"Should we turn off the radio, sir?", Tibex asks.

"It's not illegal yet," he replies, "Keep going if you like. But I'm going to go... consider."

Someone is very clever. He knew this. Now he knows they have an agenda, and he is removed enough from the water Chelish fish swim in that he can see that this is, if not aimed at Cheliax, at least very deliberately not aimed away.

It's going to be banned. They're not that hard to hide and you could probably hide the wires and reassemble them for the broadcasts you want... slaves will do it. If they heard... they probably mostly haven't heard, since you can only listen with the headphones. The Bellflowers and whoever else are going to have fun smuggling things into the country.

But thinking a step beyond that. Everyone in Cheliax is, in a weaker sense that is legally not equivalent, a slave, to Church and Crown. The nobles - well, they could probably get away with being caught with radios just fine, but they're also the least interested, except maybe in listening to chariot races in Oppara. But the urban poor, and even the middle class... they'll be smacked down hard, if they're caught. But they mostly won't be caught.

And then in the villages - where they still worship Erastil behind the priest's backs, and probably have Pharasmin clerics, and possibly make deals with druids, and where the government has never managed to crack down meaningfully - any of these that make it there will never, ever be found.

Goddess, this is going to be huge.

He likes their project. Leveling society on a grand scale. So much harder to control than literacy and printing books. Broadcasting is still extremely difficult, and he'd been resentful of it initially, that it clearly was going to be propaganda for the powerful, but instead it's propaganda for... something else. "We think the truth can do very nearly everything" is Galtan, almost, but "a world united can beat them into the dust" is something that reminds him of Abadar more than anything else, though that's still badly wrong.

Assuming there's any truth in it. Which he probably shouldn't.

He'd be putting Tibex and Jamisa and their children at risk. And his acolyte Sarakaske. He's in a dangerous position, as stable as he's managed to make it.

He wants to keep listening anyway. There's something in the back of his mind which wants nothing more than to hear from someone who cares about this.

Gods all, he hates being pragmatic.

He gets rid of them the day it's announced they're contraband. He 'loses' (throws in a drain) the key to Tibex's quarters, and tells him he has, and that he'll let him know when he gets a locksmith in to change it. (That will be 'never'.)

His congregation largely keep their radios. Oh, they say they 'heard from someone who's listening', but they know they're listening themselves, and he knows they are, and they know he knows, and they all have plausible deniability. Most of them don't listen to the Voice of Freedom. But several say they think their children might be.

He hoped that would be enough to satisfy him, but he keeps scheming in dull moments. Luckily, one of the ideas is sufficient.

He very publicly is available and taking consultations during the time the Voice of Freedom is active. (Everyone knows when that is. Either you're listening, or you're making very sure you're obviously not listening.)

He is also, three to four hours earlier, ducking into an attic garret he rents under a false face (they know he's disguised but think it's for an affair), and leaving an unseen servant cast with prayer beads, telling it to write down everything said on the radio until its duration expires. And then picking that up the next morning. His plan is to make it often with a dimension door so he isn't reliably seen on those mornings.

Which means that the first one he reads is

House Thrune is losing. Many of you have been lied to about history, so let me spell it out. In Aspex's time, the Empire - the greatest power in all of Avistan - stretched as far north as Lastwall and Varisia and as far south as some holdings on the Mwangi coast. The Empire grew and prospered until Aroden's death, and then it collapsed into thirty years of devastating civil war, egged on by Asmodeus. Now, let me tell you some things about thirty years of war. The ordinary people die, when the soldiers take all the food they need for the next harvest. Disciplined soldiers moving through their own territory will have enough sense to leave some food. But as the war dragged on, the soldiers got worse. The first year that you leave a family with barely any food for winter, their children die, and their elderly. The next year, or maybe the year after that, they all die. Then the people in the cities where the food was taken die too. People get out, if they can, and starve, if they can't. No natural war I know of has endured as long as this one at the intensity of this one; it endured so long only because Asmodeus was making it.

Asmodeus robbed Cheliax, crippled it and leached it and starved it, for thirty years, until he could puppet some cowards to the top of the pile of corpses he'd made of their country and declare them in charge.

Theopho is not as sheltered from the truth as most Chelish people, even most nobles who have the latitude to break laws as long as they aren't too egregious.

This is still not an explanation he had ever considered. He'd thought it was a matter of several gods and factions competing and investing far too much resources into the war even as it stretched on. But it makes sense, more sense, and it makes him a little sick.

He doesn't often think about his decision to return home, after he got empowered. He learned more, later - he was wrong, somewhat, about his alternatives. His costs are sunk, though, and it doesn't help to second-guess himself.

But right now, he's doing it anyway.

They worship an Evil, weak, pathetic god, that could only with enormous effort and expense manage to wrap his fingers around the throat of my homeland, and mortals have spent every minute since breaking those fingers one by one and prying him loose. And there aren't very many fingers left. 

The Thrunes are weak. It makes sense; strong and free people have their choice of employers, so Asmodeus can only work with slaves, or people too stupid to realize they're getting a bad deal, or people who no one else would ever choose to work with. In nearly every case I've ever heard of, a dynasty as incompetent and wasteful and self-destructive and infighting-happy as the Thrunes would be overthrown, and good riddance. But Hell keeps its puppets in power; it has to. All the rest of its puppets are somehow even worse."

Is he getting a bad deal? He has maintained Lawful Neutral (with difficulty) and expects that he'll be able to visit Axis from the Gardens of Erecura. He's insulated from political infighting by distance and usefulness to some of the other minor factions, and he's able to visit family - who aren't nice people but are his - and it's, as far as he can tell, stable.

He doesn't hate the Thrunes. He does go out of his way not to interact with them except when they come to him or, unfortunately, directly summon him, because he kind of suspects he might start to hate them if he interacted with them more. (He's had that reaction to a lot of higher nobility. All but one, really.) Hating them is not, actually, illegal, as long as it doesn't turn into disloyalty - and he's not in line for any kind of title or inheritance, so he's basically safe from being declared an aspiring traitor hoping to seize a title from its rightful holder. And also he has the custom-made headband that protects against detect thoughts. He doesn't hate them... but it's certainly true that they have a lot of infighting. One of the most common subjects he's asked for advice on, from nobles, is how to best insulate themselves from the current infighting. And 'current' keeps changing. They seem competent at their goals... but they've lost a lot of ground to rebellions, actually, so maybe that's more about what they present as their goals than the natural convergent goals of a healthy dynasty. Histories tend to emphasize how much infighting Taldor has had, and he's never gotten reason to think that was wrong even when traveling... but this doesn't ring false, if he's honest with himself.

...Tessane would be better at keeping people in line without infighting than the Thrunes, honestly. Really, most of her family would be - no one's 'slipped on the stairs' in at least the youngest two generations, unless you count sending Maexim to the Worldwound. (Which honestly Theo does, but that wouldn't have worked to get him killed if he was worth salvaging. Being smart enough or dangerous enough or self-aware enough would have been sufficient. Maexim was a prideful idiot and they got the trash to take itself out.) And it's not like the Jeggares don't maneuver against each other, viciously, they just keep their claws in with their family as long as no one crosses a line. (Tess told him she'd made clear through the family's whisper network that pulling him in as stakes would cross the line, in addition to pissing off a church. He didn't have a word for how he felt about that, because Chelish Taldane doesn't have a word for 'sweet'.)

And... Freedom is right. For all the same reasons they're functional, they'd be bad monarchs for Asmodeus. They made their deal, long ago, ostensibly an infernal one but they bear the cost on their bodies and sometimes minds. No soul-sale he's ever heard of did that. They're an old, old family, which she's pretty sure has never made a play for the crown, despite marrying into the old royal line, because it's far safer to be high-nobility power-brokers. They're Lawful and Evil and... pretty good Asmodeans, but... they'd run the country differently. Smoother. Less Asmodeanly.

(Better.)

He skims over the embarrassing stories about the Thrunes, nothing good will come of knowing those whether or not they're true. Even claiming to be a rebel and demonstrating it by (legally if not factually) defaming the ruling house wouldn't work, if it's been on the radio and everyone knows it. The 'lies the Thrunes thought they could get us to believe' is... sobering, because a few of those he had believed, at least tacitly, though on having it pointed out that they're false, it's obvious. (Most of them he learned before he left for Rahadoum and never gotten particular cause to reinspect, there or since returning.)

Obviously if she had any sense she could escape that fate. Get her soul trapped. Plane Shift to Heaven and beg them for help. Hire the best lawyers in Creation to try to find a way free of her contract. Why doesn't she? Well, part of the answer is that if you're the kind of person who realizes you don't want to go to Hell and does something about it, you're too smart for Asmodeus to put on the throne of Cheliax.

Oof. Oh, this is going to infuriate the Thrunes. And almost all the nobility. Except a few who will feel smug and perform fury to fit in. (It's also another strike against the Jeggares, too.)

Part of the answer is that Asmodeans have built up this long list of lies and rationalizations, and she may genuinely believe she's too special to be tortured in Hell. She's not, but she may believe it. Part of the answer is that Asmodeans try to insist that everyone goes to Hell, that there's nothing else, and - there is something else.

That everyone goes to Hell, or goes somewhere which will in time be made into Hell and punished for not being Hell to start with. Who's going to stop him, Pharasma? Iomedae? He's not exactly a patriotic Asmodean, he still despises basically all the gods for being gods, but that claim has never seemed all that much of a stretch.

Asmodeus also claims that he's going to conquer the other afterlives, but I have seen the weapons of war that are made by free hands in the defense of free lands and when you see them too you'll know that's just another lie of His. Evil has to fear the strength of its own people. Good doesn't. Cheliax has to closely monitor all its wizards because most of them defect at fifth circle, the minute they can Teleport to freedom. Good countries rejoice on learning that their wizards have reached fifth circle because their strength strengthens everyone.

Well, it's an argument. True as far as it goes - even bigoted Lawful Neutrals like Osirion are uncomplicatedly happy to see their people rise, assuming they keep their deals. But Evil has tools Good won't countenance, and endless coffers made by its slaves, and...

Wait.

weapons made by free hands in the defense of free lands and when you see them too

So that's the endgame. War. Soon. Maybe not this year, but this decade. And Freedom is involved in it.

...That's a pretty good excuse for why he needs to be listening, actually. The rune-reader needs all the facts percolating, to extract the vapors of nuance and have useful advice. Chelish Intelligence has certainly noticed the straightforward implication of war, but he's sure there's more to pull out of that, and he can understand her mindset better than an Intelligence veteran. He's never managed to talk with real Iomedans, they won't trust anyone Chelish, but he's known Lawful Good wizards and sorcerers.

Doesn't mean he'll actually tell them everything he's inferring...

No. He has to let himself think about this. His position is protective, as is the custom headband it has allowed him to get away with.

Doesn't mean he'll actually tell them everything he's inferring. Or does it? Is he risking himself for this? Is it worth it? Goddess does he wish he could get commune. (But he's shit at combat casting and high-stakes political maneuvering only gets you so far even if failure usually means torture, let alone that he's slowed down by theurgy, so he's not fifth-circle and is never likely to be.)

There's going to be a war. And not just the expected one against Cyprian. It might still be Cyprian but if so he has some new weapons. Related to the radio, presumably. Just to get Worldwound production for the same facilities building weapons? That's shaky. Just for that and Freedom Radio? No way would it tilt the balance enough to make them try it. More complicated than that. Especially if Freedom is really from Chelish soil and got out this young, that is confusing as hell. ...Possibly just that they're trying to reinforce the Worldwound for the inevitable Chelish withdrawal, if they're deploying to the Wound and Abadarans are paying for the effects on trade, then adding a propaganda station is clearly worth it, both directly and to weaken Cheliax relative to others by crippling its ability to use radio without suffering internal dissent and weakness.

Does he, selfishly, want the House of Thrune to win that war?

Cyprian's a conquering nepotistic tyrant, but the only reason Abrogail isn't is because she doesn't have the resources to do the conquering. And...

Asmodeus has to combat the natural human instinct to love one's children, the natural human instinct to love one's parents, the natural human instinct to love one's self, because all of those loves will guide you out of Hell, if you let them.

The more he thinks about this, the more he remembers that makes it sound true. And that fills him with a distant despair.

Theo is not a brave man.

He doesn't want to be a rebel.

But he is, somehow, still rather an idealist.

What's his play?

He won't offer advice until asked. But he does want to have something ready when they ask, because someone will, if not the Crown, then the Church, or at least the Tower or House of Secrets.

Freedom. Her identity. It's a mystery, and one he's better-equipped to solve than anyone else they can safely ask. And it might matter, and he's curious. He'll try to work it out, mostly sincerely, and promise to keep them updated.

And if he's also thinking about other factors they're likely to discount having not seen other countries, they don't need to know that.

Later that week, a priest of Dispater visits to formally request counsel on the matter of the radio broadcasts.

Theopho truthfully denies any relevant knowledge on the technology, but suggests that having traveled more widely, he may be better at predicting the speakers, and particularly he'd be interested in trying to analyze Freedom, especially if he could get permission to listen to the broadcasts directly rather than hear about them second- or third-hand, which he has legibly not been doing in order not to strain the leniency he is formally entitled to.

He's told the request and suggestion will make their way to the Most High, and he will receive a confiscated radio if it's granted.

He shares what he's deduced - very unusual background, not an ordinary Galtan or Andoren philosophically, clearly involved in an arms production scheme - and then wishes them well and sees them off.

He doesn't get a response by the next week, so he's reading the broadcast again.

My family was rich, but not so rich that we could call a powerful priest for a sick baby, and so we prayed for them, and when our prayers were not enough we buried them. Three of my sisters, two of my brothers. The gods didn't do that. So what did?

Hmm. That's odd, even for Cheliax where spontaneous healing is scarce.

The rest is, in its own way, as obscure and innovative as the radio, he thinks. More understanding than they have of disease, even in Rahadoum where they have to treat everything without clerics. Someone's a genius, wherever they're planning these.

And then:

Are you all right?

Oh, I'm quite well. I was saying that I'm told it's possible to save born-early babies but you have to keep them warm and get them good air, and how do you do both of those things at once?

Yeah, something happened, there.

I do feel obliged to confess that my earlier answer to you was only half-true. You noticed I seemed - surprised by something?

You did.

Someone tried to cast a Wish, to interrupt our conversation. Now, it could be that they hate early-born babies, but that wouldn't actually be my guess.

 

And my guess as to who ordered this, of course, is Abrogail Thrune.

Imagine you're Abrogail Thrune. You've got a lot of problems, as we talked about last week. Your country is poor, and Asmodeus is strangling it. Much of what he destroyed to conquer it has never been rebuilt.

 

Cyprian's a better commander than anyone who has ever worked for you, and a lot of your wizards work for him because Cheliax can't keep people who have the power to leave. Felandriel Morgethai's a better wizard than any of yours.

Also, there's a teenage girl making fun of you on the radio.

Oh, this is going to make everyone furious.

But you possess the means to harness untold arcane power to solve your problems! You can do things that many gods wish mortals did not dare to dream of! You can cast a Wish, and rewrite all of reality to suit your vision!

Wait, they don't have an archmage. So where's the wish- pit fiends. Gorthoklek has one. He wouldn't waste it on Freedom alone, probably, but if Theopho recalls his research properly the known wording for transporting people with a wish affects a dozen or more people. Probably they tried for Cyprian, and Morgethai, Whichever of Iomedae's people is in charge of invading Cheliax, and the one in charge of Andoran, and some pretenders or defectors or whoever Chelish Intelligence thinks are most worth trying.

Gorthoklek's wish is just once a year.

I guess we'll see in spring how confident they are in the 'weapons forged by free hands'.

Abby - can I call you Abby - glad to have you among our listeners! Use the next one for your Wisdom! …you know, I say that, and it's good advice, but it's also kind of mean advice, because they wouldn't let her. She can't cast Wishes herself. Hell's supplying them. If she tells Asmodeus that she wants a Wish to kidnap people off radio shows, sure, he's happy to supply that, it's Evil and it's …at least dubiously lawful - I am arguably a Chelish subject - and it's her playing Hell's stupid, stupid game, where the most important thing in the world is your pride. So they'll give her the Wish, if that's what she wants it for. If she asks for a Wish for her Wisdom - if she asks for a Wish to make Cheliax strong and rich and free - well, Hell will turn out, shockingly, to be out of Wishes today. Or they'll kill her.

Oh, that seems like exaggeration. Theopho has briefly interacted with Aspexia Rugatonn, and she was scarily insightful. More dedicated to Asmodeus than the Crown, of course, but not because she had to be, because it achieved her goals for herself. And while he has assiduously avoided coming directly into contact with Her Infernal Majestrix Abrogail Thrune II, she seems plenty aligned with Hell, and like she's at odds only on Law, if anything, which tends to be something increased Wisdom helps with.

A Hellknight of the Rack and a priest of Asmodeus stop by his temple later that week with a radio, written authorization to use it where no one else can hear, and some further notes about what he may not speak of from what he hears.

Then he can dismantle his secret recording nest and set it up in his apartments and both listen and transcribe it all.

He'll apologize to one of his counselees who'd made a regular appointment during Freedom's hour that he has new duties that are time-sensitive and will have to move it. She correctly guesses that he's gotten permission to listen, and is surprised; he begs off explaining on the ground of it being a sensitive Church matter.

He really is interested in who in the void she is. And keeps being so, week after week. He has separate notes, where he transcribes the parts that seem most important to understanding who she is, where she came from, and how she thinks.

It's possible to do all kinds of reckless and ill-advised things responsibly. But many of the people trying will, in fact, ruin their lives.

and

You could also just tell everyone not to pledge obedience in marriage. Some places don’t.

it is in any event the absolute right of any person to pursue their eccentric vision of the good alongside those who share it, if they don’t endanger children thereby.

that they raise honorable sons and honorable daughters and that the sons and the daughters make the same promises, and strive to fairly share the burdens of life and to make its crucial decisions together.

I will say that I stayed once with a woman who refused to ever even hit a child, no matter what they did, and it worked, to raise honorable hardworking children.

Probably we shouldn’t have that situation, and the law should treat men and women just alike. The law should treat alike many peoples who are different.
the law does not assess our character, and should be consistent and impartial.

But when we address disease and learn to build paradise in this world, cities will be much improved, and then He’ll be wrong

and a substantial volume about slavery, which is unsurprising given the Abadaran conversation; she doesn't have much to say critical of Andoran that week, which is probably because the guest was, he hears, wish-kidnapped and freed only with difficulty. Instead of moving parts of it over to his notes, he looks at the older ones, and something jumps out.

one day we will report from the soil of my birth, in Cheliax, and we'll build paradise together

Something's been bugging him about that line since he first read it. It doesn't sound like Galt, or Andoran, or anyone else. A little bit of each, a little Rahadi even, but it's a strange emphasis.

...He has a hunch. He asks some of his contacts whether it is permissible for a priest or noble to acquire a copy of Aroden's holy book. He's not sure what he expects to learn, but something about Cheliax in the past Ages might be important.

It's restricted but legal. He skims The History and Future of Humanity, and the similarity practically jumps off the page. This girl was raised by Arodenites. Also he actually likes Aroden surprisingly much.

Where in the void can you still find Arodenites?

Given everything else, presumably in Andoran? That does not make him all that much less confused.

the rest of the world, looking at Andoran, might reasonably think that democracy and a national ethos of irresponsibility go hand in hand, and the opinion that no state worth emulating has beggar children on its streets, and that if it were true of humans that this was what freedom produced then that would be fairly discouraging

have in their hearts grace and mercy and the knowledge that no one can actually be so virtuous as to be spared all misfortune

Those things aren't all right and I don't like being lied to.

Codwin's interview adds to the notes...

He's thinking aged Chelish exiles, maybe half-elves or planetouched, who adopt any children smuggled out of Cheliax and try to raise them as they would have been in Old Cheliax. It's not a confident theory, but it seems better than anything else he's thought of.

Some things don't go in the notes but hit him hard personally.

If sympathy takes the form of claiming that if you're wronged enough yourself it's okay to start doing Evil - well, it's not.

He's known for years he's a complete hypocrite. Hating the gods, serving one. Having principles, working indirectly for a Church which supports none of them and despises some. It doesn't usually bother him.

Somehow this bites deep into it anyway.

The local priest of Dispater comes by that week.

"High Priest of the Runes. What progress have you made in assessing 'Freedom'?"

"I believe, with fairly high confidence, that she was raised by Arodenites. I obtained a licit copy of the dead god's holy book, and there's clear similarities. Much more than with Iomedans or other faiths I'd suspect."

"Interesting. Those are certainly rare, and narrows the field. Do you have a prediction of where?"

"Yes, but not a confident one. I'd expect Andoran - her democratic impulses seem much more Andoren than Galtan. How you find Arodenites there I don't know, I don't think they're common. Maybe have someone professional guess whether her voice is human or aasimar; aasimar lifetimes might make the old-fashioned view mixed with the new one make more sense with the Abadaran-verified claim that she was born within the current borders of Cheliax."

"That is a workable theory. Raised by heaven-touched parents?"

"Most likely. It's also possible her parents were killed trying to flee to Andoran, and she survived to be adopted by aasimars, in which case she could be any species; survivors of the Civil War who fled to Andoran would be among those most plausibly attached to Aroden's philosophy, and raising Chelish-born children in that philosophy is a plausible life goal they might choose. Many other things are possible, and I wouldn't lean too heavily on this guess, but I wouldn't lean heavily on any other guess either."

"Yes, I see. I'll want to pass this on to the Church itself; do you have a written summary prepared?"

"Of course. Was there anything else you wanted to ask about?"

"I don't know a thing about Lastwall. It's a hanging offense in Kenabres."

He sticks his head out his door. "Tibex, fetch me my atlas, please, I think it's on the blue shelves."

"It was, sir. Here."

"Of course he wouldn't get a fair trial. Why would the Church of Iomedae care about fair trials?"

Okay, that sounds wrong. Not just not Good, but questionably Lawful; even in Asmodeanism, trials are meant to be fair in a certain sense, in that there is a system which is meant to work; manipulable by the skilled and the powerful, but a system nonetheless. If you kill a man in broad daylight (and don't have special status which makes you above the normal law) your trial should reflect that, not just let you threaten the judge into letting you off

(Some people feel much more strongly about that very particular notion of fairness than others. Theo's view is biased because he's carefully-not-dating one of those people.)

"Maybe got the chance to say under a truth spell that they'd never done anything wrong, if that was true, but who's that true of?"

"I don't know," says Freedom. "Certainly not me."

Hmmm. This seems meaningful, but he couldn't say why. He lets the unseen servant take dictation for a while and looks through his atlas. Where is Kenabres? Galt? Cyprian claims to be Iomedan, and all he's heard says it's sincerely meant. ...Doesn't look like it. He checks East Druma, not there either. Wait.

since they stopped burning them

Ustalav? No, that's Pharasmin. Except the northern bit that Lastwall took back from the Worldwound... No. Oh, of course, Mendev. And... yes. Right on the Wound, Kenabres, from the lines drawn clearly a wardstone site. Backwater, queen is a paladin of Iomedae and extending her life repeatedly to keep prosecuting the crusades. He remembers one of the Mendevian Crusades being a witch-hunt for traitors and involving a lot of burning - Third or Fourth, who can remember which. Probably Fourth, if the man remembers them ceasing to burn convicts.

Has he learned anything important?

Probably not. Except that Freedom is, as she admitted, sheltered and fairly ignorant of the world. Which, actually, seems uncharacteristic for the kind of people who idealistically raise the escaped children of Cheliax in Aroden's philosophy.

Maybe that is important.

Her response being to stay on the air for hours talking to more listeners is... straightforward to the point of naivete but obscurely charming. He leaves his servant to copy it down - and it will last six hours, it should be fine even if she's more excessive than she says - and considers the person behind it.

She's tied to the radios. And some new weapons, type unknown. And knows fairly little about the world's politics, though she knows plenty about the churches and major countries and their failings.

...maybe the Arodenites were trying to raise gifted children to be inventor-wizards, and one of them came out Splendid rather than Cunning. And so she's seen the inventing and had the narrow, eclectic education for it but instead talks on the radio.

...that doesn't really convince him.

But he considers a slightly vaguer frame - that she is, by means unspecified, an unusually Splendid, and more-than-ordinarily clever and insightful, person who was close to the invention of radio and whatever else. That part still seems true. What does it mean? It probably suggests that much of the radio programming was her plan. Presumably not the Worldwound or the Abadaran's things - price reports and shipping warnings. But the rest. The adventure stories, the chariot races, everything that doesn't have a direct practical purpose.

He hasn't been paying much attention to those. Maybe he should.

There isn't much more to be learned from that broadcast, or really from the next two month's. All the clergies she interviews are Lawful or Good or both, and none of them are Evil, which since she already talked to Pharasmins and Nethys is insane doesn't rule out many churches. Gozreh, Calistria, Gorum... and Sivanah, technically, but who even knows who Sivanah is, other than wizards? Point against her being raised with inventor-wizards, he guesses. She doesn't get any major political figures - nobody from Lastwall, not Cyprian or any of his marshals, no one from Oppara - and her interviews are generally less sensational than her first few.

She does have a shocking range of practical knowledge that's unusual for even fairly educated people to know, most of it in the same practical vein as the knowledge of disease and newborn care. Point in favor of being raised by or to be wizards. And it does seem like... something Arodenites would emphasize, particularly if it was clear they'd be able to speak to the peasantry and urban poor. If they could, but mostly they couldn't - these would have to be unusually well- and broadly-educated wizards.

He doesn't know. She doesn't make sense. On one level this is a relief, because it means when he is checked in on, he has nothing useful to give them and doesn't have to bluff. But it's frustrating.

And then the war starts.

Three days is enough that he's heard there's fighting, and not on the Andoren border, but not enough that he's heard details. Which means he strongly suspects that the details are "it's going badly", of course - it might be slow to be proclaimed if it was going reasonably well, but it certainly would be slow to percolate if it's not.

He's pretty sure that if he checked that his permission to listen still stood, he'd be denied. So he doesn't. And goes back to having an unseen servant take dictation and reading it an hour or two later.

He's distracted from his monitoring and theorizing by also considering what he should do to protect himself, and just as importantly his 'household'. He probably couldn't get away with planning to flee, but there's got to be other things he can do.

He does have some energy to spare on it, though, and clearly there's things to learn

I have joined the Glorious Reclamation in its fight to liberate Cheliax. I joined them a few months back, actually.

Iomedae is with us. Iomedae is with us more than She has been with any war effort since Her own crusade. Iomedae is, Herself, from Cheliax, and wants to see it free, and will see it free.

This is compatible with her not being an Iomedan. But not, he thinks, likely. It's not surprising, given he was already pretty sure she was a Good Arodenite, that she is one of the Inheritor's. Strikes him as off, a bit, but so does everything else about who she is.

I don't really expect you to believe me about this
[...]
I will tell you that on the walls of Citadel Dinyar, men started falling when the invaders were a mile away.

He believes her. He knows how hard it is to fake truth magic even partially, and also the mental picture of her he has built up wouldn't lie even if she thought she could get away with it. And she just doesn't have the bluffing skills of anyone Chelish, even someone as bad as him.

And that's terrifying, because what in Hell could manage that? Local sonic magic delivered over a modified radio broadcast?

He hears a lot on the radio. He hears some more from his counselees. One, Senyora Arlet Cadena, is responsible for a substantial piece of local weapons manufacturing and has been supplied with (broken, they think) examples of the weapons. He expresses interest in examining it - being a wizard, he might have insights. The woman's smiths have been stumped, so she agrees.

Hollow metal tube, two mechanical assemblies at the handle end, one seems to be finger-operated and strongly resembles a crossbow trigger, the other is used to slide part of the tube to the side while not allowing it to jump sideways when not in use. The smiths have concluded it's clearly an advanced variant of a crossbow in some way, but are stumped on where it gets its motive force. They've found scorch marks inside the removable butt-end, so something is being ignited, but they're lost as to what it could be.

"Did you receive any bolts?"

"Four intact, a dozen used in various states of damage. I was told the ammunition is needed to retaliate immediately. They appear to be complex objects, with some black powder next to a shaped slug of lead."

"I'd be interested in examining one, especially one you've already disassembled. But I can look at the weapon first, I imagine you're protective of it, given the scarcity."

He fiddles with the trigger assembly but doesn't learn much. The sliding butt-end... smells faintly familiar.

"Send one of the apprentices to ask if the High Priest can examine it without interrupting," she says to one of the men.

"They're not magical, which I assume you were already told. Given that they seem to be reliable in quantity, I have a hard time believing any serious alchemy is involved; from my time abroad, I'm personally familiar with how little you can rely on anything more sophisticated than a tanglefoot bag to work more than once or have a predictable scale. Master alchemists can replicate a number of spell effects by supposedly mundane means, but no one else can use the results and they detect as weakly magical. I can look at the ammunition to confirm but I can't imagine the army would have missed that. I'm not sure what that leaves." Other than leaving him further impressed, which it does.

"I don't think we knew that about alchemy, sir," says one of her smiths, "That does help, I think, though I'm as much at a loss as you are."

"Glad to help. Just for completeness's sake, walk me through what you've learned about the mechanical assemblies?"

They're happy to do it. There's probably meant to be a smouldering string in this bit lighting something on fire, there's the traces of fiber and soot, but there's too much soot. (And of course the tube is warped, that's the way it's broken, but they're not sure how that happened.)

He doesn't learn anything more useful until the apprentice comes back and says it would be a good time for him to look at the disassembled bolt-roll.

It's on a small table, wooden and well away from any forge or metal tools. In fact, they seem to be very carefully preventing anyone from bringing in metal nearby. Money pouches are fine as long as they're not iron-clasped, but the apprentice explains that they're afraid of sparks; they lost two of the four already when the paper caught and the powder flared up in a second.

"I'll be careful. Brief, too. My word on it."

He is. with the wooden tongs, he picks up the metal slug (lead, he was told), which is mostly cylindrical, but round at one end. The powder... he recalls the butt's smell. He picks up a small pinch with the tongs, sniffs it. It definitely smells familiar, but he can't place it. The paper is very thin and smooth, but doesn't seem to be remarkable in any other respect - thin will help it burn quickly, he assumes.

"I assume I can't take a pinch home with me? If not, I believe I'm done here."

"I'll ask Senyora Cadena, sir," the apprentice says, and when they've stepped outside, he goes off to find her, leaving Theopho alone.

He's puzzled. In a good way, honestly, so he's keeping his face as still as he can manage, but puzzled. There's a fire in a small tube, rapidly burning. Then the slug of lead moves, propelled at least as fast as a crossbow bolt and, somehow, flies far enough to kill at a mile of distance.

How could it possibly do that? Fire doesn't convey motive force. Sparks, a bit, but those have no momentum, they blow in the wind. Does it matter that it's small? Is it somehow creating a tiny fireball?

...a tiny fireball...

Theopho has never been an adventurer. But he did teach classes, and he was a generalist, so that included evocation. And so he did, on occasion, have to explain to young wizards the difference between a burst, a spread, and an emanation. Fireball is the standard example of a spread - an effect that will fill a ball if it can, but if cast near a turn in a corridor can and will spread around the corner. Or if you cast it at the end of a narrow hallway, extend remarkably far the other way.

If you did that in an incredibly narrow, small space, where there was only one direction it could move...

And the powder smell reminds him of something. Of bat guano and sulfur.

That doesn't mean he understand a whit of how they make that happen. It's not magical, he did check, so they can't possibly be making the material components turn into a spell inside the shaft of the weapon. Unless they're doing some absurd ritual magic, he supposes, that does exist, though he's never heard of it south of Irrisen or west of Ind.

But he's pretty sure he just realized a significant piece of how they work.

And he really doesn't want to let that on.

The smith who's been responsible for examining them returns, as does Senyora Cadena.

"You want a pinch of the fire-powder? What for?"

"To have something to compare to. Possibly use as a focus for divination, try to find something something with locate object or something. I don't think it's likely to work, but if you can spare it, I might have something to share in a few days."

"Ma'am?"

"I don't think I can allow that without authorization, High Priest Theopho."

"Understandable. It's probably not worth the time to seek it, unless you have a breakthrough on other aspects of the weapon."

"Thank you for your assistance nonetheless."

So he goes home, with a great deal to think about.

Chief among it, that this clearly has absolutely nothing in common with radio. Unless there's some fundamental alchemical property involved in making radio broadcasters or receivers work, which could be true for broadcasters, he supposes, but that seems unlikely.

Which suggests that whatever Arodenite enclave turned out these people, either their genius inventor is multidisciplinary or they have several.

Honestly this cult/cell/monastery he's imagining is getting very implausible. Either they accidentally raised the greatest inventor since, who knows, probably Nex, or they hid an enormous number of talented kids and several of them turned out to be prodigies, or someone's figured out a way to reliably turn arbitrary children into prodigies, which seems like it would take divine intervention or at least the intervention of a significantly greater archmage than Morgethai.

...Clepati could maybe do it, if she wanted to. But there's not much he'd say she couldn't do if she wanted to. And this definitely isn't her. Not enough has exploded.

Okay, actually, maybe he shouldn't dismiss Morgethai entirely. Teaching is her specialty, has been since before the godfall. What would she need, that she doesn't obviously have, to make a project like that work?

Wishes and spellsiver, probably. And lots of both. Whatever it takes to manufacture prodigies of invention and creativity, it would be astounding if it was easier than enhancing intelligence - and wisdom, probably - to the heights of mortal capacity. Might explain how they have such an astoundingly Splendid young woman on the radio.He does some math and decides that under plausible assumptions she'd need at least six years of crafting days, entirely hidden from view, to be able to shape young potential prodigies into genius inventors. In addition to vast quantities of money, in wish diamonds and spellsilver. Two dozen people who grew up wearing the best nonartifact headbands money can buy and wished to the gills to boot, and that's just the ordinary quantified flavors of intelligence and wisdom. Inventors need broader creativity and intuition, and raising children as geniuses probably would help but he'd bet you'd need more work on top of that.

None of that seems achievable in the century since Aroden's death, and to his memory she was never particularly an Arodenite to start with. If there was an Arodenite wizard - not an archmage, necessarily, but sixth or seventh circle - who came to her with a plan when Andoran broke loose, and he did the crafting other than accumulating wish scrolls... that starts to look plausible.

Why wouldn't that generate some spell development? Sure, it's insanely dangerous, but he has to believe they'd get the students of a wizard academy to be wizard inventors at higher rates. Probably they did, and whatever useful things they developed are being held back as additional tricks to play if Cheliax gets used to the absurd not-crossbows.

It might be easier if someone tried to take adults who were moderately-creative inventors and enhance them into geniuses. But... he doesn't believe it. Even if they were an Arodenite project, and that's not too hard to imagine swaying some inventors to do, that leaves Freedom. She doesn't seem like the children of a conspiracy of hidden inventor geniuses desperately trying to make weapons to take down Infernal Cheliax. She's Arodenite but not just Arodenite, and her particular view of the world seems... relentlessly optimistic and Andoren, for someone raised in what would effectively be a secret military project even if there weren't any actual military officers involved.

He can't point to anything that rules it out. But reading people is literally his job, as much as the advice he gives, and this is making more salient that he would bet his house that she wasn't raised under military discipline.

We're winning, of course, but there's no point pretending that everything's going our way; no one's going to believe that. If you claim that the war will be won without horrible losses, then when there are horrible losses people might go 'why am I fighting in this war'? So you have to be straightforward. Many people are going to die. We're going to win, though.

It's unsurprising she believes it. But honestly? He does, too.

And I'm sure at this point a lot of you are wondering, can't Cheliax steal these weapons? They've tried! But what makes them powerful is that we have ten thousand of them, and the ammunition for them, and by now House Thrune has discovered it can't make them or make ammunition for them. You might think that they can learn how, since people did learn how in the first place, but remember that only slaves, desperate people, and stupid people work for House Thrune, and many of the slaves are now contemplating escape. Invention is the business of free people, defending free countries. Cheliax will be a place of invention once again as soon as it's free.

Yes, well, you can thank me later, he thinks. He could have somewhat solved the problem for them, but then, he is also somewhat free. And of Chelish people, probably among the freest, really. Carving out a space in Hell's stronghold to live his life by his own choices and strength, like Erecura before him.

She may abandon him soon, depending on how this goes. He hasn't asked, and wouldn't even if he could. If he has to break with Her, he will, with regrets but not hesitation. He was a wizard and a Rahadi first, after all; if he was the sort to be dissuaded by 'my goddess will disapprove', he wouldn't have come to Her in the first place.

Three days ago at dawn, the Glorious Reclamation teleported their whole army to outside Kantaria, where they engaged and very easily defeated the army of the archduke of Menador.

North of the woods, then. And teleportation circles, so they have two archmages. They're... just looking to destroy the Chelish armies? He supposes they can walk their way around the Barrowwood toward Egorian.

But that's not all of the big news I have for you since yesterday's broadcast. Listeners in Rahadoum have been telling me that Rahadoum has now struck out to retake its northernmost territories from Cheliax. Under ordinary circumstances, Cheliax would probably be able to beat back the Rahadoumi - but right now, they can't afford to send any help south, and I'm not even sure they can afford for the navy and the forces stationed around Corentyn to be tied up dealing with this.

He is very glad he's listening alone, because he cannot suppress his grin. Good for you, boyos! Throw a few fireballs for me!

But then what he comes back to, an hour later on the transcript, is this:

Now, you're probably thinking 'it's possible to Teleport whole armies? I didn't even know that could be done!' because that's what I was thinking when I first heard the news.

What the void? How do you raise her among geniuses, something that takes advanced wizards even if it's not the archmage plot he considered earlier, and not have heard of the major war magic of the archmages?

Well, that rules out the whole Morgethai wish-pile theory. And... constrains all the others way more than he'd have thought. Damn, he really is running out of plausible ideas.

It's not long before the next bombshell, and for once this one doesn't come from Freedom's mouth. There's been a disturbance to the Great Seal of Tar-Baphon, and Lastwall accuses it of being from the seal in Westcrown being interfered with. Cheliax denies it, of course, but no one believes it and everyone else involved thinks it's them.

The official story is that there was some internal cult and the spymaster didn't catch them soon enough, for which she has been removed (and probably executed).

Theo briefly considers visiting the fort in Westcrown where the Imperial Lesser Seal lives and offering to inspect it, as a Lawful Neutral priest and wizard who could reasonably inspect it and who people outside Cheliax might trust more. This is true, and it would in fact be hilarious, since they'd have to pretend to believe the official story and find some other excuse for why he wasn't allowed to check the seal, but he is mindful that he really ought not taunt the Church or Crown more than his existence already does on its own.

He waits a day to hear the more detailed story, and it does not make for a good day.

Would even Abrogail Thrune dare to try to unleash the greatest horror in the history of Avistan just to distract one of her many, many enemies? Is it possible someone in Cheliax did it without her knowledge, and if so, what does that say about the state of her regime? Considering how much everyone in Cheliax lies all the time, wouldn’t you think they’d be better at it by now?

Whoever manipulated one of the lesser seals did so in order to introduce a vulnerability in the greater one. A vulnerability which might permit Tar-Baphon, while he remains trapped, to extend his influence back into our world.

"And the third seal is kept in Westcrown, in Cheliax, ruled by Hell and presently at war."
"Cheliax would have to be very foolish to imagine that Tar-Baphon’s release would serve them long."
“And they are very foolish”

Are they insane? How in the Abyss would Cheliax bring Tar-Baphon to the negotiating table, let alone secure safety against him? The Crown is often arbitrary, cruel, fractious, but... this just seems stupid, which is a criticism he's honestly rarely tempted to point their way.

The next few days are no better, because private counsel with a priest of advice and secrets is something a number of influential people want, reassurance that the accusations aren't true, or reassurance in the case that they are. And he has nothing to offer. "Were it not for the Crown's assurance that they weren't involved, I would be certain that they were responsible," he says repeatedly, "Even though I have no earthly idea why that would benefit the Crown, Church, or even House Thrune in isolation."

He visits Tessane. Partly to vent, partly to let off steam, partly to ask her what she plans for the near future. She's just about as helpless as him when it comes to possibilities which aren't treason, as it turns out. Offers to get him out of the city, she lives in her townhouse but there is an archcounty estate nearby. He refuses; he says he has responsibilities and doesn't want to even appear to break his agreement with the Church. (She doesn't believe him, of course.)

The city is tense. They can somewhat limit who's listening to Freedom, and somewhat limit news from the front, but when the front moves whenever a couple archmages want it to, which apparently they do, that's tricky enough on its own, and it doesn't really work.

It's usually mostly fairly wealthy and influential people who come ask him for advice. These days it's just the wealthy ones; the influential ones are increasingly staying clear of the cities, or else finding excuses to stay in Egorian itself, and the ones who only have wealth can't afford to, for multiple reasons.

Freedom misses a day. No one fills in, and Theo is very distracted most of the day until he observes that there have been absolutely no triumphant announcements and by now there ought to be. Well, there have been triumphal announcements, but the kind that are telling people what to believe (War on Andoran, war on Lastwall, Almas burned, the invader's army burned) rather than ones which are actually gloating about success. (And they didn't say Azir burned, so on net he was slightly relieved.)

She doesn't miss a second day.

an attack before dawn on Almas, Vigil, and probably also some other places

Felandriel Morgethai, and she doesn't take it very kindly when people mess with her city, and she's a much more impressive archmage than Razmir is

Cheliax almost certainly thought that they could take Morgethai out, and leave the forces of Good without one of their most powerful defenders. It didn't work, and now they're in deep trouble.

Well, that's certainly all true. Cheliax finally got their archmage and he ran away. If he's even still on-side.

if you cast Disintegrate on the walls of Vigil they'll laugh at you. So who did Cheliax enlist to try to break the unbreakable city? Well, the person who built it.

That actually makes him start visibly. He saw Arazni, once; back when he was researching lichdom theory, he naturally spent time in Geb - perfectly lovely country if you don't care about the zombies, really - and she doesn't make many public appearances but that's not zero. And he knows exactly how impossible it is to get Geb to care about anything other than Nex, or to let Arazni do anything on her own.

And then the Goddess cut Arazni free of Geb.

Gods damn.

So Asmodeus has a spending advantage, but that's not at all the same thing as a power projection advantage. He can spend astounding sums to bribe Geb to send Arazni to Vigil, but Iomedae can show up and say 'would you rather not work for Geb' and there goes that. He can spend astounding sums to bribe Razmir to try to kill Morgethai, but if it doesn't work on the first few tries Razmir will decide it's not worth the money. He cannot buy alliances built on anything more than convenience and assured selfish benefit, and he doesn't have any friends.

He listens to this, and nods along, but then it calls back to something he's been feeling for weeks now, and he gets distracted...

Asmodeus has a spending advantage

He does. He's the most powerful of the gods, except probably Pharasma, he monopolizes Lawful Evil and subsidizes Cheliax and...

Something Tessane said, when they interfered with Tar-Baphon:

"The brat's claimed that what's good for the Crown isn't usually good for the country, but even then I struggle to see how this serves the Thrunes. Or the Church."

The war's been weird. Gates of hellfire, attempts to wish-kidnap, paying off Geb, threatening to have to pay off Tar-Baphon...

It's not the Crown that's fighting this war. They'd cut and run, or die swinging in the wind. But the Church... Asmodeus is pouring in far more resources than the mortal Church can possibly be getting him.

They're not fighting Cheliax. Not just in the sense that they want to free it and at this point a lot of Cheliax is going to submit to that without a fuss as soon as they can.

Asmodeus is directly invested in preserving the Crown.

This is a war to exhaust Asmodeus.

Well, now he's back to being terrified actually.

He'd been thinking about ways he could aid the Reclamation with relatively small risks to himself. He is no longer thinking about that.

If people ask him about the war this week, the thing he says repeatedly is "It looks to me like Asmodeus is personally willing to spend enormous resources to keep His country secure," and if Tar-Baphon comes up again, "He seems to be willing to expensively contract with unpalatable allies to keep His country secure, also."

Neither he or his counselees are having a restful week.

He's still listening to the radio, though.

A dragon attacked them under cover of smoke, and they drove it off with gunfire same as the pit fiends, though (he infers) less quickly because it was an ambush.

They teleported the army again, and the Eastern army attacking Andoran is now squeezed between two armies and going to be cut to pieces rapidly.

No further news of Lastwall proper, which makes sense as Cheliax doesn't have the teleport capacity to seriously attack it.

Razmir makes more attacks but he's put down again, this time probably for good. And Cyprian has invaded Razmiran, so he probably won't be back even if he's still among the living.

Ravounel has risen in revolt and seems to be holding the passes. Pezzack hasn't successfully rebelled, but they rioted and the mayor's probably running scared.

...There's something odd about how Freedom described that. She was phrasing her praise and encouragements very carefully.

He goes over the wording a few times, and notices she never actually encouraged anyone to do anything similar elsewhere. Given her past "how to murder an evil priest" episode, that's... odd.

He sends a messenger to Tess's townhouse the next day.

Most esteemed Archcountess Jeggare,

I'm analyzing some interesting public statements you may have heard, and there might be a legal question involved. Do you know much about the incitement to crime laws in other countries? Lastwall, Nirmathas, and Andoran, mainly, but possibly Galt, Taldor, or maybe Rahadoum or Osirion? I would consider it a personal favor if you shared any such knowledge.

Yours,

High Priest Theopho of the Runes

High Priest Theopho,

I have significant skill in those matters, though of course I will not claim mastery of fields I have little occasion to practice. To my knowledge Lastwall's law on the subject is very narrowly drawn and clear-cut, Nirmathi law is extremely ill-defined and probably doesn't specify it as a cause of action, and both old Taldane and modern Galtan law are very broad and easy to bring a charge against anyone, primarily used to suppress dissent against their emperors. The rest I'd have to examine in more detail.

If you would care to attend me in the evening some time this week, my slaves will be told to expect you. Bring notes on the statements, if you have them.

Sincerely,

Archcountess Tessane Jeggare

Well, he hardly needs an excuse... (Though he does hate interacting with her slaves. Or anyone's, but it's usually easier to avoid.)

Nothing about how she changed her patterns of speech makes sense for any of the Avistani countries. Especially since most of them are in a state of war with Cheliax and would consider the rioting and burning of the mayoral mansion to be permissible sabotage.

Rahadoum wouldn't care either. (He wasn't sure, beyond the base Code of Laws he never interacted much with the law in Rahadoum; he was a model citizen.) Osirion, though, would. But he heard her criticism of Erastilian marriage norms and while Osirion is not as bad as he had been thinking when he was leaving Rahadoum for the last time, it's very much worse on that front than traditional Avistani society.

Why would Freedom suffer through Osirion?

He's nearly asleep, at home, when it comes to him. The Dome. Famously impervious to magic, even to the archmage level. Notably, including wish-kidnapping.

Well. There's a distinctly war-relevant fact that it's unlikely the Queen knows.

Is he going to tell them?

After a sleepless hour or two, he decides 'if they ask, yes'. But he's not going to volunteer it, and they probably won't ask. He'll work out an excuse for not volunteering it, if they do - something like "I thought she was no longer a priority since the war proper began, but kept analyzing for the sake of curiosity" should be enough.

It takes extraordinary courage, to look Asmodeus in the eye and say that He can't have your country.

And he doesn't have it. And knows it. Gods, she manages to poke him in the guilt surprisingly often.

And then the army arrives in Westcrown. Overland, not by teleportation circle this time. He offers to accompany the lord-mayor, but the man's never liked him (probably because he can tell Arvanxi is thoroughly corrupt and unprincipled) and refuses.

He considers burning a scroll of sending to tell Lord Marshal Cansellarion who to maneuver in a parley and offer to broker local governance that are relatively trustworthy, he does have two in reserve. But... Asmodeus is still willing to escalate, probably. He won't feel safe until there is no longer a Most High outside the Worldwound treaty zone.

He can still offer his help once they're in the city itself, which they won't trust much but will probably still take, he can pass a truth spell.

Then he sees cloudkill leaking through the windows of Citadel Rivad, followed by three pit fiends prostrating themselves before the Reclamation army as they open the gates.

And not the bottom-floor windows, either.

Cloudkill does not work that way.

On reflection, perhaps he should, additionally, be terrified of the Glorious Reclamation. Anyone who can do whatever just happened there can probably make his life unpleasant long after (what would otherwise be his) death.

With mixed feelings that most of them probably can't detect, Theopho does in fact offer his assistance reassuring the populace, pointing out people who can be trusted to follow contracts in an Abadaran fashion if they agree to do so, and generally serve as a guide to the soft power centers of the city of Westcrown. Also to sell them positive energy channels but he rather suspects they are in much less need of those than his previous visitors.

He assumes he'll have to explain why a priest of a power of Hell is cooperating with the invaders. His answer is that one of Erecura's commandments is for her priests to thrive in hostile circumstances and build themselves their own places to thrive by their own strength, and based on whatever they did to Citadel Rivad he's pretty sure this counts. Also, he has asked in the past and his temple is not desired in Egorian proper, and where else would he leave for, really?

Also he frees Tibex and his family! And promises them three months of free rent in their current quarters minimum, if they don't want to immediately leave.

He also visits the Lebanel Manor partly to let his parents know how he has chosen to respond to the invasion but mostly to offer assistance finding housing and ways out to their freed slaves - he suspects the Bellflowers will be overwhelmed, not having previously had the need to specialize for volume. He's not sure yet whether he wants to say his temple is somewhere to check in for any freed slaves in general looking for paid work, housing, or ways out of the country, but he's going to ask Erecura for permission and suspects she'll approve.

Augury confirms that doing it will bring weal. He goes ahead and makes it known that freed slaves and people looking to hire, house, or transport freed slaves on fair terms can contact the House of Runes and he will arrange to connect them. (He hires some people to help with this.) This is arguably risky if Asmodeus retakes control, but it gives him joy and doesn't undermine Church or Crown any more than having the city free of them already does.

He keeps wearing his protective headband. And he keeps listening to the radio. Despite his fears, it all seems to be going well for the Freedom alliance. There's a plague, but they have new medicine and have imported a lot of clerics and the plague is, while exotic and suspected to be demonic, being held back, and beaten back from the army entirely. Yet another genius from the pool of geniuses they seems to have under wraps.

He vaguely contemplates whether he wants to ask who invented the guns and radio and medicines, if they manage to pull out a solid win. He's not sure he will.

These days he listens to Freedom on his balcony, in the open air, though he still has a second set taking dictation because why not.

the forces of the Glorious Reclamation trapped her soul and finished conquering her country. …really a lot more good news than bad news, there, I guess. Anyway, the fighting in Egorian is over, the fighting around Ostenso is over, the neutral arbitrators responsible for determining who is in charge of Cheliax for the sake of determining who has the command of its Worldwound forts has determined that it's Lord Marshal Cansellarion

...that's it, then? It's over? Asmodeus finally folded rather than keep reraising?

He can't quite bring himself to believe it. That's not how tyranny works. But... he'll try.

I can tell you more of the truth, now, about where I’m from. I’m from Cheliax, from the archduchy of Menador, but when I was fifteen a magical accident picked me up and dropped me somewhere else. It says in The History And Future of Humanity that all of the stars in the sky are other suns like our sun, and about them are other worlds like our worlds, full of people both more and less alien than you would imagine; and it is on one of those worlds that I found myself, and saw the things that Golarion could grow up to be. I know that republics can work, I have seen a place where they do. I know how rich the world can get, and how fast the world can get that rich, and I’m going to see it done here, in our lifetimes, for the benefit of our children. It will take a million hands and a million minds and a million inventions, and we have them. 

And I can tell you now about airplanes. On Earth, you see, the world I visited, there are no wizards and the gods empower no priests, and all their great beasts are long dead, and so you might think that people could not fly. But people want to fly; it’s in our nature. If the world doesn’t hand us the strength we invent it ourselves. They jump off cliffs with cloth wings - don’t do that - and rise in baskets powered by heated air - tune in next week if you want to learn how to do that. 

Airplanes are built out of purely mechanical parts, there's no magic to them, and built well they can fly a Teleport's length in less than two hours, and fly across the oceans to the distant continents in six. I've been wanting to build them for ages, but while Hell had my homeland in its clutches other matters had to come first. But now, we're going to have airplanes. You'll see them in the sky sometimes, like a bird whose wings don't move, soaring eight miles up in the sky because the air's thinner there and that lets them travel faster.

Okay in his defense he was never fucking going to guess that.

I want to congratulate you, people of Cheliax, even if the only thing you did in the war was hide away and survive it, even if you served your evil queen until she met her evil end. You are free, now, and being free means it's your choice what to do from here. You can do profoundly stupid things with your freedom if you'd like. But you made it here, to this crossroads, and I'm glad for you, and I am eager to see what you choose to make of your lives from here, and I really do believe that most people choose goodness, and progress, and airplanes and blazing ambition, when they're free to choose at all.

He gets a glass of whiskey out of his cabinet and toasts Freedom. "I'll do my best not to disappoint you," he says to the air.