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Ex-Lich!Arazni gets isekaid into the Shining Crusade.
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If it were that simple, Aroden's instructions would've been different. Something is terribly wrong and dangerous here, and - and Aroden still said to protect her while he figured out more.

 

Geb is involved? How did Geb get involved?

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Her face determinedly neutral, Iomedae will lead her guest past symbols of healing up on the walls to inconvenience the undead, guards with dogs and See Invisibility and Aura Sight, an unavoidable antimagic field, and then a hallow consecrating the place to Aroden with an invisibility purge attached.

 

She will point the spells out before they enter the invisibility purge, in case her guest wants to change any of her disguises or put up Arazni's Invisibility which the purge won't get. 

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Yeah, before she gets into a tiny tunnel in range of Iomedae's sword where Iomedae can kill her and claim it was an accident, 

Will you swear that you and your agents have accurately represented Aroden's instructions and intend to carry them out?

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I have not shared all of what Aroden said to me about you, but I have shared all of His instructions with respect to you, and I swear that I have shared those accurately, and that I intend to carry them out.

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Thank you. Not that she likes saying thank you to the person responsible for her death.

But she'll go through. She's fine with the invisibility purge; it will reveal her to be a maximally stereotypical young woman from Geb. (Someone who can see through illusions as well as invisibility, but not transmutations, would see a Tian halfling.)

... She's kind of skeptical about the antimagic field, though, either being in it in sword's reach of Iomedae or people seeing her or -

How difficult is it to obtain information from the guards and anyone else you have watching this antimagic field?

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I can send the guards away, including the ones observing at a distance. 

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I think you should. Tell me when you have done so. Will there be more antimagic fields?

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Just the one. Done with a Miracle, in the midst of Erum-Hel's reign of terror, it is a shell encircling the whole secure area, though of course almost everyone believes that it's just a permanent emanation right here. 

 

"Step away and look away, including those of you observing remotely. Confirm when you've done so."

 

      "Knight-Commander," says the guard, "step yourself into the antimagic field, so we can identify you, and permit us a moment to confirm that you're expected here, and then you can give orders."

She does this. She looks the same in the antimagic field, less the angel wings. They confirm it's her. They'll step away and look away. 

 

When you're ready.

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Iomedae has already seen this spell, other people shouldn't.

She draws an invisible cold iron scepter out of one of her bags of holding and, carefully to obscure the details of the working, casts Aroden's Spellbane, a ninth-circle spell known in this world by exactly two spellcasters since the fall of Azlant. One of them has ascended and one of them has died, and neither ever used it when they did not face risks so severe that it was worth risking the sight of the spell. She used it against Tar-Baphon, and she should have used it more.

She walks through the antimagic field, then dismisses the spell, because she really does not trust Marit enough to let him see it.

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It's not Arazni, not exactly. If it were Arazni her orders would be different. It would be wildly inappropriate and unhelpful for Iomedae to react in any way to this powerful outsider as if they were Arazni. 

 

 

There's a thick, airtight steel door. Iomedae drags it open; most people couldn't, and it's slow even when she does it. The room inside is not large. Precautions like these are expensive.

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This entire situation is very obviously a setup for a powerful outsider to murder the leadership of the Shining Crusade and he is deeply unhappy about it. (Maybe Aroden would notice that and would've given different instructions, but the instructions Aroden did give were notably ambiguous about whether he trusted this outsider's representations about itself!)

It makes matters mildly better that it's not yet public that Iomedae can't be mind-controlled, but only mildly. 

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"Pleased to meet you, and welcome to Fort Lorrin," Arnisant says, as everyone else is apparently too stressed for manners. "Whoever's after you, they'll have some trouble getting at you here."

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"Maybe Geb, more likely Otolmens or Jerishall. I am pleased to see you both."

(She's still communicating via Dancing Lights and Ghost Sound.)

"Is it presently correct for me to assume that no one outside this room, except for possibly Aroden, is listening to this conversation?"

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They're in a Mage's Private Sanctum and a Forbiddance, surrounded by an antimagic field, with an Invisibility Purge ambient in the whole space.

"No one else we know of is listening."

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"Right."

"I'm from a future I want to avert, or a timeline identical to yours but ahead of it, or I was modified by some entity to think this, or I'm somehow hallucinating all of this. I think Marit will think of lots of other possibilities, starting with me lying and going on from there."

"In my timeline the Age of Glory fails. Aroden dies. Asmodeus takes over the Western Empire, Susumu is running a quarter of Shu, a portal to the Abyss eats Sarkoris, Lirgen and Yamasa are destroyed by hurricanes, various other things go badly."

"I have no idea how or why I showed up here, since ten minutes ago I was in my Aktun, but inevitables unhappy about this might show up to object to me existing anyway."

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"Are you, to your own memories, the person you look like to me, or did you pick that form for some other reason."

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"Closer to the first."

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If Iomedae wanted to specify who that is she would have done that. "All right, say we want to prevent that future, what are you asking us to do?"

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"Prevent me from dying long enough for Aroden to tell me what to do next; I trust Him, and told Him the most urgent facts about the crisis I know; hopefully when the situation in Axis is sorted out I can move to His realm or to Heaven, where I'm harder to assassinate and can communicate with Him better. If a very powerful extradimensional outsider named Lucy Whitman who turns back and forth out of a giant diamond crab shows up, she's a Chaotic Good Sarenrite and the most powerful asset Good possesses."

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Iomedae is very visibly having Emotions. Are these about how she gets to eat her cake and have it too? Did she rationalize this? Or is this just one more place where Arazni's memories are lying to her?

Well, whatever the answer.

"The other important thing to cover."

Arazni is tired. She's very tired. She hates being Arazni. She knows she must not have hated it once but being Arazni wasn't hateful, then.

"A century or so from now, after the Shining Crusade wins and Iomedae ascends and the new crusader state you founded is at the peak of its power, it picks a fight with Geb. Geb notices, and so wins."

But Iomedae can't keep it from her friends and the first time Marit casts True Seeing he'll see it himself, and the same for every other powerful wizard or cleric, so best they get the full story.

"He reanimates the paladins you sent as graveknights and sends them on a counter-raid to steal Arazni's corpse, which Geb stitches together and reanimates into an undead super-monster and puts in charge of running His kingdom. A bit under a thousand years later - after Aroden dies - Lucy Whitman resurrects her as a living approximately-mortal as part of picking a less dumb fight with Geb."

"She plane shifts to Axis, tries to figure out what to do with her life, and wakes up in the past."

"Hi."

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"Well, I'll be," says Arnisant. "That explains some things."

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If you believe it which you obviously shouldn't.

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"My read is that you did not come here for a reunion with old friends, don't want one, and we should proceed as if you were any other ally who needed our protection temporarily?"

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"Except that I really, really want to Disintegrate my corpse."

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