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Lucy attempts to solve post-Razmir Ustalav
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"It sounds like a desirable feature to have but I really don't think mine has it! I mean, nobody back home ever mentioned anything of the sort. And, uh, there's definitely non-resurrective stuff that doesn't involve consent."

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"Yes."

He gives a look off in one direction, where, at the western end of the lake, barely visible to mortal eyes, there is a looming Gothic castle.

"There is magic to force an unwilling soul to return to a body that does not want the soul, and it is very, very bad for the soul, and very, very, Evil."

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"--Well, I mean, I'm not trying to force it. I just don't know how to not! Anyway, the thing where old souls change isn't a thing where I'm from, and if someone wants to be dead, that's pretty easy to fix actually."

...She tilts her head. 

"At least, I think it's not a thing where I'm from. How old is old? The oldest person I've ever resurrected was--well, I'm not sure exactly. Something like eight thousand years?"

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"I think the simplest would be to find a cleric," he says, "to cast Speak with Dead" (the meaning clearly translates, but it is equally clearly a proper noun) "on whoever you wish to resurrect, to confirm that they want to return - it is a much simpler spell than Raise Dead, and there are many clerics of Good gods who would be eager to cast it for you on whoever you want resurrected."

(He can, yes, tell that he is speaking to a powerful Good outsider, not a powerful Neutral outsider. Some things are clear.) "For the weakest resurrection spell, one minute. For the strongest, two hundred years. If someone dead for eight thousand years came back..." He shakes his head. "And they were well?"

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"They were fine but our afterlife situation has less going on than yours seems to. How long does it take to cast Speak With Dead, that seems like a potentially serious bottleneck...I'm not saying no, you understand, just considering logistics..."

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"Ten minutes, and I could only cast it a small number of times every day if I asked Pharasma to give me as many as I could bear. Pharasma does not judge the dead if she expects them to be resurrected soon, for a new trial is called for with every death, and so it could not harm the new dead?"

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"Okay, that's good. --How new is new--" She looks around; she can't read the dates on the headstones, and wouldn't know what they meant if she could, but if there are any graves still visibly fresh with recently turned earth, that's not something a language barrier can get in the way of. 

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There's a couple! "Hours or minutes will always be safe," he says, "and - I would not do it for those who do not have unfinished business, but I do not think you will cause damage to those dead weeks or months, though those who are in the Good afterlives or Axis will not thank you for it, you understand." 

He is, however, willing to point out the newest headstones, some of which are from after he himself died.

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She looks at them, considering. 

"You knew them, right? Do you think any of them were likely to be at risk?"

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He considers.

"I was killed by a servant of Razmir when he conquered Varno - a powerful wizard whose false priests slay anyone who denies his godhood. I... would not expect them to be damned... but Razmir is an Evil man who claims to be an Evil god and his priests preach ambition and avarice, and I do not know what they would have done if their only choices if their only choice was to obey a wizard's commands or die."

He pauses, looking at the gravestones.

"Die, I expect. May they have earned Nirvana." 

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"Haaaaang on, back up a sec. Conquered? By an evil wizard?" 

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"Yes. Razmir began in Melcat to the south by demanding its king submit to him and razed his capital when he refused, and then he began conquering other countries. He is an exceptionally powerful wizard, and even his false priest was far stronger than I."

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She rubs her temples. "Oh boy. Well. I should probably do something about that, first, then--much as I love the healing and resurrections side of things, it's a lot more efficient to stop people like that than to try to clean up after them. What makes his priests specifically false?" 

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"As a false god, Razmir cannot grant his followers spells as a true god can, and so they are arcane mages, wizards and sorcerers, using enchanted items and tricks to pretend they use divine magic. Arcane magic cannot return the dead to life or cure afflictions that divine magic easily can - and Razmir has no divine realm to accept his followers after death, and so those that pursue his path to rise in his esteem find themselves damned to the evil afterlives which they could in better circumstances have escaped."

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"...Huh. Gods granting their followers powers pretty much isn't a thing where I'm from. Well, I'll put it on the list." 

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"The gods in Golarion grant some of their most devoted followers - those who understand their natures best and have served them longest and are in most accord with them - divine spells," he says, sticking with what he knows. "It is also possible through circumstance or training or inheriting the power of a naturally magical being, to use other magic, arcane magic. Some of the gods are good, some evil, some neutral; some are lawful, some neutral, some chaotic. All normally select followers who will pull the world towards their nature and the way they desire the world to be - clerics of Pharasma are most often judges or midwives or those who destroy the Un-Dead to free their souls, who would do it better with Her aid, before they are chosen; clerics of Sarenrae, the Neutral Good god of compassion and redemption, are those who work to help others, clerics of Gorum the Chaotic Neutral god of war are soldiers, and those of Asmodeus the Lawful Evil god of Hell are tyrants who desire to oppress others, and so forth for the other gods."

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"Where does Asmodeus live?"

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"Hell, the Lawful Evil afterlife, where He is mightiest and lord. He torments all who join Him there to make them serve Him as His slaves, and with armies of these slaves He desires to conquer all that exists."

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"...So, I probably want to go to Hell, and resurrect people directly from there, and probably also fight Asmodeus," she concludes.

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"You are very, very powerful," he says, "if you can raise the dead eight thousand years gone without harming their souls. Your resurrection of me - to full health, with no lingering effects, not even my uncast spells gone - is something only the most powerful clerics could have done."

"Asmodeus is almost certainly much, much, much stronger than you are, and - not the sort of enemy who can be fought, directly; the last time the gods engaged in battle direct, collateral damage that it is taught They were largely trying to avoid killed - one in ten people across the world? And opened a pit to the Abyss, Chaotic Evil realm of warring demons, that is still open. But if you want to find a way to do so anyway because He is among the greatest evils ever to exist, you should speak to the priests of Iomedae, Lawful Good goddess of the war against Evil, whose domain is doing this and who cares a great deal about doing it safely, and you should perhaps pray directly to Her, for this is Her nature and she values every ally in it."

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"--Okay, sounds like a plan." She is used to being a very, very big fish in a smallish pond, but the fact that the ocean has sharks in it is not new to her. She isn't ready to fight the Judgments yet, so she plausibly isn't ready to fight Asmodeus. 

"Do I have to do anything specific to pray to Iomedae?"

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"I have not met a priest of Iomedae before, so I do not know what they would tell you; if I wanted to pray to her, I would kneel, with her holy symbol - a sword - in hand if I had one, and focus on Her domain, and how good things should happen for everyone, and how it is terrible that suffering exists and evil people can do bad things, and how you want to reduce this in the most - Lawful, organized, effective, strategic - planned? way possible. She was a good person until She became a holy warrior because it was better for fighting evil and then she was a general because it was better and then she became a god because that was better still, and try to open your mind to her and talk to her, so you can serve as Her champion for achieving Her goals."

(He is the sole priest for a town of three hundred plus more distant farmsteads. He knows about all the gods, not just the one He serves. Not a lot, though.)

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She nods thoughtfully. 

She does not, actually, have a sword, but she does have a knife in one of her several pockets; it's plausibly better than nothing. 

She fishes it out, and folds her hands around it like she's seen people do around prayer beads, and kneels, and thinks. 

She thinks about her favorite word, and how fiercely she means it; she thinks about how she is objectively bad at being strategically effective at pursuing this goal, but she's better than she was when she was eighteen and haring around London putting out every proverbial fire that had most recently come to her attention, and she intends to become better still, with age and practice. 

(She spares a thought to the Law-light of the Judgments in case this is relevantly Lawful in some way.)

She thinks about her project to spread personality-preserving apotheosis, partly because she believes people ought to be able to reach the fullest potential they want, and partly because realistically she is going to need Judgment-tier allies in order to overthrow the current cosmic order. 

She thinks about really wanting to kick Asmodeus's ass but also collateral damage is bad. 

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... She does not, actually, get Iomedae. Basically the moment she thinks her favorite word, her mind is immediately filled with sudden flashes - if she was a human it would be best to describe her brain as completely overloaded with the fire of joyous love, but she is, in fact, not mostly human; it is the sort of thing that someone who can't think in Correspondence couldn't bear but she can - which sort of in words translate into:

:The absolute confidence that this person praying, being a person, is very very good and deserves to be happy.:

:A thronging chorus of celebration, that there are many people who can help each other and there are now more:

:An observation that there are very miserable wronged people in that castle over there who need her help:

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Oh. 

That voice is beautiful. 

 

 

 

"I don't think I got Iomedae. I think I might have gotten someone else? I like them. They pointed me at that castle, d'you know anything about that castle."

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