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Iomedae in the Eastern Empire!
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"As you say, Your Majesty."

The compulsions do look correct. It's probably either nothing, or a godplot to get him to try to overthrow the Emperor.

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“It’s not over yet but - I’m hopeful,” the Emperor says quietly. "I'll send you a copy of the latest diplomatic report, but - I think we could have more leverage with Iomedae than we realized. And I'm more sure than that that she doesn't want a war if there's a cheaper way." 

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Oh. Good. This is probably a trap, what is the specific trap this time -

"As you say, Your Majesty."

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And the Emperor will dismiss Kastil, and go back to to the endless thankless work of trying to cause there to stop being a war.

(It’s not actually thankless for Altarrin, though Bastran would find it grueling and so he’s mostly inhabiting that for verisimilitude. It’s very satisfying, though, and he can update Kietres that Kastil is suspicious in all the usual Kastil ways, but does not seem to have formed any specific suspicion that the Emperor is acting oddly and might be a body double.)

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Kietres will relay in turn that Bastran seems to be doing a little better, and spoke with Iomedae about the moral philosophy of punishment at some length, and is having Kiritan in so he can apologize to her. 

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And Iomedae will at a time arranged in advance scry the Marshal Orestan.

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Then he will be in a sound-proofed tent!

"Iomedae," he says. There will be a battle soon - once again, he's just waiting for them to come to him. This time he expects it to go better. "Pleased to hear from you again. Is Soria doing well?"

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"I believe that she is. She signed up with us and has been very valuable, though I can't speak to anything specifically.


I want you to sign a ceasefire."

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"That is a much larger favor than any you have previously requested. It will ruin the momentum of the campaign, disenhearten my troops unless I can promise them victory, and encourage the Empire to believe they have me on the run, causing them to be much less inclined to offer terms I can accept."

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"I know. I think I can get you pre-war borders, I think I can get it for you this week, and I think any glorious victories between now and then are, if anything, making the peace harder to get, because the main constraint here is how much face the Empire can save and how credibly it can deter the inevitable revolts in all its other provinces once you achieve this."

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"Pre-which war? The Empire would be very eager to grant us our boundaries from before their last invasion, much less so to give us those from before they annexed Tozoa."

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"Tozoa's the whole puzzle, isn't it. I...wish you could live without it, honestly, but I know you can't and won't, and so I'm going to make them give it to you. I would just like it if tens of thousands more people don't die while we sort that out. and if the Empire doesn't in fact collapse over having granted it to you."

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He inclines his head in a nod of respect. "The Empire won't collapse; most of their territory doesn't want to be independent, and anyone who was going to rebel except for secession has joined Norean's play for power. They have a functioning justice system and all nobles are under compulsions of loyalty to Emperor and Empire, and anyone who wanted out from under them already got it. The Empire will face a war for independence in Tolmassar, and I am surprised that you don't want them to lose it."

"And, Iomedae, the people of Tozoa make up more than half of my army. The Empire hasn't raised any legions from it because they don't trust that anyone would fight for them without compulsions."

"But I recognize what you're saying."

"What terms do you think you can get?" He'll collect a map of Oris - an old map. "These are the prewar boundaries I am formally claiming; this is the area -" he'll use a simple light-spell to indicate the borders; it is almost identical, barring uninhabited mountain passes "- that Oris in fact held and that my troops are coming from."

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"I'm going to fix the Empire. If I couldn't, then by all means, independence for Tolmassar; but I can, and war is so stunningly wasteful, and desperate war in Velgarth even worse than that. I'll take down the maps. I think my resources within the Empire are inclined to push for the actual prewar borders, blaming the whole thing on the Knights of Ozem, demanding reparations of us, and getting some face-saving assurances that'll play well at home, if there are any.

When this is progressing well, I'm going to end the other two civil wars. I could've done that weeks ago, but - I wanted to make sure that didn't just turn out very poorly for Oris."

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"I appreciate it."

Can he tell Iomedae his bottom line and have her act as a proxy for him? Based on his faith in the gods and his experience with her in the war, the answer is... probably yes.

"I don't think anyone here will believe anything I sign saying everything is your fault. Is that a problem for you?"

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"I'm not going to sign anything that's false, but it is not a high priority for me that it be widely believed in Oris, much less that the mangled version of it that inevitably gets circulated is. I was thinking about something like - the Knights agree to withdraw any operational support they or Aroden are providing to the rebels in Tolmassar and Taymyrr, acknowledge that many of the deaths in the civil wars were our fault, agree to provide resurrections at no cost above material components, acknowledge and regret respects in which we didn't act in accordance with local international norms, condemn some of Ithik's interventions and say enough rude things about them we credibly don't seem likely to ally with them, etcetera."

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"Seems reasonable enough. I have no objection." He'll pull a coin out of his pocket and start flipping it while he talks. "If you can fix the Empire, I'm all in favor. The best candidate to do the job is Mage-Colonel Cesion of Jenona, a claim you should discount for personal biases that I nonetheless believe to be true."

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Altarrin seems like an impressive fellow, she doesn't say because banter is insufficient grounds to say anything that might make anyone think Altarrin's operating in the Empire more actively than 'advising Iomedae'. 

"We'll have to talk sometime about what a fixed Empire looks like. I think it definitely isn't in the middle of three civil wars, though. And I'm getting more optimistic about bringing them around on Aroden! We're in talks to schedule a visit to His paradise. I'm worried the diplomats will find Golarion's great cities merely mediocre beside Jacona but they cannot possibly have this complaint about Axis."

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"I'd love to see it, if I ever have a day free."

Flip flip flip.

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Aroden's not established here to the meddling with coin flips degree, and she has no idea if the other gods will approve this plan of hers or not. Plausibly not. Atet may have started to notice not just that she's noisy but that she's on top of that a menace.

"I expect the gods are divided, all told, about our plans."

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"Actually, they seem all in favor," he says calmly, pocketing the coin.

 "I cannot yield any villages or farms in the peace treaty that gave me troops and officers for my army. But - money would be useful for establishing a new government that isn't in debt to Ithik, but the reparations and the passes and the Tolmassar extension and the returned throne and so forth - 

- I put those in my peace demands to have something to give up so the Empire could save face by not yielding completely to my demands."

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"Thank you," she says, very earnestly. She'd guessed as much, but it's still - a move that many people wouldn't make, to actually be straightforward about which demands they're willing to move on. "I will update you if anything changes, but my current guess is that I can get you every village and every city, and the debt to Ithik will shrink in the face of interworld trade."

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"Thank you," he says. "Do let me know when that becomes a clearer possibility, I think Oris will be very happy to be the center of one of the first permanent trans-planetary Gates."

(He's happy to explain the other things in the demand he can and can't compromise over - he cannot recognize anything that will give the Empire a claim of sovereignty over Oris, which means not allowing Imperial subjects who don't swear fealty to Oris over the Empire to keep owning nonmovable property in Oris and making sure there are absolutely no treaty-granted rights for the Empire to run anything in Oris, station troops in Oris, monitor Oris's compliance with treaties, or legally interfere in Oris's internal politics in any way whatsoever.)

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"What if it's reciprocal, they can monitor you and you can monitor them?"

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"Then they can unilaterally declare that we're breaking a treaty when we ignore their demands and we're still powerless to object if they break theirs, because they're the Eastern Empire and we're not. Third-party monitoring is fine." Yes, yes, they can do that anyway, but he wants to give them no excuse whatsoever to station troops in Oris until he's sorted his country out.

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