(It is around this point that certain events taking place, events that have been taking place for really a very brief period of time without being noticed, continue not to be noticed.)

Arbas will let them continue wondering on the matter of whether the Empire would have been reckless enough to try to contact Tar-Baphon. (He, himself, doesn't think so, but it's a question well above his pay grade, and moot now anyway, the thing to worry about is what else Alfirin might get up to.) 

So. Alfirin and Iomedae have a working relationship where Alfirin doesn't answer to Iomedae - and so can operate with plausible deniability in areas where Iomedae has committed to stay uninvolved - and Alfirin sometimes finds it convenient to do Iomedae favors. 

What else might Iomedae not normally be willing to countenance, but consider a favor under sufficiently dire circumstances? Is 'mind-controlling the Emperor' on that list? 

Iomedae is concerned with the fate of Oris, where there's an Arodenite church she fears is being brutally suppressed, and if Alfirin were doing Iomedae favors she might've done things in Oris.

(They could also just, you know, write Iomedae and ask what role she had in Alfirin's operations. She wouldn't lie.)

...Iomedae would totally be willing to countenance mind-controlling the Emperor. Directly herself - or, not herself, because she's a paladin and doesn't have the spell, but she'd happily command one of her own wizards to do it if it seemed like a good idea. They're at war with the Empire, and the Empire runs on mind control and tried to mind control her and is mind controlling her delegates, so obviously if it were strategically indicated they'd mind control the Emperor. 

Well, at least they're upfront about it! Arbas is appreciative of honesty. 

What sorts of things could Alfirin get up to in Oris, with the magic she has, to protect Aroden's church there? Mind-controlling the generals is an obvious one, but does her magic also let her, say, kill large numbers of people, or mind-control entire armies, or trap entire armies, or instantaneously transport them somewhere else? 

Well, she could probably kill any army in Oris with a Tsunami, or just mind control everyone - or actually, given that all Imperial soldiers are slaves, she could just free them all. That’s - well, Iomedae wouldn’t do it unless it were actually the best way to achieve her objectives, but it’d be very poetic and is accordingly appealing.

Indeed. How long would it take her to cut the compulsions on, say, a thousand people? Is there a range limit, such that it matters if they're concentrated? 

...Also, come to think of it, under what conditions would Iomedae consider it a favor for Alfirin to interfere with Imperial compulsions not in Oris? 

Oh, Alfirin could get miles around all at once with a Wish, that’s how Wishes work, if she had a safe wording or didn’t care about the danger.

Presumably Iomedae would consider it a favor to dispel everyone’s compulsions if it advanced the cause of human freedom and progress and flourishing and not otherwise? Like, doing it to destroy the Empire would be bad, because so many people would die, but doing it if you had something in mind that would be better would be a favor to Iomedae in the god-fashion where all Good is a favor to Iomedae.

Hmmmmmm. 

...What would it change about Iomedae's priorities, and what Iomedae would or wouldn't consider a favor, if in fact the Empire has extended a ceasefire offer in Oris? And do they expect that Alfirin, presumably out of communication with Iomedae right now, would have an accurate understanding of what it would change? 

- well, Iomedae would probably offer her own ceasefire, if the Empire signed a ceasefire in Oris. And she’d probably at that point consider it a major favor for Alfirin to leave the Empire alone, what with how otherwise the Empire couldn’t really take the peace at face value.

Arbas doesn't especially try to hide the fact that he doesn't believe them at all on that claim. 

He'll keep asking questions for a while, poking mainly at different of what they think Iomedae would endorse, or consider a favor, in various different circumstances, and paying a lot of attention to anything that seems like it might be an inconsistency in their Iomedae-related predictions. 

He's also learning a lot about their world's magic, of course but mainly in the form of 'it can also do this impossible thing' and less its limitations. 

...he's actually pretty bored and will perhaps see if he can beat the Aroden-compulsion making them fearless by slipping in some subtle - and then less subtle - attempts at compulsions of his own. 

They will continue to be totally convinced that Iomedae only wants good things to happen for everybody and would never collapse the Empire for some advantage to her own territories unless this made everyone across all the worlds better off. It makes sense that Arbas finds this boring; it's really stubborn and uncomplicated.

...he can't make them scared. He can make them convinced that something really bad is going to happen, in which case they'll spend a bunch of time thinking whether it can be avoided; he can make them convinced that coming here was a terrible mistake somehow; he can make them convinced that something really awful has already happened to them or to Iomedae or to their cause. He can cause them pain. He can make them wish they were dead, if he's willing to try hard enough. He can't make them scared. 

Godmindcontrol is weird. (Arbas is perhaps slightly jealous. He can't make people incapable of being afraid, not that he's...especially tried...maybe he should try that sometime just to prove that he can totally do anything Aroden can.) 

...Can he squeeze different answers out of them while they're convinced that coming here was a terrible mistake, or that various awful things have already happened? - or if convinced that the Empire is already working for Tar-Baphon, that's an interesting one. 

(It's not really that he thinks they're lying to him, or even exactly lying to themselves, they're too boringly straightforward for that. But there's something weird and unnatural going on in their heads, and he's not actually sure how much it's tugging them to report beliefs that aren't the ones people would naturally come to given the evidence they have, but it's definitely starting to seem like the Aroden mind-control effect is making them...weirdly optimistic about human nature? Or something?) 

It takes a lot of doing. Most of the day, by which point they're both so tired they can barely keep their eyes open.

But he can, in fact, with enough concerted effort and lying and making lies-believable and terrible-mistake-amplifying, convince them that trusting Iomedae was a mistake and the Knights of Ozem aren't worth following and they should resign their order.

And that - changes a lot of their answers, all of them previously calculated from the absolute conviction that Iomedae is doing a reasonable thing that no one with full information would feel lied-to about and that ultimately serves the flourishing of all people everywhere.

And without that, gone is most of the - unnatural optimism about human nature, the unnatural conviction. It wasn't god-intervention, not exactly, but it was - religious conviction.

They're still not scared. But they're despairing.

Good job, Arbas!

Good! Religious conviction is so frustrating. It's the worst part about having to interrogate cultists, the fact that you can't even get them to directly look at the evidence that gods are useless and don't - can't - care about human things. Not that he knows very many specifics on Aroden but he's pretty sure he can guess the end result, because it's always the same. 

Arbas is also tired, by now - compulsions are individually low-power but ten candlemarks straight of modifying them in real time is enough to push his relatively weak mage-gift - but he worked very hard getting to this point. Getting even slightly coherent predictions and explanations out of people as exhausted as they are is also a frustrating process, but he can just read their minds, and utterly exhausted and despairing people are worse at - shaping narratives that fit with a lifetime worth of beliefs and assumptions, which he can't tear down in a day and isn't actually sure he wants to. 

Can he get some new, no-longer-excessively-optimistic bounds on how Iomedae - or Alfirin, not following Iomedae's orders but nonetheless pursuing Iomedae's objectives - might intervene in the Empire, even if the Empire is trying actually quite hard to de-escalate in Oris? 

Well, since Iomedae isn't actually working for the flourishing of all people everywhere, then Aroden will withdraw her backing and there'll be a crisis on the crusade and both Iomedae and Alfirin will be too distracted to bother Velgarth at all.

....Which would be incredibly convenient for the Empire, honestly, but Arbas absolutely doesn't expect it's what will happen. He's kind of annoyed that despite an entire day of pushing, he apparently hasn't budged their conviction about their god. Probably because it's put there via mind-control by Aroden. Frustrating. 

He honestly cannot think of any other angles to push, so he'll leave and go finish noting down everything he did get from them, which is maybe not completely useless. The paladins can sleep. 

It's quite late in the evening when one of the construct-servants tells Aritha that Iomedae wants to see her, and she'd in fact been idly planning to stop studying the construct-servants and go to bed (though realistically she wouldn't have done it for several more hours). She immediately puts her notes away and anxiously tidies her borrowed robes - they're not flattering, but she actually kind of appreciates that -

- and goes to Iomedae, Knight-Commander who everyone else except Alfirin answers to, which is an Empress in everything but name and Aritha guesses plausibly also in the scope of the Knight-Commander's holdings but that's not going to be relevant to Aritha right now.

Iomedae is using Keep Watch to skip sleep, and that catches up with you fast unless you spend the time more or less restfully. Talking is usually safe enough. She's sitting in some sumptuous armchairs in a different room of the conjured mansion, and gestures for Aritha to sit as well, which Aritha immediately does.

"This is a complicated conversation," she says, "I would like you to ask questions very freely. I would prefer that you only ask questions, at this stage, and offer me no assurances, and say nothing about your intent, and not even try to decide where your loyalties lie and what your plans are, until you understand why it's a complicated conversation.

Have you been told that souls, here in Golarion, endure forever after death, and go to judgment before our Judge and then to afterlives where they will continue to think and live and act?"

Aritha had NOT been told this and of course it instantly - makes everything else inside her shatter, like she looked in and noticed it was all made entirely of daydreams and cobwebs, patched together out of scraps because she could never have the thing she actually wanted, the thing that -

- endure forever after death -

-  the Knight-Commander had instructions and she's forgotten them - 

- to ask questions, to only ask questions and not form intentions -

"Will this happen to me, I'm not from Golarion," she says once her lips are no longer too numb to speak.

"Yes," says Iomedae. "It didn't happen in your world because Velgarth's gods grab hold of souls and return them to a new body in the material world, but here no one will intervene in the going of your soul to judgment, and you do have a soul, and are perfectly legible to all of the magics of our world that use souls, and there is every reason to believe you'll have our afterlives."

Oh. 

The Knight-Commander is going to think that Aritha is an idiot. She needs to set her dizzy wondering delight aside and -

"If Alfirin hadn't raised me from the dead?"

"You would not have gotten an afterlife, as you were still on Velgarth."

"Can you bring it to them?"

"- it's complicated," says Iomedae. "I - very much desire that every person attain eternal paradise."

"Why's it complicated? Can I help?"