives and concubines, which isn't the worst thing in terms of human suffering and failure of Civilization, but is certainly among the top moments of awkwardness in terms of figuring out how to even respond

- and then they should move on to the actual topic at hand, which is: would Iomedae consider intervening in some way to try to help the people of Ithik. (Which would, incidentally, help the Empire to the extent it distracted the government of Ithik, since Ithik is sponsoring several of their rebellions.) 

....he really doubts it. The place sounds terrible. Iomedae would hate it! Aroden would presumably hate it. But Tar-Baphon is still loose, and there are a lot of people who'd be nervous if Iomedae starts conquering places just because they're humanitarian disasters, and -

- that's actually not a good enough reason to conquer places? This is one of Iomedae's complicated moral disagreements with the Empire that doesn't just come down to having lived in worlds where the gods are widely varying levels of helpful. She isn't going to take the rest of Belkzen, even though it'll continue being full of orcish warlords and misery and could instead be peaceful farms supplying her new country. She wasn't even planning to take Urgir, before her sudden disappearance for a badly timed month forced her hand. 

Hmmm. ...This is a bit of a digression, but are there kinds of intervention she would consider acceptable that aren't conquest? He would suggest "opening a church of Aroden in Ithik" except that Ithik has made all organized worship of gods other than Atet illegal because of course they have. It's not very well enforced, because they're not as competent as the Empire, but he's guessing that breaking their laws would still count as crossing a line from Iomedae's perspective? 

Aroden generally won't pick clerics in places where that's disallowed. Notice how He hasn't done so in the Empire and hasn't done other interventions in the Empire, even to protect His people. Iomedae would probably be fine with having an espionage operation in Ithik, but not fine with doing anything they wouldn't be doing symmetrically given half a chance.

Probably if she and Aroden do address the problem at all they'll go directly after Atet, and then intervene in the country only once that's handled. But, again, that's something to do years from now; right now, they're really far too busy to operate anywhere that doesn't actively want them and isn't threatening their primary interests.

...That's fair enough.

How about a different proposal. The Empire is considering asking Iomedae to intervene to help end their civil wars. He'd like to know how she's likely to respond to that, and what elements she would be to be crossing a line even if she was willing to take other steps. Is she on board with assassinations? Kidnappings? Threats? Bribery? Going after the rebel generals' families? 

- she's not going to kill innocent people. If they're going to be executed by the Empire after the fact for being related to the rebels then that's the kind of thing that'd make her not want to help the Empire end the civil wars. She's also not going to threaten anything she won't, in fact, do, under exactly the conditions she said she would. 

And she's grieved by the sack of Tatanka and wants the rebels to win in Oris, and probably won't help the Empire end the other civil wars if it just lets them bring all their armies down on the people of Oris.

But if the Empire can offer assurances it won't do that, then - it shouldn't be a problem, really. Whatever's cleanest and ends the civil wars with the fewest casualties is best, whether that's Dominating their leadership to surrender or having them drop dead of a nightmare in their sleep.

Well. The Emperor apparently wants peace with Oris, and the Emperor is not bad at his job, it'll probably happen eventually. 

The sticking point there is getting a treaty that both sides will agree to. 

...He recognizes that there are genuine political constraints on both sides. The Empire isn't going to sign a peace treaty that risks giving other provinces ideas and spawning five more rebellions and tens of thousands of casualties next year. The rebel general, meanwhile, presumably made a lot of promises to his troops and his generals and his allies in the local nobility, and genuinely can't accept a treaty that they'll see as too stingy and unfavorable to Oris.

One of the proposals being floated around is to write a treaty that's instead mostly unfavorable to the Knights of Ozem. He doesn't actually have examples in front of him of what that means, but he suspects the idea is to make it in the rebels' interest to weaken the relationship with Iomedae, and hopefully discourage other would-be rebels from going to her. If the treaty successfully does end the war, and gives the rebels pre-war borders, would Iomedae still accept that gracefully? 

- that sounds great. He doesn't expect they'll be trusted if they promise not to operate out of Oris, and they do want Aroden there because otherwise the place is going to be subject to Atet's influence, but if the Empire wants reparations or something, or for Iomedae to apologize, or to publicly execute her, sure, why not.

Or to...publically...execute– oh right resurrection. That's...quite something. It's getting the Legate to make actual unintentional facial expressions. 

He agrees that a promise to stay out of Oris would absolutely not be trusted, not at this point. Maybe someday once relations are better, but that's going to take time – the Empire currently sees Iomedae as dangerously unpredictable and incomprehensible, even if Sterngal is very aware that the Knights of Ozem, and not even unreasonably so, see the Empire the same way. 

Reparations - to both sides, maybe? because Oris definitely wants reparations and it's going to be like pulling teeth to get the council to sign off on that when their view is that the rebels started it - would help. An official apology would also help. 

(He is not even going to comment on the public execution comment although he's incredibly curious if Marit is saying that out of annoyance with Iomedae for handing him this job, and is maaaaaybe going to use his discreet signal to get a Thoughtsensing report just to assuage that curiosity. It might be relevant!) 

- well, is he? 

He thinks Iomedae would do it if it would help, but he mostly suggested it because the mental image is absolutely hilarious. The Empire does not actually possess any reliable ways to kill Iomedae if she's trying not to die, and he's not sure they possess many that'd work even if she's trying to die? You could probably decapitate her if you had like fifteen minutes and she was patiently holding still, which she would, if that was what they had agreed on.

(He's frustrated with Iomedae right now but he'd never hurt her, and that's not really part of his motivation for finding this hilarious.)

He expects an apology to be no problem and a formal agreement about reparations to be no problem though the Empire's a lot richer than the Knights are, actually? The reparations might have to be paid out in resurrections with the Empire providing the diamonds. He's sure something can be worked out.

Oris would presumably be delighted about resurrections and wouldn't have the Empire's concerns about people coming back subtly influenced by Aroden. 

Though if Marit has any suggestions for ways he would go about testing the hypothesis that Aroden is sending back the Empire's people with subtle mind-control (whether or not He's known to do it for normal resurrections), if he had the Empire's state of information about Aroden's capabilities and Aroden's motives. (So, "he wouldn't because he's Lawful" isn't a knockdown argument by itself.)

Marit ....isn't actually sure how the Empire can verify that, if extensively mindreading all the people who've returned doesn't do it. At some point, if Aroden has that power, they could have just already done it to the entire government, so he's not sure it's a useful degree of paranoia, but he doesn't exactly have a knockdown response to it.

He does think the mindreading helps. But the dead people had mostly been dead for years, making it harder to pick up on subtle shifts to their personality, and the scry-specialist is apparently kind of a wreck but that may just be a result of the obvious mind-control when he attempted to scry Alfirin. 

They could definitely use a trustworthy way to check, because...sooner or later, if they want an actual stable peace, they're going to need a resolution to the disputed question of whether Iomedae - or presumably Alfirin - mind-controlled Altarrin into defecting in the first place. And the Empire can't exactly mindread the former Archmage-General right now. 

Marit gave Arbas permission to do a close read of the Archmage-General before returning, and similar things can be arranged with other Thoughtsensers who knew Altarrin well. He was actually hoping that Arbas would have been somewhat persuasive on that point. It sounded like the two had known each other.

It was perhaps not maximally convincing for...other reasons...but it definitely included the fact that Arbas had himself been a mind-controlled prisoner, and was in fact still under mind control when he read Altarrin; they have only Iomedae's word for it that Alfirin wasn't doing a lot more than just blocking his mage-gift with it. 

...What would they do in Marit's world, if Iomedae or Alfirin were accused of un-Lawful wrongdoing on this level? Assume that for some reason it was by a party who didn't find 'well, they're paladins' a completely convincing explanation. 

Arbitration over accused breaches of contract by the Shining Crusade is conducted by the Church of Abadar, god of contracts, credible in Golarion as caring far more about contracts than about geopolitics. 

The Church of Abadar would be hard-pressed, actually, if Iomedae and Alfirin were accused of serious wrongdoing. Enchantments can't touch Iomedae, and Alfirin probably has some way to fake it. If it were - something as serious as having allegedly betrayed negotiations, and the two of them the only credible witnesses....

...it would be done in Aktun, is what would happen. It'd be expensive, but Iomedae and Alfirin would pay if the arbitration agreement didn't cover it. In Aktun, the divine realm of Abadar, the city of the First Vault, with a population in the billions, Abadar could make any mortal subject to His truth spell, in His courthouse. Even Iomedae, who is more than a mortal. ...even a god, probably. They would Plane Shift the important parties to Aktun and they'd give testimony there and everyone else would watch by scry.

He doesn't think this will work on the Empire, as they reject the premise that there are Lawful gods. But if the Padishah Empire, or Nidal, or Tar-Baphon or somebody, accused Iomedae of perfidy, that's how it'd go.

Huh. 

That - is indeed not workable for the Empire, right now - but it's intriguing that it's a questions his world has an answer to. And it presumably goes without saying that the Empire would find it very informative to be able to send their own representatives to visit 'Aktun' and see it for themselves (a population in the billions! wow), but he'll say it explicitly anyway. 

Is there anything else Marit wants to add, or questions he has, before the Legate goes to write up his report? 

Oh, he could take people to Aktun in the next day, if they'd like. There is not a meaningful risk that they'll get up to trouble in Aktun; Abadar does not really tolerate that. He had assumed that 'come visit Abadar's divine realm' wasn't a very compelling pitch, but if the Empire wants to see it, that can be immediately and uncomplicatedly arranged. 

It's - mixed - they would want to send someone who could be quarantined afterward, and someone un-Gifted to reduce the damage they could do if 'Abadar' mind-controlled them. But he will certainly include the offer in his report. They've - got to take some risks in pursuit of more information, at some point, if they ever want to resolve this one way or another. Hopefully on the side of peace. 

That is his hope as well. 

(This is very sincere.)

And - if Iomedae or Alfirin did do something terrible, here, Aktun would be how to prove it to the other nations of Golarion, because otherwise the Empire just flatly won't be believed.

(Sterngal is - mostly not making strong internal updates, right now, on his own beliefs about what actually happened with Archmage-General Altarrin. He can hold both sides in his head, for now, and respond to Marit's sincerity with sincere thanks of his own.) 

And he'll excuse himself for now, to go off and write a report.