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Iomedae in the Eastern Empire!
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They'll find two people walking towards the citadel, their hands in the air. "We surrender," the man says calmly to the soldiers. "We are delegates of the Knights of Ozem, an organization at war with the Empire."

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"Right," says the corporal.

A runner goes and tells his bosses, while the rest of the squad will watch the paladins with weapons ready, since they don't trust them at all. People at war with the emperor usually don't surrender in a province that isn't at war, and this could be some kind of clever trick.

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It could! But they continue to stand there, not doing anything. 

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About a dozen mages, who STILL SUSPECT A TRICK and are watched by other less close mages, will Gate in for the purpose of putting up force-barriers around them and hitting them with compulsions not to harm people or use magic!

... The trap still doesn't spring?

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Nope! Now they're compulsioned not to harm people or use magic! They continue to stand there with their hands in the air. The man repeats the thing he said earlier about how they surrender and are delegates of the Knights of Ozem.

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Oh-kay, they are going to get them into a cell (not one of the nasty ones) and quickly ask their superiors who the Knights of Ozem are, they've got two people claiming to be from them who said they surrender.

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The WHAT?

... Make sure they absolutely cannot use magic. Make sure they cannot use enchanted items. Make sure they cannot stab people, they're very good at stabbing people. Ask them what the hell they're here for.

He's going to tell the Emperor.

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(The delegates say they are here by the request of Iomedae, leader of the Knights of Ozem. She said the Knights were at war with the Empire, that communications had recently broken down, that it was probably a suicide mission. They have some letters.


They are by this point notably weirdly unruffled about all of this.)

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The letters will take a bit longer, but the message itself reaches the Emperor within less than a minute. 

 

 

 

 

 

What. 

 

Message back: he wants immediate confirmation of whether they've been here the whole time and just not showing themselves - in which case this seems to mostly imply either that Iomedae can communicate between worlds or else maybe that Aroden can - or if they came over from the other world for this mission. In which case he wants to know how

Also he wants to read the letters but they should obviously take precautions and make sure they're safe and plausibly have someone else read them and reword everything in case they're, you know, mind control letters. 

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They were Gated over by Altarrin about five minutes before they were Gated to the site they surrendered at! 

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Yep, the Ministry of Barbarians thought of that, they have an expendable scribe making a fair copy of the letters. 

However, Duke Klemath Elmore has a problem. They have never before had foreign powers from another world intervene in a regional rebellion, swear not to intervene outside a region, and then intervene outside the region to kidnap someone. The soldiers presently holding them don't know what protocol to apply.

The foreign minister has three possible strategies for the Emperor:

- Treat this as a diplomatic mission from a recognized country, i.e., get them an embassy in the capital, spy on it but don't do more than minimal non-assassination-and-subversion compulsions in the event they need to meet with the Emperor.

- Treat this as a diplomatic mission from rebels, i.e, extract all the information we can without torture or compulsions-to-make-them-talk while keeping them de facto locked up but in a cell that isn't horrible, use compulsions to make them not harm people, Thoughtsense a lot. But, like let them go afterwards, if they want.

- Treat this as a diplomatic mission from rebels who have previously violated the laws of war such as by exploiting attempts to negotiate with them for military purposes, i.e., throw them in a dungeon and interrogate them mercilessly for all their information and assume their words are air.

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Well. So far it certainly looks like Iomedae's people broke their word and exploited Altarrin's attempts to negotiate with them in order to mind-control him into abandoning the Empire. 

But. Maybe it's not what it looks like. Or maybe it is but this particular pair of diplomats is completely ignorant of the betrayal and can't give anything away. 

 

...They'll go with option two. For now. And get them an actual guest suite, if possible, they can quickly add all the shielding that a prison cell would have without making it obvious. - Of course, if anything concerning does come up on Thoughtsensing, they should be willing to react immediately and escalate to option three. But Iomedae wanted these people here, and so Bastran doubts they're going to try to flee, at least not before they've told the story they were sent to tell. 

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Understood!

(Also, Klemath is going to send in some diplomats to ask them questions, both "where is Altarrin" and baseline ones like "so, what's your country like?"

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Altarrin was recently in a underground supply location where he recovered from the interworld gate and cast the in-world one. He's probably left by now, but they don't know for sure; they don't know what his plans were after dropping them off. 

Tiaves is from Taldor, and it's - the greatest power in Avistan, the glorious sponsors of the Shining Crusade? 

Kiritan is from Absalom, the city Aroden drew out of the sea, and she thinks that Taldor is the past and Absalom the future, not that either of them think about geopolitics much; they're Iomedae's people, and after the war Iomedae's going to be founding her own country in conquered Ustalav. 

 

 

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The Knights of Ozem did not take any actions aimed at causing Altarrin to defect. Nor, to our knowledge, did Aroden. The ring is a Scholar's Ring, a standard magic item which permits reading in unfamiliar languages and which does not cast any mind-affecting spells, nor does it dispel or suppress compulsions. Any magic expert from Golarion can verify that for you, though I'm aware that you'll need unrestricted access to Golarion to meaningfully check this claim. 

The Knights have not conducted operations in the Empire outside Oris. Our current understanding is that my headband, which vastly enhances the reasoning abilities and persuasive abilities of the wearer, caused Altarrin to notice that the Empire is caught in a trap of the gods' making, and to decide to Gate to us. He has included his own letter with more detail of his account. We understand that from your perspective this claim is implausible. We would, under the circumstances, be willing to go to considerable lengths to demonstrate its truth, but we possess limited avenues to do that. We've sent delegates, empowered priests of Aroden who I have briefed on the situation and who I expect you to interrogate and quite plausibly to kill (though of course I would be grateful for their safe return, and can arrange to collect them if you decide to leave them alive). This is costly to the Knights and to Aroden, but it is important to me to keep the door open for further talks, even at a steep price.

If nothing else, I hope to maintain lines of communication adequate such that, were your Empire under sudden assault from Tar Baphon, you would regard yourselves as having the option of asking us to come and stop him. I am not the most dangerous thing in my world, and I have no desire to see the Empire destroyed; that is sufficient that we might under some circumstances find ourselves allied.

The Knights ourselves have, at this point, very restricted ability to operate on Velgarth, but in the course of recovering from Iomedae's assassination we contacted other parties which can more easily transit between worlds, and which may conduct operations inside the Empire, in conjunction with Altarrin or independently. The most important such is Alfirin, a powerful mage of our world, whose capabilities in broad strokes are known to the delegates. (The Church of Abadar, god of trade and commerce, has also negotiated for access to Velgarth, but they are unlikely to operate in the Empire or anywhere they are unwelcome, and unlikely to operate in Velgarth at all in the next few weeks.)

From your perspective, this should be treated as notice of the end of the Knights' commitment to not operate in the Empire outside of Oris. We in fact don't intend to, but you don't to our knowledge have the resources to tell Golarion factions apart, and I anticipate that there will be operations inside the Empire using Golarion magic in the near future, and from this point forwards that assurance will probably make your expectations less accurate rather than moreso, which is very much contrary to my intent when I made that assurance.

I imagine my word is, at this point, worth very little to you. The delegates might help with that, or they might not.

But for whatever it's worth, I regret very much that negotiations were, from your perspective, betrayed. I prize the lives of my soldiers very dearly, and those chosen by Aroden are very expensive for Him to replace. I have nonetheless risked sending them to you because I think I have a duty to try much much harder, given what happened, to be credible to you as someone it is possible to negotiate with. I will make other costly expenditures towards that end, if I or you identify some that might be genuinely helpful.

I swear to you that I did not, and would not have, take any actions which from my best guess of your perspective would have constituted a betrayal of the implicit or explicit terms of our negotiations, that I did not authorize anyone to do so, that I sent no deliberate misrepresentations of our intent or our aims, and that Aroden would renounce me, were I to have done what it must seem to you that I have done here.

You can leave future communications directed to me in a scryable location with one of my magic items present for targeting.

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And a letter that appears to be from Altarrin, or at least has his name at the bottom of it, though none of his titles. 

First: it was by my own choice, or close enough to it, that I defected to Iomedae's world. I do not expect you to believe this, and cannot at this time offer proof, but it seems worth saying. I was not at the time thinking especially clearly, but I believe the compulsions were more at fault than the headband, though I admit I was in an unusual mental state to which the headband was contributing. 

 

At the time, my reasoning was that if I returned to Jacona, it would likely be in the interest of the gods to plot for my assassination. In hindsight, I think this is not true, and I was biased in my reasoning by having to work around the compulsions and believe that leaving was the best way to serve the Empire. I realize my departure must have been incredibly disruptive and terrifying, and I am sorry that I could not see a better way. 

 

I do, in fact, think that my choice to defect will serve the Empire better than anything else I could have done. Had I returned to Jacona, even if I had survived, it would have been far harder to avoid a pointless and wasteful war that is in neither side's interests. It is not a war the Empire could win; again, I cannot prove this, but I expect you will come to agree once you know more. In the interest of full honestly, I expect that had I returned and spoken to you, you would have concluded either that I was disloyal or having a nervous breakdown. I admit that I was arguably having a nervous breakdown, though I believe I was in my right mind in the ways that matter. I also believe that I remain loyal to the true Empire, the vision of the First Emperor, but of course I would say that anyway. 

 

I can only repeat what Iomedae has already written to you: it is of the utmost importance that you do not attempt to scry for Tar-Baphon. If he learns of the Empire and decides to seize control of it, both our side and Iomedae's will lose. 

 

I am not sure, yet, where to go from here. But I do not see myself, or Iomedae, as enemies of the Empire, and I hope that instead we can rebuild some kind of trust and have something better. 

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... Do they know how Altarrin was when they left him? He was recently believed Compulsioned and kidnapped and the Empire is obviously very worried about the Duke.

(In fact, the point of this is obviously to get them thinking about it so there's information a mage/thoughtsenser can work from for a scry.)

And, since they are if possible talking to them separately: So, tell us more about Iomedae and the Shining Crusade and the war she's fighting!

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Tiaves thought that Altarrin seemed visibly fine, though of course if Alfirin was puppeting him Tiaves would hardly have been able to tell. (A scryable amount of detail can be extracted from his head about the location they were Gated to; he's not trying not to think of it.) Tiaves doubts he was Compulsioned and kidnapped because Iomedae said that he'd defected of his own free will, and Iomedae wouldn't lie about that. (If Alfirin was puppeting him, that started after Altarrin arrived in Golarion.)

 

 

Kiritan will explain that Tar Baphon is an archmage, and a lich who discovered the secret to having an unlimited number of undead slaves, and tried to take over the world, and the Shining Crusade is the effort to stop him. Iomedae is the Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade, and the founder of the Knights of Ozem, her own paladin order of which Kiritan and Tiaves are members, and also Iomedae is the strongest bravest Goodest Lawfulest person ever to live, and is going to be the Lawful Good goddess of actually winning, someday. Lawful Good needs one of those. 

(Kiritan has a crush. She has this in common with at least half her unit.)

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And, to the Emperor, they will deliver... slight paraphrases... of the letters.

The Knights of Ozem did not take actions for the purpose of making Altarrin defect, and we believe Aroden did not, either. The ring is a Scholastic Ring, a factorymade mage-artifact for allowing the wearer to read in unfamiliar languages and which does not cast any spells that do anything at all to affect the mind, nor break compulsions, nor remove compulsions. Any Adept in Golarion can confirm that, though I do know you will need free access to Golarion to confirm this claim.

The Ozem-Knights have not engaged in military action in the Empire, outside of Oris and Tozoa provinces. We believe at present that the headband you obtained, which greatly improves the manipulative and logical powers of whoever wears it, caused Altarrin to notice a god-plot that had caught the Empire and so led him to leave it and join us by Gate. (His own account is in the other letter.) We understand that you have reason to disbelieve us, and would, given the present state, be prepared to do a great deal of work to demonstrate our honesty, but we possess few ways to do that. We have sent delegates, priests of Aroden who wield his miracles and who I have told everything they need to know about the situation. I expect you to interrogate them. I also expect you to kill them, though I would be grateful for their safe return and can bring them back to me if you let them live. Killing these delegates is expensive for my organization and to Aroden, and yet it is still important to me to ensure that future communications remain possible, even if the costs are high.

Even if this accomplishes nothing else, I desire to maintain the possibility of contact such that if the Eastern Empire was attacked by Tar Baphon, it could still call me to your aid in defeating him. There are threats in my world more dangerous than I, and unlike me they would desire to see the Empire destroyed, and so this may mean that we may be allies.

We the Knights have little power to act in your world, but since the death of Iomedae we have given information to other parties that can travel between worlds with greater ease and which are not forbidden to act within the Empire, either allied with Altarrin or on their own. The greatest such is Alfirin, an Adept of our world whose powers are broadly known to our delegates. (The church of the god Abadar, whose domains are exchange and markets, have attempted to purchase the right to enter Velgarth but are not likely to visit the Empire, for there they would be unwelcome, and unlikely to act at all within the next fortnight.

In your eyes you should behave as if we have given notice that the Knights will no longer bind ourselves to limit our military action within the bounds of the Empire to Oris and Tozoa Provinces. We do not intend to break these limits, but we do not believe you can tell the difference between the factions within Golarion, and I expect there to be military actions within the Empire's boundaries not limited to those two provinces in which Golarion magic is used shortly, and I expect that now the assurance I gave you will make you expect false things, which was very much opposed to what I intended when I first gave that insurance.

I do not expect you to trust my words, and the delegates may or may not help with that, but for whatever value it has I greatly regret that the past negotiations were thus in your eyes betrayed. I value my soldiers lives' greatly, and champions of Aroden are difficult for him to fill the places of, but I have nonetheless sent them to you because it is my duty to try with great vigor to convince you that I am possible to negotiate with. I will make great expenditures towards that goal if there are any that you or I believe may be truly helpful.

This I swear unto you: I did not take and would not have taken any actions which I believed you believed would have been a betrayal of the terms, stated or otherwise, of our negotiations. I did not give my permission for anyone else to do so. I at no point misrepresented by knowing action or inaction our goals or purposes. That my god would cast me aside if I had done what you must believe that I have done.

Future messages directed to me can be placed in any location not warded against scrying with any of my mage-artifacts available to target.

 

Let me begin by saying that I defected by my own free choice, as free as choices ever are, to the world of Iomedae. I doubt that You will believe this and I cannot prove it now, but it is still worth the statement. At that time I was not thinking unusually clearly, but it is my belief that the compulsions were more to blame than the headband, although the headband did contribute to the unusual mental state I was then in.

It was then my reasoning that if I returned to the Imperial City, the gods would then desire to plan my assassination. I believe now that this was false and that I was misled by my desire to avoid the compulsions that bound me, and so to believe that to depart the Empire was the finest way to serve it. I regret that I did not see any truer path.

I do believe now that my choice to betray the Empire will serve it better than any other choice would have; if I had returned to Jacona I could have only with much greater difficulty averted this purposeless and destructive war that neither party can gain from. The Empire could not win the war again; this I cannot prove, but I predict that you will think as I do when you know more. For true honesty's sake I believe that if I had come back to the Imperial City and spoken to You, You would have believed that either I was a traitor or that my mind had broken under the strain. I agree it could be said that my mind had in fact broken under the strain, but it is my true conviction that I was rightly thinking in every important way. I once more believe that my loyalties remain to the Empire in truth, the Empire of the First Emperor, but I do acknowledge that I would say this were I misleading you.

All I can say is to repeat the writing of Iomedae: It is a matter of the highest importance that you absolutely do not target a scry on Tar-Baphon. If he learns of the Empire and seeks to command it, it will spell doom for the Empire and for Iomedae.

I do not yet know where to travel from here, but I do not perceive myself nor Iomedae to be enemies of the Empire, and I desire instead to rebuild some little trust and to work for a greater good.

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Ughhhhh Bastran really hates reading rewritten letters. Especially when the originals were from people he knows. Altarrin's is downright uncanny, and - there's the unfortunate downside that he feels significantly less able to judge whether Altarrin really wrote it, or whether he was, at the time, in his right mind. He...practically admits that he hasn't been in his right mind. 

 

The rewording of Iomedae's is...if anything harder to account for, he's read only a few samples of her writing and still finds her terrifyingly unpredictable and so he can't tell if and where meanings might have been subtly shifted. 

He's...glad for the warning, though. Iomedae is right, at this point her words are wind, but - she could just not have warned him. She certainly didn't need to send her own people as hostages, or tell him details about this 'Alfirin' who is apparently counted among her allies but not under her command. 

He finds himself wanting to order that they definitely not kill the captive diplomats, half out of...spite...? To prove that the Empire is better than Iomedae? He's not sure. It isn't just that he hates ordering executions. 

 

 

Altarrin... 

Alive. It's - more of a relief than he had realized - he had never explicitly formed the thought that Altarrin might be dead but it must have been there in the back of his mind. 

Fragments of the letter drift in his head, as he rereads it aimlessly. 

 

 

You would have believed that either I was a traitor or that my mind had broken under the strain

the compulsions were more to blame than the headband, although the headband did contribute

it could be said that my mind had in fact broken under the strain

I was misled by my desire to avoid the compulsions that bound me

I defected by my own free choice, as free as choices ever are

 

to rebuild some little trust and to work for a greater good

 

 

my loyalties remain to the Empire in truth, the Empire of the First Emperor

 

 

 

I regret that I did not see any truer path

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He can process that later. Feelings: in box. 

 

The Emperor's orders are to scry for Altarrin - they'll need a specialist, he's not stupid and neither is the Adept who is probably puppeting him - they should try to scry for her as well. And of course target the room directly, though likely they'll have moved on by now. 

 

As long as Iomedae's diplomats are being cooperative, he wants the interrogators to be courteous, but they need to know everything. Details of the war with Tar-Baphon, as much as they know; anything more they can say about the circumstances of Altarrin's arrival, was it expected - it wouldn't have been, if Iomedae is telling the truth, it would have startled her as badly as his disappearance startled the Empire. Right? 

- whether Iomedae has an independent way to travel between worlds, or is counting entirely on Altarrin, that's important - 

 

- what was Altarrin here to do, assuming he didn't Gate out the instant he had rested - 

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They'll get a scrying-specialist to track down the fugitive and his allies and his base!

... OK, several scrying-specialists.

... OK, every scrying specialist in the Empire they can get their hands on.

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... Can they explain some basic concepts, they will try to avoid saying in quite these words, like 'undead', 'lich', 'necromancer', 'Alfirin', and 'Shining Crusade'? Also the circumstances of Altarrin's arrival? Really, how does travel between worlds work? I mean, how did Iomedae even get here in the first place?

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The diplomats have orders from Iomedae to be entirely candid and as helpful as possible. 

It's possible to use magic to animate corpses! This leaves the souls stuck in those corpses. It's debated how much the souls are conscious and suffering, but probably not 'none', and more if the necromancer doing it is Tar-Baphon. A lich is an Evil wizard who puts his soul in an object so he can't be killed, except if you find the object and destroy it. 

Alfirin is a ninth circle archmage. It's as powerful as a wizard can get, which is to say that wizards keep getting more powerful after that but there aren't tenth-circle spells. (Greater complexity lets spells do more. A fifth circle spell is the Golarion equivalent of a Gate. A sixth circle spell can, say, do that involuntarily to someone else, or do Chain Lightning across a battlefield. A seventh circle spell can Gate to a different plane. They are not wizard experts and don't know any famous eighth circle wizard spells - maybe an extradimensional Mansion is eighth circle? Ninth circle spells are, like, Tsunami, and Time Stop, and Wail of the Banshee, and Wish. The 'if you're nearby, and the ninth circle is not your ally, you die and it's not close' spells.)

The Shining Crusade is the war between Taldor and Tar-Baphon, except, Tiaves observes, ' crusade' sounds nobler and more heroic and easier to fundraise for.  (Kiritan's telling is that a crusade just is an exceptionally noble and just war, Good against Evil.) The war with Tar-Baphon has been on for twenty years, as they've ground their way across more than three hundred miles of horribly haunted, frequently mountainous territory. (It doesn't sound like they have permanent Gate-thresholds, or anything like it.) They're within a campaign season's striking distance of Gallowspire, his stronghold, now, but they have no way to take it, though of course it could fall as easily as Urgir. 

....Urgir fell a few days ago. It was a dwarven sky-citadel, impossible to enter with dimensional transit magic, its walls nearly impregnable even with very large magical explosions, held by a hundred thousand of the enemy, and the army as it besieged Urgir was encircled by a second army of Tar-Baphon's, of nearly the same size, and then Iomedae called the gods to her righteous cause and Urgir fell without bloodshed. It sounds unbelievable but they were all there, and witnessed it; Iomedae grew her wings and flew, and spoke to all within miles, and told them that she'd come to liberate the city, and then magic slaughtered all the undead within it, and bound all the living to not resist her or hurt anyone including themselves, and made new gates through the walls, and they marched into a city powerless to stop them and opened the ordinary gates and are now bringing order and civilization and prosperity. (Iomedae is being very strict about ensuring that none of the local civilians are wronged, even though the local civilians are orcs and keep trying to kill them. It helps a lot that the local civilians are magically unable to actually hurt anyone, most of the time.)

They know nothing at all about Altarrin's arrival; it must have been kept very very secret. He was in a Magnificent Mansion Alfirin put up just outside the city when they met him. His arrival still is being kept very very secret, actually; Iomedae had a song-sorcerer on hand to erase their memories of the briefing, if they didn't want the mission. (If they didn't want their memories modified, they'd have been turned away at an earlier stage). Iomedae says that Altarrin's arrival was a surprise to her, that she had not intended or expected it, and they genuinely believe that she not only wouldn't but in an important sense metaphysically couldn't have been lying. 

They have no idea what Altarrin is here to do, aside from drop them off.

 

They also know nothing about interworld travel beyond that Aroden did it a lot, and that Alfirin is a ninth circle archmage and those can kind of do almost anything if they have time to prepare, and that Iomedae is a nascent god and probably getting between worlds is easier than miraculously taking a city.

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Hey, the Ministry of Progress is our political ally, we should tell them Ministry of Progress to get on that animating-dead-corpses thing, especially if it's a possible route to immortality.

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