"Did you think - Cherry, did you for a moment think that I never tried to come to them in good faith?"

"I served in their bloody war! I tried doing things their way! Heard their sermons, read their books! Tried to convince them, so many times, to do the right thing - to stop killing people, enslaving, torturing people, innocents who couldn't fight back - coming to a village, stealing the food, raping the women, enslaving the men for their war - helping devil-worshippers grow stronger because they wanted them to kill some miserable dretch whose only crime was being born with the wrong bloody alignment - did you think working with demons was my first choice?! I went to every faction along the godsforsaken border - I even went to the Hellknights after the paladins rejected me - 

"Everyone knows not to go to the Iomedaeans with their problems! The only people it doesn't leave worse off are the bloody Iomedaeans!"

"Of course I thought you tried going to them in good faith! 'I promise you will not be worse off' is a very easy promise for someone to keep: they can just ignore you. You going to them and them not changing their behavior about it is disappointing, and the fact that they support slavery in the first place is alarming, but those things both count against Iomedae's church's Goodness, not whether they're likely to lie, and speak more to the intolerable conditions on Golarion," she replies.

"Here, Irabeth, would you just step through here, please?" she asks, gesturing Irabeth towards the door and the fixity field beyond.

"The thing that does make me question whether they're actually going to keep promises is the fact that Irabeth prayed to Iomedae when I had made it clear I wasn't sure whether I wanted that. Now, there are reasons that could make sense -- such as if she already knew about this promise of Iomedae's, which it sounds like she might have, or if she had already given up on cooperating with me, which might be fair under the circumstances -- so I'm trying not to judge her for it. But I think I wouldn't have done that in her place, and I think doing that without explanation was hostile and counterproductive."

She shakes her head wildly, some stress leaking into her voice.

"But, just so we're clear here, none of that is important! I have already failed at keeping information about what is happening here away from Iomedae until we could verify that it would be safe. I have already messed that up beyond the possibility of fixing. The question now is what to do next. And the possibilities are: either Irabeth is lying about what her goddess said, and fetching us more resources is a distraction or a play for time, or she isn't and it's genuinely an attempt to help. I happen to think the latter is more likely, but I understand if you don't agree. The question of what to do remains the same."

She collects herself.

"If Iomedae had wanted to stall for time, she could have just done nothing. It will be hours before we would have heard anything from the away teams, and I still intend to roll out the fixity field in a bit less than twelve hours at the latest, so in the case where she's working against us, she can't win extra time to make us worse off by lying about it. We're already on guard for any potentially hostile divine interventions, and can't meaningfully devote more resources to that. So that's why I said we should dedicate this time to improving the plan on the assumption that we'll soon have access to more spells -- because it's a good course of action either way."

Gord plants himself firmly in the doorway.

"I'm not the one they wronged, everyone else is! All the people they leave worse off in their wake, the farmers enslaved for their wars and the refugees burned to prove they're not demons! They raise people into blind obedience from birth, and tell them it is right and good that an immortal paladin queen has the power of life and death over them, a wrong and a sin if they fight back or steal bread when they are starving, until they half believe they deserve both death and damnation! The graveyards are filled up with corpses left worse off in the name of some greater good perpetually out of sight!"

"So you messed up and Iomedae found out. Are you going to give up on your dreams? Now that she knows, you might as well tell her all your plans? She says she won't use you against your purposes, but she sure as Hell hasn't promised to use you for them! Find allies of your own choice, not the first god who happens to come along!"

Irabeth has long experience in staying calm, remaining civil, and bearing undeserved insults. Her father was lauded as a man of saintly good temperament (you know, for an orc); she herself was sometimes complimented on being a paladin, the 'despite' hanging loud and clear in the air. A raving cultist is so much water off her back. She just hopes Cherry is the right kind of person to be impressed by her civilized demeanor, instead of being swayed by emotion.

Despite the stakes she feels - at peace. This is where she belongs; this is what she is meant to do. Perhaps the Inheritor made her wiser, she marvels, the better to carry out her new task. 

"The world contains great evils not of our making. We Iomedaeans work to fix it, as best we can, and sometimes this means accepting a lesser evil, or even causing one for, yes, the greater good, because we are not all-powerful, and we must choose our battles. We don't make anything worse - not knowingly, not deliberately - by our presence. All the evil you see exists despite us, not because of us."

"A paladin queen rules Mendev, and yet Mendev is a horrible place to live. This is the demons' fault, not Queen Galfrey's. Any achievable alternative to her rule would be far worse."

"I know this not because I am an expert on Mendevian politics, but because that is what Good is. If the Queen thought it better for Mendev for her to abdicate, or if the Goddess thought it, she would be gone without a second's thought. I know that, because I know she is a paladin."

"Iomedae's place, within Lawful Good, is to be the General of Heaven. Being a general means allocating resources, making painful choices, leaving some people unrescued and letting some of your men perish so that the others might live. We do not see what She does, we cannot always make sense of Her actions, and She cannot afford to explain them to us. But we know She is wiser than us, and better, and we have faith that if She orders us to die it is in a worthy cause."

"A general may send some men to die, to save the rest," Gord says bitterly. "His men, who chose to follow him and to obey that day, for the sake of their brothers and their cause."

"His men, Iomedaean. Not bystanders. Perhaps I shouldn't expect a general of slaves to know the difference."

"I am a cleric of Gorum. I know the bloody price of war, and those who choose to pay it. What you do with your war-slaves is not war, it is slaughter."

"Hey!" she interjects.

"I am aware that bad things are happening! It is my sincere hope that we will all be able to contribute to fixing that. Sir Gorumite, if you think that I am making more mistakes I would really appreciate concrete suggestions for how to do better -- right now I want to put Irabeth inside the fixity field, where I can copy her spells, and potentially directly observe if she gets another vision. I also want to hear if she has any specific things to say about why her god didn't want us to roll out the plan immediately. The best case here is that she says 'oh, you forgot to handle this thing', we fix that, and then everyone on Golarion is saved and this argument becomes moot."

For a moment, Gord contemplates closing the door, but they will still be there when he opens it.

He's not going to sulk like a child because he didn't get his way. He's going to grin and bear it and keep fighting until the day he's dead and afterwards as well.

"The fixity field will let you observe her, but it will also let Iomedae see the field and perhaps build her own. Are you sure that is wise?" 

"It's possible I'm working from the wrong threat model -- I assumed that Iomedae's attention being drawn to this general area meant that she would have already had a chance to look, since that was our justification for trying to avoid any attention from the gods. Do you think that that's not the case?" she asks. "You probably still have better intuitions about gods, since you have more experience."

She is so glad they have shifted back to discussing something concrete and actionable. Being outside of her protections is stressful. Being under time pressure is stressful. She is so much better at dealing with concrete problems than with interpersonal problems under these circumstances.

"Also, if the priest from Absalom shows up and has Resurrection to copy, I'm going to want to copy that because otherwise we'll have a harder time getting people out of the afterlives. So that is also in the balance as a possible consideration."

"Gods both see and affect the world mainly through their empowered followers, and secondarily through regular people who pray to them or are just very well aligned - people who worship them and understand them and want the same things the god does."

"This is - received wisdom, not something I know from my own experience. Maybe that's not a hard limit, just easier for them to do. For all I know, Iomedae has seen all there is to see through the paladin's eyes through the open door."

"I would be much more at ease with followers of the gods we wanted to contact. Iomedae passed on a message from Desna, but all it said was see you soon. If I could make demands of the gods, I would have them tell us clearly that we should work with Iomedae and her servants as we would with Desna and Sarenrae and Milani, and that their goals and ours won't be harmed by it."

It really is ridiculous that someone would think Chaotic or Neutral Good more trustworthy than the specific kind of Good that exists in order to be trustworthy. Having Law is supposed to make people trust you more, not less! It's as if, in opposing Lawful Good, he has inverted not only his values but his logic and clear thinking as well!

Of course she lets none of this show on her face.

"We can pray for that," she suggests. "I will not pray about it myself, if you do not wish me to, although I realize I cannot easily prove this to you."

Is anyone here aligned enough with Desna or Sarenrae to successfully pray to Them? They're not the easiest goddesses to make yourself understood to, Cherry is as Lawful Good as she is, and the Gorumite's apparent definition of Good is - at least at odds with his actions this morning.

"Okay. So for one thing, I don't think praying to one of the other gods is going to get a response," she says, pointing at her invisible forks kneeling out of the way next to the door. "Or it already would have. Although perhaps they should ask explicitly for verification," she adds.

"One thing we could do, though, is pull the fixity field back, take Irabeth through the door, close it to block Iomedae's influence, and then bring the fixity field back. I suspect that would prevent Iomedae from seeing anything, although maybe not if she can, like, read a paladin's history or something like that. So maybe we should wait to do that until the priest arrives, and then do it in one go, returning with overwhelming force."

She turns to Irabeth. "In the case that you are trustworthy, which I do still think is more likely, I apologize for giving you the runaround like this. But the dashing swordsman has already helped me avoid several pitfalls due to unfamiliarity with Golarion, and I do think his advice has helped make this whole operation a lot more robust, so I want to take his concerns seriously."

That actually sounds reasonable? Also, Cherry is being very nice and understanding and - trusting of him, even over the Iomedaean paladin. It feels different when it's coming from someone who is, actually, good as well as Good.

"Alright. Let's do that." He unblocks the door. "And - thank you. ...For taking my concerns seriously."

That man seems really upset! What is he saying? 

Desna will happily pay Milani to be the resident mortal-translator. She has plenty of data, now that She's practically in the same room with the mortals, but it's still a bit expensive to understand it Herself.

He's saying he doesn't trust Iomedae or Her paladin, and wants a clear sign from one of us if we want him to work with them. They're discussing whether to pray about it, but we'll have a better way to answer soon.

I can see he is a cleric, but his god did not mark legibly who They are. Do any of You know?

(There is a general headshaking and muttering.)

He claims he's Gorum's. Chaotic Evil.

He has given Cherry Good advice, though!

I knew it! There is Good in everyone, even Evil people!

He is not advocating Gorum's goals. If Cherry rescues everyone and lets them leave places where they are unhappy, there will be far less war, not more.

I vote against telling Gorum.

Chaotic Neutral deities often empower followers who do not advance their goals.

I knew it! There is Good in everyone, even Gorum!

They are closing the door! Finally! See you all in a wing-beat -

With Cherry and Irabeth inside, Gord closes the door to Milliways.

And a grinning man in chainmail with a tankard in his hand claps him on the shoulder and says: 

"Well done! Have a drink!"

He was there all along, you just didn't notice him before now. It couldn't have been otherwise. No Good adventurers' bar is ever without the Dashing Swordsman.