And then, of course, there's Lastwall and the Palatinates.

It is, basically, reasonable to call Canterwall a protectorate, ruled by its council in consultation with Lastwall's paladins, who are providing a significant part of its defense against both the orcs of Belkzen to the west and Virlych to the south. It is somewhat less so with the others. Lozeri largely consists by land area of the Shudderwood, which largely by mass consists of trees and wolves, and to say that anyone rules it is nonsense, though the Palatine Council in the overgrown farming village of Chastel would certainly like to. It will be quite some time before anyone learns what's been happening in the Shudderwood, let alone is capable of responding. And Vieland is hardly haunted at all! Admittedly there's a thirty-three foot tall egg where the old counts used to live, but it's been five hundred years and it's not like it's hatched, and the intelligent, literate scholars of Leipstadt (the electors here pays proper respect to intelligence) have no time for petty superstitions when they can engage in SCIENCE!!! instead. They'll accept Lastwall's help and send troops to the frontiers, eventually, once the council finishes discussing the latest education bill.

(Admittedly, some of the saner member of the councils will send private adventurers to try to investigate crises in advance, or private guards to try to cover more of the Belkzen border to take pressure off Canterwall. But saner members are few and far between.)

Lastwall is, therefore, going to have to do everything with just the resources Canterwall and a few river towns in Lozeri can support.

The fundamental issue in western Ustulav can be described very neatly: Lastwall would like to reinforce the Palatinates. Between the Shudderwood in the north and the Hungry Mountains in the south, there's a fantastically defensible thirty-mile stretch of the Vhatsuntide that could be fortified, which would shield the vast majority of the Palatine territory from the undead and provide an excellent base for reconquest of Ustalav. Of course, if they fail to hold it, then there's then ten miles of swamp behind two-thirds of it which will absolutely slow down any reinforcement and render the southmost third totally indefensible, losing them tremendous territory and any chance of reclaiming Ardis in the near future.

But to do that, it needs to be able to trust its back.

And in its back is Virlych. Which is where the Whispering Tyrant's stronghold was and is, although he and his servants can no longer leave his tower, it is still a fortress. The last time Lastwall gave a serious try at clearing the entirety of Virlych out was during the Shining Crusade when they had Iomedae and Arazni both working together in person, and that was when Arazni died. Lastwall patrols and raids and does not, really, rule Virlych.

But there is one part of Virlych that the Whispering Tyrant's forces are known to use as a base, that their own spy reports claimed was the center of the active forces of the Whispering Way and the Cult of Urgathoa in the province, which though destroyed in the war remained a refuge for his followers who could not be hunted down, and has ever since been a lair to which they inevitably slink whenever driven from it...

Renchurch. That blade-spired fortress-monastery where the Whispering Tyrant's servants gather amidst the shadows of the Witchgate forest at the entrance to Ustalav. Julian-Raymond Theissen, Precentor Martial for Cavalry, is in fact the person in charge of foreign expeditions (the Precentors Martial were established when the Knights of Ozem were more of an army than a nation and there has been some responsibility drift over the past nine hundred years), and he thinks that that's where the armies of the Tyrant's Faithful are gathered.

The problem, of course, is that if they send only the people they can Teleport, that's a very small force, and if they send a land army, the army needs to travel up to the headwaters of the Path river into Belkzen with the mountains of Virlych looming overhead, fend off the orc tribes, maintain supply lines in hostile and lawless territory, then cross the border into Canterwall and pass through an extremely haunted forest to attack a mighty fortress of the Undead.

(There are reasons they wanted to be able to just go downriver to Caliphas, take a ship along the Lake Encarthan coast, and then make their way up to the Worldwound by road.)

This would be a lot easier if they could negotiate with orcs.

Unfortunately, nobody can negotiate with orcs.

This includes, to the everlasting frustration of the orcs, the orcs.

People argue about why. "When the races were originally created, Lamashtu made the orcs, and she wanted people who would BREED CONQUER KILL, so this is what orcs do." "The influence of Rovagug, whose rage seeped into their bones." "I'd like to see you invent Law and Good on your own if you grew up in a culture that thought the idea was funny." "Evolutionary pressures in the Darklands, where new threats could come from all sides, forced a focus on the short-term at the expense of long-term planning." 

Either way, the evidence is fairly clear: In the Hold of Belkzen, three out of four orcs are Chaotic Evil, and most of the remaining quarter is close. Exactly one tribe in Belkzen has a Good leader, and she's still a slaving warlord, just a slaving warlord who thinks there's Good in everyone and tries to stop slaves from being mistreated too badly and looks after her own people after they've outlived their usefulness to her.

Orcs aren't lawless, to be clear. There are old customs, deep in their bones, that everyone recognizes as needing to be obeyed; You Do Not Kill Members Of Your Tribe, It Is Not A Thing That Happens. The flood truce is obeyed. Duels are recognized and you wait to kill someone in a duel until after he's finished his duel. But, really - if an orc takes money to not kill you, once he has the money, he (statistically speaking) will realize he could keep the money even if he then kills you, which will allow him to feast upon the power of your life to grow stronger. So he either gives up all the money you didn't give him for nothing, or he gets to kill you. It's a really very simple deal!

(It is less that orcs are stupid, you understand, and more that the average orc child's performance on the marshmellow test is "eat the first marshmellow, then try to beat up the adult so I also get the second.")

The person who is most frustrated about this, of course, Grask Uldeth, warlord of the Empty Hand tribe.

It isn't that Grask Uldeth isn't chaotic evil! He is! It isn't that he doesn't go into screaming berserk rages in which he disembowls his enemies with a warhammer, something that is very hard to do, because he does!

It's just that he is capable of doing this at a latter point. He is not only capable of recognizing that it would, actually, make sense to, instead of killing the farmers and taking their stuff, to take part of their food, and then leave them food, so you can do this next year, even though this involves giving up food, but he is capable of doing it. Grask Uldeth is not merely capable of recognizing that it is profitable to let traders through if they pay you lots of money, but of personally beating up any orc who robs traders after they buy a pass, and only those orcs. And via this means he has made himself the single greatest warlord in the whole of Belkzen, ruler of the great orc city of Urgir!

And it still isn't enough because he is practically the only sane person. He's tried picking the smartest orcs and giving them lectures. It hasn't worked. He's tried picking the wisest, and maybe some of the shamans get it a little, but you can't have a tribe ruled by its shaman! Shamans hardly beat people up at all! Deep in his heart, Grask Uldeth is worried about what will come of him when he starts getting old and slow and some bigger, tougher orc shows up to claim his crown, but no solution has yet presented itself.

(It is, to be clear, rumored that the source of Grask Uldeth's brilliance is that in an ancient ruin of fallen ages he found a magical crown which possesses the spirit of Zutha, Runelord of Greed, which has whispered to him in dark ages, spreading his dark council, whispering in his ear the secrets of true magical power and everlasting immortality and guiding him to strategies alien to the orcish race...)

(That story's false, to be clear, Tar-Baphon ate Zutha's soul centuries ago. It was just a normal +2 headband.)

Nonetheless, Grask Uldeth, who is a smart enough person to actually make deals with Lastwall and keep them if the situation doesn't change, is not ruler of the Hold of Belkzen. He is the ruler of the city of Urgir. Anything far enough outside of Urgir that his secret police (of course he has secret police, what do you take him for, a person without summed enhanced mental stats over 50?*) can't let him know about it, and where he can't just take Zone of Truth testimony about it, and he can't go invading people close enough - 

Is just out of range, for the Empty Hand tribe. It could invade Lastwall, if it wanted to. It does raid Lastwall, when it wants to. But it cannot provide road security for Lastwall even if it wants to - that's a different and much harder problem entirely.

(*: He's up to a +6 headband by now.)

And the orcs of the eastern plains know perfectly well that they are performing suboptimally; that the civilized people have better stuff than they do, that the civilized slaves know more than the slaves born in captivity, that Grask Uldeth is the most successful warlord amongst all the orcs and that he has no successor - 

It's just that moving from a bad equilibrium to a better equilibrium is hard, actually.

The two main orc tribes in the southeast of Belkzen are the Cleft Heads, distant vassals of the Empty Hand with a reputation for un-orcish cowardice but a love of extortion, and the Open Barrows, who have taken to necromancy with a fervor appropriate for people who spend so much time in Ustalav while they raid it. Per Lastwall's spy reports (their Belkzen intelligence service took the least damage with Riudaure's death), they have some reason to suspect the Cleft Heads are embezzling from the tribute they are supposed to pay to Uldeth, which would produce a war if they wanted to have one, but probably the Cleft Heads would invade Canterwall if they tried that, so probably not the best idea.

What Lastwall would really like to do would be to pay the orcs to attack the undead, using money. Unfortunately...

... Lastwall will try to send reinforcements up through the hills of Amaans, where they have support, and putting their spy service in charge of dissuading the orcs from invading Lastwall or Canterwall while they're busy. And they'll Teleport reinforcements up to link up with the garrisons in western Canterwall, and take the risk of trying to raid Renchurch with the forces they have there, because -

- Ardis already fell?

His triumph complete, Wielki Ksiaze rides through the city on the reanimated corpse of an armored gryphon, his core force of skeletal champions and zombie lords marching alongside and behind him, gilded armor and shields concealing the rot and bones within. Behind him flies his own flag, a crowned lion, silver on black, with the ancient flag of Ustalav behind it, and behind him marches a chariot with the body of Dalis Marchand, unscarred by the spell that slew him. His herald announces his glory and mercy (the city is not being sacked; Geb's is no longer the army that doesn't rape and pillage) as the trumpets celebrate his return, and Wielki Ksiaze makes his way from the city's east gate to the great citadel of Stagcrown and lifts the corpse with a spell and bears it into the fortress after him.

There he climbs the Palace Tower, sealed a hundred years, where the shrieking souls of kings and villains from two thousand years of Ustulav's history echo out their ruined, tragic lives time and again, and there the might of the Grand Prince of Taldor rises, and he speaks mighty words of a spell of great power - 

- And when he returns it is with King Vasilas Ustav, who ruled with an iron hand age nineteen hundred years ago, striding behind him in Dalis Marchand's body and dressed in the regalia of a king.

"Behold, people of Ardis! The throne of Ustalav is returned to you, and he who rules Ustalav by right of blood shall rule it forever!"

(And, behind his glowing eyes, laughter - "For while some may say they are finished with the past, the past is not finished with them.")

And Vasilas will swear allegiance to Wielki Ksiaze, also known as Taldaris II Emperor of Taldor, as his overlord, and so establish the legitimacy of Ksiaze's government over Ustalav! This is very important, for the next stage of Ksiaze's project!

Because the next stage is the extremely obvious one that, really, you'd think anyone would realize was the most obvious move, which is to send an ambassador to the Worldwound alliance offer to take over the defense of the Ustulav border of the Worldwound in exchange for his puppet monarch being recognized as overlord of the entire country.

... This is obviously a trap, right? Obviously? International community, let's get together and condemn it.

...

Ksiaze is not, actually, Lawful Evil...

No, but my vassal who you'll be acknowledging as lord of Ustalav is!

Cheliax will think about it.

Nobody actually recognizes them, but the thinking about it is audible.

All right, now that we've dealt with that hand grenade thrown into the waters of international politics, Lastwall will adapt to the necessary geopolitical situation by trying to hire adventurers to murder all the big scary undead in Renchurch and hoping the mildly reinforced western defenders of Canterwall can hold out. They cannot, yet, carry out first-few-days attacks; their forces are not mostly based in Lastwall, the Palatines rely too heavily on militia, and they are going to have to gear up more, and send out diplomatic feelers to Caliphas and Barstoi to see if they can make any regional alliances with fellow enemies of the Undead.

Caliphas - that is, Carmilla Caliphvaso, though she has Lawful Neutral diplomats do the talking - thinks that in fact this is an excellent idea. She wholly supports it. Lastwall should give them lots of money and troops and acknowledge them as legitimate monarchs of all Ustalav and together they can cooperate against the undead who seek to wipe out all life in Avistan if not Golarion itself.

... To be clear, these troops should not, actually, set foot in the city of Caliphas. Caliphas is under control; all the undead were decisively defeated. They should go to the front, where they are actually needed.

The Hellknights are in fact prepared to recognize that Lastwall is also Lawful, and is also concerned with destroying the Undead. They see no reason for any hostility towards Lastwall. Their purpose here is to protect innocent people from agents of the Whispering Way and cultists of dark gods until such time as they can find a Lawful successor for Count Neska, which they plan to determine by using Sending and eventually a purchased Plane Shift to contact him in Axis once they have respectable candidates and dossiers on them.

(The most annoying thing about Hellknights, from the perspective of Lawful Good organizations like the Knights of Lastwall, is that every once in a while they act like sane people.)

Sounds like an alliance of Lawful and basically reasonable organizations can be formed against the undead, then?

How about officially organizing a Crusade? Get some more Hellknight orders involved, get some more Paladin orders involved - 

Still thinking about it.

Taldor is at least tempted. Taldor is not functional enough to commit to contributing resources to a crusade, but it is functional enough to diplomatically decide that "crusade" is the appropriate word to use for its polite suggestion to its dukes that they go to war against a pretender to the throne.

You know. In exchange for bribes.

(Things do not get done, in Taldor, without bribes.)

Andoran will just support this.

Seriously, people. Not everything needs to be a big deal. You can just support good things.