And, back to the paladins!

This sounds very interesting, and they're curious about how they define the magic of wizards and song-sorcerers and people the gods give miracles and everything. (The Ministry of Barbarians intends to transport them to somewhere even further away where it's harder for their godly influence to do things just as soon as it has a minute.) This does indeed sound extraordinary! Can they tell them more about...

... Paladins, dwarves, orcs, 'nascent gods', how logistics works in their world...

(This list will go on for a while.)

Meanwhile:

If they get half a dozen of the literal top spell-researchers with past work in scrying variants to, in parallel, try different ways of targeting or routing the search-spell, first to get around all known types of shield and then some wildly improvised modifications that might get around hypothetical shield-techniques not actually known to the Empire - 

(they think probably Altarrin is just not in this world at all, but they'll keep trying)

- they still can't target on either Altarrin or Alfirin, but in about thirty-five minutes, one of the scry-specialists trying three modifications at once, one of which is novel and invented on the spot, will be able to get through to the room. 

Altarrin is totally still in the room! He's not incapacitated with fatigue or anything, but he wants to be actually rested before forging out into less thoroughly shielded areas of Velgarth, invisible or not. He's dug out a bedroll and is lying down on it, though not sleeping. 

He is also Mind Blanked and not visible on scrying. There's just a bedroll that might perhaps be subtly flattened. 

Oh, is that a scry? She rather thought that might happen.

The scry specialist terminates his spell, clears his throat, and announces to the room,

"Scrying an archmage, or something an archmage cares about, or a room that happens to contain an archmage, is a risky proposition. This could have been a final strike. Don't bother me again."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh???!!!!

They do have guards, one of whom will have an unscaffolded Gate up underneath the man in about a second and a half, dropping him through into a remote underground shielded room where if he does Final Strike it will at least only cause infrastructure damage - 

- does this work - 

It works fine! Now one of their best scryers is in a remote underground shielded room.

...No, wait, he just gated out.

(AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!?????)

To, uh. Where.  Can they scry him? Can they get him on a comms spell?

(also URGENT MESSAGE TO JACONA GET THE EMPEROR TO A SECURE SECRET OFFSITE LOCATION NOW) 

Not far! Just to his quarters, where they can scry him writing a letter. They can also get him on a comms spell!

<I just want to reiterate that I could have done much worse. I control this man's actions; I control his magic. That is not by any means all I can do. You were idiots operating outside of your normal context so this time you get away with just a warning. If you bother me again, or another less forgiving archmage, you won't get a second.>

...The letter says much the same.

(Bastran has been RUDELY INTERRUPTED in the middle of his WORK and is now in a randomized secure location a hundred miles away from Jacona. He is grumpy about it.) 

They immediately drop the comms spell. It would - no one wants to kill a top scrying specialist, especially when this isn't even his fault, but the guards are terrified. 

...The mage-quarters are shielded against magic, not to a Work Room level but the mage won't see a Gate outside. 

They are not shielded against Thoughtsensing, and the scrying specialist is not wearing a talisman. There aren't many Thoughtsensers strong enough to knock someone out by hitting them hard enough along the Mindspeech channel, but they can have someone there in twenty-five seconds, hopefully while the compulsioned man is still staying put? 

Does the alien compulsion magic do anything to protect him from being knocked unconscious with a very hard Mindspeech thwack? 

Nope! He is now unconscious at his desk, message hopefully thoroughly delivered.

They will watch to be sure that he stays that way for a full minute and then send some Healers in, both to provide medical attention and to make sure he stays out while they try to figure out what spell is on him and whether it can be removed. 

They were expecting a scry, quite possibly while Altarrin was still resting, and so the instant Alfirin warns him, Altarrin scoops everyone close together with a force-net and then dropping them through a horizontal unscaffolded Gate. 

- onto the other continent. His placement is not very accurate because he's doing it off an extremely out of date map, but it's hard to miss an entire continent and ten thousand miles is...completely doable, apparently, with the belt...but absolutely no one in the Empire should have scry locations or even the range, and he and Alfirin are still unscryable. 

They land in the middle of a desert. 

She can puppet the Empire on a brief merry chase (Or a longer one if she had particular reason to) and hold a conversation at the same time.

"...This does not seem like an ideal place for resting. Are you recovered enough, or is there a better place to rest nearby that you know of, or should I be finding or creating shelter."

He checks his reserves. 

"- I can make do. Give me a moment to scry. - we are on the other continent. It is smaller and less populated and I do not have supply caches here, but it has the virtue of being definitely outside the Empire's range. And I think it must have some diamond markets, once I can find where the cities are - the map was very out of date." 

He's going to sit down for it, though, and cast a reverse weather-barrier first because it is uncomfortably hot. 

Oh. 'The other continent'. Of course that's what it's called.

Scrying and transportation are definitely the relative advantage of Velgarth's magic system, and the weather-barrier is a good enough short-term solution that she's not going to conjure a house, so she'll just stand around uselessly. She can hand Altarrin a lesser restoration potion, though. "Drink it, we have more and I'd rather not have you exhausted."

He drinks it, and - wow, their healing magic is quite something - thanks her earnestly. 

It takes about ten minutes of Velgarth scrying to confirm that nearly all the dense population centers on this continent are around the coast. There are five major cities, none quite as large as the biggest Haighlei cities or southern port cities but certainly big enough to have markets and gem-merchants. 

If Alfirin and the accountant are ready, and once Alfirin has made them invisible, Altarrin can Gate them to the outskirts of the largest city. They'll want to walk the rest of the way to the market, to make it less obvious that a totally un-Gifted person just inexplicably arrived by Gate. It'll take them longer, here - Altarrin's attention-getting strategy had its upsides - but there are also risks to getting attention, even here where the Empire has no way to learn of it. 

Do they have some kind of cover story planned, or is it just "show up with an unreasonable quantity of gold, ask to buy All the diamonds above this size." 

Does Velgarth have the stereotype of eccentric independent mages? It seems like the sort of cover story that would do something to deter outright theft.

...Also they in fact want all the diamonds. The biggest ones are the most useful, but smaller ones are used for other spells, or can be ground into dust that is used for other spells, and are still worth acquiring at a massive discount to their Golarion values.

He's not sure of the exact details of stereotypes here, but it's probably workable for the accountant to claim he's shopping on behalf of an eccentric independent mage, which Alfirin and Altarrin hover invisibly. If it looks like anyone is tempted to try theft, well, compulsions are very low powered and Altarrin is very good at them and he can probably redirect would-be thieves toward better ideas than that. 

They'll want to keep an eye on the time; they're halfway around the world from the Empire, and it's morning here, but back in the Empire it's already late afternoon. Which is convenient, actually, they can spend four or five candlemarks here making a tour of all the cities and maybe even learn where the diamond mines are, and then head back once the Emperor is in bed. Though Altarrin isn't sure how to best combine that timing with the Aritha kidnapping, because once she vanishes the Emperor's guards will definitely wake him. 

...They'll try to wake him. Which will probably alarm them further. Because Bastran will, in fact, remain asleep until he's finished with his conversation with Altarrin. That is still a reason to delay Aritha's kidnapping until Altarrin and Bastran have had some time to talk - she can make sure the dream has a clock in it if Altarrin wants to keep track of the time.

They can do that then, after they've finished buying out every diamond market at every major city on this continent. 

The delegates are still helpfully answering questions.

Paladins are Lawful Good representatives of the gods within a step of Lawful Good - so, Neutral Good, Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral. (Aroden's Lawful Neutral). Paladins are immediately stripped of their powers if they fall, either on Good or on Law. This would be expected to happen instantly, if they broke their sworn word or betrayed a parley or murdered an innocent person or something, but it usually happens more gradually, of someone making compromises they've given insufficient consideration, one too many times. The point is, if someone is a paladin and still has their divine powers (which, for these not-very-powerful paladins, mean just their magical healing and their aura of fearlessness and immunity to disease and ability to smite Evil which they obviously won't be using), then they are Lawful Good and everyone in Golarion knows it and that means everyone in Golarion can trust them. Paladin orders work extremely hard to make sure their members don't fall and also aren't afraid of doing things to the point of being useless and also have a useful reputation and also get the order's objectives actually done in the real world. The Knights of Ozem are...certainly the greatest paladin order in the world today, maybe in remembered history, and the reason is Iomedae. She's very good at recruiting, she's a brilliant tactician, she's ruthless in the manner that lends itself to 'deliberately strengthening their people by placing them under lots of occasionally-lethal combat pressure' but not in the manner that lends itself to 'your paladins fall' - 

- Urgir is of course uncharacteristic in that nothing like Urgir has ever happened before, but it's also characteristic, in that Iomedae is the kind of person who would try to besiege and take a city without any of the crusaders under your command doing any Evil, and the kind of person who would actually succeed. Many people would try that and therefore be ineffectual commanders; many people are effectual commanders because they don't try things like that. Iomedae doesn't lose, but she pulls out every trick you could imagine and many you couldn't in order to fix problems that anyone else half as ruthless as her would have resigned themselves to. One gets the sense she has never resigned herself to anything. 

People who the gods grant magic are often like any other before the gods grant the magic, aside from whatever strength of character inspired their god to choose them, and like most kinds of people on Golarion they get stronger through adversity, which (it's disagreed on) either strengthens their soul and gives their god the ability to grant them more magic or, as it's service to their god, is rewarded with more magic. They pray for spells, and can then cast them. Most people granted powers by the gods are clerics, which unlike paladins can be of any alignment near that of their god. Some people granted divine power are weirder, stranger things, and not all even know the source of their divine power. It's a big world. Powerful paladins can do what they've seen Iomedae do - kill things very very effectively, heal, fly around on angel's wings, make their allies fearless, use a divine-bonded sword. Powerful clerics are much more flexible, and can generally use their magic to strengthen their allies and whole armies, and travel between planes and summon allied outsiders, as well as channeling healing energy more often than paladins and casting healing spells pretty much as-needed.

Sorcerers are anyone whose magic is inborn and who can use their magic flexibly as an act of will instead of building it from scratch or obtaining it from an external source. Song-sorcerers work through song, they mostly do morale and enchantment and illusion and so on. It's hard to characterize sorcerers; most of them can only do a few things, but there are few things that no sorcerer can do. 

Wizards have to be clever, and they build magic themselves on magical scaffolds, with no innate ability required. It's slow to learn and hard to master, but the most powerful and dangerous people in Golarion are generally wizards. Weak wizards can do minor spells, clean laundry, protect themselves from the elements, make food and drink tastier, that kind of thing; strong wizards are Alfirin, or Tar-Baphon, who can flit among the planes doing as they please unless someone like Iomedae raises an army to fight them (which can only really destroy their operations on Golarion and convince them it's less trouble to go elsewhere; for Iomedae to actually kill Tar-Baphon so he stays dead she'll need some miracles.) It's wizards who do things like remove their souls and build demiplanes and turn into dragons and craft mage-artifacts.

Dwarves and orcs are other kinds of people, from the Darklands unless that's a myth. Orcs are violent and impulsive. They still matter, they're still people, it's still wrong to wrong them and good when they have the things they need to lead good lives, but they're collectively very hard to deal with. There's exceptions to any rule, though, and some orc crusaders who are good soldiers. Dwarves are long-lived and extremely short and many of the greatest works of craftsmanship on the face of the world are Dwarven work. There are plenty of Dwarves in the crusade. There are also....kind of a lot of other kinds of people. Elves and gnomes and halflings and goblins and merfolk and kobolds and tieflings and dragons and giants and aasimar and bird-folk and cat-folk and rat-folk and that's definitely not a comprehensive list. 

Kiritan's explanation of the fact Iomedae is a nascent god is just that - Lawful Good isn't good enough. Its gods are ancient and alien. Trustworthy, but - trustworthy to not hurt you, not trustworthy to leverage you towards fixing everything wrong for everyone who has ever lived or ever will. Hell still exists. So do Abaddon and the Abyss. It's unacceptable, and everyone knows it's unacceptable, and Iomedae is the one person who might be careful enough and powerful enough to change it. She and Aroden have obviously been angling that way for - well, for as long as Kiritan has personally been going to Aroden's church in Absalom and hearing about the Crusade. Iomedae understands Good, can transmit it to other people, embodies Law and can inspire it in her army. She can do things no one else can do, and Aroden hasn't picked a new herald since Arazni died because it's obviously Iomedae, and she took Urgir by miracle and she thinks like a god and she does magic only gods can do and she's explained why there needs to be a new Lawful Good god and the world needs her desperately. She'll go for the Starstone when the time is right but she's - already the person who will. 

(The Starstone? Oh, it's a trial Aroden set up that makes you a god if you pass. Obviously anyone can try it if they want. Mostly they'll die, though.)

Tiaves's explanation is slightly different. "Look," he says. "Iomedae is a legendary hero, the sort of person whose abilities can't be approximated by imagining anyone else, or an army of anyone elses. She's a tactical genius, she's not at all a bad politician, she goes around wearing say an eighth of the accumulated wealth of Golarion's largest empire, she has fought Tar-Baphon hand to hand a dozen times and it's him who generally has to run. Nearly every other powerful person on the planet has served on her crusade, or is the target of it. She just took a city that hadn't fallen for thousands of years. She is obviously greatly favored by Aroden, and extraordinarily powerful, and once we beat Tar-Baphon, if we beat Tar-Baphon, she'll have her own country in what used to be Ustalav, headquartered in a ludicrously well-defended dwarven sky-citadel with two different permanent active Miracles defending it. She'll have a large and experienced army, and no enemies on Golarion who'd dare get within range of her.

A lot of people ask themselves, what's she doing next, right? Some kinds of person, it'd be 'build an empire', but she has treaties already, with all of her new nation's neighbors. It's the undead we were asked to take up swords against, not the living. She means the adventurers presently in her service to disperse, in some cases all the way to Tian Xia, with stories of this war and the miracles she worked in fighting it. She has accumulated immense influence, respect, admiration, and, frankly, worship on Golarion, and it's not so she can conquer, and it's not so she can retire. She's not - none of us are - the kind of people who retire. 

The work she's been at, for at least ten years, is building a church, and building a legend, so that when she goes for the Starstone a lot of people across Golarion will worship her as a god already, and reach out to her in prayer, and that's helpful to gods that are just starting out. If the war ends well, and ends cleanly, then within a few years, she'll set up the habitable parts of Ustalav as an independent country under her church - that kind of thing is easier to do as a mortal - she'll disperse the word across the world, she'll write her holy book and have it cried on the streets of every city, and she'll go for it. There are no guarantees, but - Aroden built the trials, and Aroden works, through her, the greatest miracles anyone has ever seen Him work, and all of Good will be in her favor, and Gorum too, and Pharasma who hates the undead, and all of Law save Asmodeus and Zon-Kuthon who know She'll be eternally their enemy - she's been building a coalition among the gods just like she's been building one among the mortals, is what I'm saying. It would not surprise me to learn she picked the crusade in the first place to get Pharasma to back her ascension.

And there's no one in the world I'd rather have bring human values, and what it takes to see them realized, to Lawful Good. I've scoured the history books and there's no one in history I'd expect to do better. She's smart, and good, and careful, and she's ours, and She'll be our god and we'll be her church, and then I guess we'll fix everything, everywhere, for everyone."