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Ex-Lich!Arazni gets isekaid into the Shining Crusade.
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Great.

Arazni will spend a lot of time praying (not really with the expectation of a reply, just - this is what it felt like when this happened, this is what she saw on her brief trip to Axis, this is her best explanation of why she hasn't re-ascended at all...) and copy down more brief spell descriptions of things like "rope trick at second" and "magic missile now casts five missiles" and "people who are not me have figured out how to do some of the things I do with Fireball in a more teachable manner" and hopefully get a report back soon about which of these she needs to scribe more scrolls of.

She is, actually, ready to teleport off to go murder Tar-Baphon, if Tar-Baphon attacks, or at least ready to stop time, cast quite a lot of spells, and then go murder Tar-Baphon. She really doesn't like him.

... She should probably get a Clone. And a demiplane, if this is going to last a while. She doesn't know if she counts as sufficiently an outsider that a Clone wouldn't work, but having a spare life hidden in a demiplane would still be useful, even if it will take a few months to work.

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"I think you're probably making a predictable mistake from the perspective of you with slightly more Wisdom, and should maybe swap out headbands if you aren't just going to identify it yourself," he says to Iomedae once they're in a different Mage's Private Sanctum. He still thinks there are decent odds Arazni's spying. 

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"You mean the refusing to do any emotional processing relevant to how a distorted tortured version of Arazni is back but hates me personally and may well be a manipulation aimed at making me do something differently?"

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"Yes, that."

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"I am aware that I'm doing that."

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"Maybe when we're out of crisis mode."

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"We are stepping precautions back to sustainable levels, you have a report from Aroden, there are no urgent further steps."

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"I don't actually - it bothers me, obviously. I am trying not to try to draw lessons from it, given the source. We have already done a dozen failure analyses and this isn't a good prompt for a new one. I have no particular urge to stomp my feet and cry. I do have an urge to go argue with her but that is a terrible idea. Or to go let her kill me which is an even worse one."

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"That does sound hard to solve just by deciding it's a priority. You could try the Wisdom headband."

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"If you insist. ....I could write a letter to her and not send it."

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"Even odds she is spying on us."

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"Right."

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"You could ask Aroden. If it's worth you talking to her. If it'd go well, if we could have her - back - it's worth the question."

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" - yeah, all right. I'll ask."

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And so it transpires that when Iomedae comes with dinner four hours later, she is not armored and not carrying her sword, and is carrying a bunch of books and some maps and a deck of cards. "I gave Aroden the report. I hope you don't mind, I also asked him if it would be a terrible idea to talk to you."

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Has Arazni ever seen Iomedae not armored before? Just after a resurrection, maybe, but then she grabbed Heart's Edge as fast as she could and - 

"- I have faith in Aroden but I'll admit I'm somewhat surprised." Is that actually Iomedae? She's not under mind blank which is tremendously creepy, and that suggests an imposter, but she reads as Lawful and Good as a paladin of a nonneutral deity should and those are about the magic auras you'd expect with Iomedae's known gear, but all that says is that there's a False Aura effect... "I suppose this is the conversation where we agree that since we are both on the same side and neither of us is Evil we should work together towards our common goals?"

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" - well, it'd be a hard risk to strategically justify if there weren't enormous upsides to us concluding that, but I was mostly expecting you to throw a lot of spells at satisfying yourself of - the truth, however you end up feeling about it."

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"I don't have cleric spells or deva powers and I'm not functionally a demigod until I reascend, it's wizardry or nothing."

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"Enchantments don't work on me anymore unless you know a clever way around that, but I figured you might, and you may if you can, and Discern Lies and Share Memory and so on work fine. If you are really set on enchantments and don't know a way around what I have it's expensive for Aroden to renounce me temporarily, but not out of budget, for something this important." 

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What the - 

"- I've got to say I find this very confusing."

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"I care about you, because you were a close friend of mine who died and who I thought was gone forever and who was, apparently, in some sense instead horribly tortured for hundreds of years. I want you to be able to trust in your knowledge of what happened to you, and while this has obvious downsides if you decide to send me on a murder spree, I'm less scary against Good people, less scary unarmored, and - I believe you won't. I am sure I will nonetheless be absolutely terrified, if it is necessary to get the magical immunity to such removed. But - I loved my friend, and I miss her, and I want you, the person going around without magical fear immunity all the time, to feel safe."

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"Give me an hour to prepare spells, I didn't have anything prepared for this." Well, she had Detect Thoughts, but only on general principles.

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"Of course."

 

 

And she'll leave notArazni be. It is not a spectacularly productive hour. She puts the armor back on and paces and decides to test how much weight she can lift over her head and does that for a while and gets tired and paces and asks Aroden again if this looks like a good idea and takes the armor off and goes back.

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Right.

Arazni has her spells prepared by this point, and she's wearing her Amulet of Thought-Sensing (she misses Aroden) instead of her Amulet of Natural Armor, and has tracked down her curse-wand (she needs to start conjuring...) and has all the appropriate spells prepared.

"You should take off any magic items you're worried about."

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